Earthen pyramids long predate Cahokia! 🏛️ Poverty Point's 72-foot-tall pyramid was standing by 1300 BCE, and Holly Bluff was a walled city in the 900s with a moat, embankments, and a 55-foot Mound A larger than anything at Plum Bayou. The Coles Creek culture of Louisiana and Mississippi built whole pyramid towns behind embankments. Marksville (0-400 CE) connects to Ohio's Hopewell, both abandoned in the 400s. Then the bow and arrow arrived from Canada around 600 CE, intensifying corn agriculture and the need to defend farmland — eventually birthing Mississippian civilization.
Pre-Mississippian cultures built earthen pyramids at Holly Bluff and Poverty Point before Cahokia
Key facts
- The Coles Creek culture of Louisiana and Mississippi built pyramid towns surrounded by earthen embankments
- Holly Bluff was a walled city in the 900s CE with a moat and earthen embankment system protecting three sides and a river on the fourth
- Mound A at Holly Bluff stands 55 feet tall and covers 2 acres at its base, larger than any mound at Plum Bayou
- Plum Bayou and Holly Bluff were trade partners, with Plum Bayou shell jewelry likely arriving through Coles Creek networks
- Holly Bluff was abandoned as Cahokia rose, which spared it from extensive excavation by Clarence Moore in 1908
- The first earthen pyramids in Louisiana date to over 5,000 years ago, with Poverty Point's 72-foot-tall pyramid in place by 1300 BCE
- The Marksville site in central Louisiana (0-400 CE) built earthen platforms surrounded by a 10-foot-tall, 3,000-foot-long embankment, ending four centuries before Plum Bayou
- Marksville is considered a southern manifestation of the Hopewell civilization, whose Ohio heartland (0-500 CE) built earthen pyramids and geometric earthworks
- Marksville and Hopewell were abandoned simultaneously in the 400s CE, creating a centuries-long gap before pyramid building resumed
- The bow and arrow entered the Eastern United States from Canada around 600 CE, and intensive corn agriculture expanded at the end of Hopewell times
- Increased value of arable land and the need to defend it from arrows drove a new settlement pattern, culminating in Mississippian civilization
Sources
IDENTIFYING PATTERNS IN COLES CREEK MORTUARY ...rla.unc.edu
by MC Kassabaum · 2011 · Cited by 26 — The 3.2-ha Greenhouse site consists of seven mounds (A–G) arranged around a central plaza (Figure 2). The three most prominent mounds (A,. E, and G) are roughly…
Research at the Raffman Mound Center in Madison Parish ...library.search.tulane.edu
Social complexity and mound ceremony in the Coles Creek culture: Research at the Raffman Mound Center in Madison Parish, Louisiana. Social complexity and mound ...
(PDF) Excavations at the Bayou Grande Cheniere Mounds ...researchgate.net
two separate yet related (interacting) cultures, the Coles Creek and the Coastal Coles Creek. Though some sites have more mounds than others, the there is scant ...
Coles Creek Culture and the Trans-Mississippi Southscholarworks.sfasu.edu
by FF Schambach · 1991 · Cited by 4 — Apparently all the important Early Caddo sites such as Crenshaw and. Bowman in Arkansas, Gahagan and Mounds Plantation in Louisiana, and the Davis site in east…
Coles Creek Incised Bowl from Plum Bayou Moundsarcheology.uark.edu
Inside this pit (also known as Feature 6), archeologists found dark greasy soils with an increased clay content, along with loads of burned material, including ...
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