Neanderthal Lifeways, Subsistence and Technology: One Hundred Fifty Years of Neanderthal Study

T diversity and intricacy of current analyses and the advancement of our understanding of the chronology, paleobiology, and cultural adaptations of the Neanderthals is quite remarkable when we consider that it has been but 150 years since the first Neanderthal fossils were recovered from the now famous Neander Valley outside Düsseldorf in western Germany. Furthermore, our vision of the cultural and cognitive capacities of these Pleistocene human groups has itself evolved with the refinement of our study methods, excavation techniques, and realignment of our epistemological stances. In fact, we have gradually, but not without some resistance, passed from the image of a species whose lifeways were commonly viewed as being ‘solitary, poor, nasty, brutish and short’ to one that has come to appreciate the richness and variability of Neanderthal material culture, social organization, or even symbolic manifestations. As Gamble succinctly resumes (this volume, p. 157), “the Neanderthals of 2006 are very different than those of 1956 and 1906.”The papers collected in this volume are the product of an international and multidisciplinary symposium held in Bonn, Germany, during 2006 to commemorate the 150th anniversary of the discoveries from the eponymous valley of Neander. The chapters within coincide with another volume that resulted from the same conference, Continuity and Discontinuity in the Peopling of Europe, edited by B. Weniger and S. Condemi, which unites a series of complementary articles treating aspects of Neanderthal genetics and more general paleobiology. This review loosely follows the editor’s arrangement of the papers while focusing on the more salient contributions from each of the five sections. The first set of articles focus on chronological elements of the Neanderthal occupation of Western Europe including a welcomed revision of the chronology of the early German Middle Paleolithic based on a reevaluation of loess sequences, intercalated tephra markers, and new radiometric determinations from a series of open-air sites (J. Richter et al.) together with more site-specific analyses including a series of nearly 50 Middle Paleolithic find localities of different types, some stratified, from an enormous lignite mine north of Cologne (Uthmeier et al.). Interestingly, eight of these sites are associated with fauna typical of mammoth steppe landscapes; although the agent responsible for their accumulation is ‘anything but self-evident’ the occupations are placed by the authors to MIS 4. Should this indeed prove to be the case, it would once again highlight the remarkable adaptability of Neanderthal populations who were able to exploit relatively inhospitable northern latitudes during a climatically rigorous period of the last glaciation. This section is rounded out by a short contribution (D. Richter) describing a new thermoluminescence technique (orange-red SAR) requiring a significantly smaller (mg versus grams) sample size. So far tested against just three previously TLdated sites, this promising development not only alleviates the limitations of appropriate sample size, but presents numerous interesting applications perhaps allowing microcontexts such as successive hearth features or other burning episodes generally associated with minuscule remains to be reliably dated. Intimately tied to issues surrounding the chronology of the Middle Paleolithic is the dramatic and often changeable environmental background in which Neanderthal populations evolved, their societies developed, and subsistence practices unfolded. The second, albeit rather short, section focuses on Neanderthal subsistence and raw material procurement, although these two vital elements are touched upon in numerous other contributions throughout the volume. There is now overwhelming evidence that Neanderthals were very capable and occasionally selective hunters focusing, by obligation or not (even specializing?), on single species or mammals of specific sizes (Costamagno et al. 2006; Rendu et al. 2012). The above studies and many more have led to the steady rehabilitation of clumsy Neanderthal scavengers and replaced it with an image of accomplished and flexible hunters. Bocherens reviews the isotopic evidence for Neanderthal paleoecology, much of which has been published elsewhere, and compares it with reconstructions based on zooarcheological analyses, putting discordances between the two down to differences in meat yield or carcass transport. The conclusion that Neanderthals focused on large bodied mammals finds general support in Gaudzinski-Windheuser and Roebrucks’ concise synthesis of the subsistence record and environmental backdrop for the Eemian interglacial in Northern Europe. Although still partial, the available information indicates that Neanderthals could free themselves from open environments, expanding their range to take on the “challenge of the forest [environments of northern latitudes].” Several decades of theoretical development, particularly chaîne opératoire and ‘organization of technology’ ap-