Recording the section (walls of the excavation). Photo: Graeme Barker
Excavations underway by Jess Twyman and Jeghir Khalil. Photo: Graeme Barker
​
The project is led by Professor Graeme Barker (University of Cambridge), with Dr Tim Reynolds (Birkbeck, University of London) directing the excavations, Professor Chris Hunt (Liverpool John Moores University) the palaeoenvironmental and palaeoecological studies, and Dr Emma Pomeroy (University of Cambridge) the Neanderthal and modern human osteoarchaeological studies.
Professional excavation expertise has been provided by the Canterbury Archaeological Trust, and a team of specialists, postdoctoral researchers and PhD students are working to shed new light on the lives and deaths of the Neanderthals and modern humans who lived at Shanidar Cave. You can find out more about the team here.
​
​
Our aims
The project aims to understand help us understand how Neanderthals in south-west Asia coped with climate change compared with modern humans (Homo sapiens) who lived in the cave after the Neanderthals from around 45,000 years ago.
A major puzzle in palaeoanthropology (the study of ancient human relatives) is why Neanderthals went extinct approximately 40,000 years ago after surviving hundreds of thousands of years, while modern humans survived through to the present day. One idea is that Neanderthals were less adaptable than modern humans.
Archaeological theory and methods have come a long way since Ralph Solecki’s excavations, and so the new project aimed to apply the full range of cutting-edge archaeological and scientific methods to give more precise dates for when modern humans and Neanderthals used the cave, establish a more detailed record of how environmental conditions fluctuated over time, and understand better how Neanderthals and modern humans lived in the cave and its surroundings.
Excavations and recording the remains of the Shanidar Z Neanderthal in Solecki's deep sounding. Photo: Graeme Barker
​
The team have achieved this by re-opening Ralph Solecki’s original trench, so far down to about 10 metres below the surface, and undertaking small, highly-detailed excavations all the way down the trench walls to record the sequence of archaeological layers and collect samples to analyse pollen, soil chemistry and structure, ancient DNA, animal bones, snail shell, charcoal, stone tools, and other artefacts.
​
Neanderthal ways of life and death
​
An unexpected but exciting bonus was the discovery of new Neanderthal remains. This led to the current phase of the project, funded by the John Templeton Foundation, that is focused on the conservation and analysis of the Shanidar Z Neanderthal remains recovered in 2018 and 2019. This phase of the project seeks to combine cutting edge archaeological analyses of the new Neanderthal remains, new excavations and new research on the Neanderthal remains found by Solecki's team to shed new light on how the Neanderthals at Shanidar Cave treated their dead, whether this involved funerary rituals and the re-use of special places in the landscape to bury the dead.
Funerary rites are part of the complex symbolic behaviour considered a hallmark of our humanity: all modern cultures practice these rituals and often dedicate special places to the dead. Whether Neanderthals, our closest evolutionary relatives, behaved like us towards their dead is very controversial, but has important implications for understanding the evolutionary origins of complex symbolic behaviour, compassion and sentiment.
Above right: Photo of a hollyhock growing near Shanidar Cave taken by Ralph Solecki. Along with pollen specialist Arlette Leroi-Gourhan, Solecki controversially argued that the Shanidar 4 Neanderthal was intentionally buried on a bed of flowers including hollyhocks, based on pollen clusters around the bones.
Series 1.7 Photographs and Slides 1950– 2017, Box 56, Folder ‘Shanidar Photographs (Some Color), circa 1951-1960’, Ralph S. and Rose L. Solecki papers, National Anthropological Archives, Smithsonian Institution. Image digitized by Kayla Kubehl.
​
The controversy partly results from the fact archaeologists have to rely heavily on ‘re-reading’ old archaeological excavations, as new substantial and articulated Neanderthal remains are exceptionally rare finds. Our discoveries at Shanidar Cave offer a unique opportunity to significantly advance the debate. We aim to document whether there is evidence for treatment of the dead, e.g. intentional burial in a cut ‘grave’ or the deposition of flowers/plant materials with the body (controversially argued by Solecki for one of the Shanidar Cave Neanderthals found directly beside the new remains), and whether they might have returned multiple times to the same exact spot to deposit their dead.
​
Find out more about our latest research.
​
​
Funding
Current work at Shanidar Cave is funded by John Templeton Foundation (awarded to Emma Pomeroy and Graeme Barker).
​
The Shanidar Cave Project also gratefully acknowledges funding from:
-
British Academy (Tim Reynolds; Chris Hunt; Emma Pomeroy; Lucy Farr)
​
-
British Institute for the Study of Iraq (Graeme Barker)
-
D.M. McDonald Grants and Awards Committee, University of Cambridge (Graeme Barker; Emma Pomeroy)
-
Leverhulme Trust, Research Project Grant-2013-105 (Graeme Barker)​
-
Natural Environment Research Council, University of Cambridge Doctoral Training Programme (Emily Tilby)
​
-
Rust Family Foundation (Graeme Barker)
​
-
Society of Antiquaries (Graeme Barker)
​
-
Wenner-Gren Foundation for Anthropological Research (Emma Pomeroy, Graeme Barker).
​
In addition, OSL dating and further 14C dating has been supported by the European Research Council under the European Union’s Seventh Framework Programme (FP7/2007–2013)/ERC grant agreement number 324139 ‘PalaeoChron’ awarded to Tom Higham (Research Laboratory for Archaeology and the History of Art, Oxford University).
​
Find out more about the Shanidar Cave Project
​
Find out more about the Project's discoveries, including what the climate was like when Neanderthals and modern humans used the cave, and the kinds of evidence they left behind
​
Meet the archaeologists, anthropologists and scientists bringing their expertise to help us understand life at Shanidar Cave tens of thousands of years ago
Publications, media and resources​
​
Find our scientific and popular publications here, plus other resources about Shanidar Cave
Return to an iconic site
​
​
After 50 years with no excavations taking place at the Cave, in 2011, the Kurdish Regional Government approached Professor Graeme Barker, then head of the Department of Archaeology at the University of Cambridge, to undertake new excavations at the cave, and the Shanidar Cave Project was established.
The project is a collaboration between the University of Cambridge and the Kurdistan General Directorate of Antiquities (General Director: Kaify Mustafa Ali) and the Directorate of Antiquities, Soran Province (Director: Abdulwahab Soleiman).