The Ancient Lands of Northeastern Louisiana...

Map of site from Poverty Point website

On Friday we stepped way back in time at the Poverty Point State Historic Site near Epps, Louisiana in the northeastern corner of the state. This site is comprised of earthen mounds where an ancient civilization lived. The park was established in 1962 as a state historic site, though the mounds date to around 1500 B.C.  It is believed that the site was used by the Poverty Point peoples for three or four centuries between 1730 B.C. and 1350 B.C. Louisiana is home to more than 700 archaeological sites containing these earthen mounds, with the earliest ones built between 4000 and 2500 B.C.

Owing to its size and importance, the Poverty Point site is considered the epicenter of the Poverty Point society, although there are other villages and encampments within a 25 mile radius with similar tools and artifacts unique to this civilization. Facing due west is a large bird-shaped mound with 6 concentric ridges in front of it. The center of the concentric ridges is over 37 acres of flat land, called the plaza, and the ends of the outermost ridges are almost 3/4 of a mile apart.

The sheer size of the mounds and ridges makes recognition from the ground virtually impossible and so the magnitude of the site was only originally discovered in a series of aerial surveying photographs starting in 1938. The Poverty Point site is the largest and most elaborate earthenworks anywhere in the western hemisphere, according to the Anthropological Study Series booklet on it by Jon L. Gibson. Archaeologists have discovered that the mounds and ridges were formed with 50 pound basketfuls of mud. The highest mound stands over 70 feet high, and roughly 640 feet wide by 700 feet long. That's a lot of mud. And soil studies have shown that some of these mounds were constructed in only a few months' time despite millions and millions of basketfuls of mud!

Poverty Point beads, fat-bellied owl, and pendants
(picture from Poverty Point Virtual Books series)

We began with the visitor center where we found an informative video and a small museum exhibit with some of the items found from the excavations. Beads, arrowheads, cooking stones and such were interesting to see on their own, but it was fascinating to learn that many of the tools this culture used were made from materials not native to the area. Very few usable rocks occur naturally in the region of Poverty Point, and so archaeologists have determined that this civilization traded for rocks from all over the Upper and Lower Mississippi Valleys and on up to the Great Lakes, where the raw materials for their tools could be found readily. Some of the flint for arrowheads and copper for beads found at the site came from what is now Michigan, about 1,400 miles away. Millions of artifacts have been recovered from the ridges and mounds, including pendants, beads, effigies, tools, etc.

Poverty Point cooking stones
(picture from Poverty Point Virtual Books series)

One interesting item unique to the people of this specific region and time in history was cooking stones...these are little balls of silt molded into different shapes (cylindrical, biconical, spheriodial, etc) that were used to control how hot the pit got and how long it stayed hot. Archaeologists have cooked in similar earth ovens and they found that when they used the same number and shape of cooking stones each time, they could regulate the temperature predictably. Using different shapes produced different temperatures. Cool!

We had a great time at Poverty Point and really enjoyed the fantastic guided tram tour of the site by Eric. What a day!

After the tour, we left to head back to the RV. Along the way we again noticed the proliferation of flowers along the highway...everything from dogwoods, redbuds and wisteria to irises, azaleas and bachelor buttons. Everywhere we've looked in the last week and a half in Alabama, Mississippi and Louisiana has been awash in the colors of spring. Crimson clover is a ground cover plant we've found in all three states so far and it lends the sides of the highways an interesting dark red color until the other weeds grow too high to see it. 

We decided to walk around Jimmie Davis State Park and see Caney Lake where we found lots of fishermen sitting on the dock and in boats, but not catching much. We dipped our feet in the water and watched some boats go by. What a nice day...