Mound Bound - Part 1, Poverty Point State Historic Site

I have fond memories of childhood road trips. Loading up station wagon (first lime green, then wood paneled) and trailer and heading out for grand adventures with my mom, dad, and sister - the mountains of New Mexico and Colorado, Texas swimming holes, forests, prairies, and deserts. The smell of cooking bacon will forever bring to mind many happy camp memories. This road trip legacy has carried over to my adult life with my own husband and children. I never turn down an opportunity to see new sites: the scenic, the historic, and the weird. 

Poverty Point, Epps, LA

Last week we dropped my son off for a summer program at the Savannah College of Art and Design (SCAD) in Atlanta. This provided an excellent opportunity for a Mound themed trip home. With my archaeologist husband in tow, we visited Poverty Point, Moundville, and a couple other hidden mound gems.

Visiting other mound sites is incredibly helpful for understanding where Caddo Mounds fits in time and space within the archaeological record. Hopefully, this brief account of my travels will help you understand our own Mound site a little better too.

One of the oldest known mound sites in the US, Poverty Point was just recently declared a World Heritage Site!

Poverty Point includes five mounds, six concentric semi-elliptical ridges separated by shallow depressions, and a central plaza. Poverty Point dates to around 3,600 years ago. That means, that Poverty Point predates Caddo Mounds by more than  2,000 years.

Traveling the path to the largest mound of the Poverty Point complex takes you over the six semi-elliptical ridges that frame Mound A. 

Mound A

There is no doubt about it, all three mounds at Caddo would fit neatly inside Poverty Points' Mound A! Here is a mind blowing set of facts from the Louisiana State Parks and Historic Sites, Poverty Point website:

Poverty Point is indeed a rare remnant of an exceptional culture. It has been estimated that landscape preparation and earthworks construction may have required moving as many as 53 million cubic feet of soil. Considering that a cubic foot of soil weighs 75-100 pounds, and that the laborers carried this dirt in roughly 50-pound basket loads, it is obvious that this was a great communal engineering feat.

Walking the steps to the top of Mound A allows plenty of time for reflection about the ancient hunters and gathers who lived at this site.

Of course, it doesn't hurt to travel with your own archaeologist to help explain things.

Many artifacts from the Poverty Point culture are preserved and displayed in the site museum. This material culture represents the skills and beliefs of these ancient peoples. Animal effigies, fertility symbols, jewelry, and weapons are among the artifacts displayed. Birds are prominently featured among the Poverty Point artifacts, which have lead some to visualize a bird shape to Mound A.

The explanation of the atlatl caught my attention. It is always great to absorb new facts that can be used in our own site programs.

Did you know that atlatl is an Aztec word and the oldest atlatls date back to Africa over 25,000 years ago?

Check out our Facebook @ Caddo Mounds State Historic Site to see more Poverty Point images, and check back next week for a short write-up of my experiences at Moundville Archaeological Park.