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Hominin dispersal and human colonization have been hallmark concepts in the last two decades of palaeanthropological research,1–7 even though the terminology in these approaches is loosely defined (Box 1). The number, frequency, and routes of dispersal have been analyzed on a global scale,8 beginning with the earliest movement of hominins between Africa and Asia, and back again.9 Investigating dispersals has provided a much-needed dynamic to account for recent human origins in Africa10 and the replacement elsewhere of older regional hominin populations that include the Neanderthals.11 In the last twenty years, phylogeographies based on a wealth of molecular studies have added enormously to our understanding of global population history from the Paleolithic to the Vikings12 and has, in particular, revitalized the study of farming dispersals.13 As a result, Quaternary hominins and humans have been on the move as never before. However, not all of these movements are considered within an evolutionary framework. Interest has focused instead on using dispersals to support the claims for either a Neolithic or human revolution as the turning point in human prehistory. Here, I explore an alternative by considering the implications of the major shift that occurred in Paleolithic technology from instruments to containers.14 I argue that this development can be explained by the selective pressure from population dispersal for novel forms of cultural display that enhanced information exchange among adaptive generalists and which allowed the stretching of social relationships in space and time.15 The British Paleolithic record provides a case study.

Chronometric attention in the Late Glacial of Western Europe is turning from the dating of archaeological cultures to studying how the continent was re-populated at the end of the last ice age. We present results from a survey of all available radiocarbon determinations (the S2AGES database) which show that when calibrated, and compared to the GRIP stratotype of climatic events, the data can be interpreted as five population events in the 15ka prior to theonset of the Holocene. The fine-grained climate record provides an opportunity to study the impact of environmental factors on a human dispersal process that not only shaped subsequent European prehistory, but also the genetic makeup of modern Europeans. The population events have implications for archaeologists and molecular geneticists concerning the timing, direction,speed and scale of processes in Western European demographic history. The results also bear on the role of climatic forcing on the expansion and contraction of human populations and in particular the correlation of ice core and terrestrial records for the onset of warming in the North Atlantic. Pozornost kronometričnih raziskav se v poznem glacialu zahodne Evrope odmika od datiranja arheoloških kultur k proučevanju ponovne poselitve kontinenta ob koncu zadnje ledene dobe. Predstavljamo rezultate pregleda vseh dosegljivih radiokarbonskih sekvenc (podatkovna baza S2AGES), ki kažejo, da lahko datume, potem ko jih kalibriramo in primerjamo z GRIP stratotipom klimatskih dogodkov,interpretiramo kot zaporedje petih populacijskih dogodkov v času 15kapred pojavom holocena. Podrobno strukturiran klimatski zapis nam omogoča proučevanje vpliva okoljskih faktorjev na process človekove razselitve, ki je sooblikoval evropsko prazgodovino in genetski zapis modernih Evropejcev. Populacijski dogodki so pomembni za arheologe in molekularne genetike, ki se ukvarjajo s časovnim usklajevanjem, smerjo, hitrostjo in obsegom procesov v zahodnoevropski demografski zgodovini. Rezultati kažejo na pomen klimatskih pritiskov pri širjenju in krčenju človeških populacij in še posebej na korelacijo med lednimi in kopenskimi zapisi ob začetku segrevanja v severnem Atlantiku.

This article presents the initial results from the S2AGES data base of calibrated radiocarbon estimates from western Europe in the period 25,000–10,000 years ago. Our aim is to present a population history of this sub-continental region by providing a chronologically-secure framework for the interpretation of data from genetics and archaeology. In particular, we define five population events in this period, using dates-as-data, and examine the implications for the archaeology of Late Glacial colonization. We contrast this detailed regional approach to the larger project which we call the cognitive origins synthesis that includes historical linguistics in the reconstruction of population history. We conclude that only archaeology can currently provide the framework for population history and the evaluation of genetic data. Finally, if progress is to be made in the new interdisciplinary field of population history then both disciplines need to refrain from inappropriate agricultural thinking that fosters distorting models of European prehistory, and they should also pay less, if any, attention to historical linguistics.With comments from L.G. Straus, J.-P. Bocquet-Appel, P.A. Underhill & R. Housley and followed by a reply from the author.

