features
Battalion/Page 5B
January 27, 1983
Prehistoric monument
years before its time
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: isjustaK ;om P utei is being applied to
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stage sta FBI h as automatic ling-
orders. $ i M' IU readers developed by
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jch gone,: cau use computerized data
e p 0st offt'Pced this process tremen-
sly. So do the Royal Cana-
———i Mounted Police and some
national police f orces, the
^Kerman government and
nens AG are developing a
ilat automatic system.
I An ^ <>W a subsidiaVy ni
Anaheim, Calif., of the century-
old DeLaRue security firm in
London is marketing a system
called Printrak that goes much
farther.
Printrak can examine “la
tent” or unidentified finger
prints taken at the scene of a
crime and classif y them in such a
way that the computerized in
formation can be used to con
duct in several hours a search
for matches in large fingerpint
laboratories that might take
weeks by ordinary methods if it
can be done at all.
In fact, said DeLaRue Prin
trak President Richard Snyder,
very few latent fingerprints are
even sent to the FBI now; the
prospects of getting a match are
too remote. The chief value of a
latent print at present is as evi
dence after someone is arrested
and his or her prints can be com
pared with the latent print.
Snyder said a Printrak system
to cope with the files in a city
with a metropolitan area popu
lation of about 750,000 will cost
about $1.3 million.
United Press International
EPPS, La. — Archaeologists
say Poverty Point was North
America’s largest prehistoric
settlement, but it could take 50
years to learn why it was built
2,000 years ahead of its time.
Theories on why Indians
built six concentric ridges and
four mysterious mounds more
than 3,800 years ago range from
it being a trade center to a cere
monial center to an astronomic
al laboratory. One of the
mounds is 70 feet high and has
35 times the volume of Egypt’s
great pyramid.
There has been so little re
search done at the 500-acre Pov
erty Point site that no one has
even completed a scale map of
the area in northeast Louisiana.
“There’s nothing like this any
where else in in North Amer
ica,” said Sharon Goad of
Louisiana State University, the
only archaelogist with a project
under way there. “For this site
being so significant, it’s almost
totally unknown.
“This shows a system of ridge
building that you don’t find
much of until 200 B.C., but the
Poverty Point Indians had
already abandoned it for all
practical purposes by then.”
At eye-level, one sees little
more than a few bumps and a
big hill in the rolling farmland.
But from the air, the ridges are
visible along with the tree—co
vered mound with a top measur
ing 15 by 700 feet. There are
three smaller mounds withing
2.5 miles.
FIND IT
Poverty Point, named for a
nearby plantation, was inha
bited as early as 6,000 B.C., but
most of the evidence points to
ward full-scale occupation be
tween 1,800 and 300 B.C.
Archaeologists believe 5,000
people lived there during its
most populous period about
1,000 B.C.
Although it has been desig
nated a national prehistoric site,
Goad estimates that even with
optimum funding and staffing
— both unlikely because of the
economy and government
priorities — it would take 50
years to unravel the mystery of
Poverty Point.
The first comprehensive dig
at the site is the three-year pro
ject being conducted by Goad
with help from LSU students
and Earthwatch, a Mas
sachusetts-based private group
offering members opportunities
to participate in archaeological
digs for a price.
Goad’s group, which will com
plete its work this summer,
found the first proof of homes at
the site. This find would elimin
ate the theory that it was used
only as a ceremonial center.
Archaeologists also have found
evidence to disprove the theory
that Poverty Point was a better
astronomical laboratory than
Stonehenge.
Goad said she believes the site
was inhabited by hunter -
gatherers who lived in an orga
nised village that served as a
trade center.
The most puzzling thing is
that the ridges and mounds
were thousands of years ahead
of similar man - made forma
tions elsewhere in the world, she
said.
“That’s why we’ve got to know
what it is, how old it is and why
this is here 2,000 years before it
should be,” she said.
The site opened as a state
park in 1972 and now has a
museum, a tower that visitors
can climb to look down on a
scale-model of the site, and
pathways for walking tours.
The primary site has yielded
150,000 artifacts, including
thousands of spear points, stone
beads, microflints (small stones
worked into drillpoints), clay
statues and plummets that poss
ibly were used as weights for
bola weapons.
Some of the stone came from
other parts of the country, and
Goad said that this supports the
theory that Poverty Point was a
trade center.
Samuel Lockett of the Smith
sonian Institute first mentioned
the mounds in an 1872 survey of
the area. But the site’s signifi
cance went unnoticed until the
1930s when Dr. Clarence Webb,
an amateur archaeologist from
Shreveport, La., began digging.
In the 1950s, another
archaeologist looking at aerial
photographs of the site saw its
geometric configuration.
The main mound, hand—
built by Indians carrying baskets
of dirt, that appears to intrigue
scientists the most.
The mound is the third
largest in the United States,
ranking only behind the Caho-
kia Mound at Cahokia, Ill., and
the Emerald Mound at Natchez,
Miss. Both of those mounds
were built between 900 and
1,400 A.D. and Indians lived
atop them.
Goad said there is no evidence
of people living on the Poverty
Point mound and, although it
could be a burial ground, only
one bone has been found in it so
far, which raises more questions.
“These people were hunters
and gatherers,” she said. “The
question is how ... they got a
cooperative effort to get people
to do this.
“There should have been
somebody who said ‘build this’
and they’d come in every Satur
day and Sunday and build it for
three hours or something,” she
said.
Day students get their news from the Batt.
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IN THE
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iP.
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Q-HUTS
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For more information call: Richie 260-5570
Bryan 696-6754
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