The steppes in the Late Palaeolithic

Extract

A set of papers on the human settlement of the steppes, epoch by epoch, is not complete unless it pays attention to the last glaciation, when periglacial steppe adaptations show remarkable cultural development, especially in the famous mammoth-bone houses. The subsistence basis depended - as a coincident paper in this issue (pages 719-32 above) shows – on an unusual and unusually early development of food storage, with all that implied for social evolution.

Pressure of present commitments did not allow the writing of a new single paper on this time-period. Instead, we print here a collected set of five short contributions, by N.D. Praslov and colleanues that indicate well the evidence and the range of Soviet approaches to it. We thank Olga Soffer and George Frison for allowing us to draw on the outlines of papers given at the joint USSR-USA meeting on the Upper Palaeolithic-Palaeolndian held in the USSR in August 1989.