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Shanidar Cave: Northern Iraq's important Neanderthal site - a conversation with Graeme Barker
Mehiyar 0:00 Welcome to the Nahrein Network Podcast Series. Today we are with Professor Graeme Barker of Cambridge University Senior Research Fellow of the McDonald Institute for archaeological research fellow at the St. John's College, University of Cambridge, a fellow at the British Academy. How are you?
Graeme Barker 0:14 I'm fine. And I'm also, as I said, Disney professor of archaeology Emeritus, which is the main professorship and in some ways, it's one of the oldest in the in the UK.
Mehiyar 0:24 You're an archaeologist you've worked on in the Italian Bronze Age, Roman occupation of Libya, and Landscape Archaeology. But now you're looking at Iraq, and you're looking at a very important site in northern Iraq and Iraqi Kurdistan. Could you tell us a bit about that side?
Graeme Barker 0:37 It's a bit of background? First, I'm going to tell you, I started in Italian prehistory actually came to this colleagues and Johns to do classics change to archaeology. So I worked on Italian prehistory first, and I worked in Libya, worked in Jordan, worked in in Malaysia, in ceramic and rainforest. I suppose I'm best known for working on interdisciplinary projects that look at landscape change through time. So I've worked a lot with colleagues who are working on different periods of the past and with work on things like geography, geology, environmental approaches, because the one theme that's interested me is how do how do people shape environment? And how do environment shape people? And that interest? One reason I was attracted, and in the latter part of my career, I mean I've worked a lot on things like the origins of agriculture, and later questions have impacted people environment. More recently, I've been really interested in the whole questions of our own species and coming out of Africa. What kind of behaviors did we develop, that made us in the end of global species from an African species? Why, you know, able to move into tropical rainforests, deserts, cross oceans, and so on? So that was actually what took me to famous cave in Borneo, which was excavated in 1950s, and 60s. And so we went back to that. And then it took me to a cave in North Africa in Libya called half a tear, which was excavated by Cambridge archaeologist in the 1950s. And that's got a long, long sequence of 150,000 years of people living in the cave, and therefore what that told us about the long term relationships between people and climate. And from that, that then took us I was invited by the Kurdistan Regional Government to think about going back to re excavate, Shanidar cave, and which was also excavated in the 1950s. And I absolutely jumped at it, because it is one of the most famous archaeological sites in the world, from excavations by Professor Ralph selectie, of Columbia University in America. Between 1951 and 1960, he carried out a series of major excavations in the cave excavated a trench that was about 15 meters deep. And you got a long long sequence again, of occupation. But why the site is most is so well known is he found in the lower part of it a series of Neandertal skeletal remains, and I'm deliberately avoiding the use of the word burial, because he argued that some of these about 10 Neandertals men, women and children. And he argued that some of them had probably been killed in rueful rocks coming down from the roof of the cave. But others have been buried with formal Burial Rites and his findings and his arguments have been discussed specifically from Shanidar ever since. And they're part of a much bigger debate about how similar or different when he added towels to our own species, Homo sapiens. And therefore, in particular, did Neandertals bury their dead, which takes all sorts of connotations about do they think about death, like weed? Or do they have any sense of what was happening after death and so on. So, Shanidar cave has been at the heart of these debates about how similar or different when the added towels to modern humans ever since. And so, he also found out he didn't find fossils, but he found archaeology of modern humans above Neandertals. So again, in terms of the big, big debate about why did Neandertals eventually die out? And why are there no Neanderthals today? And why we're here and we're modern human, anatomically modern human Homo sapiens, big, big debates about wine. Yeah, the towels become extinct and our species at the same sort of time. It becomes the global species. Shanidar again because it is one of the few sites which has got a Neanderthal archaeology followed by modern human archaeology. So again, it's a really attractive to go back both. Look at these questions about how did Neanderthals live and die? And then also, what happened to Neanderthals? And the whole question of why did they disappear and our own species replaced them.
Mehiyar 5:26 You're working on it for about four years now.
