Is It Evolution Yet? A Critique of Evolutionary Archaeology

Abstract

versity of Washington Press, in press).The present paper was submitted 23 ix 96 and accepted 4 iii 97; the find version reached the Editor's office 16 v 97.The application of Darwinian evolutionary theory to archaeology has taken two divergent and rather distinct paths over the past Over the past two decades, a number of programmatic two decades. According to one program, often referred to as evolutionary archaeology, cultural change as seen in the archaeologistatements advocating the application of Darwinian cal record can best be explained in terms of the direct action of theory to archaeological phenomena have appeared in natural selection and other Darwinian processes on heritable vari-the literature. According to one program, cultural ation in artifacts and behavior. The other approach, referred to as change as seen in the archaeological record can best be evolutionary or behavioral ecology, explains cultural and behavioral change as forms of phenotypic adaptation to varying social explained in terms of the direct action of natural selecand ecological conditions, using the assumption that natural setion and other Darwinian processes on heritable varialection has designed organisms to respond to local conditions in tion in artifacts and behavior (Dunnell 1980(Dunnell , 1989 fitness-enhancing ways. We argue that the primary conflict be- Leonard and Jones 1987; O'Brien and Holland 1990, tween the two approaches centers on fundamental differences in

Natural selection and cultural rates of change

“…Critiques of cultural evolution from within science object that analogies with genetic evolution do not hold (2), and culture is altered instead by a series of contingent historical events (3,4). Biologists have developed theoretical models to understand patterns in genetic evolution, revealing evolutionary relationships, population bottlenecks, genes under selection, and even past human migrations (5)(6)(7).…”

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“…Such debates can be very productive and enlightening, for example, the style debate between Binford (1965), Sackett (1977Sackett ( , 1982Sackett ( , 1985Sackett ( , 1986aSackett ( ,b, 1990, and Wiessner (1982Wiessner ( , 1983Wiessner ( , 1984Wiessner ( , 1985Wiessner ( , 1990 or the evolutionary archaeology debate between Dunnell (1980), Moore (1994), O'Brien (O'Brien and Holland 1995;O'Brien and Lyman 2000), Boone and Smith (1998), Shennan (2000), and Bamforth (2002). In contrast, the reduction sequence vs. chaîne opératoire debate has been so one-sided as barely to deserve the label.…”

Behavioral and Other Human Ecologies: Critique, Response and Progress through Criticism

“…However, her rationale for representing it as a chronological matter of sequential causation rather than an analytical matter of interacting causation is a puzzle. Joseph apparently is unaware that there are HBE discussions of conceptual and other relationships between history and evolution (e.g., Boyd and Richerson 1992, Winterhalder 1994, Boone and Smith 1998.…”

“…They are shaped by several different kinds of causes ranging from genes to symbols" (Winterhalder and Smith 1992: 4). 9 Joseph's account relies on a summary found in Boone and Smith (1998). 10 Joseph relies on summaries found in Bettinger (1991), replicating Bettinger's mistaken citation of Winterhalder et al (1988) with a date of 1989.…”