Constructing chronologies for the late Middle Paleolithic and Upper Paleolithic: limitations and means to overcome them - CNRS - Centre national de la recherche scientifique Access content directly
Journal Articles World Archaeology Year : 2015

Constructing chronologies for the late Middle Paleolithic and Upper Paleolithic: limitations and means to overcome them

Abstract

Improvements in our understandings of the timing and nature of millennial-scale climatic variability combined with improved dating methods and more accurate calibration curves have allowed researchers to better place archaeological cultures within their paleoenvironmental contexts. Since all human cultures operate within an environmental framework, these developments allow researchers to investigate if and how cultural variability is related to temporal shifts in culture-environment relationships. Studying such relationships, however, is dependent on our ability to construct robust chronologies, and this need has been by incorporating Bayesian modeling methods into archaeological investigations. This paper reviews the assumptions and methods behind this practice and argues that while site-specific age models are useful, we should also employ methods with which chronological models for broad archaeological cultures can be constructed. Such a combination approach allows one to thoroughly incorporate available chronological data and build reliable chronologies that are critical to investigations aimed at examining culture-environment relationships.
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Dates and versions

hal-03007334 , version 1 (16-11-2020)

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William E. Banks. Constructing chronologies for the late Middle Paleolithic and Upper Paleolithic: limitations and means to overcome them. World Archaeology, 2015, 47 (4), pp.585-600. ⟨10.1080/00438243.2015.1052544⟩. ⟨hal-03007334⟩
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