Abstract: Excavations in course at the site of Qermez Dere in north Iraq have revealed a stratified sequence dating from the end of the epi‐palaeolithic period into the earliest centuries of the early neolithic. A sequence of subterranean houses belonging in the latter part of that time‐span (8250–7900 bc) is remarkable for the elaborate care and effort spent on their construction, maintenance and demolition/replacement. Each house was kept very clean, and there is a distinct lack of debris and even the equipment of everyday life. Each house was equipped with one or more non‐structural clay pillars. At the end of the series six weathered human crania were placed on the floor of the last house as it was being obliterated. These very early neolithic houses are contrasted with those of the preceding epi‐palaeolithic of the Levant, and it is suggested that they represent an important change in the perception of the house as home and the focus of attitudes and activities of symbolic social significance concerne...

Abstract: The Mesolithic of Southern Scandinavia, with comprises Denmark and Southern Sweden, has been an attractive area for research for several reasons, including the good preservation conditions at many sites. Most of the work has been concentrated on the southwestern part of Southern Scandinavia, but results from more recent investigations mean that other areas can also be analyzed. New finds in the last few years have given us a greater understanding of the Late Paleolithic settlement and of its relation of the Mesolithic. For the Early Mesolithic (10,000–8000 B.P.), interest has focused primarily on the small inland bog sites in the southern part of the area, where the coast has since been submerged. Farther north, where the land has been uplifted, evidence of coastal settlement has been documented. The Late Mesolithic (8000–6000 B.P.) is known chiefly on the basis of its large coastal settlements. In this period, there is also a larger and more varied collection of finds, which makes it possible to discern clear regional differences. There has also been considerable research on the transition from Mesolithic to Neolithic.

Abstract: Recent Western European Mesolithic research has greatly augmented our understanding of the time and space parameters of material derived from settlements. Perusals of those regularities have led to a renewed scrutiny of the ethnographic literature in an attempt to perceive the resulting temporal and spatial units as anthropologically relevant regional groups. The proposition that the breeding population was identical to the ethnic identity of the participants is untenable. After a review of the physical anthropological composition of that population and its forms of social and spatial organization, the emic relevance of decorative ornamentation and costume is established in terms of society-specific styles. Proceeding from a series of tenets of processual ethnographic analogy, the ornaments extant in the post- glacial hunter-fisher-gatherer cultures of Western Europe are examined for their formal properties and time and space parameters. By means of an explicit set of postulates they are tested for the identification, definition and territorial placement of mesolithic social, ethnic and linguistic groups.

