Congratulations to Gonzalo J. Linares Matás on two publications!

Gonzalo's research explores the social and ecological drivers of human behavioural diversity. In addition to his doctoral project using satellite data to document how prehistoric societies in the southern Sahara dealt with increasing aridification, he has continued working on hunter-gatherers and human evolution, leading to two recent publications:

 

Linares-Matás, G. J. and Lim, J. 2021. “This is the way”: Knowledge networks and toolkit specialization in the circumpolar coastal landscapes of western Alaska and Tierra del Fuego. Journal of Island and Coastal Archaeology.

 

This paper focuses on hunter-gatherer adaptations to circumpolar environments, particularly the relationship between Holocene climatic variability, demographic trends, and toolkit specialisation for fishing and marine mammal hunting in western Alaska and Tierra del Fuego.

 

Linares-Matás, G.J., et al. 2021. Hyaenas and early humans in the latest Early Pleistocene of South-Western Europe. Scientific Reports 11, 24036. https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-021-03547-7

 

This paper was centred around the study of the formation processes of the bone assemblage at Cueva Negra, southeastern Spain, dated to around 800,000 years ago. In addition to discussing the adaptive skills of early humans, the authors also describe one of the earliest documented instances of spotted hyaenas in Western Eurasia.