HUMAN OCCUPATION OF CAVESThere are

HUMAN OCCUPATION OF CAVES
There are few aspects of the human experience that are such worldwide phenomena as
the use of caves and few natural features in the landscape that have so excited the
imagination (see also Folklore and Mythology). Cave use is an activity that spans the full
temporal range of Homo sapiens, extending over half a million years from the present.
Some finds hint at cave use by other members of the hominid family, though the context
and biological status of the early humans represented in some caves by their fossils or
artefacts is rarely unambiguous (see entries, Africa, South: Archaeological Caves and
Atapuerca Caves, Spain). It is interesting to note that while cave use is a behavioural trait
of many animals it does not appear to be one widely shared by humans’ closest relatives,
the other higher primates, though this may be because caves are not usually a feature of
their preferred habitats. If we wish to compare human cave use with similar behaviour by
other mammals we have to turn to the social carnivores, the wolves and hyaenas, both of
which regularly use caves. Bears can provide another point of comparison though their
use of caves is mainly as secure quarters for hibernation. Although the use of caves is not
a uniquely human trait, some aspects of that use certainly are.
The wide range of different activities undertaken in caves by humans over several
hundred thousand years fall broadly into two categories. Some activities may be
described, rather loosely, as economic. The most frequently encountered activity is
residence, either short or long term, and the word “troglodytes” or “cave-dwellers” from
the Greek troglodutes, is a common English-language term, often used in a derogatory
sense. Numerous examples exist of caves being used as workshops, often for “industrial”
activities that needed to be segregated from other aspects of everyday life, such as the
activities of the Roman bronze worker who established himself in Poole’s Cavern,
Buxton, England, or the small community of ropemakers who occupied the entrance to
the Peak Cavern, Derbyshire, England until the middle of the 20th century. A more recent
example is provided by the cave of Bedeilhac in the French Pyrenees which was used as
an aircraft factory during World War II. Caves have also been used for storage and their
use as repositories for rubbish is witnessed by the hundreds of prehistoric middens found
in the mouths of caves along the Atlantic coasts of Europe from Cantabrian Spain to
northern Scotland. The ancient Chinese used caves as sources of raw materials such as
minerals, water, and chemicals, and swiftlet nests, the essential ingredient of bird’s nest
soup, are still harvested along with bat guano fertilizer at Niah Cave in Sarawak (see
Organic Resources in Caves). It is some aspects of behaviour of this kind that humans
have in common with many other animals. Wolves and hyaenas live in caves and dispose
of their food debris there; elephants and antelopes have been reported entering caves in
search of minerals and water, and many small mammals cache food stores in caves.
It is the second broad aspect of cave use that is uniquely human, the use of caves for
ritual purposes. Two activities can be described under this heading, the use of caves as
theatres for ritual, usually evidenced by cave art (see Art in Caves) and/or the presence of
votive deposits, and the use of caves as burial vaults (see Burials in Caves). However, not
all human remains found in caves are the result of formal burial and the victims of
rockfalls can probably be classified along with the remains of bears that died in
hibernation, while some human fragments should probably be treated as the remains of
another cave-using carnivore’s meal. Formal burial is, of course, a form of ritual but not
all rituals carried out in caves involved human remains.
The distinction between economic and ritual behaviour may be partly false as it arises
from the application of a 21st-century rationalist perspective which may not be entirely
appropriate in other contexts. We know from ethnography, ethnohistory and everyday
experience that many aspects of economic behaviour have a ritual dimension, while ritual
behaviour often has an economic aspect.
The use to which a cave can be put depends on a number of factors of which the most
important are its size and shape. A single burial can be squeezed into a small, dark
crevice but residential activity requires space and light, while the more arcane of rituals
seek obscurity and concealment. In terms of their suitability for human use it is possible
to classify caves according to whether they are open (or day-lit) chambers which in some
cases are indistinguishable from rock shelters, or deep fissure caves, although both types
are often found as part of the same system. The former can be, and frequently are, used
for both economic and ritual activities, whereas deep caves are rarely used at all and then
only for ritual purposes. A third category consists of cavities formed within rockfalls (see
Talus Caves), although these have more in common with rock shelters than true caves
and are not discussed further.
