THE CAVE CULTURE OF ARKANSAS 



By WINSLOW M. WALKER 



Associate Anthropologist, Bureau of American Ethnology 



The cave region of the Ozarks in north central Arkansas has long 

 been considered a likely place in which to look for evidences of an 

 early type of American aborigine. Last summer the opportunity came 

 for the writer to visit that section as his first field trip for the Bureau 

 of American Ethnology. A letter from a correspondent at Gilbert, 

 Ark., spoke of caves in that vicinity, in which it was thought traces 

 of ancient human remains might be found. Proceeding directly to this 

 locality a stay of seven weeks was made, during which some 16 

 caves in the neighborhood of Buffalo River in parts of Marion and 

 Searcy counties were explored and three were carefully excavated. 



These caves occur in the limestone ledges of the Boone and St. Joe 

 formations of Lower Mississippian age, here and there lying un- 

 conformably on sandstone of the Lower Ordovician. Where these 

 limestone ledges outcrop along the streams and small creeks caves are 

 sometimes found at the heads of side hollows. These are due to the 

 action of underground rivers cutting away the soft limestone in an 

 attempt to escape and join the streams in the creek beds. The cav- 

 erns thus formed have large open mouths affording excellent sites 

 for human habitation. Although many of them are now dry, some 

 still contain small streams, usually at one side of the cave near the wall. 

 It is in the dry caves that extensive deposits of dust, dirt, and ashes 

 yield unmistakable evidence of primitive man's former occupancy. 



The first cave visited was located near a bend in Buffalo River about 

 half a mile above the town of Gilbert. A long gallery winding about 

 for some 150 feet under the hill opened out under the limestone ledge 

 at the head of a small cove 40 feet above the river level. This aperture 

 had been nearly closed by the filling in of talus fallen from the over- 

 hanging ledge, leaving a hole just wide enough to permit a man to 

 crawl inside. The owner of the property decided it would make a 

 good storehouse for his dairy products because of the cold draft of 

 air issuing from the underground gallery, and in beginning to clear 

 out the chamber had encountered a dry dust which he mistook for 

 ashes. Being of a scientific turn of mind he wrote in to the Bureau of 

 American Ethnology to invite investigation of his cave on the chance 

 of finding human remains there. But after three days of the hardest 



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