Until a few years ago, Poverty Point culture was a major archaeological
mystery. The mystery centered around the ruins of a large, prehistoric
Indian settlement, the Poverty Point site in northeastern Louisiana.
Poised on a bluff overlooking Mississippi River swamplands was a group
of massive earthworks. It was not the earthworks themselves that were so
mysterious, although they were unusual. Eastern North America was after
all the acknowledged home of the “Mound Builders,” originally believed
to be an extinct, superior race but now known to have been ancestors of
various Indian tribes. No, the mystery lay in the age and the size of
the earthworks.
Radiocarbon dates indicated that they were built at least a thousand
years before the birth of Christ. This was a time when Phoenicians were
plying warm Mediterranean waters spreading trade goods and the Ugaritian
alphabet. This was a time when the Hittites were warlords of the Middle
East. It was before the founding of Rome; even the ascendancy of the
Etruscans was still centuries away. Rameses II sat on the throne of
Egypt. Moses had just led the Israelites out of Egyptian bondage in
quest of the Promised Land. David and Solomon were kings of Israel.
In America where written history is lacking, Native Americans of 2000 to
1000 B.C. were thought to have been wandering hunters and gatherers
living in small bands or at best simple tribes. 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. These conditions—large,
permanent villages and effective political power—were normally found
only among peoples whose economy was based on agriculture. In America
that usually meant maize (corn).
Were we to believe that Poverty Point might have successfully integrated
these factors—large populations, political strength, and maize
agriculture—while everyone else in America north of Mexico was still
adhering to a much simpler existence? If so, it meant that Poverty Point
was one of the first communities, if not _the_ first, to rise above its
contemporaries and start the long journey to becoming a truly advanced
society.
If Poverty Point did represent the awakening of complex society in the
United States, how and why did it develop? Was its emergence caused by
immigrants, bearing corn and a new religion, from somewhere in Mexico
(Ford 1969:181)? Did it develop locally but under Mexican stimulation
(Webb 1977:60-61)? Did it come about by itself without foreign
influences (Gibson 1974)?
These were some of the major questions that surrounded Poverty Point.
The lack of agreement on these issues created an aura of mystery and
promoted the idea that Poverty Point was an enigma, or puzzle. 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.
Time has begun to change these perceptions. Poverty Point is no longer
regarded as a geographic or developmental irregularity. New research
during the last three decades has shown that the Poverty Point way of
life was not confined to the big town at the main site, but extended
over a large region and encompassed many peoples. Even with increased
knowledge, Poverty Point still remains exceptional; yet it is no longer
regarded as being out of step with Native American cultural evolution or
as a historical flower that blossomed before its time. There are still
many unresolved questions about Poverty Point culture. In the following
pages, we will explore these questions and our current state of
knowledge in order to present a reasonable picture of life in the Lower
Mississippi Valley during Poverty Point times.