This is the first book to focus on the role of Southern Asia and Australia in our understanding of modern human origins and the expansion of Homo sapiens between East Africa and Australia before 30,000 years ago. With contributions from leading experts that take into account the latest archaeological evidence from India and Southeast Asia, this volume critically reviews current models of the timing and character of the spread of modern humans out of Africa. It also demonstrates that the evidence from Australasia should receive much wider and more serious consideration in its own right if we want to understand how our species achieved its global distribution. Critically examining the 'Out of Africa' model, this book emphasises the context and variability of the global evidence in the search for human origins.
1. The past and present of human origins in Southern Asia and Australia Robin Dennell and Martin Porr; 2. Asia and human evolution: from cradle of mankind to cul-de-sac Robin Dennell; 3. The changing contribution of the Australian archaeological record to ideas about human evolution Sandra Bowdler; 4. Smoke and mirrors: the fossil record for Homo sapiens in southern Asia Robin Dennell; 5. An Arabian perspective on the dispersal of Homo sapiens out of Africa Huw Groucutt and Michael Petraglia; 6. The Indian subcontinent and modern human origins Michael Petraglia and James Blinkhorn; 7. East of Eden: founder effects and the archaeological signature of modern human dispersal Christopher Clarkson; 8. Missing links, cultural modernity and the dead: anatomically modern humans in the Great Cave of Niah (Sarawak, Borneo) Graeme Barker and Chris Hunt; 9. Faunal biogeography in island Southeast Asia: implications for early hominin and modern human dispersals Mike Morwood; 10. Late Pleistocene subsistence strategies in Island Southeast Asia and its implications for understanding the development of modern human behaviour Philip J. Piper and Ryan J. Rabett; 11. Modern humans in the Philippines: colonization, subsistence and new insights into behavioural complexity Armand Salvador B. Mijares, Philip J. Piper and Alfred F. Pawlik; 12. Views from across the ocean: a demographic, social and symbolic framework for the appearance of modern human behaviour Philip J. Habgood and Natalie R. Franklin; 13. Early modern humans in Island Southeast Asia and Sahul: adaptive and creative societies with simple lithic industries Jane Balme and Sue O'Connor; 14. Tasmanian archaeology and reflections on modern human behaviour Richard Cosgrove, Anne Pike-Tay and Wil Roebroeks; 15. Explaining prehistoric human behavioural change: the challenge from Tasmania Ian Gilligan; 16. Patterns of modernity: taphonomy, sampling and the Pleistocene archaeological record of Sahul Michelle C. Langley; 17. Late Pleistocene colonisation and adaptation in New Guinea: implications for debates on modern human behaviour Glenn R. Summerhayes and Anne Ford; 18. Modern human spread from Aden to the Antipodes, and then Europe: with passengers and when? Stephen Oppenheimer; 19. It's the thought that counts: unpacking the package of behaviour of the first Australians Iain Davidson; 20. Essential questions: 'modern humans' and the capacity for modernity Martin Porr.
Robin Dennell is Emeritus Professor of Archaeology, University of Sheffield. The recipient of a Leverhulme Research Fellowship (1989–92) and a British Academy Research Professorship (2003–6), Dennell has conducted extensive fieldwork in Bulgaria, Iran, Pakistan (where he was Field Director of the British Archaeological Mission), and China. He is the author of The Palaeolithic Settlement of Asia (Cambridge, 2009) and European Economic Prehistory: A New Approach (1983), among other books. He is currently a fellow of the British Academy. Martin Porr is Associate Professor of Archaeology and a member of the Centre for Rock Art Research and Management at the University of Western Australia. He has published widely on issues related to Palaeolithic art and archaeology. He is the editor of Ethno-Analogy and the Reconstruction of Prehistoric Artefact Use and Production (with Linda Owen,1999) and The Hominid Individual in Context: Archaeological Investigations of Lower and Middle Palaeolithic Landscapes, Locales and Artefacts (with Clive Gamble, 2005). He is currently engaged in research projects on the Pleistocene settlement of the Philippines; the indigenous art of the Kimberley, Northwest Australia; and the Early Upper Palaeolithic art of Central Europe.
