UK Archaeologists Protect and Restore Precious Artifacts Found in Mammoth Cave
During Extensive Underground Renovations
By Gail Hairston
Published: May 27, 2016
University of Kentucky News
http://uknow.uky.edu/content/uk-archaeologists-protect-and-restore-precious-artifacts-found-mammoth-cave-during-extensive
LEXINGTON, Ky. (May 27, 2016) — George Crothers, a University of Kentucky
expert in prehistoric archaeology, has spent the better part of 30 years in the
shadow-draped, surreal underworld of Kentucky’s Mammoth Cave system, searching
for prehistoric as well as historic treasures of humanity’s adventures
underground.
Although it’s one of those never-quite-finished projects — there are hundreds
of miles of underground labyrinths and chambers, after all — the UK associate
professor of anthropology in the College of Arts and Sciences said much of his
work and an extensive trail reconstruction project has been completed, in time
for this year’s celebrations marking Mammoth Cave National Park’s 75th
anniversary, America's National Park Service’s 100th anniversary, and the
bicentennial of the beginning of guided tours in “the Monarch of Caves” in
1816. The park was designated a World Heritage site in 1981.
Recognizing his expertise as well as his familiarity with the caves, Crothers
and Steve Ahler, director of UK’s Program for Archaeological Research, were
invited two years ago to take part in the National Park Service’s ambitious
$5.5 million renovation, refurbishment and preservation program of cave trails
— the largest in-cave construction project Mammoth Cave has seen since it
became a national park.
“The project has been about preservation as much as renovation,” said Crothers,
who is also director of UK’s William S. Webb Museum of Anthropology.
In 2014, a year before the National Park System’s trail reconstruction began,
Crothers and a UK support team of staff and students surveyed the anticipated
construction area in search of historic and prehistoric materials scattered in
passageways and buried along the trails. These surveys would eventually guide
the construction crews away from sensitive areas.
Crothers was also assigned to conserve and preserve the 200-year-old log pipes
and wooden leaching vats that make up the cave’s abandoned saltpeter mining
apparatus. The old mining equipment his team found and treated remain in situ,
where they were originally installed in 1809 to process cave sediments, rich in
nitrates used in the manufacture of gunpowder.
The National Park System’s Mammoth Cave Trail Project has turned two miles of
packed-dirt and gravel-and-dirt trails — many marking traces originally blazed
by prehistoric miners as much as 5,000 years ago — into wide, level byways of
pavers and concrete. The now completed project greatly improves visitor safety
and accessibility, while reducing the damaging contaminants raised by thousands
of visitors’ steps. In some off-trail locations deep inside the caves, park
officials find as much as two inches of dust, hair, lint, bits of tobacco,
threads and other foreign substances carried into the cave by humans. That sort
of lightweight material never has a chance to disperse in the windless
environment below ground.
While workmen pushed handcarts and wielded hand tools to rebuild the trails —
no heavy machinery was allowed underground — Crothers and his team worked
alongside, seeking rare and priceless prehistoric and historic artifacts
preserved by the cave’s climate. Often the relatively slight disturbance of
soil — in depths ranging from as little as three inches to as much as two feet
— uncovered precious, long-lost artifacts
“It was the responsibility of UK archaeologists to monitor the digging and
recover any historic or prehistoric artifacts that the construction work might
uncover,” said Crothers, who helped oversee much of the work along the two-mile
Historic Tour trail.
One of the most fascinating sites along the historic trail, the saltpeter
mining operation was first established in the 1790s to enable the manufacture
of black gunpowder, a precious, rare commodity to the pioneers on the far
western edge of the American frontier. Huge wooden pipes and vats were hewn
from the surrounding forest in 1809 for an expanded mining operation that would
provide saltpeter to the American military as the War of 1812 approached. The
end of the wars on American soil by 1815, however, caused the demand and the
price for Kentucky saltpeter to plummet, and brought an abrupt end to the
commercial mining of caves.
“We felt incredibly privileged to return to the caves and continue the process
of preserving that unique site,” Crothers said. “Naturally decomposing items,
like wood, animal hides and cloth, simply don’t deteriorate as much in the
constant temperatures and humidity of a deep cave. However, with increasing
human traffic we found some artifacts were now threatened.”
A treasure trove of more than 200 historical artifacts, some as much as 200
years old, have been recovered, documented and preserved; most of those objects
were restored for public view in situ along the public Historic Tour trail. To
preserve the items, researchers used a solution of borax salts to treat the
huge wooden pipes, pumps and leaching vats. The borax salts will repel bugs and
decay for decades with no harmful residue.
Although Crothers estimates that 80 to 90 percent of the 200-year-old saltpeter
mining equipment and fixtures are still inside the caves, not all of them can
be found where the centuries-dead miners left them.
“When they started building public trails about 150 years ago, instead of
chopping down more trees in the surrounding woodlands, they used what wood they
found at hand, inside the cave. They used that perfectly seasoned wood from the
mining operation to make handrails, benches and other amenities for guests.
Now, we have only one damaged pump left in the cave, but it will still give
visitors a sense of the importance of Mammoth Cave to the prehistoric natives,
to the American frontier, and to us today, ” Crothers said.
Crothers and his team took more than 3,000 photographs and countless drawings
to record their work. Some of those images may be available for public view
later this year. With the anniversary celebrations planned this summer, two
miles of extensively refurbished underground trails plus more than 200 restored
ancient and historical artifacts will allow even experienced visitors “to see
the caves in new and exciting ways,” said Crothers.
The National Park Service cares for special places saved by the American people
so that all may experience our heritage, and invites you to "Find Your Park"
throughout the National Park Service Centennial in 2016. Visit any of the 411
areas in the National Park Service across the nation, or online at www.nps.gov .
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