Evaluating evolutionary archaeology

Current …, 1998

versity of Washington Press, in press).

Rediscovering Darwin: Evolutionary Theory in Archaeological Explanation, 1997

2009

Signed papers are the responsibility of their authors alone. Les texts signés sont de la seule responsabilité de ses auteurs.

2009

This paper presents a short history of the influence evolutionary thinking has had on anthropology and archaeology. The focus is on four major "schools" in evolutionist thought: the classical evolutionism of the 19 century, Neo-evolutionism, social biology (sociobiology) and Neo-Darwinian archaeology. The basic conclusion of this text is that the idea of socio-cultural evolution, understood in the broadest sense, has left a lasting impression on anthropological and archeological theory, and that it still represents a useful theoretical framework for new research.

Archaeopress eBooks, 2009

Signed papers are the responsibility of their authors alone. Les texts signés sont de la seule responsabilité de ses auteurs.

This paper presents a short history of the influence evolutionary thinking has had on anthropology and archaeology. The focus is on four major "schools" in evolutionist thought: the classical evolutionism of the 19th century, Neo-evolutionism, social biology (sociobiology) and Neo-Darwinian archaeology. The basic conclusion of this text is that the idea of socio-cultural evolution, understood in the broadest sense, has left a lasting impression on anthropological and archeological theory, and that it still represents a useful theoretical framework for new research.

Journal of Evolutionary Psychology, 2010

1997

As is the case with all scholarly endeavors, there are individuals who played a major role in helping make Rediscovering Darwin a reality, but who-for one reason or another-are not listed in any bibliography. My own realization of the applicability of neo-Darwinian evolutionary theory was inspired by a lecture I attended as a graduate student at the University of Arizona in the Fall of 1978. Given jointly by Robert Netting and Keith Basso, the lecture was an assessment of the state of anthropology as a unified discipline. Their conclusion was a rather disheartening prognostication of the potential fragmentation of the field due to the diverse interests of its practitioners and the lack of a general theory of human behavior. Unwilling to accept this pronouncement, it came to me later that evening that Darwinian evolution might provide a much more robust and satisfactory explanatory framework than the 'evolutionary' (i.e., Spencer's, Tylor's, White's, Service's) and other theories Netting and Basso so effectively critiqued. As is so often the case with personal revelations, however, none of my colleagues seemed to appreciate this 'flash of insight'. Several years later, after listening to one of my occasional tirades about the unappreciated potential of Darwinian theory for understanding human behavior, my wife Margaret (also an archaeology graduate student, but at a different university) suggested that I read a book by Robert Dunnell. However, with a title of Systematic* in Prehistory , it didn't seem to have much to do with evolutionary theory nor did it seem relevant to my interests in paleolithic prehistory and Pleistocene environments. As I have long since learned, however, I should have heeded her advice. As it was, I finally read an article by Dunnell in 1987 and realized (with a mixture of disappointment, relief, and a little embarrassment) that I was neither the only one nor the first to recognize the potential of Darwinian theory in archaeology.