Encyclopedia of Global Archaeology

2014 Edition
| Editors: Claire Smith

Poverty Point, Archaeology of

Reference work entry
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4419-0465-2_974

Introduction

Poverty Point is the name of an archaeological site located in the lower Mississippi Valley in modern-day northeast Louisiana (Fig. 1) dating from c. 1500 to 1150 cal BCE. The site is famous for being exceptionally large (the core of the site is roughly 1000 ha) and for having multiple earthen mounds and ridges indicating exceptional labor investment. In addition, the inhabitants of the site imported remarkable quantities of lithic materials into the site from considerable distances. These qualities set the site apart from almost all of its contemporaries.
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References

  1. Gibson, J. L. 2000. The ancient mounds of Poverty Point: place of rings. Gainesville: University Press of Florida.Google Scholar
  2. Hamilton, F. E. 1999. Southeastern archaic mounds: examples of elaboration in a temporally fluctuating environment? Journal of Anthropological Archaeology 18:344-55.Google Scholar
  3. Kidder, T. R. 2006. Climate change and the archaic to woodland transition (3000-2600 cal B.P.) in the Mississippi River Basin. American Antiquity 71:195-231.Google Scholar
  4. - 2011. Transforming hunter-gatherer history at Poverty Point, in K. E. Sassaman & D. H. Holley, Jr. (ed.) Hunter-gatherer archaeology as historical process: 95-119. Tucson: Amerind Foundation and University of Arizona Press.Google Scholar
  5. Renfrew, C. 2001. Production and consumption in a sacred economy: the material correlates of high devotional expression at Chaco Canyon. American Antiquity 66:14-25.Google Scholar
  6. Webb, C. H. 1982. The Poverty Point culture (Geoscience and Man 17) (2nd ed., revised). Baton Rouge: Geoscience Publications, Department of Geography and Anthropology, Louisiana State University.Google Scholar

Copyright information

© Springer Science+Business Media New York 2014

Authors and Affiliations

  1. 1.Department of AnthropologyWashington University in St. LouisSt. LouisUSA