Neanderthals
and Modern Humans in the European Landscape during the Last Glaciation:
Archaeological Results of the Stage 3 Project ed. TJERD VAN ANDEL and
WILLIAM DAVIES
Cambridge: McDonald Institute Monograph
2003. ISBN: 1-902937-21-X. 265 pp (c. 110 figures) £35 hardback
The Cambridge Stage 3 Project has been one of the
major research investigations of recent years. Stage 3, variously known
as OIS 3 (Oxygen Isotope Stage 3) or MIS 3 (Marine Isotope Stage 3),
covers the central period of the last glaciation from 59,000 to 24,000
years ago. This was the time when anatomically modern humans colonised
Europe and when Neanderthals became extinct. This drama has been played
out on a stage where the multiple changes of scene have been those of
climate and environment. This book provides a degree of documentation
rarely seen in the world of archaeology and asks pivotal questions about
the nature of the changing environments and the interactions of humans,
Neanderthals and fauna with the climate.
Structure
There are fourteen chapters which can usefully be grouped into overarching
themes, viz
Theme(s) |
Chapter(s) |
aims and objectives |
1 |
last glaciation environments |
2, 5, 6 |
the mammalian faunas of OIS 3 |
7, 10 |
Neanderthal and modern human presences |
3, 4, 8, 11 |
Neanderthal thermoregulation, climatic stress and extinction |
9, 12, 13 |
human dispersal, migration and evolution |
4, 14 |
overview and prospect |
Epilogue |
In addition to these themes there are small sub-plots and ‘cameo
appearances’, as we shall see.
Epilogue
I very much wish that Tjerd van Andel, the project’s co-ordinator,
had placed his excellent Epilogue at the beginning. His text provides
a first rate and succinct overview of the results of the project as
a whole and, so, would have focused the mind of the reader on the key
trends and results. One must remember, in this context, that archaeologists
are more likely to quarry this work for its particular themes than to
read it from cover to cover. They are in danger therefore – to
their great loss – of missing this overarching review.
Aims and objectives
Van Andel sets the scene in chapter 1 and explains that coverage was
limited to the period of OIS 3 in Europe. Only existing data had been
used and two key questions were identified at the outset (p. 1):
1. What was the climate of Europe like in OIS 3 and to what degree did
the drastic changes displayed by the Greenland ice cores influence the
European landscape and its flora and fauna?
2. Do the human events of the Middle and early Upper Palaeolithic reflect
the OIS 3 climatic and environmental history and in what way and to
what degree?
The work was carried out in two phases. The first
of these involved collection of the environmental and chronological
data. The second sought to map the changing presences of hominids and
to use the data generated to examine issues of climatic tolerance and
survival during the fluctuating climates of last glaciation Europe.
Thus, Phase One was characterised as ‘climate and landscape’
and sought inter alia to test the models developed through
such independent data sets as pollen and plant macro-fossils; loess,
river gravels and permafrost features; and coleoptera. In all this,
the detailed and well-documented Greenland ice-core record would serve
as a key to interpreting climatic data, at least for the maritime areas
of Europe. Phase Two of the project, entitled ‘the Palaeolithic
in a climatic context’ sought to build up a ‘chrono-archaeological
data base’ of all relevant dates between 60-20 cal ka BP. Note
here that all 14C determinations have been calibrated to calendar years,
using CalPal, so that they can be consistent with the calendrical ages
provided by the Greenland ice-cores (pp. 5-6). It would have been helpful
if some basic calibration tables, between 14C and calendar years, could
have been provided for the benefit of the declining but significant
numbers of readers who do not have access to, or cannot understand,
computer-based calibration systems.
Chapter 3 provides a comprehensive discussion of the
range of techniques that underpin the construction of chronologies for
OIS 3, using a range of sources of which radiocarbon is but one. The
possibility that radiocarbon determinations on bone, antler or horn
may be ‘worthless’ is quietly introduced to worry us but
is as quickly dropped, there being ‘no robust evidence’
(p. 28). This negative aside might have been better relegated to a footnote
or omitted altogether.
