Poverty Point: A Culture of the Lower Mississippi Valley

The volume presents an archaeological account of a prehistoric Lower Mississippi Valley culture centered on a large earthwork settlement, synthesizing site excavation, artifact studies, and radiocarbon evidence to reconstruct daily life, economy, and social organization. It describes settlement layout, monumental earthworks and craft production, subsistence and tool-making, and long-distance exchange of raw materials and ornaments, and explores competing interpretations of cultural origins and development. The book combines field data, artifact illustrations, and the history of research to argue that the culture represents a complex, regionally connected society rather than an isolated anomaly.