Abstract: The purpose of this paper is to review the current evidence for plant use in Mesolithic Europe and to summarize its implications. In order to do so, four sources of data are examined: macrobotanical remains, palynological data, artefactual evidence, and the human biological record. A prelimary survey of palaeobotanical evidence for plant use in the Mesolithic indicates that the evidence is far more extensive than expected hitherto and that accumulations of plant food, especially of nuts, point to their regular and extensive use. In those areas such as Britain, where a large number of fine-resolution palynological studies have been carried out, the incidence of clearance and burning phases seems to be too high to be explained by acts of nature alone. A good case can be made for deliberate forest clearance and the maintenance of a more open landscape by Late Mesolithic groups as part of a promotional strategy to increase the productivity of nut and fruit trees and shrubs, wetland plants, and possibly native grasses. Artefactual evidence points to a widespread distribution of soil-working tools (hoes and antler mattocks), especially in temperate Europe, and to a greater than expected presence of reaping and grinding equipment, lending conditional support for the existence of a specialized plant processing tool kit for digging, reaping, and plant processing. Palaeopathological evidence indicates the existence of a dietary pattern in the west Mediterranean making extensive use of starchy and carbohydrate foods which resulted in a high caries rate among the Mesolithic population of that area. In discussing the signiftcanse of these four lines of evidence, it is argued that, by the Late Mesolithic, the patterns of plant use support the notion of wild plant food husbandry instead of the incidental and opportunistic use of plants for food which has implicitly been accepted as a norm for the Mesolithic in Europe. Three geographical areas can be identified with their specific pattern of plant use: temperate Europe, Mediterranean Europe, and the south-eastern Balkans/Pontic Steppe. The patterns of plant use suggested in this paper emphasize the additive nature of the adoption of the agro-pastoral Neolithic farming practices in Europe.

Abstract: BENNETT, JOHN W., AND SEENA B. KOHL. I98I. \"Longitudinal research in rural North America: The Saskatchewan Cultural Ecology Research Program, I960-I973,\" in Anthropologists at home in North America: Methods and issues in the study of one's own society. Edited by Donald A. Messerschmidt. New York: Cambridge University Press. BENNETT, JOHN W., AND ROBERT K. MCKNIGHT. I956. Liberation of alienation: The Japanese woman student in America. News Bulletin of the Institute of Internal Education 3 I(7):

Abstract: The amount of information that can be derived from stone tools has increased dramatically during this century. One of the latest approaches to the topic is functional analysis of flint tool edges using high-power microscopy, a method developed by L. Keeley in the late 1970s. This work is based on this method, and concerns tool functions in the Danish late-Mesolithic Ertebolle culture, as well as in the Neolithic Funnel Breaker (TRB) culture. The investigations focus on evidence of prehistoric plant working, and on "gloss", a lacquer-like sheen or use-wear, well-known to most archaeologists.

Abstract: summary Pollen analysis was carried cut on sediment sequences from two small basins situated 6 km apart in the hills of west Mainland, Orkney, At both sites, vegetation development from the late glacial until after the arrival of Neolithic people is recorded. An initial late glacial heath, interrupted by a herbaceous phase indicating the Younger Dryas, was replaced by tallherb and grassland vegetation. The Saksunarvatn ash layer was recorded, coinciding with the arrival of Corylus avellana in the islands at around 9.2 ka BP. Extensive woodland developed at about 8000 yr BP, predominantly Betula–Coryhus with Salix, alnus glutinosa. Quercus and Pinus sylvestris occasionally present. The woodland was locally affected by Mesolithic human activity and finally lost at around 5kaBP, partly as a consequence of Neolithic human activity. Mire development was actively proceeding in both basins after the woodland decline. The records illustrate the importance of human activity in the development of the treeless, varied landscape seen in Orkney today.

