Description:
A sample from a charcoal rock painting at the Arnold/Tainter Cave site (47Cr560) was radiocarbon dated, providing the first direct age determination for a pictograph in Wisconsin. The sample was pretreated with HCl and NaOH before organic carbon was extracted using an oxygen plasma. The painting, of a creature resembling a caribou because of the orientation of the tines on its antlers, is of interest because caribou have not been found in southwestern Wisconsin since the end of the Pleistocene. However, the accelerator mass spectrometry (AMS) radiocarbon age determination of 1260±60 BP is inconsistent with such a species identification. Another sample—from a painting of a deer—was also taken but did not yield enough carbon for radiocarbon measurement.
Carr and Boszhardt (2010), upon the occasion of the designation of Silver Mound as a National Historic Landmark, presented a comprehensive discussion of the quarry and work site within a lithic technological system. Experimental and archaeological research on stone tools has also been important to the region (Boszhardt 2002; Boszhardt and Gundersen 2003; Boszhardt and McCarthy 1999) while Steelman et al. (2001) presented a methodology for extracting datable material from cave art. Subsistence research included both recovery and analysis of macro-and microfloral and faunal remains, as well as biochemical analyses of human bones, to directly examine past diets (Arzigian 2000; Bender et al. 1981; Emerson 1978Emerson, 1980Lippold 1971; Price and Kavanagh 1982; Theler 1981b; Tubbs and O’Gorman 2005; Waselkov 1978).
