Analysis enabled the identification of the number of Poverty Point attributes, diagnostic features of the Poverty Point culture period, present in the assemblage. The site has been occupied almost continuously since 1000 BC, and these occupations range from the Poverty Point Period through all subsequent Lower Mississippi River Valley (LMV) archaeological periods (McGahey 1972:3).
LITERATURE REVIEW
Jaketown was occupied during the pre-ceramic period and throughout the ceramic chronology of the Lower Mississippi Valley (Saunders and Allen 2003:156). 1400, through the cultural periods shown above, in the discussion of the Lower Mississippi Valley, in Table 1.
LABORATORY METHODS
Lithics are prehistoric stone materials that have been modified, typically in the process of creating stone tools. Classification of cores and testers can provide the archaeologist with information about what techniques were used to create chipped stone tools. There were few historical objects in the collection and they were not a focus of the laboratory.
Unmodified materials in the collection include various types of stone, such as iron ore, lead ore.
ANALYSIS
The second largest number of items in the collection is "unmodified", which makes up 365 or 3.72% of the collection. Also present are 33 ecofacts representing 0.3% of the assemblage and 25 unidentified objects representing 0.3% of the assemblage. Ecofacts represent a larger number of objects than unidentified objects, but the objects in this category carry more weight.
Quan&ty
Weight (g)
The largest weight in the collection is the ceramic industry with 51.8 kilograms, which amounts to 61.1% of the weight. There is an abundance of lithic artefacts in the collection, but the bulk of the weight is made up of ceramic artefacts. The pottery industry can be divided into pottery, shaped clay, painted and undefined, as shown in Table 7.
There are 2,768 objects in the ceramics industry that can be classified as pottery, accounting for 74.7% of ceramics.
Ar&fact Quan&ty
Ar&fact Weight (g)
The weight of molded clay objects is 20,693 grams or 39.9% of the ceramics industry by weight. The weight of clay in the ceramics industry is 1,030.8 grams or 2% of the ceramics category. The undetermined category is representative of 11 objects in the ceramics industry or 0.3% of the industry.
The total number of ceramics present in the collection is 3,705 items and the total weight of the ceramic industry is 51,841.5 grams.
Ceramic Industry Quan&ty
Ceramic Industry Weight (g)
Pottery vessel shape includes rim, base, body, neck/shoulder, near rim, and undetermined categories, as shown in Table 8. Neck/shoulder sherds are pottery fragments that formed the neck of the vessel, between the body and the rim. The total number of ceramic vessel forms is 2,768 and the total weight of ceramic vessel forms is 29,974.8 grams.
Ceramic decoration can be divided into undecorated, or plain, and decorated, consisting of a design or surface treatment.
Po;ery Vessel Morphology Weight (g)
Po;ery Vessel Morphology Quan&ty
The decorative types of pottery in the collection include indeterminate, incised, slipped, impressed, banded, stamped and punctured, as shown in Table 10. Due to the large number of ceramics in the collection and a lack of time, not every decorative type could be included. The ceramics that had not yet been analyzed or had a decoration that had eroded were placed in the 'indeterminate' category.
Therefore, only about 20% of all decorated pottery has been sufficiently analyzed to determine a decorative type.
Po;ery Decora&on Quan&ty
There are 79.8%, or 1,266 items, of decorative pottery types that have not yet been identified or are too weathered to print.
Po;ery Decora&on Weight (g)
Approximately 15% of the pottery from the collection was analyzed for temperature and the proportions are listed above in Table 11. Molded clay objects are objects that are shaped by hand and may or may not be fired. The 'other' category includes shaped clay objects that did not fit into any of the individual shaped clay categories.
Poverty Point Objects represent 71.2% of shaped clay technology, followed by unspecified objects (28%) and other objects (0.8%).
Shaped Clay Quan&ty
Shaped Clay Weight (g)
Poverty Point Objects are molded clay objects that have been exposed to heat (Gibson 1996:114). There were ten main categories present in the collection including biconical, modified biconical, biscuit, cross groove, cylindrical, modified. The lithic industry has five categories of materials, including chipped stone, broken rock, ground stone, hammerstone and others.
Poverty Point Objects Quan&ty
Poverty Point Objects Weight (g)
Chipped stone is the most common category in the lithic industry and contains 5,399 objects, making up 96.9% of the lithic industry. The total number of lithographs present in the collection is 5,575 pieces and the total weight of the litho industry is 31,513.1 grams. The most common material in the collection for the lithic industry was chipped stone, as shown below in Figures 43 and 44.
Lithic Industry Quan&ty
Lithic Industry Weight (g)
There were five categories of chipped stone present in the collection: tool, core, tester, debitage and indeterminate, and their proportions are shown in Table 16. The total number of chipped stone technology in the collection is 5,399 items and the total weight is 26,031, 8 grams.
Chipped Stone Quan&ty
Chipped Stone Weight (g)
Indeterminate” includes chipped stone for which a size grade was not complete, such as with cores and testers (8.7%).
Size Grade Quan&ty
Size Grade Weight (g)
Milled or polished stone consists of four different categories: adze, mortar, basalt, and indeterminate, as shown in Table 19. Basalt is a very hard stone that can be used for grinding, pulverizing, crushing, or smoothing.
