Macroevolution in Human Prehistory: Evolutionary Theory and Processual Archaeology

✍ Scribed by Anna Marie Prentiss, Ian Kuijt, James C. Chatters (auth.), Anna Prentiss, Ian Kuijt, James C. Chatters (eds.)

• Publisher: Springer-Verlag New York
• Year: 2009
• Tongue: English
• Leaves: 316
• Edition: 1
• Category: Library

✦ Synopsis

Cultural evolution, much like general evolution, works from the assumption that cultures are descendent from much earlier ancestors. Human culture manifests itself in forms ranging from the small bands of hunters, through intermediate scale complex hunter-gatherers and farmers, to the high density urban settlements and complex polities that characterize much of today’s world.

The chapters in the volume examine the dynamic interaction between the micro- and macro-scales of cultural evolution, developing a theoretical approach to the archaeological record that has been termed evolutionary processual archaeology. The contributions in this volume integrate positive elements of both evolutionary and processualist schools of thought. The approach, as explicated by the contributors in this work, offers novel insights into topics that include the emergence, stasis, collapse and extinction of cultural patterns, and development of social inequalities. Consequently, these contributions form a stepping off point for a significant new range of cultural evolutionary studies.

✦ Table of Contents

Front Matter....Pages i-viii
Introduction....Pages 1-19
Front Matter....Pages 1-1
Proximate Causation, Group Selection, and the Evolution of Hierarchical Human Societies: System, Process, and Pattern....Pages 23-49
Landscape Learning in Relation to Evolutionary Theory....Pages 51-71
“The Multiplication of Forms:” Bering Strait Harpoon Heads as a Demic and Macroevolutionary Proxy....Pages 73-107
Front Matter....Pages 109-109
The Emergence of New Socioeconomic Strategies in the Middle and Late Holocene Pacific Northwest Region of North America....Pages 111-131
Testing the Morphogenesist Model of Primary State Formation: The Zapotec Case....Pages 133-155
Evolutionary Biology and the Emergence of Agriculture: The Value of Co-opted Models of Evolution in the Study of Culture Change....Pages 157-210
Front Matter....Pages 211-211
A Macroevolutionary Perspective on the Archaeological Record of North America....Pages 213-234
Cultural Stasis and Change in Northern North America: A Macroevolutionary Perspective....Pages 235-251
Niche Construction, Macroevolution, and the Late Epipaleolithic of the Near East....Pages 253-271
Front Matter....Pages 273-273
Macroevolutionary Theory and Archaeology: Is There a Big Picture?....Pages 275-295
Material Cultural Macroevolution....Pages 297-316
Back Matter....Pages 1-8

✦ Subjects

Archaeology