Hunter-gatherer behaviour in the landscape:reconstructing movement patterns in the British Late Upper Palaeolithic

The application of the LA-ICP-MS technique to a suitable sample size of artefacts, sites and sources will allow the unambiguous reconstruction of British Late Magdalenian raw material procurement networks for the first time. Hypotheses about territorial size, annual scheduling of resources and topographical keys to human behaviour will be testable for the first time at the context of the regional scale. This will, for the first time, allow British Upper Palaeolithic archaeology to move firmly beyond chrono-cultural ordering and provide data directly comparable to that of contemporary European Magdalenian groups.

Several research questions provide a context for such a comparison, each clearly addressable within the parameters of the results.

How variable in range and direction were lithic procurement networks and what does this reveal about the size of Late Magdalenian territories?
How do these compare with those of contemporary Late Magdalenian regions on the continent? Does similarity suggest the straightforward extension of continental adaptations onto the country? Alternatively, what factors might explain major differences?
Does the directionality of procurement networks support the notion that the Severn and Trent rivers formed the main communication axis in Britain in the Late Magdalenian?
Is the notion that major sites were produced by the same group justifiable in the light of raw material movements?
Have any sources remained unidentified which may be taken to suggest the operation of British groups outside the modem geographical limits of the country?
What are the implications of the results with regard to landscape learning processes; specifically, how and at what rate were procurement and subsistence rounds established and how did these relate to the apparent patterns of colonisation movement?
The overall significance of the project is that it will allow detailed, regional (in this case national) scale reconstruction of Late Pleistocene human behaviour directly relevant to major international research issues.