Tainter Cave, also known as Tombstone Cave, is a dry sandstone cave in Crawford County, Wisconsin, in which prehistoric Native Americans carved petroglyphs and drew pictographs, including birds, men, deer, and abstract designs. With over 100 pictographs, the cave holds more than any other known site in Wisconsin. It is also notable as the first archaeological site recorded in the dark zone of a cave in the Upper Midwest.
Description and discovery
The cave is in a layer of St. Peter Sandstone near the top of a ridge in the Driftless Area. From the entrance on the east-facing side of the ridge, it penetrates over 175 feet to the southwest. The front of the first chamber is lit by natural light from the opening; the two chambers behind it are pitch black. The ceiling is generally low, requiring one to crawl or stoop.
The cave had been known to locals and cavers for many years. In 1967 it was mapped by the Wisconsin Speleological Society under the name "Tombstone Cave." In 1993 local cave enthusiast Daniel Arnold wrote to the Mississippi Valley Archaeological Center that the cave had a diamond-shaped carving near the entrance, interesting historic carvings, drawings of animals and human figures, with birch torches on the floor. Professional archaeologists visited in 1998 and determined that many of the images among the graffiti were probably made by prehistoric Native Americans. The cave was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 2001.
Chamber One
The entrance is a long horizontal crack, 35 feet across and four feet tall at the highest. Inside, the first chamber is about 60 feet deep, with slabs of rock fallen from the ceiling to the floor in places. Among the clearly modern graffiti are some carvings which are almost certainly Native American. There is a carved diamond with a dot in its center, similar to designs at the Viola Rockshelter, Bell Coulee Shelter, and other sites in the region. A line-drawing of a headless bird is carved near the bottom of a boulder.
On the ceiling inside the entrance, a panel of drawings shows a human figure with lines across the body – possibly a baby bundled on a cradleboard - with a line almost connecting it to a speckled bird. If it is a baby, the composition of baby connected to bird could represent a naming ceremony.
On the south wall are more drawings, including a deer or elk with a filled-in body and with forward-curving antlers. A sample of its pigment has been AMS-dated to within 60 years of 690 A.D., placing the artist in the Late Woodland period, during the time effigy mounds were being built. The style of the antlers is not seen elsewhere for this region and period.
On the west wall is a panel of drawings, including what could be depictions of spear tips and groups of abstract arcs and lines that resemble designs found elsewhere on Late Woodland pottery. A bird-like figure is high on the panel, a headless human (perhaps a shaman) in the middle, and a lizard-like creature at the bottom; the three might be deliberately arranged to represent an Upper, Middle and Lower-world.
Based on cultural materials found in the cave, it appears that people lived mainly in the first chamber, where there was some natural light. Deer bones were on the surface - many of them pulverized and partly charred - and shell fragments. Four pottery sherds were found - thin-walled and grit-tempered. The style of one matches examples of Millville-phase pottery from 250-500 A.D. Two other sherds have a dentate rocker-stamped style over a cord-marked exterior, similar to late Millville/Mills sherds at other sites from 250 to 700 A.D. A piece of wood charcoal from the floor was carbon-14 dated to 535 A.D.
Charred rolls of birch bark are also scattered around the floor, mostly along the walls in chambers one and two. These were apparently lit as torches, providing light at night and for the artists working in the dark parts of the cave.
Chamber Two
At the back of the first chamber in the dark is a low opening into a totally dark chamber 75 feet by 10 to 15 feet wide, with the ceiling not quite high enough to stand up. Small rock is scattered along the walls, with a large collapse halfway down the chamber.