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Brought to public attention in 1873 by Samuel Lockett, Poverty Point is one of the most significant sites in North America, located near the Mississippi River in northern Louisiana. It is most closely linked to the work of James A. Ford, who began research there in 1953. Constructed between 1730 b.c. and 1350 b.c. by a preagricultural people, the site features complex earthworks undertaken on a massive scale. The central construction is composed of six rows of concentric ridges, which are thought to have been 1.3 meters high originally. The five aisles and six sections of ridges created by this construction take the form of a wheel; the diameter of the outermost ridges measures three-quarters of a mile. Scholars believe that these ridges served as foundations for dwellings, although little evidence of structures has been found. However, features and midden deposits uncovered during excavations offer some support for this theory. Large earth mounds were also constructed on the site; among them are Poverty Point Mound, which measures about 210 by 195 meters at its base and is 21 meters high, and Mound “B,” which is conical in shape.
We know quite a bit about the people who lived at Poverty Point. For example, they imported stone for projectile points from as far away as the Ouachita and Ozark Mountains. Indeed, the evidence indicates that Poverty Point was part of a major trading network that spanned the eastern United States.
See also
United States of America, Prehistoric Archaeology
References
Gibson, J. L. 1996. Poverty Point: A Terminal Archaic Culture of the Lower Mississippi Valley. Louisiana Archaeological Survey and Antiquities Commission.
(1834–1902)
John Wesley Powell grew up in the midwestern portion of the United States, fought in the American Civil War, and later became an explorer of the Colorado River canyons. He began fieldwork among the Soshone, Ute, and Paiute Native American Indian peoples of the Great Basin and Grand Canyon regions. He founded the smithsonian institution’s Bureau of American Ethnology (BAE), which he directed from 1879 until 1902.
As an early anthropologist, geologist, and member of the Anthropological Society of Washington, D.C., Powell was an evolutionist. Greatly influenced by Charles Darwin, Herbert Spencer, and lewis henry morgan, he envisaged a rigid framework for human development. As director of the BAE, he supported the Cyrus Thomas Survey of North American Indian mounds and sponsored the fieldwork of archaeologists frank cushing and william henry holmes, among others. He also supported the preparation of the 1891 linguistic map of North American native peoples and the collection of Native American Indian vocabularies.
Powell argued for applied government anthropology to improve reservation conditions; for federal government support of linguistic, archaeological, and ethnographic fieldwork; and for the preservation of antiquities such as Great Serpent Mound in Ohio and casa grande in Arizona. The publication of his own fieldwork was not realized until a century after his death; however Powell contributed many essays to the BAE’s annual reports as its director.
See also
Mason, O. T.; United States of America, Prehistoric Archaeology
References
Zernel, J. J. 1983. John Wesley Powell: Science and Reform in a Positive Context. Ann Arbor: University Microfilms.
(1796–1859)
Born in Salem, Massachusetts, and educated at Harvard University, the partially sighted William Hickling Prescott became a prolific writer with a particular interest in Spanish history. A Chronicle of the Conquest of Granada (1829) and History of the Reign of Ferdinand and Isabella the Catholic (1838) were followed by History of the Conquest of Mexico (1843) and History of the Conquest of Peru (1847). The last two multivolumed
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