Mound A of Poverty Point

Mound A is the largest structure at Poverty Point, the great earthwork complex of northeastern Louisiana built between about 1700 and 1100 BC by a society that had no agriculture, no beasts of burden, and no wheeled carts. Around it run six concentric C-shaped ridges, the outermost nearly three-quarters of a mile across, and the whole landscape is estimated to hold as much as 53 million cubic feet of moved soil, carried basket-load by basket-load. The mound itself rises about 72 feet and is traditionally known as the Bird Mound for its shape, which is read as a flying bird seen from above, though the park presents the site's geometry without overclaiming the reading.

What makes Poverty Point unusual is who built it. Most of the world's monumental earthworks came from agricultural states; Poverty Point's builders were hunter-gatherers who nonetheless supported a dense population and ran a trade network reaching from the Ozarks to the Ohio Valley, importing stone for tools and soapstone for vessels. The site was designated a National Historic Landmark in 1962, became a Smithsonian Affiliate in 2010, and was inscribed on the UNESCO World Heritage list in 2014. Louisiana State Parks operates it today with a museum, tram tours, and daily access to the mounds, and the entry's honest frame is that this is archaeology you can walk on: the purposes of the ridges and mounds are inferred, not known, and the site's interpreters keep it that way.

Visiting

Louisiana State Parks' Poverty Point page carries hours (daily 9-5, closed major holidays), admission ($6 adult, $4 senior, free under 7), and the optional tram tour fees.

Photo: Jennifer R. Trotter, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons ([source](https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Mound_A_at_the_Monumental_Earthworks_Poverty_Point_World_Heritage_Site.jpg))