Lithic assemblages have always been an important source of information, sometimes the only source, on human activities in Late Glacial and Early Postglacial Europe. These twelve papers, some of which were given at the 59th Annual SAA meeting in Arnheim in 1994 (here revised) present comparative lithic material from across Europe.

Case-studies which examine the organization of lithic technology in the context of environmental change in the: eastern Pyrenees (Xavier Terradas); Basque country (J. J. I. Estevez & J. E. G. Urquijo); Portugal (N. F. Bicho); south-east Italy (Sarah Milliken); Jerxen-Orbke, Detmold, Germany (C. Kempcke-Richter); Switzerland (Marie-Isabelle Cattin); Paris basin (Pierre Bodu); eastern Mediterranean (N. Goring-Morris, O. Marder, A. Davidson, F. Ibrahim).

For more than a century, the study of hunting and gathering societies has been central to the development of both archaeology and anthropology as academic disciplines, and has also generated widespread public interest and debate. The Oxford Handbook of the Archaeology and Anthropology of Hunter-Gatherers provides a comprehensive review of hunter-gatherer studies to date, including critical engagements with older debates, new theoretical perspectives, and renewed obligations for greater engagement between researchers and indigenous communities. Chapters provide in-depth archaeological, historical, and anthropological case-studies, and examine far-reaching questions about human social relations, attitudes to technology, ecology, and management of resources and the environment, as well as issues of diet, health, and gender relations - all central topics in hunter-gatherer research, but also themes that have great relevance for modern global society and its future challenges. The Handbook also provides a strategic vision for how the integration of new methods, approaches, and study regions can ensure that future research into the archaeology and anthropology of hunter-gatherers will continue to deliver penetrating insights into the factors that underlie all human diversity.

This collection presents state-of-the-art approaches to the use of inorganic raw materials in the period known as prehistory. It focuses on stone-tools, adornments, colorants and pottery from Europe, America and Africa. The chapters intimately merge archaeology, anthropology, geology, geography, physics and chemistry to reconstruct past human behaviour, economy, technology, ecology, cognition, territory and social complexity. The book represents a framework of raw material investigation for those working in science, regardless of the time period, region of the world or materials they are studying.

For the past million years, individuals have engaged in multitasking as they interact with the surrounding environment and with each other for the acquisition of daily necessities such as food and goods. Although culture is often perceived as a collective process, it is individual people who use language, experience illness, expend energy, perceive landscapes, and create memories. These processes were sustained at the individual and household level from the time of the earliest social groups to the beginnings of settled agricultural communities and the eventual development of complex societies in the form of chiefdoms, states, and empires. Even after the advent of “civilization” about 6,000 years ago, human culture has for the most part been created and maintained not by the actions of elites—as is commonly proclaimed by many archaeological theorists—but by the many thousands of daily actions carried out by average citizens. With this book, Monica L. Smith examines how the archaeological record of ordinary objects—used by ordinary people—constitutes a manifestation of humankind’s cognitive and social development. A Prehistory of Ordinary People offers an impressive synthesis and accessible style that will appeal to archaeologists, cultural anthropologists, and others interested in the long history of human decision-making.

The prehistoric site of Le Placard, Southwest France, was first explored 150 years. 19th-century excavations almost emptied the cavity, now surprisingly ill-known. This 150-year milestone grants an opportunity to look back at this exceptional site and what it can tell us about the Late Pleistocene hunting and gathering societies who dwelt there.

Humans at the End of the Ice Age chronicles and explores the significance of the variety of cultural responses to the global environmental changes at the last glacial-interglacial boundary. Contributions address the nature and consequences of the global climate changes accompanying the end of the Pleistocene epoch-detailing the nature, speed, and magnitude of the human adaptations that culminated in the development of food production in many parts of the world. The text is aided by vital maps, chronological tables, and charts.