Jon L. Gibson

“ The Poverty Point story is a patchwork of facts, hypotheses, guesses, and speculations. Often there are many different ways to look at the same set of data. This is why there are so many alternative interpretations and differences of opinion among archaeologists who study this fascinating culture. This should not be mistaken for a bad state of affairs. It is good and healthy. It is a sign to all that much remains to be done before we can present a detailed picture in which everyone can be confident. ”

“ Poverty Point culture might have developed without agriculture. One idea was that ordinary hunting, fishing, and collecting in special localities could have been the basis of Poverty Point livelihoods (Gibson 1973) . In areas with generous expanses of elevated lands and swampy river bottoms, wild plant and animal foods were not only bountiful, they were present year-round. By precise timing of food-getting efforts with nature’s seasonal rhythms, Poverty Point peoples could have gotten all the food they needed and probably as much extra as they desired. ”

“ 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. ”

“ When the real size and magnificence of Poverty Point came to be realized in the 1950s, it was believed that such developments were possible only when agriculture or a similarly efficient means of food production were known. ”

“ The only other known human remains that apparently date to the Poverty Point period were some teeth and a lower jaw dredged from the bottom mucks of Bayou Macon, the small stream that lies at the foot of the bluff beneath the Poverty Point site. ”

“ Another suggestion was that Poverty Point life might have involved farming all right, but of a different kind. Mounting evidence showed that a unique brand of horticulture had developed in eastern North America before Poverty Point culture ever began. The plants that were grown included sunflower, sumpweed, probably goosefoot, and possibly others. Other than sunflower, you would be right in thinking these are not widely cultivated species today, although they are common garden plants. They are notorious weeds and modern science has produced a variety of herbicides to get rid of them. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Poverty Point trade dealt primarily in rocks and minerals. At least so it seems. If other things were also circulated, they left no remains. Rocks do make good sense, however. Indians of the day made most of their tools out of rocks; they had no metal-working technology. Rocks do occur in the heartland of Poverty Point culture but mainly as gravels or as outcrops of crumbly sandstones, ironstones, and other soft materials, ill-suited for chipping. ”

“ There are dissenting views on the chiefdom hypothesis, and it will not be surprising if future studies find that different kinds of societies and distinctive structures, existed throughout the Lower Mississippi culture area.
Regardless of whether Poverty Point communities were chiefdoms or tribes or whether organization was complex or simple, there is no doubt that kinship played a dominant role in holding people together. Communities were most basically groups of kinfolks, joined by blood and marriage ties. ”

“ Political organization seems to have been as sophisticated. Just to run a town the size of Poverty Point—the largest in the country in 1000 B.C.—must have required administration far more complicated than that normally found in primitive bands or simple tribes. In addition to its giant size, there was an ambitious civic building program that required administering, as well as commercial trade enterprises that had to be overseen. ”

“ There are several equally plausible ways of looking at Poverty Point trade based on our presently limited knowledge. There are additionally many things we will probably never be able to find out, such as the motivation for trade and the circumstances under which it transpired among participating communities. ”

“ Since we do not know if the goosefoot and knotweed seeds found at Poverty Point sites were domesticated or wild varieties, we cannot be certain whether or not Poverty Point peoples had gardens of these native plants. All we really know, 15 at present, is that Poverty Point communities throughout the Lower Mississippi Valley ate wild plants and animals. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Society and government are the most difficult dimensions of prehistoric cultures for archaeologists to reconstruct. This is because they do not leave material remains and must be inferred indirectly. Yet social and political institutions are basic to every culture. They are primary factors that distinguish one group of people from another. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Other villages, located on rivers which joined Poverty Point with source areas of exotic materials, became important as trade outposts—gateway communities more directly involved with primary acquisition and initial relay of materials. It is probable that these outposts, like Jaketown and Deep Bayou, maintained rather exclusive connections with the peoples who were directly responsible for quarrying or collecting trade materials or through whom such materials had to first circulate. ”

“ Other archaeologists prefer to think that ceramics, whatever their origin, were made by later people and that their appearance in Poverty Point garbage deposits was due to subsequent disturbances which churned and mixed earlier and later remains. And then there are other archaeologists who contend that Poverty Point people developed and made pottery largely on their own.
The extreme differences in pottery throughout the various Poverty Point territories support the latter view. In order to prevent cracking, some Poverty Point potters added vegetable fibers to the clay ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Cottontail and swamp rabbits, opossums, raccoons, squirrels, and other small mammals were hunted, as were turkeys, sandhill cranes, and other kinds of birds. There seems to have been considerable region-to-region and perhaps site-to-site differences in the importance of small mammals and birds.
Plant foods identified from Poverty Point refuse and cooking pits include hickory nuts, pecans, acorns, walnuts, persimmons, wild grapes, wild beans, hackberries, and seeds from honey locust, goosefoot, knotweed, and doveweed (?) ”

“ 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. ”

“ There can be no question of the importance of the principal town of Poverty Point in the entire trade network. This major settlement did not fall at the geographic center of the exchange area but near the common junction of the major rivers that served as trade 32 routes. Along these rivers between Poverty Point and sources of exotic materials were the trade outposts. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Native cultivation need not have involved anything more than scattering seeds over open ground. These plants produced enormous quantities of nutritional seeds. Thus, from the point of view of return for amount of work invested, this kind of gardening would have been economically efficient. ”

“ Many other tools were used in everyday tasks of building houses, butchering animals and making other tools. We know Poverty Point peoples used stone tools for these jobs and probably also used wood, bone and antler ones, as well. ”