editorial

Changing times

Transitions by definition represent a shift from one condition, or state of being, to another, and inherent in the term is a sense of a passing rather than a rapid revolution. We in the west may be living in the midst of a social and economic transition to a different kind of capitalism, but that is the problem with a transition: it’s hard to know from the inside if it really is happening. Time gives us the vantage point from which to make that historical judgement. Time is also what Palaeolithic archaeologists have in abundance. Not as individuals of course, our careers are measured on the brief scale of a few decades at best.  Time is what we have as a subject for study. We parcel the three million years or so of the archaeological record into technological entities and then discuss how and why they changed.  We fashion our theories of change in terms of shifting perceptions of the balance between external and internal drivers of change. Environment or culture is the crude theoretical divide that has waxed and waned over the history of the discipline. The postmodernist challenge to a science of humanity has now given way to are vival of evolutionary approaches and with it has come a renewed interest in the analysis of transitions in the archaeological record.

The papers in this issue reflect the current trend of downplaying change as revolutionary (the ‘human revolution’ in reference to the Middle to Upper Palaeolithic transition in Europe is now a largely abandoned phrase).Change is now more usually presented as a multi-stranded and irregular passage from one behavioural mosaic to another with a more nuanced understanding injected of external forces operating at differing scales from the individual to the region. The papers in this issue, beginning with Gregg et al’s regional approach to understanding variability in symbolic practices in the Levantine Natufian, reflect important elements of this current trend. Nick Taylor’s review of the Middle Pleistocene Lupemban Industry of central Africa highlights the limitations of the database before extracting the significance of the industry as a marker of the first hunter-gatherers in the region. Ariel Malinsky-Buller and co-authors also examine a period of change in the Middle Pleistocene, but from the intimate perspective of the technological variability found in one part of one site (Revadim, Israel).  You may find the detail of the analysis overwhelming, but your patience will be rewarded by the insights that emerge about cultural responses to environmental change over time. This paper also reflects a period of transition in analytical approaches to the study of lithic technology.  The 3 D imagery is more than a potential screen saver, it is a highly visual way of supporting the dry statistics of stone tool data.

John Hawks in his paper on the ‘centre and edge’ model of population dynamics forces us to step back and consider the impact of ecological variability on the biological structure of human populations. There is greater genetic diversity found in populations inhabiting ecologically stable core areas compared to those on the more difficult peripheries. This basic distinction is not new, but Hawks brings it up-to-date and the model can be used by archaeologists looking broadly at patterns of change across regions and continents. Resource availability was, and remains, a key force in human evolution.

The Editor

Liverpool, January 2012

© Western Academic & Specialist Press Ltd 2011