Symboling and the Middle-Upper Palaeolithic Transition: A Theoretical and Methodological Critique

Byers, A. Martin

doi:10.1086/204291

“…According to McBrearty and Brooks (2000), for example, the essence of humanity includes abstract thinking, planning depth, innovation, and symbolic behavior. Other similar approaches have emphasized the cultural consequences of symbolic thought, including social relationships of permission granting and dynamic, creative technologies (Byers, 1994;A. Clark, 1997;H.…”

Section: Evaluating "Modern" In the Archaeological Recordmentioning

confidence: 99%

What Is a Hunter-Gatherer? Variation in the Archaeological Record of Eastern and Southern Africa

Kusimba

¹

2005

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This article reviews the recent history of the archaeology of African huntergatherers, focusing on debates around the origins of modern humans and the destiny of hunter-gatherers with the advent of food production. African archaeologists are developing an increasing appreciation for the diversity of African hunter-gatherer societies. Understandings of hunter-gatherers based primarily on ethnography are being successfully challenged and extended.

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“…Does it violate a taboo? In short, symbolic culture sets criteria for determining what is and is not appropriate -beyond the considerations of practical efficacy (Byers, 1994). The result is that the production of material culture is now influenced by cultural as well as practical considerations, and this fact is bound to be reflected in the material culture.…”

Section: Archaeological Correlates Of Symbolic Culturementioning

confidence: 99%

Humanity from African Naissance to Coming Millennia

Tobias¹,

Raath²,

et al. 2001

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The first 2.5 million years of hominid history is characterized by limited dispersals similar to those of the living great apes whose home range sizes very little between years. Unlike our closest relative Pan, who are particulary vulnerable during dispersal because the distribution of their resources is highly habitat specific and predation takes a relatively higher toll than it does in r-selected animals, hominids are widely dispersed after 1.8 Ma. Hominid dispersal must have entailed either a shift in the types of resources exploited or a technological advance to ensure resource availability or both. Using data from ecology, geochronology, morphology, and paleontology we assess the initial hominid dispersal from Africa and the relationship to patterns of dispersal in nonhuman primates and large mammals of both 'widely dispersing' and 'non-dispersing' species. The dispersal rates of Plio/Pleistocene hominids differ from those of nonhuman primates and are typical of widely-dispersing large mammals. In fact, H. erectus first appears in Java almost immediately after its appearence in Africa, yet its first appearence in Java is contemporaneous with that of Colobus, Macaca, and Pongo that had already inhabited mainland Asia for millions of years. Although the timing of the first hominid dispersal pre-dates significant technological advances, the energy required by larger hominid body/brain sizes suggest a shift to exploitation of highprotein packages that, according to correlation between faunal and chronometric sequences, is itself dispersing. These data suggest that it is at the origin of H. erectus (sensu lato) that our uniquely human dispersal capabilities began to emerge and that this dispersal is not primarily due to the technological innovation of the Acheulean tradition. IntroductionThe global distribution of Homo sapiens contrasts with the restricted ranges of our closest living primate relative, Pan. Yet for some three million years after our lineages diverged, both were apparently exclusively African phenomena, as Pan remains today. These current biogeographic differences are reflected in home range (HR) sizes that are some 15 to 100 times greater in recent human huntergatherers than in Pan. (23 hectares in Pan, 330-2600 in humans; Leonard and Robertson, 2000). Although an extensive literature considers the significance of the behavioral repertoire that allows the final, relatively late, dispersal of Homo sapiens into Australasia, North and South America, and Siberia (e.g., Lindly & Clark, 1990;Roberts et al., 1991; Davidson & Noble, 1992; Jelinek, 1994; Waters et al., 1997), the origin of this difference in dispersal patterns is not well understood.The original hominid dispersal from Africa has been viewed as a largely hominid (technologically) driven rather than ecologically driven phenomenon. Such scenarios are based on the idea that widely dispersed ex-African hominids are not found before 1.0 ma (Pope, 1983) or are not found before the development of the Acheulean (Wolpoff, 1999), and thus that th...

