The Poverty Point site near present-day Floyd in northern Louisiana represents the earliest evidence of mound building. Flourishing at an early stage—the various mounds constructed between 1800 to 500
B. C., and apparently by a nonagricultural people (although some scholars theorize a certain amount of farming among them)—Poverty Point can be called a transitional culture between Archaic Indians and Formative Indians.
The largest mound at Poverty Point—70 feet high and 710 by 640 feet wide—resembles a bird with outspread wings and was probably built for a ceremonial purpose. The site has five smaller conical mounds, four to 21 feet high, plus six concentric earthen ridges, the outermost with a diameter of two-thirds of a mile. Unlike later Mound Builders, Poverty Point Indians did not use any of their mounds for burials. The ridges are known to have held structures.
Poverty Point artifacts include finely crafted stone beads and pendants, clay figurines, and flint tools. The presence of copper, lead, and soapstone artifacts indicate widespread trade contacts.
More than 100 Poverty Point sites have been located in Louisiana, Arkansas, and Mississippi, with other sites in Tennessee, Missouri, and Florida also showing Poverty Point influences. Whether Poverty Point peoples migrated northward and helped create the next great mound building culture, the Adena culture, is not known.
World History
