Poverty Point as Structure, Event, Process

Abstract

A multiscalar analysis of the Poverty Point mound and ridge complex of northeast Louisiana illustrates the value of agency and practice theories to historical interpretations of monumental architecture. The architects of Poverty Point included both ancient mounds in their design and, arguably, symbolic representations of the far-flung places and peoples from which Poverty Point residents acquired raw materials for tools and ornaments. The conjunction of the past with the present, and the local with the nonlocal was the logic of a new social order that was both corporate and pluralistic. Extrapolation of the geometry of Poverty Point earthworksat increasingly larger scales encompasses the places and histories of communities whose migrations, shifting alliances, and transformations contributed to the genesis of Poverty Point culture.

Emergent Complexity, Changing Landscapes, and Spheres of Interaction in Southeastern South America During the Middle and Late Holocene

“…We can track the spread of a new funerary architecture represented by earthen mounds and enclosures among the Southern Proto-Jê (Iriarte et al 2008a) and speak about shared ancestor cult of the Sambaqui societies along the Atlantic Coast (DeBlasis et al 2007). This means that we must begin to see the Río de La Plata basin as other large river systems of the Americas-a highly contested geographical enclave prone to the juxtaposition of identities, where novel sociopolitical arrangements emerged, ethnicities are congealed, and traditions were invented and projected onto the landscape (Bernardini 2005a(Bernardini , b, 2011Pauketat 2001Pauketat , 2007Pauketat , 2010Pauketat and Loren 2005;Sassaman 2005Sassaman , 2010. The arrival of these external influences did not necessarily mark an abrupt rupture with the midHolocene cultures of the region.…”

Constructing community at civic-ceremonial centers: pottery-making practices at Crystal River and Roberts Island

“…Given the difficulties of definitively identifying ethnicity from the material record (Jones 1997), we are not ready to go so far as to necessarily equate differences in pottery-making practice at Crystal River and Roberts Island with distinct ethnic groups, as has been argued from other facets of material culture for the civic-ceremonial centers at Poverty Point (Sassaman 2005) and Cahokia (Emerson and Hargrave 2000). As we have noted, much of the variation in temper may be related to shifts in settlement and concomitant variability in the availability of particular clays and aplastics.…”

PostScript: Doing Agency in Archaeology

“…In many cases, deep histories of repeated practices that allow us to define regional traditions are interpreted as evidence of long term reproduction of dispositions (Joyce, 2003a;Joyce and Hendon, 2000;Alt, 2003, see Cobb andKing, 2005;Martin, 2005;Owoc, 2005;Sassaman, 2005). The linking logic is that what we today recognize as continuity, or better, repeated replication, is the material expression of the intentional actions of past agents working within the structures they inhabited, along with the unintended consequences of those actions that were incorporated in the structural matrix of later actors.…”

“…It would be possible to argue that Cerro Palenque was the product of self-conscious actions by a small group of actors who determined that the new settlement should be built, and initiated each of the individual building projects, although such an assertion would require ignoring the many variations in building plan and construction techniques and use of materials involved that suggest decentralization of these construction projects. But even if the innovation of a new large settlement were attributed to the agency of a few self-conscious actors, the tactical occupation of the site through everyday circulation and acts of daily life would still need to be acknowledged as repeated practices critical to the maintenance of the settlement, and the reproduction in the persons tracing trajectories through it of dispositions to act in certain ways (similarly, see Martin, 2005;Owoc, 2005;Pauketat and Alt, 2005;Sassaman, 2005).…”