Last glaciation environments in Europe
Chapters 2, 5 and 6 deal with last glaciation environments. Chapter
2 includes a valuable history of last glaciation climate in Europe.
Here, the growth of an extensive Fennoscandian ice-sheet late in OIS
4 led to the formation of widespread tundra or cold steppe in Europe
north of the Alps. The start of OIS 3 saw the initiation of a sequence
of mild so-called Dansgaard-Oeschger events which were intercalated
with cooler episodes. Long pollen and other environmental sequences
at a number of sites, such as Les Echets or Grande Pile in France, or
at Monticchio in Italy (fig. 2.4, p. 12), offer the possibility of regional
terrestrial correlations with distant ice-core sites, combined with
local information regarding plant and coleopteran successions from which
inferred temperatures may be derived. The ‘early warm period’
(which becomes the ‘stable warm period’ in table 4.3, p.
33) ended about 45 ka. The climate worsened thereafter until, after
a final warm event, a serious downturn began with temperatures broadly
comparable with those of the Last Glacial Maximum (LGM), a period now
seen as having been initiated c. 35 ka. One of the big questions asked
in this book is whether the demise of the Neanderthals was in some way
directly linked with this extreme climatic movement.
Two ‘gold standards’ of information relating
to palaeo-climate in Europe are identified (p. 13). First, the Greenland
ice-core GISP2 and, second, the terrestrial core from the Lago Grande
di Monticchio in central Italy where sediments covering in excess of
100,000 years preserve a high resolution pollen record, well dated by
a lamination-based chronology, with further support from tephrochronological
and radiocarbon determinations. Chapters 5 and 6 develop the pattern
of the environmental evidence for Stage 3 and show how the vegetational
assemblages lack modern analogues and are not simply the result of latitudinal
shifts (p. 92). I was intrigued (perhaps influenced by the Ents in Tolkien’s
Lord of the Rings or by the movement of Abercromby’s
long necked Beakers, changing their shape as they rolled north at the
rate of two miles per year) to learn that, in the early Holocene, trees
moved out of their once glacial environments at the rate of 0.2 to 2.0
kilometres per year (p. 93). The point here is that the trees may have
moved at much the same speed during the warmer OIS 3 events.
The mammalian faunas of OIS 3
The chapters dealing with faunal issues (7, 10) highlight the many problems
of identification, misidentification, and interpretation which await
the researcher in this area. Rudolf Musil’s paper (Ch. 10) is
focused on central and southeastern Europe. He makes the key point that
many species are eurythermic and, so, are not strongly adapted to warm
or cold climates. Indeed, the differences between species assemblages
may relate more to contrasting maritime and continental climates. This
author points up, too, the nature of both cave-assemblages (mostly carnivores
and their prey) and open air accumulations (chiefly anthropogenic).
There is a very useful catalogue of sites (pp. 171-81) followed by an
analysis of diachronic change in faunal groupings. The inference is
often made that mammoths were not hunted, except for situations like
the ‘stampede’ at La Cotte on the island of Jersey. However,
the fauna at Bohunice in the Middle Danube consists solely of mammoth
remains and is interpreted as a specialist hunting site (p. 204). Of
especial value to the archaeologist is Musil’s list of the principal
faunal types in his area, giving Latin names, common names and ecology
(table 10.2, pp. 189-90).
Neanderthal and modern human presences
Settlements and the use of caves
There is comparatively little material on the local geographical setting
of sites, but this is more than balanced by the quality of the papers
in this section. Here, I want to pay especial tribute to William Davies’s
regional studies which bring a scale that is both local and human to
this very European work. It was, perhaps, a bit surprising though to
see the re-emergence of the ambush of game in small valleys concept
(p. 211). I rather thought that Lewis Binford had put paid to the idea
that large mammals are generally too stupid to anticipate that humans
might be lurking in caves in narrow valleys (1978, 489-90). What Binford
found, when studying the Nunamiut of inland North Alaska, was that it
was pointless for the local people to ‘hole up’ in caves
which, in that region tended to be located in side valleys, and simply
wait for the game to walk by, because the animals knew perfectly well
that the hunters were camped in the caves and simply kept away. Thus,
it may be the absence of caves in the Lot valley (parallel to the valley
of the Dordogne) relates less to factors of wind chill and temperature
levels (Davies p. 206; van Andel p. 261) than to the unsuitability of
such a relatively narrow valley as a place where hunting could be effectively
pursued.
