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Shanidar Cave is an archaeological site on Bradost Mountain, within the Zagros Mountains in the Erbil Governorate of Kurdistan Region in northern Iraq. Neanderthal remains were discovered here in 1953, including Shanidar 1, who survived several injuries, possibly due to care from others in his group, and Shanidar 4, the famed 'flower burial'. Until this discovery, Cro-Magnons, the earliest known H. sapiens in Europe, were the only individuals known for purposeful, ritualistic burials.
In archaeology and anthropology, the term excarnation refers to the practice of removing the flesh and organs of the dead before burial. Excarnation may be achieved through natural means, such as leaving a dead body exposed to the elements or for animals to scavenge; or by butchering the corpse by hand. Following excarnation, some societies retrieved the excarnated bones for burial. Excarnation has been practiced throughout the world for hundreds of thousands of years. The earliest archaeological evidence of excarnation is from the Awash River Valley in Ethiopia, 160,000 years ago. Examples of excarnation include "sky burials" in parts of Asia, the Zoroastrian "Tower of Silence", and Native American "tree burials". Excarnation is practiced for a variety of spiritual and practical reasons, including the Tibetian spiritual belief that excarnation is the most generous form of burial and the Comanche practical concern that in the winter the ground is too hard for an underground burial. Excarnation sites are identifiable in the archaeological record by a concentration of smaller bones, which would be the bones that would be the easiest to fall off the body, and that would not be noticed by practitioners of excarnation.
Blombos Cave is an archaeological site located in Blombos Private Nature Reserve, about 300 km east of Cape Town on the Southern Cape coastline, South Africa. The cave contains Middle Stone Age (MSA) deposits currently dated at between c. 100,000 and 70,000 years Before Present (BP), and a Late Stone Age sequence dated at between 2000 and 300 years BP. The cave site was first excavated in 1991 and field work has been conducted there on a regular basis since 1997, and is ongoing.
Gorham's Cave is a sea-level cave in the British overseas territory of Gibraltar. Though not a sea cave, it is often mistaken for one. Considered to be one of the last known habitations of the Neanderthals in Europe, the cave gives its name to the Gorham's Cave complex, which is a combination of four distinct caves of such importance that they are combined into a UNESCO World Heritage Site, the only one in Gibraltar. The three other caves are Vanguard Cave, Hyaena Cave, and Bennett's Cave.
Gatecliff Rockshelter (26NY301) is a major archaeological site in the Great Basin area of the western United States that provides remarkable stratigraphy; it has been called the "deepest archaeological rock shelter in the Americas". Located in Mill Canyon of the Toquima Range in the Monitor Valley of central Nevada, Gatecliff Rockshelter has an elevation of 7,750 feet (2,360 m). David Hurst Thomas discovered Gatecliff Rockshelter in 1970 and began excavations in 1971. Full scale excavations occurred at Gatecliff Rockshelter for about seven field seasons in which nearly 33 feet (10 m) of sediments were exposed for a well-defined stratigraphic sequence. The well-preserved artifacts and undisturbed sediments at Gatecliff Rockshelter provides data and information have been applied to a range of research topics. Based on the analysis of the artifacts at Gatecliff Rockshelter, it can be determined that it was most likely a short-term field camp throughout prehistory. The latest evidence for human usage at Gatecliff occurs between ca. 5500 B.P. to 1250 B.P.
St. Michael's Cave or Old St. Michael's Cave is the name given to a network of limestone caves located within the Upper Rock Nature Reserve in the British Overseas Territory of Gibraltar, at a height of over 300 metres (980 ft) above sea level. According to Alonso Hernández del Portillo, the first historian of Gibraltar, its name is derived from a similar grotto in Monte Gargano near the Sanctuary of Monte Sant'Angelo in Apulia, Italy, where the archangel Michael is said to have appeared.
Parc Cwm long cairn, also known as Parc le Breos burial chamber, is a partly restored Neolithic chambered tomb, identified in 1937 as a Severn-Cotswold type of chambered long barrow. The cromlech, a megalithic burial chamber, was built around 5850 years before present (BP), during the early Neolithic. It is about seven 1⁄2 miles (12 km) west south–west of Swansea, Wales, in what is now known as Coed y Parc Cwm at Parc le Breos, on the Gower Peninsula.
