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Long-distance trade was a hallmark of Poverty Point culture. Stones
were moved over long distances, some up to 1,400 miles (2,250 km).
Many kinds of materials were traded, including flint, sandstone,
quartzite, slate, shale, granite and other coarse igneous rocks,
limonite, hematite, magnetite, soapstone, greenstone, crystal
quartz, copper, galena, and dozens of others. They came from many
areas of the mid-continent, including the Ouachita, Ozark, and
Appalachian mountains and the Upper Mississippi Valley and Great
Lakes. Even gravels were probably traded, since they were not always
available within easy reach of every Poverty Point site.

The Poverty Point trade network reached throughout the Lower
Mississippi Valley. Sites, like Claiborne near the Gulf coast,
participated. So did sites, like Jaketown, in the northern sections.
Many other sites were also involved, especially those close to the
larger sites, where trade seems to have been more intensive.
However, trade was by no means uniform nor did every site or
community in the Lower Mississippi Valley participate. The trade
that took place at the Poverty Point site was the most intensive of all.

Rocks were the major trade goods. Some were traded in a natural
unaltered condition, but many were circulated as finished or partly
finished artifacts.There is very little evidence that other kinds of
materials were traded in large quantities. Trade in rocks does make
good sense, because rocks furnished the raw material for many tools.
Poverty Point people did not make metal tools, and wood, bone, and
other perishable substances used to make tools were locally available.

Sources of Poverty Point Materials

*Sources of Poverty Point Trade Materials

*Some rocks occur naturally in the heartland of Poverty Point
culture, but they are limited to deposits of chert gravels and
outcrops of crumbly sandstones, quartzites, and ironstones. Although
local resources could have furnished (and did furnish for many time
periods) all the raw materials people needed, most rocks imported by
Poverty Point peoples were of better quality and prettier than local
ones. They were obviously highly desired, and the large quantities
that were circulated show that demand was high and supply and
exchange systems efficient.

Most trade rocks came from outside the land of Poverty Point
culture, sometimes from a long way away. It is hard to explain how
they got into Poverty Point country, because we have not identified
anything of Poverty Point origin in the areas where the rocks
originated that might have been traded for them. This lack seems to
eliminate simple barter, or at least, barter involving hard, durable
items. Perhaps, if peoples living in the lands of the rocks had
traded rocks for food, hides, feathers, or other organic materials,
then we should expect to find little or no evidence. It is hard to
imagine perishable goods being exchanged in the quantities that
would surely have been necessary to secure the tons of rocks that
wound up in the lower reaches of the Mississippi Valley. Besides,
northern groups had their own food, hides, feathers, and the like.

It is doubtful that they would have wanted the same kinds of goods,
just because they were from the South. It is also doubtful that
Louisiana cooking had the same appeal then as now. With rare
exceptions, Poverty Point cooking balls do not occur in rock country.

Were Poverty Point people trading ideas or an ideology (religion)
for rocks? Ideas would have left no direct trace either, but we
should expect some symbolic artifact, some religious image, perhaps
a pot-bellied jasper owl pendant, to have accompanied idea exchange,
and so far, none have shown up in the land of the rocks.

*Fat-Bellied Owls

*We can rule out down-the-line, or neighbor-to-neighbor, trade
because the number of imported rocks would have decreased as
distance from sources increased, and that is not the case. In fact,
there is little imported material at all along the long stretch of
river valley lying between the rock sources and the Poverty Point
heartland. The largest volume of rocks accumulated at the far end of
the line, opposite the sources.

Perhaps, James Ford and Clarence Webb were not too far off base when
they suggested that gathering expeditions were sent out from the big
Poverty Point site itself. Maybe one or two big ventures were all
that were needed to obtain most non-local flints and other materials
that outcropped along the Mississippi, Ohio, and Tennessee rivers
and their tributaries. Other sources could have been visited more
often. It is hard to imagine such long-distance collecting trips
being sustained for very long, and maybe, they were not. People may
have lived at the Poverty Point site for only a couple of
generations. Direct gathering could, however, explain why southern
trade goods seem to be lacking in the rock country of the Midwest
and why there was such a big gap between rock sources and Poverty
Point territory.

But direct gathering does not explain how materials were circulated
once they reached the Lower Mississippi Valley. Here, we are
certainly talking about some kind of delivery network, some kind of
organized trade system. It is not reasonable to assume that each and
every site with nonlocal rocks got them independently by sending out
gathering expeditions to the rock sources. If every site had gotten
its own rocks directly, we would expect each site to have different
kinds of rocks, and that is not the case. Although each site does
not always have the full array of nonlocal materials, those that are
present are always the same kinds that appear everywhere else.