The distribution of settlements
Some valleys may have been inclement places but the thermal advantages
of caves would have been well known to palaeolithic hunters and were
probably not lightly neglected. The need for shelter – rather
than ambush – may explain, therefore, the concentration of occupation
of side valley caves in the Ardennes, the most northerly of Davies’s
study areas. Rather more needs to be known, however, about the micro-
and macro-climatic contexts of caves, their terroir, and of
the wider terrain in which they were situated, in addition to the evidence
of the use of these caves by humans and other carnivores. It is clear
that there were factors which led to settlement becoming strongly focused
in one region, whilst contiguous sites and areas were less used or not
exploited at all. One suspects that in some cases a sort of law of ‘primogeniture’
applied: thus, last glaciation populations were globally small and seem
to have been growing from perhaps a few tens of thousands at the start
of OIS 4 to around a million in the early Holocene (Lahr and Foley this
volume, p. 241; Mithen 2003, 11). Thus the population of a particular
area – whether occupied seasonally or not – might have grown
intra regionem without societal fission leading to the colonization
of new areas. The human fear of the unknown is very familiar to us all
and the quotation from Romeo and Juliet that there is ‘no
life without Verona’s walls’ speaks to us as surely now
as it did to audiences of Shakespeare’s day. Pari passu,
there may have been some wholly disjunctive movements in which groups
that had broken away leap-frogged adjacent areas empty of settlement,
before reaching their ‘promised land’. Indeed, something
of this kind has been argued for the earlier Aurignacian in Europe (Davies
2001).
Human presence in OIS 3
Chapter 4 looks at the distribution of Neanderthals and anatomically
modern humans within a climatic range that was mild at its beginning
c. 60,000 years ago, but was in a state of serious deterioration as
the Last Glacial Maximum was approached. I would suggest that the authors’
use of archaeological industries as proxy evidence for Neanderthals
or anatomically modern humans, whilst well and honestly handled, is
not without risk. Here, it is worth noting that Aurignacian artefacts
have twice been found in association with Neanderthal remains, at the
sites of Trou de l’Abîme in France and Vindija in Croatia
(p. 31 and table 4.1, p. 32). There are no instances, however, of the
reverse phenomenon. The publication – since the appearance of
this book – of new radiocarbon determinations from Vogelherd,
SW Germany, has further undermined faith in the interpretation of the
Aurignacian as a product of anatomically modern humans rather than Neanderthals.
The background to this story is that Vogelherd had produced –
apparently from well-stratified contexts in layers V and IV –
a dozen examples of figurative art, rich Aurignacian assemblages, and
a last glaciation fauna (Conard et al. 2004). These layers
were well dated to between 36-30,000 14C BP but new dates on four human
specimens have yielded wholly unexpected late Neolithic results of c.
5-4,000 14C BP, and show the human remains to have been intrusive. Indeed,
Cro-Magnon itself has now been dated to 27,760 14C BP and the apparently
well-stratified site of Mladec in the Czech republic lacks dates on
the human remains. Modern human remains have been dated to ~35,000 BP
at Pestera cu Oase in Romania but lack archaeological associations.
