Salts Cave
name: label: Collection Creator
content: Watson, Patty Jo, 1932-
setName: label: See more items in
content: Patty Jo Watson papers
label: See more items in
content: Patty Jo Watson papers / Series 1: Research / 1.3: The United States / The Southeast / Mammoth Cave National Park
unitdate: label: Date
content: 1962-1980
label: Date
content: 1990
dataSource: label: Archival Repository
content: National Anthropological Archives
objectType: label: Type
content: Archival materials
scopecontent: label: Scope and Contents
content: Watson's work in Salts Cave began when she became the director of the Cave Research Foundation Archeological Project in 1963. Salts Cave lies within Mammoth Cave National Park in the Flint Ridge Cave system which was, at the time, considered to be a separate system from the Mammoth Cave system (though a passage linking the two has since been discovered). The initial goals of the project were to date the materials discovered in Salts Cave and to determine how deeply into the cave prehistoric peoples had explored, but as work progressed, the project grew to encompass archaeobotanical study of the paleofecal and plant remains discovered. Watson published her findings in Patty Jo Watson, The Prehistory of Salts Cave, Kentucky  (Springfield: Illinois State Museum, 1969) and Patty Jo Watson, ed., Archeology of the Mammoth Cave Area (New York: Academic Press, 1974). This section includes papers and articles, correspondence, and grant proposals and reports.