The word ‘refugium’ is often used to describe patterns of human settlement during various parts of the Palaeolithic. While, classically, a refugium is a location which supports an isolated population of a once more widespread species, some have argued that discrepancies in how this term is used have led to methodological confusion and a weakening of its meaning. Differences in the spatial and temporal scales of how refugia are defined, as well as in the specifics of how they operate, mean that many so-called refugia serve different biological functions and have different implications for long-term species survival (Ashcroft, 2010). In this article, I review four questions that may shape individual refugia. I then use the late Middle Palaeolithic record of peninsular southern Europe to explore how attention to these questions may help to advance Middle–Upper Palaeolithic research.

中文翻译：

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什么是避难所？南欧半岛中上旧石器时代过渡的问题

“避难所”这个词经常被用来描述旧石器时代各个时期人类居住的模式。虽然，传统上，避难所是一个支持曾经更广泛分布的物种的孤立种群的地方，但有些人认为，这个术语的使用方式的差异导致了方法上的混乱和其含义的削弱。避难所定义的空间和时间尺度的差异，以及它们如何运作的细节，意味着许多所谓的避难所具有不同的生物学功能，对物种的长期生存有不同的影响（Ashcroft，2010） . 在本文中，我回顾了可能影响个人避难所的四个问题。