Although open caves exhibit evidence for both economic and ritual use, this rarely
appears to have been simultaneous and at many caves it is possible to document a change
from one to the other. A frequently encountered change is from economic to ritual use,
although in some cases caves went through several cycles of change. For example, at St
Columba’s Cave on the west coast of Scotland, a period of late prehistoric residential and
industrial use preceded a phase of Early Christian ritual activity associated, tenuously,
with the eponymous saint, while in the following Norse period the cave became the scene
of industrial activity only to revert to being used as a burial ground in the 13th century. It
appears to be a worldwide phenomenon that open caves, initially used for economic
purposes, often become the scenes of ritual activity that may or may not include human
burial. The timing of this change is, of course, not synchronous in an absolute sense but
does seem to coincide with other, fundamental changes of an economic and social kind.
The most common example is the change from hunting and gathering to farming. The
view that formerly mobile hunters and gatherers, on adopting a more sedentary foodproducing
mode of subsistence, nevertheless retained proprietorial, emotional, and
ideological ties with the more tangible aspects of their former existence is persuasive. In
cases where people regarded as farmers are found engaged in the economic use of caves
they are often nomadic pastoralists engaged in long distance transhumance, the caves
serving as temporary shelters. Gypsies, travellers, and tinkers have habitually used caves
throughout Europe in recent centuries and might be advanced as an exception to this rule,
but these groups usually have more in common with hunter-gatherers or pastoralists than
they have with sedentary farmers, and they often maintain a degree of mobility in their
lives in which natural shelters could be seen as a convenient alternative to frail temporary
structures (see Figure 1). The common factor that the economic use of caves by humans
has is mobility. When people decide to adopt a sedentary mode of existence they usually
come out of their caves and the use of these natural shelters may be given over to ritual.
An exception to this rule is provided by the conversion of caves into houses with
formally built facades, a phenomenon still widely found throughout southern Europe but
also persisting into the early 20th century in artificial caves in the English Midlands.
Deep caves—without natural light, difficult to access, damp, and often poorly
ventilated—have rarely been the scene of economic activities, except in extreme
circumstances of social unrest when they could offer a measure of security and the use as
caves as places of refuge in times of conflict is widely reported. However, a cave system
could as often as not turn out to be a trap as in the case of the massacre, by a force of
MacLeods, of 195 members of Clan MacDonald in St Francis’ Cave on the Hebridean
island of Eigg in 1577 and the trapping of thousands of Japanese soldiers by US Marines
in the Biak Caves, Irian Jaya in 1944.
Generally, the use of deep caves is confined to ritual activity. Reports of the
penetration of truly deep caves before the development of modern speleology are rare but
examples are known from the United States, Central America, southwest Europe (e.g.
Ardèche Caves, Vezère Caves), and the Urals. Many caves are comprised of both “open”
and “deep” components, and there are numerous archaeological examples of economic
activity having taken place in cave entrances while the deeper zones bear witness to ritual activity,
represented by art or votive deposits.
The importance of adopting a contextual approach to the study of human cave use
applies at many scales of analysis, not just in the case of the juxtaposition of different
activities. For example, our appreciation of the wonders of cave art is greatly enhanced
by attempts to reconstruct the circumstances under which these images may have been
viewed originally, taking account of light, shade, and viewpoint and acknowledging a
potential role for other sensory stimuli such as sound. Taking a somewhat broader view,
in the realm of ritual behaviour caves are not the only natural features imbued with
special significance and many societies attribute ideological meaning to a range of natural
features such as rocks, trees, streams, waterfalls, and chasms. Ritual cave use needs to be
considered within this wider context if it is to be understood.
Similarly, the economic use of caves did not take place within a vacuum and it is
unlikely that there has ever existed a society of exclusively cave dwellers. On the
contrary, where we have any evidence, c

Результаты (русский) 3:

ПРАВАМ оккупации пещеры
существует несколько аспектов человеческого опыта, во всем мире явлений, как
использования пещер и несколько природных особенностей ландшафта, которые очень довольны тем в
воображение (см. также фольклора и мифологии). Пещера использовать - это деятельность, которая охватывает в полным
временной диапазон только homo, продление более полутора млн. лет с нынешних.