Lithics of the Late Middle Palaeolithic : post MIS 5 technological variability and its implications

Abstract

This special issue of Quaternary International concerns lithic (stone tool) technology of the Late Middle Palaeolithic, with a special emphasis on the periods of Marine Isotope Stages (MIS) 4 and 3, in Africa, Asia and Europe. Variations in lithic technology in this period are considered in terms of their implications for the evolution of human behaviour, adaptation and population dispersal. We chose this topic for a number of reasons. We wished to shift emphasis away from the Middle to Upper Palaeolithic transition, and to explore and elucidate the technological diversity of the Late Middle Palaeolithic. From this perspective there was nothing pre-ordained in the origin of the Upper Palaeolithic (or broadly analogous concepts such as the Later Stone Age or Late Palaeolithic), and particular historical-demographic contingencies of the Late Middle Palaeolithic may have resulted in a number of different outcomes. These possibilities are as much part of the human story as the widely researched Middle to Upper Palaeolithic transition. [excerpt from the Introduction]