Sacred Darkness: A Global Perspective on the Ritual Use of Caves - Softcover

Holley Moyes

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1607323605 ISBN 13: 9781607323600

Publisher: Gazelle Book Services, 2015

Synopsis

Caves have been used in various ways across human society, but despite the persistence within popular culture of the iconic caveman, deep caves were never used primarily as habitation sites for early humans. Rather, in both ancient and contemporary contexts, caves have served primarily as ritual spaces. In Sacred Darkness, contributors use archaeological evidence as well as ethnographic studies of modern ritual practices to envision the cave as place of spiritual and ideological power that emerges as a potent venue for ritual practice.Covering the ritual use of caves in Europe, Asia, Australia, Africa, Mesoamerica, and the US Southwest and Eastern woodlands, this book brings together case studies by prominent scholars whose research spans from the Paleolithic period to the present day. These contributions demonstrate that cave sites are as fruitful as surface contexts in promoting the understanding of both ancient and modern religious beliefs and practices. This state-of-the-art survey of ritual cave use will be one of the most valuable resources for understanding the role of caves in studies of religion, sacred landscape, or cosmology and a must-read for any archaeologist interested in caves.

About this title

About the Author

Holley Moyes is an associate professor of anthropology and affiliate member of cognitive and information sciences at the University of California, Merced.

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.

Sacred Darkness

A Global Perspective on the Ritual Use of Caves

By Holley Moyes

University Press of Colorado

Copyright © 2012 University Press of Colorado
All rights reserved.

ISBN: 978-1-60732-360-0

Contents

List of Figures, 
List of Tables, 
Preface, 
Note on Radiocarbon Dating, 
Introduction Holley Moyes, 
Part I: Old World Ritual Cave Traditions, 
1. Ritual Cave Use in European Paleolithic Caves Jean Clottes, 
2. Constructed Caves: Transformations of the Underworld in Prehistoric Southeast Italy Robin Skeates, 
3. Caves of the Living, Caves of the Dead: Experiences Above and Below Ground in Prehistoric Malta Simon K.F. Stoddart and Caroline A.T. Malone, 
4. Landscapes of Ritual, Identity, and Memory: Reconsidering Neolithic and Bronze Age Cave Use in Crete, Greece Peter Tomkins, 
5. Caves and the Funerary Landscape of Prehistoric Britain Andrew T. Chamberlain, 
6. The Subterranean Landscape of the Southern Levant during the Chalcolithic Period Yorke M. Rowan And David Ilan, 
7. The Chamber of Secrets: Grottoes, Caves, and the Underworld in Ancient Egyptian Religion Stuart Tyson Smith, 
8. Caves as Sacred Spaces on the Tibetan Plateau Mark Aldenderfer, 
9. Differential Australian Cave and Rockshelter Use during the Pleistocene and Holocene Paul S.C. Taçon, Wayne Brennan, Matthew Kelleher, and Dave Pross, 
Part II: New World Ritual Cave Traditions, 
10. Caves as Sacred Space in Mesoamerica Holley Moyes and James E. Brady, 
11. Footsteps in the Dark Zone: Ritual Cave Use in Southwest Prehistory Scott Nicolay, 
12. Forty Years' Pursuit of Human Prehistory in the World Underground Patty Jo Watson, 
13. A New Overview of Prehistoric Cave Art in the Southeast Jan F. Simek, Alan Cressler, and Joseph Douglas, 
14. Reevaluating Cave Records: The Case for Ritual Caves in the Eastern United States Cheryl Claassen, 
15. Ceremonial Use of Caves and Rockshelters in Ohio Olaf H. Prufer and Keith M. Prufer, 
16. The Ritual Use of Caves and Rockshelters in Ozark Prehistory George Sabo III, Jerry E. Hilliard, and Jami J. Lockhart, 
Part III: Case Studies in Ritual Cave Use, 
17. The Prehistoric Funerary Archaeology of the Niah Caves, Sarawak (Malaysian Borneo) Graeme Barker And Lindsay Lloyd-Smith, 
18. Recognizing Ritual in the Dark: Nakovana Cave and the End of the Adriatic Iron Age Timothy Kaiser And Staso Forenbaher, 
19. Sacred Spaces, Sacred Species: Zooarchaeological Perspectives on Ritual Uses of Caves Joanna E.P. Appleby and Preston T. Miracle, 
20. Ritual Cave Use in the Bahamas Robert S. Carr, William C. Schaffer, Jeff B. Ransom, and Michael P. Pateman, 
Part IV: Ethnographic and Ethnohistoric Studies, 
21. Caves in Ireland: Archaeology, Myth, and Folklore Patrick McCafferty, 
22. Caves in Black and White: The Case of Zimbabwe Terence Ranger, 
23. Where the Wild Things Are: An Exploration of Sacrality, Danger, and Violence in Confined Spaces Sandra Pannell And Sue O'Connor, 
24. Ritual Uses of Caves in West Malaysia Joseph J. Hobbs, 
25. A Quantitative Literature Survey Regarding the Uses and Perceptions of Caves among Nine Indigenous Andean Societies Nathan Craig, 
26. Caves and Related Sites in the Great Plains of North America Donald J. Blakeslee, 
Part V: New Approaches, 
27. Civilizing the Cave Man: Diachronic and Cross-Cultural Perspectives on Cave Ritual Andrea Stone, 
28. Caves and Spatial Constraint: The Prehistoric Implications Ezra B.W. Zubrow, 
29. Why Dark Zones Are Sacred: Turning to Behavioral and Cognitive Science for Answers Daniel R. Montello And Holley Moyes, 
List of Contributors, 
Index, 

