Professor Michael Jochim Distinguished Professor Emeritus, Department of Anthropology, UCSB

The millennia at the end of the last ice age in Western Europe have been the subject of much discussion and debate among archaeologists.

Initially not even recognized, they came to be seen as a period of cultural decline or degeneration, sandwiched between the impressive cultures of the Upper Paleolithic, noted for spectacular cave art, and the Neolithic with formidable farming villages of wooden houses.

More recently they were interpreted as different but not inferior, characterized by adaptations to the substantial environmental changes taking place.

Now, new DNA research has complicated this interpretation by suggesting that a population replacement coincided with this period, raising the question of how to recognize the archaeological arrival of the immigrants.

Presented by The Friends of the Goleta Valley Library Lecture Series.