The Pollen Question, Revisited

The new excavation addressed the flower burial question directly.

The Cambridge team extracted pollen samples from the sediment associated with the burial cluster — including material from the area near Shanidar Z — using protocols specifically designed to minimize the contamination that had complicated interpretation of Leroi-Gourhan’s original analysis.

Their findings, published in the Journal of Archaeological Science in 2023, found concentrations of pollen from several flowering plant species in a narrow, dark sediment layer associated with the burial context.

That layer contained higher pollen concentrations than the surrounding deposits.