This chapter also includes a provocative discussion of the potential use of select caves in the funerary ritual of modern humans.

The next two papers concern the transitional record of Central Europe. In Chapter 14, Nigst presents new lithic data from Willendorf II (Austria) that indicate that the industry from Layer 3 is akin to the early German Aurignacian or the Aurignacian I of France and marks a sharp technological break with the Middle Paleolithic of the area. He summarizes available data from East-Central Europe to contextualize these observations and suggests that different hominins were responsible for different contemporary as-

This is followed by Conard et al.s contribution in which the transitional record of the Swabian Jura is examined. The authors underline that, in this region too, the Aurignacian is sharply distinct from the preceding Middle Paleolithic in terms of its lithic technology and typology, subsistence base, organic technology, evidence for symbolic behavior, and sheer occupational intensity. In fact, they argue that the Swabian Jura was most likely depopulated when modern humans bearing Aurignacian technology first entered it, implying there were no interactions between Neanderthals and modern humans in that region.

A set of five theoretically and methodologically diverse papers rounds out the volume. Chapter 16, by Giaccio and colleagues, proposes that the volcanic eruption responsible for depositing the Campanian Ignimbrite (CI) over large stretches of Eurasia was a major factor driving cultural and behavioral adaptations during the close of OIS 3 and in OIS 2. This is one of the most original contributions of the volume, drawing as it does from disciplines to which paleoanthropologists often pay lip service without integrating data from these disciplines fully within their research. While one may argue over some of the finer details presented in this paper, there is no doubt that recognition of the CI and its ecological impacts offers a new way of thinking about the transition. Interestingly, these authors also suggest that the Aurignacian did not mark a dramatic break from previous technocomplexes and indeed was one of the casualties of the CI eruption. This paper is followed by a chapte