The year 1995 brought a big surprise for the debate on the earliest occupation of Europe, sparked by the Leiden team. Spanish scientists claimed to have found 1,8 million year old traces of hominid activity in the Caudix-Baza basin near Granada in southern Spain. Here the climatic fluctuations of the Pleistocene had a severe impact, and resulted in an ebb and flood of hominid presence. Temporal and geographical variations in the behaviour and cultures of hunting and foraging hominids are reconstructed. In the second part, Stratigraphy, Chronology, Ecology , a chronostratigraphical and ecological framework for palaeolithic Europe is constructed.
Special attention is given to the biostratigraphy and biogeography of the Middle Pleistocene.
Evaluation of the archaeological record, as part of the geological one, is combined with climatic and ecological inferences. The third part of the interdisciplinary research programme is entitled Methodology and Theory . The group is based at Leiden University, the Netherlands, and participates in archaeological and geological fieldwork at a number of sites in Europe.