Frightful Cave (Spanish: Cueva Espantosa) is a pre-Columbian archaeological site located in the state of Coahuila in northern Mexico.

It was occupied on several occasions during the Archaic period by what seem to be nomadic hunter-gatherer groups and is an important source of archaeological evidence concerning the ancient desert tradition of the Central Mexican highlands.

The area is “largely too arid and rainfall is too undependable for cultivation,"[2] although edible plants can be found and the mountain ranges are covered in pine and oak forest.

The argument for changing migration based on new patterns of subsistence is a strong one, as groups in the desert tradition are widely believed to have been nomads who would have settled in various areas as local wild foodstuffs became available.

Shafer has theorized that Frightful Cave may have been part of a seasonal round made by these hunter-gatherer groups, which, along with other caves in the area, would have been inhabited from spring through early summer, “when foods such as flowers, bulbs, fruits and plums were available.”[18] Similarly, Taylor posits water accessibility to be the determining factor of such groups’ migratory patterns,[17] meaning shifts thereof may also be accounted for by increasing aridity.