Showing papers by "Stephen Shennan published in 2007"

The spread of farming into Central Europe and its consequences: evolutionary models

Abstract: Introduction The use of Darwinian evolutionary models to understand patterns of social, economic and cultural change in the prehistoric past is becoming increasingly well established [e.g. 35, 22, 11, 21, 23, 15, 32]. However, it remains the subject of many misconceptions [e.g. 19], both because of the erroneous assumptions that those unfamiliar with evolutionary theory bring to their reading of the evolutionary literature, and also because of the inherent complexity of the whole endeavour. The complexity is unsurprising in the light of the history of biology over the past 150 years where the substantive and philosophical implications of Darwinism continue to ramify [e.g. 16]. In the case of the application of these ideas to the study of human societies and their history we are far nearer the beginning of the process of developing appropriate theory and the subject matter is more complex (although there are increasing suggestions that the complexity of inheritance in animal populations has been underestimated [e.g. 20, 10, 16]. Moreover, different topics call on different aspects of evolutionary theory.

Evolutionary perspectives in archaeology: from culture history to cultural evolution

Abstract: © Oxford University Press, 2007. All rights reserved. This article demonstrates the role of evolutionary approaches in archaeology by focusing on four different topics that have long been of interest to archaeologists of virtually all theoretical persuasions. It examines how evolutionary theory can be used by presenting specific concrete examples. The four topics concern different but interrelated histories: of foraging adaptations, human populations, social institutions, and patterns in culture. Addressing these topics on the basis of archaeological data from an evolutionary point of view involves making use of several different strands from the range of complementary and sometimes conflicting evolutionary approaches to understanding human behaviour. There is a major distinction within evolutionary approaches to human behaviour between human behavioural ecology and those viewpoints that attach a significant role to culture, in particular, dual-inheritance theory.

Revolution Fulfilled? Symbolic and Structural Archaeology, a Generation On. Symbolic and Structural Archaeology, edited by Ian Hodder. (New Directions in Archaeology Series.) Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007 (2nd edition); ISBN-13: 9780521035507 paperback, £18.99 & US$34.99, 196 pp.

Abstract: It is now 25 years since Symbolic and Structural Archaeology (henceforth SSA) was first published in 1982. Why run a review feature upon a book this old? Clearly not to let readers know about its now-familiar contents. One justification is historical. Very few works have had such an effect — in archaeology, the nearest parallel comes with works such as Binford and Binford's New Perspectives in Archaeology in 1968, which laid the basis for an entire agenda of New Archaeology. Like Binford and Binford's book, SSA marked a transformation of archaeology as much as, or more than, it actually transformed the field itself. It signalled the coming of age of a coherent cohort of young, energetic scholars with a strongly defined new agenda. It breached taken-for-granted limits with bold, even flagrant ambition; it consciously invoked new intellectual frames. As much as any particular publishing event can punctuate the scholarly process with the intimation of a new direction, the publication of SSA did so.And yet, a review feature on the book would perhaps not be entirely justified as purely a historical retrospective. It is clear from the trajectory of theoretical publication in Britain (and to some extent America) over the last decades, from the content of archaeological theory courses in universities, and the vocabulary bounced around at conferences such as TAG and the SAAs, that the agenda of SSA — often termed ‘post-processualism’ — has become the dominant voice in mainstream archaeological theory. The challenger has become the establishment; the once-unthinkable has become normal science. There are many other theoretical voices, of course, but even self-proclaimed alternative movements show signs of having absorbed, osmotically, much of the theoretical agenda set by post-processualism, even if their answers differ.Twenty-five is a human generation, and perhaps the closest approach to eternity in the rapidly fermenting world of theory; the current generation of students (future colleagues, really) will have known no other paradigm. Hence, we have asked our contributors not only to comment retrospectively upon the book itself, but also prospectively, on how well its agenda has weathered the years, on what roads remain untaken, and upon where they think the future might lie.