Nicolas Rolland

University of Victoria | UVIC · Department of Anthropology

Middle Palaeolithic tool assemblages have a long history of controversy. This new analysis employing principal components addresses the recurrent issues of comparing tool assemblages from different sites, whilst retaining support from the seminal study of Bordes.

The Middle Paleolithic record for the peopling of the North is presented with tables, a distribution map, chronology, bioclimatic circumstances, and toolmaking repertoires. Salient aspects identify time-series, patterns of adaptive strategies, dispersal "frontlines", and strategies for procurement of food-animals. They support empirically a model o...

Human occupation of northern Eurasia high latitudes entailed coping with severe bioclimatic circumstances and Ice Age cycle fluctuations. Resolving this “adaptability paradox” required depending on cultural, rather than biological means. Paleolithic evidence indicates culture historical developments of considerable time depth, long-term adaptive st...

The issue of ancient human single or multiple dispersal pathways into Eurasia is theoretically significant for understanding adaptive processes involved in peopling vacant spaces and varied, unfamiliar ecosystems, but receives mostly marginal attention. The Western Asian staging-post remains most plausible, whereas an alternative peopling directly...

Current knowledge on the Lower Palaeolithic peopling of Europe is synthesized, using toolmaking repertoires, geochronological. biogeographical and palaegeographic evidence. The oldest traces belong to a non-Acheulian horizon, dating between 0.90 to 0.55 my. Tracing hominid geographic origin and dispersal routes into Europe identifies three alternat...

Although anthropogenesis reaches back to Pliocene times in Subsaharan Africa, hominid dispersals beyond began only by the Early Pleistocene, with the appearance of genus Homo with Lower Palaeolithic repertoires. Causes responsible for these events remain poorly understood. Direct evidence for environmental factors, such as prolonged aridity stress...

The concept of a home-based land use strategy is fundamental for studying recent and prehistoric foraging populations. A proposed datum for the emergence of this behavior is set during later Middle Pleistocene times, around 400-350 kya, and temporally linked with the first established evidence for domestic fire making. Precise causes for this dual...

Human and carnivores relationships have a long history. They became more intensive once ancient hominids acquired a more actively carnivorous subsistence. These relationships, often competitive, had major repercussions on land use et settlement systems. Methods for protecting against carnivores became more diverse during Mid-Pleistocene times, with...

The familiar debate concerning Middle Paleolithic variability has opposed stylistic vs. functional explanations based on the assumption that tool types and assemblage groups represent discrete, invariant entities. Middle Paleolithic variability, however, actually occurs continuously. Further, recent research shows that raw-material constraints and...

Discusses the models used to describe how regionally differentiated variants of the handaxe (Acheulian) tradition, straddling several parts of the European and African continents since the Lower Pleistocene, provide separate starting points for long-term cumulative variations. resulting in the convergent development of prepared-core techniques. The...

The behavioural significance of new patterns of variablity between Middle Palaeolithic assemblages is discussed. These consist of different frequencies in regularly retouched tools of any type, correlated with named Mousterian entities. The Charentian, for example, with an abundance of racloirs in particular, possesses high implement frequencies, w...

OBSERVATIONS are presented here on quantified aspects of Middle Palaeolithic variability which have not been studied systematically so far. The findings relate to differing degrees of secondary modification of lithic artefacts between assemblages. The variations correspond with distinct toolmaking entities defined for early Würm horizons in western...

Thesis (doctoral)--University of Cambridge, 1975.