They have been sites of art, of ceremony, of burial, of refuge, and of exploration in virtually every culture that has had access to caves.

The specific meanings assigned to caves vary enormously between cultures, but the impulse to enter and to mark caves — to go inside and to leave traces of the going — is remarkably consistent across human history.

In the American Southwest, which is geographically adjacent to the Colorado Rockies and culturally connected to the region over long periods of prehistory, caves and rock shelters have been sites of ceremony, art, and symbolic activity from early prehistory through the historical period.

The specific meanings associated with these spaces in Southwestern Indigenous cosmologies vary, but they frequently involve concepts of emergence, transition between worlds, and connection between the human community and broader cosmic forces.