Floods may have damaged 800-year-old Native American cave art in Clarksville

Centuries-old Native American cave art may have been damaged by recent flooding at a state park in Clarksville.

After heavy rains caused flooding across the northwestern portion of the Volunteer State, officials at Dunbar Cave State Park are still trying to assess its impacts on the 800-year-old Mississippian charcoal drawings in one of the cave’s inner chambers.

The park announced earlier this week that floodwaters had “completely submerged” the cave art, something park manager David Britton said had “never happened before.” Britton said his team is consulting with archeologists about potential impacts to the cave drawings, but he’s bracing for the worst.

“We do know that there is a light coating of mud on top of it, but this is 800 year old charcoal,” Britton said. “So, you know, anything can be detrimental to it.”

He noted that this flooding was worse in Dunbar Cave than it had been during previous periods of heavy rainfall, including when deadly flooding damaged homes and businesses across the Clarksville area in 2010. He said, moving forward, he wants to figure out why recent floods seem to be more detrimental to the cave.

“It’s a cave. It’s going to flood periodically, and it always has – but in ways that were manageable,” Britton said. “So what changed … that is allowing the cave to take in more water than it can put out? We kind of have to look to the watershed, the areas where the groundwater is replenished, north of Dunbar Cave State Park. And that’s going to take research.”

Tennessee is home to some of the oldest cave art in the U.S., including some that’s more than 6,000 years old on the Cumberland Plateau.

Britton said his team is working to help preserve the art so that Native Americans and other park guests continue to visit the heritage site, which he said is the only dark zone cave art that’s publicly accessible in the country.

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Floodwaters lifted and moved a boardwalk towards the front of Dunbar Cave in addition to potentially damaging the cave art there.

“As Tennessee State Park Rangers, we are entrusted and tasked with protecting, preserving, sharing [and] interpreting these most important places in the state,” he said. “The cave art in Dunbar Cave has got the added dimension that this is somebody else’s cultural heritage … and we want to make good on that promise to them, that we are to be the right kind of stewards to take care of this artwork in the long run.”

The high waters also managed to unmoor the catwalk built in front of the artwork, and Britton said repairs to infrastructure like that could impact the park’s cave tour season.

Britton expects to make announcements regarding the state of the cave art and potential impacts to the park’s cave tour season in the coming days.