A study by HEAS member Timo Canessa has just been published in the open access journal PLOS One.
More On Article
- HEAS Seed Grants for June 2026 Announced
- Genomic insights into the Iron Age Saka of Boz-Barmak, Kyrgyzstan
- Paleogenomes reveal the evolutionary relationship between modern and cave lions
- Wind(ow) of change: The end of the Middle Stone Age and the beginning of the Later Stone Age at Umhlatuzana rockshelter showcasing concurrent technological and techno-economic shifts.
- Bone retouchers and end-scrapers side by side at Bushman Rock Shelter: Exploring a ca. 100,000-year-old technological imbrication in southern Africa
The Early Upper Palaeolithic of Iberia remains an actively debated record of human occupation, yet quantitative approaches to lithic assemblage variability are still lacking, especially among large-scale datasets that span the entire period and region. In this study, we utilised a newly compiled dataset of Aurignacian assemblages to explore techno-typological variability and test its spatial and temporal dimensions. Our work has been able to show that variability has a spatial – rather than temporal – character to the effect that assemblage dissimilarities increase with spatial distance. Our findings thus challenge the application of the classic Aquitaine model of techno-typological change and suggest that temporal change in the Aurignacian may be more unstructured than otherwise deemed. This has wider implications for the detection and characterisation of the technocomplex at large, corroborating previous claims of mosaicism and an inconsistent representation of diagnostic traits.