Full Description
Regional approaches to past human adaptations have generated much new knowledge and understanding. Researchers working on problems of adaptations in the Holocene, from those of simple hunter-gatherers to those of complex sociopolitical entities like the state, have found this approach suitable for comprehension of both ecological and social aspects of human behavior. This research focus has, however, until recently left virtually un touched a major spatial and temporaI segment of prehistory-the Old World during the Pleistocene. Extant literature on this period, by and large, presents either detailed site speeific accounts or offers continental or even global syntheses that tend to compile site speeific information but do not integrate it into whole c‾nstructs of funetioning so ciocuhural entities. This volume presents our current state of knowledge about a variety of regional adaptations that charaeterized prehistoric groups in the Old World before 10,000 B. P. The authors of the chapters consider the behavior of humans rather than that of objects or features and present data and models for variaus aspects of past cultures and for culture change. These presentations integrate findings and understandings derived from a number of related disciplines actively involved in researching the past. Data and interpretations are offered on a range of Old \yorld regions during the PaIeolithic, induding Africa, Asia, Australia, and Europe, and chronological coverage spans from the Early to Late PIeisto cene.
Contents
I Introduction.- 1 • Old World Archaeology and Archaeologists from a New World Perspective.- II Defining and Interpreting Regional Records.- 2 Searching for Camps and Missing the Evidence?:Another Lookat the Lower Paleolithic.- 3 • Reduction Sequences in the Manufacture of MousterianImplements of France.- 4 • "Arms Too Short to Box With God": Problems and Prospects forPaleolithic Prehistory in Dordogne, France.- 5 • Interpretive Problems in Hunter-Gatherer Regional Studies:Some Thoughts on the European Upper Paleolithic.- III Macroregional Patterns.- 6 • Man The Shoveler: Alternative Models for Middle PleistoceneColonization and Occupation in Northern Latitudes.- 7 • Middle Pleistocene Adaptations in India.- 8 • Regional Perspectives on the Soviet Central Asian Paleolithic.- 9 • Recent Developments in the Upper Pleistocene Prehistory ofChina.- 10 • Pleistocene Australia: Peopling a Continent.- IV Regional Adaptations at a Point in Time.- 11 • Upper Paleolithic Hunter-Gatherers in the Wadi Feiran, Southern Sinai.- 12. The Paris Basin in Magdalenian Times.- 13. Magdalenian Settlement Pattern and Subsistence in Central Europe: The Southwestern and Central German Cases.- V Changes Through Time.- 14 • Late Pleistocene Adaptations in the Levant.- 15 • Perigordian and Noaillian in the Greater Périgord.- 16 • Aurignacian and Gravettian Settlement Patterns in Central Europe.- 17 • Glimpses of Long-Term Shifts in Late Paleolithic Land Use in the Périgord.- 18 • Fishing and Foraging: Marine Resources in the Upper Paleolithic of France.- 19 • From the Mousterian to the Metal Ages: Long-Term Change in the Human Diet of Northern Spain.- 20 • Late Pleistocene Refugia in Europe.- 21 • Upper Paleolithic Connubia, Refugia, and the ArchaeologicalRecord from Eastern Europe.- 22 • Prehistory and Paleoenvironments at the Pleistocene-Holocene Boundary in the Western Cape.- 23 • The Case for the Regional Perspective: A New World View.
