This volume reports and interprets a comprehensive set of archaeological analyses undertaken at the Middle Paleolithic rockshelter site of Tor Faraj, Jordan. The intent of these studies is to determine whether or not the occupants of this site, between 50,000 and 70,000 years ago, utilized this rockshelter in an archaic or modern human fashion. The analytical results have important implications concerning the origins of modern humans. If the Tor Faraj folk were behaving archaically by utilizing a simple site structure while lacking nuclear-family organization, then their replacement by behaviorally complex and cognitively superior modern humans could have been expected. Alternatively, if these Middle Paleolithic people's behavior was no different from modern humans occupying rockshelters in the ethnographic present and the archaeological past, then the ascendance of modern humans may have been due simply to their technological superiority, rather than significant changes in their social organization or cognition. Donald O. Henry and his collaborators present a compellingly convincing case for the latter scenario. This suggests that the Neanderthals, rather than being biologically replaced by the behaviorally modern and smarter species of Homo sapiens, were genetically swamped and marginalized by an influx of conspecifics who may merely have had a more efficient technology.
The book is organized into three sections. The first introduces and places into context the questions being investigated by the Tor Faraj research team, the second presents the various analyses performed by the members of the project, and the third summarizes the team's findings and interprets what these results imply regarding the occupants' behavior in this Middle Paleolithic rockshelter. The introductory chapters are written by Henry, the editor of the volume and principal investigator of the research team. Chapter 1 is a broad overview of the modern human origins debate, and concludes that this controversy is unresolved in the biologic and cognitive realms. However, the potential exists for archaeological analyses, particularly from Levantine sites, where Neanderthals and "early modern humans" coexisted in time and space, to determine if Middle Paleolithic peoples were behaving in an archaic or modern fashion. In Chapter 2, Henry explicitly focuses upon the archaeological, fossil hominid, and paleoenvironmental evidence from the Levant to establish this region's centrality in answering the questions he poses in the opening chapter.
Chapters 3-9 form the majority of this volume, and are referred to by Henry as the "Case Study" section of the book. Once again, the editor authors the first two chapters of this section. Chapter 3 describes the site of Tor Faraj, its history of discovery, and the site-formation processes. This chapter also places the rockshelter into its broader geographical, chronological, and geological contexts. In Chapter 4, Henry provides an archaeological and behavioral overview of the site in which the B-Type Levantine Mousterian, raw-material sources, and patterns of site occupation are addressed.
The next five chapters of the "Case Study" section provide specific results of various archaeological analyses undertaken by the team members of the Tor Faraj Project. In Chapter 5, Armagan reports on her studies of the site's small lithic debris. Her most significant findings document the use of both hardand soft-hammer percussion, but the lithic debris from each activity are concentrated in different areas within the site. In addition, Armagan's analyses indicate that the occupants dumped ashes beyond the shelter's dripline and periodically swept the floor of debris. Demidenko and Usik's refitting studies presented in Chapter 6 have important implications regarding the reconstruction of behavior at Tor Faraj. The authors conclude that the toolmakers economized by efficient primary processing of Levallois points from the chert nodules that were brought to the site from outcrops 22 km away. The toolmakers' use of