In distant prehistory, along a branch of the Tigris River, a group of 
humans once lived in a community “on the threshold of the 
Neolithic Revolution.”  Near their open village at the river, Shanidar 
Cave, nestled in the Zagros Mountains, served as a base camp and 
also sheltered a burial site. Eleven thousand years later, 
archaeologists excavating the cave have discovered artifacts and 
skeletal remains that offer impressive evidence about this site’s 
prehistoric culture and, specifically, about the origins of agriculture 
and trade.

    The thirty-five bodies in twenty-six burials and the associated 
artifacts recovered from the cave’s upper levels are systematically 
catalogued and described in this well-illustrated and carefully 
explicated report. Associated with the burials was a special 
assemblage of funerary goods and human remains that provide 
new clues to the familial relationships and lifestyles of these people 
of the ninth millennium B.C.

    The only prehistoric cemetery site of its kind east of the 
Mediterranean area, Shanidar Cave adds a new geographic 
perspective to the study of the Proto-Neolithic era, which has been 
dominated by findings from the more extensively investigated 
Levant area to the west. It suggests unexpected patterns of trade 
and cultural interactions and offers clues to the role of the Zagros-
Taurus Mountains area in the prehistory of the Near East.

    This report has long been awaited by anthropologists who have 
followed the work of the Soleckis’ research team on the distant 
prehistory of Mesopotamia. The current inaccessibility of the region 
for further excavations (because of recent political developments in 
Iraq and surrounding countries) gives the material even greater 
value and significance.

_________________________________________________________

RALPH S. SOLECKI is professor emeritus at Columbia University 
in New York City and an adjunct professor in the Department of 
Anthropology at Texas A&M University in College Station. ROSE L. 
SOLECKI is a research associate at Columbia and an adjunct 
professor at Texas A&M. ANAGNOSTIS P. AGELARAKIS, a 
professor of anthropology, specializes in bio-archaeology and 
serves as director of the Environmental Studies Program at Adelphi 
University.


Number Seven: Texas A&M University Anthropology Series


What people are saying about this book


"This well illustrated and very readable book provides an exemplary 
account of the diversity and wealth of information that can be derived 
from the study of caves. Moreover, it is an excellent showcase for 
explaining what cave archaeology can tell us from a careful and 
systematic study of prehistoric artifacts. The more we learn about 
our distant ancestors, the more we ultimately know about ourselves."
—PRS, Fall 2006

". . . an exemplary account of the diversity and wealth of information 
that can be derived from the study of caves. Moreover, it is an 
excellent showcase for explaining what cave archaeology can tell us 
from a careful and systematic study of prehistoric artifacts."—NSS 
News, Summer 2005

". . . this volume is an invaluable source of data on the only proto- 
Neolithic cemetery thus far known from the Taurus-Zagros Arc. It is 
highly recommended to those directly involved in Epipaleolithic, 
proto-Neolithic, and ealy Neolithic research in southwest Asia and 
those involved in mortuary archaeology generally."—American 
Journal of Archaeology, April 2005