Overview

The research presented in this book results from an international interdisciplinary research program in Hayonim cave (Israel) from 1992 to 2000, directed by Prof O. Bar-Yosef (Harvard University) and L. Meignen (CNRS, France), and focusing on a long archaeological sequence dated to circa 300-140 000 years ago. The intensive fieldwork and research following it allowed us to document an essential period of human history in the Levant: the end of the Lower Palaeolithic and Early Middle Palaeolithic, during which recent discoveries showed that the early H. sapiens, expanding out of Africa, reached SW Asia around 180-190 000 y ago. This book brings together the impressive findings of nine years of excavations and analysis by an interdisciplinary team of well-known scholars from US universities (Harvard, Boston, University of Arizona), Weizmann Institute (Israel) as well as from the French CNRS. Several complementary approaches are implemented to understand early human economic, cultural and behavioral changes observed at this crucial period. It is based on detailed studies of lithic artifact technology, the remains of systematic fire use and cave occupation by early humans, and foraging strategies that include the early development of human adaptations for hunting large prey. In the context of the highly debated cultural break observed at the end of the Lower Palaeolithic, we propose new interpretations based on these innovative results. This volume will provide a cornerstone for the history of humankind in a critical geographic region, at the crossroads between Africa and Eurasia.

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9789464261868

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Liliane Meignen is a geologist and prehistorian by training. She received her Ph.D. in Prehistory/ Human Paleontology, in 1972, from the University of Paris VI (France). She joined the Centre Recherches Archéologiques (CRA)- CNRS in 1976 in Sophia-Antipolis (France). She is currently Director of research (emerita) at the CEPAM (Cultures et Environnements Préhistoire, Antiquité, Moyen Age), Université Côte d’Azur and French National Research Center (CNRS), in Nice (France). Ofer Bar-Yosef was an Israeli archaeologist and Mac Curdy Professor of Prehistoric Archaeology in the Department of Anthropology at Harvard University. In his early days, he was Professor of Prehistory at the Institute of Archaeology, Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Israel, before moving to the USA in 1980 for a long career at Harvard University. He was a member of several organizations, among them the National Academy of Sciences of the USA.

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