Part 1

Department of Culture, Recreation and Tourism Louisiana Archaeological Survey and Antiquities Commission Anthropological Study No. 7

POVERTY POINT

Baton Rouge, Louisiana

STATE OF LOUISIANA

Edwin W. Edwards _Governor_

DEPARTMENT OF CULTURE, RECREATION AND TOURISM

Noelle LeBlanc _Secretary_

ARCHAEOLOGICAL SURVEY AND ANTIQUITIES COMMISSION

_Ex-Officio Members_

Dr. Kathleen Byrd _State Archaeologist_ Mr. Robert B. _Assistant Secretary_, Office of Cultural DeBlieux Development Mr. B. Jim Porter _Secretary_, Department of Natural Resources Mrs. Dorothy M. _Secretary_, Department of Urban and Taylor Community Affairs

_Appointed Members_

Mrs. Mary L. Christovich Mr. Brian J. Duhe Mr. Marc Dupuy, Jr. Dr. Lorraine Heartfield Dr. J. Richard Shenkel Mrs. Lanier Simmons Dr. Clarence H. Webb

First Printing April 1983 Second Printing, with corrections September 1985

The second printing of this document was funded by the Louisiana Research Foundation and the U. S. Department of the Interior, National Park Service Historic Preservation Fund. This document was published by Bourque Printing, Inc., P. O. Box 45070, Baton Rouge, LA 70895-4070.

POVERTY POINT: A Culture of the Lower Mississippi Valley

Jon L. Gibson

To Carl Alexander, with gratitude

Editor’s Note

Louisiana’s cultural heritage dates back to approximately 10,000 B.C. when man first entered this region. Since that time, many other Indian groups have settled here. All of these groups, as well as the more recent whites and blacks, have left evidence of their presence in the archaeological record. The Anthropological Study series published by the Department of Culture, Recreation & Tourism, Office of Cultural Development provides a readable account of various activities of these cultural groups.

Jon L. Gibson, a professional archaeologist with a long-standing interest in the Poverty Point culture, is the author of “Poverty Point: A Culture of the Lower Mississippi Valley,” the seventh in the series. In this volume, Jon Gibson describes the Poverty Point culture—one of the most spectacular episodes in Louisiana’s past. Few people realize that the Poverty Point site, at 1000 B.C., was the commercial and governmental center of its day. In its time, the Poverty Point site had the largest, most elaborate earthworks anywhere in the western hemisphere. No other Louisiana earthen constructions approached the size of the Poverty Point site until the nineteenth century.

This volume tries to reconstruct from the archaeological remains the life of these bygone people. It discusses where these people lived, what they ate and how they made their tools. It also attempts to reconstruct their social organization and government.

We trust the reader will enjoy this introduction to the fascinating Poverty Point people.

Kathleen Byrd _State Archaeologist_

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

Much of what I know, think, and say about Poverty Point is due to Dr. Clarence Webb. Our close association and collaboration on Poverty Point matters go back to 1969 when we cooperated in a study of the large Carl Alexander collection. The mutual respect and friendship spawned by that association have grown over the years, even though our views on the Poverty Point site and culture have not always coincided. We were to have coauthored this booklet, but circumstances would not permit. I have forged ahead, under his prodding, and hope the results will be to his liking. His thoughtful critique of an earlier version of this report has improved the current one immeasurably.

Mitchell Hillman, Curator of the Poverty Point Commemorative Area, has been a constant source of information and new ideas. Walks over the magnificent Poverty Point site with Hillman are always new experiences. I have never come away from these get-togethers without being rededicated to delving into the many mysteries that the awe-inspiring site has to offer.

The excellent photographs in this book are the work of Brian Cockerham, Ranger at the Poverty Point Commemorative Area, and the drawings are my own.

INTRODUCTION

Until a few years ago, Poverty Point culture was a major archaeological mystery. The mystery centered around the ruins of a large, prehistoric Indian settlement, the Poverty Point site in northeastern Louisiana. Poised on a bluff overlooking Mississippi River swamplands was a group of massive earthworks. It was not the earthworks themselves that were so mysterious, although they were unusual. Eastern North America was after all the acknowledged home of the “Mound Builders,” originally believed to be an extinct, superior race but now known to have been ancestors of various Indian tribes. No, the mystery lay in the age and the size of the earthworks.

Radiocarbon dates indicated that they were built at least a thousand years before the birth of Christ. This was a time when Phoenicians were plying warm Mediterranean waters spreading trade goods and the Ugaritian alphabet. This was a time when the Hittites were warlords of the Middle East. It was before the founding of Rome; even the ascendancy of the Etruscans was still centuries away. Rameses II sat on the throne of Egypt. Moses had just led the Israelites out of Egyptian bondage in quest of the Promised Land. David and Solomon were kings of Israel.

