Nature Conservancy Magazine: Summer 2009

Go Deeper

The Nature Conservancy in Tennessee
The Conservancy has protected more than 270,000 acres in Tennessee.

Working as a cave biologist for The Nature Conservancy in Tennessee, Cory Holliday spends most of his days tracking down rare things such as hidden caverns and dwindling populations of endangered Indiana bats.

But even Holliday was surprised the day he discovered a rare piece of rock art while surveying a new 4,200-acre Conservancy property for bat caves. “On first impression, I thought it was something a kid had painted on the rock,” says Holliday. “I don’t know anything about archaeology, so I assumed it was a fake.”

The painting turned out to be 1,000 years old, from a prehistoric Mississippian culture. “We invited a local expert, Jan Simek, a professor of anthropology at the University of Tennessee, to examine the painting,” says Holliday. “He confirmed that it was real.”

The image on the rock is a humanlike figure that is typical of the period, according to Simek. “Its hands kind of look like crayfish claws,” says Holliday. “And it’s got antennae or something like antlers on its head.” Simek chipped off a tiny sample of the pigment and ran an analysis at his lab. He says the painting is unusual in that it is black. Nearly every other open-air painting in the Southeast from the same era is made from red clay.

“We thought it was really important to protect this property because it is right between two caves where Indiana bats hibernate,” says Holliday.

“It would be great if we could protect more of this habitat.”

— Curtis Runyan