Poverty Point is a monumental earthwork center dating to the Late Archaic Period (ca. 3700-3100 Cal BP). The site is well known for its diverse collection of foreign lithic materials indicative of a wide-ranging acquisition network. Among the extra-local items recovered from the site are lithic raw materials that were used for bifaces in the form of projectile points and/or knives (PP/Ks). Here, I determined the atomic and molecular composition of 847 bifaces from the Alexander Collection using Visible/Near-Infrared Reflectance (VNIR) and Fourier-Transform Infrared Reflectance (FTIR) spectroscopy. The combined wavelength spectra datasets were compared to a raw material database to determine the location of the parent formations from which the raw materials were obtained. The PP/K raw materials analyzed were sourced to outcrops stretching across the Southeast, Mid-South and Mid-West.

The Claiborne site in Hancock County, Mississippi has been considered part of a culture within Poverty Point’s control since it’s discovery in the 1950’s. In this study, I sampled and ran new five new radiocarbon dates from the collections at Mississippi State University. I then created a chronometric hygiene scale, ranked the new and current dates, removed dates from models that did not have the criteria needed to continue. This thesis created a new chronology for the site, placing it within the timeline of Poverty Point but also related it to the Archaic shell mounds in Southeastern North America.