The scientific commission 'Prehistoric Societies in North Africa: Behaviours and Palaeoenvironments' works towards achieving a better understanding of climate variability and landscapes, and their bearing on technological, economic, and symbolic behaviours of North African prehistoric societies. Prehistorians, Quarternary scientists and experts in cognate fields, working on prehistoric research projects across all of northern Africa, are invited to join the commission as a forum for discissing the regional and supra-regional implications of their results. The commission provides a platform for sharing data, strengthening ongoing research projects, and exploring new venues for collaborative research.
As it is geographically a crossroad between Europe and Asia, a number of major human biological and cultural developments occurred in North Africa during the Pleistocene and the Holocene. A number of these developments currently represent central issues in paleoanthropological studies, and prehistoric research conducted in North Africa, contributes significantly to elucidating them.These issues include:
- Early hominin adaptation and occupation in North Africa and their subsequent spread into Eurasia
- Emergence and development of the Acheulean technological tradition, and the tempo and mode of its expansion into Europe
- Homo erectus behavior and adaptation during the Mid-Pleistocene Transition (MPT)
- End of the Acheulean in northern Africa and the transition to the Middle Palaeolithic/Middle Stone Age
- Emergence of Anatomically Modern Humans in North Africa and its role in the broader evolution of modern humans
- Technological variability and subsistence patterns in the Middle Palaeolithic of northern Africa
- Iberomaurusian technological and symbolic behaviours
- Climate and palaeoenvironmental changes in the Pleistocene and Holocene and their impact on human settlement and technological and subsistence behaviours
- Iberomaurusians and Capsians: biological and cultural continuity or discontinuity
- Socio-economic organization of the last hunter-gatherers in North Africa and their transition to the Neolithic and food production
New surveys and field research, conducted across northern Africa in the last two decades, led to the discovery of a large number of prehistoric sites. Multidisciplinary investigations undertaken at the newly discovered sites and at other known key sites have allowed archaeologists and Quaternary scientists to address the central issues mentioned above and to better understand the biological evolution, diversity, cultural dynamics, and the ecology and landscapes of prehistoric societies in North Africa during the Pleistocene and the Holocene.
