The Cambridge excavation has added Shanidar Z and potentially others as work continues.

This clustering is significant.

Single isolated Neanderthal burials exist at other sites — La Chapelle-aux-Saints, Kebara Cave in Israel, Amud Cave also in Israel, La Ferrassie in France.

But the concentration at Shanidar, across multiple individuals and — based on radiocarbon dating — over an extended period, suggests that this particular location held specific meaning for the Neanderthal community that used the cave.

Whether that meaning was what we would call religious, ancestral, practical, or something else entirely is a question the evidence cannot definitively answer.