Founded 700 CE Excavation dates 1926, 2003 | Abandoned 1200 CE | |
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Location Plaquemines Parish, Louisiana, USA Cultures Coastal Coles Creek culture Region Plaquemines Parish, Louisiana | ||
Bayou Grande Cheniere Mounds (16 PL 159) is an archaeological site in Plaquemines Parish, Louisiana built by the Coastal Coles Creek culture. It was inhabited from 875 to 1200 CE, from the Early Coles Creek period to the Coles Creek/Plaquemine period.
Contents
Description
The site is located on a natural levee of Bayou Grande Cheniere and has twelve mounds, eleven arranged around a central plaza and one 75 metres (246 ft) to the south connected by a constructed landform. The site was connected by a causeway to Bayou Grande Cheniere. The elliptical plaza measures 100 feet (30 m) on its north-south axis by 75 feet (23 m) east-west. Mound 1, the largest, is a conical mound measuring 60 feet (18 m) and located on the eastern edge of the plaza. The southern edge of the plaza is bounded by Mound 10 and the northern edge by Mound 3, both are platform mounds. The western edge of the plaza is a string of interconnected small mounds, Mounds 4 to 9. The site is unusual in its size and number of mounds. Typically Coastal Coles Creek settlements had three mounds arranged around a plaza. The site's plan and large scale are most like the large Coles Creek settlement in Avoyelles Parish, the Greenhouse Site.
Excavations
Henry Collins excavated the site in 1926. The mound site as mapped by McGimsey in 2000. Saunders, Timothy Schilling and seven students from Louisiana State University conducted field excavations at the site in January 2003. Pottery found during excavations was dated from 875 to 1200 CE during the Bayou Ramos (700-875 CE), Bayou Cutler (875-1000 CE) and St. Gabriel (1000-1200 CE) Phases, spanning the Early Coles Creek period to the Transitional Coles Creek/Plaquemine period for the eastern delta. No material from earlier the Troyville culture were found, nor were materials from after the Plaquemine period. In the late 2000s NASAs Stennis Space Center, in partnership with the US Army Corps of Engineers New Orleans District and Tulane University, undertook an archaeological survey of the southeastern Louisiana marshes including the Bayou Grande Cheniere site. This survey discovered the existence of the causeway leading from the site to the bayou.