The Earliest Occupation of Europe

The Earliest Occupation of Europe PDF Author: European Science Foundation. Workshop
Publisher: Faculty of Archaeology, University of Leiden
ISBN:
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 348

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Book Description
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.

The Earliest Occupation of Europe

The Earliest Occupation of Europe PDF Author: European Science Foundation. Workshop
Publisher: Faculty of Archaeology, University of Leiden
ISBN:
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 348

Get Book Here

Book Description
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.

Palaeolithic Europe

Palaeolithic Europe PDF Author: Jennifer C. French
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 110858411X
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 723

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Book Description
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.

Pleistocene Archaeology

Pleistocene Archaeology PDF Author: Rintaro Ono
Publisher: BoD – Books on Demand
ISBN: 1838803572
Category : Geology, Stratigraphic
Languages : en
Pages : 205

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Book Description
This book presents an overview of recent research in the field of Pleistocene Archaeology around the world. The main topics of this book are: (1) human migrations, particularly by Homo sapiens who have migrated into most regions of the world and settled in different environments, (2) the development of human technology from early to archaic hominins and Homo sapiens, and (3) human adaptation to new environments and responses to environmental changes caused by climate changes during the Pleistocene. With such perspectives in mind, this book contains a total of nine insightful and stimulating chapters on these topics, in which human history during the time of the Pleistocene is reviewed and discussed.

The Palaeolithic Societies of Europe

The Palaeolithic Societies of Europe PDF Author: Clive Gamble
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 9780521658720
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 532

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Book Description
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.

Quaternary Sea-Level Changes

Quaternary Sea-Level Changes PDF Author: Colin V. Murray-Wallace
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 0521820839
Category : Nature
Languages : en
Pages : 503

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Book Description
An important overview of Quaternary climates including detailed Pleistocene and Holocene sea-level changes, for researchers and graduate and advanced undergraduate students.

The Earliest Europeans

The Earliest Europeans PDF Author: Robert Hosfield
Publisher: Oxbow Books
ISBN: 1785707620
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 410

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Book Description
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.

The Ancient Human Occupation of Britain

The Ancient Human Occupation of Britain PDF Author: Nick Ashton
Publisher: Elsevier
ISBN: 0444535985
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 322

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Book Description
The Ancient Human Occupation of Britain Project (AHOB) funded by the Leverhulme Trust began in 2001 and brought together researchers from a range of disciplines with the aim of investigating the record of human presence in Britain from the earliest occupation until the end of the last Ice Age, about 12,000 years ago. Study of changes in climate, landscape and biota over the last million years provides the environmental backdrop to understanding human presence and absence together with the development of new technologies. This book brings together the multidisciplinary work of the project. The chapters present the results of new fieldwork and research on old sites from museum collections using an array of new analytical techniques. - Features an up-to-date treatment of the record of human presence in the British Isles during the Palaeolithic period (700,000 - 10,000 years before present) - Takes multidisciplinary approach that includes archaeology, geochemistry, geochronology, stratigraphy and sedimentology - Coincides with the culmination of the AHOB project in 2010, providing a benchmark statement on the record of human occupation in Britain that can be utilized and tested by future research

The British Palaeolithic

The British Palaeolithic PDF Author: Paul Pettitt
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 0415674549
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 616

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Book Description
The British Palaeolithic provides the first academic synthesis of the entire British Palaeolithic, from the earliest occupation to the end of the Ice Age. It fills a major gap in teaching resources as well in research by providing a current synthesis of the latest research on the period.

Early-Middle Pleistocene Transitions

Early-Middle Pleistocene Transitions PDF Author: Geological Society of London
Publisher: Geological Society of London
ISBN: 9781862391819
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 342

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Book Description
The Early-Middle Pleistocene transition (around 1.2 to 0.5 Ma) marks a profound shift in Earth's climate state. Low-amplitude 41 ka climate cycles, dominating the earlier part of the Pleistocene, gave way progressively to a 100 ka rhythm of increased amplitude that characterizes our present glacial-interglacial world. This volume assesses the biotic and physical response to this transition both on land and in the oceans: indeed it examines the very nature of Quaternary climate change. Milankovitch theory, palaeoceanography using isotopes and microfossils, marine organic geochemistry, tephrochronology, the record of loess and soil deposition, terrestrial vegetational change, and the migration and evolution of hominins as well as other large and small mammals, are all considered. These themes combine to explore the very origins of our present biota.

Out of Africa I

Out of Africa I PDF Author: John G Fleagle
Publisher: Springer Science & Business Media
ISBN: 9048190363
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 293

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Book Description
For the first two thirds of our evolutionary history, we hominins were restricted to Africa. Dating from about two million years ago, hominin fossils first appear in Eurasia. This volume addresses many of the issues surrounding this initial hominin intercontinental dispersal. Why did hominins first leave Africa in the early Pleistocene and not earlier? What do we know about the adaptations of the hominins that dispersed - their diet, locomotor abilities, cultural abilities? Was there a single dispersal event or several? Was the hominin dispersal part of a broader faunal expansion of African mammals northward? What route or routes did dispersing populations take?