Watson Brake

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Watson Brake is an arrangement of human-made mounds located in the floodplain of the Ouachita River near Monroe in northern Louisiana, United States. Watson Brake consists of an oval formation of 11 mounds from three to 25 feet tall connected by ridges to form an oval near 900 feet across. It has been dated to about 5400 years ago (appox. 3400 BCE). The Oxidizable Carbon Ratio (OCR) date estimates for the buried surfaces range from 5289 to 5778 years before present, age estimates for the fill soils range between 5087 and 6407 years before the present, with a mean of 5590 years. Based on OCR data from 200 samples, the three mounds and two ridges at Watson Brake were constructed within 200 years of 5180 years before present.

Monuments mark the rise of social complexity world-wide. The earthen mounds of Eastern North America are part of a long-standing monument tradition. In the Americas, mound construction starts at an early date, well before the pyramids of Egypt were constructed. Watson Brake is considered the earliest mound complex in North America and is the earliest dated complex construction in the Americas. Watson Brake's dating is nearly 2,000 years before the better-known Poverty Point, which was previously thought to be the earliest mound site in the United States. With Watson Brake's discovery and dating, pre-agricultural, pre-ceramic American societies were shown to be more complex than previously thought.