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Were Western European Neandertals Able to Make Fire?

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Abstract

Significant variability has been observed in the frequency of fire use over the course of the Late Pleistocene at several Middle Paleolithic sites in southwest France. In particular, Neandertals appear to have used fire more frequently during warm climatic periods and very infrequently during cold periods. After reviewing several lines of evidence and alternative explanations for this variability, the null hypothesis that these Neandertals were not able to make fire still stands.

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Acknowledgements

Chez Pinaud Jonzac was excavated by Jacques-Jaubert and Jean-Jacques Hublin with Marie Soressi and SPM. All are thanked for agreeing to share this portion of the lithic data from Jonzac. Abri Peyrony was excavated by Michel Lenoir and SPM. Tamara Dogandžić supervised the field work and studies the lithics with SPM. Again, all are thanked for agreeing to share this portion of the lithic data. SPM thanks the Max Planck Society and Jean-Jacques Hublin for support of this research. Aylar Abdolahzadeh was responsible for most of the collection of the Combe Grenal burned flint data, and we would like to thank Stéphane Madelaine of the Musée National de Préhistoire for arranging access to this material. Much of the data used here was the result of research projects that were possible through funding provided by the US National Science Foundation, the Leakey Foundation, Service Régional d’Archéologie, the Conseil Général de la Dordogne, Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology, National Geographic Society, the University of Pennsylvania Research Foundation, the University of Pennsylvania Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology, and the Marie Curie International Fellowship within the 6th European Community Framework Program.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Anthropology, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, USA

    Harold L. Dibble

  2. Department of Human Evolution, Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology, Leipzig, Germany

    Harold L. Dibble, Shannon McPherron & Vera Aldeias

  3. Institute for Human Origins, School of Human Evolution and Social Change, Arizona State University, Tempe, AZ, USA

    Harold L. Dibble

  4. Department of Archaeology and Human Evolution Studies Program, Simon Fraser University, Burnaby, BC, Canada

    Dennis Sandgathe

  5. Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, USA

    Dennis Sandgathe

  6. Centre for Archaeological Science, School of Earth & Environmental Sciences, University of Wollongong, Wollongong, NSW, 2522, Australia

    Paul Goldberg

  7. Institute for Archaeological Sciences, Eberhard Karls Universitat Tübingen, Tübingen, Germany

    Paul Goldberg

  8. Department of Archaeology, Boston University, Boston, USA

    Paul Goldberg

  9. Interdisciplinary Center for Archaeology and Evolution of Human Behavior (ICArEHB), Universidade do Algarve, Faro, Portugal

    Vera Aldeias

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  1. Harold L. Dibble
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  2. Dennis Sandgathe
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  3. Paul Goldberg
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Correspondence to Harold L. Dibble.

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Dibble, H.L., Sandgathe, D., Goldberg, P. et al. Were Western European Neandertals Able to Make Fire?. J Paleo Arch 1, 54–79 (2018). https://doi.org/10.1007/s41982-017-0002-6

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