Pattern and Process in Cultural Evolution

Pattern and Process in Cultural Evolution PDF

Author: Stephen Shennan

Publisher: Univ of California Press

Published: 2009

Total Pages: 384

ISBN-13: 9780520255999

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This volume offers an integrative approach to the application of evolutionary theory in studies of cultural transmission and social evolution and reveals the enormous range of ways in which Darwinian ideas can lead to productive empirical research, the touchstone of any worthwhile theoretical perspective. While many recent works on cultural evolution adopt a specific theoretical framework, such as dual inheritance theory or human behavioral ecology, Pattern and Process in Cultural Evolution emphasizes empirical analysis and includes authors who employ a range of backgrounds and methods to address aspects of culture from an evolutionary perspective. Editor Stephen Shennan has assembled archaeologists, evolutionary theorists, and ethnographers, whose essays cover a broad range of time periods, localities, cultural groups, and artifacts.

Evolutionary and Interpretive Archaeologies

Evolutionary and Interpretive Archaeologies PDF

Author: Ethan Cochrane

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2016-09-16

Total Pages: 399

ISBN-13: 1315428792

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This collection of original articles compares various key archaeological topics—agency, violence, social groups, diffusion—from evolutionary and interpretive perspectives. These two strands represent the major current theoretical poles in the discipline. By comparing and contrasting the insights they provide into major archaeological themes, this volume demonstrates the importance of theoretical frameworks in archaeological interpretations. Chapter authors discuss relevant Darwinian or interpretive theory with short archaeological and anthropological case studies to illustrate the substantive conclusions produced. The book will advance debate and contribute to a better understanding of the goals and research strategies that comprise these distinct research traditions.

Handbook of Archaeological Theories

Handbook of Archaeological Theories PDF

Author: R. Alexander Bentley

Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield

Published: 2008

Total Pages: 604

ISBN-13: 9780759100336

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This handbook gathers original, authoritative articles from leading archaeologists to compile the latest thinking about archaeological theory. The authors provide a comprehensive picture of the theoretical foundations by which archaeologists contextualize and analyze their archaeological data. Student readers will also gain a sense of the immense power that theory has for building interpretations of the past, while recognizing the wonderful archaeological traditions that created it. An extensive bibliography is included. This volume is the single most important reference for current information on contemporary archaeological theories.

Handbook of Evolutionary Research in Archaeology

Handbook of Evolutionary Research in Archaeology PDF

Author: Anna Marie Prentiss

Publisher: Springer

Published: 2019-06-03

Total Pages: 443

ISBN-13: 3030111172

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Evolutionary Research in Archaeology seeks to provide a comprehensive overview of contemporary evolutionary research in archaeology. The book will provide a single source for introduction and overview of basic and advanced evolutionary concepts and research programs in archaeology. Content will be organized around four areas of critical research including microevolutionary and macroevolutionary process, human ecology studies (evolutionary ecology, demography, and niche construction), and evolutionary cognitive archaeology. Authors of individual chapters will address theoretical foundations, history of research, contemporary contributions and debates, and implications for the future for their respective topics. As appropriate, authors present or discuss short empirical case studies to illustrate key arguments. ​

Journal of Northwest Anthropology

Journal of Northwest Anthropology PDF

Author: Darby C. Stapp

Publisher: Northwest Anthropology

Published: 2016-03-02

Total Pages: 146

ISBN-13: 1530193559

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JONA Volume 50 Number 1 - Spring 2016 Tales from the River Bank: An In Situ Stone Bowl Found along the Shores of the Salish Sea on the Southern Northwest Coast of British Columbia - Rudy Reimer, Pierre Freile, Kenneth Fath, and John Clague Localized Rituals and Individual Spirit Powers: Discerning Regional Autonomy through Religious Practices in the Coast Salish Past - Bill Angelbeck Assessing the Nutritional Value of Freshwater Mussels on the Western Snake River - Jeremy W. Johnson and Mark G. Plew Snoqualmie Falls: The First Traditional Cultural Property in Washington State Listed in the National Register of Historic Places - Jay Miller with Kenneth Tollefson The Archaeology of Obsidian Occurrence in Stone Tool Manufacture and Use along Two Reaches of the Northern Mid-Columbia River, Washington - Sonja C. Kassa and Patrick T. McCutcheon The Right Tool for the Job: Screen Size and Sample Size in Site Detection - Bradley Bowden Alphonse Louis Pinart among the Natives of Alaska - Richard L. Bland

