Metal detectorist unearths 2,000-year-old penis pendant
A metal detectorist recently discovered a silver, penis-shaped pendant in Kent, England that was likely worn around the neck to protect a person from misfortune around 1,800 years ago.
This Roman pendant made of silver depicts a penis. The streaks at the top appear to depict pubic hair.
Ancient Roman writers such as Marcus Terentius Varro (lived 116 B.C. to 27 B.C.) and Pliny the Elder (A.D. 23 to 79) mention how the phallus and representations of it are thought to have had the power to protect a person from evil.
Many depictions of the phallus have been found throughout the Roman Empire and scholars often believe that they were created to avoid bad luck.
The pendant (also called an amulet) is about 1.2 inches (3.1 centimetres) long, with a tiny ring at the top for a string (necklace) to go through. It dates back to a time when the Romans controlled England, between A.D. 42 and 410.
While such amulets in the shape of a penis were frequently seen throughout Roman Britain, they are typically made of copper-alloy rather than silver like the one from Kent, Lori Rogerson, a finds liaison officer with the Portable Antiquities Scheme (PAS), wrote in a report(opens in new tab) on the artefact.
“Being a higher-quality metal than copper-alloy, silver may have been thought to strengthen the phallus’ protective abilities,” Rogerson told Live Science in an email.
“We know that children were protected by these apotropaic [having the power to stop evil] devices, and the archaeological evidence suggests their use in Britain was very popular within the Roman army.”
Roman men, women, children and even animals wore pendants like this, in an effort to ward off the so-called evil eye, said Cyril Dumas, a scholar at Musée Yves Brayer who has researched and written about these artefacts. “This amulet is against the effects of ‘the evil eye,’ a personification of bad luck,” Dumas told Live Science in an email.
As for the choice of metal, perhaps the person who commissioned or bought the piece of jewellery had enough money for a higher-quality metal.
“The choice of silver as a material can be for many reasons, one of which is simply because the wearer could afford it and the pendant then also becomes an object of display,” Rob Collins a project manager and research coordinator at Newcastle University’s School of History, Classics and Archaeology, told Live Science in an email.
“However, I suspect that silver also has magical properties or affiliations associated with it as a material,” added Collins, who has studied and written about artefacts like this one.
Wendy Thompson found the penis pendant while metal-detecting.
Metal detectorist Wendy Thompson found the amulet on Dec. 31, 2020, and she reported her to find to the Portable Antiquities Scheme, a program run by the British Museum and National Museum Wales that tracks finds made by metal detectorists.
The artefact is now going through the treasure process required by U.K. law, which may result in it entering a museum collection in Britain.
Rusty saber, possibly wielded by medieval Turkish pirates, unearthed in Greece
A rusty medieval saber, or one-edged sword, unearthed at a fortified Christian monastery in northern Greece might be a deadly weapon that either raiding Turkish pirates or the monastery’s defenders wielded hundreds of years ago. The discovery of the saber is unusual, as iron weapons from this period usually quickly rust away.
Archaeologists think the one-edged curved sword — a type of saber — dates from a raid on the monastery that took place in the 14th century.
The style of this weapon, too, is unusual — but it turns out that such curved, one-edged swords were used both by Turks and Byzantines at around the time of the attack in the 14th century, said archaeologist Errikos Maniotis, a doctoral candidate at Masaryk University in Brno in the Czech Republic, who studied the sword.
“It’s hard to determine if the sword belonged to the Byzantine defenders, or to the probably Turkish [raiders],” Maniotis told Live Science in an email. “They both used similar weapons in this period.”
Maniotis is working with Theodoros Dogas, an archaeologist for the Ephorate of Antiquities of Chalcidice and Mount Athos, the region’s government archaeological agency, to excavate the medieval site, which is called the “Monastery of Agios Nikolaos of Chrysokamaros” in honour a local saint.
The ruins are located on the coast of the middle of the three prominent peninsulas of Chalkidiki (also called Chalcidice), about 40 miles (64 kilometres) southeast of the city of Thessaloniki on the northwest coast of the Aegean Sea.
But although the location by the sea is picture-perfect today, it hasn’t always been a peaceful place. The sword could be from any one of at least three military events that took place in the region in the 14th century alone, Maniotis and Dogas said.
