an engineered site
Between 1700 and 1100 BCE, a society of hunter-gatherers moved an estimated 53 million cubic feet of soil with no draft animals or wheeled carts to construct the Poverty Point earthworks. The site's core covers about 345 acres and features a complex of mounds and C-shaped earthen ridges. The six concentric ridges are the most noticeable feature. While worn down by centuries of agriculture, they still stand up to 6 feet high in places. If straightened and laid end-to-end, these ridges would stretch for more than seven miles. The diameter of the outermost ridge is nearly three-quarters of a mile.
The mounds are distinct constructions. The largest, Mound A, is a T-shaped earthwork 72 feet tall and roughly 705 by 660 feet at its base. Research suggests this massive mound was built rapidly, possibly in less than three months. Mound B is a 21-foot-high conical mound, while the most recently identified, Mound F, was added around 1280 BCE. These structures are arranged around a large, 37.5-acre central plaza that was intentionally leveled and raised. The scale of the geometric design was only fully recognized through aerial photography.
A society of foragers and traders
The people of Poverty Point thrived without agriculture, relying on the rich resources of the Mississippi floodplain. Their diet included nuts, fruits, deer, fish, alligators, and turtles. The site lacks evidence of domesticated crops, and curiously, it also contains no human remains, suggesting the mounds were not for burials. Despite being a pre-agricultural society, thousands of people may have lived here.
Poverty Point was the center of a vast trade network, the most extensive in North America at the time. Over 78 tons of rocks and minerals were imported from distant locations. Stone for tools and projectile points came from the Ohio and Tennessee River valleys, as well as the Ouachita and Ozark Mountains. Soapstone for carving bowls originated in the Appalachian foothills of northern Georgia and Alabama, hundreds of miles away. The presence of these materials shows a complex society capable of long-distance trade and transport.