Culture History and Convergent Evolution

Dr. Huw S. Groucutt is group leader of the Max Planck ‘Extreme Events Research Group’ in Jena, Germany. He received his Bachelors in Archaeology and Masters in Paleoanthropology at the University of Sheffield in 2007 and 2008 respectively, and his PhD in Archaeological Science at the University of Oxford in 2013. He was then a postdoctoral researcher on the ERC funded Palaeodeserts project (2013-2016) and then a British Academy postdoctoral fellow (2016-2019), both at the University of Oxford. He has co-written over 50 journal articles, and co-edited four books and journal special issues. Dr Groucutt's research interests include human evolution and prehistory, stone tool technologies, human demographic changes in the Saharo-Arabian belt, and the relationship between hominin demography and environmental change.

• Chapter 1-Introduction: Into the tangled web of culture-history and convergent evolution.- Chapter 2-The unity of Acheulean culture. Chapter 3-Problems and pitfalls in understanding the Clactonian.- Chapter 4-Culture and convergence: The curious case of the Nubian Complex.- Chapter 5-Lithic variability and cultures in the East African Middle Stone Age.- Chapter 6-A matter of space and time: How frequent is convergence in lithic technology in the African archaeological record over the last 300 kyr?.- Chapter 7-Technology and function of Middle Stone Age points. Insights from a combined approach at Bushman Rock Shelter, South Africa.- Chapter 8-Raw material and regionalization in Stone Age East Africa.- Chapter 9-The Middle-Upper Paleolithic transition: A long-term biocultural effect of anatomically modern human dispersal.- Chapter 10-Threading the weft, testing the warp: Population concepts and the European Upper Palaeolithic chronocultural framework.- Chapter 11-Communities of interaction: Tradition and learning in stone tool production through the lens of the Epipaleolithic of Kharaneh IV, Jordan.- Chapter 12-Toward a theory of the point.- Chapter 13-Learning strategies and population dynamics during the Pleistocene colonization of North America.- Chapter 14-Culture, environmental adaptation or specific problem solving? On convergence and innovation dynamics related to techniques used for stone heat treatment.- Chapter 15-Style, function and cultural transmission.