Raw Materials Quan&ty
Raw Materials Weight (g)
There was an equal share of all four materials, one object each, which individually represent 25% of the collection. The total amount of cut or polished stone objects is four, and the weight of the cut or polished stone objects is 484.9 grams. The quantities and weights of the cut or polished stone categories are shown below in Figures 51 and 52.
Ground/Polished Stone Quan&ty
Ground/Polished Stone Weight (g)
The total amount of fire-cracked rock is 125 objects and the total weight is 3,995.1 grams. The collection contains human and animal bones as well as evidence of invertebrates, mollusk shells.
Fractured Rock Quan&ty
Fractured Rock Weight (g)
Based on identification processes, there are at least Bos Taurus (cow), Cervidae (deer) and human bone in the vertebrate category. Invertebrates and flora both have only one object present in the ecofacts category, accounting for 3% each. Human bone and vertebrates dominate the ecofact objects in both quantity and weight as shown below in Figures 55 and 56.
The category of historic materials in the Jaketown collection includes glass, metal, plastic, ceramic, tile, and "other" materials (Table 22).
Ecofact Quan&ty
The 'other' group contained many unidentified materials and broken pieces that could not be recognized.
Ecofact Weight (g)
Historic Quan&ty
Historic Weight (g)
Unaltered rocks include ten categories: iron ore, lead ore, sandstone, shale, quartz, chalk, flint, basalt/pumice, other, and undetermined (Table 23). The amount of unmodified rock present at a site can be used to determine what types of activities occurred during occupation times.
Unmodified Rock Quan&ty
Unmodified Rock Weight (g)
Magnetite is the most abundant form of iron ore in the collection and constitutes 42.1% of the iron ore (n=56), followed by hematite with 37.6%, unspecified objects are next (18.8%) and limonite bottom is the least abundant iron. ore in the collection, which constitutes (1.5%) of the total amount of iron ore (Table 24). The total number of iron ore present is 133 items and the total iron ore weight is 4,293.3 grams.
Iron Ore Quan&ty
Iron Ore Weight (g)
Total Quan&ty
The first feature of ceramics that is taken into account when sorting is the morphology or shape of the vessel. Within the category of vessel shape, pottery sherds can be classified as body, rim, shoulder, bottom or rim.
Ceramic Industry Quan&ty
Pottery included decorated or plain fragments, and Table 29 shows the relationship between pottery morphology and decoration. The most common type of pottery surface quality present in terms of number and weight is plain sherds.
Po;ery Vessel Morphology Weight (g)
Po;ery Vessel Morphology Quan&ty
Po;ery Vessel Surface Quali&es Quan&ty
Po;ery Vessel Surface Quali&es Weight (g)
Differences in volume-to-weight ratios can be attributed to the different sizes of fragments present. The most common type of surface-tempered ceramics in terms of number and weight is grog. Figures 73 and 74 show graphs of the quantity and weight of each category of pottery in bag 13.
Po;ery Vessel Paste Quality (temper) Quan&ty
Po;ery Vessel Paste Quality (temper) Weight (g)
The Mississippian Plain can be defined by its identifiable, fractured shell which tends to be coarse (Ford et al. 1955:99). Mulberry Creek Cord marked is characterized by its grog temper, cord-shaped outer surface, and stamping near the edge (Ford et al. 1955:87). Larto Red is characterized by its grog temper, red slip, and occasional incisions near the edge (Ford et al. 1955:86).
I also found two sherds of Coles Creek Incised, which is characterized by grog temper, intense firing, and incising, representing 0.8% of the pottery types in bag 13 (Ford et al. 1955:95).
Typifying Po;ery Quan&ty
The sherd on the left in Figure 78 is a rim sherd with edges and the sherd on the right has indentations along the edge. The sherd on the right in Figure 79 has a typical slip and can be specifically defined as "Larto Red" pottery type. The three pottery sherds on the right are examples of Parkin Punctated Figure 79: The pottery on the.
The two pieces of burned bone weigh 15.91 grams and the piece of unburned bone weighs 3.53 grams.
Historic Weight(g)
Other categories (brick) and plastic each contain one item, each comprising 16.7% of historical materials. The weight and percent weight of plastic is 2.4 grams and 5.2% of historical materials in bag 13.
DISCUSSION AND CONCLUSION
1955) did not distinguish between biconical Poverty Point Objects as Lehman and the UM Jaketown collection did. Claiborne contains objects similar to Poverty Point Objects, but have been named "Claiborne". Poverty Point objects are predominantly made of clay and are in shades of yellow and orange.
Poverty Point and Claiborne have a greater number of melon-shaped Poverty Point objects as shown below in Table 38.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
2013 Settlement, Mobility and Organization of Technology in the Clark Lake Area (22SH535): A Small-Scale Forest Settlement. 2008 Basin-scale reconstruction of the geologic context of human settlement: An example from the Lower Mississippi Valley, USA, 1255–1270. In: Unedited version of the state historic context document and comprehensive preservation plan for the state of Mississippi for.
2014f "Lithic Raw Materials in the Lower Yazoo Basin - Jaketown's Colorful Diversity Preserved in Stone" Laboratory Methods in Archaeology (408).
