Stephen Shennan

Uses neo-Darwinian evolutionary ideas to explore the history of human populations and the origins of, and changes to, their cultural traditions.

Darwinian Archaeology and Cultural Evolution

Genes, Memes and Human History

James Conolly

Sue Colledge

Katie Manning

Keith Dobney

This volume tackles the fundamental and broad-scale questions concerning the spread of early animal herding from its origins in the Near East into Europe beginning in the mid-10th millennium BC. Original work by more than 30 leading international researchers synthesizes of our current knowledge about the origins and spread of animal domestication. In this comprehensive book, the zooarchaeological record and discussions of the evolution and development of Neolithic stock-keeping take center stage in the debate over the profound effects of the Neolithic revolution on both our biological and cultural evolution.

The Origins and Spread of Domestic Animals in Southwest Asia and Europe

Knowledge of the origin and spread of farming has been revolutionised in recent years by the application of new scientific techniques, especially the analysis of ancient DNA from human genomes. In this book, Stephen Shennan presents the latest research on the spread of farming by archaeologists, geneticists and other archaeological scientists. He shows that it resulted from a population expansion from present-day Turkey. Using ideas from the disciplines of human behavioural ecology and cultural evolution, he explains how this process took place. The expansion was not the result of 'population pressure' but of the opportunities for increased fertility by colonising new regions that farming offered. The knowledge and resources for the farming 'niche' were passed on from parents to their children. However, Shennan demonstrates that the demographic patterns associated with the spread of farming resulted in population booms and busts, not continuous expansion.

An Evolutionary Perspective

The First Farmers of Europe

Colin Renfrew

Christopher Scarre

John F. Cherry

These papers look at the increasingly influential role of social archaeology - an area in which Colin Renfrew has been a key player. Topics covered include: the development of the human mind, trade and exchange, social change, chiefdoms and states, and the archaeology of island societies.

Studies in Honour of Colin Renfrew

Explaining Social Change

Michael John O'Brien

Leading scholars offer a range of perspectives on the roles played by innovation in the evolution of human culture. In recent years an interest in applying the principles of evolution to the study of culture emerged in the social sciences. Archaeologists and anthropologists reconsidered the role of innovation in particular, and have moved toward characterizing innovation in cultural systems not only as a product but also as an evolutionary process. This distinction was familiar to biology but new to the social sciences; cultural evolutionists from the nineteenth to the twentieth century had tended to see innovation as a preprogrammed change that occurred when a cultural group "needed" to overcome environmental problems. In this volume, leading researchers from a variety of disciplines--including anthropology, archaeology, evolutionary biology, philosophy, and psychology--offer their perspectives on cultural innovation. The book provides not only a range of views but also an integrated account, with the chapters offering an orderly progression of thought. The contributors consider innovation in biological terms, discussing epistemology, animal studies, systematics and phylogeny, phenotypic plasticity and evolvability, and evo-devo; they discuss modern insights into innovation, including simulation, the random-copying model, diffusion, and demographic analysis; and they offer case studies of innovation from archaeological and ethnographic records, examining developmental, behavioral, and social patterns. Contributors André Ariew, R. Alexander Bentley, Werner Callebaut, Joseph Henrich, Anne Kandler, Kevin N. Laland, Daniel O. Larson, Alex Mesoudi, Michael J. O'Brien, Craig T. Palmer, Adam Powell, Simon M. Reader, Valentine Roux, Chet Savage, Michael Brian Schiffer, Jeffrey H. Schwartz, Stephen J. Shennan, James Steele, Mark G. Thomas, Todd L. VanPool

Contributions from Evolutionary Anthropology

Innovation in Cultural Systems

Tim Kerig

This volume brings together a group of peer reviewed papers, most of them presented at a workshop held at University College London, 15-17 October 2011, as part of the European Research Council (ERC) funded project Cultural Evolution of Neolithic Europe (EUROEVOL 2010-2015).

Connecting Networks: Characterising Contact by Measuring Lithic Exchange in the European Neolithic

Peter Stone

Robert Layton

Over the last thirty years issues of culture, identity and meaning have moved out of the academic sphere to become central to politics and society at all levels from the local to the global. Archaeology has been at the forefront of these moves towards a greater engagement with the non-academic world, often in an extremely practical and direct way, for example in the disputes about the repatriation of human burials. Such disputes have been central to the recognition that previously marginalized groups have rights in their own past that are important for their future. The essays in this book look back at some of the most important events where a role for an archaeology concerned with the past in the present first emerged and look forward to the practical and theoretical issues now central to a socially engaged discipline and shaping its future. This book is published in honor of Professor Peter Ucko, who has played an unparalleled role in promoting awareness of the core issues in this volume among archaeologists.

A Future for Archaeology

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.

Phylogenetic Approaches in Anthropology and Prehistory

Mapping Our Ancestors

James Steele

Human social life is constrained and defined by our cognitive and emotional dispositions, which are the legacy of our foraging ancestors. But how difficult is it to reconstruct the social systems and cultural traditions of those ancestors? The Archaeology of Human Ancestry provides a stimulating and provocative answer, in which archaeologists and biological anthropologists set out and demonstrate their reconstructive methods. Contributors use observations of primates and modern hunter-gatherers to illuminate the fossil and artefactual records. Thematic treatment covers the evolution of group size; group composition and the emotional structure of social bonds; sexual dimorphism and the sexual division of labour; and the origins of human cultural traditions. The Archaeology of Human Ancestry is an essential introduction to the subject for advanced undergraduates and researchers in archaeology and biological anthropology. It will also be used by workers in psychology, sociology and feminist studies as a resource for understanding human social origins.

Power, Sex and Tradition

The Archaeology of Human Ancestry

Curt W. Beck

Infrared absorption spectroscopy is able to pinpoint the source of British Prehistoric amber, here shown by analysis of all surviving finds to be predominantly Baltic. This leads on to a discussion of British amber in a European context, and of its particular significance as a social indicator, and as an item of trade or exchange. Complete with catalogue, analyses, drawings. 231p with figs. (Oxbow Monograph 8, 1991) Pb

Amber in Prehistoric Britain

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.

Stephen Shennan

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