Abstract: Excavations of sites spanning the Beaker to early Roman periods at Stackpole Warren, Dyfed, are described. The sites are in an area of blown sand which enhanced their preservation and led to the separation of several horizons. The earliest is a buried soil beneath the blown sand which contained Mesolithic to Bronze Age artefacts. At site A, there was a roundhouse associated with Early Bronze Age pottery and dated to 1620±70 and 1400±70 BC uncal., and two other roundhouses, one possibly of Beaker age. After a period of soil formation, a ritual complex of Later Bronze Age date was established, this contemporary with the earliest besanding of the area; it included a stone setting of more than 2000 small stones, an alignment of small water-worn stones and a standing stone. A cremation gave a latest date of 940±70 BC uncal. Other Later Bronze Age activity is recorded at site G/J in the form of a rectangular enclosure, possibly unfinished.Late Iron Age to early Romano-British settlement was present at sites A and B, consisting of scatters of occupation debris, burnt mounds, cooking pits, hearths and houses, some of stone, some of timber, all taking place in an area being intermittently besanded.Peripheral to the religious and domestic sites, a field system was excavated. The earliest phase was a linear earthwork from which a C14 date of 400±70 BC uncal. was obtained from charcoal in the ditch. After the decay of this, rectangular fields with stone walls were laid out, one along the line of the erstwhile earthwork, this taking place around the end of the Iron Age as dated by C14 of charcoal directly beneath a wall to 90±70 BC uncal. Some of the fields had been cultivated by a succession of cross- and one-way-ploughing, others used for cattle.An assemblage of 763 flints included a few Mesolithic artefacts but was mostly of Late Neolithic and Bronze Age date. A succession of ceramic assemblages included a small Middle Neolithic group (4 vessels), two distinct Beaker groups, one early (Lanting and van der Waals steps 1–3 (8 vessels), one late (steps 3–6) (45 vessels), an Early Bronze Age group of collared urns (43 vessels) and a Later Bronze Age group (26 vessels).Environmental data was not prolific but there was a small quantity of animal bone, mostly cattle and sheep, and cereal grain, mostly barley with some wheat. Marine molluscs were present but sparsely utilized and there was no other indication of the exploitation of the coastal resources such as seals, birds, fish andiseaweed. Land Mollusca indicated open country from the Iron Age onwards when the record begins.The importance of the site is in the ritual complex from site A, the succession of Iron Age/Romano-British occupation horizons, the succession of ceramic assemblages, the field system and the fact that blown sand horizons have allowed the preservation and separation of the sequence much of which would have been at best conflated in to a single horizon or at worst destroyed. Otherwise, there is no evidence that the site was in any way special with regard to the relationship of human activity and sand deposition until the Middle Ages when the area was used as a rabbit warren. Nor was the coastal location important, at least as could be determined by the results. This was a representative of a succession of later prehistoric farming communities and their various domestic, ritual and sepulchral activities in lowland Dyfed.

Abstract: The first radiocarbon determinations for a large prehistoric cemetery in Karelia, USSR, have been obtained using accelerator mass spectrometry (AMS) of several organic fractions from prehistoric human bone samples. These determinations suggest an age of c. 7500 b.p. for the burials, definitely within the Mesolithic period. Additional information from skeletal and isotope evidence confirm Olenii ostrov as a very important Mesolithic site in northern Europe.

Abstract: Chronological ecology based on studies of plant macro remains, especially prehistoric charcoal, provides evidence concerning the changes in western Mediterranean vegetation during the past millennia. Comparisons are based on present vegetation zones as defined by Ozenda (1975). From the last glacial period to the present time, climatic differences between warm and cool vegetation zones were of about 8°C in the south of France but less extreme in more southern regions. Pines and junipers were characteristic of the late Pleistocene and early Holocene (late Paleolithic and part of Mesolithic). The late Mesolithic and the early Neolithic are periods of forest optimum. During the Neolithic, deciduous and evergreen oaks had a role of varying importance among all the present Mediterranean zones. Man’s influence on the vegetation became significant in the middle Neolithic (south of France) or earlier (south of Spain) and may be characterized by the presence of plants such as Buxus sempervirens, Quercus ilex, Pinus halepensis and Erica. The Chalcolithic, the Roman period, and the Middle Ages are also important periods of man’s influence.

Abstract: This paper presents the first systematic archaeological evidence from the early prehistory of south-east Ireland. The research is designed to investigate the colonization of the area during the Mesolithic period and the subsequent transition to agriculture. From a theoretical perspective, we offer a view of indigenous development. That is, we look for continuities between Mesolithic and Neolithic Ireland in terms of technology and settlement. The data, we are gathering include surface and excavated materials. Lithic assemblages were systematically collected from ploughsoils surrounding the Waterford Harbour area during the years 1983 through 1987. These materials are analyzed from the point of view of geography, raw material, reduction sequences, manufacturing technology, and chronological typology to yield an initial glimpse into the rich prehistory of the region and its pattern of settlement. Excavations during 1986, 1987 and 1989 have begun to fill in some detail including the region's first prehistoric barley, a Neolithic radiocarbon date, prehistoric pottery, a rhyolite quarry and several rich lithic assemblages.