Graeme Barker 5:28 I mean, the original invitation was about 2011. I came out a couple of times, and, you know, to discuss it with the antiquities directorate, and so on. We actually started in 2014. But we weren't able to really start excavations that we did survey around the site. And then we, we then came back again at the time of the ISIS attack in August 2014. So we weren't able to really start excavating the site until 2015. And we've been back a couple of times in 2015 2016. And once in 2017 months in 2018. When I applied a lot of questions about what Ralph Selec he found, and one of the reasons that I and this group of colleagues, particularly geographers, environmental scientists, went back to the cave, the cave in Borneo, which is critical for debates about modern humans expanding into Southeast Asia and Australia, and then to the cave in Libya. And now Shanidar is we've got huge range of archaeological science today, that wasn't available then. And so there are many questions about what Ralph he found. And so we wanted when we first went back, I mean, one of the key things is, at that time, the only method for dating these old sites was radiocarbon dating, dating things like charcoal and bone. And that method went back about 40,000 years. And, therefore was able to date about four or five meters down of this 1514 meter sequence, down to 40,000 years, he had a series of radiocarbon dates very early in the method. And beyond that, he just had a guest the ages by various ideas about how long the sediments might have accumulated. So it was pure guesswork. And the Neandertals, therefore, were not when they weren't dated. I mean, they were very loosely dated to sort of, I mean, the latest ones were kind of just below his top radiocarbon dates. So he sort of around, he thought, well, perhaps around 45 50,000. So the archeology was largely undated. And in particular, we have no real understanding of the climates in which these Neanderthals and modern humans lived. So all these debates, one of the common ideas about Neanderthals is they died out, because they couldn't cope with the rapidly changing and deteriorating climates, where we turned out to be much more successful because in the hardest, they disappear in Europe about 40,000 years ago, it's probably around then they disappear in Southwest Asia, including Shanidar that sort of time. And 40,000 years ago, modern humans are in Australia by the end, and they're in Siberia, and able to deal with all sorts of ferociously difficult environment. So that was the wider context. And so when the original permit, what I said I wanted to do was to clean out the backfill in the trench of the exposed part of the selected the walls of his trench, and take lots of soil samples, and samples for these new methods of dating, we now have so dry work, first of all, try and work out where the Neanderthals were, where the modern human levels were recognize them, and then get dating samples to be able to date when they were, and equally get lots of samples for different sorts of analyses to work out what the climate was like. So that's what I hope to do was to end up with a climatic sequence in the cave, which we called map to the climate sequences that are known for the whole world, in particular, from ice cores in Greenland. That's the main climate records going back millions of years. And so what I wanted was to try to work out what the climate was like when Neanderthals were there what the climate is like with a modern humans were there, if possible, to date, the the when the Neanderthals being buried there, and also get information about the behavior of Neanderthals the behavior of modern humans again, which was, again, with a lot of the methods microscopic techniques that weren't available in select his time fan, he only died a couple of weeks ago at age 101. And he's been incredibly supportive all the way through to us going back and, and so we, that that was the context what I never really thought is that we'd find more Neandertal bones and that was really the big surprise of going back. I mean, I thought we'd like we'd work out where he found these bones and then we'd be able to date from the sediments where what when they were But we've been able to show we've found remains of one of the upper burials that he found, which he knew he hadn't got all of it. It's called Shannon on number five. And we dated that to about 50,000 years ago. And then a couple of years ago, we've got deeper down into his trench. And we've we could see human bone in the clean wall of his trench that we left. And then it was cited damage by visitors to the cave, well, that we protected everything. So we therefore had to, we have to start with much better safer to excavated. So last year, we did an exploration of these lower bones, and they they date about 80,000 years ago. And I think we've shown to our satisfaction, and we had a an international workshop in January here in Cambridge to look at our data. Because a lot of the experts have always said Neanderthals didn't bury their dead generally. And they didn't do it to chanida. And other people said, yes, they did, and so on. So we had all the both the believers and non believers together at the workshop. And I think everybody was pretty convinced that what we've got there is part of a group of Neandertals, that's lucky found. And it's a pretty unique and a lot of nantel archaeology, sort of cluster these bodies, and we've got remains of a we've got the skull and an upper body of the anatella ladder, we don't yet know whether it's male or female, and it was lying crouched on the ground. And that's going to be the basis for a huge range of studies, you know, ancient DNA and diet and so on.
