Layout, Construction, and Rebuilding of Landscape Features at Poverty Point World Heritage Site

Summary

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2024: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology.

Questions persist about the layout and building sequence of Poverty Point’s landscape features, and the planning and rapidity of overall site construction. A research program using geophysics, stratigraphic coring, lidar, and targeted excavation that began in 2006 continues to yield new data and interpretations about the ridges, timber circles, plaza, and other features. Magnetic survey reveals that the concentric ridges are comprised of smaller components roughly analogous to mound construction stages. Innermost ridges 1 and 2 include multiple, contiguous, and overlapping components, whereas the outer ridges have fewer, more consistently aligned components. Some aisles in ridges 1 and 2 may have been added after ridge construction. Many of the timber circles are clustered near the aisle and plaza intersections, but other circles are interspersed with ridges 1 and 2 and suggest organic growth. The rebuilding of some ridges and many timber circles, massive filling to raise portions of the plaza, and new information about the Mound E Ridge and West Plaza Rise, suggest a protracted and complex construction history.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• SAA 2024: Individual Abstracts   •
• Society for American Archaeology 89th Annual Meeting, New Orleans, LA (2024)

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Spatial Coverage

Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 39519.0