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Steatite vessel fragments of the Poverty Point Culture.
POVERTY POINT CULTURE
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eluding a plummet; an awl; sheet fragments; globular, tubular, and discoid beads; wire fragments; and amorphous lumps. Of these specimens, the majority of which are surface finds, only the plummet and a laminated fragment have been described in detail. "In December,
1961, Carl Alexander found several copper beads washing out of the midden; subsequently, other beads, including 19 beads in a double row suggesting a burial placement, and small copper objects were found in the same place." Although the laminated fragment was excavated at Poverty Point, neither its provenance nor its archaeological associations necessarily align it with the Poverty Point Culture, and the archaeological association of the beads is equally obscure. Nevertheless, in light of the vast Poverty Point trade network and the numerous similar artifacts excavated from Poverty Point middens at the Claiborne Site, the attribution of these native copper artifacts to the Poverty Point Culture seems valid.14
Bone objects do not preserve well at Poverty Point because of the high soil acidity. Webb records only 81 worked objects, which include deer antler points, flakers, a wedge, and an atlatl hook (Pi. 12,7).15 There are also a bone awl, decorated pins and pin fragments, tubes, pendants, a spatula, a worked human jaw, several perforated human teeth, and five perforated animal teeth. Since most of these items were dredged from Bayou Magon, their exact archaeological association with the Poverty Point Culture is unclear.
There are many other Poverty Point Culture sites in or near Louisiana. The Claiborne Site, located in Hancock County, Mississippi, along the left bank of the Pearl River very near its mouth, is a Poverty Point regional center.16 The site was dominated by a large, horseshoeshaped, rangia shell midden with an outside diameter of 660 feet and an inside diameter of 460 feet, whose ends abutted the riverbank. The exact height of the midden was not reported becausc, just prior to an archaeological investigation, most of the site was disturbed in prepa-
14.	Webb, The Poverty Point Culture-, Robert E. Bell, "A Copper Plummet from Poverty Point, Louisiana," American Antiquity, Vol. 2.2 (1956), No. 1, p. 8o; Ford and Webb, Poverty Point-, Webb, "The Extent and Content of Poverty Point Culture," 317; Clarence H. Webb, personal communication to the author, 1978.
15.	Webb, The Poverty Point Culture.
16.	Gagliano and Webb, "Archaic-Poverty Point Transition at the Pearl River Mouth."