Check out a mysterious ancient culture and the 3,000-year-old mounds they left behind.
Poverty Point State Historic Site, UNESCO World Heritage Site, preserves archaic mounds built in Northeastern Louisiana. Mounds along and near the Mississippi River are not uncommon. There was entire culture called the “Mound builders”. The mounds of Cahokia are the most well-known mound areas, but others have been built along the Ohio River and as far north as Iowa. However, the mounds at Poverty Point are much, much older.
Site drawing of Poverty Point.
Poverty Point consists of earthen ridges and mounds, built between 1700 BCE and 1100 BCE. They weren’t all constructed at once. The builders even leveled the site before they started building the mounds to create a plaza area. Archaeologists are still stumped on why the mounds were constructed in the first place. The later Hopewell mounds and Cahokia mounds were constructed by farming cultures. Poverty Point was built by hunter-fisher-gatherers. Some of the ridges had evidence of habitation. Whether the site had continuous occupation or was used at certain times of the year for trading or rituals is still unknown.
Jana Irving Bayou Macon, today, runs past the site. Poverty Point is about 15 miles from the modern route of the Mississippi River. Several settlements are mounds have been found along Bayou Macon.
Jana Irving A ridge hides the site from Bayou Macon.
Jana Irving It would have been much more impressive 3,000 years ago.
Jana Irving Mound D is thought to have been built by a different culture, Coles Creek culture, about 2,000 years after Poverty Point culture left the site.
Jana Irving An historic cemetery associated with the Poverty Point Plantation that the site used to belong to. People here just burying their dead in a 1,000 year old mound at a 3,000 year mound site.
Jana Irving Uncut grass shows us today where the ridges were. They were a bit taller but were plowed over for 150 years, reducing their height. The ones that weren’t farmed over are 4-6 ft. high.
Jana Irving A shallow trench ran between the mounds.
Jana Irving Behind all the ridges, is Mound A, one of the largest mounds in what is now the United States. It was probably one of the last mounds built here at the site during the Poverty Point occupation.
Jana Irving Mound A is said to resemble a bird.
Jana Irving It’s a bit of a climb up.
Jana Irving Not as high or large as Monks Mound at Cahokia but extremely impressive.
Jana Irving Mound A is about 72 ft. tall. It’s base measures 710 long and 660 wide.
Jana Irving Mound B is the oldest mound at Poverty Point, dating to around 1600 BCE. It was originally a conical form, but it has flattened out a bit.
Jana Irving The bird theory of Mound A does make a bit of sense since a lot of bird art was found at the site.
Jana Irving These owls are about an inch or so tall.
Jana Irving A bunch of decorative pendants.
Jana Irving Michigan copper beads all the way down in Louisiana.
Jana Irving There were a bunch of these weird decorative objects.
Jana Irving There were some figures of humans as well.
Jana Irving The detached heads are a bit creepy.
Poverty Point is a neat archaeological site. While it is hard to imagine what it may have looked like 3,000 years ago, it was a very large complex built by people that were not even farming yet, which is very rare. However, for now, Poverty Point will remain a mystery.
To be honest, the whole reason I came up with this weird road trip was to visit Poverty Point, the rest just happened to be close byish (eh, not really).
Check out my next update where I explore Baton Rouge!
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