Definition: Poverty Point is a large, C-shaped, 3500-year-old earthwork located on the Maçon Ridge in the Mississippi River trench in northeastern Louisiana. The site was built between 1730 and 1350 BC, by Archaic period hunter-gatherers, and it was a settlement and a major exchange center for its occupants, thought to have been several hundred people.
Recent debates concerning the specifics of the site plan have arisen, but most scholars would agree that Poverty Point has at least five mounds and an elliptical earthwork enclosure of five or six rings with radial aisles. The two largest mounds are thought to be bird effigies. Two others are platform mounds and the fifth is a conical burial mound.
Archaeological evidence suggests that Poverty Point was a town for the ancestors of the Tunica-speaking Koroa, Tunica, and Tioux, people who fished and hunted and gathered to feed themselves and, in their off hours, built a beautiful piece of engineering work using baskets of earth.
Google Earth placemark
Recent debates concerning the specifics of the site plan have arisen, but most scholars would agree that Poverty Point has at least five mounds and an elliptical earthwork enclosure of five or six rings with radial aisles. The two largest mounds are thought to be bird effigies. Two others are platform mounds and the fifth is a conical burial mound.
Archaeological evidence suggests that Poverty Point was a town for the ancestors of the Tunica-speaking Koroa, Tunica, and Tioux, people who fished and hunted and gathered to feed themselves and, in their off hours, built a beautiful piece of engineering work using baskets of earth.
Google Earth placemark
Sources
Gibson, Jon L. 2000. The Ancient Mounds of Poverty Point. University Press of Florida, Gainesville.
Gibson, Jon L. 2007. "Formed from the earth in that place": The material side of community at Poverty Point. American Antiquity 72(3):509-523.
Kidder, Tristram R. 2002 Mapping Poverty Point. American Antiquity 67(1):89-102.
Walthall, John A., Stow, Stephen H., and Goad, Sharon I. 1982. Galena analysis and Poverty Point trade. Midcontinental Journal of Archaeology 7: 133-148.
This glossary entry is part of the Dictionary of Archaeology. Any mistakes are the responsibility of Kris Hirst.
