Narratives are stories. In this case a story used to describe a conjecture. Unfortunately researchers found the story convincing enough that Since the publication of the wood‐overuse hypothesis, no attempts have been made to evaluate if erosion in the uplands and/or increased flooding in the floodplain did indeed occur during Cahokia's occupation.

The authors have a potential solution in that conjectures that cross academic divisions should include support from related academic fields or from new interdisciplinary ones like geoarchaeology.

Moving forward, we propose that to move past these older narratives of ecocide, there needs to be increased engagement with obtaining both archaeological and environmental data to address these older theories, a need for researchers who are trained in interdisciplinary research, as well as increased support for long‐term, interdisciplinary collaborations. The interdisciplinary field of geoarchaeology is especially equipped to help us move forward, as long as the members of the field remain engaged with developing anthropological theory.