Moving Earth at Poverty Point: Investigating "Perforators" as Specialized Basket Making Tools

Summary

Studying the development of technological specialization in cultural groups has been an interest of archaeologists for many years because specialization lends itself to the development of specialized labor. Technological specialization was a necessary factor in the building of the mounds and ridges at the late Archaic site at Poverty Point. Yet most of the research done to this point has been focused on the symbolic significance of the mounds and ridges, leaving our understanding of the development of the infrastructure necessary to create these structures surprisingly blank, even though 1.2 million cubic meters of soil must have been moved from other locations in some sort of containers. Imprints of baskets found in the excavations of Mound B indicate that baskets were the containers used. Little is known about how or where these baskets were made; I argue that the numerous perforators found at Poverty Point could have been used to create the massive quantity of baskets required to create the mounds. In this research, I explore the question of whether the perforators of Poverty Point were used in the production of basketry.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Society for American Archaeology 83rd Annual Meeting, Washington, DC (2018)

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Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 21840