Cultural Transmission and Material Culture

Cultural Transmission and Material Culture PDF

Author: Miriam T. Stark

Publisher: University of Arizona Press

Published: 2022-07-12

Total Pages: 320

ISBN-13: 081654929X

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How and why people develop, maintain, and change cultural boundaries through time are central issues in the social and behavioral sciences in generaland anthropological archaeology in particular. What factors influence people to imitate or deviate from the behaviors of other group members? How are social group boundaries produced, perpetuated, and altered by the cumulative outcomeof these decisions? Answering these questions is fundamental to understanding cultural persistence and change. The chapters included in this stimulating, multifaceted book address these questions. Working in several subdisciplines, contributors report on research in the areas of cultural boundaries, cultural transmission, and the socially organized nature of learning. Boundaries are found not only within and between the societies in these studies but also within and between the communities of scholars who study them. To break down these boundaries, this volume includes scholars who use multiple theoretical perspectives, including practice theory and evolutionary traditions, which are sometimes complementary and occasionally clashing. Geographic coverage ranges from the indigenous Americas to Africa, the Near East, and South Asia, and the time frame extends from the prehistoric or precontact to colonial periods and up to the ethnographic present. Contributors include leading scholars from the United States, Canada, the United Kingdom, and Europe. Together, they employ archaeological, ethnographic, ethnoarchaeological,experimental, and simulation data to link micro-scale processes of cultural transmission to macro-scale processes of social group boundary formation, continuity, and change.

Theory in the Pacific, the Pacific in Theory

Theory in the Pacific, the Pacific in Theory PDF

Author: Tim Thomas

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2020-07-27

Total Pages: 333

ISBN-13: 1351398903

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Theory in the Pacific, the Pacific in Theory explores the role of theory in Pacific archaeology and its interplay with archaeological theory worldwide. The contributors assess how the practice of archaeology in Pacific contexts has led to particular types of theoretical enquiry and interest, and, more broadly, how the Pacific is conceptualised in the archaeological imagination. Long seen as a laboratory environment for the testing and refinement of social theory, the Pacific islands occupy a central place in global theoretical discourse. This volume highlights this role through an exploration of how Pacific models and exemplars have shaped, and continue to shape, approaches to the archaeological past. The authors evaluate key theoretical perspectives and explore current and future directions in Pacific archaeology. In doing so, attention is paid to the influence of Pacific people and environments in motivating and shaping theory-building. Theory in the Pacific, the Pacific in Theory makes a significant contribution to our understanding of how theory develops attuned to the affordances and needs of specific contexts, and how those contexts promote reformulation and development of theory elsewhere. It will be fascinating to scholars and archaeologists interested in the Pacific region, as well as students of wider archaeological theory.

Kom el-Hisn (ca. 2500-1900 BC)

Kom el-Hisn (ca. 2500-1900 BC) PDF

Author: Anthony J. Cagle

Publisher: Lockwood Press

Published: 2016-09-30

Total Pages: 501

ISBN-13: 1937040542

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This volume presents the findings of three seasons of excavation in the 1980s at Kom el-Hisn, "the mound of the fortress," in the northwest Nile Delta. This provincial community was often in the orbit of Memphis, the capital and administrative center of Egypt's Old Kingdom period. Small areas of occupations of the First Intermediate and early Middle Kingdom periods were also excavated. One of the goals of the excavations was to complement and compare the substantial ancient textual record of this era with Kom el-Hisn's archaeological record because such evidence is sparse for Lower Egypt between about 2500 and 1800 BC. The findings presented here reveal the complexity of small Old Kingdom settlements in the context of the Memphite state organization and shed light on the changing relationships of this administrative center with its provincial communities. Kom el-Hisn's faunal, floral, lithic, and architectural remains are presented and discussed in detail, as are some theoretical and methodological issues relevant to this research. With contributions by Paul E. Buck, Anthony J. Cagle, Michal Kobusiewicz, Karla Kroeper, Richard R. Redding, Sarah Sterling, Robert J. Wenke, Wilma Wetterstrom, Anna Wodzinska, and Alexandra Witsell.

Mapping Our Ancestors

Mapping Our Ancestors PDF

Author: Stephen Shennan

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2017-07-12

Total Pages: 371

ISBN-13: 1351507079

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Much of what we are comes from our ancestors. Through cultural and biological inheritance mechanisms, our genetic composition, instructions for constructing artifacts, the structure and content of languages, and rules for behavior are passed from parents to children and from individual to individual. Mapping Our Ancestors demonstrates how various genealogical or "phylogenetic" methods can be used both to answer questions about human history and to build evolutionary explanations for the shape of history. Anthropologists are increasingly turning to quantitative phylogenetic methods. These methods depend on the transmission of information regardless of mode and as such are applicable to many anthropological questions. In this way, phylogenetic approaches have the potential for building bridges among the various subdisciplines of anthropology; an exciting prospect indeed. The structure of Mapping Our Ancestors reflects the editors' goal of developing a common understanding of the methods and conditions under which ancestral relations can be derived in a range of data classes of interest to anthropologists. Specifically, this volume explores the degree to which patterns of ancestry can be determined from artifactual, genetic, linguistic, and behavioral data and how processes such as selection, transmission, and geography impact the results of phylogenetic analyses. Mapping Our Ancestors provides a solid demonstration of the potential of phylogenetic methods for studying the evolutionary history of human populations using a variety of data sources and thus helps explain how cultural material, language, and biology came to be as they are.