Becoming Neanderthals: The Earlier British Middle Palaeolithic

It is now widely accepted that by the later Middle Palaeolithic Neanderthals possessed a wide range of social and practical skills. More recently, researchers have become interested in how these skills actually emerged; in effect, the challenge now is to document the process by which Middle Pleistocene hominids "became Neanderthals". This book explores the development of classically Neanderthal behaviours in Europe between MIS 9-6, focusing on the British record, especially stone tools as durable residues of human action. As a geographically constrained study area, the progressively robust British chronometric framework now allows previously invisible patterning in technological behaviour, hominid habitat preference and demography during this period to be investigated. This book examines the immense technological variation that is apparent between British sites, in order to present a picture of changing human behaviour and the emergence of European Neanderthal adaptations.

Table of Contents

1. Introduction
2. Historical Background; Previous and Current Research Frameworks
3. The Earliest Middle Palaeolithic of the Thames; Sites of the Lynch Hill/Corbets Tey Terrace (MIS 10-9-8)
4. Neanderthals of Southern Britain; Sites of the Taplow/Mucking Terrace of the Thames (MIS 8-7-6) and Deposits of Equivalent Date
5. The Development of Neanderthal Behaviours in Early Middle Palaeolithic Europe
6. Changing Technological Practice and the Exploitation of Levallois Technology
7. The Middle Palaeolithic Settlement History of the British Isles
8. Living on the Edge; Resettling British Neanderthals in Middle Palaeolithic Europe

Bibliography with Manuscript Sources
Appendix: Flint Analysis Methodology
Index

Beccy Scott is a curator at the British Museum employed on the Pathways to Ancient Britain project, with a passion for all things Neanderthal. Following a degree in Archaeology and Anthropology at Cambridge she obtained her PhD at Durham on the Early Middle Palaeolithic of Britain, in the course of which she became an associate of Ancient Human Occupation of Britain Project (AHOB). She is particularly interested in the development of classic Neanderthal behaviours during the earlier Middle Palaeolithic and especially the organisation of technological behaviour in the landscape.