Before Poverty Point

Clovis and other spear point types typical of the Paleoindian period are found at Poverty Point and other sites on Macon Ridge, scattered in a pattern suggesting highly mobile people who stopped only briefly as they moved across the landscape. Once thought to have been big game hunters, Paleoindians are now believed to have been hunter-gatherers who used a variety of foods. During the Early and Middle Archaic periods, people settled more into their environment, moved less frequently, often returned to the same sites seasonally, and developed more complex tool kits for a greater number of specialized tasks, while decorative items such as drilled polished stone beads first appeared. The Middle Archaic period also saw the first earthen constructions, including Lower Jackson Mound south of Poverty Point, the LSU Campus mounds, and the Watson Brake earthwork complex, all built long before Poverty Point, but mound building had stopped about 1,000 years before it began again with Poverty Point's Mound B.

Pioneer, Louisiana · United States