Darwinian Archaeologies

1. Front Matter

   Pages i-xxiii

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2. Introduction

   1. Front Matter

      Pages 1-1

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   2. Darwinian Archaeologies

      • Herbert D. G. Maschner, Steven Mithen

      Pages 3-14

3. Cultural and Behavioral Selection

   1. Front Matter

      Pages 15-15

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   2. The Historical Development of an Evolutionary Archaeology

      • Michael J. O’Brien

      Pages 17-32

   3. Explaining the Change from Biface to Flake Technology

      • Alysia L. Abbott, Robert D. Leonard, George T. Jones

      Pages 33-42

   4. Cultural Virus Theory and the Eusocial Pottery Assemblage

      • Ben R. S. Cullen

      Pages 43-59

   5. Organized Dissonance

      • Roland Fletcher

      Pages 61-86

4. Paths to Revisionism in Cultural-Behavioral Selection

   1. Front Matter

      Pages 87-87

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   2. Kin Selection and the Origins of Hereditary Social Inequality

      • Herbert D. G. Maschner, John Q. Patton

      Pages 89-107

   3. Archaeology, Style, and the Theory of Coevolution

      • Kenneth M. Ames

      Pages 109-131

   4. Style, Function, and Cultural Evolutionary Processes

      • Robert L. Bettinger, Robert Boyd, Peter J. Richerson

      Pages 133-164

   5. In Search of the Watchmaker

      • Paul Graves-Brown

      Pages 165-181

5. Cognition and the Evolution of Mental Adaptations

   1. Front Matter

      Pages 183-184

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   2. Weak Modularity and the Evolution of Human Social Behavior

      • James Steele

      Pages 185-195

   3. The Origin of Art

      • Steven Mithen

      Pages 197-217

6. Overview

   1. Front Matter

      Pages 219-219

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   2. The State of Evolutionary Archaeology

      • Robert L. Bettinger, Peter J. Richerson

      Pages 221-231

7. Back Matter

   Pages 233-264

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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.

• darwinian archaeologies
• darwinian theory
• evolution
• evolution of mental adaptations
• evolutionary psychology
• prehistory

• Department of Anthropology, University of Wisconsin-Madison, Madison, USA

  Herbert Donald Graham Maschner

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