Dear Colleagues,

As a legacy of 19th century archaeology, caves have suffered from a long history of misrepresentations that established these sites primarily as habitations for European Paleolithic people. The assumption that caves were spaces that conveniently afforded housing or storage areas for past people, no matter how spatially remote they were, was accepted by many archaeologists that unquestioningly interpreted them in this way, with little consideration of other uses.

As cave archaeology developed as a subfield in the mid-20th century and as the number of projects increased, this began to change as archaeologists examined their data more critically and began to consider the use of space within these sites. Of note was the work of Charles Faulkner, who was the first to suggest that the quality of available natural light in caves correlated with their potential use, parsing cave space into light, twilight, and dark zones. He noted that dark zones were special contexts that he recognized as ritual or symbolic venues, whereas light or twilight areas could be habitational, observations that are key to understanding cave contexts. As a corollary, equally important are the site’s morphological properties. The term “cave” is problematic and early reports often conflated rockshelters, shallow caves, and deep caves, masking the ritual or symbolic contexts located within a multipurpose site.

Today, dark caves are recognized as ritual or symbolic spaces that are salient features in myth, cosmologies, beliefs, and world views. They are often used as ritual venues because of their powerful associations with the earth itself and with indwelling deities. Often described as liminal spaces, they are the conduits into the earth and passages to netherworlds. From a phenomenological perspective, archaeologists recognize their special physical properties as features of the cave context that deserve consideration. Because of their inherent power, caves may also become resources coopted by political or religious leaders. This Special Issue aims to add to the growing literature on caves as special contexts in human thought and action. We hope that it will aid directly in advancing archaeological studies of ritual cave use that seek to understand the symbolism and meaning of caves as cultural constructs and recognize how these meanings were embedded in ritual practices.

We welcome case studies as well as regional or global comparative contributions, including ethnographic and ethnohistoric works, from all temporal periods. Themes may include the role of caves as venues for cultural expressions such as art or architectural elaborations, mythological places, or places of emergence or fertility. Topics may also include landscape approaches, boundary marking, territoriality, spatial analyses, the nature of artifact assemblages, the politics or political economy of cave rituals, rites of passage, relationships to the environment, ritual reconstructions, changes in ritual practice, pilgrimage, phenomenology, sensoriality, and cognition. Papers that focus on the relationships between caves and communities are strongly encouraged. Other topics will be considered on a case-by-case basis.

Dr. Holley Moyes
Dr. Sonia Machause-López
Guest Editors

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• caves
• archaeology
• speleoarchaeology
• ritual
• sacred space
• ritualization
• phenomenology
• sensoriality