A link between climate change and human evolution during the Pleistocene has often been assumed but rarely tested. At the macro–evolutionary level Foley showed for hominids that extinction, rather than speciation, correlates with environmental change as recorded in the deep sea record. Our aim is to examine this finding at a smaller scale and with high–resolution environmental and archaeological archives. Our interest is in changing patterns of human dispersal under shifting Pleistocene climates during the last glacial period in Europe. Selecting this time frame and region allows us to observe how two hominid taxa, Neanderthals and Crô–Magnons, adapted to climatic conditions during oxygen isotope stage 3. These taxa are representative of two hominid adaptive radiations, termedterrestrialandaquatic, which exhibited different habitat preferences but similar tolerances to climatic factors. Their response to changing ecological conditions was predicated upon their ability to extend their societies in space and time. We examine this difference further using a database of all available radiocarbon determinations from western Europe in the late glacial. These data act as proxies for population history, and in particular the expansion and contraction of regional populations as climate changed rapidly. Independent assessment of these processes is obtained from the genetic history of Europeans. The results indicate that climate affects population contraction rather than expansion. We discuss the consequences for genetic and cultural diversity which led to the legacy of the Ice Age: a single hominid species, globally distributed.

Human populations, along with those of many other species, are thought to have contracted into a number of refuge areas at the height of the last Ice Age. European populations are believed to be, to a large extent, the descendants of the inhabitants of these refugia, and some extant mtDNA lineages can be traced to refugia in Franco-Cantabria (haplogroups H1, H3, V, and U5b1), the Italian Peninsula (U5b3), and the East European Plain (U4 and U5a). Parts of the Near East, such as the Levant, were also continuously inhabited throughout the Last Glacial Maximum, but unlike western and eastern Europe, no archaeological or genetic evidence for Late Glacial expansions into Europe from the Near East has hitherto been discovered. Here we report, on the basis of an enlarged whole-genome mitochondrial database, that a substantial, perhaps predominant, signal from mitochondrial haplogroups J and T, previously thought to have spread primarily from the Near East into Europe with the Neolithic population, may in fact reflect dispersals during the Late Glacial period, ∼19-12 thousand years (ka) ago. M.P. was supported by Marie Curie Early Stage Training “Advanced Genetic Analysis in the Postgenomic Era” (European Union MEST-CT-2004-504318) and by a Newton International Fellowship. This research was also supported by the Italian Ministry of Education, University, and Research: Progetti FIRB-Futuro in Ricerca 2008 (to A.A. and A.O.), and Progetti Ricerca Interesse Nazionale 2009 (to A.A., O.S. and A.T.); Fondazione Alma Mater Ticinensis (to A.T. and O.S.); the European Commission, Directorate-General for Research (FP7 Ecogene grant number 205419, to R.V.); the European Union Regional Development Fund (through the Centre of Excellence in Genomics, to R.V.); the Estonian Ministry of Education and Research (Basic Research grant numbers SF 0270177As08, to R.V., and SF 0270177Bs08, to E.M.); the Estonian Science Foundation (grant number 7858, to E.M.); and the FCT (Portuguese Foundation for Science and Technology), through research project PTDC/CS-ANT/113832/2009 and personal grants to J.B.P. (SFRH/BD/45657/2008) and P.S. (SFRH/BPD/64233/2009). P.S. also received support from the DeLaszlo Foundation. N.A.-Z. was supported by the Institute of International Education fellowship. IPATIMUP is an Associate Laboratory of the Portuguese Ministry of Science, Technology, and Higher Education (FCT) and is partially supported by FCT.

The northern Magdalenian, as Rensink so clearly points out, has outstripped the efforts of ethnoarchaeologists to provide descriptive models of how it was organized. Perhaps with hindsight this was always going to be case since the models of land use and mobility which have been developed in the past thirty years were always more at home in the caves and abris of the southern Magdalenian. Here it was possible to describe assemblages as curated or expedient without having to worry too much about variation within sites, such as that now revealed by the complex settlement archaeology of say Verberie or Gönnersdorf. The only added complication in the southern Magdalenian was the cave art, but that could always be treated separately, and may have to be if the 30,000 bp plus dates for the new Ardèche cave are found to spill over into the Dordogne. I therefore agree with Rensink that we must become our own ethnographers of the Magdalenian rather than constantly trying to fit our patterns to those derived from a particular actualistic study. But in this respect it must be remembered that Binford, one of the suppliers of such models, has always warned against working towards definitions; the belief that by naming an assemblage as curated we have done a good archaeological job. Far from it. All we have achieved is a congratulatory nod towards our own descriptive systems. If we are to understand the palpable variation in the archaeological record then we must understand contexts and the conditions for their use which causes patterning in what was left behind. This requires a focus on what we mean by magdalenian society rather than concentrating solely on the properties of the adaptive system.

We live in interesting political times. Because Paleolithic and Pleistocene archaeology have always reflected contemporary interests, changes in the political map have usually been met with a geographical shift in the cradle of human origins or the center from which humanity sprang. My aim in this chapter is to look at the components of a center-edge model that have a long and continuing use in classifying and interpreting Paleolithic data. The three components are: 1 The geographical location of centers and edges. 2 The dispersal of population between them. 3 The interpretation of centers as complex societies.