A number of archaeological sites dated to MIS 8 and MIS 7 and containing Early Middle Palaeolithic Levalloisian assemblages can now be identified within the British Palaeolithic record. These provide a mixture of high-and low-resolution signatures, which together permit the reconstruction of aspects of early Neanderthal behaviour, settlement history and technological organisation within the British Isles. Much is certainly missing, but it is now possible to begin the task of disentangling the previously conflated Middle Palaeolithic, separating those sites belonging to the Middle Pleistocene from those dating to the last climatic cycle. This paper presents the first attempt to synthesise the data from the Early Middle Palaeolithic and presents some of our preliminary and tentatively held interpretations of what it might mean.
scite is a Brooklyn-based organization that helps researchers better discover and understand research articles through Smart Citations–citations that display the context of the citation and describe whether the article provides supporting or contrasting evidence. scite is used by students and researchers from around the world and is funded in part by the National Science Foundation and the National Institute on Drug Abuse of the National Institutes of Health.