Ofer Bar-Yosef

TL;DR: In this paper, the conditions under which progressive levels of burning may occur to archaeological bone, and how burning damage changes bones' crystal structure and susceptibility to fragmentation (a.k.a. friability).

TL;DR: A survey of the states of preservation of organic material in 30 fossil bones from 16 different prehistoric sites in the Near East shows that whereas almost all the bones have little or no collagen preserved, they do, with few exceptions, contain non-collagenous proteins.

TL;DR: Variations in small game hunting along the northern and eastern rims of the Mediterranean Sea and results from predator-prey simulation modeling indicate that human population densities increased abruptly during the late Middle Paleolithic and again during the Upper and Epi-Paleolithic periods.

TL;DR: The transition from the Middle Paleolithic to the Upper Paleolithic is considered one of the major revolutions in the prehistory of humankind as discussed by the authors, and explanations of observable archaeological phenomena in Eurasia, or the lack of such evidence in other regions, include biological arguments (the role of Cro-Magnons and the demise of the Neanderthals), as well as cultural-technological, and environmental arguments.

TL;DR: The question of why the emergence of farming communities in the Near East was an inevitable outcome of a series of social and economic circumstances that caused the Natufian culture to be considered the threshold for this major evolutionary change is addressed.