Poverty Point

This article is about the US National Monument in the lower Mississippi valley; for the geographical feature in Massachusetts also called Poverty Point, see Fairhaven, Massachusetts.

Poverty Point National Monument
IUCN category V (protected landscape/seascape)
A map of the Poverty Point earthworks site.
Location	West Carroll Parish, Louisiana, U.S.
Nearest city	Epps, Louisiana
Area	911 (3.68 km²)
Established	October 31, 1988
Governing body	State of Louisiana National Park Service

Poverty Point (French: Pointe de Pauvreté) is a prehistoric earthworks of the Poverty Point culture, now a historic monument located in the Southern United States. It is 15.5 miles (24.9 km) from the current Mississippi River , and situated on the edge of Maçon Ridge, near the village of Epps in West Carroll Parish, Louisiana.

Poverty Point comprises several earthworks and mounds built between 1650 and 700 BCE, during the Archaic period in the Americas by a group of Native Americans of the Poverty Point culture. The culture extended 100 miles (160 km) across the Mississippi Delta. The original purposes of Poverty Point have not been determined by archaeologists, although they have proposed various possibilities including that it was: a settlement, a trading center, and/or a ceremonial religious complex.

The site, which has been described as "the largest and most complex Late Archaic earthwork occupation and ceremonial site yet found in North America" is a registered National Monument. The monument was brought to the attention of archaeologists in the early 20th century, when it was given the name of Poverty Point after a nearby plantation. Since then, various excavations have taken place at the site, and various theories have been suggested regarding its purpose, which range from the archaeological to the pseudo-archaeological and the New Age, while it has remained as a tourist attraction.

Site description

Poverty Point is constructed entirely of earthworks. The core of the site measures approximately 500 acres (2.0 km²), although archaeological investigations have shown that the total occupation area extended for more than three miles (5 km) along the river terrace. The main part of this is a group of six curving earthworks, although there are also a series of mounds both on the outside and inside of the ring earthworks.

Six curving earthworks

The main part of the monument is the six concentric curving earthworks which sit in the center of the site. Each is separated from one another by a flat corridor of earth. Dividing the ridges into three sections are two ramps that slope inwardly, leading to Bayou Maçon. Each of these ridge earthworks is about three feet high. Archaeologists believe they were once five feet high, but have been worn down through agricultural ploughing over the last few centuries. The approximate diameter of the outside ridge is three-quarters of a mile, while the innermost ridge’s diameter is about three-eighths of a mile.

Mound A at Poverty Point

Mound A (The Bird Mound)

Alongside these ridges, there are various other earthworks situated around the site. The largest of these, Mound A, is to the east of the ridges, and is roughly T-shaped when viewed from above. Many have interpreted it as being in the shape of a bird and also as an "Earth island", representing the cosmological center of the site. Scholars use the fact that Mound A is in the center of a direct alignment between Mound B and E as an element demonstrating the complex planning exercised by the sites' builders.

It is known that Mound A was constructed quickly, probably over a period of less than three months. Prior to construction, the vegetation covering the site was burned. According to radiocarbon analysis, this burning occurred between approximately 1450 and 1250 BCE. Workers immediately covered the area with a cap of silt, followed quickly by the main construction effort. There are no signs of construction phases or weathering of the mound fill even at microscopic levels, indicating that construction proceeded in a single massive effort over a short period. In total volume, Mound A is made up of approximately 238,000 cubic meters of fill, making it the second-largest earthen mound (by volume) in eastern North America. It is second to the later Mississippian-culture Monks Mound at Cahokia, in present-day Illinois.

Mound B

Mound B, a platform mound, is north-west of the rings and below the mound was found a human bone inturned with ashes, a likely indication of cremation, suggesting that this might be a burial mound or the individual was a victim of human sacrifice. Mound B aligns up in a straight north to south line with both Mound A and E.

Mound E (The Ballcourt Mound)

The Ballcourt Mound, which is also a platform mound, is so called because "two shallow depressions on its flattened top reminded some archaeologists of playing areas in front of outdoor basketball goals, not because they had any revelation about Poverty Point's sports scene." Mound E aligns up in a straight south to north line with Mound A and B.

The Dunbar and Lower Jackson Mounds

Within the enclosure created by the curving earthworks, two further platform mounds were located. One, the Dunbar Mound, had various pieces of chipped precious stones upon it, indicating that people used to sit atop of it and make jewelry. South of the site center is the Lower Jackson Mound, which is believed to be the oldest of all the earthworks at the site. In the southern edge of the site, the Motley Mound rises 51 ft (16 m). The conical mound is circular and reaches a height of 24.5 ft (7.5 m). The three platform mounds are much smaller than the other mounds.

