Author Description

"The book continues the previous two volumes already published on Kebara Cave and the monograph on the faunal assemblages of Hayonim and Meged rock shelter, complementing aspects that have never been presented in such detail [...] This book is a testimony to its editors' contribution to our understating of the evolution of past hunter-gatherer ways of life. The rich corpus of evidence presented in this book will continue to add more oil to the eternal fire of the MP variability discourse for the next generations to come." - Journal of Anthropological Research The research presented in this book results from an international interdisciplinary research program in Hayonim cave (Israel) from 1992 to 2000, directed by Prof O. Bar-Yosef (Harvard University) and L. Meignen (CNRS, France), and focusing on a long archaeological sequence dated to circa 300-140,000 years ago. The intensive fieldwork and research following it allowed us to document an essential period of human history in the Levant: the end of the Lower Palaeolithic and Early Middle Palaeolithic, during which recent discoveries showed that the early H. sapiens, expanding out of Africa, reached SW Asia around 180-190,000 years ago. This book brings together the impressive findings of nine years of excavations and analysis by an interdisciplinary team of well-known scholars from US universities (Harvard, Boston, University of Arizona), Weizmann Institute (Israel) as well as from the French CNRS. Several complementary approaches are implemented to understand early human economic, cultural and behavioral changes observed at this crucial period. It is based on detailed studies of lithic artifact technology, the remains of systematic fire use and cave occupation by early humans, and foraging strategies that include the early development of human adaptations for hunting large prey. In the context of the highly debated cultural break observed at the end of the Lower Palaeolithic, we propose