The Middle Paleolithic of the Crimea

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With National Science Foundation support, Dr. Anthony Marks and his colleagues will continue archaeological work in the Crimea. Research to date has yielded rich assemblages of Middle Paleolithic industries at several sites. These contain with preserved faunal remains and the team will now conduct detailed studies of these. They will analyze these materials both to reconstruct the environments in which Middle Paleolithic peoples lived and how they changed over time. Faunal remains also provide information on how people utilize resources and thus the study will provide insight into environmental stimulus and human response. Middle Paleolithic peoples are the immediate predecessors of anatomically modern humans who appeared in Europe about 40,000 years ago. In the attempt to understand these later adaptations, the Middle Paleolithic provides a benchmark and it is through an understanding of `not quite fully human` behavior that the unique behavioral adaptations which characterize our own subspecies can best be understood. Dr. Marks work to date indicates that these earlier adaptations are more complex than archaeologists had expected and that groups adapted in distinct and specific ways over very limited geographic distances. This research is important for several reasons. It will shed new light on how prehistoric peoples adapted to their environments and will provide data of interest to many archaeologists.