There was evidently no standard architectural arrangement involving mounds and ridges, but semicircular patterns occurred most often. The largest example is at the giant Poverty Point town (Figure 3). Linear plans were also used, and some sites show no recognizable designs. These various arrangements have been said to reflect everything from astronomical observatories to possible “fortresses.” Of all the similarities and differences among territorial settlement patterns, several things stand out. Villages in each province ranged from small to large and from simple to complex, and every province had one village that stood apart from all the rest. This main village was probably the regional “capital.” Such an arrangement also seems applicable to the provinces themselves. They, like the villages within their bounds, can be ranked in importance according to the intensity of interaction with the major province. Lest there be any doubt, that supreme province lay along the Macon Ridge-Upper Tensas lowlands in extreme northeastern Louisiana. Its “capital” was the great town of Poverty Point. Because of its dominating influence, this magnificent town will be described in detail. [Illustration: Figure 3. Reconstruction of the Central District of the Poverty Point Site about 1000 B.C.] It was first reported by Samuel Lockett in 1873 and was visited many times afterwards. However, it was during excavations, sponsored by the American Museum of Natural History in the early 1950s, that its true nature came to be realized (Ford and Webb 1956). From aerial photographs came the startling realization—Poverty Point was a giant earthwork. It was so large that the bumps and ridges, apparent from a ground-level view, were once thought to be natural. The symmetrical geometry revealed on the photographs, however, led everyone to believe that it had been built from a “blueprint” in a single, all-out construction effort. Its great size, coupled with the millions of artifacts scattered over and in the artificial constructions, gave the impression that it was home for literally thousands and a magnet for multitudes of visitors. Even though new information has begun to change some of these ideas, it has not diminished the massiveness of the engineering feat or appreciation for the collective spirit of those long-ago builders whose vision and toil is represented there.