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In this book, Jennifer French presents a new synthesis of the archaeological, palaeoanthropological, and palaeogenetic records of the European Palaeolithic, adopting a unique demographic perspective on these first two-million years of European prehistory. Unlike prevailing narratives of demographic stasis, she emphasises the dynamism of Palaeolithic populations of both our evolutionary ancestors and members of our own species across four demographic stages, within a context of substantial Pleistocene climatic changes. Integrating evolutionary theory with a socially oriented approach to the Palaeolithic, French bridges biological and cultural factors, with a focus on women and children as the drivers of population change. She shows how, within the physiological constraints on fertility and mortality, social relationships provide the key to enduring demographic success. Through its demographic focus, French combines a 'big picture' perspective on human evolution with careful analysis of the day-to-day realities of European Palaeolithic hunter-gatherer communities—their families, their children, and their lives.
The picture of the Palaeolithic adaptations in the Italian Peninsula has always been coarse-grained compared to various well-researched regional hotspots in central and western Europe. This volume aims to fill that gap by presenting the latest advances in Palaeolithic research in Italy.
Palaeolithic societies have been a neglected topic in the discussion of human origins. In this book, which succeeds and replaces The Palaeolithic Settlement of Europe, published by Cambridge University Press in 1986, Clive Gamble challenges the established view that the social life of Europeans over the 500,000 years of the European Palaeolithic must remain a mystery. In the past forty years archaeologists have recovered a wealth of information from sites throughout the continent. Professor Gamble now introduces a new approach to this material. He examines the archaeological evidence from stone tools, hunting and campsites for information on the scale of social interaction, and the forms of social life. Taking a pan-European view of the archaeological evidence, he reconstructs ancient human societies, and introduces new perspectives on the unique social experience of human beings.
The Earliest Europeans explores the early origins of man in Europe through the perspective of ‘a year in the life’: how hominins in the Lower Palaeolithic coped with the year-round practical challenges of mid-latitude Europe with its distinctive temperatures, seasonality patterns, and available resources. Current research has provided increasingly robust archaeological and Quaternary Science records, but there are ongoing uncertainties as to both the earliest Europeans’ specific survival strategies and behaviours, and the character of their dispersals into Europe. In short, how sustained and ‘successful’ were the individual phases of European occupation by Lower Palaeolithic hominins and what sorts of ‘human’ where they? Using a season-by-season chapter structure to explore, for example, the contrasting demands and opportunities of winter versus summer survival, Hosfield explores how foods and other resources would vary across the four seasons in quantity and quality, and the resulting implications for hominin behaviours. Text boxes provide the background on key issues, and the book draws on a range of supporting evidence including technology (e.g. the nature of Lower Palaeolithic stone tools; the evidence for organic tools), hominin life history (e.g. the length of infant dependency; the nature of ‘parenting’; the implications of different mating models; the Social Brain Hypothesis), cognitive studies (e.g. brain scanning research into possible planning capabilities) and potential bias in the archaeological record (e.g. in terms of what is and isn’t preserved). By testing the likelihood of different scenarios by comparing short-term, site-based insights with long-term, regional trends, Hosfield is able to out forward ideas on how our earliest European ancestors survived and what their lives were like.
Provides a comprehensive account of prehistoric Europe from the coming of the Stone Age to the fall of the Roman Empire, providing information on the changing landscape of Europe and responses and adaptations to these changes.
This volume provides an elementary and comprehensive synthesis of the new discoveries and the new interpretations of European prehistory.
This volume provides an elementary and comprehensive synthesis of the new discoveries and the new interpretations of European prehistory.
Written from an archaeological perspective, Painted Caves is a beautifully illustrated introduction to the oldest art of Western Europe: the very ancient paintings found in caves. Lawson offers an up to date overview of the geographical distribution of the sites and their significance within the varied network of Palaeolithic art.
This collection of papers arises from a meeting of distinguished scholars at Tautavel in 1993, sponsored by the European Science Fund. The aim of the meeting was to discuss and review the evidence for the earliest occupation of different European regions, from Scandinavia to the Mediterranean and from the United Kingdom to the Russian Plains and including neighbouring areas such as the Caucasus and Northern Africa. Discussion focused on four themes: chronology, environment, industries and subsistence. The central dispute between proponents of the Long chronology (placing the first hominids in Europe almost 2m years ago) and the supporters of a Short chronology (no hominids until 500,000 years ago) is covered in detail. The disputed 1.5m years are crucial to our understanding of how our earliest ancestors adapted to the European environment and this book will be crucial in furthering the debate.