The Prehistoric Archeology of Mammoth Cave

The prehistory of the Mammoth Cave area has been of interest to archeologists for more than a century because of the remarkable preservation in the dry cave environment. Beginning with the antiquarian search for mummified bodies in the early nineteenth century up to the most modern scientific research, Mammoth Cave has revealed important information about the Native Americans who lived near and explored these cave systems beginning more than 5000 years ago. The first interest in Mammoth Cave may have simply been human curiosity, but by 3000 years ago Native Americans began mining several exotic minerals that form in the large, dry passages. They left behind tools and other remains from this mining effort that has been important for understanding the beginnings of the first farming societies in eastern North America and provides insight into their ritual and ceremonial life. By 2000 years ago, that mining ceased and Native Americans do not seem to have returned to the cave in any large numbers, although other caves in the area continued to be visited for other purposes. This is the story of the archeology of Mammoth Cave and what we have learned about the first Native Americans who explored its passages. In the bluffs along the Green River and in the coves and hollows that carve up the sandstone plateau of Mammoth Cave National Park, known as the Chester Upland, cave entrances and rock overhangs or rockshelters can be found in abundance. Where these natural shelters are suitable—dry and roomy with relatively level floors—prehistoric Native Americans, ancestors of American Indians, left numerous remains from their past activities. They built fires, made stone tools from locally occurring chert (a fine-grained, silica-rich rock commonly found in limestone formations), butchered and cooked game animals and fish that were abundant in the region, gathered numerous plants for food and to make tools or shelter, and occasionally buried deceased members of their group in these shelters. They also explored the deep passages of many caves. This is the story of what we know about these prehistoric cave explorers, how they used the deep caves, and about the archeology that has helped piece together this story. Dr. Patty Jo Watson, who has spent a lifetime studying the prehistory of the Mammoth Cave area (Watson 1969, 1997), has called the aboriginal people who once traveled the labyrinthine routes of Mammoth and Salts Caves “the world’s greatest cave explorers.” This is not an exaggeration. Beginning some 4500–5000 years ago, prehistoric people began venturing into the remote depths of the large, dry passages of several caves that comprise the Mammoth Cave system. Bundling together dry river cane, weed stalks, or woody stems to make torches, they lit their way through large passages and tight crawlways leaving behind a trail of charred torch material and marks from their torches where they stoked them against the walls to keep them lit (Figs. 2.1 and 2.2). Archeologists have found evidence of this exploration upward of 6–8 km (4.7–5.0 miles) from any known natural cave entrance. Although some caves in other parts of the world were explored earlier, and perhaps used more intensively, no caves show such deep exploration and extensive use as Mammoth and Salts Caves in Mammoth G.M. Crothers (&) William S. Webb Museum of Anthropology, University of Kentucky, Lexington, USA e-mail: [email protected] © Springer International Publishing AG 2017 H.H. Hobbs III et al. (eds.), Mammoth Cave, Cave and Karst Systems of the World, DOI 10.1007/978-3-319-53718-4_2 29 Cave National Park. Indeed, Watson once wrote: “Virtually everywhere we have gone in Upper Salts, whether via the main passages or routes through the breakdown, we have found plentiful remains left by the aboriginal cave explorers” (1969: 3). However, it was not just curiosity that enticed prehistoric people to explore Mammoth Cave. Beginning approximately 3000 years ago, the minerals that form in some dry passage ways, especially gypsum or calcium sulfate dihydrate, became of interest to these cave explorers and considerable effort was made to remove them. This mining ended about a millennium later for reasons unknown to us. From 2000 years ago until the first European-Americans and African-Americans began exploring Mammoth Cave in the late eighteenth century, there appears to have been little or no use of these large caves by Native Americans. Other caves in the region do show continued use, but not in the manner of Mammoth or Salts Caves. Before we go farther into the world of cave archeology, however, it is useful to set the stage above ground. 2.1 The Prehistory of Central Kentucky The verdant Green River valley would have been a paradise for the first hunters and gatherers who ventured into this area during the Paleo-Indian Period. Very distinctive stone tools, identified as the Clovis artifact complex, first appeared in Kentucky at the end of the last Ice Age or the Late Pleistocene Epoch, possibly as early as 11,500 years ago. The climate was cooler and wetter than today and megafauna, such as wooly mammoths, mastodons, and giant ground sloths, still roamed North America. Some of these animals were most certainly hunted by Paleo-Indians, but the Green River valley was rich with numerous plant and animal food sources that we are more familiar with today: whitetail deer, wild turkey, fish, hickory nuts, and acorns. Several Clovis sites are known from the lower Green River valley outside of Mammoth Cave National Park, including sites in rockshelters and cave entrances. However, we have no evidence of Clovis people venturing into deep caves. What they thought of the yawning entrance to Mammoth Cave when it was first encountered, we will never know. After the Ice Age, the Holocene or current climate period stabilized into the pattern we are familiar with today. Although megafauna became extinct, whitetail deer and other forest animals continued to be hunted. An increasingly important component of the diet during the early Holocene, or what archeologists call the Archaic Period, was fish and shellfish. In modern times, the Green River downstream of Mammoth Cave has been dredged and the river level raised by locks and dams for navigation, but formerly it teamed with a great diversity of freshwater mussels that could be easily collected from the shallow rapids. Fish such as catfish, drum, and buffalo fish also could be taken easily in the deeper pools by hand line or collected from shoals when they were spawning. Add to this diet, nutritious nuts from hickory and black walnut trees, which are common in central Kentucky, and you have the basis of an extremely healthy diet and plentiful food resources for the Archaic Period Indians who lived in central Kentucky. There is abundant, well-preserved evidence of this Archaic Period lifestyle from deeply stratified shell middens that are found along the middle and lower Green River dating between 7000 and 3000 years ago. These sites are rich with the shells of freshwater mussels, the bones of fish and mammals, carbonized nutshells and seeds, and many artifacts made of bone and stone (Marquardt and Watson 2005). The Archaic Period Indians also were very familiar with the Mammoth Cave region, as indicated by the numerous sites dating from this time period found throughout the park. The rugged country in Mammoth Cave National Fig. 2.1 Torch marks on a cave wall. Photograph by Ben Miller Fig. 2.2 The unburned ends of torch remains, which can be found in dry caves 30 G.M. Crothers