Objectif The Caucasus appears today as a key region, a junction between the Near-East, Central Asia and Europe.Occupied between 120 000 and 35 000 years ago by groups of Neandertal hunters, this mountains region between the black and the Caspien seas, at once a barrier and a passageway, junction of civilisations, is an ideal region to constitute a model of the lifestyle and behaviour of Neandertal hunters, to apprehend their morphological and cultural diversity and to better understand the replacement process of Neandertal Man by Homo sapiens, ancestors to modern Europeans.This project aims at resolving a few fundamental questions :What was the process behind the emergence of Mousterian cultures : progressive evolution from Lower Paleolithic cultures, gradual evolution, evolution through exterior influences and if so, to what degree, replacement of ancient cultures by new cultures coming from other regions ?What were the main lines of Mousterian cultural evolution between 120 000 and 35 000 years ago ?How can the different Mousterian groups in the regions of the Caucasus be described ?Are divers Mousterian cultures related to groups independent of the different cultural traditions which rubbed shoulders for thousand of years, do they correspond to different paleo-environments, to certain lifestyles or to specific hunting strategies ?What were the hunting strategies, the skinning and butchering techniques and the culinary practices of the divers Mousterian cultures ?Were the Neandertals of the Caucasus anatomically closer to those of the Near-East, of Central Asia or of Europe ?What was the replacement process of Mousterian cultures by those of Upper Paleolithic ones : local evolution, strong exterior influence in a Mousterian cultural context, brutal substitution by cultural currents comings from other regions ?What was the replacement process of Neandertals by the first Modern Humans in the regions of the Caucasus : local evolution, replacement by population coming from the Near-East, cross-breeding ?Are the first Modern Humans, ancestors of the present day populations of Europe, descendants of their Ante-Neandertal and Neandertal predecessors or do they correspond to an immigration wave from the Near-East and Africa ?What role variations in the paleo-environment play in the morphological and cultural evolution of Man ? What was the dynamics of the interactions between Man and his environment? Programme(s) IC-INTAS - International Association for the promotion of cooperation with scientists from the independent states of the former Soviet Union (INTAS), 1993- Thème(s) 7 - Economics, Social and Human Sciences OPEN - OPEN Call Appel à propositions Data not available Régime de financement Data not available Coordinateur Mus?um National d'Histoire Naturelle Contribution de l’UE Aucune donnée Adresse 1, rue René Panhard 75013 Paris France Voir sur la carte Coût total Aucune donnée Participants (6) Trier par ordre alphabétique Trier par contribution de l’UE Tout développer Tout réduire Azerba?djan Academy of Sciences Azerbaïdjan Contribution de l’UE Aucune donnée Adresse pros. H. Djavid, 31 370143 Bakou Voir sur la carte Coût total Aucune donnée IPE - Prehistoric laboratory Russie Contribution de l’UE Aucune donnée Adresse Moskovskiy Prospeckt, 7 - 38 190031 St. Petersburg Voir sur la carte Coût total Aucune donnée State Museum of Georgia Géorgie Contribution de l’UE Aucune donnée Adresse 3, Purtseladze street 380007 Tbilisi Voir sur la carte Coût total Aucune donnée Universita di Ferrare Italie Contribution de l’UE Aucune donnée Adresse Corso Ercole I d'Este, 32 44100 Ferrara Voir sur la carte Coût total Aucune donnée Universitat Rovira i Virgili Espagne Contribution de l’UE Aucune donnée Adresse Pla?a Imperial Tarraco, 1 43005 Tarragona Voir sur la carte Coût total Aucune donnée Université de Turin Italie Contribution de l’UE Aucune donnée Adresse 52, corso M. d'Azeglio 10126 Torino Voir sur la carte Coût total Aucune donnée