SHANIDAR CAVE — SOLECKI 395 



observation was corroborated by the geologists of the Iraq Petroleum 

 Co., who had not noted any glacial indications in their field explora- 

 tions.^ Traces of glaciers have been observed in the Anatolian Moun- 

 tains by de Morgan (1925, p. 99). A more detailed report on glacial 

 evidences on the Anatolian plateau was made more recently by Ering, 

 (1949), who noted existing glaciers in the mountains of northeast 

 Anatolia. Flint (1948, pp. 362-363) presents data to show that the 

 mountain areas of western Persia as well as the Anatolian Mountains 

 were glaciated. 



HISTORY OF THE PALEOLITHIC ARCHEOLOGY OF IRAQ 



The archeology of the Old Stone Age of Iraq is better known in the 

 steppe and mountain areas than in the desert areas or in the region 

 south of a line below Kirkuk. Aside from a few surface finds in the 

 western desert of Iraq and some west of Kerbala, a holy city south 

 of Bagdad, no data have been recovered in the latter area. This is 

 due mainly to the fact that this area has not been explored yet for 

 Paleolithic remains — a truism that holds for a large area of the Near 

 East. The principal investigator of the western desert regions of 

 Iraq is Dr. Henry Field, who collected from many surface sites on 

 the desert plateau west of Bagdad. These collections were made by 

 Field (1952a, pp. 136-139) on motor trips from 1925 to 1928, in 1934, 

 and 1950. The artifacts recovered by Field on his earlier motor trips 

 were studied by Dorothy Garrod, but the work has not yet been pub- 

 lished (Field, op. cit., p. 139, footnote 41). In the southwest angle 

 of Iraq on Jebel Anazeh, Field (1952b) found "flint stone implements 

 of Middle and Upper Paleolithic types." He also found artifacts at 

 Wadi Hauran, a long valley near Eutba in the same region. The 

 locus of a number of finds of Old Stone Age material is a large de- 

 pression (Qaara) about 20 miles north and east of Rutba (Field, 1951, 

 p. 89). In presumably the same area M. Rene Wetzel found flints 

 which appear to be of archaic Neolithic type (Fleisch, 1952, pp. 

 214-216). 



There are in the collections of the Iraq Museum some surface finds 

 of Paleolithic-appearing flints recovered on desert landing grounds 

 of western Iraq. The finds were made by Squadron Leader G. S. M. 

 Insall (now Group Captain, V. C, M. C, retired) of the Royal Air 

 Force in 1927. The specimens were found on Landing Grounds 5 



' From Iraq comes Information that Dr. Herbert E. Wright, Jr., with the 1954- 

 19.55 Oriental Institute expedition in the Near East, discovered evidences of 

 glaciers in northern Iraq which had flowed down to 5,000 feet elevation. The 

 relation of gravel terraces of glacial origin to some archeological sites were to 

 be studied. (Released by permission of Dr. Robert B. Braidwood in a personal 

 communication dated February 9, 1955.) 



