Zooarchaeology and Modern Human Origins ― Human Hunting Behavior During the Later Pleistocene

Recent genetic data showing that Neanderthals interbred with modern humans have made it clear that deeper insight into the behavioral differences between these populations will be critical to understanding the rapid spread of modern humans and the demise of the Neanderthals. This volume, which brings together scholars who have worked with faunal assemblages from Europe, the Near East, and Africa, makes an important contribution to our broader understanding of Neanderthal extinction and modern human origins through its focus on variability in human hunting behavior between 70-25,000 years ago—a critical period in the later evolution of our species.?

Jamie L. Clark is an Assistant Professor of Anthropology at the University of Alaska Fairbanks. She is also an Honorary Research Fellow at the Institute for Human Evolution, University of the Witwatersrand (Johannesburg, South Africa), and a research fellow at the Institut fur Naturwissenschaftliche Archaologiem, Universitat Tubingen (Germany). She received her BA in African and Middle Eastern History from Northwestern University (2002) and her MA (2004) and PhD (2009) in Anthropology (Archaeology) from the University of Michigan. John D. Speth is Arthur F. Thurnau Professor Emeritus of Anthropology in the Department of Anthropology at the University of Michigan (Ann Arbor). He served as Director of the Museum of Anthropology from 1986 to 1989 and as the Museum’s Associate Director from 2006 to 2008. Dr. Speth completed his BA in Geology at the University of New Mexico (1965), and his MA (1968) and PhD (1971) in Anthropology at the University of Michigan. Dr. Speth studies hunter-gatherers, past and present, New World and Old World.