Until a few years ago, Poverty Point culture was a major archaeological mystery. The mystery centered around the ruins of a large, prehistoric Indian settlement, the Poverty Point site in northeastern Louisiana. Poised on a bluff overlooking Mississippi River swamplands was a group of massive earthworks. It was not the earthworks themselves that were so mysterious, although they were unusual. Eastern North America was after all the acknowledged home of the “Mound Builders,” originally believed to be an extinct, superior race but now known to have been ancestors of various Indian tribes. No, the mystery lay in the age and the size of the earthworks.

Radiocarbon dates indicated that they were built at least a thousand years before the birth of Christ. This was a time when Phoenicians were plying warm Mediterranean waters spreading trade goods and the Ugaritian alphabet. This was a time when the Hittites were warlords of the Middle East. It was before the founding of Rome; even the ascendancy of the Etruscans was still centuries away. Rameses II sat on the throne of Egypt. Moses had just led the Israelites out of Egyptian bondage in quest of the Promised Land. David and Solomon were kings of Israel.

In America where written history is lacking, Native Americans of 2000 to 1000 B.C. were thought to have been wandering hunters and gatherers living in small bands or at best simple tribes. Such unsophisticated groups were not considered capable of raising earthworks like those at the Poverty Point site. Archaeologists believed that such massive construction projects were possible only when large numbers of people started living together in permanent villages and when political control over villagers reached the point where labor could be organized and directed toward building and maintaining community projects, such as civic or religious centers or monuments. These conditions—large, permanent villages and effective political power—were normally found only among peoples whose economy was based on agriculture. In America that usually meant maize (corn).

Were we to believe that Poverty Point might have successfully integrated these factors—large populations, political strength, and maize agriculture—while everyone else in America north of Mexico was still adhering to a much simpler existence? If so, it meant that Poverty Point was one of the first communities, if not the first, to rise above its contemporaries and start the long journey to becoming a truly advanced society.

If Poverty Point did represent the awakening of complex society in the United States, how and why did it develop? Was its emergence caused by immigrants, bearing corn and a new religion, from somewhere in Mexico (Ford 1969:181)? Did it develop locally but under Mexican stimulation (Webb 1977:60-61)? Did it come about by itself without foreign influences (Gibson 1974)?

These were some of the major questions that surrounded Poverty Point. The lack of agreement on these issues created an aura of mystery and promoted the idea that Poverty Point was an enigma, or puzzle. When Poverty Point was not simply being ignored in discussions of Southeastern prehistory during the 1950s-1960s, it was usually portrayed as an unusual cultural complex that burst upon the Lower Mississippi Valley landscape, flourished for a while, and then disappeared leaving no trace among succeeding cultures.

Time has begun to change these perceptions. Poverty Point is no longer regarded as a geographic or developmental irregularity. New research during the last three decades has shown that the Poverty Point way of life was not confined to the big town at the main site, but extended over a large region and encompassed many peoples. Even with increased knowledge, Poverty Point still remains exceptional; yet it is no longer regarded as being out of step with Native American cultural evolution or as a historical flower that blossomed before its time. There are still many unresolved questions about Poverty Point culture. In the following pages, we will explore these questions and our current state of knowledge in order to present a reasonable picture of life in the Lower Mississippi Valley during Poverty Point times.