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A Hub of Poverty Point Culture The Jaketown site in west-central Mississippi has yielded a plethora of unusual artifacts.
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JOHN CONNAWAY
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overing nearly 200 acres, the Jaketown site is best known for its role as regional center of the Poverty Point culture in Mississippi’s Yazoo Basin. Located in Humphreys County, the site was occupied during every cultural period from just prior to the Poverty Point period (1730–1350 B.C.) through the Mississippian (A.D. 1400). Surface collections from the Jaketown site include such items as jasper pendants and beads, magnetite and hematite plummets, engraved gorgets and tablets, and Poverty Point fired-clay objects believed to have been used for cooking. The site has also yielded hundreds of micro-lithic tools made from chert blades that are common Poverty Point artifacts. Archaeologists believe Jaketown inhabitants not only manufactured goods from imported materials such as steatite, hematite, and magnetite, but that they also played a major role in the redistribution of raw materials and finished items to surrounding Poverty Point sites. Poverty Point culture sites have been recorded in Louisiana, Mississippi, and Arkansas. Poverty Point culture, named after the type site in northeast Louisiana, is defined primarily by certain tools and artifacts, many of which are made from imported materials obtained through extensive trade networks. Poverty Point sites were usually located on waterways, giving them the advantage of access to trade routes and
Mound B, one of Jaketown’s two extant mounds, is covered by the trees in the right of this photograph. The site’s other mounds have, for the most part, been leveled.
wetland environments teeming with game and fish. This was especially true of Jaketown, which 3,700 years ago was located on what was then the path of the Mississippi River. Jaketown was first recorded in 1908 by legendary archaeologist C. B. Moore, but he was unable to obtain permission to excavate. The site wasn’t revisited until 1941, when James B. Griffin did an archaeological survey of the Lower Mississippi Valley. Excavations were conducted by Philip Phillips and Paul Gebhard in 1946, and James A. Ford and Warren Eames in 1951. Their work revealed evidence of
pre–Poverty Point occupation, overlaid by a substantial Poverty Point midden containing the unusual and exotic artifacts for which the culture is known. These strata were in turn covered by layers containing pottery from Early, Middle, and Late Woodland cultures and, finally, by artifacts and pottery from the Mississippian Period. One excavation trench even showed the remains of Poverty Point structures. This was especially important because very little is known about the houses people lived in so long ago. Both structures consisted of post mold patterns arranged in arcs, which suggests these early in-
spring • 2003