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“…In fact, such symbolic systems play a large part in governing our behavior. As Byers (1994) has pointed out, almost nothing we do can be separated from its place in the symbol system, because that system now provides rules for defining what is or is not appropriate, or for what symbolic meaning any act or artifact has beyond its purely practical purpose. A garment may be made to keep one warm, but it also provides symbolic (i.e.…”

Section: Referential Symbolism and Symbolic Culturementioning

confidence: 99%

“…The crux of the matter is that, as Byers (1994) points out, symbolic culture governs behavior. It does this in a number of ways.…”

Section: Archaeological Correlates Of Symbolic Culturementioning

confidence: 99%

See 1 more Smart Citation

Humanity from African Naissance to Coming Millennia

Klein¹,

Tobias²,

Raath³

et al. 2001

The South African Archaeological Bulletin

0

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The first 2.5 million years of hominid history is characterized by limited dispersals similar to those of the living great apes whose home range sizes very little between years. Unlike our closest relative Pan, who are particulary vulnerable during dispersal because the distribution of their resources is highly habitat specific and predation takes a relatively higher toll than it does in r-selected animals, hominids are widely dispersed after 1.8 Ma. Hominid dispersal must have entailed either a shift in the types of resources exploited or a technological advance to ensure resource availability or both. Using data from ecology, geochronology, morphology, and paleontology we assess the initial hominid dispersal from Africa and the relationship to patterns of dispersal in nonhuman primates and large mammals of both 'widely dispersing' and 'non-dispersing' species. The dispersal rates of Plio/Pleistocene hominids differ from those of nonhuman primates and are typical of widely-dispersing large mammals. In fact, H. erectus first appears in Java almost immediately after its appearence in Africa, yet its first appearence in Java is contemporaneous with that of Colobus, Macaca, and Pongo that had already inhabited mainland Asia for millions of years. Although the timing of the first hominid dispersal pre-dates significant technological advances, the energy required by larger hominid body/brain sizes suggest a shift to exploitation of highprotein packages that, according to correlation between faunal and chronometric sequences, is itself dispersing. These data suggest that it is at the origin of H. erectus (sensu lato) that our uniquely human dispersal capabilities began to emerge and that this dispersal is not primarily due to the technological innovation of the Acheulean tradition. IntroductionThe global distribution of Homo sapiens contrasts with the restricted ranges of our closest living primate relative, Pan. Yet for some three million years after our lineages diverged, both were apparently exclusively African phenomena, as Pan remains today. These current biogeographic differences are reflected in home range (HR) sizes that are some 15 to 100 times greater in recent human huntergatherers than in Pan. (23 hectares in Pan, 330-2600 in humans; Leonard and Robertson, 2000). Although an extensive literature considers the significance of the behavioral repertoire that allows the final, relatively late, dispersal of Homo sapiens into Australasia, North and South America, and Siberia (e.g., Lindly & Clark, 1990;Roberts et al., 1991; Davidson & Noble, 1992; Jelinek, 1994; Waters et al., 1997), the origin of this difference in dispersal patterns is not well understood.The original hominid dispersal from Africa has been viewed as a largely hominid (technologically) driven rather than ecologically driven phenomenon. Such scenarios are based on the idea that widely dispersed ex-African hominids are not found before 1.0 ma (Pope, 1983) or are not found before the development of the Acheulean (Wolpoff, 1999), and thus that th...

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Symboling and the Middle-Upper Palaeolithic Transition: A Theoretical and Methodological Critique

Cited by 51 publications

References 2 publications

What Is a Hunter-Gatherer? Variation in the Archaeological Record of Eastern and Southern Africa

What Is a Hunter-Gatherer? Variation in the Archaeological Record of Eastern and Southern Africa

Humanity from African Naissance to Coming Millennia

Humanity from African Naissance to Coming Millennia

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