History

Construction

Poverty Point was not constructed all at once, as one singular monument, but it appears that it was built up over a period of centuries or even millennia, as additions were made by successive generations. There is evidence (collected through excavations performed in 2009 by the University of Louisiana at Monroe and the Mississippi State University), that wooden-post circular structures 80 to 160 feet (49 m) wide had been built in the "plaza" area; whether these features were contemporary with other constructions at the site is not currently known. The first part of the surviving monument that was built was the Lower Jackson Mound, which was probably constructed during the Middle Archaic period, as several highly typical features of Middle Archaic mounds, such as baked loess blocks and Evans points, had been used in its construction; this would place it chronologically either hundreds or even thousands of years before the construction of the rest of Poverty Point. Some archaeologists also believe that Ballcourt Mound may also have been built around this time, though this remains unproven.

The rest of the monument was subsequently built later, during the Later Archaic period, and its creators intentionally incorporated the older monuments of the Lower Jackson Mound and the Ballcourt Mound into it. Quite when construction of the rest of the earthworks commenced, and for how long that construction went on for, has remained a matter of speculation and debate. Radiocarbon dating of the site produced a wide variety of results, and suggested that most of the rings had been constructed between 1600 and 1300 BCE, indicating that the monument had likely been gradually built over several centuries by groups of successive generations.

Although the time scale regarding the building of Poverty Point is still somewhat uncertain, archaeological evidence has shown more clearly how the earthworks were actually constructed. The number of workers involved is unknown, although one of those archaeologists investigating the site, Jon L. Gibson, estimated that it could have been produced in a century by three generations if a hundred people had spent six or seven days a month on its construction. Evidence shows that the workers probably lived on-site during construction, setting up temporary homes on top of the very earthworks that they were building, moving them whenever that particular earthwork was added to. Prior to the construction of the earthworks, the land around the site was levelled off, with ditches being filled in, as has been found by archaeological investigation. The main building material was loess, a type of soil which is easy to dig but has the problem of quickly turning to mud when exposed to water. For this reason clay was used to pack around the loess in order to protect it from rain and ensure that the monuments did not wash away.

Purposes

What functions Poverty Point was used for has been debated by archaeologists since its rediscovery. One of the main questions that has been debated is whether it was used for a settlement, or not and instead for periodic events. Some archaeologists, such as Jon L. Gibson, have postulated that houses were constructed on top of the concentric ring earthworks. The main evidence for this is the few postholes which have been found upon these earthworks, indicating the former presence of a building. However, others have countered that if buildings were indeed found on these earthworks then there would be far more examples of this particular archaeological feature. The response debates that the majority of these postholes would have been destroyed by subsequent ploughing, thus explaining why very few examples survive to the present day. Other archaeologists, such as Sherwood Gagliano and Edwin Jackson, have supported the idea that Poverty Point was not a settlement, but a place where various groups came to meet and trade on an occasional basis. This view was criticised by Gibson, who claimed that there was too much rubbish left at the site by its original inhabitants to indicate only occasional habitation, and that it would be implausible for such a monument to be built to be used simply as a trading center.

Some have also interpreted Poverty Point as having religious symbolism and importance. A posthole was discovered in the central plaza, indicating that a large post was possibly erected there. The archaeologist Professor William Haag, who excavated at the site during the 1970s, interpreted this post as having astronomical significance in being aligned to the solstices, although this view was criticised by the astronomer Robert Purrington of Tulane University, who claimed that the posts were geometrically aligned rather than astronomically. Others have looked at contemporary Native American religious beliefs for parallels, with many noting that among many Natives today, the west is seen as the direction of evil and death. Gibson believed that the rings therefore faced the west in order to keep malevolent spirits out.

The Poverty Point People

Clay cooking balls found at the Poverty Point site

The Poverty Point culture people who constructed Poverty Point were hunter-gatherers rather than agriculturalists, displaying a rare example of a complex hunter-gatherer society that actually constructed large scale monuments. The vast majority of other prehistoric monuments, ranging from Stonehenge in England to the Great Pyramid at Giza in Egypt were all constructed by agricultural societies.

As such, the Poverty Point people’s food sources came from the local animals and plant life that lived around the area. Food was cooked in hearths and pits that likely acted as earth ovens, some of which had plastered walls. Firewood was typically chosen carefully, with only specific trees being used, namely oak and to a lesser degree hickory and cane, which archaeologist Jon L. Gibson believed was due to the fact that oak and hickory add a specific savoury flavour to food.

Artifacts

The vast majority of artifacts uncovered at Poverty Point are small baked loess shapes, which are usually balls, bicones or ropes, all of which have been described as “Poverty Point Objects” or PPOs and for a long time archaeologists debated what they had originally been used for. The conclusion that they had in fact been implements used in cooking was eventually reached after being investigated through experimental archaeology, where, when placed in earth ovens, they were shown to hold heat and help to cook the food. The inhabitants of Poverty Point also produced small amounts of pottery, creating a variety of different kinds - fiber-tempered, sand-tempered, clay grit-tempered and untempered - as well as using both the Wheeler and Old Floyd Tchefuncte design styles as decoration. More commonly however, they used stone vessels, some of which were made on-site and which would have taken greater effort than the production of pottery.

