Mound A
Mound A is the largest mound built at Poverty Point. It stands a whopping 72 feet tall, 710 feet long and 660 feet wide. In fact, the mound is so big that making it would have taken as many as 15.5 million basket loads of earth!
American Indians built this massive mound around 1300 B.C. That makes it one of the last mounds built during the Late Archaic period. Builders made Mound A differently from the other mounds at Poverty Point. They built the other mounds by creating a single portion and then adding to it, one stage at a time, to reach their final height.
Unlike the other mounds, builders made Mound A in three sections: the peak (or cone), the platform, and a ramp that linked the platform to the peak. After finishing the first two sections, each in a single stage, builders
Cone
Platform
Ramp
© Susan Guice
took a long break before making the ramp. When it was finished, Mound A was in a direct north-south line with Mounds B and E.
When archaeologists say that people living at Poverty Point were part of something larger than themselves, they really mean it. Just how much bigger? Mound A alone is roughly 7 school buses tall, 20 buses wide and almost 18 buses long! Photo © Jenny Ellerbe
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