Reassessing Paleolithic Subsistence The Neandertal and Modern Human Foragers of Saint-Césaire

The contribution of Neandertals to the biological and cultural emergence of early modern humans remains highly debated in anthropology. Particularly controversial is the long-held view that Neandertals in Western Europe were replaced 30,000 to 40,000 years ago by early modern humans expanding out of Africa. This book contributes to this debate by exploring the diets and foraging patterns of both Neandertals and early modern humans. Eugène Morin examines the faunal remains from Saint-Césaire in France, which contains an exceptionally long and detailed chronological sequence, as well as genetic, anatomical and other archaeological evidence to shed new light on the problem of modern human origins.

1. The research problem; 2. Human origins and the problem of Neandertals; 3. Foraging theory and the archaeological record; 4. Saint Césaire; 5. The fauna; 6. Taphonomy; 7. Seasonality; 8. Transport decisions and currency analysis; 9. Testing the hypotheses; 10. Diet breadth at the regional level; 11. An alternative look at the Middle to Upper Paleolithic transition; 12. Concluding thoughts.

Eugène Morin is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Anthropology at Trent University in Canada. He has published articles in the Journal of Archaeological Science, Geoarchaeology and PNAS and serves on the editorial board of Ethnobiology Letters.