There are, therefore, now no certain associations of Aurignacian assemblages
and Modern Human remains in Europe and, thus, Conard and colleagues
argue that it is equally plausible that Aurignacian industries were
made either by Neanderthals or by Modern Humans
Neanderthals and Modern Humans: climate and range
The scenario of settlement was played out against two major climatic
trends: N/S, from arctic to cold on the northern edge of the east-west
European mountain chain, and W/E from the maritime Atlantic to the plains
of continental Europe. Time-based trends show the picture set out below
(based on table 4.3, p. 33). It might have been useful had the names
given to the climatic phases been more easily conveyed to memory.
|
climate phase |
age ka BP |
|
|
|
OIS 5a |
early glacial warm phase |
>74 |
|
|
|
OIS 4 |
transitional phase |
74-66 |
OIS 4 |
first glacial maximum |
66-59 |
OIS 3 |
stable warm phase |
59-44 |
OIS 3 |
transitional phase |
44-37 |
OIS 3 |
early cold phase |
37-27 |
|
|
|
OIS 2 |
last glacial maximum |
27-16 |
The progressive climatic downturn from 37 ka marked
the onset of Neanderthal decline, just as the warm upturn from 59 ka
saw a wide Neanderthal spread south of the 50°N parallel. Indeed,
we find repeatedly in this book a consensus that Neanderthals were distinctly
unenthusiastic about the cold. The Neanderthal decline involved a double
seawards withdrawal, west to the Atlantic and southeastward to the Black
Sea, the latter perhaps triggered both by climatic change and by decline
in the availability of game on the Russian plains (p. 39). The issue
of whether Aurignacian = Modern Human remains plagued with doubt but
accepting this equivalence offers the following picture. First, that
the patterns of movement of both Neanderthals and Modern Humans during
the period 45-37 ka reflect similar climatic preferences. From this
the inference might be drawn that both groups were adapted to the hunting
of largely sedentary game and, so, neither population might have easily
been able to adapt to the high level of seasonal movement seen recently
under truly arctic conditions. A surprise of a different kind is the
suggestion of the ‘dual nature’ of the Aurignacian with
colonisation routes into Europe via both the Danube and Gibraltar (p.
44). This is clearly problematic but the idea is challenging and, as
the text says, ‘worth evaluating’. ‘Early Aurignacian’
expansion had stabilised by 35 ka and, so, at roughly the same time
(38-35 ka) as the appearance of the very earliest Gravettian: this appeared,
in central Europe, at the sites of Dolní Vestonice and Höhle
Fells; in Bulgaria, at Temnata; and, in Russia, at the sites of Mezmaiskaya
and Kostenki. The authors of chapter 4 (van Andel, Davies and Weninger)
hazard a guess that the origins of the Gravettian may have lain in Moravia,
where it may have developed from the Aurignacian. What is strikingly
different where the Gravettian is concerned is that the people who made
it display demographic patterns which stand apart from both the Mousterian
and the Aurignacian. The makers of the last two assemblages named seem
to share many behavioural patterns (and so, perhaps, belonged to the
same Neanderthal species?) but the makers of the Gravettian did not
decline as the climate fell away; rather, they increased, notwithstanding
the most adverse of circumstances, and eventually reached a plateau
at 25 ka. Moreover, whilst not adverse to residence in the milder climes
of Italy, they seem to display a marked preference for the colder north,
up to 67°N, and the central European Alpine foreground, with distributions
that were at times far denser. Indeed, in Moravia, the sites of Dolní
Vestonice, Pavlov and Milovice, have often been regarded as large permanent
settlements. The chapter closes with a series of questions largely concerned
with Neanderthals: particularly embracing issues of origins, migration
routes, relationships between dispersal patterns and climate, as also
the question of responses by Modern Humans and Neanderthals to the same
climatic situations. Final questions relate to Neanderthal extinction,
the advanced adaptation reflected in the distribution of Gravettian
sites, and the issue of settlement placing and spacing (pp. 49-50).
‘Snow, snow, thick thick snow’
The words that act my title for this section were useful (just) to people
of my own generation when learning the rhythm and steps of the waltz.
