BEHAVIORAL-DIFFERENCES BETWEEN ARCHAIC AND MODERN HUMANS IN THE LEVANTINE MOUSTERIAN

Early modern and archaic humans are associated with similar lithic ind ustries in the Middle Paleolithic of the southern Levant, but new data suggest that they used the environment in different ways. Evidence fr om analyses of seasonally deposited increments of the teeth of the ani mals they hunted suggests that modem humans primarily practiced a stra tegy of circulating seasonal mobility, while archaic humans in the sam e region 30,000 years later were more residentially mobile. Analyses o f their lithic hunting technology further suggest that archaic humans hunted more frequently than did modern humans. We argue that this grea ter hunting intensity may have been a strategy for coping with the con sequences of resource biodepletion resulting from long-term, multiseas onal occupation of sites. These behavioral contrasts may be related to some of the morphological differences between early modern and archai c humans.