The ruins of the monastery are in the middle of the three prominent peninsulas at Chalkidiki. Archaeologists think it was destroyed by fire during a raid in the 14th century.
Medieval monastery
Historical records mention a monastery at the site from at least the 11th century, although it’s not known if it was independent or a metochi — an “embassy church” of the Mount Athos monastery, a powerful establishment on the easternmost of the Chalkidiki peninsulas, Maniotis said.
Archaeologists briefly excavated the site in 2000 and 2001, when the one-edged sword was found; but the excavations this year have established that the monastery was surrounded by a sturdy wall made of granite rocks between 5.5 and 6 feet (1.7 to 2 meters) thick, Dogas said.
Such well-built monasteries and churches were often used as a local refuge during attacks, such as pirate raids. These ecclesiastical centres might also have had riches of their own, such as religious items made of gold, and often held a supply of grain, he said. In fact, archaeologists have found grain seeds in the lower levels of a tower at the monastery, which indicated it might have been used for food storage, Dogas noted.
The tower is now about 16 feet (5 m) high, but the research shows it was once much higher. There’s evidence the structure was badly damaged by fire at some point. Moreover, weapons, including axes, arrowheads and the one-edged sword, were discovered in the same archaeological layer as the fire damage.
This is “evidence that leads us to conclude that the tower was destroyed by strong fire after a raid,” the researchers wrote in an academic presentation given in Athens on May 27.
Archaeologists found a large number of glazed pottery vessels, mainly from the 14th century, in the same layer; and, based on their styles, the researchers reason the destruction probably occurred in the second half of the 14th century and possibly as late as the beginning of the 15th century.
The iron sword was badly damaged in the fire that destroyed the monastery and is badly corroded. But the assembly includes metal rings that were part of the scabbard that enclosed it.
Swords of this type, with a single sharp edge and a curve throughout its length, were used by both Byzantine soldiers who may have been defending the monastery and Turkish pirates or soldiers who may have been attacking it.
Well-built monasteries along the coast were often used as a refuge during pirate attacks, and archaeologists think it may have also been targeted for its stores of grain.
One-edged sword
Although the sword is distinctive, the archaeologists can’t tell for certain just who might have wielded it, or when. Sabers had been used in Turkish lands for centuries; for example, they are depicted in an illustrated Seljuk manuscript from the 13th century that is now held at the Topkapi Palace Museum in Istanbul.
But research by the archaeologists has also shown such swords were used by Byzantine soldiers — perhaps those helping defend the monastery from a raid by Turkish pirates, for instance.
Icons of Byzantine saints from the 13th century depict curved, one-edged swords, and it’s known that Byzantine soldiers used the swords as early as the sixth century, after facing them while fighting the nomadic Avars and the Sassanid Persians, who had assimilated them from the warriors of the Eurasian steppes, the researchers wrote.
Maniotis and Dogas have identified three military actions in the 14th century that could have led to the sword being used there: attacks along the coast by Turkish pirates, which included the kidnapping in 1344 of administrators from the Mount Athos monastery; the occupation of the region from 1345 until about 1371 by the forces of the Serbian king Stefan Dušan, who aspired to conquer Byzantine territories in the West; and the siege of Thessalonica by Ottoman troops from 1383 until 1387, when the Chalkidiki region was often raided for food.
Maniotis can’t say for sure, but he thinks the sword may be of Turkish origin, and that it was used in a pirate raid on the monastery. It’s now in poor condition, having been bent during the attack that destroyed the monastery, although several metal rings from the scabbard that once contained it can still be seen.
Nearly 18 inches (45 centimetres) of the blade of the sword remain whole, but not enough to determine by its shape alone whether it is of Turkish or Byzantine origin, the researchers wrote.
But it has historical importance in any case: “this particular sword is the only find from this category of swords in a closed archaeological assembly in Greece,” the researchers wrote. “It may in fact be one of the few swords of the late Byzantine period found in Greece.”
The discovery of the sword and other artefacts from the excavations will be the subject of an upcoming research paper, Maniotis and Dogas said.
Study Suggests Chickens Were Domesticated 3,500 Years Ago
It turns out that chicken and rice may have always gone together, from the birds’ initial domestication to tonight’s dinner. In two new studies, scientists lay out a potential story of chicken’s origins.
Modern chickens originated around 3,500 years ago in Southeast Asia, later than previously thought, scientists say. Rice cultivation apparently spurred the transformation of wildfowl into a global menu item.
