Perhaps the oldest modern human settlement in Europe, the archaeological site at Dolní Věstonice–Pavlov, located in the rolling, forested plains just north of the Danube River, has yielded a treasure trove of Ice Age artifacts since its first excavation in 1924. The earliest people who lived here some 30,000 years ago produced tools crafted from stone and bone and carved elaborate animal and human figurines fashioned of mammoth ivory and sculptures of fired clay, including the famous “Venus of Dolní Věstonice,” one of the oldest known ceramic artifacts in the world. Interestingly, novelist Jean M. Auel took much of the inspiration for her popular novel, Clan of the Cave Bear, from the discoveries at Dolní Věstonice–Pavlov. Richly illustrated throughout, including beautiful color renderings of scenes from Paleolithic life suggested by Svoboda’s research, this first English translation of Dolní Věstonice–Pavlov: Explaining Paleolithic Settlements in Central Europe is sure to provide not only vital information for scholars, researchers, and students but also insightful and thought-provoking background for interested general readers.

This is primary descriptive volume on the most important paleontological site for research into the emergence of humans, the development of a modern pattern of hunting and gathering societies in the Middle Upper Paleolithic Era. Erik Trinkhaus is among the most distinguished paleoanthropologists and a member of the National Academy. Svoboda is the project leader on the Pavlovian site.

Geoarchaeology is the archaeological subfield that focuses on archaeological information retrieval and problem solving utilizing the methods of geological investigation. Archaeological recovery and analysis are already geoarchaeological in the most fundamental sense because buried remains are contained within and removed from an essentially geological context. Yet geoarchaeological research goes beyond this simple relationship and attempts to build collaborative links between specialists in archaeology and the earth sciences to produce new knowledge about past human behavior using the technical information and methods of the geosciences. The principal goals of geoarchaeology lie in understanding the relationships between humans and their environment. These goals include (1) how cultures adjust to their ecosystem through time, (2) what earth science factors were related to the evolutionary emergence of humankind, and (3) which methodological tools involving analysis of sediments and landforms, documentation and explanation of change in buried materials, and measurement of time will allow access to new aspects of the past. This encyclopedia defines terms, introduces problems, describes techniques, and discusses theory and strategy, all in a format designed to make specialized details accessible to the public as well as practitioners. It covers subjects in environmental archaeology, dating, materials analysis, and paleoecology, all of which represent different sources of specialist knowledge that must be shared in order to reconstruct, analyze, and explain the record of the human past. It will not specifically cover sites, civilizations, and ancient cultures, etc., that are better described in other encyclopedias of world archaeology. The Editor Allan S. Gilbert is Professor of Anthropology at Fordham University in the Bronx, New York. He holds a B.A. from Rutgers University, and his M.A., M.Phil., and Ph.D. were earned at Columbia University. His areas of research interest include the Near East (late prehistory and early historic periods) as well as the Middle Atlantic region of the U.S. (historical archaeology). His specializations are in archaeozoology of the Near East and geoarchaeology, especially mineralogy and compositional analysis of pottery and building materials. Publications have covered a range of subjects, including ancient pastoralism, faunal quantification, skeletal microanatomy, brick geochemistry, and two co-edited volumes on the marine geology and geoarchaeology of the Black Sea basin.

2022 Choice Outstanding Academic Title The Indigenous Paleolithic of the Western Hemisphere is a reclaimed history of the deep past of Indigenous people in North and South America during the Paleolithic. Paulette F. C. Steeves mines evidence from archaeology sites and Paleolithic environments, landscapes, and mammalian and human migrations to make the case that people have been in the Western Hemisphere not only just prior to Clovis sites (10,200 years ago) but for more than 60,000 years, and likely more than 100,000 years. Steeves discusses the political history of American anthropology to focus on why pre-Clovis sites have been dismissed by the field for nearly a century. She explores supporting evidence from genetics and linguistic anthropology regarding First Peoples and time frames of early migrations. Additionally, she highlights the work and struggles faced by a small yet vibrant group of American and European archaeologists who have excavated and reported on numerous pre-Clovis archaeology sites. In this first book on Paleolithic archaeology of the Americas written from an Indigenous perspective, The Indigenous Paleolithic of the Western Hemisphere includes Indigenous oral traditions, archaeological evidence, and a critical and decolonizing discussion of the development of archaeology in the Americas.

Humans are unique in that they expend considerable effort and ingenuity in disposing of the dead. Some of the recognisable ways we do this are visible in the Palaeolithic archaeology of the Ice Age. The Palaeolithic Origins of Human Burial takes a novel approach to the long-term development of human mortuary activity – the various ways we deal with the dead and with dead bodies. It is the first comprehensive survey of Palaeolithic mortuary activity in the English language. Observations in the modern world as to how chimpanzees behave towards their dead allow us to identify ‘core’ areas of behaviour towards the dead that probably have very deep evolutionary antiquity. From that point, the palaeontological and archaeological records of the Pliocene and Pleistocene are surveyed. The core chapters of the book survey the mortuary activities of early hominins, archaic members of the genus Homo, early Homo sapiens, the Neanderthals, the Early and Mid Upper Palaeolithic, and the Late Upper Palaeolithic world. Burial is a striking component of Palaeolithic mortuary activity, although existing examples are odd and this probably does not reflect what modern societies believe burial to be, and modern ways of thinking of the dead probably arose only at the very end of the Pleistocene. When did symbolic aspects of mortuary ritual evolve? When did the dead themselves become symbols? In discussing such questions, The Palaeolithic Origins of Human Burial offers an engaging contribution to the debate on modern human origins. It is illustrated throughout, includes up-to-date examples from the Lower to Late Upper Palaeolithic, including information hitherto unpublished.