The final paleolithic cultures of the European plain were characterised by a variety of adaptive responses, reflected in technologies, settlement patterns, subsistence practices, social organisations and, possibly, ideologies. Underlying this regional diversity of specific environmental and cultural changes that were relatively rapid and extreme and that would very likely have had major use among geographically and geomorphologically different regions across most of North-western Europe, this volume aims at a detailed inter- as well as intra-regional comparison and contrast of approaches and results. Chapters discuss general problems such as the reconstruction of Lateglacial environments, the chronology of final paleolithic colonisation and questions of cultural differentiation, and they present reports concerning the most interesting and important recent discoveries from different parts of the plain.