For the early peoples who inhabited Europe, snow was at times a matter
of life and death. If it masked landscapes, food might be denied either
to the game animals on which the humans depended or, directly, to the
humans themselves. It might be necessary for humans to become not ‘man
the hunter’ but ‘man the shoveller’ (Gamble 1987),
in order to locate or recover carcasses buried in the snow, rather like
a squirrel looking for his nuts. An important part of this book (notably
chapter 8) is concerned, therefore, with a series of climatic indicators
among which the issue of the thickness and density of snow cover, and
its impact on human and animal life, looms large.
The first half of OIS 3, from 59-37 ka, was relatively
warm. The downturn was initiated in 37 ka; by 30 ka it was seriously
cold; and 10,000 years later, the Last Glacial Maximum was at its height.
The variables most relevant to the condition humaine are summer
and winter temperatures, day/night contrasts, wind-chill, and precipitation
(which includes rain, snow, hail, fog and mist); important also, as
far as snow is concerned, are both thickness of snow cover and the number
of annual snow days. The focus here is on both the tolerance and preference
of humans for a range of climatic conditions. These are assessed separately
for the three archaeological techno-complexes which spanned the period
60-20 ka, namely Mousterian, Aurignacian and Gravettian. There are problems,
however, in doing this for we often cannot be sure whether the location
of a site, at a particular latitude or in a particular place, reflects
year-round or seasonal human presence. The word ‘aestival’
creeps in here and seems to be used as an adjective pertaining to summer.
But its potential use is wider for its primary meaning is heat (Latin
aestus) from which the summer may be inferred. It also has
the sense, when used zoologically, of heat-induced torpor. The latter
sense would however convey the opposite of that intended, for those
aestivating are our vigorous cold-loving Gravettians. Closing this linguistic
diversion, we may note – here particularly commending the editors/authors
for the regular points of note sections that make navigation
through these frequently ice-laden waters so much easier – that
the wind chill and snow cover tolerances of the makers of all three
techno-complexes are very similar. Tolerances of mean temperatures present,
however, a slightly different story. Mousterian and Aurignacian tolerances
of temperatures and wind-child factors are actually very similar but,
with the Gravettians we find, for the first time, that a distributional
shift has occurred wherein most sites are in regions where winter temperatures
are well below 0°C. The difficulty here, of course, is that we are
not really sure whether we are looking at sites where the occupation
was limited to the summer (what one might call ‘aestival’).
But we need to look in more detail at the issue of snow.
My paternal grandmother, an otherwise wonderful woman,
believed that leaves fell off trees purely for her discomfiture. Yet
I look back to the same period my memory is quite other, and the image
that remains is of a time when I enjoyed some spellbinding autumnal
walks, crunching underfoot deep carpets of red and brown deciduous leaves.
Let us not, therefore, see snow depth purely in negative terms as a
constraint ‘through its impact upon prey, inhibiting large mammal
grazing and mobility if it became excessive’ (p. 141). Snow provides
readily accessible supplies of drinking water. Snow can also be fun.
We can see this from our primate context where macaques of the Joshinetsu
Plateau in Japan are known to have fun playing with snowballs (Ford
2000, 5). In Europe, the evidence for not just palaeo-spelaeology, but
palaeolithic palaeo-spelaeology, is powerful not just in Magdalenian
contexts but, even earlier, before 30,000 years ago (Clottes 2003).
People may have had several reasons for venturing into the northern
wastes: perhaps economic (food or ivory); ritual visitation as a socio-symbolic
act; or exploration. These movements may have been prompted, however,
by the stress engendered through being part of annual social aggregations.
I have suggested elsewhere that small scale movements of hunter-gatherers
may sometimes have involved ‘holiday groups rather than hunting
groups’ seeking to chill out away from areas of social stress
(Aldhouse-Green 2000, 41). Elsewhere in the volume here reviewed, the
authors seem to suggest that occupation at several cave-sites was suspect
because of the contingency of alleged human presence with extreme climatic
conditions. Thus, doubt has been cast on the validity of the Aurignacian
presence at Uphill Cave 8, inferred from ‘a solitary dated bone
point’ (p. 143) and the fact that the Mousterian site at the Hyaena
Den, Somerset, enjoyed the coldest wind chill temperatures in Europe
(p. 155) has been identified. We have to remember several things here.
