"The clearly written chapters by top-flight authors provide an excellent background and summary for students and even researchers wishing to learn more about an area beyond their own specialty."
—Choice Magazine
"[I]t provides a comprehensive summary . . . to the vital question of what we know about human origins and, more importantly, how we know it."
—Anthropology Review Database
"This volume is a fantastic resource for researchers and advanced students looking for a solid grounding in the many methodological approaches in hominin paleoecology."
—American Journal of Human Biology
An introduction to the multidisciplinary field of hominin paleoecology for advanced undergraduate students and beginning graduate students, Early Hominin Paleoecology offers an up-to-date review of the relevant literature, exploring new research and synthesizing old and new ideas.
Recent advances in the field and the laboratory are not only improving our understanding of human evolution but are also transforming it. Given the increasing specialization of the individual fields of study in hominin paleontology, communicating research results and data is difficult, especially to a broad audience of graduate students, advanced undergraduates, and the interested public. Early Hominin Paleoecology provides a good working knowledge of the subject while also presenting a solid grounding in the sundry ways this knowledge has been constructed. The book is divided into three sections—climate and environment (with a particular focus on the latter), adaptation and behavior, and modern analogs and models—and features contributors from various fields of study, including archaeology, primatology, paleoclimatology, sedimentology, and geochemistry.
Early Hominin Paleoecology is an accessible introduction into this fascinating and ever-evolving field and will be essential to any student interested in pursuing research in human paleoecology.
Contributors: David R. Braun, Beth Christensen, David J. Daegling, Craig S. Feibel, Frederick E. Grine, Clifford J. Jolly , Naomi E. Levin, Mark A. Maslin, John C. Mitani, Jay Quade, Amy L. Rector, Jeanne Sept, Lillian M. Spencer, Mark F. Teaford, Carol V. Ward, Katy E. Wilson