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DISCUSSION 1: An Overview of Matters Transitional, From the Outside Looking In

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Abstract

This is a response to other chapters in this volume and its content is largely determined by theirs. Gowlett and Chauhan tackle entire continents (Africa and South Asia, respectively) and vast periods of time. Gowlett synthesises the Plio-Pleistocene, during which nothing startling happened. Chauhan tries to do similarly for the Palaeolithic of South Asia, but is bedevilled by a lack of data. The chapters by Lycett and Blackwell et al. are methodological and I cannot assess them as fully as they deserve. Three of the seven chapters are confined to the Middle-Upper Palaeolithic transition in Europe (Clark, Soffer and Straus) and two of those (Clark and Straus) are further confined to southwestern Europe. Their emphases are deliberately upon cultural change. However, modern humans (“modern” in all respects) evolved in Africa and the European Middle-Upper Palaeolithic transition reflects their arrival in Europe and the rapid extinction of the Neandertals. I thus believe that decoupling cultural from biological change is what we should not do at this particular transition.

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Acknowledgements

I thank Marta Camps and Parth Chauhan for asking me to write this chapter in lieu of the other one (!). They probably expected something more polite and less offensive. I thank the students in the Archaeology of Human Origins class, Spring 2008, who were very demanding. I also thank Tom Minichillo for years of thoughtful discussion of the Middle Stone Age of southern Africa. If I have offended the authors whose work I have discussed, I apologize—that was not my intent. I could not help myself, and I claim that my evil twin made me do it. “Think but this and all is mended, that you have but slumbered here while [this chapter] did appear” (with additional apologies to W.S.).

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  1. Department of Anthropology, University of Washington, Seattle, WA, USA

    Angela E. Close

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  1. Angela E. Close
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  1. Dept. Anthropology, George Washington University, G Street NW., 2110, Washington, 20052, U.S.A.

    Marta Camps

  2. CRAFT Stone Age Institute, Indiana University, W. Dittemore Road 1392, Gosport, 47433-9531, U.S.A.

    Parth Chauhan

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Close, A.E. (2009). DISCUSSION 1: An Overview of Matters Transitional, From the Outside Looking In. In: Camps, M., Chauhan, P. (eds) Sourcebook of Paleolithic Transitions. Springer, New York, NY. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-0-387-76487-0_8

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