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Roebroeks2018_Article_UnevenDataQualityAndTheEarlies.pdf 23,33MB
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1000 Titel
  • Uneven data quality and the earliest occupation of Europe - the case of Untermassfeld (Germany)
1000 Autor/in
  1. Roebroeks, Wil |
  2. Gaudzinski-Windheuser, Sabine |
  3. Baales, Michael |
  4. Kahlke, Ralf-Dietrich |
1000 Erscheinungsjahr 2017
1000 LeibnizOpen
1000 Art der Datei
1000 Publikationstyp
  1. Artikel |
1000 Online veröffentlicht
  • 2017-12-27
1000 Erschienen in
1000 Quellenangabe
  • 1(1):5-31
1000 FRL-Sammlung
1000 Copyrightjahr
  • 2017
1000 Lizenz
1000 Verlagsversion
  • https://doi.org/10.1007/s41982-017-0003-5 |
1000 Publikationsstatus
1000 Begutachtungsstatus
1000 Sprache der Publikation
1000 Abstract/Summary
  • The database regarding the earliest occupation of Europe has increased significantly in quantity and quality of data points over the last two decades, mainly through the addition of new sites as a result of long-term systematic excavations and large-scale prospections of Early and early Middle Pleistocene exposures. The site distribution pattern suggests an ephemeral presence of hominins in the south of Europe from around 1 million years ago onward, with occasional short northward expansions along the western coastal areas when temperate conditions permitted. From around 600,000–700,000 years ago, Acheulean artefacts appear in Europe and somewhat later hominin presence seems to pick up, with more sites and now some also present in colder climatic settings. It is again only later, around 350,000 years ago, that the first sites show up in more continental, central parts of Europe, east of the Rhine. A series of recent papers on the Early Pleistocene palaeontological site of Untermassfeld (Thuringia, Germany) makes claims that are of great interest for studies of earliest Europe and are at odds with the described pattern: the papers suggest that Untermassfeld has yielded stone tools and humanly modified faunal remains, evidence for a 1 million years old hominin presence in European continental mid-latitudes, and additional evidence that hominins were well-established in Europe already around that time period. Here, we evaluate these claims and demonstrate that these studies are severely flawed in terms of data on provenance of the materials studied and in the interpretation of faunal remains and lithics as testifying to a hominin presence at the site. In actual fact, any reference to the Untermassfeld site as an archaeological one is unwarranted. Furthermore, it is not the only European Early Pleistocene site where inferred evidence for hominin presence is problematic. The strength of the spatiotemporal patterns of hominin presence and absence depends on the quality of the data points we work with, and database maintenance, including critical evaluation of new sites, is crucial to advance our knowledge of the expansions and contractions of hominin ranges during the Pleistocene.
1000 Sacherschließung
lokal Hominin dispersal
lokal Early Pleistocene
lokal Europe
lokal Bone modifications
lokal Lower Palaeolithic
lokal Pseudo-artefacts
1000 Fachgruppe
  1. Interdisziplinär |
1000 Fächerklassifikation (DDC)
1000 Liste der Beteiligten
  1. http://orcid.org/0000-0002-5075-6899|https://frl.publisso.de/adhoc/creator/R2F1ZHppbnNraS1XaW5kaGV1c2VyLCBTYWJpbmU=|https://frl.publisso.de/adhoc/creator/QmFhbGVzLCBNaWNoYWVs|https://frl.publisso.de/adhoc/creator/S2FobGtlLCBSYWxmLURpZXRyaWNo
1000 Label
1000 Dateien
  1. Uneven data quality and the earliest occupation of Europe - the case of Untermassfeld (Germany)
1000 Objektart article
1000 Beschrieben durch
1000 @id frl:6408761.rdf
1000 Erstellt am 2018-07-16T10:39:26.224+0200
1000 Erstellt von 270
1000 beschreibt frl:6408761
1000 Bearbeitet von 270
1000 Zuletzt bearbeitet Thu Jan 30 19:05:10 CET 2020
1000 Objekt bearb. Wed Jul 25 12:37:04 CEST 2018
1000 Vgl. frl:6408761
1000 Oai Id
  1. oai:frl.publisso.de:frl:6408761 |
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