Mehiyar 11:42 You thought you felt was anything else that you tools was that they use at the time? Well,
Graeme Barker 11:47 In in this particular case, the body is lying down on its side, with its hands up by its by its head, and between the upper arm and the shoulder is a single Flint blade. And we're trying to work out, you know, I mean, it has it, has it simply moved from an occupation there above? And it's got nothing to do with the body? Or was the individual holding it? Or was it? You know, in the in the body? I mean, the things very, very fragmented. So that's, it's still an open question. So we do find the occupation evidence, I mean, basically, what you find in these sorts of sites is, is the rubbish they throw away, which basically means that stone tools that they used for hunting and the kind of chipping debris from when they're sharpening the tools, and repairing them, and the bits of animal bones from the animals, they hunted and chopped up and broke the bones up from marrow, and so on, and so forth, and shells that they collected them in plant foods, they implant remains they're collected. So the burials themselves are quite unique. Anyway, it does look in this case, that, in fact, it looks like there are two bodies there. And so it's unfinished business, which is another clear reason for his asking to continue with the permit there. But it looks like from what we saw two years ago, that there's another body or remains of a body underneath this one. And they're definitely in a scoop that has been made by people, the microscopic studies show that it's not like a scoop from, you know, water flowing, and that is done doubtedly the avatars have dug a hole or a scoop. And they've put perhaps these two bodies in, and there are stones on top, which we can show I think, again to the satisfaction of these, both the believing and the doubting experts at the workshop, that they're not part of the rock fall, they're placed there. So it does look like they really are thinking because some people have also said, well, there are those who said, Yeah, I've never buried their dead. And and then others have said, well, they might have done but they probably did it just for hygienic reasons, you know, if a body is smelling to stick it in a hole to keep predators away, but not the idea of actually barrels we would understand, I should say, actually, the most famous burial of Shanidar is known as the flower burial. And that's what everybody every first year student taking archaeology anywhere in the world will know about the flower burial at Shanidar. And what happened his soil samples were taken from around the body very about a meter away from wherever in digging this last season in the soil was fossil pollen of flowers and the person who analyzed it was very cautious about what it might be because she suggested it's possible that it could just be brought in by bearing animals. And in the end she she thought about these reasons, but suggested but perhaps it's more likely that they will have flowers with the body. And now select he took that and said, Great. And in fact, the main book he wrote on I'll put on the whole thing is called the flower people. It was all in the mid 70s, when he was writing like that. And there was his idea for the body being buried with a whole clutch of flowers, which are the flowers that grow around the site in in spring. Anyway, well, we've done a lot of studies of how pollen gets into the cave, and how pollen gets carried down from the surface down in the around. And we've looked in detail at the pollen, very poorly preserved in the sediments, around these bodies, and also in in the sediments inside an animal burrows. And in the end, it looks very, very unlikely, unfortunately, that they did bury a body with flowers.
Mehiyar 15:53 There's no other evidence to suggest that there might be there might have engaged in ritual.
