This volume stems from sessions at the 2004 Theoretical Archaeology Conference at Glasgow University, entitled "Hunter-Gatherers in Early Prehistory" and "Hunting for Meaning: Interpretive Approaches to the Mesolithic." The sessions came about as a response to a continuing lack of appreciation of new developments in theoretical approaches to the archaeology of prehistoric hunter-gatherers both in the Pleistocene and Holocene. Contents: 1) Hunter-Gatherers in Early Prehistory (Fiona Coward & Lucy Grimshaw); 2) Upper Palaeolithic Social Colonisation and Lower Palaeolithic Biological Dispersal? A Consideration of the Nature of Movements into Europe During the Pleistocene (Lucy Grimshaw); 3) Transitions, Change and Prehistory: An Ecosystemic Approach to Change in the Archaeological Record (Fiona Coward); 4) Darwin Vs. Bourdieu - Celebrity Deathmatch or Postrocessual Myth? A Prolegomenon for the Reconciliation of Agentive-Interpretive and Ecological-Evolutionary Archaeology (Felix Riede); 5) We're Not Waiting Any More - Or, Hunting for Meaning in the Mesolithic of North-West Europe (Hannah Cobb & Steven Price); 6) Midden, Meaning, Person, Place: Interpreting the Mesolithic of Western Scotland (Hannah Cobb); 7) Reconstructing the Social Topography of an Irish Mesolithic Lakescape (Aimee Little); 8) Can't See the Trees for the Wood: The Social Life of Trees in the Mesolithic of Southern Scandinavia.