Troyville Earthworks is a Woodland period Native American archaeological site with components dating from 100 BCE to 700 CE during the Baytown to the Troyville-Coles Creek periods. It once had the tallest mound in Louisiana at 82 feet (25 m) in height. It is located in Catahoula Parish, Louisiana in the town of Jonesville. The site is the type site for the Troyville culture of the lower Ouachita and Tensas River valleys. Before it was destroyed for bridge approach fill in 1931, the main mound at Troyville was one of the tallest in North America.
Artists conception of Troyville Earthworks
Layout of the site
Different heights and profiles of Mound 5
Coles Creek culture is a Late Woodland archaeological culture in the Lower Mississippi valley in the Southeastern Woodlands. It followed the Troyville culture. The period marks a significant change in the cultural history of the area. Population increased dramatically and there is strong evidence of a growing cultural and political hierarchization, especially by the end of the Coles Creek sequence. Although many of the classic traits of chiefdom societies are not yet manifested, by 1000 CE the formation of simple elite polities had begun. Coles Creek sites are found in Arkansas, Louisiana, and Mississippi. It is considered ancestral to the Plaquemine culture.
A wattle and daub house of the type used by Native Americans during the late prehistoric period
Image: Bayou Grande Cheniere Mounds Coles Creek culture H Roe 2011
Image: Frogmore Mound Site H Roe 2011 01
Image: Greenhouse Site H Roe 2017