In America where written history is lacking, Native Americans of 2000 to 1000 B.C. were thought to have been wandering hunters and gatherers living in small bands or at best simple tribes. Such unsophisticated groups were not considered capable of raising earthworks like those at the Poverty Point site. Archaeologists believed that such massive construction projects were possible only when large numbers of people started living together in permanent villages and when political control over villagers reached the point where labor could be organized and directed toward building and maintaining community projects, such as civic or religious centers or monuments. These conditions—large, permanent villages and effective political power—were normally found only among peoples whose economy was based on agriculture. In America that usually meant maize (corn).

Were we to believe that Poverty Point might have successfully integrated these factors—large populations, political strength, and maize agriculture—while everyone else in America north of Mexico was still adhering to a much simpler existence? If so, it meant that Poverty Point was one of the first communities, if not _the_ first, to rise above its contemporaries and start the long journey to becoming a truly advanced society.

If Poverty Point did represent the awakening of complex society in the United States, how and why did it develop? Was its emergence caused by immigrants, bearing corn and a new religion, from somewhere in Mexico (Ford 1969:181)? Did it develop locally but under Mexican stimulation (Webb 1977:60-61)? Did it come about by itself without foreign influences (Gibson 1974)?

These were some of the major questions that surrounded Poverty Point. The lack of agreement on these issues created an aura of mystery and promoted the idea that Poverty Point was an enigma, or puzzle. When Poverty Point was not simply being ignored in discussions of Southeastern prehistory during the 1950s-1960s, it was usually portrayed as an unusual cultural complex that burst upon the Lower Mississippi Valley landscape, flourished for a while, and then disappeared leaving no trace among succeeding cultures.

Time has begun to change these perceptions. Poverty Point is no longer regarded as a geographic or developmental irregularity. New research during the last three decades has shown that the Poverty Point way of life was not confined to the big town at the main site, but extended over a large region and encompassed many peoples. Even with increased knowledge, Poverty Point still remains exceptional; yet it is no longer regarded as being out of step with Native American cultural evolution or as a historical flower that blossomed before its time. There are still many unresolved questions about Poverty Point culture. In the following pages, we will explore these questions and our current state of knowledge in order to present a reasonable picture of life in the Lower Mississippi Valley during Poverty Point times.

POVERTY POINT CULTURE: A DEFINITION

Poverty Point culture was a widespread pattern of life followed by certain Indian peoples in the Lower Mississippi Valley between 2000 and 700 B.C. This general lifeway stretched roughly from a northerly point near the junction of the Mississippi and Arkansas rivers, (above the present-day town of Greenville, Mississippi) down the Mississippi Valley to the Gulf Coast (Figure 1). It covered parts of Louisiana, Arkansas, and Mississippi, and its influences reached as far as Florida along the eastern coast and as far up valley as Tennessee and Missouri.

One should not get the idea that Poverty Point peoples from one end of this large region to the other were exactly alike. They did not comprise a single body of kinfolks or a nation. They almost certainly spoke different languages. It is likely that Poverty Point peoples were divided into a number of socially, politically, and ethnically separate groups.

What these people did have in common was participation, to varying degrees, in a far-reaching system of trade and manufacture or use of certain artifacts. Recognition of these artifacts is how archaeologists differentiate between Poverty Point sites and sites of different cultures. Some of these characteristic artifacts include clay cooking balls, clay figurines, small stone tools called microflints, plummets, and finely-crafted stone beads and pendants (Figure 2). Several things distinguish Poverty Point artifacts. One is the decided preference for materials imported from other regions. The other is the emphasis on ground and polished stone artifacts, especially ornaments and other status insignias.

Radiocarbon and thermoluminescence dates show that Poverty Point culture developed over a long period of time. By 3000 B.C., many of the typical artifacts were already in use. A few items had appeared even earlier. During the next thousand years, new artifacts and new styles were added, and by 2000-1800 B.C., an early stage of Poverty Point culture had evolved in some areas. However, the period between 1500 and 700 B.C. was the most climactic, because that was the span dominated by the giant Poverty Point site.

