The Skull of Shanidar IF 



By T. D. Stewart 



Head Curator of Anthropology 

 Smithsonian Institution 



[With 9 plates] 



When I restored the first adult Neanderthal skull from Shanidar 

 cave, northern Iraq, during the late months of 1957 (Stewart, 1958), 

 another skull of an adult, designated as "Shanidar II" (Solecki, 1957, 

 1960a and b), had already been worked on in the laboratory of the 

 Iraq Museum, Baghdad. The attention it had received from the lab- 

 oratory technicians had consisted of the careful removal of the earth 

 (it had been brought to Baghdad in a block of earth) and of the 

 consolidation of all surfaces and loose fragments by means of a plastic 

 cement. This procedure served to reveal the skull in the picturesque 

 condition in wdiich it was recovered ; that is, broken into many pieces, 

 flattened from side to side, the lower jaw still in articulation but with 

 the mouth somewhat agape, and the upper half of the spinal column 

 adherent to, and curving around, the base from pterygoids to occiput. 



All this is show^n in the three photographs, plates 1, 2, and plate 3, 

 figure 1, which were taken in 1957 by Antran Evan. Otherwise the 

 only records made earlier on this specimen are some radiographs of the 

 teeth taken in the Radiological Institute, Baghdad. These radio- 

 graphs will be considered in due course. 



Although I left Baghdad early in 1958 with the impression that 

 the skull of Shanidar II could not be restored, in the sense that the 

 first skull had been, eventually I decided that any restorational effort 

 must yield information of scientific value. Furthermore, I decided 

 that the information thus obtained would be more useful than simply 

 keeping the specimen in its original form for exhibition purposes. 

 Thus, when Dr. Solecki made plans for the Fourth Shanidar Expedi- 

 tion and applied to the National Science Foundation for a grant, 

 further work on the second skull was included in the schedule, along 

 with the recovery from the cave of the remaining postcranial bones 

 of the skeleton. 



* Reprinted, with minor changes, by permission from Sumer, vol. 17, 1961. 



521 



