Southern Asia, Australia, and the Search for Human Origins

Description

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.

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.