A Regional Perspective on Mud Glyph Cave Art in Southeastern North America.

Author(s): Alan Cressler; Jan Simek

Year: 2015

Summary

We provide an overview of a signature prehistoric cave art form in the Southeast of North America: "Mud Glyph" images traced and/or carved into plastic sediments inside the dark zones of caves. Today, we know of 21 such mud glyph caves in Tennessee, Alabama, Kentucky and Virginia. Sometimes, mud glyphs form elaborate cave art compositions. While this art form has roots in the Archaic Period more than 3000 years ago, its greatest frequency occurs during the Mississippian Period after AD 1000. The subject matter of the art varies, but prehistoric religious iconography associated with the Mississippian Period is very common.

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Cite this Record

A Regional Perspective on Mud Glyph Cave Art in Southeastern North America.. Jan Simek, Alan Cressler. Presented at The 80th Annual Meeting of the Society for American Archaeology, San Francisco, California. 2015 ( tDAR id: 395169)

Spatial Coverage

min long: -91.274; min lat: 24.847 ; max long: -72.642; max lat: 36.386 ;