The Ancient Mounds of Poverty Point

One of America’s most intriguing prehistoric monuments sits on a small ridge overlooking Bayou Maçon in north- eastern Louisiana. Consisting of a series of concentric earthen half-rings and several large mounds, it is one of the most unusual and confounding sites in the New World. Louisiana archaeologist Jon Gibson, the grand old man of Poverty Point archaeology, tells the story of this great site and the scholars who study it in this folksy, readable volume. When radiocarbon testing dated it to 3,500 years ago, Poverty Point was upgraded from unusual to extraordinary. Nothing so complex and old had ever been found before, and archaeologists flocked to the Louisiana swamps to study it. They found massive construction for the rings and mounds, and a continental system of exchange. Stone for tools came from as far as 1,500 miles away. Conventional wisdom said monumental architecture could not flourish in a time before agriculture and pottery, but it did at Poverty Point. Famous archaeologists including Clarence Webb, William Haag, and James Ford helped make the site a state park in 1972. Yet for all the attention, Gibson estimates that only three tenths of one percent of the site has been excavated. Poverty Point is one of North America’s greatest sites, and Gibson has done it justice.