Technological and Typological Change at the Middle to Upper Palaeolithic Boundary in Lebanon

About this book

Since 2009 the Collaborative Research Centre (CRC 806) "Our Way to Europe – Culture-Environment Interaction and human Mobility in the Late Quaternary" has investigated the origin and dispersal of early modern humans from Africa to Eurasia. A couple of projects has focused on the Middle East, the Balkan Peninsula and the Carpathic Basin, thus following one possible pathway of human migration about 50 000 to 30 000 years ago. From the archaeological point of view, this is the time when the Middle to Upper Palaeolithic "transition" (or rather the boundary between the two eras?) occurred.

When Dirk Leder came up with the idea to investigate this crucial time range with a focus on southern Lebanon the Research Centre immediately accepted the author's plan as a dissertation project. Dirk Leder's work is based on his own studies in Beirut, London, Basel and Cologne, of all important archaeological inventories available. As a pioneering work, the present volume delivers new, first-hand information from sites which were previously poorly known.

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