How Poverty Point trade was carried out in the confines of the Lower
Mississippi Valley remains as obscure as how it was conducted on its
broadest scale. In the last 10 years, considerable research has been
done, and while we still do not have definite answers, we have been
able to sharpen our views about some aspects of the topic.

In the area within 25 miles of the Poverty Point site, certain kinds
of tools were consistently made from certain kinds of nonlocal rock,
and very few unworked trade rocks occur. So, the types of tools
present at a given site determine the types of trade rocks at the
site. For example, plummets were made of hematite, and hoes and
Motley points were made of gray northern flint, usually of the Dover
variety. So, if a site had a lot of plummets, it had a lot of
hematite; if it had a lot of hoes or Motley points, it had a lot of
gray northern flint.

How long people lived on a place also must have affected amounts and
kinds of trade materials; sites with long occupations probably
obtained larger quantities and a wider variety, too. If these were
the only influential factors, then we could assume that trade was a
simple affair with a simple motive: putting stone resources into the
hands of workers and putting the workers to work.

But this view may be too simplistic. To date, only the most abundant
trade rocks have been studied, and these were all made into common
work tools. We should not be surprised to find them mainly where
people worked. Other trade materials, destined to become ornaments,
fetishes, or other symbolic objects, may have been traded through
different channels or through the same channels in different hands.
These materials may be distributed differently from the trade rock
used for tools, but they are so uncommon that we really cannot tell.
Certainly, the large number of ornaments and symbolic artifacts at
the Poverty Point site is in keeping with its great size and
cultural significance, but what about symbolic objects from small
outlying sites? What do they mean? Do they make that site or its
head man or shaman more important than other small sites without
such objects? We do not know, and until we find out, the full nature
of Poverty Point trade will remain unclear. Only one conclusion is
certain: The Poverty Point site was the most important trade center. 

Symbolic Objects, Ritual and Religion

Death and burial are solemn and powerful rituals in every society,
ancient and modern, but there is very little information about Poverty
Point burial practices. This may simply be a sampling problem, since
archaeologists have sampled less than one percent of the area of the
Poverty Point site. However, so far, no burials have turned up at the
Poverty Point site, nor have burials been found at other excavated
Poverty Point sites. A suspected cemetery at the Cowpen Slough site near
Larto Lake in central Louisiana proved to be much earlier, after it was
finally radiocarbon dated.

Burned bone fragments were found in an ash bed beneath Mound B at the
Poverty Point site. Most were tiny and unidentifiable, but one was the
upper end of a burned human femur (thighbone), proving that at least one
person had been cremated and covered by the earthen mound. Two human
milk teeth were found in another area of the site, called the "Dock,"
and a cut out section of jaw and other teeth, drilled for suspension,
were discovered in the muck dredged out of Bayou Maçon, the small stream
that lies at the foot of the bluff beneath the Poverty Point site. The
drilled molars and jaw section were not from burials; they were
ornaments, made from the remains of revered ancestors or brave enemies
to serve as amulets, charms, medals, or religious objects.

Stone Ornaments

*Stone Ornaments: Pendants, Beads, Effigies

*How did Poverty Point people dispose of their dead? Through cremation
that left little or no remains? By putting bodies in trees or on
scaffolds for the scavengers? By simply abandoning corpses in the woods
or throwing them in streams? By burying people in individual graves
scattered across villages and camping areas or perhaps away from living
areas entirely? Or by putting corpses in traditional cemeteries, which
simply have not been discovered yet? We just do not know.

This much we can say though. If a lot of people lived and died at the
Poverty Point site, then burial of their physical remains would have
required a sizeable area. It seems that if cemeteries existed,
archaeologists would have discovered them by now, and this makes
cremation or some other kind of non-burial disposal practice likely.

Poverty Point people made many unusual objects, but none were more
unusual than those having symbolic meaning. No other preceding or
contemporary culture in North America had as many ornaments and symbolic
objects. Cylindrical, tubular, and disc-shaped stone beads, made mostly
of red jasper, predominated, but many other special objects were
crafted. Ground stone pendants were made in a variety of geometric and
zoomorphic shapes: mainly silhouettes of birds and bird heads, animal
claws or talons, feet or paws, and turtle shells. There were even small
stone replicas of open clam shells. In-the-round pendants shaped like
fat-bellied owls were made and circulated across the Gulf area from
western Louisiana to central Florida. A polished tablet from Jaketown
bore a carved human face. Copper and galena beads and bangles were worn
at Poverty Point and Claiborne sites. Perforated human and animal teeth,
cut out sections of human jaws, bone tubes, and bird bills, dredged from
the bottom muck of the bayou below the Poverty Point site, suggest that
much more ornamentation of perishable materials has disappeared.

