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Lovelock Cave (NV-Ch-18) is a North American archaeological site previously known as Sunset Guano Cave, Horseshoe Cave, and Loud Site 18. The cave is about 150 feet (46 m) long and 35 feet (11 m) wide. Lovelock Cave is one of the most important classic sites of the Great Basin region because the conditions of the cave are conducive to the preservation of organic and inorganic material. The cave was placed on the National Register of Historic Places on May 24, 1984. It was the first major cave in the Great Basin to be excavated, and the Lovelock Cave people are part of the University of California Archaeological Community's Lovelock Cave Station. History The large rock shelter is north of modern-day Humboldt Sink. Lovelock Cave is in the Lake Lahontan region, next to the former lakebed of Lake Lahontan. It was formed by the lake's currents and wave action. It was first a rock shelter. Eventually an earthquake collapsed the overhang of the mouth. Lake Lahontan was a large Pleistocene pluvial lake that covered much of western Nevada. Due to drier Holocene climate the water elevation dropped and much smaller lakes remain such as Lake Humboldt, Pyramid Lake, and Carson Lake. The dry environment of the cave resulted in a wealth of well-preserved artifacts that provide a glimpse on how people lived in the area. Lovelock Cave was in use as early as 2580 BC but was not intensively inhabited until around 1000 BC. People occupied Lovelock Cave for over 4,000 years. The initial discoveries of artifacts and excavations, in the early 20th century, were not very well executed, which resulted in a loss of archaeological information. However more recent investigations were more careful and meticulous. A wealth of knowledge pertaining to life on the Great Basin has come from this important site because many unique artifacts have been successfully recovered. Earliest discovery of artifacts In 1911 two miners, David Pugh and James Hart, were hired to mine for bat guano from the cave to be used as fertilizer. They removed a layer of guano estimated to be 3 to 6 feet (0.91 to 1.83 m) deep and weighing about 250 tons. Heizer and Napton's review of the excavation states “[the guano] was dug up from the upper cave deposits, screened on the hillside outside the cave, and shipped to a fertilizer company in San Francisco.” Miners had dumped the top layers of Lovelock into a heap outside of the cave. The miners were aware of the artifacts but only the most interesting specimens were saved. The first exploration was unsystematic and the loss of material and damage to the site strata was considerable in large portions of the cave. L.L. Loud of the Anthropology Department at the University of California was contacted by the mining company when the refuse left by the ancient people proved so plentiful that fertilizer could no longer be collected. First archaeological investigation In the spring of 1912 A.L. Kroeber sent L. L. Loud, an employee of the Museum of Anthropology, University of California to recover any materials that remained from the guano mining of the previous year. Loud excavated Lovelock Cave for five months and reportedly collected roughly 10,000 material remains. The majority of the archaeological record was gathered from three areas: a dump outside the cave left by miners, lower level deposits from the northwest end of the cave, and undisturbed refuse along the outlying edges of the cave. Loud did not maintain a comprehensive report of the excavation so detailed information is not available. The method and procedure of archaeological excavations has improved over the years and Loud's excavation does not fit into the standards of today's practices. He labeled the individual dig locations as “lots” without establishing any grid system. Grid systems are used to determine origin and depth of archaeological record. Loud recorded 41 lots. Heizer and Napton tried to further detail Loud's findings but because Loud was not consistent with his methods of recording data their efforts were ineffective. Later excavations Twelve years after the first excavation Loud returned to Lovelock Cave with M.R. Harrington in the summer of 1924. The Museum of the American Indian, Heye Foundation, New York commissioned Harrington and Loud, who, assisted by local Paiute Indians, attempted to recover any materials left from previous investigations. They found leftover fragments that had been ignored by collectors in the east end and center of the cave. The team also dug to the base of the deposits in the west end. This excavation resulted in the discovery of the famous duck decoy cache. The American Museum of Natural History sponsored Nels Nelson to conduct a surface collection of Lovelock Cave in 1936. However, no archaeological material recovered was admitted to the museum's collection. Robert Heizer came to Lovelock Cave in 1949 to collect organic material for radiocarbon dating. He later returned in 1950 and 1965 with a field group to sift through the remains that the miners left behind in a slope in front of the cave and collect coprolites. In excavations with Lewis Napton during 1968 and 1969 disturbed human remains were discovered. The remains found were so scattered that a complete recovery was never possible. Human coprolites found at Lovelock Cave are instrumental in piecing together the cultures’ subsistence patterns, specifically the kinds of food the Indians were eating: primarily birds, fish and other fauna that lived near the lake, as well as vegetation which was collected and stored for winter months. Furthermore, because coprolites are organic material, they could be dated with the radiocarbon dating technique. Duck decoys The most renowned discovery at Lovelock Cave was a cache of eleven duck decoys M.R. Harrington and L.L. Loud found when they were digging for the Museum of the American Indian in 1924 in Pit 12, Lot 4. The cache included eight painted and feathered decoys and three unfinished decoys. Items found in the same pit consisted of feathers and two bundles of animal traps. The remarkable decoys were made from bundled tule, a long grass-like herb, covered in feathers and painted. The first attempt to date the decoys with radiocarbon dating techniques in 1969 was unsuccessful because the material got lost. Later samples could not be acquired without causing extensive damage to the decoys so they were not dated until the development of the Accelerator mass spectrometry (AMS) dating technique. Technological advances with AMS dating meant that much smaller, milligram-size, specimens from archaeological record were ample size for dating. Samples were retrieved from two duck decoys and A. J. T. Tull of the University of Arizona, Tucson conducted the dating of the specimens. In 1984 he reported the dates to Don D. Fowler. Duck Decoy 13/4513, Lovelock Cave was dated at 2,080 +/- 330 BP (c. 130 BC), and Duck Decoy 13/4512B was dated at 2,250 +/- 230BP (c. 300 BC). Prehistoric sl.... Discover the Abra Harrington popular books. Find the top 100 most popular Abra Harrington books.