Graeme Barker 15:57 Well, that I mean, there are other sites, some of them increasingly they're, the more we learn about now, the towels. I mean, the the more complex, I mean, it will if you look at very, very, you know, like 19th century books, they're shown, as you know, like almost like eight men. Their brains are actually slightly bigger than ours. They were clearly highly complex. There's a whole series of exhibitions where you get reconstructions of Neanderthals. And if you were sitting on the underground in London, there was Ananda town next year, you wouldn't have noticed that. So the physical features were not that different, although the skulls have got particularly prominent features, actually. They, they're, they're different from modern humans. But we also now know from the genetics, that there was some interbreeding? Probably, probably in the Levant and Iraq, Iran, Syria, Israel, Lebanon, that whole era, probably that's where modern humans and Neanderthals were in the same sort of area. For the longest period. It's we've all got about, I think it's about 5% Neanderthal DNA in us. And that comes from this interbreeding Long, long ago. And we just know that there are caves in Israel, where there are some modern human fossils that go back pretty much 120,000 years ago, which is mostly when people think that modern humans came out of Africa, because the world climate was more benign, then it was, at least as warm and humid is today and slightly more. So anyway, they date about that. And so it looks like modern humans come out of Africa into this eastern Mediterranean area, and also the Neanderthals to wrap in Europe all the time as as it looks like they came down because they've got other sites with Neanderthals at the same sort of age. Now we have, we have no idea we probably, you know, we deal with tiny population, tiny amounts of evidence, I should say, and probably tiny populations over huge area over a huge timescale, we can't really talk about I mean, did they encounter each other often, and so on, so forth. But But whereas in Europe, it looks like Neanderthals and modern humans if they overlap they have and that by a few 1000 years, whereas in the Near East, in the broadest sense, Southwest Asia, going into the Zag Ross. There's every possibility that they were both in the same region from over 100,000 years ago to when the Neanderthals disappeared 50-40,000 years ago. So there's 50,000 years at least when the two species could have encountered each other.
Mehiyar 18:51 The Shanidar Cave, tell us anything about this transition.
Graeme Barker 18:54 It is thought there was a hiatus a gap of about 10,000 years between the Neandertal archeology and the burials and the modern human archaeology. One of the difficulties is when I say modern human archaeology, it's the kind of stone tools that we think were made by modern humans, because there are similar sorts of industries elsewhere in the Near East and in Europe. But most articles, haven't got human fossils with them. And so anyway, what we've shown it Shanidar so far is there really isn't a hiatus. It does look as if the near the modern human archaeology really is there from immediately after, or possibly during the time of the latest Neandertals it's when we're trying to sort out the dating and the stratigraphy at the moment because we have these very big issues in the debates. But the new technique, I mean, the techniques were developed for getting ancient DNA out of bones. So it's very difficult, particularly in the most successful work has always been done in places like Siberia and Alaska where things are constantly cold and dry. That's the best survival of ancient DNA. Whereas in our sorts of environments or somewhere like go to stand where it's getting very hot, very cold, very hot, very cold, it's, you know, hopeless for survival for DNA. So we're very lucky if the labs to try and get it get DNA out. We tried on the bones in his upper skeleton and didn't manage, but they're trying from the bones from the lower skeleton. There are new techniques that they've developed, also getting ancient DNA out of the soil out of the sediments. And so obviously, in principle, the sediment that's in the lower part of the trench, where the Neanderthal bones are, the environmental DNA, it's called the human DNA that can be in the sediments ought to be in the Anatel. And the DNA that is in the upper settlements ought to be us mod Newman, even though there aren't the bones. So that's in the sense, that's the neat expectation that Neanderthals are down there. And if there are other DNA in the sediment, it's theirs. And then there's a nice break, except we've shown it to, to kind of, it seems to be not much of a break, and might even not be and might be overlapping. And then, and then we get non human. But theoretically, as I said, in given that we know that not in humans and Neanderthals are around towards the Mediterranean, they the sites in Israel in particular, over this 120,000 years to 50,000 years, then we can't assume that there were only in the end of towels in these early periods up in the Zacharias just the same, we can't assume, therefore, that now details weren't lasting until about 40,000, which would take us into this archaeology. So all of that, I mean, that's in a way. That's the context of us, us applying for the next stage of a permit. In a way we've we've got a long way with where we were first, but like all research, you know, you end up answering some questions and you realize as a result that you result in, you realize they're even more interesting questions that you've never even thought all