Archaeology

Plaquemine Culture
This entry covers the Plaquemine culture in the Lower Mississippi River Valley during the Mississippi period, 1200 to 1700 CE
This entry covers the Plaquemine culture in the Lower Mississippi River Valley during the Mississippi period, 1200 to 1700 CE
Louisiana boasts some of the most significant Native American earthen monuments in North America and ranks second only to Mississippi in the number of mound sites.
This entry covers the Pre-Clovis and Clovis cultures during the Early Paleoindian Period, 11500–9500 BCE, and Middle Paleoindian Period, 9500 BCE–8800 BCE.
Poverty Point in Louisiana, one of the most significant archaeological sites in in the world, dates to 3,500 years and represents the largest, most complex settlement of its kind in North America.
Louisiana architect and preservationist Richard Koch worked with the Historic American Buildings Survey (HABS) in the state during the Great Depression.
Fronting the Mississippi River, Audubon Park is one of New Orleans' most popular attractions for both tourists and locals.
The original St. Francis Chapel of Point Coupee, was one of the first parish churches in Louisiana.
This large, rambling house began as a one-and-half-story frame structure built as a retreat by lawyer, planter, and entrepreneur Alfred Hennen in 1829.
Florville Foy, a free man of color, was a marble cutter, sculptor, and proprietor of one of the most successful marble yards in nineteenth-century New Orleans.
Louisiana artist Ellsworth Woodward was a pillar of the New Orleans art scene as a teacher and a promoter between 1890 and 1940.
Darryl Reeves is a master blacksmith who hand-forges decorative and functional ironwork for many of New Orleans' historic homes and public buildings.
Captain William Lindsey Challoner worked for the Machecca line of fruit trade ships and sailed through many international ports. These busy ports inspired Challoner's paintings of ships and harbor scenes.
Enslaved people endured brutal conditions on sugarcane and cotton plantations during the antebellum period.
The Singer Submarine Company operated a naval yard on the banks of Cross Bayou that built five Confederate submarines, four of which were sunk before seeing combat.
An integrated labor union violently suppressed by lumber barons.
The festival celebrates southwest Louisiana’s connections to the francophone world.
Imported in the early twentieth century for their fur, nutria have exploded into an invasive species that contributes to coastal erosion.
The gradual loss of Louisiana’s coastal wetlands is a slow-moving disaster largely set in motion by a series of human interventions in natural processes.
The 1976 George Prince ferry disaster between Destrehan and Luling was the deadliest ferry disaster in US history and a touchstone for a new set of safety protocols for ferry travel.
Hurricane Gustav was the first major storm to test New Orleans’s rehabbed defenses after Hurricane Katrina.
New Orleans Jazz Funerals are public burial services for prominent community members; traditionally African American males. After the funeral service, a procession of musicians, funeral directors, family, and friends moves from the site of the funeral to the cemetery while marching to the beat of a brass band.
Voudou, a synthesis of African religious and magical beliefs with Roman Catholicism, emerged in New Orleans in the 1700s and survives in active congregations today.
The courir de Mardi Gras is the rural celebration of Mardi Gras in Louisiana, usually held in Cajun communities
Healers draw on a folk tradition that dates to the eighteenth century and includes Creole, Native American, Cajun, and European influences.
A round, braided cake consumed during the Carnival season across Louisiana, especially in New Orleans.
Beignets, or pockets of fried dough served with powdered sugar, are an iconic New Orleans treat.
Gumbo is a thick soup that could be considered the signature dish of South Louisiana.
Louisiana’s citrus industry traces its origins to the early 1700s, but the effects of climate change increasingly threaten its long-term viability.
The Natchitoches settlement, founded in 1714, is the oldest in the Louisiana Territory.
An American effort to explore the Louisiana Purchase territory was hindered by a log jam on the Red River and two hundred Spanish troops.
The Fontainebleau State Park bears the name of Bernard de Marigny's sugar plantation, which formerly occupied this site and was itself named after the estate of the French king Francois I.
