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South-Eastern Mediterranean Peoples Between 130,000 and 10,000 Years Ago

edited by Elena A.A. Garcea

The span of time between 130,000 and 10,000 years ago, the Upper Pleistocene, encompassed a period of dramatic cultural developments in the south-eastern Mediterranean basin. This book highlights and synthesizes the latest discoveries on the most topical issues in current scientific debate on the archaeology of this time period in North Africa and the Near East.

Current archaeological research in previously poorly-known North Africa has brought this region to play a decisive role in the world's scientific debates. After decades of neglect, the archaeological record from North Africa parallels in significance and importance that from the Near East and this book offers an opportunity to observe the Afro-Asian side of the Mediterranean basin as an uninterrupted land, so much as it must have been for its Upper Pleistocene inhabitants.

Important focuses of the book include the Out-of-Africa movement of anatomically modern humans (Homo sapiens) into the Levant from their African homeland, the transition from the Middle Palaeolithic/Middle Stone Age to the Upper Palaeolithic/Later Stone Age between c. 45,000 and 30,000 ago, and the beginning of a totally new way of life, by 10,000 years ago, based on plant cultivation and animal husbandry. These topics are taught in numerous university classes throughout the world, as they are of crucial interest to all courses on human evolution, prehistoric archaeology, anthropology, and palaeoenvironmental studies.

This volume brings together data and perspectives by scholars, usually separated in the scientific venues, the Eurasian world for those working in the Levant and the Near East, and the African world, or rather a little enclave of it, North Africa and the Nile Valley, which are in Africa, but rarely communicate with their colleagues working in neighbouring regions, be them the Near East, East Africa, or sub-Saharan Africa. This volume is complementary to The Mediterranean from 50,000 to 25,000 BP: Turning Points and New Directions edited by M. Camps and C. Szmidt (Oxbow Books, 2009). 200p, 86 b/w illus, 8 tbls. (Oxbow Books 2010)

Review Quotes

"South-Eastern Mediterranean Peoples Between 130,000 and 10,000 Years Ago is a handsome, geographically comprehensive, and practical collection of papers that encompasses interdisciplinary studies on the current human evolution debate, prehistoric archaeology, and palaeoenvironment. The coverage is regional and the scope of the book balanced across the south-eastern Mediterranean region. This nicely produced volume concerning the evolution of our species 100,000 years ago, will appeal to a cross-disciplinary readership of scholars, and students with some basic knowledge who wish to study the topic in more detail; as well as to various specialists due to the quality of its papers, its diversity of approaches, and its wide range of data."

Annita Antoniadou
Archaeological Review from Cambridge (2011)

"...this is a very up-to-date, well-illustrated, and useful work in the grand tradition of mises à jour....it is a great source of information, references, and teaching material on this crucial area at the crossroads between Africa, Europe, and Asia."

Lawrence Guy Straus, University of New Mexico
Journal of Anthropological Research (2011)

Table of Contents

1. Introduction: Goals and challenges (Elena A. A. Garcea)
2. Palaeoenvironments of eastern North Africa and the Levant in the late Pleistocene (Jennifer R. Smith)
3. A new luminescence chronology for Aterian cave sites on the Atlantic coast of Morocco (Jean-Luc Schwenninger, Simon N. Collcutt, Nick Barton, Abdeljalil Bouzouggar, Laine Clark-Balzan, Mohamed Abdeljalil El Hajraoui, Roland Nespoulet and André Debénath)
4. The spread of Aterian peoples in North Africa (Elena A. A. Garcea)
5. The lower and upper later Stone Age of North Africa (Elena A. A. Garcea)
6. Middle and upper Palaeolithic in the Egyptian Nile Valley (Pierre M. Vermeersch)
7. Late Palaeolithic hunter-gatherers in the Nile Valley of Nubia and upper Egypt (Romuald Schild and Fred Wendorf)
8. Neanderthals and early homo sapiens in the Levant (John J. Shea)
9. The Levantine upper Palaeolithic and Epipalaeolithic (Ofer Bar-Yosef and Anna Belfer-Cohen)
10. The later Epipalaeolithic (Natufian) Levant: a brief history and review (Brian Boyd)
11. Bridging the gap between in and out of Africa (Elena A. A. Garcea)

Related Titles

• The Mediterranean from 50,000 to 25,000 BP: Turning Points and New Directions
  edited by Marta Camps and Carolyn Szmidt

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