Missouri Cave Paintings

[L Roebuck]

Missouri cave paintings give ancient insight

The story begins, as many do, with curiosity. About 20 years ago, two men exploring "Picture Cave" found paintings on the rock walls and sent hand-drawn reproductions to archaeologists Jim Duncan and Carol Diaz-Granados.

"These things are fake!" Duncan remembered thinking at the time. As it turned out, the nature and location of the drawings contradicted widely held beliefs about Mississippian culture.

The figures on the walls of the cave in east-central Missouri now provide crucial details of the prehistoric timeline of the region. And there's recent evidence that the paintings in Picture Cave predate the Cahokia Mounds as the birthplace of what archaeologists refer to as the Mississippian period.

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[Azurerana]

It is a very powerful site. There is a tell-tale thing about the illustration with the story the author doesn't mention-- if you look at the figures, they actually have atlatls (throwing sticks). Some people think the bow shapes were added on later. Unless you are an archaeologist, most cave vandals wouldn't know what an atlatl is, in enough detail to put it on a cave wall. There is a creature painting in the cave...I cannot describe it...which is an underworld power figure, it terrifies down to the marrow of your bones and the eyes follow you around the cave, in the same way that paintings of the 18th century sometimes do. It is positively creepy in an amoral sort of way, if you have any imagination at all. It you are really interested, Diaz-Granados and Duncan have a book from U of Alabama Press, called The Pictographs and Petroglyphs of Missouri which goes into more detail, but the photo in the book doesn't do it justice, and no, it doesn't reveal the cave location either. What is interesting is when Duncan described some of the rock art to Oklahoma Osage he knows, they began telling him the legend which went with the figures. What is intriguing about this is the Osage (Plains Souian/Algonkian people) aren't generally associated with the Mississippi Mound builders of Cahokia, and much of their iconography and legends do not overlap. More mysteries...

[L Roebuck]

Thanks Az! I'm always interested in cave art. I may have to look for "The Pictographs and Petroglyphs of Missouri" but it goes without saying that I would rather see the actual cave art than read a book about it.

[Azurerana]

Yeah, but you've been to France, and I haven't. This doesn't quite make us even-- you've still got the upper hand. *|:-) We were on a gating trip many many moons ago...it was quite an event, as we had to propitiate the gods before we entered. I wrote a three and a half page 7 part poem about it. We also had an ex-boyfriend on that trip. Ex had a seizure, and I was the only one who knew how to deal with it. And the day ended with a rainstorm and a double rainbow.

I have a rawhide rattle I made decorated with some of the iconography.

[L Roebuck]

Glad you knew how to deal with seizures!
Well still, it all adds up to life experiences. It would be great if you could see Lascaux Cave, Grotte de Rouffignac, and all the other prehistoric caves. Rouffignac is a commercial cave but it also has some amazing perhistoric cave art -- for the tour you board an electric train.

This is kind of off topic but Alan Cressler has a photo set of prehistoric cave art on Flickr. Unnamed Cave 60, Prehistoric Cave Art