Obstructions to Shellability

Abstract

We consider a simplicial complex generaliztion of a result of Billera and Meyers that every nonshellable poset contains the smallest nonshellable poset as an induced subposet. We prove that every nonshellable $2$-dimensional simplicial complex contains a nonshellable induced subcomplex with less than $8$ vertices. We also establish CL-shellability of interval orders and as a consequence obtain a formula for the Betti numbers of any interval order.