Decorated snail shell in a cave in Iraq could be evidence of Paleolithic bling

June 20, 2017 8.56am EDT


Our excavations at Shanidar Cave in north-eastern Iraq have produced a tiny shell plaque which was made by the first modern people in the region. This little object seems to have been made to ornament something showy, suggesting a very modern enjoyment of a bit of bling – but it also shows unexpected complexity.

Shanidar Cave in the Zagros Mountains is an important Neanderthal site. It was there in the 1950s that Ralph Solecki, an anthropologist from the Smithsonian Institution, unearthed the remains of ten Neanderthals – eight adult and two infant, thought to be between 65,000 and 35,000-years-old.

Some were complete skeletons but others were only a few bones. He thought most had been purposely buried because of their completeness. One became famous as the “Shanidar flower burial” – after pollen analyst Arlette Leroi-Gourhan found clumps of pollen from plants with medicinal properties in samples taken close to the skeleton.

Since 2014 a joint UK-Kurdish team, led by Graeme Barker, Tim Reynolds and me, with members from Cambridge, Liverpool John Moores, Birkbeck, Queen’s Belfast and the Kurdish Antiquities Department, have been re-investigating the cave. We aim to clarify the sequence of deposits, work out the age of the Neanderthal remains, establish whether they were indeed buried and whether flowers were involved. During this work, our small but careful excavations have yielded large quantities of cultural debris as well as new Neanderthal remains.

More:
http://theconversation.com/decorated-snail-shell-in-a-cave-in-iraq-could-be-evidence-of-paleolithic-bling-79380