The volume will provide, for the first time in forty years, a global overview of Late Middle Pleistocene archaeology. It investigates whether this period saw a significant growth in hominin capacities that foreshadow many of the better documented developments associated with the much later modern human revolution. Leading international experts r

i. Dedication and acknowledgements; ii. Contributors; iii. List of Figures and Tables; iv. Glossary; Section 1: Frames for interpretation: persistence and thresholds in the Middle Pleistocene; CHAPTER 1. Thresholds in hominin complexity during the Middle Pleistocene: a persistent places approach; CHAPTER 2. Thresholds in behaviour, thresholds of visibility: landscape processes, asymmetries in landscape records and niche construction in the formation of the Palaeolithic record; Section 2: Regional Case studies: dynamic transformation in Western Europe and the Levant; CHAPTER 3. The road to differentiated land use and domestic space in the Middle Pleistocene of Southwestern Asia; CHAPTER 4. A land of flint and fallow-deer: human persistence at Middle Pleistocene Qesem Cave; CHAPTER 5. On the co-evolution of hearth and home-making during the Middle Pleistocene in the Levant; CHAPTER 6. Land use in Brittany during the Middle Pleistocene: the example of the persistent place of Menez-Dregan I (Plouhinec, Finistère); CHAPTER 7. La Cotte de St Brelade: place making, assemblage and persistence in the Normano-Breton Gulf; CHAPTER 8. Landscapes of habit and persistent places during MIS 11 in Europe. A return journey from Britain; CHAPTER 9. Thresholds in lithic technology and human behaviour during MIS9 in Britain; CHAPTER 10. Neither hot nor cold but dry: a Northwest European view of Neanderthal environments in late MIS 7 and beyond; CHAPTER 11. From the Middle to the Upper Pleistocene: origins and diversification of the Middle Palaeolithic in Northwest France; Section 3: Global Debates; CHAPTER 12. Everyday tasks demonstrate cognitive complexity in Africa's Middle Stone Age; CHAPTER 13. A major event in the Middle Pleistocene?; CHAPTER 14. Persistent places, resident predators and vigilant faunas: life in Eurasia in Eurasia in the late Middle Pleistocene