CHAPTER 1

Ritual Cave Use in European Paleolithic Caves

Jean Clottes

* * *

This chapter examines evidence for ritual Paleolithic cave use in Europe. It begins with a case for limited ritual use of a deep cave by Neanderthals prior to the Upper Paleolithic and the arrival of modern humans in the area. Numerous examples of caves used for rock art by modern humans date from about 38,000 to 11,000 BP, and extend from the southern tip of the Iberian Peninsula to the Urals in Russia. Burials are rare at that time in painted or engraved caves (Cussac in the Dordogne, Vilhonneur in the Charente). On the other hand, many activities took place in caves and left abundant evidence that must be interpreted with caution to be able to work out whether they may be considered ritual behaviors, and to discover whatever additional information these data can bring us about the people who frequented the deep painted caves. Remains range from footprints on the ground to fires and their attendant debris (charcoal, burnt bones), from mobiliary art — which can be related (or not) to the wall art — to deliberate gestures and actions, such as breaking and using concretions, sticking bits of bones into cracks or cave- bear bones into cave floors, and making scratches on the walls. Such traces and remains are nowhere better preserved than in deep caves and are apt to bring invaluable information about ritual cave use tens of thousands of years ago.

A recent book on The Human Use of Caves (Bonsall and Tolan-Smith 1997) deals with many of the issues in point and presents a wealth of information and observations on which it will be necessary to dwell. First, we must explain precisely what we mean by cave. In the above-cited book, as in many other cases, the word cave is used indiscriminately by various authors. It can mean either rockshelters, where activities take place in the natural light of the day, or deep passages and chambers that truly pertain to the subterranean world. For clarity's sake, it is only the latter that should properly be called caves. To avoid misunderstandings, all cavities in the rock where in the daytime it is possible to see and to move about without the help of such artificial lighting as torches or grease lamps should and will be called shelters. Such a definition includes the entrances to deeper caves, often used as shelters.

Another central point is the definition of ritual. Actions evidenced as ritual in caves by Tolan-Smith and Bonsall include art, votive deposits, and burials. The authors also state that "some activities may be described, rather loosely, as economic. These include ... the acquisition of raw materials such as workable stone, minerals, water and chemicals," while acknowledging that "we know from ethnography, ethnohistory and everyday experience that many aspects of economic behaviour have a ritual dimension, while ritual behaviour can often have an economic aspect." They add that "deep caves are rarely used at all and then only for ritual purposes" (Bonsall and Tolan-Smith 1997, 217).

Now, in traditional societies — such as those of hunter-gatherers — it could be argued that everything is ritual (or that nothing is). What we call the supernatural world is immanent to what we call the real, everyday world. In Australia, traditional Aranta hunters used to make drawings on rocks before going hunting. When asked why they were doing this by ethnologist Lewis Mountford, they were quite astounded at the silliness of the question and replied, "But how can we go hunting if we do not paint first?" Drawing an animal on the rock — which for us might be a ritual act — was obviously for them as much a part of the hunting process as preparing their weapons and stalking the game (Anati 1989, 10).

We must therefore be aware of the fact that the concept of "ritual" may well have been alien to the societies we are dealing with. It is the same with the concept of "art" and "artist" for which many traditional peoples did not even have a word at the time of Contact (Whitley 2001, 22). This being said, we should not be deterred from using those words — with provisos — whenever they prove useful to us and to our understanding of a particular phenomenon. Thus, an act may be called "ritual," perhaps provisionally, when it cannot be explained by any imaginable "practical" reason, while it may well have been felt to be entirely practical from the point of view of the authors of the act. This is all the more so when acts of the same ilk have been evidenced in many different cultural contexts and correspond to universal ways of thinking and acting (see examples below).

