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8 Poverty Point Chipped-Stone Tool Raw Materials: Inferring Social and Economic Strategies
- The University of Alabama Press
- Chapter
- Additional Information
It is easy to become awed by the Poverty Point site located in northeast Louisiana (Figure 1.1). Poverty Point was occupied by hunter-gatherers but included a built landscape with a geometric layout suggestive of master planning (Clark, this volume; Gibson 1973:69, 1987:19–22). Additionally, an interesting array of material culture indicative of intense and wide-scale trade and signi¤cant production activities was present. These aspects are what have made the Poverty Point site one of the mysteries of archaeology and have ensured its inclusion in all overviews of Southeastern prehistory. Many of the basic questions concerning the nature of the site occupation are still debated, as are other aspects of the inhabitants’ lifeways. The built landscape of Poverty Point includes six concentric earth embankments and Mound A (Gibson 1974, 1994b). These embankments are impressive in scale and are 1.2 km apart at the ends. Not particularly tall today (1–2 m), these embankments have been variously impacted since their construction. The embankments are divided by ¤ve crosscutting corridors into six sectors with Mound A at one end of the central corridor. Mound A is suggested to represent a ®ying bird and measures approximately 21 m high and 216 m from head to tail. Additional mounds, the “causeway” embankment, and other arti¤cial features compose the Poverty Point site and further demonstrate the impressiveness of the built landscape. The Poverty Point site was arguably planned and required the organization of a signi¤cant amount of labor to build (Clark, this volume; Gibson 2000). The material culture recovered from the Poverty Point site is remarkable in diversity and quantity (Gibson 1974; Webb 1968). The assemblage includes a wide variety of personal items such as cylindrical, tubular, and disc-shaped beads, ground-stone pendants in geometric and zoomorphic shapes, and perfo8 Poverty Point Chipped-Stone Tool Raw Materials Inferring Social and Economic Strategies Philip J. Carr and Lee H. Stewart rated human and animal teeth. The number of utilitarian items such as projectile points, atlatl weights, plummets, and clay balls is impressive, but the amount of chipped-stone tool debris is staggering. Gibson (1998a) estimates that there are 70 metric tons of exotic chipped-stone artifacts at Poverty Point. In addition to nonlocal chert and other raw materials for chipped-stone tool manufacture, trade materials include copper, galena, hematite, magnetite, and a remarkable amount of soapstone. Attempting to grasp the magnitude and diversity of Poverty Point material culture is not an easy task, and we must admit to being somewhat awed by the variety of raw materials evident in even a single 10-cm level of a 1-×-1-m unit. The pendulum can swing from incredulity to a more sober perspective on the Poverty Point landscape and assemblage. While impressive now, it must be kept in mind that the earthworks and artifacts represent a lengthy occupation. The exact span is debated, but Gibson (1998a:319) suggests the major occupation was between 1730 and 1350 cal b.c. That is, if the Poverty Point site was occupied for X years and by Y number of people, then the amount of labor per week each individual would need to devote to landscape modi¤cations or procuring raw materials may appear much more reasonable. For example, Gibson (1987:16–19) calculates that 100 laborers working daily could have built the Poverty Point earthworks in 23.5 years, but these ¤gures are proposed as labor equivalents and not a re®ection of the actual time span for mound construction. Such an exercise can help put things in perspective, which is certainly needed for interpreting a site such as Poverty Point. However, if taken too literally , it can remove human action. Can we truly imagine people carrying X basketloads of dirt per day for almost 24 years? In terms of the amount of artifacts , can trade trips be made in a day or can such trips be ensured to take place on any regular schedule? Gibson (1987) rightly presents his labor equivalent as a heuristic and not as re®ecting human action. In order to answer questions about how the occupants of Poverty Point might go about modifying their landscape or procuring raw materials, more context from a variety of data classes is needed. Focusing on the uniqueness and enormity leads to seeing the people of Poverty Point as somehow outside the rest of prehistory and not being expected to¤t our explanations. On the other hand, making the people of...