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. ​

This book is an in-depth treatment of Darwinian evolutionism and its applicability to the investigation of the archaeological record. The authors explain the unique position that this kind of evolutionism holds in science and how it bears on any attempt to explain change over time in the organic world, demonstrate commonalities between archaeology and paleobiology, and explain the principles, methods, and techniques - the systematics - inherent in the approach.

What is the role of neo-Darwinian evolution in explaining variation in prehistoric behavior? Evolutionary Archaeology, a collection of nine papers from a variety of contributors, is the first book-length treatment of the evolutionists' position. All archaeologists, and especially those with a specific interest in method and theory, will find much here to challenge traditional theory, solidify the evolutionists' position, and stir further debate. Evolutionary archaeologists argue that Darwinian natural selection acts on human behavior, resulting in the persistence of alternative human behaviors and the material products of those behaviors. The contributors address the methodological requirements of evolutionary theory as it may apply to the nature of archaeological data. Several contributors evaluate the methodological implications of basic evolutionary principles, including the structure of explanations, the units of evolution and analysis, and the measurement of information transmission. Others explore the role of specific analytic approaches such as seriation, raw material sourcing, and comparative and engineering analyses. Still others confront the issue of reformulating archaeological problems from the point of view of evolutionary theory. By focusing on the methodological requirements of evolutionary theory, these essays go far in meeting the challenge of building new archaeological method. The work contributes to a better understanding of cultural evolution and builds toward a new, logical framework to explain variation in the archaeological record.

Anthropology, and by extension archaeology, has had a long-standing interest in evolution in one or several of its various guises. Pick up any lengthy treatise on humankind written in the last quarter of the nineteenth century and the chances are good that the word evolution will appear somewhere in the text. If for some reason the word itself is absent, the odds are excellent that at least the concept of change over time will have a central role in the discussion. After one of the preeminent (and often vilified) social scientists of the nineteenth century, Herbert Spencer, popularized the term in the 1850s, evolution became more or less a household word, usually being used synonymously with change, albeit change over extended periods of time. Later, through the writings of Edward Burnett Tylor, Lewis Henry Morgan, and others, the notion of evolution as it applies to stages of social and political development assumed a prominent position in anthropological disc- sions. To those with only a passing knowledge of American anthropology, it often appears that evolutionism in the early twentieth century went into a decline at the hands of Franz Boas and those of similar outlook, often termed particularists. However, it was not evolutionism that was under attack but rather comparativism— an approach that used the ethnographic present as a key to understanding how and why past peoples lived the way they did (Boas 1896).

Hunter-gatherers are the quintessential anthropological topic. They constitute the subject matter that, in the last instance, separates anthropology from its sister social science disciplines: psychology, sociology, economics, and political science. In that central position, hunter-gatherers are the acid test to which any reasonably comprehensive anthropological theory must be applied. Several such theories-some narrow, some broad-are examined in light of the hunter gatherer case in this book. My purpose, then, is that of a review of ideas rather than of a literature. I do not-probably could not-survey all that has been written about hunter-gatherers: Many more works are ignored than considered. That is not because the ones ignored are uninteresting, but because it is my broader purpose to concentrate on certain theoretical contributions to anthro pology in which hunter-gatherers figure most prominently. The book begins with two chapters that deal with the history of anthro pological research and theory in relation to hunter-gatherers. The point is not to present a comprehensive or even-handed accounting of developments. Rather, I sketch a history of selected ideas that have determined the manner in which social scientists have viewed, and thus studied, hunter-gatherers. This lays the groundwork for subjects subsequently addressed and establishes two funda mental points. First, the social sciences have always portrayed hunter-gatherers in ways that serve their theories; in short, hunter-gatherer research has always been a theoretical enterprise. Second, these theoretical treatments have gener ally been either evolutionary or materialist-or both-in perspective.

