Darwinian ArchaeologiesHerbert D.G. Maschner Just over 20 years ago the publication of two books indicated the reemergence of Darwinian ideas on the public stage. E. O. Wilson's Sociobiology: The New Synthesis and Richard Dawkins' The Selfish Gene, spelt out and developed the implications of ideas that had been quietly revolutionizing biology for some time. Most controversial of all, needless to say, was the suggestion that such ideas had implications for human behavior in general and social behavior in particular. Nowhere was the outcry greater than in the field of anthropology, for anthropologists saw themselves as the witnesses and defenders of human di versity and plasticity in the face of what they regarded as a biological determin ism supporting a right-wing racist and sexist political agenda. Indeed, how could a discipline inheriting the social and cultural determinisms of Boas, Whorf, and Durkheim do anything else? Life for those who ventured to chal lenge this orthodoxy was not always easy. In the mid-l990s such views are still widely held and these two strands of anthropology have tended to go their own way, happily not talking to one another. Nevertheless, in the intervening years Darwinian ideas have gradually begun to encroach on the cultural landscape in variety of ways, and topics that had not been linked together since the mid-19th century have once again come to be seen as connected. Modern genetics turns out to be of great sig nificance in understanding the history of humanity. |
Contents
An Introductory Essay | 3 |
CULTURAL AND BEHAVIORAL SELECTION | 15 |
Evolutionary Theory | 23 |
Chapter 3 Explaining the Change from Biface to Flake | 33 |
Conclusions | 39 |
Science Religion and Cultural Virus Theory | 45 |
The Eusocial Pottery Assemblage | 51 |
References | 57 |
Northwest Coast Art | 121 |
Summary and Conclusions | 127 |
Style Function and Cultural Evolutionary Processes | 133 |
A Critique of the Selectionist Program in Modern Archaeology | 140 |
Conclusion | 158 |
Attribution of Agency | 165 |
Natural Selection for Choice | 171 |
A Short History of Time | 175 |
Cultural Messages | 64 |
The Elementary Structure and Operation of Cultural Replication | 71 |
The Locus of the Elementary Code Recipe | 78 |
References | 84 |
Culture as a Unit of Analysis | 90 |
A Northwest Coast Example | 96 |
References | 102 |
Chapter 7 Archaeology Style and the Theory of Coevolution | 109 |
Cultural Selection Choice and Imposition | 115 |
COGNITION AND THE EVOLUTION OF MENTAL | 183 |
Human Cognitive Evolution and the Normal Social Environment | 189 |
Natural Signs Mental Modularity | 197 |
The Attribution of Meaning | 203 |
Accessibility and the MiddleUpper Paleolithic Transition | 212 |
Evolutionary | 221 |
Evolutionary Ecology Is Evolutionary Research | 223 |
Analogues between Evolutionary Process in Natural and Cultural | 229 |
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Common terms and phrases
Academic Press adaptationist adaptive allomemes American Antiquity approach archaeological record argued argument artifacts assemblage Bettinger biface Binford biological Boyd and Richerson brain Cambridge University Press cognitive complex concept context cultural evolution cultural selection cultural transmission culture change Darwin Darwinian archaeology Dawkins Deir el Medina dual inheritance theory Dunnell Durham ecology environment eusocial evolutionary archaeology evolutionary biology evolutionary theory evolved explanation foraging genes genetic Hunter-Gatherer ideas inclusive fitness individuals interaction isochrestic ISVCS kin selection language lineage M.B. Schiffer Maschner material memes Mithen models modularity natural selection neocortex Northwest Coast art O'Brien and Holland organisms Paleolithic Parry and Kelly patterns perspective phenotype Pleistocene population Prehistoric primates problem processual archaeology production random reference group replication reproductive success Richerson 1985 Rindos role scientific selectionist sexual selection signals societies structure style and function stylistic tion traits variation villages visual symbolism York