Poverty Point, known for its mound construction, is an archaeological site in northeastern Louisiana (near the town of Epps), overlooking the Mississippi River flood plain. The name derives from the Poverty Point plantation, which included the site's land in modern times. It was constructed c. 1730 BC–1350 BC by American Indians of the archaic Poverty Point culture that inhabited the Mississippi Delta at that time, and continued to develop further in the centuries to come.The earthen structures were built and enlarged for centuries, with the site reaching its final form at about 1000 BCE. It is referred to by some as the first true city of North America, although the population is unlikely to have exceeded 2000 individuals at any time.

The site is a wide, 400 acre (1.6 km²) plaza consisting of six concentric earthen ridges. The ridges may have originally been six feet high. Aisles intersected the ridges, leading directly from the center to the perimeter. Unique in the configuration of its earthen structures — notably concentric, semi-elliptical ridges of great size — it had no equal in grandeur in its day. "Clearly an earth-moving project of this magnitude and sophistication, no matter how protracted over time, required not only a large pool of labor, but also formal orchestration...geometric patterning among Archaic mounds, including those of Poverty Point, is an archaeological fact whose significance lies not so much in the labor needed to erect them, but in the ideas needed to conceive of them" (Sassaman, p.92-93).



Poverty Point also contains a diverse archaeological record. "Raw materials imported from as far away as the Great Lakes and the Appalachians, while impressive in volume and diversity, were often used to make mundane items: soapstone for cooking vessels; granite, basalt, and greenstone for celts; hematite and magnetite for plummets; and various cherts for projectiles and cutting tools... coupled with the ubiquitous baked clay objects, hearths, pits, and midden accumulation, the inventory of subsistence technology strongly suggests that Poverty Point was a place of residence" (Sassaman, p.92). At its height, a permanent population of several thousand people lived on Poverty Point's curving ridges.Living in a non-agricultural culture, the population subsisted on wild foods, such as acorns, hickory nuts, fish, turtles, and deer.