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“Hunting and Gathering Subsistence Patterns and Climatic Change in the Late Pleistocene”
Co-chaired by Christopher Boehm, Director, Jane Goodall Research Center, University of Southern California; and Peter J. Richerson, Professor, Department of Environmental Science and Policy, University of California, Davis, November 34, 2005.

Participants
Robert L. Bettinger, Professor
Department of Anthropology, University of California, Davis
“Why Holocene Hunter-Gatherers May Not Be Good Models for Pleistocene Social Organization”

Christopher Boehm, Director (Co-chair)
Jane Goodall Research Center, University of Southern California
“Two Approaches to Modeling Pleistocene Bands”

Peter J. Richerson, Professor (Co-chair)
Department of Environmental Science and Policy, University of California, Davis
“Evolution on a Restless Planet: Were Environmental Variability and Environmental Change Major Drivers of Human Evolution?”

Mary C. Stiner, Associate Professor
Department of Anthropology, University of Arizona
“Changes in the ‘Connectedness’ and Resilience of Paleolithic Forager Societies in Mediterranean Eco Systems”

Bruce Winterhalder, Professor
Department of Anthropology, University of California at Davis
“Hunting and Gathering Subsistence Patterns and Climate Change in the Late Pleistocene”

From left: Christopher Boehm, Mary C. Stiner, Robert L. Bettinger, Bruce Winterhalder, Peter J. Richerson

Summary

Hunting and Gathering Subsistence Patterns and Climatic Change in the Late Pleistocene

Five scholars met for a two-day seminar to assess climatic variability in the late Pleistocene and its impact upon human adaptations, including social organization. To better understand human adaptation during the late Pleistocene, participants reviewed archaeological findings and examined ethnographic and prehistoric hunter-gatherer adaptations. Data obtained from ice cores drilled in Greenland were presented and discussed. The proposed book will focus on human social life since the advent of large-game hunting and will key its interpretations to new information on climatic variability and the human response to that variability.