Saturday, October 24th @ 2:00 PM – 2:50 PM     DIANA GREENLEE   Omni Westside Hotel, Houston Texas (open to the public)

“Poverty Point: Revealing the Forgotten City”

Jenny Ellerbe and Diana M. Greenlee

The settlement of Poverty Point, occupied from about 1700 to 1100 BC and once the largest city in North America stretches across 345 acres in northeastern Louisiana. The structural remains of this ancient site—its earthen mounds, semicircular ridges, and vacant plaza—intrigue visitors as a place of inspiration as well as puzzlement. “Poverty Point: Revealing the Forgotten City” delves into this enduring piece of Louisiana’s cultural heritage through personal introspection and scientific investigation.

With stunning black-and-white photography by Jenny Ellerbe and engrossing text by archaeologist Diana M. Greenlee, this imaginative and informative book explores in full Poverty Point’s Late Archaic society and its monumental achievements. Ellerbe’s landscapes and commentary reflect the questions and mysteries fostered by her many visits to the site, and Greenlee discusses the most recent archaeological findings, explaining what past excavations have revealed about the work involved in creating the mounds and about the lives of the people who built them. The conversation between artist and archaeologist also covers what is still unknown about this place, including the city’s function in the ancient world and how its people acquired their stone materials, some of which originated over a thousand miles from Poverty Point.

The historical significance of Poverty Point, which was recognized by UNESCO as a World Heritage Site in 2014, resonates regionally, nationally, and internationally.

Jenny Ellerbe has spent most of her photographic career exploring and documenting the largely overlooked region surrounding her hometown of Monroe, Louisiana.  She is a self-taught photographer whose photographs have been published in journals such as Lenswork Magazine, The Oxford American, Science, Louisiana Life, and Louisiana Cultural Vistas.  Her work resides in the permanent collections of the Masur Museum of Art, Monroe, Louisiana, and the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, Texas, as well as private collections in the US and Canada.

Diana M. Greenlee, Ph.D., is the Station Archaeologist at the Poverty Point World Heritage Site and an Adjunct Professor of Archaeology in the School of Sciences at the University of Louisiana at Monroe (ULM). She earned her Ph.D. in Anthropology from the University of Washington in Seattle in 2002 and has been the Poverty Point Station Archaeologist since August 2006. In recognition of her contributions to the effort to place Poverty Point on the World Heritage List, she was named the 2013 Archaeologist of the Year by the Lieutenant Governor of Louisiana.

Publisher:  LSU Press, April 2015, ISBN:   978-0807160213
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