Ralph Stefan Solecki (October 15, 1917 – March 20, 2019) was an American archaeologist. Solecki was born in Brooklyn, New York in October 1917, the son of Polish immigrants – Mary (nee Tarnowska), a homemaker, and Casimir, an insurance salesman. From 1959 to 1988, he was a member of the faculty at Columbia University. His best-known excavations were at the Neanderthal site at Shanidar Cave, in Iraq. His publications include early works on aerial photography and as well as two volumes on Shanidar (1971, 1972).
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Ralph Stefan Solecki (Brooklyn, 15 d'octubre de 1917 - Livingston, 20 de març de 2019) va ser un arqueòleg i prehistoriador nord-americà. Va exercir de professor al Smithsonian Institute i a la Universitat de Colúmbia (1959-1988). Solecki és especialment conegut per haver dirigit les excavacions a la cova de Shanidar, al Kurdistan iraquià, on van aparèixer nombroses restes de neandertals enterrats amb evidencies de ritualitat. Era el primer cop que s'observava res de semblant en la cultura dels neandertals i va revoluc •
Ralph Solecki (1917-2019)
Ralph Stefan Solecki was born on 15 October 1917 in Brooklyn, New York, to Polish immigrants. His father, Casimir Solecki, sold insurance, and his mother, Mary (née Tarnowska), was a homemaker. While his parents named him Stefan Rafael, he was known throughout his career as Ralph. Solecki’s interest in archaeology began when he was about ten years old after he read newspaper reports of the treasures that the British Egyptologist Howard Carter had retrieved from the tomb of the Egyptian pharaoh Tutankhamun. In 1931 his family bought a house in Cutchogue, on Long Island’s North Fork, in New York, and soon thereafter Solecki began searching the farm fields near his home for Native American arrowheads and other artifacts. Solecki attended Newtown High School in Elmhurst, Queens, and after graduating in 1936, he enrolled in the City College of New York where he received a B.S. degree in geology in 1942. Throughout these years, he had been engaged in a number of productive archaeological excavations. Solecki and his childhood friend Stanley Wisnewski,
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Archeology
The first archeological site documented in West Virginia was eight figures from the Brown's Island Petroglyph (46HK8). Benjamin S. Barton visited the site ca. 1785 and published the figures in 1799
The first archeological excavation undertaken in West Virginia was at Grave Creek Mound at Moundsville in 1838. In the fall of 1846, when Ephraim G. Squier and Edwin H. Davis documented the Salt Rock petroglyphs along the Guyandotte River in Cabell County. Their report, published in 1848, was included in the first volume of the Smithsonian Institution's "Contributions to Knowledge" series, titled Ancient Monuments of the Mississippi Valley.
The early settlers believed a prehistoric race of people they called "Mound Builders" constructed the burial mounds and earthworks. The Mound Builders were viewed as an ancient race from Europe, Africa, or the Near East, who had vanished and been replaced by American Indians. Some early scholars believed the Mound Builders were one of the Lost Tribes of Israel.
In 1881, Congress gave $5,000 to the Smithsonian Institution to conduct