this kind of archaeology. I mean, anyway, perfectly naturally, the the director general of antiquities will say, well, kind of. Okay. So tell me how you solve the, you know, why did Neandertals disappear? Question. And it's not quite as simple as that, as he knows that. And it's the same really, with all archaeology, the, in a way, the easy quick bit, is digging it up. It's then what happens. And we've had a lot of materials come back to the UK for laboratory analysis. So innumerable bags of soil, go to all sorts of labs for different purposes. And then we've got various things have come back to get studied. I mean, in the advanced laboratories, and they go back to Kurdistan. So it's a good relationship like that, because it's what happens afterwards. It is most of what the story telling is about the in the end. It's the science, archaeological science. It starts with incredibly careful excavation processes. And it's what happens in the lab takes enormous amounts of time, this skull. I mean, it basically had the consistency of sort of mashed up digestive biscuits. I mean, it's fragmentary, small thing, rather consolidate it well, Emma Pomeroy will make CT scans of the fragments, and then she'll reassemble digitally, the skull. And an essentially, can be processed one would hope that the skull itself can be physically put back together and it should end up back in Kurdistan. But the DNA I mean, the DNA is I mean, there are 50 people in a laboratory in Copenhagen. You looked for DNA unsuccessfully in the first fragment they're trying again now and it's so it's trying to get also that that it really is like a an iceberg in the sense of you see at the top the field work. And what goes on after this, you know, take takes a lot of time, a lot of effort, a lot of money and a lot of clever people, which is why you do get short articles in nature which change the way we think about the past. We've got 50 names on three pages and Shanidar going to generate those sorts of things again, though. It and it's also very, very slow process. In some ways. The attractive thing said, This is the third cave and there never was a grand plan to go to these three caves. It sort of went from one to the other but The three people who excavated in the 50s. And in one case into the 60s, x rayed on a scale we could never possibly think about. And we would never go about now digging a 15 meter deep hole, you can drop a house into it. In terms of you know, the modern scientific exploration is so slowly, so we could never, but there's a scale of information that they got in since they lost a lot because of the scale that they dug. In fact, selection use dynamite a lot because it's so full of huge rocks. And we can we dig it a tiny scale. And it's incredibly slow. And in the case of Shanidar Well, it's the same the same technique we use half a decade in Libya. Every bag of soil every bag, that's that's from an archaeological context, that's, that's, you know, ancient soil gets put in bags, it gets taken down the heel, it gets washed in a flotation system that we've got, it washes out the organic materials that come here, and they go to labs in Liverpool, and wind up then with the residues, which are sift through and picked on or half the team are in the cave and half the team are sitting there hour by hour by hour air down at the dig house at the site, picking out things from these washed residues because the goal is to pick out to lose nothing, that's where to pick out everything that's two millimeters in size or above. So that's not digging with dynamite was incredibly slow. But as a result of that, we've got things like we've got fish bones of it. I mean, the Neanderthals were clearly collecting fishing big fish down in the river. At this cave in Libya, we've got tiny little shells or the perforated shells beads. And there are similar sorts of things emerging from Shanidar, you'd never find those, the techniques earlier. So it's incredibly slow and incredibly laborious. But as a result, when these projects work, well, the old working forms the new and the new working forms the old because we ended up in a way, taking a small amount of data and squeezing it incredibly hard. And that provides all sorts of new insights, qualities of data that informs the huge collections that these early excavations got. But again, in the end, we're often talking about, you know, a trench that's two meters by one meter. That's what we did at the Libyan cave down 50 meters on they have a tiny cat there. And where's the excavator they've dug a hole, the size of the one in Shanidar and all the fines and factor in Cambridge, millions of things. And so when these things work, well, we can build on that scale of information they got with the quality of information that we've got. And they talk to each other to the project. So that's why we have people working on the old material, as well as new materials. And we've really looked at the Shannon data, select the fine. So it isn't just that the bones are in Baghdad, we'd like to with the stone tools, the animal bones, and so on. So we try not to look at the old material in new ways, look at what they found, as well, and get as much as we can from the new so that it's a it's a complicated relationship. And it's expensive and slow that people often think, you know, the digging is the is what it's all about. And that's the bit that often we want to pay for. We have the same problems in this country. You know, it's digging it up and digging it up is a tiny fraction of what happens.
Mehiyar 28:44 And you're part of a team, you're going to Iraq tomorrow. What is your program?
