Bat guano (dung) was an improbable boom commodity around the turn of the last century. It was an important ingredient in fertilizer before artificial nitrogen fixation had been invented. Every “bat cave” became the center of a burst of mining activity, and Nevada’s Lovelock Cave was no exception. In their excavations, the miners encountered Native American artifacts, which they largely discarded in a heap outside the cave. Only when the artifacts started to hinder the operation did professional archaeologists become involved in excavating the cave properly. Unsurprisingly, the mining had…
