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Stephen Shennan

Bio: Stephen Shennan is an academic researcher from University College London. The author has contributed to research in topics: Population & Prehistory. The author has an hindex of 52, co-authored 192 publications receiving 10207 citations. Previous affiliations of Stephen Shennan include Massachusetts Institute of Technology & Arts and Humanities Research Council.


Papers
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Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: In this article, the authors explore the strengths and weaknesses of different kinds of archaeological evidence for population patterns, as well as how they address related issues such as taphonomic loss, chronological uncertainty and uneven sampling.

86 citations

Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: This paper reviews the progress that has been made in inferring processes from patterns and the role of demography in those processes, together with the problems that have arisen.
Abstract: Recent years have seen major advances in our understanding of the way in which cultural transmission takes place and the factors that affect it. The theoretical foundations of those advances have been built by postulating the existence of a variety of different processes and deriving their consequences mathematically or by simulation. The operation of these processes in the real world can be studied through experiment and naturalistic observation. In contrast, archaeologists have an ‘inverse problem’. For them the object of study is the residues of different behaviours represented by the archaeological record and the problem is to infer the microscale processes that produced them, a vital task for cultural evolution since this is the only direct record of past cultural patterns. The situation is analogous to that faced by population geneticists scanning large number of genes and looking for evidence of selection as opposed to drift, but more complicated for many reasons, not least the enormous variety of different forces that affect cultural transmission. This paper reviews the progress that has been made in inferring processes from patterns and the role of demography in those processes, together with the problems that have arisen.

85 citations

Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: In this article, the authors explore the potential of evolutionary models to explain diversity and change in bloomery ironmaking recipes using a combination of multivariate statistics, ternary phase diagrams, and oxide ratios.

83 citations

Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: In this paper, it is argued that demographic fluctuations play a key role in accounting for patterns of cultural change over the course of the Neolithic and that a variety of methods can inform on them, including the use of summed radiocarbon probability distributions, which have the advantage that the information to construct them is very widely available.
Abstract: Observations of continuities and discontinuities in the archaeological record depend in important ways on the spatial and temporal scale at which we make the observations, which are in turn affected by the observational tools we have available. Nowhere is this more important than in matters of chronological resolution and its impact on our sense of stability and change. But theoretical considerations are also relevant and specific theoretical positions and observational tools tend to go together. A variety of new methods have made it possible to attain levels of chronological resolution not previously accessible and also to obtain information about aspects of past societies that were not previously available, such as the genetic make-up of their members. These developments have undermined the long-standing view in Anglo-American archaeology that change is gradual and autonomous and are leading to a view of the past that is much more dynamic. The implications of these new developments are examined in relation to the demographic patterns of the European Neolithic. It is argued that demographic fluctuations—‘boom-bust’ patterns—play a key role in accounting for patterns of cultural change over the course of the Neolithic and that a variety of methods can inform on them, including the use of summed radiocarbon probability distributions, which have the advantage that the information to construct them is very widely available. Given the speed with which demographic processes operate, it is important that the temporal resolution of our methods is sufficient to characterise the patterns that result from them. While the demographic patterns are becoming clearer, much more work needs to be done to understand the cultural, social and economic processes at work following regional collapse in populations, where this does not simply lead to reoccupation by new groups from elsewhere.

80 citations

Book
15 Aug 2005
TL;DR: This book should be a useful introduction to the subject for advanced undergraduates and researchers in archaeology and biological anthropology and can be used by workers in psychology, sociology and feminist studies as a resource for understanding human social origins.
Abstract: 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.

77 citations


Cited by
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Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: The African Middle and early Late Pleistocene hominid fossil record is fairly continuous and in it can be recognized a number of probably distinct species that provide plausible ancestors for H. sapiens, and suggests a gradual assembling of the package of modern human behaviors in Africa, and its later export to other regions of the Old World.

2,165 citations

Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: In this article, the authors analyze data on the sexual behavior of a random sample of individuals, and find that the cumulative distributions of the number of sexual partners during the twelve months prior to the survey decays as a power law with similar exponents for females and males.
Abstract: Many ``real-world'' networks are clearly defined while most ``social'' networks are to some extent subjective. Indeed, the accuracy of empirically-determined social networks is a question of some concern because individuals may have distinct perceptions of what constitutes a social link. One unambiguous type of connection is sexual contact. Here we analyze data on the sexual behavior of a random sample of individuals, and find that the cumulative distributions of the number of sexual partners during the twelve months prior to the survey decays as a power law with similar exponents $\alpha \approx 2.4$ for females and males. The scale-free nature of the web of human sexual contacts suggests that strategic interventions aimed at preventing the spread of sexually-transmitted diseases may be the most efficient approach.

1,476 citations

Journal ArticleDOI
11 Jun 2015-Nature
TL;DR: In this paper, the authors generated genome-wide data from 69 Europeans who lived between 8,000-3,000 years ago by enriching ancient DNA libraries for a target set of almost 400,000 polymorphisms.
Abstract: We generated genome-wide data from 69 Europeans who lived between 8,000-3,000 years ago by enriching ancient DNA libraries for a target set of almost 400,000 polymorphisms. Enrichment of these positions decreases the sequencing required for genome-wide ancient DNA analysis by a median of around 250-fold, allowing us to study an order of magnitude more individuals than previous studies and to obtain new insights about the past. We show that the populations of Western and Far Eastern Europe followed opposite trajectories between 8,000-5,000 years ago. At the beginning of the Neolithic period in Europe, ∼8,000-7,000 years ago, closely related groups of early farmers appeared in Germany, Hungary and Spain, different from indigenous hunter-gatherers, whereas Russia was inhabited by a distinctive population of hunter-gatherers with high affinity to a ∼24,000-year-old Siberian. By ∼6,000-5,000 years ago, farmers throughout much of Europe had more hunter-gatherer ancestry than their predecessors, but in Russia, the Yamnaya steppe herders of this time were descended not only from the preceding eastern European hunter-gatherers, but also from a population of Near Eastern ancestry. Western and Eastern Europe came into contact ∼4,500 years ago, as the Late Neolithic Corded Ware people from Germany traced ∼75% of their ancestry to the Yamnaya, documenting a massive migration into the heartland of Europe from its eastern periphery. This steppe ancestry persisted in all sampled central Europeans until at least ∼3,000 years ago, and is ubiquitous in present-day Europeans. These results provide support for a steppe origin of at least some of the Indo-European languages of Europe.

1,332 citations

Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: The cross-cultural evidence on the behavior of women and men in nonindustrial societies, especially the activities that contribute to the sex-typed division of labor and patriarchy, is reviewed.
Abstract: This article evaluates theories of the origins of sex differences in human behavior. It reviews the cross-cultural evidence on the behavior of women and men in nonindustrial societies, especially the activities that contribute to the sex-typed division of labor and patriarchy. To explain the cross-cultural findings, the authors consider social constructionism, evolutionary psychology, and their own biosocial theory. Supporting the biosocial analysis, sex differences derive from the interaction between the physical specialization of the sexes, especially female reproductive capacity, and the economic and social structural aspects of societies. This biosocial approach treats the psychological attributes of women and men as emergent given the evolved characteristics of the sexes, their developmental experiences, and their situated activity in society.

1,154 citations