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Central Asia has delivered significant paleoanthropological discoveries in the past few years. New genetic data indicate that at least two archaic human species met and interbred with anatomically modern humans as they arrived into northern Central Asia. However, data are limited: known archaeological sites with lithic assemblages generally lack human fossils, and consequently identifying the archaeological signatures of different human groups, and the timing of their occupation, remains elusive. Reliable chronologic data from sites in the region, crucial to our understanding of the timing and duration of interactions between different human species, are rare. Here we present chronologies for two open air Middle to Upper Palaeolithic (UP) sequences from the Tien Shan piedmont in southeast Kazakhstan, Maibulak and Valikhanova, which bridge southern and northern Central Asia. The chronologies, based on both quartz optically stimulated luminescence (OSL) and polymineral post-infrared infrared luminescence (pIR-IRSL) protocols, demonstrate that technological developments at the two sites differ substantially over the ∼47-19 ka time span. Some of the innovations typically associated with the earliest UP in the Altai or other parts of northeast Asia are also present in the Tien Shan piedmont. We caution against making assumptions about the directionality of spread of these technologies until a larger, better defined database of transitional sites in the region is available. Connections between the timing of occupation of regions, living area setting and paleoenvironmental conditions, while providing hypotheses worth exploring, remain inconclusive. We cautiously suggest a trend towards increasing occupation of open air sites across the Central Asian piedmont after ∼40 ka, corresponding to more humid climatic conditions which nevertheless included pulses of dust deposition. Human occupation persisted into the Last Glacial Maximum, despite cooler, and possibly drier, conditions. Our results thus provide additional data to substantiate arguments for occupation of Central Asia., (Copyright © 2017 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.)

This paper examines shape and size variability in Mousterian of Acheulian Tradition (MTA) handaxes and compares the observed patterns to those in the Lower Paleolithic Acheulian, both to better understand variability in MTA handaxes and to test whether or not this variability, particularly as it relates to resharpening and reduction, is structured similarly to that in the Acheulian. The Acheulian data set is based on previously published data with the addition here of a study of the handaxes from the site of Boxgrove, England. The MTA data set is based on four classic sites from southwest France with large handaxe collections. Both standard caliper-based morphometrics and Elliptical Fourier Analysis applied to coordinate data taken from digitized images of handaxes are used to assess shape. The result is that, contrary to expectations based on assumptions of evolving technological skill, handaxes in the MTA are as or more variable in shape than Acheulian ones. This variation is allometric in Acheulian handaxes, and is linked to resharpening from the tip down to the base, but is not related to size in the MTA samples. These results suggest that the goals and constraints of handaxe manufacture, but particularly handaxe reduction as a result of reworking during use, were quite different in the MTA and Acheulian, implying that conclusions about hominin cognition drawn from patterns in shape variability in handaxes must be understood in the context of artifact life histories., (Copyright © 2011 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.)