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The Early to Middle Pleistocene Transition (EMPT) is characterised by major environmental changes and evolutionary innovations within the genus Homo but the scarcity of the African EMPT fossil and archaeological records obscures its palaeoecological context. Here, we present archaeological and faunal evidence from a newly excavated West-Turkana EMPT site--Kanyimangin. Keywords: Kenya, Early to Middle Pleistocene, lithic artefacts, geochronological analyses, Introduction One of the stumbling blocks to understanding the evolutionary history of the genus Homo concerns the impact of the Early to Middle Pleistocene Transition (EMPT) (1.2-0.75Ma) on hominin populations. [...]

The megalithic burials of southern India--a wonderfully varied set of monuments--have long needed a chronology and a context. Broadly contemporary with the Roman and Sasanian empires, these dolmens, cairns and cists have continually raised contradictions with their material contents. The authors attack the problem using luminescence applied to pottery at the site of Siruthavoor in northeast Tamilnadu. Although sharing material culture, this first pilot project gave dates ranging from 300 BC to AD 600, so exposing the problem and perhaps, in OSL, its long-term solution. Keywords: southern India, Tamilnadu, Siruthavoor, Iron Age-Early Historic, first millennium BC, first millennium AD, dolmens, stone circles, cairns, cists, urn burial, OSL, Introduction 'A thousand megalithic cists might be excavated with the utmost care [in south India] without any significant addition to our knowledge of their chronology' (Wheeler 1947: 185). The chronology [...]

A multiproxy study involving sedimentology, palynology, radiocarbon dating, stable isotopes, and geochemistry was carried out on the Parsons Valley Lake deposit, Nilgiris, India, to determine palaeoclimatic fluctuations and their possible impact on vegetation since the late Pleistocene. The 72-cm-deep sediment core that was retrieved reveals five distinct palaeoclimatic phases: (1) Warm and humid conditions with a high lake stand before the last glacial maximum (LGM; ~29,800 cal yr BP), subsequently changing to a relatively cool and dry phase during the LGM. (2) Considerable dry conditions and lower precipitation occurred between ~16,300 and 9500 cal yr BP. During this period, the vegetation shrank and perhaps was confined to moister pockets or was a riparian forest cover. (3) An outbreak in the shift of monsoonal precipitation was witnessed in the beginning of the mid-Holocene, around 8400 cal yr BP, implying alteration in the shift toward warm and humid conditions, resulting in relatively high pollen abundance for evergreen taxa. (4) This phase exhibits a shift to heavier δ13C values around ~1850 cal yr BP, with an emergence of moist deciduous plants pointing to drier conditions. (5) Human activities contributed to the exceedingly high percentage of Acacia and Pinus pollen during the Little Ice Age. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Late Pleistocene palaeoenvironments in the Thar Desert (India), located at the eastern extent of the Saharo-Arabian desert belt, have fluctuated considerably as a result of the varying range and intensity of the Indian summer monsoon. Phases of widespread Pleistocene aridity are well documented in the Thar Desert, but research focusing on humid proxies is critical to examine how the region may have facilitated population expansions across southern Asia. At Katoati, located on the northeast margin of the Thar Desert, the combination of field recording of sediment sections with detailed analyses (micromorphology, stable isotope, loss on ignition, magnetic susceptibility, and X-ray fluorescence) from an archaeological site identify a series of hominin occupations during phases of enhanced humidity between ~96 and 60 ka. A gradient of humidity on the eastern margin of the Thar Desert during the late Pleistocene is identified, with the periodic humidity evident at Katoati occurring more frequently and with longer duration towards the southern margin. This uneven distribution of humidity in the Thar Desert is likely to have strongly influenced when and where hominin populations could expand into and across the region. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]