The British Palaeolithic: Human Societies at the Edge of the Pleistocene World

Paul Pettitt · Mark White

nov 2012 · Routledge

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The British Palaeolithic provides the first academic synthesis of the entire British Palaeolithic, from the earliest occupation (currently understood to be around 980,000 years ago) to the end of the Ice Age. Landscape and ecology form the canvas for an explicitly interpretative approach aimed at understanding the how different hominin societies addressed the issues of life at the edge of the Pleistocene world.

Commencing with a consideration of the earliest hominin settlement of Europe, the book goes on to examine the behavioural, cultural and adaptive repertoires of the first human occupants of Britain from an ecological perspective. These themes flow throughout the book as it explores subsequent occupational pulses across more than half a million years of Pleistocene prehistory, which saw Homo heidelbergensis, the Neanderthals and ultimately Homo sapiens walk these shores.

The British Palaeolithic fills a major gap in teaching resources as well as in research by providing a current synthesis of the latest research on the period. This book represents the culmination of 40 years combined research in this area by two well known experts in the field, and is an important new text for students of British archaeology as well as for students and researchers of the continental Palaeolithic period.

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Dr Paul Pettitt is Reader in Palaeolithic Archaeology at Sheffield University, and specializes in the Middle and Upper Palaeolithic of Britain. He is the author of The Palaeolithic Origins of Human Burial (Routledge, 2010).

Dr Mark White is Reader in Archaeology at Durham University and specializes in the Lower and Middle Palaeolithic of Britain.