Robert Hosfield

The Earliest Europeans explores the early origins of man in Europe through the perspective of ‘a year in the life’: how hominins in the Lower Palaeolithic coped with the year-round practical challenges of mid-latitude Europe with its distinctive temperatures, seasonality patterns, and available resources. Current research has provided increasingly robust archaeological and Quaternary Science records, but there are ongoing uncertainties as to both the earliest Europeans’ specific survival strategies and behaviours, and the character of their dispersals into Europe. In short, how sustained and ‘successful’ were the individual phases of European occupation by Lower Palaeolithic hominins and what sorts of ‘human’ where they? Using a season-by-season chapter structure to explore, for example, the contrasting demands and opportunities of winter versus summer survival, Hosfield explores how foods and other resources would vary across the four seasons in quantity and quality, and the resulting implications for hominin behaviours. Text boxes provide the background on key issues, and the book draws on a range of supporting evidence including technology (e.g. the nature of Lower Palaeolithic stone tools; the evidence for organic tools), hominin life history (e.g. the length of infant dependency; the nature of ‘parenting’; the implications of different mating models; the Social Brain Hypothesis), cognitive studies (e.g. brain scanning research into possible planning capabilities) and potential bias in the archaeological record (e.g. in terms of what is and isn’t preserved). By testing the likelihood of different scenarios by comparing short-term, site-based insights with long-term, regional trends, Hosfield is able to out forward ideas on how our earliest European ancestors survived and what their lives were like.

A Year in the Life: Survival Strategies in the Lower Palaeolithic

The Earliest Europeans

The Earliest Europeans explores the early origins of man in Europe through the perspective of a year in the life: how hominins in the Lower Palaeolithic coped with the year-round practical challenges of mid-latitude Europe with its distinctive temperatures, seasonality patterns, and available resources. Current research has provided increasingly robust archaeological and Quaternary Science records, but there are ongoing uncertainties as to both the earliest Europeans specific survival strategies and behaviours, and the character of their dispersals into Europe. In short, how sustained and successful were the individual phases of European occupation by Lower Palaeolithic hominins and what sorts of human where they? Using a season-by-season chapter structure to explore, for example, the contrasting demands and opportunities of winter versus summer survival, Hosfield explores how foods and other resources would vary across the four seasons in quantity and quality, and the resulting implications for hominin behaviours. Text boxes provide the background on key issues, and the book draws on a range of supporting evidence including technology (e.g. the nature of Lower Palaeolithic stone tools; the evidence for organic tools), hominin life history (e.g. the length of infant dependency; the nature of parenting; the implications of different mating models; the Social Brain Hypothesis), cognitive studies (e.g. brain scanning research into possible planning capabilities) and potential bias in the archaeological record (e.g. in terms of what is and isnt preserved). By testing the likelihood of different scenarios by comparing short-term, site-based insights with long-term, regional trends, Hosfield is able to out forward ideas on how our earliest European ancestors survived and what their lives were like.

A challenging reply to those who have considered the evidence for Lower and Middle Palaeolithic hominid behaviour as disparate and unworkable. Robert Hosfield takes a new approach to the data involving spatial modelling techniques and GIS-based models in investigating demographic trends and long-term behaviour patterns of Middle Pleistocene hominids in the Hampshire Basin. The study goes beyond the lithic assemblage, site-based studies typical of this period and presents some interesting conclusions on long-term changes and trends.

A Regional Model of Hominid Behaviour During the Middle Pleistocene

The Palaeolithic of the Hampshire Basin

Fiona Coward

Matt Pope

Francis Wenban-Smith

This volume provides a narrative of early hominin evolution, linking material aspects of the early archaeological record with social, cognitive and symbolic landscapes.

Robert Hosfield

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