 Etudes et Recherches Archéologiques de l’Université de Liège, n° 999, 20 Late Levantine Mousterian Spatial Patterns at Landscape and Intrasite Scales in Southern Jordan Donald O. Henry 1. Introduction Despite recent advances in understanding the biologi- cal relationship of modern humans and Neanderthals, we have yet to establish with any certainty the degree to which the patterned behaviors of Neanderthals may have differed from those of quasi-contemporary and suc- ceeding human groups. Paleogenetic (Green et al 200, Noonan et al 2006) and human paleontologic (Hublin 2009) evidence indicate that Neanderthals diverged from modern human populations between 270,000 and 440,000 years ago. The Neanderthal genome, also points to a small amount of gene low from Neanderthal to an- cestral non-African groups prior to their expansion into Eurasia (Green, et al 200). This is attributed to the mix- ing of Neanderthals with immigrant African groups in the Near East some 50,000 to 80,000 years ago (Green, et al 200). Morphological features of early modern hu- mans in Europe also point to modest levels of assimila- tion of Neanderthals into an expanding African popula- tion sometime before 33,000 years ago (Trinkaus 2007). While we have a much more reined picture of the bio- evolutionary aspects of Neanderthals than we did only a few decades ago, we still have little direct knowledge of such basic social dimensions as group size, composition, site structure and settlement-procurement patterns. What is so intriguing is to see how these behavioral features of Neanderthals compare to those of modern humans given the proposed biologic distance between these two hom- inin branches. In many ways this represents the ultimate level of the nature – nurture debate. With these issues in mind, inter- and intra-site studies were undertaken at several Middle Paleolithic, Late Le- vantine Mousterian occupations situated along the edge of the Ma’an Plateau and Rift Valley in southern Jordan (Henry 994, Henry 995a, Henry et al. 200, Henry 2003, Henry et al 2004). The research centered on an integration of regional evidence of how groups exploited the Late Levantine Mousterian landscape coupled with site speciic information on how the groups organized their behaviors within their living spaces. 2. Setting The study area consists of four major landforms that fall away as steps from the Ma’an Plateau (~,700masl) to the loor of the Rift Valley (~100masl) along a transect of about 35km (Figures  and 2). Beyond their striking differences in elevation, the landforms are largely as- sociated with different bioclimatic zones and geologic substrates. Moreover, given the area’s position as a land- bridge connecting Africa and Eurasia, the environmental zones represent remnants of biogeographic successions of continental scale. The high elevations of the plateau are associated with a degraded Mediterranean woodland of European association, the piedmont supports an Asi- atic steppe, and the lower elevations of the broad plain of the Wadi Hisma and the lank and loor of the Rift Valley are covered in desert vegetation with African afinities. The inherent environmental diversity of the area is fur- ther enhanced by marked seasonality associated with a Mediterranean climate in which rainfall is conined to a short winter wet season followed by a long dry season. From the perspective of Paleolithic research, another important feature of the study area is the restricted avail- ability of chert due to differences in geologic substrates. Extensive chert sources are found above ~,500masl on the Ma’an Plateau and along the edge of the Rift Valley at elevations of ~200-400m in limestone formations. Chert from these sources varies widely in color, composition, and form, but most of the sources yield very high quality chert relative to knapping qualities. The greater part of the piedmont, Hisma, and Rift Valley are associated with sandstone and granitic substrates and lack chert sources. The large majority of chert varieties forming the artifact 2011 Late Levantine Mousterian spatial patterns at landscape and intrasite scales in Southern Jordan. The Lower and Middle Palaeolithic in the Middle East and Neighbouring Regions, Etudes et Recherches Archéologiques de l’Université de Liège (ERAUL) (Jean-Marie Le Tensorer, Reto Jagher & Marcel Otte eds.) Pp. 115-130.