Graeme Barker 28:47 Oh, we're going back now, really just to discuss with the director of Antiquities, the proposed new work. He came with some of his staff to this workshop in Cambridge, the end of January. So that was all about looking at the results of the five years of work at the site, in this international critic critical context, these international experts. So he's perfectly well aware of what we've achieved like that in four or five days or looking in detail at all the material. And so we're now going to go back and go back with one of my collaborators as press Chris at Liverpool John Moores University who's overseeing all the environmental work of the project critical environmental work. So anyway, we're going back with all the documentation and to sit down with the director and the staff just talk about to try and frame out the nature of the next five years of work. And then obviously, it's a formal procedure that eventually ends up if if it's allowed, it's a ministerial panel.
Mehiyar 29:48 The next stage is obviously it starts from September onwards.
Graeme Barker 29:51 Yeah, we'd like to be starting September and that's the number one priority is clearly to excavate these fairly vulnerable bones that are underneath the adult that we found. And so we found the upper half from the chest and so on are the ribs and upper body and the arms and the head. And what we don't know is whether the bones underneath are the same individual, Dr. Emma Pomeroy who's the biographer she's working. She's convinced when we first saw them, there is a second individual underneath, but it's part of where it's actually when were selected found the flower burial is right by where we are. And what actually happened is he was never, it was never really clear exactly what he found. So we're not yet clear precisely that they were, they're all given given numbers. So I said, we found the upper barrel for number one, and number five, and number three. And the lower barrels were in these particularly for six, eight and nine, what actually happened is he having found the flour barrel. They, they encased a block of sediment in planks and plaster, put it on the roof of a taxi, and drove it from Shanidar to Baghdad for an excavation to excavate it there. By which time of course, it was pretty disturbed. And so trying to work out precisely which individuals, how many individuals there was, was complicated. And so it's possible that some of the interpretations of what they thought they got in this sediment may not be right. And so it's this new part of the body almost certainly belongs to this group. But it doesn't, you can't neatly take the kind of lower half of the body that he found. And that part we found and stick it together. Again, not like that. So, which is why it's really important that Mr. Palmer wants to get back to Baghdad, and look at the selection of the auditor finds error, as well as the ones in Europe and the state to try and try and see. That's another reason for going back is also it's part of these debates. I mean, you can do microscopic studies now to see how they, how they treated their bones. There's some there's some instances when the animals practice cannibalism. There's some instances where it looks like they d fleshed and then buried, there's all manner of complicated Burial Rites possibilities. So there's just you know, it's time for a good new look.
Mehiyar 32:17 You'll be hosting one of the British Institute for the Study of Iraq and Nahrein Network scholar to Dlshad Mustafa he'll be coming to Cambridge. So he's the cultural heritage officer director of Antiquities, Soran, which is where the Graeme Barker 32:31 Yeah, we're in Shanidar caves in certain provinces.
Mehiyar 32:34 Which it is in Erbil itself. Yeah. So you'll be working with him, but it'd be looking at different aspects of what could be the museum. So this is one of the suggestions to having these.
Graeme Barker 32:43 Yeah, so that both the new director of Antiquities, in Erbil and for Kurdistan and also the director of Antiquities, in Saran province. Abdul Wahab Silverman, I mean, they've always been talking about what, how best to display the site, you know, they're difficult sites to display. It's a spectacular cave, wonderful landscape where it is fantastic mountain landscape. It's enclosed in a fenced area, a reserve that's several square kilometers. It is enormously popular is a picnic site, particularly by people coming out from our bail. It's a lovely day trip, loads, people come to picnic. When I first knew the site, there were some quite sensible display panels in English, Kurdish and Arabic of the selected work. So there was a little bit of guidance, a little bit information about them, and they've since deteriorated in the weather. So it's the right time now, because the work we've done as well to display the site. I mean, in order to manage it, because again, I mentioned you get vandalism there. People don't know they come up, they write their names on the walls. It's fenced off, but one suspects that you know, lads try and climb in and it's a bed deep hole. So it's vulnerable. So it needs protecting, managing. I mean, it is a world famous site. It is the oldest site in Kurdistan, it's probably the oldest site in the sag Ross. It's absolutely seminal for studies of human evolution and why our species in the end is here and the avatars aren't and so it's got an enormous importance for World debates about human evolution, but therefore coming down to the Zagg, Grace Iraq and Kurdistan that it's, it's it's got. you can wrap all sorts of stories to it, including ones of course, the past is never neutral. You can immediately think of how different groups in the sacrus Kurds, Iraq's Kurds, Iraqi and so on and so forth might wish to claim. The deep antiquity you know, we've been ever ever kind of arguments are In these sites, is there a guide that people can use to risk? There's no guide system there. And so there's, you can see. And again, it's quite well, I mean, it's only two or three hours from a build. And then, of course, you've got masses of tourists. This time of year, when the spring is good. It's really the, you know, the school trips season, and so on and so forth. When we're there, 1000 people might come on a Friday and lots of university groups calm, lots of school groups.