It would hardly be appropriate to describe the folks at Poverty Point as
gaudily adorned, but compared with their country neighbors in the small
villages, they must have appeared quite ornate and "fancy." Because
there were so many ornaments at the Poverty Point site, it is
conceivable that personal status and social standing were more
formalized there than anywhere else.

Hundreds of solid stone objects, such as cones, cylinders, spheres,
cubes, trapezoids, buttons, and others, were also made at the Poverty
Point site. Because utilitarian functions for these small objects are
hard to imagine, they too may have had ornamental or symbolic significance.

Religious and other symbolic purposes may have also been served by stone
pipes. Most were shaped like slender ice-cream cones or fat cigars.
Other smoking tubes, made of baked clay, have also been found at Poverty
Point and other places far from Poverty Point. Among historic Indian
peoples of the southeastern United States, smoking was a religious
ritual and was not done for pleasure. Pipes and their elaborately
decorated pipe stems were considered sacred; they were symbols of tribal
identity and were used in intertribal ceremonies: to proclaim war and
peace and to honor and salute visiting dignitaries. Might not the
Poverty Point pipes have been used similarly?

Female Figurines of Baked Clay
*Female Figurines of Baked Clay

*Other possible sacred objects may have included the small, hand-molded,
clay figurines depicting seated or kneeling women, many of whom appear
to be pregnant. Heads were nearly always missing, although whether or
not they were snapped off deliberately during ceremonies is unknown.
Smaller decorated versions of Poverty Point objects may have had special
symbolic value as well.

Everyday artifacts may have been turned into sacred ones under special
circumstances. This could explain the deposit of thousands of soapstone
vessel fragments buried in an oval pit a little southwest of the big
mound at the Poverty Point site. These were not from vessels that had
been intentionally broken on the spot and then buried. Only a few pieces
from the same vessel were buried in the pit, and no whole vessels could
be pieced back together. Some pieces from the deposit fit fragments
found on the ridges, up to three-quarters of a mile (1.2 km) away. This
deposit might have just as easily been interpreted as an artisan's cache
of recyclable material if it had not been for the four small fires that
had burned in the corners of the pit. The fires suggest ritual, and the
deposit probably represents some kind of offering. Other deposits of
soapstone vessels, both whole and broken, were found at the Claiborne
site on the Gulf coast.

Other ordinary objects that may have been given special religious
significance include plummets and bannerstones bearing engravings of
various animals. The engravings include the so-called "Fox-Man" and
"Long-Tail" designs, as well as duck foot and bird figures. The
"Fox-Man" design is probably a stylized horned owl, rather than a man
with fox head or headdress, and the "Long-Tail" may represent an
opossum. The really interesting thing about these engravings, as well as
all the other zoomorphic objects at Poverty Point, is that the animals
they represent are all important in the myths and lore of historic
Southeastern Indians. They are usually mentioned in connection with
death, witchcraft, early warning, news bringing, and origin stories.

Stone Engravings

*Stone Engravings with Symbolic Significance

*The unique abilities possessed by these animals--flight, night vision,
and alertness--were awe-inspiring. It is easy to see how people living
as close to nature as did Native Americans came to respect and revere
them. These similarities do not mean that Poverty Point people and
historic tribes had the same religion, but it does make me wonder if
they might have shared similar world views, world views carried on by
oral tradition for thousands of years.

If these images really are religious symbols, then we ought to think of
Poverty Point religion as animistic. Animism is a belief system that
sees the world as being full of spirits and power. Such a world can be
manipulated by shamans (or medicine men or women) and witches and
altered by prayers, fetishes, amulets, and charms. Although animism
lacks the formal organization of religions historically associated with
other monument-building societies, it was not any less capable of
explaining the great mysteries or of providing direction and meaning for
its followers. Its rituals and ceremonies were just as exciting and
fearsome as those of more formalized religions, perhaps even more so
since the spirit world was so constantly close at hand.

There is little doubt that religion was the most powerful and persuasive
force in Poverty Point society. The uncommonly large number of fetishes
and charms at Poverty Point indicates that a great deal of power was
concentrated there, and that power and those who were able to control
and direct it were undoubtedly responsible, in whole or part, for the
great constructions and other remarkable achievements.

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