This book was inspired by Dennis Labatt during our visits to the Poverty Point site. Every North American archaeological site should have such a dedicated and enthusiastic supervisor. We would like to thank Robert Connolly, Lisa Wright, Linda York, and Kay Corley for their assistance during our visits and for their cooperation in providing Poverty Point Objects (cooking clays) for our ongoing research in prehistoric starch, phytolith, and pollen analysis at Poverty Point.
We would especially like to acknowledge the work of Dr. Jon L. Gibson, who has dedicated so much of his life to the interpretation of Poverty Point’s archaeology.
Once more we would like to thank our longtime friend and colleague, Dr. Linda Scott Cummings, for her endless enthusiasm and pioneering ethnobotanical research. Working with us, she has recovered the first starches, pollens, and phytoliths from Poverty Point cooking clays. Now, when we say they were cooking foods like yellow lotus and little barley in the earth ovens, we can prove it. Thanks, Linda.
Special thanks to Barbara and Anders Lock of Viking Technology for their hard work maintaining our website at www.gear-gear.com.
Finally, the Holiday Inn of the Waters in Thermopolis, Wyoming, still makes the best buffalo jalapeno cheeseburger in the world. We thank them for maintaining our “office away from the office.”