Robert Hosfield's monograph examines how the first hominins in Europe adapted to the environment during the Lower Palaeolithic and the unique challenges that northern latitude occupation represented. The volume offers a season-by-season analysis of hominin life. This innovative approach immerses the reader in a Palaeolithic world constructed with palaeoclimate simulations, fauna and hominin ecology based on living taxa and known behaviour from other hominins. Although this seasonal approach is related to established literature from behavioural ecology and cultural anthropology studies documenting recent hunter-gatherers, it is a unique example for the Lower Palaeolithic. This framework allows Hosfield to transfer the abstracted archaeological and palaeontological record to describe specific behavioural responses to European climatic and ecological limitations. Naturally, given the author's experience in stone tools and archaeological sites, the book reads as leaning more towards the archaeological record than the palaeoanthropological record compared with other monographs. As Hosfield rightly points out, the lack of scholarly attention to this seasonal perspective is a strange omission in approaches to early hominins, particularly in the study of northern latitudes where seasonality is the principal constraint on biological diversity.
This book is divided into seven chapters, four of which are devoted to the individual seasons in some detail. The volume opens with two introductory chapters, the first of which provides some background on the environment that hominins occupied in Lower Palaeolithic Europe, and discusses the value of a seasonal perspective. The second chapter explores climate cycles, temperature and seasonality indicators, the Lower Palaeolithic archaeological record and chronology, the hominin ‘characters’ and the outstanding research questions. The text is supported by a variety of maps and graphs representing data from palaeoclimate to lithics. The graphics are generally good and helpful, with the exception of a map of sites discussed (fig. 2.2) and a map of UK sites (fig F.1), which are produced in a colour scheme unsuited to greyscale. Despite the overall strong format, a detailed list of figures and feature box topics would be useful to the reader, as would an index.
Białowieża Forest, a uniquely intact ecosystem on the Belarusian-Polish border, plays a larger role in this work than in comparable studies. Although this forest's ecological parameters are invaluable for obtaining data on European wolves, bison, wild boar and other species, the lack of data for other habitats (Eurasian savannah, light forest or steppe) and the fact that Pleistocene habitats lack true modern analogues is a constraint in any such study.
The lively debate about how hominins were able to navigate the energetic and thermal challenges of colder climes is thoroughly covered. In the absence of reliable evidence for the regular control of fire, this represents a substantial challenge. There is little evidence for shelter construction, and even if advanced shelter design were available it would not explain sufficiently how hominins coped with winter conditions that dropped far below zero in parts of their range (e.g. Happisburgh III). Hosfield suggests episodic use of fires in the more northern range despite the inverse pattern being present in Middle Palaeolithic Europe (presumable as fires are more difficult to maintain in less dry northern environments), but he considers that fire use was pre-dated by early forms of clothing or at least bedding insulation. Hosfield covers current literature on whether known tool kits are consistent with the preparation of hides and furs; regrettably, this is an area where the experimental archaeology has not matched what is observed in the published ethnologies. I refer to the apparent absence of tanning in the production of skin-clothing worn by native peoples of Tierra del Fuego and the Arctic and the neglect of the study of bone- and wood-scraping and -softening implements.
The monograph outlines current opinion on the provision of nutrition through hunting and scavenging, and the author favours a mixture of meat-exploitation methods that became more specialised to cope with seasonal shortages in the later Middle Pleistocene. The author also considers how food provision might relate to group structure through fusion and fission. There is extensive consideration on the role of vegetal foods. With regard to the latter, the work considers that the published Schöningen wooden tools are unlikely to be plant-gathering digging sticks; I feel, however, too much attention has been paid to stick length in the identification of digging sticks, as ethnographically they vary enormously. Much of the discussion of plant foods refers to plants that botanists have found occurring in Pleistocene deposits, but many of these plants probably were not staples, if foods at all. More time might have been allocated to energy-dense plant foods that may have not required cooking and that might have been important even if lacking in evidence; for example, the coastal food Crambe maritima L., a starchy taproot that was highlighted as a feasible Lower Palaeolithic staple by Gordon Hillman. Also, more coverage on the optimal times at which plant foods might have been useful to Lower Palaeolithic peoples would have been valuable. Hosfield deserves praise for considering the role of hominins collecting wild foods during childhood, a rarely studied phenomenon despite being well known ethnographically. This feeds into his view that Lower Palaeolithic hominins will be shown to have longer middle childhoods and adolescence for associative learning and alloparenting.
The work ends with a concluding chapter that sets out broad predictions to be tested in future research. In addition, there are compact and helpful appendices that list key Palaeolithic sites, common names of important plant genera and common names of key fauna taxa. Overall, this is an excellent book that represents a long-overdue approach to understanding the Lower Palaeolithic archaeological record.
