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The Population of Late Upper Palaeolithic and Mesolithic Britain

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  18 February 2014

Christopher Smith
Christopher Smith*
Affiliation:
Department of Archaeology, The University, Newcastle upon Tyne NE1 7RU
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Extract

In the absence of direct evidence, archaeologists interested in the demography of stone age hunter-gatherer societies are forced to turn their attention to sites as the unit of analysis. The distribution of sites and their varying density across space and through time have been considered to be acceptable, proxy, population records (see for example Constandse-Westermann & Newell 1984,158–64). This note is a contribution to these studies, but one which is not based on the site as a unit of analysis.

Smith & Openshaw (1989) have argued that the conventional archaeological site is a poor unit of analysis in considering regional settlement patterns. It is poorly defined and the recorded distribution of sites is potentially subject to too much distortion by post-depositional factors such as geomorphological processes and landuse practices, and biases inherent in archaeological method.

Type
Research Article
Information
Proceedings of the Prehistoric Society , Volume 58 , Issue 1 , 1992 , pp. 37 - 40
Copyright
Copyright © The Prehistoric Society 1992

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References

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Constandse-Westermann, T. S. & Newell, R. R. 1984. Human biological background of population dynamics in the western European Mesolithic. Proceedings of the Koninklijke Nederlandse Akademie van Wetenschappen Series B, 87 (2), 139–223.Google Scholar
Smith, C. Late Stone Age Hunters of the British Isles. London: Routledge.Google Scholar
Smith, C. & Openshaw, S 1989. Mapping the Mesolithic. In Vermeersch, P. M. & van Peer, P. (eds), Contributions to the Mesolithic in Europe, 17–22. Leuven: U.I.S.S.P. Mesolithic Commission, Leuven University Press.Google Scholar