There is another group of chipped stone artifacts which is one of the most abundant tool classes at the Poverty Point and Jaketown sites and which occurs in respectable numbers at many Poverty Point villages (Webb 1977:42). These mysterious objects are called microliths. The most common form has been dubbed a Jaketown perforator (Haag and Webb 1953: Ford and Webb 1956). Typically, perforators are tiny artifacts, made from blades and flakes; they have one bulbous end and a narrow point. They were originally presumed to be drills or punches, but experiments showed that they could have been worn-out scrapers, resulting from whittling antler, bone, and perhaps wood (Ford and Webb 1956:77). Their abundance at Poverty Point and Jaketown suggests a rather commonplace function, and perhaps the experimental results have been rightly interpreted. Recently, however, an archaeologist made a revealing discovery. He noticed an obstruction in the bottom of an unfinished hole that was drilled in the center of a narrow-ended, rectangular stone tablet. Using a straight pin, he dislodged a small flint object. It was the broken end of a Jaketown perforator; so perhaps, they were used as drills after all!
SYMBOLIC OBJECTS AND CEREMONIES
Poverty Point culture had many unique objects, but perhaps most important were its artifacts of personal adornment and symbolic meaning. In no other preceding or contemporary culture were so many ornaments and status symbols produced. Stone beads, made mostly of red jasper, predominated, but many other unusual objects were manufactured. Pendants were made in a multitude of geometric and zoomorphic shapes. Dominant were birds, bird heads, animal claws, foot effigies, turtles, and open clam shell replicas ([Figure 11]). Small, in-the-round carvings of “locusts” and fat-bellied owls were made and were evidently widely circulated, even among non-Poverty Point peoples (Webb 1971). One pendant from Jaketown (Webb 1977:Figure 25) was a polished tablet with a carved human face. Copper and galena beads and bangles were worn at the Poverty Point and Claiborne sites. Perforated human and animal teeth, cut out sections of human jaws, bone tubes, and bird bills (Webb 1977:52-53), dredged from the bottom mucks of the bayou below the Poverty Point site, reveal that much more ornamentation of perishable materials has disappeared.
Figure 11. Stone Ornaments. a, g, Pendants; b, Hour-Glass Bead; d-f, k, Tubular Beads; c, i-j, Fat Owl Effigy Pendants; h, Clam Shell Effigy; l-m, Buttons; n, Claw Effigy. Photographs courtesy of Brian Cockerham.
It would hardly be apt to describe the folks at Poverty Point as gaudily dressed, but by comparison with their country neighbors living in little villages and with their trade partners in Arkansas, Mississippi, and other sections of Louisiana, they must have been quite “fancy” and impressively clothed. Because so much personal ornamentation occurs at Poverty Point itself, it is conceivable that social distinctions there were more numerous and more rigid than anywhere else at the time. There was only one Poverty Point. It must have seemed like New Orleans on Mardi Gras, Mecca during the pilgrimage, and Mexico City on market day—all rolled into one.
Hundreds of solid stone objects, such as cones, cylinders, spheres, cubes, trapezoids, buttons ([Figure 11]), and others, were also made by skilled craftsmen, mainly at the giant Poverty Point site (Webb 1977:48). Since utilitarian functions for these small objects are difficult to imagine, they too must have had ornamental, symbolic, or, perhaps, even religious meanings.
Religious and other symbolic purposes might have been served by stone pipes. Most were shaped like ice-cream cones or fat cigars. Other smoking tubes, made of baked clay, may have been the “poor man’s” versions of sacred pipes in regional communities outside the sphere of direct Poverty Point control. At the Poverty Point site, tubular clay pipes may have served more ordinary, nonreligious purposes. The presence of pipes, however, suggests that they might have been the first calumets used by Southeastern Indians; calumets being the most sacred symbols of intertribal relations, used to proclaim war and peace and to honor and salute important ceremonies and visiting dignitaries.
Other sacred objects may have included the small, crudely molded, clay figurines depicting seated women, many of whom appear to be pregnant ([Figure 12]). Heads were nearly always missing, although whether or not they were snapped off deliberately during ceremonies is purely conjectural. Perhaps, smaller, decorated versions of clay cooking objects may have had religious or social symbolic value as well.
It is also suspected that regular everyday artifacts could be turned into sacred ones under certain circumstances. This probably explains the 200 to 300 steatite vessels that were broken and buried in an oval pit a little southwest of the biggest mound at the Poverty Point site (Webb 1944). They must have been an offering of some kind. Other deposits of steatite vessels, both whole and broken, were found at the Claiborne site on the Gulf Coast (Gagliano and Webb 1970; Bruseth 1980). Religious and social meaning can be ascribed to virtually anything, and there need not be any recognizable intrinsic value or unusualness. No doubt thousands of other artifacts functioned in this nondomestic realm of behavior, and we just do not know what they are.