AREAS OF SETTLEMENT SITES POVERTY POINT Jaketown Cowpen Slough Claiborne Ouachita River Arkansas River Joe’s Bayou West Fork Mississippi River East Fork Mississippi River Vermilion River Teche-Red River Louisiana boundaries and modern Mississippi River shown as dotted lines

SETTLEMENT

A map showing the Lower Mississippi Valley in 1000 B.C., during the zenith of Poverty Point culture, reveals some very interesting things. Population was concentrated in certain areas and these areas were separated from each other, sometimes by scores of miles (Figure 1). While this pattern of geographic isolation may be due in part to river erosion and spotty archaeological investigation, it almost surely reflects preferences for certain kinds of land. There were at least 10 population clusters in the area. The largest concentration was in the Yazoo Basin of western Mississippi. Another surrounded the Poverty Point site itself in the Upper Tensas Basin-Macon Ridge region of northeastern Louisiana.

Lying between these various population clusters were stretches of uninhabited or lightly occupied land. In possibly one or two cases, intervening areas may have supported populations almost as concentrated as Poverty Point territories but, for various reasons, these peoples did not participate regularly or intensively in Poverty Point culture.

Our map of 1000 B.C. shows another interesting feature. The scattered Poverty Point population clusters were all linked by waterways. Every one was tied to the Mississippi River. Even though the Mississippi River did not run through every concentration, its major tributaries and distributaries did. These interconnected streams must have been the highways that carried people, trade goods, and ideas.

Most of the population lived in permanent villages along these streams. There were small, medium, and large villages, ranging in size from less than an acre to over 100 acres. The smallest settlements probably housed only a few families, while residents at some of the larger ones must have numbered in the hundreds, possibly even more. One site among them was a veritable metropolis for the day; the population at the Poverty Point site itself has been estimated to number several thousands (Ford and Webb 1956; Gibson 1973). In addition to these stable villages, there were temporary campsites, where villagers evidently took advantage of seasonally available foods and other resources.

Larger villages were often distinguished from smaller ones by more than population numbers. One or more villages in nearly every Poverty Point territory were set apart by public construction works, usually mounds and sometimes embankments. Mounds were made of dirt and were usually dome-shaped affairs constructed in several stages. Two unique mounds at the Poverty Point site have been identified as bird effigies (Ford 1955). Typically one mound stood at these villages, but two to eight mounds were present in some instances (Webb 1977:11-13).

As a general rule, the number and size of these works varied directly with village size and population. Even though several of these mounds have been excavated, their purpose is still unclear. They superficially resemble mounds used as tombs by later cultures, but no burials have turned up in the Poverty Point structures. Beneath a mound of this type at the Poverty Point site was a bed of ashes and a burned human bone, suggesting that, at least in this example, it covered a cremation (Ford and Webb 1956:38). Embankments, or artificial ridges, were occasionally built at these bigger villages. In many cases, embankments seem to have been raised by a combination of construction and incidental accumulation of living refuse. Most of the giant ridges at Poverty Point seem to have grown this way (Ford and Webb 1956; Kuttruff 1975). However, not all of these ridges positively served as foundations for houses. Some served to connect mounds, others perhaps to mark alignments of some kind.

There was evidently no standard architectural arrangement involving mounds and ridges, but semicircular patterns occurred most often. The largest example is at the giant Poverty Point town (Figure 3). Linear plans were also used, and some sites show no recognizable designs. These various arrangements have been said to reflect everything from astronomical observatories to possible “fortresses.”

Of all the similarities and differences among territorial settlement patterns, several things stand out. Villages in each province ranged from small to large and from simple to complex, and every province had one village that stood apart from all the rest. This main village was probably the regional “capital.” Such an arrangement also seems applicable to the provinces themselves. They, like the villages within their bounds, can be ranked in importance according to the intensity of interaction with the major province. Lest there be any doubt, that supreme province lay along the Macon Ridge-Upper Tensas lowlands in extreme northeastern Louisiana. Its “capital” was the great town of Poverty Point. Because of its dominating influence, this magnificent town will be described in detail.

It was first reported by Samuel Lockett in 1873 and was visited many times afterwards. However, it was during excavations, sponsored by the American Museum of Natural History in the early 1950s, that its true nature came to be realized (Ford and Webb 1956). From aerial photographs came the startling realization—Poverty Point was a giant earthwork. It was so large that the bumps and ridges, apparent from a ground-level view, were once thought to be natural. The symmetrical geometry revealed on the photographs, however, led everyone to believe that it had been built from a “blueprint” in a single, all-out construction effort. Its great size, coupled with the millions of artifacts scattered over and in the artificial constructions, gave the impression that it was home for literally thousands and a magnet for multitudes of visitors. Even though new information has begun to change some of these ideas, it has not diminished the massiveness of the engineering feat or appreciation for the collective spirit of those long-ago builders whose vision and toil is represented there.

