In 1951, American anthropologist Ralph Solecki began a new series of excavations at Shanidar Cave in northern Iraq. Over four excavation seasons between 1951 and 1960, Solecki and his team excavated material showing evidence of more than 40,000 years of continuous human habitation in Shanidar Cave, including the remains of ten Neanderthal men, women, and children. Among the Shanidar Neanderthals, Solecki’s team found evidence of individuals who had lived with chronic disabilities and healing injuries—evidence of caretaking, community, and a profound argument for Neanderthal humanity. Subsequent analysis conducted by French archaeologist Arlette Leroi-Gourhan suggested that one Neanderthal had been buried surrounded by flowers.

In this talk, I explore how excavations at Shanidar were shaped by multiple overlapping sets of public interests and political demands. Solecki’s research was funded in part by US Fulbright Grants, publicized in American and Iraqi newspapers and regional Middle Eastern US Information Service magazines, and conducted with support from public officials in both the Kingdom of Iraq (1932-1958) and the Iraqi Republic (established 1958). Different framings of Shanidar portrayed a highly specific locality as simultaneously universal, Iraqi, Kurdish, and American. Additionally, Solecki’s work was conducted in public—quite literally, since his excavation trench ran through the center of a modern community of semi-nomadic herders who lived in Shanidar Cave on a seasonal basis. In this talk, I examine how Solecki’s interactions with surrounding communities helped structure his interpretation of how prehistoric people had lived and worked in Shanidar in the distant past.

In 1966, the Beatles captured a moment when the aspirational dream of publishing a bestselling book made its way into their lyrics. This rather odd, rather sweet sentiment reflected the widespread success of a relatively new experiment in publishing: intellectual paperbacks. Scientists were as much a part of this genre as novelists. Paul de Kruif, for example, shared the same imprint of Pocket Books with Rudyard Kipling and Dorothy Parker. At less than five inches wide, six and a half inches tall, these books were designed to “slip handily into a man’s pocket or a woman’s handbag.”

This paper charts how these relatively cheap, easily purchased books became widely available starting in the 1950s, and blossomed in the following decades as commercial and university presses printed new science titles alongside re-releases of classics. Each explained a scientific topic or question in language accessible to general readers. In these context, scientific memoirs promised a personalized introduction to the scientific life—reflecting the writer’s desire to craft prose accessible to general audiences and a narrative of great interest to professional colleagues and aspiring students as well. Memoirs fit well in this mixed genre of colloquiual science, providing a voice to scientists as representatives of a new kind of public intellectual who wrote, backed by scientific authority, in an accessible style designed to reach both professional and public audiences.