The Hidden Valley Rockshelter ( 44-BA-31) is a significant archaeological site located near the community of Warm Springs in Bath County, Virginia, United States. A large

rockshelter A rock shelter (also rockhouse, crepuscular cave, bluff shelter, or abri) is a shallow cave-like opening at the base of a bluff or cliff. In contrast to solutional caves (karst), which are often many miles long, rock shelters are almost alway ...

located near the Jackson River, it has been occupied by humans for thousands of years, and it has been named a historic site.

Geography

Hidden Valley is a tall formation with a nearly vertical rear wall; trees grow below the roof at the shelter's edge. The stone is

Oriskany sandstone The Oriskany Sandstone is a Middle Devonian age unit of sedimentary rock found in eastern North America. The type locality of the unit is located at Oriskany Falls in New York. The Oriskany Sandstone extends throughout much of the Appalachi ...

, located in an outcrop near the western side of the Jackson River, but it is generally safe from flooding due to its location approximately higher than the river's normal surface. Measuring approximately from end to end, and from the drip line to the base of the rear wall, the shelter is irregular in its shape; vertical striations and deep holes are found on the rear wall.Loth, Calder, ed. ''The Virginia Landmarks Register''. 4th ed. Charlottesville and London: U of Virginia P, 1999, 58.

Human presence

Hidden Valley is known to have been occupied for the last several thousand years. The site's good

stratigraphy Stratigraphy is a branch of geology concerned with the study of rock (geology), rock layers (Stratum, strata) and layering (stratification). It is primarily used in the study of sedimentary rock, sedimentary and layered volcanic rocks. Stratigrap ...

has enabled archaeologists to demonstrate its occupation since the

Late Archaic Late may refer to: * LATE, an acronym which could stand for: ** Limbic-predominant age-related TDP-43 encephalopathy, a proposed form of dementia ** Local-authority trading enterprise, a New Zealand business law ** Local average treatment effect, ...

, three millennia before Christ, while

Late Woodland In the classification of archaeological cultures of North America, the Woodland period of North American pre-Columbian cultures spanned a period from roughly 1000 BCE to European contact in the eastern part of North America, with some archaeologi ...

cultural materials are also present. It remained in use into the historic period, as evidence of interactions between Indians and whites is likewise present. However, the site's significance depends on the wide variety of cultural materials dating between these extremes: simple artifacts such as common projectile points and potsherds are found at all locations in the

midden A midden (also kitchen midden or shell heap) is an old dump for domestic waste which may consist of animal bone, human excrement, botanical material, mollusc shells, potsherds, lithics (especially debitage), and other artifacts and ecofact ...

, and the continuity of the deposits demonstrates gradual transitions in ceramic and lithic technology from generation to generation of the shelter's occupants. Moreover, the shelter is significant for more than just its pottery and

stone tool A stone tool is, in the most general sense, any tool made either partially or entirely out of stone. Although stone tool-dependent societies and cultures still exist today, most stone tools are associated with prehistoric (particularly Stone Ag ...

s: both faunal and floral materials are exceptionally well preserved at Hidden Valley, thus enabling scholars to trace the site's environment over the last several thousand years. Human remains have also been found at the site: one human burial, an infant less than a year old, was found with a pair of canine skulls, and the bones of another dog were found mixed with those of an adolescent human. The appearance of canine skeletons may be an indication of the shelter's ritual significance, as ritual burials of dogs are known from numerous Archaic sites;Claassen, Cheryl, and Mary Elizabeth Compton.
Rock Features of Western North Carolina
.

', ch. 14. N.p.: North Carolina Archaeological Council, 2011, 14-3. one such site, the

Carlston Annis Shell Mound The Carlston Annis Shell Mound (designated 15 BT 5) is a prominent archaeological site in the western part of the U.S. state of Kentucky. Located along the Green River in Butler County, this shell midden has been declared a historic site becau ...

in western Kentucky, produced the remains of nearly thirty intentionally buried dogs.Webb, William S. "The Carlson Annis Mound: Site 5 Butler County Kentucky". ''University of Kentucky Reports in Anthropology'' 7.4 (1950): 265-354: 272. Scholar Cheryl Claassen argues that dog-burial sites were considered places of renewal, a belief that persisted into the historic Cherokee.

Preservation

In mid-1986, the Hidden Valley Rock shelter was listed on the National Register of Historic Places because of its archaeological significance. It is one of twenty-one Bath County locations with this distinction, although none of the others are significant primarily on archaeological grounds.

Geography

Human presence

Preservation

References

Further reading