As one can see from the “city map” (Figure 3), the town was divided into several areas. The main area in the middle of town was dominated by a semicircular or partially octagonal enclosure. The enclosure was produced by six artificial, earthen embankments which formed concentric arcs. Extra ridges were outlined in the western sector, and the outer ridge terminated before reaching the south sector. The ridges were between 50 and 150 feet apart and about the same in width. They were 4 to 6 feet tall. Between them were low areas, or swales, apparently where much of the construction dirt had been removed. From one end of the outer arc to the other was 3950 feet, or nearly three-quarters of a mile. Opposite ends of the interior or smallest embankment were 1950 feet apart. All of the ridges terminated at the edge of a bluff, which dropped steeply some 20 feet below to a stream which paralleled the entire eastern side of the earthwork.

Formerly, archaeologists suspected that the ridges formed a complete circle or octagon and that the Arkansas River, which once flowed by the site, had eaten away the eastern side. Recent geological information and studies of activity patterns on the site, patterns that include both occupational and architectural tasks, now show that the enclosure was always semicircular. The bluff that marks the eastern edge of the site today and which seems to have cut into the earthwork was formed thousands of years before building ever started. In fact, the bluff edge has probably retreated very little since the time of earthwork construction.

The ridges were divided into five sectors by four aisles, or corridors. These openings range from 35 to 160 feet in width. They did not converge at a single point in the middle of the enclosure; neither did they divide the encircling embankments into equal-size areas.

The middle of the enclosure, or plaza, was relatively flat and covered an area of about 37 acres. At the eastern edge lay an oval mound (Bluff Mound). Whether it was built during Poverty Point times or during the Civil War, as claimed by some, is not certain.

Outside the central area were other earthworks (Figure 4). These included mounds and other embankments, as well as depressions. Physically connected to the outermost arc in the western sector was a huge mound (Mound A). The mound had an unusual shape which reminded some experts of a bird. It stood over 70 feet high and measured 640 feet along the “wing” and 710 feet from “head to tail.” The flattened, or so-called “tail,” section of the monster structure was actually built in a pit some 12 or more feet deep. Another similar but slightly smaller mound (Motley Mound) was built 1.5 miles north of the central embankments. Because it had only a lobe where the “bird’s tail” should have been, it was believed to be unfinished (Ford and Webb 1956:18).

Three more structures were positioned along a north-south line that passed through the central “bird” mound. About 0.4 mile north of the big mound was a conical construction (Mound B) covering a possible cremation. Some 600 feet south lay a square, earthen structure with a depression in the center. The function of this mound, like all the others, remains uncertain. There are even doubts about its man-made nature. A curving ridge connected this mound with the aisle separating the western and southwestern sectors. About 1.6 miles further south along the same axis was a second dome, the Lower Jackson Mound, the southernmost structure of the Poverty Point complex.

Some other earthworks—a comma-shaped ridge and at least one mound on the Jackson Place immediately south of the central enclosure—were probably once part of the overall complex. Unfortunately they have been destroyed.

Some of the dirt for the earthworks had been dug from borrow pits that lay outside the embankments. One large one stretched along the entire periphery of the southwestern sector (Figures 3 & 4). A balk, or “bridge,” crossed the center of this depression. An even larger pit ran north from the bird mound to Mound B. Smaller ones dotted the area around the “tail” of the bird mound and north of Mound B. These would have formed large ponds, and one cannot help but wonder if we might not be looking at an ancient, municipal water system or perhaps fish ponds, where catfish and other species might have been “farmed” or kept until needed.

MOTLEY MOUND Escarpment Macon MOUND B MOUND A BLUFF MOUND EMBANKMENTS MOUND Bayou Floodplain Macon Ridge JACKSON COMPLEX POVERTY POINT LOWER JACKSON Escarpment

The majority of the population apparently lived on the embankments in the central area, but appreciable numbers of people lived outside. Important “suburbs” were scattered along the bluff between the central district and Motley Mound, to the west of Motley Mound, to the west and south of the bird mound, on the Jackson Place, and south to Lower Jackson. Other peripheral neighborhoods will no doubt eventually be discovered.

Nothing much is known about Poverty Point houses and furnishings. Probable house outlines were reported from Jaketown (Ford, Phillips, and Haag 1955: Figure 10) and Poverty Point (Webb 1977:13). Stains in the soil, called postmolds, showed these structures to have been circular and small, around 13 to 15 feet in diameter. One possible burned house at Poverty Point appears to have been a semi-subterranean structure, framed with bent poles and covered with cane thatch and daub (dried mud). Interior furnishings were not recognized.