Rose L. Solecki (born November 18, 1925) was an American archaeologist, who worked with her husband

Ralph Solecki 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 salesm ...

on excavations in Iraq, Iran, Turkey,

Syria Syria ( ar, سُورِيَا or سُورِيَة, translit=Sūriyā), officially the Syrian Arab Republic ( ar, الجمهورية العربية السورية, al-Jumhūrīyah al-ʻArabīyah as-Sūrīyah), is a Western Asian country loc ...

, Lebanon, and

Sudan Sudan ( or ; ar, السودان, as-Sūdān, officially the Republic of the Sudan ( ar, جمهورية السودان, link=no, Jumhūriyyat as-Sūdān), is a country in Northeast Africa. It shares borders with the Central African Republic t ...

Early life

Rose Muriel Lilien was born in New York City, the daughter of Israel Lilien and Anna Muchel Lilien. Her father was born in Poland. Her brothers Harry and Sidney were baseball card collectors before World War II. She earned a bachelor's degree in anthropology from

Hunter College Hunter College is a public university in New York City. It is one of the constituent colleges of the City University of New York and offers studies in more than one hundred undergraduate and postgraduate fields across five schools. It also admi ...

in 1945, and her master's and doctoral degrees from Columbia University. While she was a graduate student at

Columbia Columbia may refer to: * Columbia (personification), the historical female national personification of the United States, and a poetic name for America Places North America Natural features * Columbia Plateau, a geologic and geographic region in ...

, she participated in archaeological excavations in Arizona under the supervision of

Emil W. Haury Emil Walter "Doc" Haury (May 2, 1904 in Newton, Kansas – December 5, 1992 in Tucson, Arizona) was an influential archaeologist who specialized in the archaeology of the American Southwest. He is most famous for his work at Snaketown, a Hohokam ...

, and in Peru under the supervision of

William Duncan Strong William Duncan Strong (1899–1962) was an American archaeologist and anthropologist noted for his application of the direct historical approach to the study of indigenous peoples of North and South America. Early life and education Strong was bor ...

. She wrote ''A Study of Central Andean Ceramic Figurines'' (1981) based on her doctoral research.

Career

Rose Solecki joined her husband's excavation of the Shanidar cave sites in Iraq between 1956 and 1960. The sites contained rich evidence of Neanderthal life, including several complete skeletons. They also had archaeological projects in Lebanon, Iran, Turkey, Syria, and Sudan. Until Ralph Solecki's retirement in 1990, she was a research associate affiliated with Columbia University; from 1990 to 2000, Rose Solecki was Adjunct Professor of Anthropology at Texas A&M University. The Soleckis co-authored many scholarly articles, and ''The Proto-Neolithic Cemetery in Shanidar Cave'' (2004, with Anagnostis P. Agelarakis), based on their years of work in Iraq. Rose Solecki also wrote ''Tepe Seavan, a Dalma Period Site in the Margavar Valley, Azerbaijan, Iran'' (1973) and ''An Early Village Site at Zawi Chemi Shanidar'' (1981).

Personal life

Rose married Ralph Solecki in 1955. They had two sons,

John Solecki John Solecki was the head of United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) office in the Pakistani city of Quetta. Solecki had been working in Balochistan to help the Afghan refugees, the communities hosting them and the local people affec ...

(a United Nations official) and William Solecki (a geography professor). Ralph Solecki died in 2019, aged 101 years. The Soleckis' papers, and a 2018 oral history with both of them, are archived in the National Anthropological Archives, Smithsonian Institution. Columbia University gives an annual Ralph and Rose Solecki Award, for an archaeology student chosen by the faculty.

References

* {{DEFAULTSORT:Solecki, Rose 1925 births Living people American archaeologists Columbia University alumni Hunter College alumni American women archaeologists American expatriates in Iraq 21st-century American women