What this means it that the main structure was built in one season byan extended community of at least ten thousand. It also clarifies animportant issue. This was an excellent method by which a communitycould demonstrate its power and size while easy to build andmaintain. Other communities would have followed suit as we know fromthe archeological record.
At the same time, poverty Point was the Atlantean factory town thatreceived raw copper from Aztalan by the Mississippi access to LakesMichigan and Superior. Here the copper was smelted and formed intoingots for shipping to Bimini in preparation for its journey to theEuropean market by way of Lewis in Scotland. The massive hearths aresituated here.
Once you understand that a corn based town culture existed alongsidea general hunter gatherer culture, the archeology makes sense. Thiscorn based society was laid out in small plots and likely within aprotective cordon. Any other plan would have simply been overrun bypredation from those local hunters.
The same held true in Eurasia with the mobility afforded by horsedrawn wagons changing the equation and allowing an extended layoutnot easy in the Americas.
Archaic NativeAmericans built massive Louisiana mound in less than 90 days
by Gerry Everding
St. Louis MO (SPX)Feb 12, 2013
http://www.terradaily.com/reports/Archaic_Native_Americans_built_massive_Louisiana_mound_in_less_than_90_days_999.html
Nominated early thisyear for recognition on the UNESCO World Heritage List, whichincludes such famous cultural sites as the Taj Mahal, Machu Picchuand Stonehenge, the earthen works at Poverty Point, La., have beendescribed as one of the world's greatest feats of construction by anarchaic civilization of hunters and gatherers.
Now, new research inthe current issue of the journal Geoarchaeology, offers compellingevidence that one of the massive earthen mounds at Poverty Pointwas constructed in less than 90 days, and perhaps as quickly as 30days - an incredible accomplishment for what was thought to be aloosely organized society consisting of small, widely scattered bandsof foragers.
"What'sextraordinary about these findings is that it provides some of thefirst evidence that early American hunter-gatherers were not assimplistic as we've tended to imagine," says study co-authorT.R. Kidder, PhD, professor and chair of anthropology in Arts andSciences at Washington University in St. Louis.
"Our findings goagainst what has long been considered the academic consensus onhunter-gather societies - that they lack the political organizationnecessary to bring together so many people to complete alabor-intensive project in such a short period."
Co-authored by AnthonyOrtmann, PhD, assistant professor of geosciences at Murray StateUniversity in Kentucky, the study offers a detailed analysis of howthe massive mound was constructed some 3,200 years ago along aMississippi River bayou in northeastern Louisiana.
Based on more than adecade of excavations, core samplings and sophisticated sedimentaryanalysis, the study's key assertion is that Mound A at Poverty Pointhad to have been built in a very short period because anexhaustive examination reveals no signs of rainfall or erosion duringits construction.
"We're talkingabout an area of northern Louisiana that now tends to receive a greatdeal of rainfall," Kidder says. "Even in a very dry year,it would seem very unlikely that this location could go more than 90days without experiencing some significant level of rainfall. Yet,the soil in these mounds shows no sign of erosion taking place duringthe construction period. There is no evidence from the region of anepic drought at this time, either."
Part of a much largercomplex of earthen works at Poverty Point, Mound A is believed to bethe final and crowning addition to the sprawling 700-acre site, whichincludes five smaller mounds and a series of six concentric C-shapedembankments that rise in parallel formation surrounding a small flatplaza along the river. At the time of construction, Poverty Point wasthe largest earthworks in North America.Built on the westernedge of the complex, Mound A covers about 538,000 square feet[roughly 50,000 square meters] at its base and rises 72 feet abovethe river. Its construction required an estimated 238,500 cubicmeters - about eight million bushel baskets - of soil to be broughtin from various locations near the site. Kidder figures it would takea modern, 10-wheel dump truck about 31,217 loads to move that muchdirt today.
"The PovertyPoint mounds were built by people who had no access to domesticateddraft animals, no wheelbarrows, no sophisticated tools for movingearth," Kidder explains. "It's likely that these moundswere built using a simple 'bucket brigade' system, with thousands ofpeople passing soil along from one to another using some form ofcrude container, such as a woven basket, a hide sack or a woodenplatter."
To complete such atask within 90 days, the study estimates it would require the fullattention of some 3,000 laborers. Assuming that each worker may havebeen accompanied by at least two other family members, say a wife anda child, the community gathered for the build must have included asmany as 9,000 people, the study suggests.
"Given that aband of 25-30 people is considered quite large for mosthunter-gatherer communities, it's truly amazing that this ancientsociety could bring together a group of nearly 10,000 people, findsome way to feed them and get this mound built in a matter ofmonths," Kidder says.
Soil testing indicatesthat the mound is located on top of land that was once low-lyingswamp or marsh land - evidence of ancient tree roots and swamp lifestill exists in undisturbed soils at the base of the mound. Testsconfirm that the site was first cleared for construction by burningand quickly covered with a layer of fine silt soil. A mix of otherheavier soils then were brought in and dumped in small adjacentpiles, gradually building the mound layer upon layer.
As Kidder notes,previous theories about the construction of most of the world'sancient earthen mounds have suggested that they were laid down slowlyover a period of hundreds of years involving small contributions ofmaterial from many different people spanning generations of asociety. While this may be the case for other earthen structures atPoverty Point, the evidence from Mound A offers a sharp departurefrom this accretional theory. Kidder's home base in St.
Louis is just acrossthe Mississippi River from one of America's best known ancientearthen structures, the Monk Mound at Cahokia, Ill. He notes that theMonk Mound was built many centuries later than the mounds at PovertyPoint by a civilization that was much more reliant on agriculture, afar cry from the hunter-gatherer group that built Poverty Point. Evenso, Mound A at Poverty Point is much larger than almost any othermound found in North America; only Monk's Mound at Cahokia is larger.
"We've come torealize that the social fabric of these socieites must have been muchstronger and more complex that we might previously have given themcredit. These results contradict the popular notion thatpre-agricultural people were socially, politically, and economicallysimple and unable to organize themselves into large groups that couldbuild elaborate architecture or engage in so-called complex socialbehavior," Kidder says.
"The prevailingmodel of hunter-gatherers living a life 'nasty, brutish and short' iscontradicted and our work indicates these people were practicing asophisticated ritual/religious life that involved building thesemonumental mounds."
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