#poverty point

The 1300s BC saw a major shift in the great power politics of Western Asia. From around mid-century, the Assyrians, who were on the border between the Babylonian and Mitanni spheres of influence, began to assert themselves. They attempted to establish diplomatic contact with Egypt as a peer, which provoked a letter from Babylon to Egypt that amounted to, “Hey. Hey. These guys are our client state. You want to talk to them, you go through us.”

Not long after this, an opportunity opened up for the Assyrians. The Mitanni got into an internal power struggle between rival claimants to the throne; one side was backed by Egypt, the other by the Hittites. But the Hittites weren’t friends to Mitanni – they had been raiding them for years – and the second claimant to the throne switched to seeking support from Assyria. This didn’t work out for him: it angered the Hittites enough that they invaded Mitanni. But the collapse of the Mitanni state and the conquest of its western parts by the Hittites gave the Assyrians the chance to scoop up Mittani’s eastern parts. The whole thing ended with both the Hittites and Assyria much stronger than they had been, and those two along with Babylon and Egypt being the four Great Powers of the region. The Hittites were now Egypt’s principal rival, and Assyria was the main rival of Babylon.

At around the same time as the Mittani were conquered, Egypt was experiencing its own upheavals in the form of a religious revolution from above that has been described by some historians as the first occurrence of state monotheism. In the fifth year of his reign, Amenhotep IV and his wife Queen Nefertiti changed from the usual Egyptian worship of many gods to a focus on the formerly-minor deity Aten, the god of the sun disc. Amenhotep IV changed his name to Akhenaten, moved Egypt’s capital to a new city, Akhetaten (also called Amarna), midway between Memphis (roughly present-day Cairo) and Thebes (Luxor), built temples to Aten in many other cities, and banned the worship of other gods. Nefertiti appears to have reigned as an equal to her husband – she is depicted as the same size as him in art from their reign, which is unusual for Egyptian queens – and may have ruled as regent after his death. 

Following the deaths of Akhenaten and Nefertiti, this revolution was undone and excised from historical records. Their son, the young Tutankhaten, changed his name to Tutankhamun; the capital of Akhetaten and the temples to Aten were destroyed; and Akhenaten’s name was removed from lists of Egyptian pharaohs.

Across the Mediterranean from Egypt, Mycenae continued its rise. The earliest records of their Linear B script, based on the Minoan Linear A, date from the 1300s BC. This is only the third form of ancient writing that has been deciphered (after cuneiform and Egyptian hieroglyphics) – a fourth will join them next week. This is also when we first see Mycenaean ‘palaces’ (like the Minoan ones, more of a central administrative building than just a royal residence).

A new power was also on the rise in Mesoamerica, constituting the region’s first state-level society. Starting in the mid-1300s, the Olmecs established San Lorenzo on the southern Gulf Coast as a major civic and ceremonial centre. There they began the construction of a large artificial plateau or mesa, involving moving over 2 million cubic metres of earth, on which the core of the city was situated. The visual of this plateau rising as an island from the surrounding river evoked one of the central images of their cosmology: a sacred mountain rising from the waters of the underworld.

Nor was this the only major earthwork created in North America during this period. In what is now northeastern Louisiana, people built a monumental complex composed of a series of semicircular ridges facing a central plaza, with a large mound (now around 215m x 200m in length and width and 22m high; around 238,000 cubic metres in volume) on the opposite side of the ridge. The largest of the ridges is over 1.5km long. Other smaller mounds surrounded the site; at least one of these, Mound B, had been built centuries earlier, in the 1600s BC. This site is now known as Poverty Point.

The construction of the main mound was systematic in its technique. It forms roughly a large oval with a sharp peak, with a flat ‘platform’ facing the back of the ridges; the peak, the platform, and a ‘ramp’ leading from the platform to the peak are each built with different types of earth. Goods from different regions of North America, some over 1000km away, indicate that the site’s functions included trade and/or gatherings of people from a wide area. 

