Comment on Szabo, Frumm and Bellwood: 'Shell Artefact Production at 32,000–28,000 BP in Island Southeast Asia'

Szabo and colleagues rightly emphasize that the archaeological study of the evolutionary emergence of modern human behaviour "presents the most complex theoretical and methodological issues," but they do not tell us what they mean by "modern human behaviour," and without a definition we will be forever boxing at shadows. They run through many of the traits that others of us have used without ever generating the theoretical insight that would join them together.