Interwoven with the debate regarding the biologic replacement of Neanderthals by modern humans is the question of the degree to which Neanderthals and modern foragers differed behaviorally. We consider this question through a detailed spatial analysis of artifacts and related evidence from stratified living floors within a 49–69 k.y.a. rock shelter site, Tor Faraj, in southern Jordan. The study involves a critical evaluation of living floors, the identification of site structure, and the decoding of the site structure in an effort to understand how the inhabitants of the shelter organized their behaviors. The site structure of Tor Faraj is also compared to occupations of modern foragers in ethnographic and archaeological contexts. When the information from the excavation of Tor Faraj is considered with evidence from other late Middle Paleolithic sites, there seems to be little basis for the claims that constraints in the behavioral organization of Neanderthals led to their replacement by modern foragers.

The analysis of the spatial distributions of artifacts on archaeological floors has potential for the recognition and interpretation of cultural patterns represented by prehistoric remains. This study emphasizes the use of multiple procedures for the separate problems of pattern detection, estimation, and prediction. Aggregative and segregative definitions are proposed for three artifact class associational modes. Definitions are also proposed for general and special pattern prediction problems. An application to the Mousterian site of Rosh Ein Mor in Israel, shows that multiple procedures can be extremely advantageous in the interpretation of general complex patterns.

It has been postulated that one difference between Neanderthals and anatomically modern people lies in a ‘clearer mental template’ of flaked stone tools on the part of modern people. This is thought to have been manifested in greater tool standardization during the Upper Palaeolithic than in the Middle Palaeolithic. Testing of this hypothesis, using three samples of a characteristic Upper Palaeolithic tool class — burins — from one Middle Palaeolithic and two Upper Palaeolithic assemblages, reveals that they are equally standardized for both metric and non-metric traits. Further consideration suggests that most Palaeolithic flaked stone tools are poorly suited to test notions of standardization, although some tool attributes may be well suited when considered in specific adaptive contexts.

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