Abstract
As the title suggests, rather than a traditional review of the Lower Palaeolithic record of Europe, this book aims to give an impression of what life was like for hominins in the temperate zone in the Early and early Middle Pleistocene, using seasonal variation as an entry point. The seasonal focus is what drew me to this book. Changes in seasonality are seen to have played an important role in many major events in human evolution. The earliest hominin fossils come from sub-Saharan Africa, where hot and dry rather than cold temperatures provided the biggest challenges. However, by the end of the Early Pleistocene, stone tools and fossils document hominin presence across much of Eurasia, from the Nihewan Basin in northern China, to Dmanisi in the Georgian Caucasus, to northern Spain. At these latitudes (40°North) hominins would have encountered greater seasonality. Currently, plant growth stops during a portion of the winter and air temperatures below freezing are not infrequent. Further, seasonal contrasts increased between 1.2 and 0.5 mya. While this book focuses on the westernmost part of this region, it is relevant to more general questions about hominin range expansion and adaptation to seasonal temperate conditions across Eurasia.
At the same time, reconstructing Pleistocene seasonality is challenging, with few reliable proxies available (Kingston, 2005). Remarkably detailed reconstructions of past landscapes have been produced from palaeoenvironmental proxies, but both qualitative and quantitative estimates tell us most about the extremes of winter and summer. Further, it can be difficult or impossible to tell which seasonal proxies are associated with evidence for hominin activity, even in low energy depositional conditions. As Dennell (2004) has argued, we have to consider the possibility that ‘most of the Lower Pleistocene record for hominids outside East Africa is one of occasional visitors, rather than long-term residents’. The seasonal theme, and particularly the attention to each season in turn, is challenging and relevant.
This book will be of interest to students of Palaeolithic archaeology and human origins, and Quaternary scientists with an interest in the hominin part of the faunal community. It would make a comprehensive, up-to-date textbook for final year undergraduate or postgraduate teaching. In terms of subject areas of interest to readers of this journal, it addresses environmental and climatic changes on connected long (multi-millenial) and short timescales, and the development of natural landscapes. The lack of an index is a minor limitation.
The first chapter provides an introduction to the book and a summary of fundamental aspects of seasonality, including global and regional drivers, latitudinal and longitudinal trends in European seasonality today, and impacts on plants and animals (including hominins). Here, key challenges and opportunities in terms of environmental conditions and resources are highlighted for each season in a clear diagram: this sets the stage for detailed discussions in Chapters 3–7.
Chapter 2 provides background information, including long-term trends in climate, flora and fauna in the Pleistocene, evidence for local seasonality and vegetation structure. This chapter also introduces the main characters, providing a discussion of the hominin species present (interpreted as Homo antecessor and Homo heidelbergensis), diet, life history and social life. The sketch of hominin behaviour draws strongly on comparative data from hunter-gatherers, primates and other mammals to supplement the archaeological and fossil evidence. This chapter finishes with a review of broad geographical and temporal patterns in site distribution. This includes a useful box on the nature of the archaeological record, focussing on the types of landscapes we see and which are invisible; such ‘reality checks’ are provided throughout the book.
Chapter 3 focuses on challenges associated with winter, expanding on Hosfield’s (2016) earlier article as well as work on the Middle Palaeolithic (White, 2006). The starting point is the evidence for temperature and precipitation conditions in winter, and differences between regions and across the Early to Middle Pleistocene period are explored. The discussion focuses on the interglacials, when hominins were most likely to have been present and from which most evidence derives. In terms of hominin behaviour, this chapter focuses on biological and cultural means of keeping warm (including clothing, fire and shelter), winter food procurement and mobility strategies, in particular the need to balance the costs of winter travel with more spread-out resources. Throughout the book, Hosfield’s approach to questions about hominin strategies draws on detailed palaeoenvironmental reconstructions, ethnographic comparison, comparative zoology and triangulation with the archaeological record, to develop and keep within reason hypotheses about behaviour, and address key aspects of strategies that are relatively invisible. For example, in considering mobility strategies, he makes a comparison with wolves (highlighting a larger overall winter range but also a small core area where resting sites were located), to argue that hominins would have been only semi-nomadic in winter. Landscapes which offered a favourable microclimate and range of critical resources would have been selected; a range of Lower Palaeolithic sites are evaluated in this frame. This is consistent with other aspects of Hosfield’s ‘winter model’ such as stored foods and a hunting focus on winter residents.
