ABOUT THIS BOOK

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.

AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY

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

REVIEWS

"Sacred Darkness brings together an international group of scholars to explore the potential of multidisciplinary research for deciphering the meaning of the dark spaces of caves in ancient societies. Scholars with years of experience beneath the earth bring us up-to-date on the latest thinking on an often-neglected subject. This perceptively edited volume is certain to become a standard work on the subject."
—Brian Fagan, author of Elixir and Cro-Magnon

"The book is a gold mine of information and insights; its cross-cultural and trans-temporal coverage is sure to stimulate new thinking about how caves figure in people's lives."
—Wendy Ashmore, University of California-Riverside

". . . an impressive and laudable compendium of archaeological, ethnographic, and cognitive studies of human ritual and religious practice conducted within caves or similar natural and constructed features."
—Myles R. Miller, SAS Bulletin

"This volume is stimulating and unique, and has global importance."
—L. M. Foster, Choice

"Fascinating. . . .the most up-to-date and comprehensive exploration of what we know about the human use of caves."
—Paul S.C. Taçon, Time and Mind

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Cover

Contents

Figures

Tables

Preface

Note on Radiocarbon Dating

Introduction

Part I: Old World Ritual Cave Traditions

1. Ritual Cave Use in European Paleolithic Caves

2. Constructed Caves

3. Caves of the Living, Caves of the Dead

4. Landscapes of Ritual, Identity, and Memory

5. Caves and the Funerary Landscape of Prehistoric Britain

6. The Subterranean Landscape of the Southern Levant during the Chalcolithic Period

7. The Chamber of Secrets

8. Caves as Sacred Spaces on the Tibetan Plateau

9. Differential Australian Cave and Rockshelter Use during the Pleistocene and Holocene

Part II: New World Ritual Cave Traditions

10. Caves as Sacred Space in Mesoamerica

11. Footsteps in the Dark Zone

12. Forty Years’ Pursuit of Human Prehistory in the World Underground

13. A New Overview of Prehistoric Cave Art in the Southeast

14. Reevaluating Cave Records

15. Ceremonial Use of Caves and Rockshelters in Ohio

16. The Ritual Use of Caves and Rockshelters in Ozark Prehistory

Part III: Case Studies in Ritual Cave Use

17. The Prehistoric Funerary Archaeology of the Niah Caves, Sarawak (Malaysian Borneo)

18. Recognizing Ritual in the Dark

19. Sacred Spaces, Sacred Species

20. Ritual Cave Use in the Bahamas

Part IV: Ethnographic and Ethnohistoric Studies

21. Caves in Ireland

22. Caves in Black and White

23. Where the Wild Things Are

24. Ritual Uses of Caves in West Malaysia

25. A Quantitative Literature Survey Regarding the Uses and Perceptions of Caves among Nine Indigenous Andean Societies

26. Caves and Related Sites in the Great Plains of North America

Part V: New Approaches

27. Civilizing the Cave Man

28. Caves and Spatial Constraint

29. Why Dark Zones Are Sacred

Contributors

Index

REQUEST ACCESSIBLE FILE

If you are a student who cannot use this book in printed form, BiblioVault may be able to supply you with an electronic file for alternative access.

Please have the accessibility coordinator at your school fill out this form.

It can take 2-3 weeks for requests to be filled.