When Clay Sings
Connie H. Nobles, Ph.D.
Associate Professor in Department of Teacher Education
Southeastern Louisiana University
Hammond, LA 70402
Email: cnobles@selu.edu
Archaeologists have identified aspects of the way Lower Mississippi Valley peoples lived between approximately 1730 and 1350 B.C. through investigations including the Poverty Point site located near Epps, Louisiana. One of the site’s cultural traits is female clay figurines. In the free booklet, Poverty Point (1999), made available to the public by the Louisiana Division of Archaeology, Jon Gibson describes the artifacts and people from a modern and masculine point of view. The purpose of this presentation is to show this site through more feminized lens using the work of Marija Gimbutas. I suggest that some of the people who populated this area were worshippers of the Great Goddess. While the public booklet presents these peoples, their representations, and possible religion in one light, this presentation will compare the same information with the Language of the Goddess (1989).
References
Gibson, Jon L.
1999 Poverty Point: A terminal Archaic culture of the Lower Mississippi Valley. Second Edition, with Revision. Department of Culture, Recreation and Tourism. Baton Rouge: Louisiana Archaeological Survey and Antiquities Commission.
Gimbutas, Marija
1989 The Language of the Goddess. San Francisco: Harper & Row.