Field Notes

CONSERVANCY Field Notes

Researchers screen excavated dirt for artifacts (left) and take soil core samples (right) at Jaketown.

Investigating Poverty Point Culture

SOUTHEAST—The Poverty Point culture flourished in portions of the Lower Mississippi Valley—primarily Louisiana, Mississippi, and Arkansas—and it’s generally believed to date to approximately 1700-1000 B.C. It’s characterized by monumental architecture such as mounds and embankments, extensive long distance trade networks of raw materials, and the impressive lapidary works fashioned from these raw materials, such as highly polished jasper stone beads and ornaments.

The culture was named after its largest site, the Poverty Point State Historic Site, located in northeastern Louisiana. The second largest Poverty Point site is the Conservancy˙s 70-acre Jaketown site in Mississippi. In addition to its Poverty Point occupation, Jaketown also has subsequent Woodland (a.d. 600) and Mississippian (after a.d. 1000) occupations, and several mounds and mound remnants from the Poverty Point and Mississippian periods.

While much research has been done at the type-site in Louisiana, no major excavations have taken place at Jaketown since the 1950s, when work was done on a borrow pit during highway construction. In June of this year, T. R. Kidder and Lee Arco of Washington University and Anthony Ortmann of Murray State University directed a joint field school at the site with the objectives of defining its chronology, examining its mound construction history, and analyzing soil sediments to determine how frequent flooding from the Mississippi River and its tributaries affected its occupations.

Centuries of flooding have deposited a large amount of soil over Jaketown, burying its earliest occupations deep below the surface. After digging approximately 12 feet down, the crew reached the dark soil that characterized the rich Poverty Point occupation zone. At this depth, they found what appeared to be a mound or some other type of earthwork.

The researchers also relocated a trench that was excavated during the 1950s as well as postmolds in the Poverty Point occupation zone that are indications of some type of structure. Almost nothing is known about the types of structures the Poverty Point people built. Samples for radiocarbon dating were collected to determine when the Poverty Point people lived at Jaketown, and how the subsequent Woodland and Mississippian

Samuel Duwe maps roomblocks at the Leafwater-Kap site.

occupations evolved at the site. “Washington University and Murray State University have begun one of the most interesting and exciting research projects in this region,” said Jessica Crawford, the Conservancy’s Southeast Regional Director, “and we are looking forward to future field seasons.”

Studying Population Change

SOUTHWEST—Samuel Duwe, a graduate student at the University of Arizona, recently mapped two Conservancy sites, Leafwater-Kap and Tsama, found along two branches of the Rio Chama in Northern New Mexico. The Leafwater-Kap and Tsama sites were inhabited by the Ancestral Tewa people after they coalesced into larger and fewer villages in the Rio Grande Classic Period (a.d. 1325-1600).

Duwe is examining the effects on the social and cosmological systems after the move. There were no inhabitants in the Tewa Basin until the Coalition Period (a.d. 1250-1325), when a wave of immigration, presumably from the Four Corners area, took place. But in the Classic Period, immigration was for the most part replaced by internal population growth. Leafwater-Kap is a Coalition period site and Tsama has a Coalition-Classic component. This provides tools “to see the change through time,” Duwe said.

Duwe mapped the sites, and he identified roomblocks, kivas, plazas, and rock alignments. Harry P. Mera, with the Laboratory of Anthropology in Santa Fe, mapped these sites in the early 1930s. Duwe compared his maps to Mera’s and found that they were very similar. However, there were a few discrepancies in the Tsama maps, most notably that Duwe noted five kivas and Mera only two.

Duwe has worked at nine other sites in the Tewa Basin and is currently analyzing data from those sites. “Simply put, I am doing this mapping to build a thorough cultural history of the region where I can see when smaller sites were abandoned and other sites grew in size,” he said.

Geophysical Survey at Barton

NORTHEAST—A recent geophysical survey of the Barton site has revealed new information about this important multi-component site. Barton forms part of a cluster of archaeological sites that are situated on two river terraces on the North Branch of the Potomac River in Western Maryland. Over the last 20 years, excavations led by Bob Wall of Towson University have shown that it spans 12,000 years from PaleoIndian to early Historic times.

This spring, Tim Horsley from the University of Michigan’s Museum of Anthropology conducted a magnetometer survey of this 37-acre site owned by the Conservancy. A magnetometer can locate buried archaeological features such as pits, palisade trenches, and hearths by detecting subtle distortions in the earth’s magnetic field.

The survey results have changed the interpretation of the site. In addition to mapping the extent of Late Woodland occupation areas (ca. a.d. 900 to 1400), at least three new villages enclosed by palisades have been discovered. Two of these villages are situated adjacent to a previously known Keyser village (ca. a.d. 1400). Horsley thinks these villages could also date to the Late Woodland period, but until they are excavated he can only speculate.

These new results will now be used to guide future excavations at the Barton site to answer questions about their relative chronology and internal structure.

The research was sponsored by the Maryland Historical Trust and Towson State University, and the geophysical survey was assisted by members of the Western Chapter of the Maryland Archaeological Society and students from Frostburg State University.