In Landscape of the Mind, John F. Hoffecker explores the origin and growth of the human mind, drawing on archaeology, history, and the fossil record. He suggests that, as an indirect result of bipedal locomotion, early humans developed a feedback relationship among their hands, brains, and tools that evolved into the capacity to externalize thoughts in the form of shaped stone objects. When anatomically modern humans evolved a parallel capacity to externalize thoughts as symbolic language, individual brains within social groups became integrated into a "neocortical Internet," or super-brain, giving birth to the mind. Noting that archaeological traces of symbolism coincide with evidence of the ability to generate novel technology, Hoffecker contends that human creativity, as well as higher order consciousness, is a product of the superbrain. He equates the subsequent growth of the mind with human history, which began in Africa more than 50,000 years ago. As anatomically modern humans spread across the globe, adapting to a variety of climates and habitats, they redesigned themselves technologically and created alternative realities through tools, language, and art. Hoffecker connects the rise of civilization to a hierarchical reorganization of the super-brain, triggered by explosive population growth. Subsequent human history reflects to varying degrees the suppression of the mind's creative powers by the rigid hierarchies of nationstates and empires, constraining the further accumulation of knowledge. The modern world emerged after 1200 from the fragments of the Roman Empire, whose collapse had eliminated a central authority that could thwart innovation. Hoffecker concludes with speculation about the possibility of artificial intelligence and the consequences of a mind liberated from its organic antecedents to exist in an independent, nonbiological form.

A compilation of archaeological and paleoanthropological studies that provide a foundation for the field of evolutionary ecology, which applies Darwinian natural selection theory to the study of adaptive design in behavior, morphology, and life history and has produced substantial advances in understanding human evolution and prehistory.

This book uses evidence from empirical studies to understand conditions that led to the development of cognitive processes during evolution.

This book collects the contributions to the symposium The current state of evolutionary archeology in Argentina that was held in Buenos Aires, for celebrating the 200th anniversary of Charles Darwin's birth and the 150th anniversary of the publication of On the Origin of Species. The meeting was sponsored by the IMHICIHU-CONICET (Instituto Multidisciplinario de Historia y Ciencias Humanas-Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Cientificas y Tecnicas). Contents: PREFACE (Hernan J. Muscio and Marcelo Cardillo); INTRODUCTION (Hernan J. Muscio and Marcelo Cardillo); CULTURAL ADAPTATIONS: IS IT CONCEPTUALLY COHERENT TO APPLY NATURAL SELECTION TO CULTURAL EVOLUTION? (Santiago Ginnobili); THEORY OF CLASSIFICATION AND TAXONOMICAL SCHOOLS: A SYNTHESIS FOR ARCHAEOLOGY (Daniel Garcia Rivero); ENVIRONMENT, SPACE, HISTORY, AND TECHNOLOGICAL EVOLUTION. THE CASE OF THE PATAGONIAN COAST (Marcelo Cardillo); ON THE PROBLEM OF IDENTIFYING HOMOLOGIES IN LITHIC ARTIFACTS (Gustavo Barrientos); LOCAL EXTINTION, POPULATION DYNAMICS AND ARCHAEOLOGICAL PATTERNS OF CULTURAL EVOLUTION: A CASE STUDY IN THE NORTH PUNA OF ARGENTINA (Hernan Muscio); HUMAN HOLOCENE COLONIZATION, DIET BREADTH AND NICHE CONSTRUCTION IN SIERRAS OF CORDOBA [ARGENTINA] (Diego Rivero and Matias Medina); THE DEVELOPMENT OF A LEGACY: EVOLUTION, BIOGEOGRAPHY AND ARCHAEOLOGICAL LANDSCAPES (Juan Bautista Belardi, Ramiro Barberena, Rafael Goni and Anahi Re)

Music is possessed by all human cultures, and archaeological evidence for musical activities pre-dates even the earliest known cave art. Music has been the subject of keen investigation across a great diversity of fields, from neuroscience and psychology to ethnography, archaeology, and its own dedicated field, musicology. Despite the great contributions that these studies have made towards understanding musical behaviours, much remains mysterious about this ubiquitous human phenomenon—not least, its origins. In a ground-breaking study, this volume brings together evidence from these fields, and more, in investigating the evolutionary origins of our musical abilities, the nature of music, and the earliest archaeological evidence for musical activities amongst our ancestors. Seeking to understand the true relationship between our unique musical capabilities and the development of the remarkable social, emotional, and communicative abilities of our species, it will be essential reading for anyone interested in music and human physical and cultural evolution.