The objective of this edited volume is to bring together a diverse set of analyses to document
how small-scale societies responded to paleoenvironmental change based on the evidence of their
lithic technologies. The contributions bring together an international forum for interpreting
changes in technological organization - embracing a wide range of time periods geographic
regions and methodological approaches. As technology brings more refined information on ancient
climates the research on spatial and temporal variability of paleoenvironmental changes. In
turn this has also broadened considerations of the many ways that prehistoric hunter-gatherers
may have responded to fluctuations in resource bases. From an archaeological perspective stone
tools and their associated debitage provide clues to understanding these past choices and
decisions and help to further the investigation into how variable human responses may have
been. Despite significant advances in the theoryand methodology of lithic technological
analysis there have been few attempts to link these developments to paleoenvironmental
research on a global scale.