This poultry tale begins surprisingly recently in rice fields planted by Southeast Asian farmers around 3,500 years ago, zooarchaeologist Joris Peters and colleagues report. From there, the birds were transported westward not as food but as exotic or culturally revered creatures, the team suggests on June 6 in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
“Cereal cultivation may have acted as a catalyst for chicken domestication,” says Peters, of the Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich.
The domesticated fowl then arrived in Mediterranean Europe no earlier than around 2,800 years ago, archaeologist Julia Best of Cardiff University in Wales and colleagues report on June 6 in Antiquity. The birds appeared in northwest Africa between 1,100 and 800 years ago, the team says.
Researchers have debated where and when chickens (Gallus gallus domesticus) originated for more than 50 years. India’s Indus Valley, northern China and Southeast Asia have all been touted as domestication centres. Proposed dates for chickens’ first appearance have mostly ranged from around 4,000 to 10,500 years ago.
A 2020 genetic study of modern chickens suggested that domestication occurred among Southeast Asian red jungle fowl. But DNA analyses, increasingly used to study animal domestication, couldn’t specify when domesticated chickens first appeared.
Using chicken remains previously excavated at more than 600 sites in 89 countries, Peters’ group determined whether the chicken bones had been found where they were originally buried by soil or, instead, had moved downward into older sediment over time and thus were younger than previously assumed.
After establishing the timing of chickens’ appearances at various sites, the researchers used historical references to chickens and data on subsistence strategies in each society to develop a scenario of the animals’ domestication and spread.
The new story begins in Southeast Asian rice fields. The earliest known chicken remains come from Ban Non-Wat, a dry rice–farming site in central Thailand that roughly dates to between 1650 B.C. and 1250 B.C. Dry rice farmers plant the crop on upland soil soaked by seasonal rains rather than in flooded fields or paddies. That would have made rice grains at Ban Non-Wat fair game for avian ancestors of chickens.
These fields attracted hungry wild birds called red jungle fowl. Red jungle fowl increasingly fed on rice grains, and probably grains of another cereal crop called millet, grown by regional farmers, Peters’ group speculates. A cultivated familiarity with people launched chicken domestication around 3,500 years ago, the researchers say.
Chickens did not arrive in central China, South Asia or Mesopotamian society in what’s now Iran and Iraq until nearly 3,000 years ago, the team estimates.
Peters and colleagues have for the first time assembled available evidence “into a fully coherent and plausible explanation of not only where and when, but also how and why chicken domestication happened,” says archaeologist Keith Dobney of the University of Sydney who did not participate in the new research.
But the new insights into chickens don’t end there. Using radiocarbon dating, Best’s group determined that 23 chicken bones from 16 sites in Eurasia and Africa were generally younger, in some cases by several thousand years, than previously thought. These bones had apparently settled into lower sediment layers over time, where they were found with items made by earlier human cultures.
A researcher points to chicken bones from England that are more than 2,000 years old (middle), which lie between bones of larger modern chickens.
Archaeological evidence indicates that chickens and rice cultivation spread across Asia and Africa in tandem, Peters’ group says. But rather than eating early chickens, people may have viewed them as special or sacred creatures.
At Ban Non-Wat and other early Southeast Asian sites, partial or whole skeletons of adult chickens were placed in human graves. That behaviour suggests chickens enjoyed some social or cultural significance, Peters says.
In Europe, several of the earliest chickens were buried alone or in human graves and showed no signs of having been butchered.
The expansion of the Roman Empire around 2,000 years ago prompted more widespread consumption of chicken and eggs, Best and colleagues say. In England, chickens were not eaten regularly until around 1,700 years ago, primarily at Roman-influenced urban and military sites.
Overall, about 700 to 800 years elapsed between the introduction of chickens in England and their acceptance as food, the researchers conclude. Similar lag times may have occurred at other sites where the birds were introduced.
Ancient humans used Spanish caves for rock art for more than 50,000 years
Cueva de Ardales in Málaga, Spain, is a famous site containing more than 1,000 prehistoric cave paintings and engravings. It also includes artefacts and human remains. But since its discovery in 1821, after an earthquake unearthed the entrance, the way ancient humans used the cave has been a mystery.
Excavation area in Cueva de Ardales with evidence from the Middle Palaeolithic period.
