The current geography of north-west Europe, from the perspective of long term Pleistocene climate change, is temporary. The seaways that separate southern Britain from northern France comprise a flooded landscape open to occupation by hunter-gatherers for large parts of the 0.5 million years since the English Channel’s formation. While much of this record is now inaccessible to systematic archaeological investigation it is critical that we consider past human societies in the region in terms of access to, inhabitation in, and exploitation of this landscape. This latest volume of the acclaimed Prehistoric Society Research Papers provides a starting point for approaching the Middle Palaeolithic record of the English Channel region and considering the ecological opportunities and behavioural constraints this landscape offered to Neanderthal groups in north-west Europe. The volume reviews the Middle Palaeolithic archaeological record along the fringes of La Manche in northern France and southern Britain. It examines this record in light of recent advances in quaternary stratigraphy, science-based dating, and palaeoecology and explores how Palaeolithic archaeology in the region has developed in an interdisciplinary way to transform our understanding of Neanderthal behaviour. Focusing in detail on a particular sub-region of this landscape, the Normano-Breton Gulf, the volume presents the results of recent research focused on exceptionally productive coastal capture points for Neanderthal archaeology. In turn the long-term behavioural record of La Cotte de St Brelade is presented and explored, offering a key to changing Neanderthal behaviour. Aspects of movement into and through these landscape, changing technological and raw material procurement strategies, hunting patterns and site structures are presented as accessible behaviours which change at site and landscape scales in response to changing climate, sea level and ecology over the last 250,000 years.

• Cover
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• Contributors
• Abstract
• French Language Abstract
• German Language Abstract
• Acknowledgements
• 1. Repeopling La Manche: survey and encounters
  • Introduction: encounters on foot in the La Manche palaeo-landscape
  • The Western Approaches: resistant coasts and foreshores
  • The Cretaceous Channel: raw material abundance and poor preservation
  • The Channel Islands: situating a lost landscape in modern and ancient geographies
  • Beyond speculation: La Cotte de St Brelade and the landscapes of La Mancheland
• 2. La Cotte de St Brelade: a key early Middle Palaeolithic geoarchaeological sequence in La Manche
  • The early Middle Palaeolithic La Cotte sequence
  • Re-assessing the age of the La Cotte sequence
  • La Cotte and the early Middle Palaeolithic settlement history of La Manche
  • La Cotte: legacy and future
  • Conclusion
• 3. In pursuit of the mammoths
  • The stratigraphic sequence and age of the deposits
  • Mammoths warm and cold: the expansion of the Quaternary sequence
  • A new look at the La Cotte mammoths
  • Mammoths in caves
• 4. The early Middle Palaeolithic ‘bone heaps’ from La Cotte de St Brelade reconsidered
  • The La Cotte ‘bone heaps’: challenges for analysis and interpretation
  • Re-investigating the La Cotte ‘bone heaps’
  • The Lower Bone Heap
  • The Upper Bone Heap
  • The La Cotte ‘bone heaps’: comparisons and contrasts
  • The La Cotte ‘bone heaps’: structured deposition in the Middle Pleistocene
• 5. Coming home: reconstructing place and landscape during the early Middle Palaeolithic at La Cotte de St Brelade
  • Lithic assemblages, behaviour and landscape use
  • Use of place and landscape during the early Middle Palaeolithic at La Cotte
  • Conclusions
• 6. Jersey’s north facing property: the Neanderthal sequence at La Cotte à la Chèvre Cave
  • Excavation history at La Chèvre
  • Stratigraphy and chronology
  • Subsistence and the surrounding landscape
  • The site archive
  • Discussion
  • Conclusion and future work
• 7. Understanding the context of Palaeolithic archaeology in the Normanno-Breton Gulf: the importance of the Pleistocene coastal sequences
  • The Normanno-Breton Gulf: landscape and climatic considerations
  • The record from Jersey
  • The record from Baie de Saint-Brieuc
  • Discussion
• 8. La Cotte, Neanderthals and Goldilocks: investigating hominin adaptations in the submerged landscapes of the Normanno-Breton Gulf
  • The lost landscapes of La Manche
  • Repopulating La Manche
  • Changing late Middle Pleistocene landscapes of the Normanno-Breton Gulf
  • La Cotte and the ‘Goldilocks’ threshold: hominin land use adaptation during the late Middle Pleistocene at La Cotte
  • Conclusion
• 9. Archaeological sequences, framework, and lithic overview of the late Middle Pleistocene of northern France
  • Problems and methods
  • Sedimentary contexts
  • Before the late Middle Pleistocene: the first evidences of human occupation in northern France
  • MIS 11/10 human occupation
  • MIS 9 human occupation
  • MIS 8 human occupation
  • MIS 7 human occupation
  • MIS 6 human occupation
  • Settlement dynamics of the late Middle Pleistocene cycles in northern France
  • Conclusions and perspectives
• 10. La Cotte in its regional context: reconsidering La Manche
  • Early Middle Palaeolithic environments: global and regional climate change
  • The palaeogeography of the Channel River Valley: impact on the Normanno-Breton Gulf
  • North of La Manche: the British Saalian record: MIS 8−7−6
  • South of La Manche: the Breton Saalian record: MIS 8−7−6
  • Jersey: a fragile Middle Palaeolithic context
  • Discussion
  • Conclusion: the Normanno-Breton Gulf and the Channel River valley
• 11. Mind and society: re-imagining the archaeology of Neanderthals
  • Explaining patterns in archaeological data using FACE values
  • The profusion of stuff in the Palaeolithic
  • The social brain, people, and things
  • Extended Social Cognition (ESC)
  • Conclusion: La Cotte and deep history
• Bibliography