The Frison Institute/Geoarchaeology Interest Group Symposium: Archaeology and Geoarchaeology of Rockshelters and Caves

Archaeologists have targeted rockshelters and caves for more than a century because they are easy to find, are often less affected by regional erosion and have better preservation than open-air sites. In its early history, archaeology treated caves and rockshelters as artifact mines and, later, as sources of artifact chronology. But, as fixed, sheltered places on the landscape, rockshelters and caves also offer a window onto how settlement systems shift from the point of view of a particular class of sites. At the same time, rockshelters and caves can be geologically complex and their contribution cannot be tapped without acknowledging this fact. Papers in this session examine the archaeology and geoarchaeology of rockshelters as a class of sites whose characteristics can inform about more general properties of the changing cultural system(s) using those sites.