New research, published in PLoS ONE, on items from the first excavation has shed light on prehistoric Iberia’s human inhabitants. Archaeologists from Spain, Germany and Denmark collaborated to analyse the paintings, relics and human bones from the cave.
Combining radiometric dating – measuring the presence of radioactive elements such as carbon-14 to determine the age of remains – with other analyses of artefacts from the site, the researchers have determined the first occupants of Cueva de Ardales, arriving more than 65,000 years ago, were likely Neanderthals.
Lithics from the Middle Paleolithic layers of zone 3. A: Quartzite core or heavy-duty tool, B: Blade, C: Levallois flake, D: Sidescraper.
Modern humans came to use the cave around 30,000 years later. This timeframe coincides with the disappearance of Homo neanderthalensis some 40,000 years ago.
Homo sapiens used the cave sporadically until as recently as the beginning of the Copper Age, around 7,000 years ago.
Rock art is believed to be an indication of humankind’s first attempts to understand, rationalise and abstract the external world.
Our ability to imagine and communicate through language, writing, science, art and abstractions are likely consequences of such leaps in ancient human culture.
The authors write: “Our research presents a well-stratified series of more than 50 radiometric dates in Cueva de Ardales that confirm the antiquity of Palaeolithic art from over 58,000 years ago. It also confirms that the cave was a place of special activities linked to art, as numerous fragments of ochre were discovered in the Middle Palaeolithic levels.”
The oldest examples of cave art in the Málaga site include abstract signs such as dots, fingertips and hand stencils created with red pigment. Later artwork involves more complex paintings and figures such as animals.
Human remains indicate the use of the cave as a burial place in the Holocene – the period of geological time since the end of the last major glacial epoch, or “ice age”, around 12,000 years ago.
There is limited evidence of domestic activities at Cueva de Ardales, suggesting humans were not residing in the cave.
The team’s findings confirm that Cueva de Ardales is a site of immense symbolic value.
The Iberian Peninsula holds more than 30 other caves with similar rock art, making the region a key locality for investigating the history and culture of ancient humans in Europe.
Archaeologists from Edinburgh have discovered more than 100 Iron Age settlements in southwest Scotland that date from the time of Roman occupation.
The team has been surveying an area north of Hadrian’s Wall to better understand the impact of Rome’s rule on the lives of indigenous people.
Researchers explored nearly 600 square miles around Burnswark hillfort, Dumfries-shire, where Roman legions campaigned as the Empire expanded northwards.
Previous archaeological research on the terrain between Hadrian’s Wall and the Empire’s more northerly frontier at the Antonine Wall had focused predominantly on the Roman perspective.
It had concentrated on the camps, forts, roads and walls that Rome’s empire built to control northern Britain – rather than sites associated with native tribes.
Immense firepower
The new study initially focused specifically on Burnswark – home to the greatest concentration of Roman projectiles ever found in Britain, and a testament to the firepower of Rome’s legions.
The research team went on to scour an area of 580 square miles beyond the hillfort, using the latest laser-scanning technology.
Although much of the area had been studied before, researchers found 134 previously unrecorded Iron Age settlements — bringing the total number known in the region to more than 700.
The survey’s discovery of so many small farmsteads is a significant finding, researchers say. Such settlements offer key insights into how the majority of the indigenous population would have lived.
Analysis showed sites were dispersed evenly across the landscape — with dense clusters in some places — suggesting a highly organised settlement pattern, researchers say.
Empire’s edge
Work on Hadrian’s Wall began in AD 122 and, for two decades, the defensive fortification between the Solway Firth and the River Tyne marked the northernmost border of the Roman empire.
In AD 142, having made further gains north, the Romans built a second defensive line called the Antonine Wall between the Firth of Forth and the Firth of Clyde.
A few decades later, however, this second wall was abandoned with the Empire drawing its frontier back south to Hadrian’s Wall.
The findings of this latest study by the University of Edinburgh, Historic Environment Scotland and the Scottish Universities Environmental Research Centre have been published in the journal, Antiquity.
The study is part of a wider project called Beyond Walls, which is seeking to shed light on ancient sites, stretching from Durham in the south to the fringes of the Scottish Highlands in the north.
Exciting prospect
Study author Dr Manuel Fernández-Götz, of the University’s School of History, Classics and Archaeology, said: “This is one of the most exciting regions of the Roman Empire, as it represented its northernmost frontier.
