Your article on the archaeology of La Brea Tar Pits in Los Angeles makes for engaging reading, but La Brea is far from being the “only urban, active ice age excavation site in world” (‘Pompeii, but in the middle of a massive city’: the ice age fossil site hidden in Los Angeles, 24 May). Ongoing excavation in London, Paris, Rome, Istanbul, Xi’an and elsewhere continues to cast fresh light on stone age life.
To take just one example, excavations at Casal Lumbroso in Rome have just recently provided a wonderful cameo of how the carcass of the (now extinct) straight-tusked elephant was taken apart with carefully fashioned stone tools.
