Rethinking the initial Upper Paleolithic Steven L. Kuhn a, * , Nicolas Zwyns b, c a School of Anthropology, University of Arizona, Bldg. 30, Tucson, AZ 85721-0030, USA b Dept. of Anthropology, University of California, Davis, CA 95616, USA c Department of Human Evolution, Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology, Leipzig, Germany article info Article history: Available online xxx Keywords: Early Upper Paleolithic Hominin dispersals Levallois Blade technology abstract The term Initial Upper Paleolithic (IUP) was originally proposed to describe a specific assemblage from the site of Boker Tachtit (level 4). The use of the term was subsequently extended to cover the earliest Upper Paleolithic assemblages in the Levant, characterized by forms of blade production that combines elements of Levallois method (faceted platforms, hard hammer percussion, flat-faced cores) with fea- tures more typical of Upper Paleolithic blade technologies. More recently, the term IUP has been broadened again to include any early Upper Paleolithic assemblage with Levallois-like features in methods of blade production, irrespective of location. Artifact assemblages conforming to this broadest definition of the IUP have been reported from a vast area, stretching from the Levant through Central and Eastern Europe to the Siberian Altai and Northwest China. Whereas it is indisputable that similar lithic technologies can be found in all of these areas, it is not self-evident that they represent a unified cultural phenomenon. An alternative possibility is convergence, common responses to adapting Mousterian/MSA Levallois technology to the production of blade blanks, or some combination of multiple local origins with subsequent dispersal. In this paper, we suggest that the current definition of IUP has become too broad to address such issues, and that understanding the origins of this phenomenon requires a more explicit differentiation between analogies and homologies in lithic assemblages. © 2014 Elsevier Ltd and INQUA. All rights reserved. 1. Introduction What we call “cultures” or “culture complexes” in the Paleolithic often exist on a scale unmatched by any familiar contemporary social or cultural phenomenon. Constellations of associated mate- rial culture traits that define the Acheulean or the Aurignacian are extraordinarily persistent in time and remarkably widespread in space. Specific technological procedures, such as pressure micro- blade production or Levallois method are even more broadly distributed and long-lived. These kinds of phenomena present a challenge to archaeologists. We do not know exactly how to un- derstand them. Are they cultures in a familiar sense at all, or are they the outcome of less familiar processes leading to the fixation of certain cultural traits across very large areas? To what extent can broad similarity in lithic technology be equated with continuity in cultural transmission, as opposed to convergence guided by the fracture mechanics of isotropic stone or responses to similar ecological challenges? The Initial Upper Paleolithic (IUP) has become this sort of “extensive” cultural phenomenon. When first proposed, the term Initial Upper Paleolithic had a very narrow meaning. The use of the term has subsequently been broadened to encompass an ever- larger series of archaeological assemblages that spans an area stretching from North Africa to north China. At this point the term has become so generalized that its meaning and utility must be re- evaluated. Here, we examine what has been called IUP in various places and reconsider what this phenomenon might signify for hominin global dispersals and trajectories of cultural evolution. We briefly review the origins and uses of the term Initial Upper Paleolithic, the spatial and temporal ranges of assemblages iden- tified as IUP, and some of the technological variability subsumed under the name. At this point, the global distribution of IUP as- semblages presents important challenges for distinguishing results of large-scale dispersal events from outcomes of technological convergence. 2. History of the term As far as we are aware, Marks and Ferring (1988) coined the term Initial Upper Paleolithic to describe the lithic industry from * Corresponding author. E-mail addresses: skuhn@email.arizona.edu (S.L. Kuhn), nzwyns@ucdavis.edu (N. Zwyns). Contents lists available at ScienceDirect Quaternary International journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/quaint http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.quaint.2014.05.040 1040-6182/© 2014 Elsevier Ltd and INQUA. All rights reserved. Quaternary International xxx (2014) 1e10 Please cite this article in press as: Kuhn, S.L., Zwyns, N., Rethinking the initial Upper Paleolithic, Quaternary International (2014), http:// dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.quaint.2014.05.040