Pictographic Cave Site in Montana

We'd long wanted to visit this cave site but thought it a lot further away and over a rough gravel road. Having discovered our mistake, and since Ingrid had gotten off work early, we drove there this afternoon.

We'd also hoped to be able to photograph some interesting pictographs to share with you, but were mistaken in this, too. Mineral deposits, erosion, misguided tourism, graffiti, protracted vandalism and neglect have caused all but 44 of the 106 painted images identified in the 1930's to fade, flake off or disintegrate altogether. So, while we could make out certain remains of the paintings, nothing stood out as the subject for an easily readable photograph.

This was very disappointing (and it made us angry at the avoidable waste) but it cheered us a bit to learn of a certain archeological benefit to some of the unavoidable damage that had occurred here over the centuries. When portions of the ceiling rock (sometimes in enormous slabs) have fallen off from time to time, they naturally buried everything on the cave floor beneath them. This included easily perishable items that would otherwise have disappeared ~ over 30,000 of which were recovered during excavations before WWII.

According to an article in Montana The Magazine of Western History, 51 (Winter 2001,) "The deeper deposits revealed artifacts from the Middle Prehistoric Period (3000 b.c. to 500 a.d.) when roving bands hunted game with stone-tipped spears and atlatl darts but also relied heavily on wild plants and seeds for food. Levels closer to the surface indicated a series of Late Prehistoric occupations (500 a.d. to 1800 a.d.) by nomadic buffalo hunters armed with bows and arrows. Archaeologists discovered a number of perishable items from this period-basketry, a hafted knife, roasted turnips in hearths, and beds of woven twigs and leaves-that would have been lost in an exposed site. Evidence indicated that nomadic hunters abandoned the shelter of the caves in favor of camping in tepees on the terrace below at about the time the horse was introduced on the plains in the 1700s." It's importance, therefore, lay "more in the completeness of the picture it presents than in being spectacular in any one phase."

I liked this site for the stories it could tell ~ but also because it looks so wonderful. It pleases me to think that those who've lived there before ~ especially the ones who felt impelled to make pictures of their own ~ might well have thought so, too.