First, we do not know the season of occupation at either site and that
even the summer temperatures of the Last Glacial Maximum were mild (p.
259). Second, both sites are caves, precisely where you would expect
to find visitors to the ‘frozen north’ sheltering from the
lowered temperatures and wind-chill of that northern world. This is
not the place to explore these ideas further, but I will be developing
these issues in publications elsewhere. The conclusions advanced in
chapter 8 are broadly as follows:
- Neanderthal snow preferences are consistent with less than 5 centimetres
of snow depth and less than 60 days of snow cover per year
- Neanderthal tolerances reach no more than 50 centimetres of snow
depth and 210 days annually of snow cover
- only as Neanderthals approached extinction do tolerances increase
to 100 centimetres of snow depth and 240 days of snowcover (‘Hobson’s
choice’?)
- the Aurignacian pattern is similar to that of the Neanderthals
- from 37 ka, both the Aurignacian and Gravettian sites show preferences
for snow-depths of up to 20 centimetres
- during the Last Glacial Maximum, Gravettian depth tolerances reached
150 centimetres
These extremely valuable analyses on the issues of
Neanderthal and modern human presences set the scene for a wider discussion
of Neanderthal thermoregulation and extinction. Overall, the data seem
to show is a high degree of similarity between the early Aurignacian
and the Mousterian, such that ‘the earliest Aurignacian has more
in common with the contemporary Neanderthals than with the later manifestations
of the same techno-complex or with the Gravettian’ (p. 145).
Neanderthal thermoregulation, climatic stress
and extinction
The first of three chapters on the above theme is chapter 9, written
by Leslie Aiello and Peter Wheeler. They make their starting point a
recapitulation of three ‘rules’ relating to the relationship
between body form and climate (p. 147) viz:
- Bergmann’s rule species living in colder climates will have
a higher body mass than populations elsewhere
- Allen’s rule species living in colder climates will have
shorter extremities than populations elsewhere
- Ruff’s rule species living in colder climates will have very
broad trunks when compared with populations elsewhere
Neanderthals correspond to the above with a very wide
bi-iliac breadth (like the modern Inuit), relatively short legs and
distal extremities expressed in the following ratios: lengths of radius:humerus,
tibia:femur, and femoral length relative to femoral head size. Also
suggested as signs of cold adaptation are large noses, large paranasal
sinuses and large brains. The data studied by Aiello and Wheeler relate
specifically to body form. The key result is that there is only a comparatively
small difference between Neanderthals and Modern Humans as far as adaptation
to cold is concerned. The Neanderthal advantage amounted to no more
than 1°C before thermoregulatory thermogenesis would have to be
initiated; a difference of 2.5-3.5°C applied in the case of their
minimum sustainable ambient temperature. The hypothesis that Neanderthals
might have benefited from a thick layer of insulating body fat is considered
and rejected, on the basis that the weight of fat needed to produce
a meaningful result would be more than half of an individual’s
calculated body weight. The possibility of hairiness could not be evaluated
but it is clear that Neanderthals would have needed the provision of
shelter, fire and some kind of clothing. What is perhaps surprising
at first sight is that median winter wind chill temperatures calculated
for individual archaeological sites vary from a ‘warm’ +3.1°F
(Mousterian), through -4.1°F (Aurignacian) to a distinctly chilly
-8.7°F in the case of the Gravettian. But this may all be a reflection
of an impaired Neanderthal capacity both to design and make clothing
and perhaps also in maintaining and enhancing a high energy diet.