Chapter 4 focuses on spring, a season which is less often considered in relation to hominin adaptations. Palaeoenvironmental proxies for spring conditions are rare but analysis of herpetofauna from Spain suggests a familiar pattern of increases in temperature and reductions in rainfall. In spring, new food resources included migrating ungulates, animals coming out of hibernation, newborns and fresh vegetation growth. However, Hosfield stresses that this season was not without risks, including aggression from other animals with newborns, and spring floods in already large rivers. This chapter includes discussion of hominin strategies for food procurement, mobility and also life history and social life including fission-fusion organisation, food sharing, medical care and childcare. Throughout the book, plant foods as well as meat receive attention, reflecting recent research stressing hominin dietary diversity. In this chapter, plant food options are reviewed based on edible plants recorded from the archaeological site of Schöningen as well as modern contexts; this suggests that a range of vitamin C sources as well as starches were available in spring. This chapter also explores the social demands of a seasonal environment, given the high energy demands and life history pattern of hominins. I enjoyed the detailed discussion of what the ‘fission’ part of fission-fusion organisation might have involved in terms of foraging group size, composition (including the role of children), landscape use and resource focus. Hosfield stresses the need to monitor food resources, predators, weather and landscape ‘signposts’ to find other members of the group – highlighting the competence and cognitive skills of these populations.
Summer (Chapter 5) presented obvious benefits but also, in areas where aridity was pronounced, challenges: water requirements, prey ranges and wildfires. Hosfield points out that long days and abundant resources made this a good season for more complicated procurement strategies; similarly, summer may have given more opportunities for learning of social and subsistence skills, and for aggregation (hence, the scale of landscape use and social networks is discussed here). Despite the general perception of Lower Palaeolithic lives as very local, Hosfield discusses evidence from a number of workshop sites for more complicated procurement strategies for stone. In addition, it is increasingly evident that organic materials were as important as stone; here, wood and bone are discussed in detail. The seasonal link is emphasised by the suggestion that summer was the likely period for procuring green wood for the famous Schöningen spears. Throughout the book Hosfield pays attention to differences within hominin groups, particularly the limitations and abilities of children. In this chapter there is a thoughtful discussion of children’s learning in the Lower Palaeolithic, which must have been important for these long-lived, encephalised, omnivorous, tool-using (and child dominated?) people. I particularly liked the very wide range of things to be learned that are considered. There is a useful discussion of the relation between distances of stone raw material movement and home ranges, knowledge of raw material locations and artefact lifespans in the Lower Palaeolithic; Hosfield highlights the contrast between the signals of small scale movement and interaction and the requirements of genetic viability.
Annual migration, meat and hide procurement and processing, regional and temporal variability in technology are covered in Chapter 6 (autumn). Because of high prey meat and hide quality and oncoming winter, obtaining carcases could have been important in autumn: Hosfield provides a thorough discussion of strategies for procuring, butchering, defending and storing meat (and hides), with particular reference to detailed evidence from Boxgrove, Schöningen and Atapuerca TD10. The likely importance of ambush hunting, particularly using wooden spears, but complicated by limited cover, is addressed. A number of sites provide clear evidence of skinning, including a lion from TD10.1 and possibly beaver from Caune de l’Arago (with very insulative waterproof fur). Hosfield discusses whether hides were untreated and frequently replaced, or treated to make them last longer, which would imply availability of a controlled space and suitable weather (most likely in autumn). Flexibility and variability in tool production and use, and regional variation, are highlighted in the discussion of stone tool technology. Hosfield argues that handaxes may have been less important to Lower Palaeolithic people than suggested by other archaeologists; their perceived significance is affected by research history and geochronological context and is not ubiquitous even at butchery sites.
Chapter 7 adds a temporal perspective, and addresses the extent to which seasonality in temperate Europe selected for versatile hominins. Changes within the Lower Palaeolithic behavioural evidence, combined with range expansion, and greater cold tolerance, suggest adaptation. Hosfield argues for a period of substantial change after c. 600 kya, with later aspects presaging the Middle Palaeolithic.
In addition to understanding evolutionary processes, one advantage of a seasonal approach is in accessibility: the seasons described are recognisable, making it easier to picture landscapes and relate to hominin behaviour. Another is that it tends to make one think in terms of varied, but consistent, hominin niches. I found that the diagrams describing the suite of possible strategies for each season, provided at the end of each chapter, gave a very useful summary of complex discussions, which also emphasises the interconnections between different aspects of behaviour. Hosfield’s approach effectively portrays competent, skilled, unique hominin populations.
Finally, what does the first part of the title, ‘The Earliest Europeans’, signify? This is partly a pragmatic limitation reflecting geography and research history. While it is not a major theme in the book, Hosfield makes a case for a political interpretation. Genetic studies provide increasing evidence for interbreeding between different hominin populations, going far back in time; while Homo sapiens is an African species, the Palaeolithic record worldwide is important for understanding our origins. Also, the broad similarities and distinct regional patterns of the European Lower Palaeolithic record ‘remind us of the human capacity for similarities and also deep differences’. This would certainly be a good topic for a lively class debate.