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BOULDER, COLORADO—Sites known as platform cave caches offer evidence that the Apache arrived in the southern mountains of Arizona and New Mexico more than 200 years earlier than previously thought, according to Jeni Seymour of the University of Colorado Museum. Platform cave caches are small platforms constructed to store goods, such as pottery, baskets, ceremonial items, and food, for later use within a remote rock shelter. Sometimes the cache was hidden with rocks, grasses, or other cave features. Later on, the caches were used to hide weapons and ammunition. Nineteenth-century accounts mention the practice of keeping goods in caves, but this is the first time that evidence of the custom has been found.