Some 2000 years separate Poverty Point from an earlier mound-ridge-and-plaza site at Watson Brake (also in northern Louisiana). The continuation of such building traditions over such a long period with nothing in between seems unlikely to me; there could have been many more such sites that have since been eroded or destroyed.

Last, we turn to China. The Shang Dynasty in China moved their capital twice during the 1300s BC: first to Xiaoshuangqiao, some 20km northwest of Erlingang and still in the Yellow River valley, and then to Huanbei, further north on the Huan River. Huanbei would itself be abandoned and the capital moved across the river to a new site, Yinxu, where the Shang dynasty would reach its peak.

American Beauty Berry.

Poverty Point, Louisiana

There were a number of large population centers in the Americas. I will be focusing on those in what is now the US and Canada, but large cities also existed south of the Rio Grande.

Generally considered the greatest pre-Columbian Native American city, Cahokia once sat directly across the river from what is now St. Louis, Missouri. It was settled around 600 CE and existed from 1050-1350 CE, with its apex around 1100 CE. Cahokia likely had more than 20,000 people living in (thousands more than London, at the time) and was the most influential urban settlement of the Mississippian culture.

Cahokia, on the Mississippi River, was an important center for trade and agriculture. It maintained trade links with communities from the Great Lakes to the Gulf Coast and had people living outside the main urban center. Cahokia, and the Mississippians who built it, were known for their incredible urban planning and the mounds that made up the city center. Today, the Cahokia Mounds are a UNESCO World Heritage site.

Second, the Poverty Point (named after a 19th-century plantation on top of it) culture was centralized in what is now northeastern Louisiana. Like Cahokia, it had a number of important mounds for urban life. It was constructed over multiple generations, and radiocarbon dating suggests that earthwork construction was in progress from 1800-1200 BCE. Poverty Point is one of the most ancient cities in the Americas. Poverty Point had a rich material culture include fired earthware, copperwork, and stone vessels. They had manufacturing and long-distance trade.

Third, the Calusa (Caloosahatchee) people of the southwest coast of Florida, on the coast of the Gulf. They also built mounds and, at the time of European contact in the 16th century, had a population in the 10,000s. They were likely the only indigenous North Americans who established a kingdom without practicing agriculture, using the abundant fishing resources instead. The main mound, Mound Key, was a manmade structure with canals, watercourts, and other features. The Calusa were notable for their carved-wood art and their sophisticated engineering and architecture. A single manor on Mound Key was capable of holding 2,000 people.

Fourth, the Mogollon culture was one of the major cultures of southwest America. It had multiple large and dense settlements, but one that's considered a proper city. Called Paquimé, it was settled from 1130-1450 CE. It had a population in the thousands, who lived in multi-story buildings and an irrigation-based agricultural economy. They had a complex system of water control that included drainage, reservoirs, channels, and sewage. The city had a market, ballcourts, and the production of copper and ceramic objects.

The final city to discuss is Etzanoa. Located in what is now Arkansas City, Kansas on the Arkansas River, it actually flourished after and alongside European contact, mostly with the Spanish. Etzanoa housed approximately 20,000 people. It was a seat of power for the Wichita and a trading hub.

The location of these earthen mounds is in North-East Louisiana and the site is called Watson Brake.

Long thought to have been a part of the later poverty point culture it wasn’t until the 1990’s that the remarkable antiquity of Watson Brake was recognized.

Older than the pyramids of Egypt and older than Stonehenge, this unique site is contemporary to Newgrange and Knowth in Ireland.

The construction of the mounds started somewhere around 3400 BCE and lasted for approximately 600 years until somewhere in 2800 BCE.

What triggered the mound building tradition at Watson Brake and other sites along the Mississippi valley remains unclear, their first built stages are too small to have been motivated by aggrandizement of any nature.

They aren’t burial mounds like the contemporary mounds we see in Ireland.

Join me in uncovering more about Ancient North-American mound builders!

Lower Jackson Mound