There is also
strong evidence of a large microlith industry in Jaketown and other Poverty
Point sites. Microliths consist if
cores, unmodified blades, endscrapers, sidescrapers, perforators, needles, and
notched blades. All of these microliths
were made from local chert. At Jaketown
most of the microliths were found on a ridge in the southern area of the
site. Well over 3,000 microliths were
found at Jaketown and the numbers of microliths found here and at the Poverty
Point site were much higher than the number of microliths found at other
Poverty Point sites.
The next group of artifacts that
were commonly found at Jaketown and other Poverty Point sites were the ground
stone artifacts. Three types of ground
stone artifacts were found, rough ground tools, polished tools, and stone
vessels. Rough ground tools found at
Jaketown includes hammerstones, pitted stones, whetstones, grooved abraders,
saws, and manos. Hammerstones were
circular objects that showed signs of wear from battering in one or more
places. These were possible used for
food-processing or manufacturing activities.
Pitted stones have small indentions in them, which is assumed to be from
routinely hitting an object placed on top of them. They could have been used as a kind of primitive anvil. Whetstones and grooved abraders were very
similar objects with both of them having been grinded on one or more sides. However, the grooved abraders had narrow
grooves on there sides from sharpening wood or bone. Polished tools were made up of celts, adzes, plummets,
bannerstones, and gorgets. The polished
adzes found were the most characteristic artifacts of Poverty Point culture
found at Jaketown. Archeologists
believe that the plummets found at Jaketown and other Poverty Point sites were
used as weights to assist in catching waterfowl. Gorgets also served as weights, but they were used on atlatls,
which were spear like weapons used for hunting. There were a few other polished artifacts found in Jaketown that
could not be classified into any of these groups and their uses are still
unknown. Most of these objects were
undamaged and exhibited smooth curves.
Other undetermined artifacts included several pieces of polished tubular
objects.