Somewhat of a companion post to the Poverty Point one. One of the main reasons I was so enthusiastic about this year's meeting was the chance to get a tour of the Watson's Brake mound complex with Reca Jones, the lady who reported the site. (She is over 70 and had no problem walking the relatively large site in heavily wooded, rough terrain. I was impressed.) Much of the site is privately owned and inaccessable to the public. The state of LA has purchased approximately half of the site and will try at some point to get the rest and turn it into a state site of some sort, but as of now it's doubtful this will happen. Anyhoo, when Poverty Point was discerned to be of Late Archaic origin, it was considered for many years to be the oldest earthworks in the U.S. Newer research has led to the discovery that Watson's Brake, in addition to several other mounds and mound groups in Louisiana and Mississippi, were built during the Middle Archaic, thousands of years before the Woodland and Mississippian mounds we're more familiar with. At present these mounds are the oldest known in the western hemisphere; their function is unknown. Watson's Brake is the most heavily investigated of the Middle Archaic mounds, with many carbon dates obtained. The site was first occupied before 6000bp, with mound construction begun before 5500 and ended at some point before 5000 years before present. The occupants of the site used Evans points, and the many carbon dates from this site pretty well conclusively establishes that type as a Middle Archaic one, better luck next time Overstreet's. The site contains 11 mounds of varying size connected by ridges or berms, with the tallest mound being around 25 ft high. The group is in an oval shape, and is about 850 ft in width. It is located along the Ouchita River in Ouchita Parish, south of Monroe, LA. The woods are so thick the mounds usually aren't noticable until you're very close to them, these pics are about as good as I could get LOL. I haven't correlated which photo is of which mound yet, so these are pretty much random. (IMG: http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v461/PowerG/MAA2010/se3775705001.jpg)
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