Abstract: Pollen-stratigraphic data and radiocarbon dates are presented for a full Holocene series of sediment cores obtained from a high-level site in the Appennino Parmense, northern Italy. Three 'marker' horizons are identified on the basis of sediment changes and pollen stratigraphy, and the extent to which they indicate episodes of significant human interference in the local vegetation is discussed. The earliest (M1) is dated to around 6300 BP. From the pollen evidence, some form of human impact on the regional vegetation at this time is suspected, but there is no convincing archaeological evidence to support this. The pollen evidence from the second (M2: 5000-4000 BP) and third (M3: ca. 1400 BP) marker horizons is consistent with archaeological information in suggesting that the high parts of the Apennines, close to the tree-line, were subject to intense summer grazing during the late Neolithic through to the Copper Age, and the immediate post-Roman period. A review of archaeological and documentary evidence ...

Abstract: The Upper Pleistocene prehistory of Portugal is among the least known of any area of Western Europe. Recent survey and excavations have revealed that southern Portuguese Estremadura may well be as rich in the full range of prehistoric sites as any part of Iberia. Numerous open and cave sites with intact cultural deposits have been located that range from the Mousterian through the early Neolithic. While the work is ongoing, there is now good evidence, in terms of absolute chronology and material remains, for both strong parallels with the rest of SW Europe and some markedly local cultural expressions.

Abstract: The existence of a ‘radiocarbon plateau’ at 9600 BP causes problems for early Mesolithic archaeology and palaeoecology, since events separated by up to 400 calendar years are not distinguished by radiocarbon dating. A new sequence of closely spaced radiocarbon accelerator dates from waterlogged deposits at the early Mesolithic site at Star Carr, Yorkshire, has enabled recognition of this plateau. It has been possible to ‘wiggle-match’ these Star Carr dates to the recently produced dendrochronological calibration curve for the early post-glacial period, providing an ‘absolute’ chronology for formation of the deposits. Associated high resolution palaeoecological analyses indicate two local phases of human activity, the lengths of which can be estimated from the calibrated time-scale. As far as we are aware, this is the first time that it has been possible to provide ‘absolute’ dates for human activity at an early Mesolithic site in Europe.

Abstract: mans in the Natufian occupied their sites for much of the year, calls for further eflection given their known differences in behavior. The Neanderthal occupation may have corresponded to oxygen-isotope stage 4, when the climate of the region was cool and dry, while the Natufians who inhabited the sites studied by Lieberman lived from about i.2,000 to iI,000 B.P. in radiocarbon years, during a relatively warm and moist episode. The Natufian pattern may indeed indicate a shift to a more sedentary mode of life, as Lieberman proposes, but the apparent year-round occupation by Neanderthals is probably the result of a different pattern of debris deposition. The later Middle Palaeolithic sites are in ecotones, as he observes, and so would have been attractive to such groups in more than one season. Neanderthals may have used the sites for short periods of a few days or weeks at various times of the year and have repeated their visits intermittently over several millennia. Gazelle remains brought back to a site during such infrequent stays would have been obtained in different seasons, thus mimicking year-round occupations. Lieberman's claim that occupation of Natufian sites for much of the year was linked to increased cereal consumption and the development of agriculture must be challenged. The direct evidence from plant remains for cereal consumption at the sites in the Natufian heartland from which he obtained his samples is minimal (Olszewski I993:425). The only contemporary Levantine site at which large quantities of cereals have been found is Abu Hureyra i (Hillman, Colledge, and Harris I989), in the steppe, beyond the Mediterranean zone. Acorns may have been a staple plant food for the inhabitants of Natufian sites in the Mediterranean forest, as Olszewski (I993:427), I (i99I :289), and others have argued. The first unequivocal evidence for agriculture in the form of domesticated cereals and pulses occurs at Jericho (Hopf I983) and Tell Aswad (van Zeist and Bakker-Heeres I982) about Io,000 B.P., a millennium later than the Natufian deposits studied by Lieberman. This gap in time between his Natufian sites and the inception of farming corresponded to the Younger Dryas, an episode of cooler, drier climate that was partly responsible for the disruption of late Epipaleolithic hunting and gathering and that contributed to the development of farming (Moore and Hillman I992). Jericho and Tell Aswad lie in semiarid country, suggesting that agriculture developed there and not in the Mediterranean forest.