“The land we now know as Scotland was one of the very few areas in Western Europe over which the Roman army never managed to establish full control”.
Fellow author Dr Dave Cowley of Historic Environment Scotland said: “The discovery of so many previously unknown sites helps us to reconstruct settlement patterns.
“Individually, they are very much routine, but cumulatively they help us understand the landscape within which the indigenous population lived.”
Archaeologists discover passageways in 3,000-year-old Peruvian temple
Archaeologists have excavated a network of passageways under a 3,000-year-old temple in the Peruvian Andes. Chavin de Huantar temple was once a religious and administrative hub for people across the region, Reuters reported.
Archaeologists work on the new discovery in the Peruvian Andes in Ancash
Found earlier this month, the passageways have features believed to have been built earlier than the temple’s labyrinthine galleries, according to an archaeologist at Stanford University.
John Rick, who was involved in the discovery, said: “It’s a passageway, but it’s very different. It’s a different form of construction. It has features from earlier periods that we’ve never seen in passageways.”
At least 35 underground passageways, which sit 3,200m above sea level, have been found over several years, connecting with each other.
They were built between 1,200 and 200 years BC in the foothills of the Andes.
Chavin de Huantar, declared a World Heritage Site in 1985, was the inspiration and name of the operation carried out when the Peruvian armed forces built a network of tunnels to rescue 72 people taken hostage by the Tupac Amaru Revolutionary Movement (MRTA) rebel group at the Japanese ambassador’s residence in Lima in 1997.
The archaeological site of Chavin de Huantar, which is a UNESCO World Heritage site, is seen some 155 miles (250 km) north of Lima on July 18, 2008.
It comes as archaeologists uncovered an “unprecedented” network of lost cities in the Amazon that shed light on how ancient civilisations constructed vast urban landscapes while living alongside nature.
Researchers used lidar technology, dubbed “lasers in the sky”, to scan through the tropical forest canopy, and examine sites found in the savannah forest of southwest Amazonia.
They uncovered a wide range of intricate settlements that have laid hidden under thick tree canopies for centuries in the Llanos de Mojos savannah forest in Bolivia.
The findings, described in the journal Nature on Wednesday, shed light on cities built by the Casarabe communities between AD500 and AD1400.
Heiko Prumers, an archaeologist and study co-author from the German Archaeological Institute, said the complexity of the settlements was “mind-blowing”.
The site features an unprecedented array of elaborate and intricate structures “unlike any previously discovered” in the region, including 5m high terraces covering 22 hectares – the equivalent of 30 football pitches – and 21m tall conical pyramids, say the scientists, including Jose Iriarte from the University of Exeter in the UK.
Researchers examined six areas within a 4,500 sq km region of the Llanos de Mojos, in the Bolivian Amazon, that belonged to the Casarabe culture.
They also found a vast network of reservoirs, causeways, and checkpoints, spanning several kilometres at the site.
1,000-Year-Old Aztatlán Burials Uncovered in Coastal Mexico
The space where the exploration is carried out corresponds to a natural mound in an area of estuaries, whose surface was used to establish occupation. To date, an Aztatlán-style pipe and three complete vessels have been found, although fragmented, as well as bone, remains from burials, until now unique in this port.
Findings of the Aztatlán culture.
Mazatlán, Sinaloa.- A new archaeological site of the Aztatlán culture with burials of unique characteristics has been discovered in the urban area of the port of this Sinaloa city, during the paving and infrastructure construction works, in the northern extension of the Avenida del Dolphin.
From May 16 to 28, the Ministry of Culture of the Government of Mexico, through specialists from the National Institute of Anthropology and History (INAH), carried out the archaeological salvage. The site was found by workers when a pipe ruptured exposing human remains; After the corresponding expert opinion and since they were ancient vestiges, the INAH was called to rescue them.
The space, where the works are carried out, corresponds to a natural mound, located in an area of estuaries, whose surface was used in pre-Hispanic times to establish an occupation, on a high point to avoid flooding, while taking advantage of the ecosystem, reports archaeologist Víctor Joel Santos Ramírez, coordinator of the salvage.