Mehiyar 35:26 They can actually go into the cave?
Graeme Barker 35:28 Yeah, I mean, it's just like a big like, aircraft hangar, really, you walk in, it's not a I mean, it's not a deep dark cave. People didn't live in that, you know, you live in nice places. And this is open to the south, you know, it gets the sun, it faces south, it's got spectacular views down in the valleys. So you can imagine when people, Neanderthals and modern humans came around, we're probably just going back to the past. I mean, you're probably dealing with groups of 20-30-40 people, men, women, children, and might be there for a few weeks at a time that there we can see that they're, they're there. They're repairing hunting equipment, they're probably preparing skins, making skin, clothing, and so on. I mean, that we've, it's those sorts of activities, and then they move on. So they create a rather ephemeral archaeology, and also say there are these huge, big debates. They're incredibly important. I mean, like, you know, the whole business of how similar or different are they to ask, why did why are we here? Why did they all have these big debates, but actually, in the end, the archaeology is very simple and rudimentary, that's left behind. In most instances, it's bits of bones and bits of stone tools and so on. So both how you display these things to people effectively, how you display them, and get across the the importance of the ideas about them, to people of different ages, different education levels, different backgrounds, coming from Kurdistan, Iraq, Western Europe, lots of I mean, there are lots and lots of tourist groups and therefore it will be good to see is a simple, good quality museum there which really does help the public to understand what they're seeing. I should also say that the nature they're fabulous we've seen wolves we've seen Ibex even though the site so popular. You know wonderful birdlife wonderful am I've wonderful geology, it's never going to be part of a mess, tourism will occur the star never be somewhere for mass tourism. But it can be a place Kurdistan for a high quality tourism, which often can profit the local people, ordinary people in these places much more than the kind of mass tourism where, you know, people come and stay in grand hotel chains and get taken around by buses owned by the similar sort of people and so on and so forth that that to actually get it so that tourist money goes down. Shanidar now these fabulous gorges around the area. You can I've worked on a very different project in Jordan, where now it's, it's it's a high quality green tourism, ecological tourism. There's an Eco Lodge where we worked in in Jordan, people will go from the famous art of Petra and they go on a walking trip down through a nature park that belongs to the Royal Society for the Conservation of Nature of Jordan. They see the archaeology they see the nature. You get local Bedouin are the guides that really went in form. They've got different languages. They know that geology, the archaeology, the birds, the flowers, and so on and so forth. And it people will clearly pay good money for a very good experience. And, and in the end, I always think the the best sites, I've seen one in America and ones in Britain where, if you've only got half an hour, or 45 minutes, you can turn up at Stonehenge or you can turn up at the Gettysburg Battlefield and have a good experience. There's a visitor center, that really gives you a good sense of why the site's important. And if you've got a couple of hours, in the case of Stonehenge, you can see the visitor center and go and look at the stones or Gettysburg, you can look at the Visitor Center and walk up to some famous ridge where the crux of the battle was and then there are people who've gone all day. And in the case of Gettysburg, when I was there, I saw lots of school kids with backpacks and they're being taken all around the whole landscape having a fabulous day. And Stonehenge is the same people can now go around and visit the landscape and you can just see, that's what one would like to get in the end that a Shanidar can be a great experience for those who just want to or see the landscape with it as well with people to take them around local people when we meet people who've read anything about their past, or if you've got a European visitors or American visitors read anything about archaeology. Shanidar they know a little bit about shadow particularly about flower burial. So now the the I should say that there's was the director of antiquities has been putting a lot of effort in recently to try to improve the infrastructure in terms of you know, the park and there's a 24 hour 24/7 Peshmerga guard at the site in the reserve, but therefore improving the facilities that, you know, the bathroom facilities and pygmy facilities and so forth. So all of