Mugharet el-Zuttiyeh is a prehistoric archaeological site in Upper Galilee, Israel. It is situated 800 m (2,600 ft) from the Nahal Amud outlet, approximately 30 m (98 ft) above the wadi bed. It was found to house a fossil today known as the "Galilee skull" or "The Yabrudian Man".
Wynfrid Lawrence Henry Duckworth was a British anatomist, and former Master of Jesus College, Cambridge. The Duckworth Laboratory at Cambridge University is named after him.
Gibraltar 2, also known as Devil's Tower Child, represented five skull fragments of a male Neanderthal child discovered in the British Overseas Territory of Gibraltar. The discovery of the fossils at the Devil's Tower Mousterian rock shelter was made by archaeologist Dorothy Garrod in 1926. It represented the second excavation of a Neanderthal skull in Gibraltar, after Gibraltar 1, the second Neanderthal skull ever found. In the early twenty-first century, Gibraltar 2 underwent reconstruction.
Fontbrégoua Cave is an archaeological site located in Provence, Southeastern France. It was used by humans in the fifth and fourth millennia BCE, in what is now known as the Early and Middle Neolithic. A temporary residential site, it was used by Neolithic agriculturalists as a storage area for their herds of goats and sheep, and also contained a number of bone depositions, containing the remains of domestic species, wild animals, and humans. The inclusion of the latter of these deposits led the archaeological team studying the site to propose that cannibalism had taken place at Fontbrégoua, although other archaeologists have instead suggested that they represent evidence of secondary burial.
Martin's Cave is a cave in the British Overseas Territory of Gibraltar. It opens on the eastern cliffs of the Rock of Gibraltar, below its summit at O'Hara's Battery. It is an ancient sea cave, though it is now located over 700 feet (210 m) above the shore of the Mediterranean Sea. It is only accessible because Martin's Path was constructed.
The Genista Caves are a series of caves located under Windmill Hill in the British Overseas Territory of Gibraltar. Fossils of various mammals and human remains were discovered here in the mid-1860s. The name of the caves is a play on words based on Captain Frederick Brome's name, who discovered them.
The Goat's Hair Twin Caves are in the British Overseas Territory of Gibraltar.
Judge's Cave is a cave in the British Overseas Territory of Gibraltar. Human remains dated to the late prehistoric period have been unearthed in the cave.
Pete's Paradise Cave is a cave in the British Overseas Territory of Gibraltar. Explored in the 1960s and 1970s by a team led by George Palao, four skeletons have been unearthed in the cave, two of which were female skeletons with crushed skulls.
Devil's Tower Cave is a cave in the British Overseas Territory of Gibraltar. Archaeologist Dorothy Garrod found a Neanderthal skull in the cave which, together with other evidence found in this cave, shows it was used as a rock shelter by the Neanderthals of Gibraltar.
The Neanderthals in Gibraltar were among the first to be discovered by modern scientists and have been among the most well studied of their species according to a number of extinction studies which emphasize regional differences, usually claiming the Iberian Peninsula partially acted as a “refuge” for the shrinking Neanderthal populations and the Gibraltar population of Neanderthals as having been one of many dwindling populations of archaic human populations, existing just until around 42,000 years ago. Many other Neanderthal populations went extinct around the same time.
Haua Fteah is a large karstic cave located in the Cyrenaica in northeastern Libya. This site has been of significance to research on African archaeological history and anatomically modern human prehistory because it was occupied during the Middle and Upper Paleolithic, the Mesolithic and the Neolithic. Evidence of modern human presence in the cave date back to 200,000 BP.
References
- This article uses freely licensed text generously shared by underground-gibraltar.com
- ↑ Genista Caves, Underground-Gibraltar.com, accessed 8 January 2013
- 1 2 Wynfrid Duckworth (1910). The journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute of Great Britain and Ireland. Royal Anthropological Institute of Great Britain and Ireland. p. 355. Retrieved 30 January 2013.
