Environmental factors in human evolution and dispersals in the Upper Pleistocene of the western Mediterranean

3. Specific Objectives

   1. Introduction and underlying rationale
   2. Key Issues
   3. Specific Objectives
   4. People
   5. Moroccan Sites
   6. Gibraltar Sites
   7. Map of Sites
   8. Summary of Sites
   9. References

The principal objective is to create the first detailed database for the Upper Pleistocene human occupation of northern Morocco, using a number of key Middle and Upper Palaeolithic cave sites with well-preserved botanical and faunal remains. It will entail collecting and studying fresh archaeological, anthropological and environmental evidence (e.g. small and large terrestrial vertebrates, charcoal, mollusca and fish) and integrating them within a secure chronostratigraphic framework. The project will also rely on existing collections available in Moroccan museums in order to conduct this research. A linked objective will be to study environmental samples (principally small mammals and charcoals) already collected, but not yet fully analysed from two long cave sequences in Gibraltar and to undertake some further dating work. Intercomparison will also be carried out on all available palaeoecological records of southern Iberia, including those of the Padul sequence from Granada (Pons & Reille 1988), and the recently published record from the Western Mediterranean marine core (MD95-2043; Sánchez Goñi et al. 2002).

With such an approach we will be able to:

1. Re-evaluate the evolutionary record of dispersal of archaic H. sapiens in Northwest Africa and by placing that record in a better chronological and geographic context, examine the evidence for local evolution or dispersals,
2. Demonstrate the nature and chronology of key cultural transitions (Middle Palaeolithic-Aterian and Aterian- Iberomaurusian) and their environmental/palaeoclimatic contexts,
3. Construct a regional pattern of climatic change during OIS 5-2 using environmental proxy data
4. Compare the dating of the Middle to Upper Palaeolithic transition on both sides of the Strait
5. Consider the broader question whether suggested cultural similarities and the morphology of humans on both sides of the Strait are indicative of unrelated populations, or ones in close contact.