Table Of ContentDarwinian
Archaeologies
INTERDISCIPLINARY CONTRIBUTIONS TO ARCHAEOLOGY
Series Editor: Michael Jochim, University of California, Santa Barbara
Founding Editor: Roy S. Dickens, Jr., Late of University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill
Current Volumes in This Series:
THE ARCHAEOLOGY OF WEALTH
Consumer Behavior in English America
james G. Gibb
CASE STUDIES IN ENVIRONMENTAL ARCHAEOLOGY
Edited by Elizabeth]. Reitz, Lee A. Newsom, and Sylvia]. Scudder
CHESAPEAKE PREHISTORY
Old Traditions, New Directions
Richard]. Dent,Jr.
DARWINIAN ARCHAEOLOGIES
Edited by Herbert Donald Graham Maschner
DIVERSITY AND COMPLEXITY IN PREHISTORIC MARITIME SOCIETIES
A Gulf of Maine Perspective
Bruce J. Bourque
HUMANS AT THE END OF THE ICE AGE
The Archaeology of the Pleistocene-Holocene Transition
Edited by Lawrence Guy Straus, Berit Valentin Eriksen, Jon M. Erlandson,
and David R. Yesner
PREHISTORIC CULTURAL ECOLOGY AND EVOLUTION
Insights from Southern Jordan
Donald 0. Henry
REGIONAL APPROACHES TO MORTUARY ANALYSIS
Edited by Lane Anderson Beck
STATISTICS FOR ARCHAEOLOGISTS
A Commonsense Approach
Robert D. Drennan
STONE TOOLS
Theoretical Insights into Human Prehistory
Edited by George H. Odell
STYLE, SOCIETY, AND PERSON
Archaeological and Ethnological Perspectives
Edited by Christopher Carr and jill E. Neitzel
A Chronological Listing of Volumes in this series appears at the back of this volume.
A Continuation Order Plan is available for this series. A continuation order will bring delivery
of each new volume immediately upon publication. Volumes are billed only upon actual
shipment. For further information please contact the publisher.
Darwinian
Archaeologies
Edited by
HERBERT DONALD GRAHAM MASCHNER
University of Wisconsin-Madison
Madison, Wisconsin
Foreword by
STEPHEN SHENNAN
Institute of Archaeology
University College London
London, England
Springer Science+Business Media" LLC
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Darwinlan archaeologles I edited by Herbert Donald Graham Maschner.
p. cm. -- IInterdlscipllnary contributlons ta archaeologyl
Includes bibl iographical references and Index.
ISBN 978-1-4757-9947-7 ISBN 978-1-4757-9945-3 (eBook)
DOI 10.1007/978-1-4757-9945-3
1. Social archaeology. 2. Social Darwinlsm. 3. Social evolutlon.
1. Maschner, Herbert D. G. II. Series.
CC72.4.D37 1996
930.1--dc20 96-17069
CIP
ISBN 978-1-4757-9947-7
© 1996 Springer Science+Business Media New York
Originally published by Plenum Press, New York in 1996
Softcover reprint of the hardcover 1s t edition 1996
10 9 8 7 6 54 3 2 1
AII righ ts reserved
No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any
form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, microfilming, recording, or
otherwise, without written permission from the Publisher
In memory of Ben Cullen
February 10, 1964 to December 29, 1995
Contributors
Alysia L. Abbott • Department of Anthropology, University of New Mexico,
Albuquerque, New Mexico 87131
Kenneth M. Ames • Department of Anthropology, Portland State University,
Portland, Oregon 97207
Robert L. Bettinger • Department of Anthropology, University of California,
Davis, California 95616
Robert Boyd • Department of Anthropology, University of California, Los An
geles, California 90024
Ben R. 5. Cullent • Sherwood House, St Dogmael's, Cardigan, West Wales
SA43 3LF, United Kingdom
Roland Fletcher • Department of Archaeology, School of Archaeology, Clas
sics, and Ancient History, The University of Sydney, New South Wales
2006, Australia '
Paul Graves-Brown • Department of Psychology, University of Southampton,
Highfield, Southampton S017 IBJ, United Kingdom
George T. jones • Department of Anthropology, Hamilton College, Clinton,
New York 13323
Robert D. Leonard • Department of Anthropology, University of New Mexico,
Albuquerque, New Mexico 87131
Herbert D. G. Maschner • Department of Anthropology, University of Wiscon
sin, 1180 Observatory Drive, 5240 Social Science, Madison, Wisconsin
53706
Steven Mithen • Department of Archaeology, University of Reading, White
knights, P.O. Box 218, Reading RG6 2AA, United Kingdom
Michael]. O'Brien • Department of Anthropology, University of Missouri, 200
Swallow Hall, Columbia, Missouri 65211
t Deceased.
