Watson Brake
Artists conception of the Watson Brake Site
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 Location within Louisiana today
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| Location |
Logtown, Louisiana, Ouachita Parish, Louisiana,  USA
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| Region | Ouachita Parish, Louisiana |
| Coordinates | 32°22′6.31″N 92°7′53.00″W / 32.3684194°N 92.1313889°W |
| History | |
| Founded | 3500 BCE |
| Cultures | Archaic period |
| Site notes | |
| Responsible body: private | |
Watson Brake is an archaeological site in Ouachita Parish, Louisiana, from the Archaic period. Dated to about 5400 years ago (approx. 3500 BCE), Watson Brake is considered the earliest mound complex in North America. It 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 eleven mounds from three to 25 feet (7.6 m) in height, connected by ridges to form an oval nearly 900 feet (270 m) across.
Watson Brake's dating is 1,900 years before the better-known Poverty Point in Louisiana, begun about 1500 BCE and previously thought to be the earliest mound site in North America. In the Americas, mound building started at an early date.
The discovery and dating of Watson Brake as a Middle Archaic site demonstrate that the pre-agricultural, pre-ceramic, indigenous cultures within the territory of the present-day United States were much more complex than previously thought. While primarily hunter-gatherers, they were able to plan and organize large work forces over centuries to accomplish the complex mound and ridge constructions. Monumental constructions have marked the rise of social complexity world-wide. The earthen mounds of Eastern North America are linked to mankind's monument tradition.
In the early 1980s, the site was brought to the attention of professional archaeologists by Reca Bamburg Jones, a local resident, In 1981, after logging revealed more of the site, Jones identified the pattern of eleven mounds connected by ridges, a complex 280 yards across. In 1983, Jones and John Belmont published the site in a survey of pre-history in the Ouachita River Valley. Around this time Joe Saunders, then regional archaeologist for the state, was shown the site.
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