Santos Ramírez, a researcher at the INAH Sinaloa Center, details that the surface of the mound was covered with rammed shell debris, to build perishable constructions on top and under this floor the human burials were placed, one of them accompanied by an excellently made Aztatlán-style glass: “In Mazatlan, a burial of these characteristics had not been found: under a shell floor and accompanied by fine ceramics, since burials inside pots are common in the region,” explains the archaeologist.
Archaeological salvage in Mazatlan Sinaloa.
This characteristic makes the finding relevant for the archaeology of the region, for which the INAH is seeking an agreement with the Mazatlan City Council, in order to protect the site as an archaeological reserve and resume excavation work in the near future, Santos Ramírez reported.
As of May 27, at the site, which is being explored by the archaeologist Paola Martínez Delgadillo, in charge of the fieldwork, and the restoration technician, Eduardo Núñez Montesinos, coordinated by the archaeologist Víctor Joel Santos Ramírez, an Aztatlán style pipe and three complete vessels, although fragmented, among which the glass stands out; in addition to the human bone remains in a poor state of conservation, due to the natural characteristics of the Mazatlán soil.
Aztatlán style glass of excellent billing.
The pottery found is of excellent technical quality, located in the Acaponeta phase (900-1100/1200 AD), reports Santos Ramírez.
The settlement was part of a broad culture that, according to research by Alfonso Grave Tirado, also an archaeologist from the INAH Sinaloa Center, a scholar of this region, developed from the year 900 AD, a date that coincides with the time of the greatest social development. , economic and political of southern Sinaloa and northern Nayarit, known in the archaeological literature as Horizonte Aztatlán.
The archaeologist comments that surely this is not the only pre-Hispanic site and that it is very likely that evidence of an important ancient settlement, still unknown, is found throughout this area.
According to Víctor Joel Santos Ramírez, there have been few archaeological sites registered in the port of Mazatlan -no more than 10-, since most have disappeared due to the growth of the urban sprawl and unfortunately, authorities are rarely notified. ; this case is the exception since the INAH was notified, the archaeologists have received the support of personnel from the Comprehensive Port Administration and the contractor company, as well as from the Mazatlán City Council to carry out the research work.
The excavation is carried out systematically, although it is very difficult due to the depth and hardness of the soil, it is estimated that the work will conclude this weekend with just an approximation of the site, concludes the archaeologist.
Mississippian Period Cave Art Tells A Tale From 6,500 Years Ago
On a cold winter’s day in 1980, a group of recreational cavers entered a narrow, wet stream passage south of Knoxville, Tennessee. They navigated a slippery mud slope and a tight keyhole through the cave wall, trudged through the stream itself, ducked through another keyhole and climbed more mud. Eventually, they entered a high and relatively dry passage deep in the cave’s “dark zone” – beyond the reach of external light.
Human figure from Mud Glyph Cave with raised right hand and Chunkey game piece in left hand. Alan Cressler
On the walls around them, they began to see lines and figures traced into remnant mud banks laid down long ago when the stream flowed at this higher level. No modern or historic graffiti marred the surfaces. They saw images of animals, people and transformational characters blending human characteristics with those of birds, and those of snakes with mammals.
Ancient cave art has long been one of the most compelling of all artefacts from the human past, fascinating both to scientists and to the public at large. Its visual expressions resonate across the ages as if the ancients speak to us from deep in time. And this group of cavers in 1980 had happened upon the first ancient cave art site in North America.
Since then archaeologists like me have discovered dozens more of these cave art sites in the Southeast. We’ve been able to learn details about when cave art first appeared in the region, when it was most frequently produced and what it might have been used for. We have also learned a great deal by working with the living descendants of the cave art makers, the present-day Native American peoples of the Southeast, about what cave art means and how important it was and is to Indigenous communities.
From the outside, these caves betray no hint of the ancient art that might be inside. Alan Cressler
Cave art in America?
Few people think of North America when they think about ancient cave art. A century before the Tennessee cavers made their own discovery, the world’s first modern discovery of cave art was made in 1879, at Altamira in northern Spain. The scientific establishment of the day immediately denied the authenticity of the site.
Subsequent discoveries served to authenticate this and other ancient sites. As the earliest expressions of human creativity, some perhaps 40,000 years old, European palaeolithic cave art is now justifiably famous worldwide.
But similar cave art had never been found anywhere in North America, although Native American rock art outside of caves has been recorded since Europeans arrived. Artwork deep under the ground was unknown in 1980, and the Southeast was an unlikely place to find it given how much archaeology had been done there since the colonial period.