Human dispersal, migration and evolution
Two key events happened in Europe in OIS 3: the extinction of the Neanderthals
and the arrival of Modern Humans. These are considered by Marta Lahr
and Robert Foley (chapter 14). Their stimulating discussion of evolutionary
processes cannot be covered here. However, it is clear that anatomically
modern humans did not expand into Europe before 60 ka. Their analysis
of Stage 3 events in Europe has some significant conclusions:
- there is no relationship between climate and the number of archaeological
sites as a whole
- but, if Middle Palaeolithic sites alone are considered, there is
evidence that Neanderthals were adversely affected by climate
- a refugium zone existed at 43-45° of Latitude (the level of
southwestern France) but the more intensive use of this in Stage 4
rather than Stage 2 suggests that Neanderthals had a lesser tolerance
of cold than Modern Humans
- that genetic data, whilst immensely valuable, is less fine-grained
than archaeological and fossil evidence; accordingly, genetic data
seem unlikely to be of significant use for resolving key questions
regarding the interaction of human demography and climate
Presentation
Overall presentation is of a remarkably high standard. Even so, I find
it remarkable that there is no index. Perhaps this reflects an ancestral
memory of early BARs. Even Mortimer Wheeler – who ‘inter
arma [had] no heart for studentship’ – managed in wartime
Britain to prepare an index for his monumental work on Maiden Castle.
It is a pity, too, that there is no composite bibliography which would
have been considerably more useful for the reader than simply locating
references at the end of each chapter. The effect of these two lacunae
is to make interrogation of the data more difficult to achieve. I am
reminded of the famous quotation from Nennius’s Historia Brittonum
‘Ego … coacervavi omne quod inveni’, which may
be loosely rendered ‘I have made a heap of all I know’.
With so many figures, problems were likely to arise and here we may
note, particularly, fig. 9.5 on p. 156, where symbols have not reproduced
clearly, and fig. 6.12 on p. 98, where the incomplete key renders interpretation
of this map difficult. A very few other such points include Appendix
10.1 on pp.186-89, which began its life as Appendix 10A; a curious statement
on p. 221, suggesting that Neanderthals and Modern Humans co-existed
in Cantabria until ‘10 ka BP’ (I suspect that an editor
has slipped in an unwanted ‘BP’); finally, the dates of
60-50 Kyr in the top image of Fig. 14.3 purport to relate to OIS 4 human
dispersals but it might have been better to have said ‘after Stage
4’.
Reviewer’s conclusion
The book overall is a triumph of investigation into a very important
part of the last ice age. Perhaps predictably, the project proved so
successful on such a range of fronts that ‘we abandoned the idea
of a complete and systematic report and left the authors free to select
their topics’ (van Andel, p. 257). In answer, to Tjerd van Andel’s
final question (p. 262), this work is clearly overture rather than finale.
Congratulations to Tjerd van Andel and William Davies, and to all the
contributors.
Stephen Aldhouse-Green
University of Wales,
Newport
References
Aldhouse-Green, S.H.R., 2000. Palaeolithic and Mesolithic Wale, in Lynch,
F., Aldhouse-Green, S.H.R. and Davies, J.L., Prehistoric Wales.
Stroud: Alan Sutton, 1-41
Binford, L.R., 1978. Nunamiut Ethnoarchaeology. London: Academic
Press
Clottes, J. (ed.), 2003. Return to Chauvet Cave. Excavating the
Birthplace of Art: the First Full Report. London: Thames &
Hudson
Conard, N.J., Grootes, P.M. and Smith, F.H., 2004. Unexpectedly late
dates for human remains from Vogelherd. Nature 430, 198-201
Davies, W., 2001. A very model of a modern human industry: new perspectives
on the origin and spread of the Aurignacian in Europe. Proceedings
of the Prehistoric Society 67, 195-217
Ford, B.J., 2000. Sensitive Souls. London: Warner Books
Gamble, C., 1987. Man the shoveler: alternative models for Middle Pleistocene
colonisation and occupation in northern latitudes, in Soffer, O., (ed.),
1987. The Pleistocene Old World. New York: Plenum, 81-98
Mithen, S., 2003. After the Ice. A global human history: 20,000 to 5,000
BC. London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson
Review Submitted: August 2004
The views expressed in this review are not
necessarily those of the Society or the Reviews Editor.
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