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The article responds to the comments of G. A. Clark and J. M. Lindly on the article "Les processus du transition du Paleolithique superieur ancien en Europe," by Marcel Otte in a 1990 issue. The issue of migration has given Clark and Lindly an opportunity to publish their own paper on the subject, but they demonstrate a systematic blindness of some king. The whole of Paleolithic variability was not reduced to diffusion by author but was merely emphasized among others.

The article compares the archaeological record and models of colonization among the U.S., Europe and Australia. It presents a comparison systematically, considering the implications of interregional differences in greater detail in terms of both the accumulated archaeological record and current models of colonization. The North America and Australia have no systematically gathered all-encompassing databases of dated archeological sites and list of dates sites is gathered from general literature reviews. Europe has a very large database of archaeological sites and dates from the late Quaternary and is unlikely that all of them have been discussed with the same care as those in America and Australia because many sites and dates have been found there.

With a few exceptions, archaeologists have been far less concerned with the form of their texts or problems of authorship than have ethnographers. Typically, archaeologies are presented in the form of narratives understood as sequential stories. Approaches to narrative analysis drawn from literary theory, philosophy, and sociology and definitions of characters, events, and plots are examined, together with particular problems these may pose for the discipline of archaeology. It is suggested that neither literary analysis nor the tendency to write and evaluate archaeological and historical narratives in terms of explanatory value takes sufficient account of the often hybrid nature and aims of these texts and the contexts in which they were produced. This argument is illustrated with particular reference to stories of the Mesolithic-Neolithic transition in Europe. It is argued that reconsidering archaeology's positioning across the 19th-century science-humanities divide suggests a broader approach to the idea of what constitutes a narrative which can offer fresh opportunities for useful reflexivity and experimentation in presentation. Further roles and possibilities of narrative and non-narrative ways of writing archaeologies are also considered. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article examines the ecological conditions existing in the terminal Pleistocene Europe and trapping strategies adopted by hunter-gatherer societies at the time. There existed extreme and peculiar climatic conditions in the terminal Pleistocene era. It is suggested on the basis of available archaeological evidence that these hunter-gatherer societies probably adopted an edge-of-the-woods strategy which involved dependence on tundra for primary subsistence and hunting gregarious mammals rather cautiously. For this, they stayed in forests for small periods of time and after gathering enough supplements retreated to the outer fringe of the forests. In higher southern reaches of the Europe, evidences of adopting more of a mixed strategy have been found.

The article discusses on the human fossil record with reference to Mousterian context and in relation to the scenario for the appearance of modern humans in Europe and their relationships with the late Neanderthals. It also includes a discussion on the geochronological and archaeological data collected, the main features of the cranial fragment previously discovered and a general and comparative description of the new dental specimen. During a systematic excavation in progress since 1986, archeologic assemblages and Pleistocene deposits have been discovered in Grotta Breuil, representing the occupation of this region by Würmian Neanderthals and modern Homo sapiens.

The article discusses the anthropological study which aims to determine the end of the Paleolithic and the Mesolithic period in Portugal. With basis of the gathered data from excavated sites, it has been found that the technology and diet of prehistoric hunter-gatherers remained the same from 16,000-8,000 years before the present. It stresses that the stable and long-lasting final Paleolithic technology and settlement system has started sometime during the magadlenian times. A punctuated human demographic expansion has occurred during the final Paleolithic and Mesolithic period which have resulted from the establishment of settlements and technological change.

The article cites on the art, monuments, and society in Neolithic Britanny in France. The evidence for an early ritual complex that includes a series of carved menhirs sealed beneath the cairn of the Table des Marchands passage grave has been revealed during the excavations by Jean L'Helgouac'h and Serge Cassen at Locmariaquer. Monuments of passage graves extends right around the coast of Britanny, specifically to the area around Carnac and the Golfe du Morbihan. It is believed that there was a localized emergence of marked social differentiation in southern Britanny at the end of the 5th millennium before the Christian era.

The article reports on the discussions on the archaeological record of the period between 30000 to 20000 years ago at the fourth and final workshop of the European Science Foundation Network on the Palaeolithic Occupation of Europe at Pavlov in the Czech Republic on October 12-14, 1995. The basic focus of the workshop was the evaluation of such assertions. The extent of climate change during the period, and the extent to which the climate changed or affected populations distribution throughout Europe are discussed.

The article comments on the study of Wil Roebroeks on the earliest occupation of Europe published in volume 35 of the "Current Anthropology" journal. Roebroeks indicates that a number of early European sites lack artefactual material and all assemblages dating to more than 500,000 year ago are all geofacts, justifying that these artifacts have been collected by archeologists from gravels and considers it impossible to distinguish an artifact from masses of pebbles and cobbles. To this reference, the author illustrated how he had collected artifacts from the pebbles and argued that research on large amounts of gravels and pebbles on the surfaces of terraces or in gravel pits have been one of the sources of artifacts in England and other part of Europe.