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A RECENTLY DISCOVERED CACHE CAVE IN THE BACKCOUNTRY OF
SANTA BARBARA COUNTY, CALIFORNIA

STEPHEN BRYNE
ICF, LOS ANGELES

DEVLIN GANDY
LOS PADRES NATIONAL FOREST PARTNERS IN PRESERVATION

DAVID W. ROBINSON
UNIVERSITY OF CENTRAL LANCASHIRE

JOHN R. JOHNSON
SANTA BARBARA MUSEUM OF NATURAL HISTORY

In February 2015, a cache cave was discovered in the remote backcountry of Santa Barbara County. An
investigation of the cache was carried out by the authors. Three baskets, a cave stick, and cordage were
identified from the cache, which was mapped using 3D scanning and photogrammetry. A decorated storage
basket appears to be the largest known from the Chumash area. The implications of this cache, and its
relationship to other nearby caches and rock art sites, are discussed.

Cache caves are a poorly understood archaeological phenomena. This is largely due to a long
tradition since the latter half of the nineteenth century of pot-hunting, and looting, or simply collecting by
non-professionals of the contents of caches found in the areas such as the Santa Barbara backcountry.
Dozens, if not hundreds, of such sites have had their contents removed with little or even no documentation
of the arrangement of the artifacts. Equally, many of the finds have long since disappeared so that we will
never know the extent of prehistoric caching. However, recent years have seen something of a renaissance
in the study of Chumash cache caves. This includes the acquisition of artifacts by museums from
responsible collectors, new techniques of documentation, and, as discussed in this paper, new discoveries.
In February 2015, the primary author, Stephen Bryne, discovered a cache cave in the backcountry
of Santa Barbara County. This cache has subsequently become known as the Bryne Cache. The cache
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included three baskets placed upon a stacked-rock platform, and a large “cave stick” propped against the
cave’s apron—jutting towards the cache. The largest basket of the cache measured some 73 cm in diameter,
and represents the largest Chumash basket presently known. A state site form was completed (Bryne and
Degner 2015) and this site received a trinomial (CA-SBA-4075) from the Central Coast Information Center.
In October 2015, a team was assembled to record and recover the cache in partnership with the Los
Padres National Forest Service and Santa Barbara Museum of Natural History. The team members included:
John Johnson and Katherine Bradford of the Santa Barbara Museum of Natural History, David Robinson
of the University of Central Lancashire, Carol Bury and Rick Bury of the American Rock Art Research
Association, Stephen Bryne of ICF, Joel Degner of Leidos, Inc., and Devlin Gandy and Joshua Roth, of
Los Padres National Forest, Partners in Preservation. The team spent two days (October 25-26, 2015)
recording and recovering the assemblage, which is presently curated at the Santa Barbara Museum of
Natural History under a curation agreement with the Los Padres National Forest (I.P. B6326.1).

CACHE CAVES
Traditionally, it is extremely rare to find organic perishable objects associated with archaeological
sites. While the coastal and island sites of the Chumash have provided many artifacts of stone, bone, and

SCA Proceedings, Volume 30 (2016) Bryne, Gandy, Robinson, and Johnson p. 213