Human adaptations to environmental change during the Terminal Pleistocene and Early Holocene - Part 1

DOCUMENT Citation Only Felix Riede.

The Hamburgian is associated with the initial pioneer human re-colonization of northern Europe during the Late Glacial. Whilst much recent research has focused on the dynamics of initial entry, this paper addresses the end of the Hamburgian, especially in its northernmost range of present-day southern Scandinavia. The difference in cultural signature between the Hamburgian culture’s late Havelte variant and its successor in the region, the Federmessergruppen, is striking and difficult to explain...

DOCUMENT Citation Only William Banks.

A common theme among Upper Paleolithic studies is how hunter-gatherer adaptations may be related to environmental variability, with some focusing on how culture-environment relationships during the Paleolithic are intertwined with ecological niche dynamics. The reason being that when faced with the rapid-scale climatic fluctuations and environmental reorganizations characteristic of MIS 3 and 2, Paleolithic populations could have responded in a variety of ways. Ecological niche modeling methods...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Simon Connor. Shawn Ross. Adela Sobotkova. Ilia Iliev.

The spread of agriculture into Europe from its Near Eastern heartland was an important cultural event, the causes of which have been debated for many decades. DNA analyses are increasingly providing insights into the genetic inheritance of Europe's first farmers, yet the triggers for their initial migration remain elusive. The earliest agricultural sites in Europe appear to be those situated in coastal Greece, while more fertile inland areas, such as the Thracian Plain, were settled centuries to...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Natalie Munro. Mary Stiner.

Franchthi Cave is a pivotal case in research on the mechanisms of the forager-producer transition in the southern Balkans region. Publications on this site have documented the geological, artifactual and macrobotanical records, but detailed information on the faunas is lacking. This zooarchaeological study focuses on the Final Mesolithic and Initial Neolithic periods and the question of whether livestock were adopted as isolated components by late Mesolithic foragers or the site was colonized by...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Jennifer French.

A key question for archaeologists studying the late Pleistocene is how human populations responded and adapted to the dramatic, and often rapid, global climatic changes which characterised this glacial period. Using a range of archaeological data attributed to the Upper/Final Magdalenian and Azilian techno-complexes (15 000-10 000 uncal BP), this paper assesses the evidence for changes in settlement patterns and human demography during the Late Pleistocene in South-Western France. Data on...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Philippe Crombé. Erick Robinson.

In a recent paper Robinson et al. (2013) could synchronize major changes in Mesolithic armatures and the development of the Rhine-Meuse-Scheldt Culture with the abrupt cooling event of 9.3 cal BP. It is suggested that this climatic event led to environmental stress which triggered the development of inter-regional social networks, e.g. by expanding long-distance raw material exchange and creating particular socially symbolic artifact types. Yet, the impact of the 9.3 cooling event on the...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Clive Bonsall. Catriona Pickard. Peter Groom.

Intensive and specialized exploitation of marine resources has traditionally been attributed to the Early Holocene in Europe, from c. 11,500 cal BP (e.g. Clark 1965, 1975; von Brandt 1984) as a response to changing climate, reduction in large mammal biomass, and consequent broadening of the resource base. However, the technical sophistication of fishing gear recovered from Early Holocene archaeological contexts is suggestive of a long history of development. This paper presents a synthesis of...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Michael Jochim.

The environmental changes in Europe at the end of the last ice age had profound effects on human populations. One of these changes, the development of numerous lakes in the region north of the Alps, created new habitats and niches that were rapidly exploited, with significant effects on many aspects of behavior. The record of environmental and archaeological changes in Switzerland and southern Germany are examined with an emphasis on subsistence, technology, and land use. SAA 2015 abstracts...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Leore Grosman.

The Natufian culture coincided with the Terminal Pleistocene, a period of climatic unpredictability. In the Southern Levant the Late Natufian phase corresponds to the global Younger Dryas event and directly precedes the abrupt transition to early Neolithic entities at the beginning of the Holocene climatic regime. The unique cultural dynamics of the Natufian, shifts in subsistence strategies and the environmental setting of various sites are the key for understanding the process of...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Ofer Bar-Yosef. James Phillips.

The Levant is geographically limited by the sea in the Mediterranean in the west, deserts in south and east with the only widened extension of wetter condition in the Euphrates and Tigris basins. Abrupt climatic changes allowed for the demographically growth of Terminal Pleistocene foragers in the Levant and led to increasing territoriality. Pressures were increased with the expansion of hunting-gathering groups from the Nile Valley into Sinai and the Negev. The social and economic impacts...

DOCUMENT Citation Only James Phillips. Ofer Bar-Yosef.

This paper is concerned with interpreting the terminal Pleistocene foragers of the Nile River basin, dating between ca. 22,000 to 11,000 years BP. From Wadi Halfa at the Second Cataract, downriver to Qena, at least twelve archaeological traditions occupied and/or utilized the Nile River ecosystem, with subsistence strategies organized around the Nile floods, and the migration of migrating birds. Some settlement patterns within the confines of the Valley shifted seasonally, while others...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Sarah Lacy.

Oral pathology prevalence can be used to make inferences about the behavioral and environmental factors that contribute to individual and population health. Late Upper Paleolithic Western Eurasian human groups were expanding geographically as well as increasing in density, and the major climatic oscillations that define this period stressed these pioneering humans. Evidence of this strain includes temporal differences in oral pathology prevalence, namely caries, periodontal disease, tooth loss,...