This paper examines, through the use of Accelerator Mass Spectrometry dating, the database of Lateglacial cultures involved in the recolonisation of northern Europe. The aim is not only to determine the timing of that recolonisation, but also to propose a general model of hunter-gatherer colonisation at a sub-continental scale. The question is addressed of how long the period of abandonment of northern Europe during the Wiirm/Weichsel glaciation may have lasted, and when it both started and came to an end. A series of questions is asked concerning the processes and mechanics of recolonisation and the sequences for specific areas are examined. AMS radiocarbon dating shows that a two stage process was involved, which has important implications for our analysis of regional settlement patterns and the changing scale of Lateglacial hunting systems. Recolonisation was a dynamic process, integral to, and internally driven by, the social life of Lateglacial hunters. It may have been constrained by environmental and resource factors, which we have emphasised here, but ultimately it was an historical, social process and should be similarily regarded to that of the farmers. By measuring rates of expansion data are provided for use in other studies of hunter-gatherer colonisation.

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The earliest pottery yet found in the Western Hemisphere has been excavated from a prehistoric shell midden near Santarém in the lower Amazon, Brazil. Calibrated accelerator radiocarbon dates on charcoal, shell, and pottery and a thermoluminescence date on pottery from the site fall from about 8000 to 7000 years before the present. The early fishing village is part of a long prehistoric trajectory that contradicts theories that resource poverty limited cultural evolution in the tropics.

Marked changes in human dispersal and development during the Middle to Upper Paleolithic transition have been attributed to massive volcanic eruption and/or severe climatic deterioration. We test this concept using records of volcanic ash layers of the Campanian Ignimbrite eruption dated to ca. 40,000 y ago (40 ka B.P.). The distribution of the Campanian Ignimbrite has been enhanced by the discovery of cryptotephra deposits (volcanic ash layers that are not visible to the naked eye) in archaeological cave sequences. They enable us to synchronize archaeological and paleoclimatic records through the period of transition from Neanderthal to the earliest anatomically modern human populations in Europe. Our results confirm that the combined effects of a major volcanic eruption and severe climatic cooling failed to have lasting impacts on Neanderthals or early modern humans in Europe. We infer that modern humans proved a greater competitive threat to indigenous populations than natural disasters.