Today, conservation is the most pressing problem for Tennessee’s prehistoric cave art. So far removed in time, we may never know the meaning of this earliest prehistoric cave art. Thus, Archaic and Woodland cave art may have served different purposes for its makers: sanctifying space, protecting people engaged in dangerous activities, marking places where resources could be found. Image themes are rather different from those during the Mississippian and sometimes associated with other activities (e.g., mining). In earlier periods, meaning is problematic. Cave art depicting serpents and winged humans may reflect a belief in the power of these dark, deep places and their role in the structure of the cosmos. For historical tribes in Tennessee, caves were passageways to the underworld, and the underworld was an important yet dangerous place for Mississippian peoples. In late time periods, similarities between the cave images and SECC iconography suggests that the art was primarily religious, perhaps produced by priests or shamans in the context of specific rituals. The meaning of Tennessee’s prehistoric cave art is difficult to determine. A number of sites associated with the Mississippian show the SECC iconography first identified at Mud Glyph Cave. 1000), and the images there (humans and crude animals) are also distinctive. Artwork from Crumps Cave in Kentucky shows that art was also produced during the Woodland Period (2000 B.C.-A.D. Images in these early sites are simple (serpents, suns, chevrons) and not obviously similar to later SECC iconography. Radiocarbon dates from Adair Cave in Kentucky and 3rd Unnamed Cave in Tennessee suggest that artwork may have its origins more than 4,300 years ago during the Archaic Period. Tennessee cave art has great time depth, and it appears that the subject matter of the artwork changed over time. Thus, a great variability existed in the nature and context within which artwork was produced. These date either to the Woodland or Mississippian Periods and are the rarest form of prehistoric cave art only a few examples are presently known. Pictographs are images painted onto surfaces with mineral pigments like charcoal and clay. Some petroglyphs are associated with human burials, but most are either isolated art independent of other evidence for cave use or are associated with mining of raw materials from caves. Tennessee’s earliest cave art (3rd Unnamed Cave at 4,000 years old) is of this type, but petroglyphs were also produced during the late Mississippian Period. Petroglyphs are images scratched into the rock of cave walls and ceilings. Mississippian Period mud glyph caves are very elaborate, sometimes including organized compositions of hundreds of images. Seven mud glyph sites are now known, including one of the earliest (Adair Cave) and the very latest site (1st Unnamed Cave). Mud glyphs are images traced into wet mud on cave walls and banks. Three different production techniques have been identified. In one case, the art is located a mile from the mouth of the cave, indicating that prehistoric artists were physically and technically able to penetrate the vast underground karst systems of the Appalachian Plateau. This distribution corresponds to the limestone tablelands of the Appalachian uplands, suggesting that cave art was produced everywhere caves were available for decoration. Two caves are in Virginia, two in Kentucky, one in Alabama, and the remainder in Middle and East Tennessee. Nearly twenty other deep art caves have been found since. 1300, coincident with the Mississippian Period. Several radiocarbon dates on cane charcoal, deposited from torches used by ancient cave visitors, are clustered around A.D. The Mud Glyph Cave images included animals, winged humans, warriors, and other emblems of the “Southeast Ceremonial Complex” (SECC), a religious iconography associated with the late prehistoric Mississippian moundbuilders. These were the first ancient artworks ever found in the “dark zone,” beyond the reach of light, in a North American cave. He reported the marks to Charles Faulkner of the University of Tennessee, who identified them as prehistoric drawings. In 1979 a caver exploring a narrow subterranean passageway in southeastern Tennessee noticed scratches and lines in mudbanks that lined the cave walls.
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