Not my particular area of specialism, but the early UP/later UP division seems fine. Also worth considering whether the later UP phase should also include an explicit sub-division between Late Upper Palaeolithic (e.g. Creswellian) and a Final Upper Palaeolithic (e.g. Federmesser) – or whether such more specific sub-divisions should be left within the details of individual entries?

And perhaps also a late Middle Pal/early Upper Pal. transitional phase, at the start of the whole UP period?

Thanks,

Rob

Onto the next topic then, hopefully uncontentious. The current EH period framework fails to sub-divide the Upper Palaeolithic. As pointed out by contributions on the HER Forum following the meeting of 9^th July earlier this year, this could very usefully be subdivided into "Early Upper Palaeolithic " and "Late Upper Palaeolithic ". The main boundary should probably be the Last Glacial Maximum, between c. 24,000 and 18,000 BP, when Britain was unoccupied, so one could have an Early UP between c. 40,000 and 22,000 BP, and a Late UP between 18,000 and 10,000 BP [or perhaps up to 9500 BP, or -9500, bearing in mind the subsequent item concerning overlap between Mesolithic and final Upper Palaeolithic].

It is also perhaps worth considering whether further sub-divisions of the Early or Late Upper Palaeolithic might be useful/feasible.

Comments/suggestions please..

Homepage: www.soton.ac.uk/~ffws/New_ffws/index.html

Francis Wenban-Smith (Dr) 
Department of Archaeology (CAHOR - Centre for Applied Human Origins Research)
University of Southampton (Avenue Campus)
Southampton, Hants
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