vii
viii CONTRIBUTORS
john Q. Patton • Department of Anthropology, University of California, Santa
Barbara, California 93106
Peter]. Richerson • Division of Environmental Studies, University of Califor
nia, Davis, California 95616
james Steele • Department of Archaeology, University of Southampton, High
field, Southampton S017 IBJ, United Kingdom
Foreword
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. Historical linguistics
one of the disciplines that influenced Darwin's own ideas-is itself increas
ingly looking toward Darwinian models, while the links between the genetic
and the linguistic history of populations are also being explored. There are
Darwinian perspectives on how the mind/brain develops, while in the fields
of philosophy and psychology it has been postulated that "universal Darwin
ism" is the key to understanding the nature of human knowledge. Darwinian
concepts of variation and selection have even been applied in provocative and
stimulating ways to literary history and criticism. Darwinism, it appears, is in
creasingly in tune with the Zeitgeist.
ix
X FOREWORD
How does archaeology fit in with all this? The answer is a complex one.
The cultural-historical archaeology of the first half of this century can certainly
be seen in retrospect as fulfilling aspects of a Darwinian program even though
this is not how it was perceived at the time. The process of documenting the
history of archaeological cultures and their origins represented the demonstra
tion of descent with modification in the field of human culture, even if the
mechanisms responsible for this were inadequately and inaccurately character
ized. The processual archaeology that succeeded it in the Anglo-American
sphere of influence certainly thought of itself as evolutionary because of its
concern with adaptation. However, it was shot through with the fallacies of
group functionalism, as Maschner and Mithen point out, and it was Lamarcki
an rather than Darwinian in character because change was conceived in terms
of the environment impressing itself on human populations, as opposed to in
ternally and historically generated variation within human populations inter
acting with, and being selected by, aspects of the environment.
This functionalist approach probably remains the disciplinary orthodoxy
in many parts of the world, but in Britain and elsewhere it has been superseded
in this role by so-called "post-processual" archaeology whose hallmarks in
clude a concern with humanistic interpretation rather than scientific explana
tion, with meaning rather than function, with individuals and the
contingencies of history rather than the formulation of generalizations, and
with the social context of archaeology and contextual influences on its ideas as
opposed to their internal coherence and their relationship to evidence.
Nevertheless, on the margins of these major trends there has been a grow
ing interest among archaeologists in the possibilities offered by the now enor
mous variety of Darwinian approaches to the study of past human societies and
cultures. The mid-l990s seem to mark the coming of age of the archaeological
application of such approaches. The past year has seen the publication of Evo
lutionary Archaeology, edited by Patrice Teltser; The Archaeology of Human An
cestry: Power, Sex and Tradition, edited by james Steele and myself; and now
Darwinian Archaeologies, each demonstrating in its different way the potential
these ideas have to offer.
As Herb Maschner and Steve Mithen make clear in their introduction,
there are in fact some close parallels between Darwinian and post-processual
approaches, ironically in view of the "political incorrectness" which remains
(erroneously) associated with the former. Both emphasize individual inten
tions and decisionmaking; both accord social strategies as much importance as
subsistence; both recognize the role of the contingencies of history and the im
portance of "heritage constraint." Even the poststructuralist emphasis on hu
mans as caught in a web of signifiers beyond their control is mirrored by the
idea of human minds as brains parasitized by populations of memes!
