Contested Caves: The Politics of Underground Places

DOCUMENT Citation Only Knut Andreas Bergsvik.

Caves and rockshelters occur frequently in Norway and they were extensively used as dwelling-sites for humans in most periods of the prehistory. During the transition to the medieval period (AD 550 – 1500), however, archaeological excavations show that their use changed significantly. From then on, they mainly served as offering sites, burial sites and as workshops for metal smiths and stone masons. This change may have been related to a change in the perceptions of caves and rockshelters. One...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Erin Ray. Holley Moyes.

In Marxist philosophy, commodity fetishism imbues an object with a value not inherent to the object itself. This paper explores the ways in which archaeologists have contributed to the fetishizing of archaeological material which in turn promotes the looting of archaeological sites. By nature of our profession, old objects hold more value than modern ones or even replicas. Contextual information about these objects is arguably just as, if not more, important than the object itself. In many...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Clive Bonsall. Adina Boroneant.

Radiocarbon sequences from some cave sites in the Balkan and Italian peninsulas show a temporal gap between Mesolithic and Neolithic occupations. Some authors have seen this as a regional phenomenon and have sought to explain it in terms of a general population decline in the late Mesolithic, which facilitated the replacement of indigenous foragers by immigrant farmers. In this paper, we re-examine the evidence and consider alternative explanations for the Meso-Neolithic ‘gap’, focusing on...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Joseph Douglas.

During the American Civil War, numerous Union and Confederate soldiers visited dozens of caves in the major karst areas of the border and Confederate states, often marking the subterranean walls with graffiti. In the most important karst area of all, the Mammoth Cave region of Kentucky, caves were significant (and famous) features of the landscape, possession of which was bitterly contested, especially in the military campaigns of 1862. A preliminary study of extant historic graffiti at several...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Scott Nicolay.

Although evidence for the use of caves and earth openings as shrines in the North American Southwest begins in the Pleistocene, this practice intensified greatly after the development of agriculture. Many of the region’s major shrines appear divisible into three categories: controlled shrines, to which access was restricted by surface architecture; contested shrines, which were located equidistant between two or more surface sites; and remote sites, which may have marked cultural boundaries....

DOCUMENT Citation Only Ann M. Scott. Judith Maxwell.

Caves and other sacred landscape features such as clefts in rocks and mountain voids embody special powers controlled by earthen, spiritual entities. To the Highland Maya that power personified by the earth owner needs to be maintained, appeased, and managed, even on a daily basis. This maintenance comes in the form of elaborate ceremonies utilizing a number of special items deemed suitable for pleasing the ancient entities. Mayan ritual specialists or daykeepers, who perform the ceremonies, are...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Brian Hayden.

Caves have been recognized as important prehistoric ritual sites for well over a century. Yet, archaeological discussion of the rituals conducted in caves has rarely gone beyond the platitudes that they were locations for contacting the spirits, invoking powers of fertility, or burying the dead. This paper attempts to place the ritual uses of many caves in a more specific ritual context by documenting the ethnographic ritual use of caves by secret society members and relating this to some...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Lindsey Büster. Ian Armit.

The Sculptor’s Cave in NE Scotland saw a long history of use, from the Late Bronze Age to the Early Medieval (Pictish) period. Late Bronze Age activity is characterised, as in other caves along this stretch of coast, by complex communal funerary practices involving the exposure and processing of human bodies. Veneration continued for many centuries, yet by the Roman Iron Age (c. 3rd century AD) perceptions of the cave had markedly changed. During this period, several adults were decapitated...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Agni Prijatelj.

White bones in black caves: cave burials and social memory Caves have always been part of contemporary, living landscapes: as such, they have acted not only as natural, cultural, social, economic and ritual places, but also as political locales. One of the most recent, and contested, examples of this phenomenon in Slovenia is the use of karstic shafts as sites of post-war executions between May 1945 and January 1946, in the aftermath of the Second World War. Such sites of mass executions are...