THE CAVE AS ANOTHER WORLD AND ITS USES

In order to attempt the difficult task of interpreting the uses of deep caves in Paleolithic times, it is necessary to consider the ways prehistoric and traditional people all over the planet have acted and felt about the subterranean world, whether they frequented it or not. In most cultures, deep caves have been shunned. In all of Africa, in South America, in Central India, and in most of Australia, for example, the traces of human activities are generally restricted to the entrances of caves or to shelters. When such a place has been painted or engraved, the rock art stops where the light no longer reaches. Among the available examples of people venturing into the depths of caves, in addition to the well-known European Paleolithic caves, Mesoamerica is prominent, in particular with the Mayas (Stone 1997; Moyes and Brady, this volume) but also with the rather late so-called Mudglyph Caves in the Southeast of the United States (Faulkner 1996; Simek, Cressler, and Douglas, this volume) and the Pleistocene limestone caves of southern Australia (Taçon et al., this volume). The latter are all the more interesting, because aboriginal feeling about what to do with caves has obviously changed with time (Bednarik 1986).

Everywhere in the world and at all times, people have had feelings of awe about caves. Caves are the realm of the supernatural powers, the spirits, the gods, and/or the dead. (See, for example, Charon and the Styx, a subterranean river in Greek mythology.) They can be highly respected places of emergence or of origin, as for the Incas who traced their origins from a cave 26 kilometers south of Cusco (Dransart 1997). It is only in our modern Western world that deep caves have lost their supernatural aura and are routinely explored by spelunkers for whom they are a challenge and an area of sport and study.

Traditional orientations to caves may entail one of two attitudes. They may be considered such spiritually dangerous places that people must keep away from them. Contemporary Aborigines have always felt that way, as do most Africans. Conversely, caves can be considered as providing a physical access to the other world and, as such, to constitute a valuable cultural resource that can be used whenever necessary. This might explain the deposition of the dead found in many different cultures, such as those of the Chalcolithic in Western Europe or of the Kalimantan people in Borneo (Chazine and Fage 2002).

Although their Pleistocene ancestors made use of deep caves, present-day and subcontemporary Australian Aborigines shun deep caves. In Mesoamerica, however, the tradition has continued until Contact and after, so that invaluable direct testimonies exist about the way deep caves are now viewed and probably were in the past. According to Andrea Stone:

In Maya thought caves were a conduit into the bowels of the earth, a dangerous but supernaturally charged realm, often referred to as the "underworld" in current literature or by the Quiché term, Xibalda. Herein dwelt the ancestors, rain gods, various "owners" of the earth, culture heroes, nefarious death demons, animal and wind spirits. The Maya made pilgrimages to caves to propitiate these beings ... post-contact sources tell us that cave ceremonies usually concerned rain and other agricultural interests, hunting, ancestor worship, renewal/New Year rites and other calendrically- timed ceremonies, and petitions for various personal needs (e.g., health problems). Caves were also used by brujos (witches) to cast spells. (1997:202–3)

The two attitudes to caves (shunning them and going into them for particular ritual purposes) are not contradictory. They stem from the same beliefs and they can also be complementary, as access to caves may be restricted in various ways. For example, some sacred caves could only be accessed at particular periods or at very long intervals, sometimes spanning generations. Also there might have been all sorts of restrictions concerning the persons who went into them, depending on their age, sex, and status.

Finally, caves have occasionally been used for mining minerals. In southern Australia a number of examples have been evidenced and researched in the past 25 years, the best-known of them being Koonalda Cave (Bednarik 1986), where the mining is associated with a great number of finger tracings on the walls. Pleistocene people systematically extracted chert from those caves (in addition to Koonalda, see also Karlie-ngoinpool Cave and especially Gran Can Cave) (Bednarik 1992). As to the Maya, "some rather sketchy evidence indicates that Maya extracted clays and minerals from caves." For example, a "case of Prehispanic mining was discovered at Footprint Cave, Belize, where a stone mortar with a white mineral ground on the surface was found along with other Late to Terminal Classic artifacts" (Stone 1997, 202). It would be difficult to believe that all those activities would be "purely" economic and materialistic, especially considering the way the Maya felt about deep caves and behaved in them. Those observations will be particularly relevant when we address the activities of Paleolithic people in the deep painted caves.