that's being done. And within their longer plan is indeed to make a good display materials, which is the context in which both Dilshad and I thought it'd be great idea if he could apply for the Nahrein fellowship to bring him to Cambridge. I mean, he's a practicing archaeologist, he's worked with us every season, and a very, very good field archaeologist he's involved in, in the print in archaeological heritage management for the Soran area. So he's experienced in different areas, different periods, but therefore, be really good to, for him to come here to look at the kind of displays that we've got. There's a good example here at the moment in the Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology on a site that's very, very famous in, in Britain and Europe. It one of these early periods isn't as early as Shanidar, it's good in the Mesolithic period. But in a way, there's very little see it as a waterlogged field. It's a muddy field now, if you actually should go to the plays, but it's a beautiful display, which I showed to the Director General antiquities, and he said, he could see straight away that they were just very nicely done, the way the artifacts will display, there were some really nice little videos and things like how they might have made far at the time and just simple, but really nicely done sustainable, that will look good, in five years time, because 10 years, from the story of these things, they look great for a month, and then they look tired very quickly. So getting something that can be really well maintained. A small museum at Shanidar will be good. Plus, of course, materials we want, I mean, that, which is why I also want him when he's here, to look at the kind, I mean, he's going to visit places like the Canterbury Archaeological Trust, because we've got colleagues who work with me, then he's visited them already, but to look in detail at their outreach program, how they go about working with schools, and museum here has a big schools program. I mean, there's experience. And you mentioned before this experience in Kurdistan like this now, people who are wanting to learn how to work best with, with school so that they, they know what they do know, they do a bit of work from the column, they come things that is materials for them to use to see materials and get off the web about the site in Arabic or Kurdish. And it's a it's slow steps. But I think having if we can expose Dlshad he's he's come to a lot of courses already on things like illicit antiquities, and that sort of aspect of heritage management. But to come and see some of the ways that these sorts of sites are displayed. There are some caves in northern England, which again, is a very, very important, it's one of the furthest points that Neanderthals and modern humans got. Because the ice caps the glasses came right down to near Sheffield, and they're near Sheffield. So that was the furthest point you could get to as a Neanderthal or modern human. And there are some caves there. So an incredibly important, again, there's not much to see, in the sense of a massive, you know, Stonehenge sort of site, but therefore, to see how they've been displayed really well, to get across the different publics. Plus also, the things we've talked about the politics of these sites in the sense of how you get across to different visitors, whether rather different senses of how they belong to the land, the country, the different part of the country, and Kurds, Arabs, people beyond all of that, how you display? Well, all of those people that write it is an important site for anybody in the Zack Ross region, generally. And it's also a site that's at the core of debates about what it is that makes us human in much wider agendas. Everybody knows Shanidar cave and we have the new finds will actually really put it on the map again, anyway. So that's the context in which we're really happy that he's got this fellowship, because I think he'll he'll have a great time here, talking to people meeting people where there's a sense of heritage studies here, which is interdisciplinary. So just engaging with the more theoretical side of presenting heritage. You know, presenting heritage is complex. The past is not simple. Presenting the past today is not simple when people want to read into it, all sorts of things for good or bad. So just to see how we get to to engage in those theoretical debates, then also see some examples in Britain, of how people are actually trying to do it, with adult groups with school children and so on.
Mehiyar 44:57 On that note, thank you, Professor Graham Barker from Cambridge thank you for your time and I wish you good luck with your work it seems fascinating I think it's something that Iraqis in general need to know more about.
Graeme Barker 45:12 Great thank you.
Mehiyar 45:13 Thank you very much for that.