The origins of the notorious adult playground
After the Civil War, the federal government briefly operated places of refuge for sick, injured, and elderly formerly enslaved people that proved both benevolent and coercive.
Louisiana has had ten state constitutions since 1812, with the current governing document dating to 1974.
An American effort to explore the Louisiana Purchase territory was hindered by a log jam on the Red River and two hundred Spanish troops.
During World War II, central Louisiana became the site of training maneuvers to prepare the United States Army to engage in Germany’s new blitzkrieg-style warfare.
Explorer, astronomer, and administrator Antonio de Ulloa was the first Spanish governor of Louisiana, serving from 1766 to 1768.
Bavarian immigrant Michael Hahn served as the first Union governor of Louisiana for one year during the Civil War.
Poverty Point in Louisiana, one of the most significant archaeological sites in in the world, dates to 3,500 years and represents the largest, most complex settlement of its kind in North America.
Like the rest of the nation, Louisiana experienced many changes during World War II. Federal spending helped boost the state’s economy and new employment opportunities proliferated.
Five thousand to ten thousand white Louisianans fought for the Union during the Civil War.
Cammie Henry played a central role in Louisiana's artistic and literary communities, as both a patron of the arts and preservationist.
Despite the difficulties John Kennedy Toole faced while trying to publish A Confederacy of Dunces, the novel went on to win the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction and sell more than two million copies.
Louisiana poetry ranges from early francophone works to contemporary compositions.
Walker Percy incorporated the culture and traditions of Louisiana in particular, and the South in general, into his literary work.
Trombonist and bandleader Kid Ory, a pioneer of the traditional New Orleans Jazz style, played a key role in the New Orleans Revival of the 1940s.
Congo Square, now Armstrong Park in New Orleans’s Tremé neighborhood, served as a gathering ground for Africans in the early years of the city.
Musician and composer Randy Newman was influenced by the time he lived in New Orleans as a child and many of his songs, including the poignant “Louisiana 1927,” reflect this.
Inez Catalon was a Louisiana folk singer who specialized in cantiques, a type of French folk song.
The Jena Band of Choctaw Indians is one of four Louisiana tribes recognized by the federal government and one of seven recognized by the state.
Louisiana's Isleños descend from Canary Islanders who immigrated to the southeastern part of the state in the late 1700s, when Spain ruled the colony.
A lawsuit filed by a man against his employer resulted in a ruling establishing Cajuns as a federally recognized ethnic group.
The Quapaw Indians, whose four villages were located along the Arkansas River, were military allies and trade partners of colonial Louisianans.
After the Civil War, the federal government briefly operated places of refuge for sick, injured, and elderly formerly enslaved people that proved both benevolent and coercive.
Sister Helen Prejean is an anti-death penalty advocate in New Orleans and the author of "Dead Man Walking."
All Saints Day or All Hallows Day is a Catholic tradition honoring the saints and also deceased family members each November 1.
Voudou, a synthesis of African religious and magical beliefs with Roman Catholicism, emerged in New Orleans in the 1700s and survives in active congregations today.
A Jesuit priest was the first to establish Catholic missions among the Indigenous peoples of the Gulf South.
During the nineteenth century, cholera epidemics caused tens of thousands of deaths throughout the state of Louisiana.
Woody Gagliano sounded the alarm on Louisiana’s coastal land loss crisis and worked with his colleagues for decades to remedy the problem.
Flint-Goodridge Hospital opened in 1896 to serve New Orleans’s Black community and provide medical training for Black nurses and physicians at a time when other hospitals denied services to Black people.
For a state experiencing land loss at an alarming rate, coastal restoration has become an urgent need.
Despite growing up in a region where football was king, Shreveport native Joe Dumars enjoyed a successful career as a player and executive in the NBA.
Sired by Secretariat and owned by Ronnie Lamarque and Louis Roussel III, Risen Star was one of the most successful racehorses ever to come out of Louisiana.
Toby Hart brought New Orleans its first professional sports franchise in 1887.
Louisiana jockey Robby Albarado is one of the most successful riders in US horse racing history.
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