Abstract: Presentation, sur la base de comparaisons ethnographiques, d'un modele de demographie et structures sociales pour les populations du Paleolithique final/Mesolithique d'Europe occidentale

Abstract: The Natufian culture occupies a special place in the evolution of human societies in the Near East, namely, that of the threshold to the emergence of farming communities. The idea that the Natufians were the earliest farmers is as old as the original discovery of their cultural remains by Garrod (I932). What seemed at the time an intuitive suggestion is now considered perhaps the right interpretation (Moore i982, Unger-Hamilton i989). The shift from hunting-and-gathering with some horticulture to a true farming economy seems a logical continuum (Henry i989). The fact that most of the hard evidence from the Natufian sites comes from the Early or even Middle Natufian (Valla i984), which predates the Early Neolithic by at least 8oo radiocarbon years, is rarely taken into account (Bar-Yosef and Belfer-Cohen i989). The discovery of early farming sites in the Jordan Valley and the adjacent hilly areas on both the east and the west side of the Rift Valley has made it clear that the origins of wheat and barley agriculture were in the southern Levant (van Zeist I988, Bar-Yosef i989). Thus the need to understand cultural processes in and around the Natufian homeland (Stordeur i98i) has assumed special importance. Explaining not only how but also why the Natufian culture emerged from a world of hunter-gatherers apparently not much different in material culture from their contemporaries has become the concern of a number of scholars. Henry (i989) has produced perhaps the most substantial discussion, which takes population dynamics into account. As more and more new data have been retrieved from Natufian sites, pollen cores, and faunal collections, the need for direct international discussion has become obvious, especially since many scholars working in various countries of the Near East have no such communication because of the political situation. The participants in the conference on the Natufian held at the Centre des Recherches Archeologiques, Sophia Antipolis, Valbonne, June 6-8, I989, were archaeologists, zooarchaeologists, palynologists and palaeobota-

Abstract: The general nature of explanations for the Mesolithic-Neolithic transition in Britain and the current support for the notion of indigenous change are noted. The need for a more regionalized view of the transition is argued with reference to the upper Kennet valley and surrounding chalk downland in north Wiltshire. Problems in the recovery and presentation of later Mesolithic settlement are discussed. A model of later Mesolithic exploitation of the area from camps or bases outside it leads to the view that, whatever the cultural identity of those involved, there was a genuine agricultural colonization of the valley, involving new adaptations and new skills. Such infill is unlikely to have belonged to the primary phase of the establishment of agricultural settlement, and other possible cases of secondary infill in southern England and western Europe are noted.

Abstract: Current models for the transition from foraging to food production in Ireland describe a range of possibilities concerning the roles played by indigenous populations, the length of overlap between the adaptive systems and the potential influence of one group on the other. For example, Woodman views Mesolithic populations as passive and temporally discrete for the most part (1976; 1978c; 1987). Alternatively, Aalen (1978) sees the potential for Mesolithic groups exerting a significant influence on the Neolithic populations. In Case's model, Neolithic lifeways are introduced fully formed into Ireland, with little or no input from indigenous groups (1969; 1976). All three agree that colonists initiated the transition on the island. Expanding these models and outlining expectations based on them provides the baseline against which the data from Waterford will be measured.

Abstract: Phyto-archaeological data based on macro-remains studies, especially prehistoric charcoal, provide evidence concerning the changes in western Mediterranean vegetation during the last millennia. Comparisons are based on present vegetation levels as defined by Ozenda. From the last glacial period to the present time, differences between warm and cool vegetation were of about 8 degrees C in the south of France but less extreme in more southern regions. The late Pleistocene and early Holocene (Late Palaeolithic and part of Mesolithic) were a period of transition with pines and junipers. Then, the late Mesolithic and the early Neolithic are typically periods of good forestation. During the Neolithic period deciduous and holm oaks had a role of varying importance in all the present Mediterranean levels (thermomeso- and supramediterranean). Man's influence on the vegetation became significant in the middle Neolithic (south of France) or earlier (south of Spain) and may be characterized by plants such as Buxus sempervirens, Quercus ilex, Pinus halepensis and heaths. The Chalcolithic, the Roman period and the Middle Ages are also periods during which Man's influence was important.

