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Elsevier

Updating Neanderthals

Understanding Behavioural Complexity in the Late Middle Palaeolithic

  • 1st Edition - June 28, 2022
  • Latest edition
  • Editors: Francesca Romagnoli, Florent Rivals, Stefano Benazzi
  • Language: English

Updating Neanderthals: Understanding Behavioral Complexity in the Late Middle Paleolithic provides comprehensive knowledge on Neanderthals who lived throughout the European… Read more

Description

Updating Neanderthals: Understanding Behavioral Complexity in the Late Middle Paleolithic provides comprehensive knowledge on Neanderthals who lived throughout the European and Asian continents. The book synthesizes historical information about the study of Middle Paleolithic populations and presents current debates about their genetics, subsistence, technology, social and cognitive behaviors. It focuses on the last phase of Neanderthal settlements and presents the main patterns of modern humans across Europe. Written by international experts on the Middle Paleolithic who have conducted innovative studies in the last three decades, this book explores the implications of interactions between different human species, including Neanderthals, Denisovans and Sapiens.

In addition, the book discusses the diversity and variability of human adaptations and behaviors in the changing climate and environment of the Late Pleistocene, and the relationship between these behaviors, demography and cognitive capabilities.

Key features

  • Offers a comprehensive update on the variability and diversity of Neanderthal behaviors during the Late Pleistocene
  • Presents an interdisciplinary reconstruction of Neanderthals by assessing archaeology, paleontology, paleoecology, anthropology, genetics and cognition
  • Reviews the reliability of archaeological data and the theoretical and methodological advances of the last 30 years
  • Discusses the most debated Neanderthal themes, such as demography, diet, socio-economy and art

Readership

Researchers in evolutionary biology, archaeology, and paleoecology. Advanced undergraduate and graduate students in Paleolithic, human evolution, or paleoecological studies

Table of contents

1. Updating Neanderthals: taking stock of more than 160 years of studies

2. The climatic and environmental context of the Late Pleistocene

3. Biotic interactions in the Middle and Late Palaeolithic

4. Different species on the horizon: Denisovan hominins

5. Neanderthal: anatomy, genes, and evolution

6. Neanderthal brain

7. Neanderthal subsistence: selective or opportunistic hunters?

8. Small animal use by Neanderthals

9. The use of plants by Neanderthals

10. Neanderthal technological variability: a wide-range geographical perspective in the Final Middle Palaeolithic

11. The organisation of living spaces in Neanderthal campsites

12. Fire among Neanderthals

13. "Art": Neanderthal symbolic graphic behaviour

14. Spiritual and symbolic activities of Neanderthals

15. Beyond European boundaries: Neanderthals in the Armenian Highlands and the Caucasus

16. Methodological advances in ancient Paleolithic studies

17. The arrival of Homo sapiens in Europe

Review quotes

"Well written and nicely illustrated by a large collection of specialists, and the book is a useful and timely addition to the technical literature."—Quarterly Review of Biology

Product details

  • Edition: 1
  • Latest edition
  • Published: July 1, 2022
  • Language: English

About the editors

FR

Francesca Romagnoli

Francesca Romagnoli, PhD, is an Assistant Professor at the Universidad Autónoma de Madrid, Madrid, Spain. She is specialized in the study of Neanderthal socio-economy. Her research is aimed at understanding adaptations and diversity of cultural behaviors in European Neanderthals, with a special focus in coastal adaptations. She has published innovative research on Neanderthal shell technology, site formation processes, and the relationships between human mobility, technological costs, and stone tool resources.
Affiliations and expertise
Universidad Autónoma de Madrid, Madrid, Spain

FR

Florent Rivals

Florent Rivals, PhD, ICREA is a Research Professor at the Institut Català de Paleoecologia Humana i Evolució Social, Tarragona, Spain. He is specialized in the study of Neanderthal paleoecology. His research focuses on the impact of climate-driven environmental changes on humans, and Neanderthals in particular. He has published significant papers aimed to reconstruct ancient environments, tracking shifts related to climatic changes, and understanding hominin behavioral strategies in different ecological settings.
Affiliations and expertise
Institut Català de Paleoecologia Humana i Evolució Social, Tarragona, Spain

SB

Stefano Benazzi

Stefano Benazzi, PhD, is a Full Professor at the University of Bologna, Department of Cultural Heritage, in Bologna, Italy. He is specialized in the study of Neanderthal skeletal morphology. His research is aimed at understanding the time and mode of the biological and cultural shifts that led to the demise of the autochthonous Neanderthals and their replacement by modern humans. He has published significant papers aimed to assess the taxonomical affiliation of isolated human teeth, to evaluate Neanderthal and modern human morphological variability, and to track the earliest arrival of modern humans in Europe.
Affiliations and expertise
Department of Cultural Heritage, University of Bologna, Bologna, Italy

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