Nevertheless, the Tennessee cavers recognized that they were seeing something extraordinary and brought archaeologist Charles Faulkner to the cave. He initiated a research project there, naming the site Mud Glyph Cave. His archaeological work showed that the art was from the Mississippian culture, some 800 years old, and depicted imagery characteristic of ancient Native American religious beliefs. Many of those beliefs are still held by the descendants of Mississippian peoples: the modern Cherokee, Chickasaw, Choctaw, Coushatta, Muscogee, Seminole and Yuchi, among others.
After the Mud Glyph Cave discovery, archaeologists here at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville initiated systematic cave surveys. Today, we have catalogued 92 dark-zone cave art sites in Tennessee, Alabama, Georgia, Kentucky, Virginia and West Virginia. There are also a few sites known in Arkansas, Missouri and Wisconsin.
What did they depict?
There are three forms of southeastern cave art.
Mud glyphs are drawings traced into pliable mud surfaces preserved in caves, like those from Mud Glyph Cave.
Petroglyphs are drawings incised directly into the limestone of the cave walls.
Pictographs are paintings, usually made with charcoal-based pigments, placed on the cave walls.
Sometimes, more than one technique is found in the same cave, and none of the methods seems to appear earlier or later in time that the others.
Archaic Period pictograph of a hunter and prey dated to 6,500 years ago. Alan Cressler
Some southeastern cave art is quite ancient. The oldest cave art sites date to some 6,500 years ago, during the Archaic Period (10,000-1000 B.C.). These early sites are rare and seem to be clustered on the modern Kentucky-Tennessee state line. The imagery was simple and often abstract, although representational pictures do exist.
Woodland Period petroglyph of a box-shaped human-like creature with a long neck and u-shaped head. Alan Cressler
Cave art sites increase in number over time. The Woodland Period (1000 B.C. – A.D. 1000) saw more common and more widespread art production. Abstract art was still abundant and less worldly. Probably more spiritual subject matter was common. During the Woodland, conflations between humans and animals, like “bird-humans,” made their first appearance.
The Mississippian Period (A.D. 1000-1500) is the last precontact phase in the Southeast before Europeans arrived, and this was when much of the dark-zone cave art was produced. The subject matter is clearly religious and includes spirit people and animals that do not exist in the natural world. There is also strong evidence that Mississippian art caves were compositions, with images organized through the cave passages in systematic ways to suggest stories or narratives told through their locations and relations.
Mississippian Period pictograph showing an animal with talons for feet, a blunt forehead and long snout, with a long curving tail over the back. Alan Cressler
Cave art continued into the modern era
In recent years, researchers have realized that cave art has strong connections to the historic tribes that occupied the Southeast at the time of the European invasion.
In several caves in Alabama and Tennessee, mid-19th-century inscriptions were written on cave walls in Cherokee Syllabary. This writing system was invented by the Cherokee scholar Sequoyah between 1800 and 1824 and was quickly adopted as the tribe’s primary means of written expression.
On a cave wall in Alabama, an 1828 Cherokee syllabary inscription relating to a stickball ceremony. Alan Cressler
Cherokee archaeologists, historians and language experts have joined forces with nonnative archaeologists like me to document and translate these cave writings. As it turns out, they refer to various important religious ceremonies and spiritual concepts that emphasize the sacred nature of caves, their isolation and their connection to powerful spirits. These texts reflect similar religious ideas to those represented by graphic images in earlier, precontact time periods.
Based on all the rediscoveries researchers have made since Mud Glyph Cave was first explored more than four decades ago, cave art in the Southeast was created over a long period of time. These artists worked in ancient times when ancestral Native Americans lived by foraging in the rich natural landscapes of the Southeast all the way through to the historic period just before the Trail of Tears saw the forced removal of indigenous people east of the Mississippi River in the 1830s.
As surveys continue, researchers uncover more dark cave sites every year – in fact, four new caves were found in the first half of 2021. With each new discovery, the tradition is beginning to approach the richness and diversity of the Paleolithic art of Europe, where 350 sites are currently known. That archaeologists were unaware of the dark-zone cave art of the American Southeast even 40 years ago demonstrates the kinds of new discoveries that can be made even in regions that have been explored for centuries.
