Crossing Deserts and Avoiding Seas: Aterian North African-European Relations

Abstract

This article presents and discusses the most recent data on the Aterian in Africa and correlates them with the archaeological evidence from southwestern Europe. It provides an Africanist's interpretation of the cultural development of the Aterian in North Africa and considers one of the Aterian's putative passageways to Europe argued by the Out-of-Africa dispersal model--the Strait of Gibraltar. Several scenarios for Aterian interaction with southwestern Europe are discussed. The first three review the possibility of Aterian migration and/or diffusion to southwestern Europe and supposed relations with Solutrean, Aurignacian, and Mousterian populations. The fourth, and most likely, scenario considers convergence between North Africa and southwestern Europe populations and examines the most recent technological, anthropological, organizational, and environmental evidence for this idea.