The role of fatty acids in Palaeolithic diet: New evidence from frozen Mammoth carcasses.

Many studies into Palaeolithic diet, both traditional zooarchaeological analysis and isotope studies, emphasise the importance of meat to past hominin diet. However, these frequently encounter the problem of explaining how these past communities overcame problems related to the consumption of large quantities of meat. Whilst it is one of the worst kept secrets in Palaeolithic archaeology…

Chatty cousins or silent siblings? A new method to assess Neanderthal speech capacity from hyoid bones

For Palaeolithic archaeologists, assessing the language capacity of any extinct hominin lineage is hard, and really only possible through the analysis of directly preserved remains (hyoid bones) or indirectly through material-culture expressions. The discovery of numerous hyoid bones from various sites has continued to fuel the debate about the language capacities of many of our…

Surviving at the edge of the Palaeolithic world

The movement of hominins out of a particular region into different areas, to which they are not necessarily adapted, is a topic familiar to Palaeolithic research for all regions and periods. In northwest Europe this topic has received a lot of interest, particularly related to both the initial occupation of Britain and subsequent re-occupation during…