Technology and behavioural evolution in late Pleistocene Africa, Europe and Australia

The project tests competing models of human behavioural evolution in the late Pleistocene, using assemblages of stone artefacts from Africa, Europe and Australia. The project has two components. The first involves using finely-resolved technological and palaeoecological data from African sites to assess whether the capacity of humans to develop technological solutions to environmental variation changed significantly over the last 120 000 years. The second examines whether the technologies which appeared at this time were crucial to the human colonisation of new environments in Europe and Australia after 60 000 years. The project will result in a reappraisal of human behavioural evolution.