RITUAL BEHAVIOR OF NEANDERTHALS IN THE DEEP CAVES

In the depths of the Bruniquel cave, in the Tarn-et-Garonne in France, broken stalactites and stalagmites were piled and arranged in a kind of oval roughly 5 meters by 5 meters, with a much smaller round structure next to it (figure 1.1). The nature of those structures and the conditions of the cave make it impossible for them to have been the consequence of animal or natural activities. They are indisputably human made.

The structures themselves cannot, of course, be directly dated, but a fire was made nearby, and a burnt fragment of bone from it was dated to more than 47,600 years BP. If this date also applies to the arrangement of stalagmites, as seems likely, it puts the structures well within the Mousterian, the local Neanderthal cultural period (Rouzaud, Soulier, and Lignereux 1995). Even though the cave was quite accessible before a collapse of the cliff blocked its entrance, and although it was by far the biggest in the area — where three smaller caves have been painted (Mayrière supérieure, Travers de Janoye) or engraved and carved (La Magdelaine) at various periods of the Upper Paleolithic — not a single painting or engraving was found on its walls. These conditions make it very unlikely that the Bruniquel cave was frequented by Cro-Magnons.

No practical purpose can be suggested for those constructions. The people who made them did not live that far inside the cave, as the absence of the kind of remains so common on habitation sites testifies. The hypothesis was made that the arrangements of stones could have been the substructures of a tent (Rouzaud, Soulier, and Lignereux 1995). This would imply the construction of a superstructure consisting of poles and of hides arranged and tied onto them. The dimensions of the bigger structure would entail carrying a very heavy load of poles and of hides far into the cave. But if this were the case, why would physical protection be needed inside a deep cave, the climate of which is proverbially stable? In addition, building a big (perhaps 20 square meters) tent for practical purposes could only be done if prolonged stays in the cave were contemplated, and we have seen that the cave was never used as a habitation site. As a consequence, the only hypothesis that makes sense is the delimitation of a symbolic or ritual space well inside the subterranean world. This could thus be a valuable — if so far unique — testimony to Neanderthals' attitude to deep caves.

The cave of Régourdou, in the Dordogne (France), provides another unique example, this time of a complete Neanderthal human burial, with a stone wall separating it from a brown bear partially buried in a pit. Two bear legbones prolonged the human body that had been deposited on bear hides. Grave goods (bear bones and stone implements) had been left on top of a slab covering the body. A number of big stones protected the whole. Then a deer antler was put on top of the mound and covered with another layer of stones before a small fire was made. Other manmade structures with brown-bear remains were discovered nearby, some predating and others postdating the human burial (Bonifay 2002; Bonifay and Vandermeersch 1962). Those examples show the spiritual importance attached to bears by the Neanderthals.

Previous to the Neanderthals, we have no evidence that earlier humans went into caves for ritual purposes. In the Sima de los Huesos site at Atapuerca, in Spain, deep inside a cave, Juan Luis Arsuaga and his team did excavate the remains of more than thirty Homo heidelbergensis, found together with a spectacular biface which could well be the earliest "grave good" ever discovered. At the time of the burials, however, a 13-meter natural shaft existed and it is likely that the bodies were thrown into it and accumulated at its bottom. The site would certainly qualify as a burial place but not as a deep underground one.

ART IN THE DARK AND OTHER RITUAL ACTIVITIES DURING THE UPPER PALEOLITHIC

In the Upper Paleolithic — that is, when Homo sapiens sapiens inhabited Europe at the end of the last Ice Age — testimonies of human activities inside caves are plentiful. Contrary to a long-standing legend, however, the anatomically modern humans did not generally use deep caves as habitation sites. Like their Neanderthal predecessors they favored rockshelters (e.g., Le Placard in the Charente) or the entrances to bigger caves (e.g., Gargas in the Hautes-Pyrénées). For example, the enormous cavern of Niaux in the Ariège, one of the great painted caves in Europe, was never inhabited. The Magdalenians who frequented it lived at La Vache, a much smaller cave right across the valley, lower down and closer to the stream (Clottes and Delporte 2003).

(Continues...)

Excerpted from Sacred Darkness by Holley Moyes. Copyright © 2012 University Press of Colorado. Excerpted by permission of University Press of Colorado.
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Edition details

• Publisher: Gazelle Book Services
• Publication date: 2015
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 1607323605
• ISBN 13: 9781607323600
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 520
• Editor: Holley Moyes