Many of their tools appear to have been made on-site as there is evidence of debris from their construction process found across much of Poverty Point. However, they were also active in trade with other Native American peoples. A disproportional amount of imported items, consisting of projectile points and microliths, have been determined to have originated in the Ouachita and Ozark Mountains and in the Ohio and Tennessee River valleys. There is also soapstone from the southern Appalachian Mountains of Alabama and Georgia , and copper and galena artifacts that indicate trade with the prehistoric copper-producing tribes in the upper Great Lakes region.

Discovery, Excavation and Tourism

An aerial view reveals the circular pattern of ancient American earthworks at Poverty Point.

Discovery and Archaeological Excavation

The first evidence for a later human encountering ancient Poverty Point comes from a burial of a twelth century CE Caddo Native American that was excavated at the Mounds Plantation, a village on the Red River in north-western Louisiana, approximately 150 miles (240 km) to the west of this monument. This individual, who some have speculated was a Konah, or medicine man, was buried with various charms within his medicine bundle that included artifacts from Poverty Point such as two red stone beads, a slate pendant and a hematite plummet. It appears he had come across the site, or encountered someone else who did, and had ancient artifacts taken from it, perhaps believing they had a spiritual reference or power and could be used as amulets.

One of the first written accounts of Poverty Point came from Jacob Walter, a man who had been searching for lead ore in the area, who wrote about it in his diary during the 1830s. However, the first published account of the site came from Samuel Lockett, an officer in the Confederate army during the American Civil War, who described the mounds in 1873. During the early 20th century, interest in the site from actual archaeologists arose, with the site being briefly investigated by Clarence B. Moore over 1911-1912, by Gerard Fowke of the Smithsonian Institution in 1926, by Clarence H. Webb in 1935, and then by Michael Beckman, who was actually searching for oil, in 1946. Three excavation seasons in 1952, 1953 and 1954 were undertaken by James A. Ford and Robert Neitzel, leading to the publication of Poverty Point, a Late Archaic Site in Louisiana in 1956. It was during this excavation that "Poverty Point witnessed some of the first experimental archaeology done in North America." Excavations would continue at the site right through to the 21st century, in an attempt to learn more about the nature of the site, and various different theories were debated, including that it provided evidence for America's first chiefdom, something that has subsequently been discredited.

Public access

In 1960, John Griffin, who at the time was the Southeast Regional Archaeologist for the National Park Service, suggested to the Federal government that Poverty Point be declared and established as a National Monument, stating that "Poverty Point is the largest and most complex Late Archaic earthwork occupation and ceremonial site yet found in North America". However at first Congress declined to support the protection, fearing the unpopularity of acquiring the land upon which the site was located from local landowners. The site was designated as a National Historic Landmark on June 13, 1962. In 1972, the State of Louisiana purchased a 400-acre (1.6 km²) section of the site, and in 1975 opened it to the public as the Poverty Point Commemorative Area, which included a museum devoted to the monument and exhibiting many of the artifacts uncovered there. In 1988 it was finally designated as a U.S. National Monument by Congress. It has since become a popular tourist destination.

Today Poverty Point National Monument is open for visitors daily from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. except for Thanksgiving, Christmas, and New Year’s Day. The cost of the entrance is $4 a person; seniors over the age of 62 and children 12 and under are free. The site is occasionally monitored by the National Historic Landmark program, which is concerned about the erosion of the mounds. Louisiana is working with the Vicksburg U.S. Army Corps of Engineers division in developing plans for erosion control.

New Age and Pseudoarchaeological interpretations

The site has gained significance among some followers of the New Age movement, who believe it to have spiritual qualities. John Ward, in his controversial pseudo-archaeological Ancient Archives among the Cornstalks (1984) claimed that Poverty Point was built by refugees who fled up the Mississippi River after their home, Atlantis, was destroyed in 1198 BCE. A similar connection to the legendary lost city was made by Frank Joseph who claimed that those individuals who were the reincarnation of former Atlanteans were able to unleash the psychic energies of Poverty Point by spilling purified water on the oak tree upon the main mound at the site. A connection to extraterrestrials has also been suggested, most notably by Erich Von Daniken, who looked into the idea that one of the mounds was a landing platform for alien aircraft.

See also

• Watson Brake
• Mound Builder
• Archaic period in the Americas
• Native Americans in the United States

References

• nps.gov
• crt.state.la
• met.museum
• Gibson, Jon L. (2000). The Ancient Mounds of Poverty Point: Place of Rings. Gainesville, Florida: University Press of Florida.
• Milner, George R. (2004). The Moundbuilders: Ancient Peoples of Eastern North America. London: Thames & Hudson Ltd.

External links

• National Park Service: official Poverty Point National Monument website
• Louisiana Archaeological Survey: Poverty Point
• The Archaeology Channel - "Poverty Point Earthworks"