Evaluating landscape knowledge and lithic resource selection at the French Middle Paleolithic site of the Bau de l'Aubesier.

We report on the application of a novel approach to exploring the degree of landscape knowledge, wayfinding abilities, and the nature of decision-making processes reflected in the utilization of stone resources in the French Middle Paleolithic. Specifically, we use data from the site of the Bau de l'Aubesier to explore the reasons why a majority of the 350 raw material sources cataloged in the surrounding region appear not to have been utilized, including several located near the site and yielding high-quality lithic materials. To this end, we focus on the spatial relationships between sources as an explanatory variable, operationalized in terms of minimum travel times.

Site fragmentation, hominin mobility and LCT variability reflected in the early Acheulean record of the Okote Member, at Koobi Fora, Kenya.

From its initial appearance at ∼1.7 Ma, the Acheulean was prevalent through a vast chronological span of hominin behavioural evolution that lasted nearly 1.5 million years.

What is Still Bay? Human biogeography and bifacial point variability.

'Still Bay' is the name given to a cultural phase within the southern African Middle Stone Age, which remains critical to our understanding of modern human behavioural evolution. Although represented in only a handful of sites, the Still Bay is widespread geographically and, at certain localities, persisted over a substantial period of time. Many studies have focused on tracing the temporal range and geographic reach of the Still Bay, as well as inferring degrees of early modern human demographic connectedness from these parameters.

The Mungo Mega-Lake Event, Semi-Arid Australia: Non-Linear Descent into the Last Ice Age, Implications for Human Behaviour.

The Willandra Lakes complex is one of the few locations in semi-arid Australia to preserve both paleoenvironmental and Paleolithic archeological archives at high resolution. The stratigraphy of transverse lunette dunes on the lakes' downwind margins record a late Quaternary sequence of wetting and drying. Within the Willandra system, the Lake Mungo lunette is best known for its preservation of the world's oldest known ritual burials, and high densities of archeological traces documenting human adaptation to changing environmental conditions over the last 45 ka.