Abstract: Synthese regionale aboutissant a un modele de peuplement et de subsistance fonde sur la sedentarisation d'une societe de chasseurs-collecteurs-pecheurs

Abstract: Two prehistoric burials (classified in an Early Neolithic narrowly related with local Late Mesolithic) from Cueva de Los Canes (Asturias, Spain) are described. Their relevance for the study of the processes of neolithization in the northern coastal region of Spain is also discussed.

Abstract: Presentation de ces assemblages dates de la transition Pleistocene/Holocene, decouverts dans la region de Pobiti Kamani. Ils contiennent 428 microlithes, 900 lames et lamelles et pres de 9 000 eclats. Ils representent la limite orientale de la tradition epigravettienne

Abstract: The lithic industry from this site is typical of the Late Tardenoisian III cultural facies found in North- West Europe. This has been defined through research on tools and standard microliths found in the Mesolithic of the Paris Basin. All the lithic remains have been subjected to various methods of analysis. These confirm the important differences which exist in the Late Mesolithic in this region between the Tardenoisian, the Mauregny facies and the Sauveter- rian « a denticules ». These divergences concern both knapping techniques and microlith morphology. This site has thus become a reference site for the Late Tardenoisian III.

Abstract: The southern side of the Eastern Alps and the plain immediately to the south have been used as a model to study the problem of the human population in the Alps in the Palaeolithic and Mesolithic. This area has been chosen because of the large number of known Palaeolithic and Mesolithic sites, the consequent concentration of research, and because the distribution of sites appears more significative than in other Alpine areas. The chosen area extends from the Alpine watershed to the upper Adriatic coast including the basins of the rivers Adige, Astico, Brenta, Piave, Tagliamento and the Sarca-Garda. Along the Alpine divide there are the peaks of the Atesine Alps (3500-3700 m) and the Carnic Alps (2600-2700 m) divided by important valleys (Resia 1508 m, Brennero 1375 m, Dobbiaco 1209 m, and Camporosso 812 m). To the south there is the O'rtler group (3899 m), to the west the Adamello group (3544 m) and to the east the Dolomites (with peaks of less than 3000 m). Further south the Pre-Alps (highest peaks of just over 2000 m) are intersected by deep valleys. The Pre-Alps slope down to the Veneto-Friulan plain where there are the Euganean and Berici hills. When judging the significance of Palaeolithic sites in our area it is necessary to take into account the possibility that potential deposits have been destroyed by the transgressions of Pleistocene glaciers, especially during the Wiirm II pleniglaciation. The probability that the Wiirm glaciations had destroyed older anthropogenic deposits is indicated by the distribution of Middle Palaeolithic sites up to the limits of the areas affected by the glaciations. The most notable example seems to be Monte Baldo, where Musterian artefacts are present only in the belt between the Wiirm glaciation of Garda and the local glacier. The rare faunal deposits of Ursus Spelaeus from the RissjWiirm interglacial or Early Wiirm preserved in caves (Busi di Bernardo, Grotta delle Conturines) within the areas of glaciation do not contain traces of mano

Abstract: This first survey indicates that, in the most favourable situations, a chronological table of Mesolithic sites in the Paris Basin can be drawn up based on pollen analysis of their occupation levels. The Early Mesolithic period seems to have been contemporaneous with the Boreal context (4 sites), whereas the Middle and Late Mesolithic periods seem to have developed during the Atlantic and early Sub-Boreal (5 sites). However situations do exist where it is not possible to correlate pollen spectra, industries and proposed dates: this diaChronism would seem to be due to perturbing phenomena such as the infiltration of recent pollens through percolation or bioturbation, etc. Analyses must therefore be continued for more Mesolithic rock-shelter sites. They should enable a complete sequence, specific to this type of site, to be built up. This is indispensable in order to situate the human occupation levels chronologically, as in most cases they are stratigraphically isolated.