Abstract: Dental and gnathic metrics from a series of Mesolithic and Neolithic cemetery samples in the Dnieper River valley (Ukraine) are compared. Both male and female Neolithic samples have larger dental dimensions, wider dental arcades, and a more robust mandibular corpus than do the Mesolithic samples. In addition, the relative variances (RVs) of bucco-lingual dental breadths (as measured by modified Levene's Tests) show an intriguing pattern of change from the Mesolithic into and through the Neolithic. Female RVs show a clear tenency to increase through time, while male RVs show more mixed tendencies. Such a pattern indicates that the increases in Ukrainian Neolithic dento-gnathic dimensions are plausibly attributable to low intensity gene flow (demic diffusion). Seen in the light of new chronometric, paleodietary, and paleolinguistic information, as well as in the context of recent archaeological models for agro-pastoralist origins in the North Pontic, these data suggest that gene flow via population interactions originating in or transient through the circum-Caucasus may have played an important role in producing the Ukrainian Neolithic dental increase. © 1994 Wiley-Liss, Inc.

Abstract: Le sondage effectue en 1984 dans l'abri sous roche effondre de Yutil al-Hasa avait livre des assemblages du Paleolithique superieur final de tradition ahmarienne. De nouveaux sondages en 1993 ont permis de reconnaitre des depots du Madamaghien et du Natoufien ancien. L'occupation du site ne fui pas continue au cours des 8 000 ans que couvrent approximativement ces deux phases. Pourtant, l'abri occupait alors une situation privilegiee dans la region, ce qui a permis de faire des observations sur les strategies ď utilisation de l'espace. Cette region comprenait pendant le Pleistocene final des zones favorables (dans ce cas un lac/marecage) dans un passage essentiellement desertique. ; Mots cles : Jordanie, Yutil el-Hasa. paleolithique superieur, epipaleolithique.

Abstract: The process of Neolithization (transition from foraging to food-producing economy) is discussed using Lithuanian archaeological and anthropological data. Local Neolithic Nemunas and Narva cultures show continuation of the Mesolithic tradition and preference for a foraging economy up to the Early Bronze age. Origins of people of these cultures should be searched for in Central Europe. Late Neolithic Corded Ware culture and its bearers also probably arrived from the south and differed craniologically from the indigenous population. During interaction with local cultures and people, the hybrid Pamariu (Baltic Coastal) culture emerged, its subsistence strategies more related to food production and its population occupying a morphologically intermediate position. Paleodemographic data suggest demic expansion from the south, thus confirming archaeological and craniological data. Paleopathological lesions demonstrate high levels of stress. Morphology of postcranial skeleton and estimated somatom etric indices reveal tendencies for gracilization during Neolithic transition, improvement of demographical indexes and leptosomization with the rise of civilization.

Abstract: General works surveys and syntheses methodology palaeolithic and mesolithic neolithic Bronze Age Iron Age Roman early medieval later medieval post-medieval and industrial sub-sections for each part are as follows - general surveys of the period chronology/history environment settlement pattern and communications types of settlement and individual sites sites other than settlements technology and economics artefact types art and religion.

Abstract: For the most part the Pleistocene, and even the earliest post-glacial, is a blank when it comes to evidence of humans eating plants. No wonder the old men's stories, of chaps who hunt great mammals and eat their meat, still dominate our unthinking visions of hunter-gathering in that period. Some real evidence, slight though it is, from a classic European Upper Palaeolithic site provides a more balanced view.

Abstract: While the caves round Oban, on the west coast of Scotland, are famous for their Mesolithic artefacts, they have also produced Bronze Age finds and numerous burials. Radiocarbon dates on human bones from one cave show these to be Iron Age, suggesting the Obanian assemblages are composites accumulated over millennia.