Beccy Scott

The Early Middle Palaeolithic: The European Context

Abstract This chapter explores the regional context of Early Middle Palaeolithic Britain as the northwesternmost edge of the European landmass between Marine Isotope Stages (MIS) 8 and 6. During this period, Levallois flaking became favoured as a problem-solving strategy in northwest Europe, and handaxes were not routinely manufactured in most areas. Here we explore the relationships between the British and mainland European records, in order to consider how and why Levallois flaking became so widely practised in northwest Europe at this time. We consider the environmental succession of MIS 8–6 and its likely impact upon human behaviour, concentrating on age-constrained archaeological assemblages from the ‘northwest region’ of Europe which have some indications of local environment. These data are used to investigate patterns of human habitat preference, colonisation and abandonment in relation to environmental and palaeogeographic change, and technological practice.

Technology and landscape use in the Early Middle Palaeolithic of the Thames Valley.

Abstract This chapter re-examines key assemblages from the Thames Valley which can confidently be assigned to the early Middle Palaeolithic (Marine Isotope Stages 8–6). The assemblages are characterised in terms of human activity at each place, in order to understand patterns of adaptation, technological practice, demography and landscape use in different parts of the Thames catchment. Contrasts are apparent between the Middle and Lower Thames in terms of available raw material and site location, technological strategies and curation practices, which require consideration when constructing demographic models for Britain during this period.

A new view from La Cotte de St Brelade, Jersey

Did Neanderthal hunters drive mammoth herds over cliffs in mass kills? Excavations at La Cotte de St Brelade in the 1960s and 1970s uncovered heaps of mammoth bones, interpreted as evidence of intentional hunting drives. New study of this Middle Palaeolithic coastal site, however, indicates a very different landscape to the featureless coastal plain that was previously envisaged. Reconsideration of the bone heaps themselves further undermines the ‘mass kill’ hypothesis, suggesting that these were simply the final accumulations of bone at the site, undisturbed and preserved in situ when the return to a cold climate blanketed them in wind-blown loess.

The archaeology of persistent places: The Palaeolithic case of la Cotte de St Brelade, Jersey

Abstract Excavations at the Middle Pleistocene site of La Cotte de St Brelade, on the island of Jersey in the English Channel, have revealed a long sequence of occupation. The continued use of the site by Neanderthals throughout an extended period of changing climate and environment reveals how, despite changes in the types of behaviour recorded at the site, La Cotte emerged as a persistent place in the memory and landscape of its early hominin inhabitants. The sites status as a persistent place for these people suggests a level of social and cognitive development permitting reference to and knowledge of places distant in time and space as long ago as at least MIS 7.

Book reviews. Thomas Wynn & Frederick L. Coolidge. How to think like a Neanderthal . xii+210 pages, 13 illustrations. 2012. Oxford: Oxford University Press; 978-0-19-974282-0 hardback £ 16.99.

The author of this unusual book was especially interested in the long-term ecological history of malaria as a whole, and the links with other primates. It is particularly relevant to archaeology in that we have long evolved in malarial areas and the development of agriculture probably had a significant effect on the spread of malaria and associated human mortality. Some time in the past, perhaps as a result of human population increase, malaria reservoirs were also established in our close relatives, gorillas, chimpanzees and bonobos.

Neanderthals behavingLaura Niven. The Palaeolithic Occupation of Vogelherd Cave: Implications for the Subsistence Behavior of Late Neanderthals and early Modern Humans (Tübingen Publications in Prehistory). vi+314 pages, 84 illustrations, 61 tables. 2006. Tübingen: Kerns; 3-935751-04-4 hardback €39.95.

The first volume is a series of papers presented at an international symposium at Blaubeuren-Tübingen in July 2004, published to coincide with the 150th anniversary of the Neander Valley discovery. Whilst explicitly concerned with the origins of modern humans in Europe and the fate of the Neanderthals, this is an excellent collection of papers which encompasses a variety of perspectives, written in a refreshingly non-polemical, discursive manner. Although not divided thematically, the papers are grouped by shared focus. Conard reviews the history of research into questions of interaction and extinction, and the emergence of behavioural modernity as an area of interest in itself. His paper underlines a primary focus of the collection as a whole: that such complex issues cannot be addressed with reference to monocausal explanations, but are