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A Mississippian Period Ritual Cave in Tennessee

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  20 January 2017

Charles H. Faulkner ,
Bill Deane  and
Howard H. Earnest Jr.
Charles H. Faulkner
Affiliation:
Department of Anthropology, University of Tennessee, Knoxville, TN 37996
Bill Deane
Affiliation:
312 Hermitage Road, Knoxville, TN 37920
Howard H. Earnest Jr.
Affiliation:
National Forest Service, Box 2010, Cleveland, TN 37311
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Abstract

Trailed and incised drawings on the mud-covered walls of an East Tennessee cave have been identified as the artwork of Mississippian Indians who visited this sanctuary about 800 years ago. These unique drawings, called “mud glyphs” because of their similarity to certain petroglyphs found in the southeastern United States, include abstract designs, symbols, zoomorphic forms and anthropomorphic figures. Symbols such as the forked eye and the “bird-man” anthropomorphic representation correlate with six radiocarbon dates on torch charcoal that range between the twelfth and seventeenth centuries A.D. The occurrence of thousands of superimposed elements on the walls indicates that Mud Glyph cave was a Mississippian period sanctuary and further suggests that certain southeastern caves during this period were used for ritual activities rather than for mining as they were during earlier Woodland and Archaic times.

Type
Reports
Information
American Antiquity , Volume 49 , Issue 2 , April 1984 , pp. 350 - 361
Copyright
Copyright © The Society for American Archaeology 1984

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