Poverty Point culture had many unique objects, but perhaps most
important were its artifacts of personal adornment and symbolic meaning.
In no other preceding or contemporary culture were so many ornaments and
status symbols produced. Stone beads, made mostly of red jasper,
predominated, but many other unusual objects were manufactured. Pendants
were made in a multitude of geometric and zoomorphic shapes. Dominant
were birds, bird heads, animal claws, foot effigies, turtles, and open
clam shell replicas (Figure 11). Small, in-the-round carvings of
“locusts” and fat-bellied owls were made and were evidently widely
circulated, even among non-Poverty Point peoples (Webb 1971). One
pendant from Jaketown (Webb 1977:Figure 25) was a polished tablet with a
carved human face. Copper and galena beads and bangles were worn at the
Poverty Point and Claiborne sites. Perforated human and animal teeth,
cut out sections of human jaws, bone tubes, and bird bills (Webb
1977:52-53), dredged from the bottom mucks of the bayou below the
Poverty Point site, reveal that much more ornamentation of perishable
materials has disappeared.
[Illustration: Figure 11. Stone Ornaments. a, g, Pendants; b,
Hour-Glass Bead; d-f, k, Tubular Beads; c, i-j, Fat Owl Effigy
Pendants; h, Clam Shell Effigy; l-m, Buttons; n, Claw Effigy.
Photographs courtesy of Brian Cockerham.]
It would hardly be apt to describe the folks at Poverty Point as gaudily
dressed, but by comparison with their country neighbors living in little
villages and with their trade partners in Arkansas, Mississippi, and
other sections of Louisiana, they must have been quite “fancy” and
impressively clothed. Because so much personal ornamentation occurs at
Poverty Point itself, it is conceivable that social distinctions there
were more numerous and more rigid than anywhere else at the time. There
was only one Poverty Point. It must have seemed like New Orleans on
Mardi Gras, Mecca during the pilgrimage, and Mexico City on market
day—all rolled into one.
Hundreds of solid stone objects, such as cones, cylinders, spheres,
cubes, trapezoids, buttons (Figure 11), and others, were also made by
skilled craftsmen, mainly at the giant Poverty Point site (Webb
1977:48). Since utilitarian functions for these small objects are
difficult to imagine, they too must have had ornamental, symbolic, or,
perhaps, even religious meanings.
Religious and other symbolic purposes might have been served by stone
pipes. Most were shaped like ice-cream cones or fat cigars. Other
smoking tubes, made of baked clay, may have been the “poor man’s”
versions of sacred pipes in regional communities outside the sphere of
direct Poverty Point control. At the Poverty Point site, tubular clay
pipes may have served more ordinary, nonreligious purposes. The presence
of pipes, however, suggests that they might have been the first calumets
used by Southeastern Indians; calumets being the most sacred symbols of
intertribal relations, used to proclaim war and peace and to honor and
salute important ceremonies and visiting dignitaries.
Other sacred objects may have included the small, crudely molded, clay
figurines depicting seated women, many of whom appear to be pregnant
(Figure 12). Heads were nearly always missing, although whether or not
they were snapped off deliberately during ceremonies is purely
conjectural. Perhaps, smaller, decorated versions of clay cooking
objects may have had religious or social symbolic value as well.
It is also suspected that regular everyday artifacts could be turned
into sacred ones under certain circumstances. This probably explains the
200 to 300 steatite vessels that were broken and buried in an oval pit a
little southwest of the biggest mound at the Poverty Point site (Webb
1944). They must have been an offering of some kind. Other deposits of
steatite vessels, both whole and broken, were found at the Claiborne
site on the Gulf Coast (Gagliano and Webb 1970; Bruseth 1980). Religious
and social meaning can be ascribed to virtually anything, and there need
not be any recognizable intrinsic value or unusualness. No doubt
thousands of other artifacts functioned in this nondomestic realm of
behavior, and we just do not know what they are.
[Illustration: Figure 12. Female Figurines of Baked Clay. a-b, d,
Torsos; c, Head. Photographs courtesy of Brian Cockerham.]
Religion is one of the most powerful motive forces in culture. So it was
in Poverty Point culture. It provided sanctions, direction, meaning, and
explanation of great mysteries. It was central to group organization and
leadership. It was the single most important source of power and was
probably the underlying motivation for communal building projects and
other group activities.
But unlike the other early great religions of the New World—Chavin in
South America and Olmec in Lowland Mexico—Poverty Point religion seems
to have lacked a special religious artwork. There are a few symbolic
artifacts, such as fat-bellied owl pendants and locust effigies that
have a widespread distribution (Webb 1971), but these objects often
occur in earlier contexts and in contemporary, non-Poverty Point
cultural situations. The lack of a widespread religious art style argues
against the possibility of a universal state religion and implies that
local populations had independent systems of worship.
The mounds and the specialized objects that functioned in ceremonial
realms were probably all involved in some way with religion and ritual.
Yet the nature of Poverty Point religion and worship remains unknown.
Ancestor worship has been mentioned as one possibility. Amulets and
charms, if correctly identified, imply beliefs in spirit forces or
perhaps nature spirits. Bird representations in stone and earth suggest
that birds may have been deified. Bird symbolism was an integral part of
Southeastern religions during the Christian Era, and possibly its
beginnings were in Poverty Point beliefs.
There is little information on Poverty Point burial practices. This is
primarily due to the fact that there have been so few excavations, and
those have been largely confined to residential areas in villages.
Mound B at Poverty Point covered an ash bed which contained fragments of
burned bone (Ford and Webb 1956:35). Most were tiny and unidentifiable,
but one was the upper end of a burned human femur, proving that at least
one person had been cremated and covered by the earthen tomb.
Further evidence of cremation, as well as in-flesh burial, derives from
the Cowpen Slough site near Larto Lake in central Louisiana. Although
conceivably later, the burials were completely enveloped by Poverty
Point occupational deposits which seemed to be undisturbed. Since the
burial area was not completely excavated, many question marks still
remain. However, we know that adults and at least one juvenile were
buried. Some were in tightly bent positions, but the positions of others
were not determined (Baker and Webb 1978; Giardino 1981). One small pit
in the burial area contained fragments of an unburned adult in the
bottom and an undisturbed cremation of a juvenile near the top (Giardino
1981). All of the excavated interments were close together, and the
presence of surrounding postmolds (Baker and Webb 1978) may indicate
burial beneath a house floor or some other structure. Except for a set
of deer antlers, placed at the pelvis of one of the individuals, there
were no apparent burial offerings; nearby artifacts seemed to be just
household trash.
The only other known human remains that apparently date to the Poverty
Point period were some teeth and a lower jaw dredged from the bottom
mucks of Bayou Macon, the small stream that lies at the foot of the
bluff beneath the Poverty Point site. These were not burials, however,
but ornaments! The molars were perforated at crown bases, and the jaw
section may have been cut into shape. These objects were probably more
than just decorations; they may have served as amulets, magical charms,
battle trophies, or religious objects symbolizing revered ancestors.