John P. Hart - Darwin and archaeology: a handbook of key concepts

Cover

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Darwin and Archaeology

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A Handbook of Key Concepts

EDITED BY John P. Hart
AND John Edward Terrell

Foreword by Gary M. Feinman

BERGIN & GARVEY
Westport, Connecticut London

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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Darwin and archaeology : a handbook of key concepts / edited by John P. Hart and John
Edward Terrell ; foreword by Gary M. Feinman.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 0897898788 (alk. paper)ISBN 0897898796 (pbk. : alk. paper)
1. Human evolution. 2. Evolution (Biology) 3. Social evolution. 4. Natural
selection. 5. Anthropology. 6. Archaeology. 7. Ethnoarchaeology. 8. Darwin,
Charles, 18091882Contributions in archaeology. I. Hart, John P. II. Terrell, John.
GN281.D39 2002
930.1dc21 2001043975

British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data is available.

Copyright 2002 by John P. Hart and John Edward Terrell

All rights reserved. No portion of this book may be
reproduced, by any process or technique, without the
express written consent of the publisher.

Library of Congress Catalog Card Number: 2001043975

ISBN: 0-89789-878-8

0-89789-879-6 (pbk.)

First published in 2002
Bergin & Garvey, 88 Post Road West, Westport, CT 06881

An imprint of Greenwood Publishing Group, Inc.
www.greenwood.com

Printed in the United States of America

The paper used in this book complies with the
Permanent Paper Standard issued by the National
Information Standards Organization (Z39.481984).

10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

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Gary M. Feinman

In the anglophile scholarly world, the intellectual roots of evolutionary studies (including Darwinian approaches), anthropology, and archaeology are closely intertwined, extending back in their academic heritage for roughly a century and a half. Nevertheless, the appropriate and most scientifically productive relationships between these intellectual domains and the future agendas for them remain unresolved and a matter of significant current discussion and debate (e.g., Barton and Clark 1997; Gould 1997a, 1997b; Maschner 1996; Sanderson 1990; Spencer 1997; Wilson 1998). In this encyclopedic volume, key evolutionary constructs and concepts are explored to reflect on and clarify the potential for Darwinian evolutionary perspectives to inform and help chart a more synthetic course for contemporary anthropological archaeology.

In the spirit of full disclosure, I confess that I have never really considered myself a Darwinian archaeologist, nor has a reading of this set of papers caused me to have a midnight conversion. Yet as an anthropological archaeologist working in a natural history museum, who has interests in evolution, history, and change, it is impossible to remain dispassionate in regard to the central issues and questions raised in this text. After all, one day recently, the popular media trumpeted academic warfare (Shulevitz 2001) between scientific and humanistic intellectual streams in American anthropology, while practically the next day it speculated on the relationship between a simpler-than-expected human genetic code and the diversity that we recognize in our species (Karow 2001). With such pivotal and contemporary debates at stake, my aim here is to provide a somewhat critical commentary on the diverse range of theoretical perspectives offered in this compendium, while endeavoring to define a productive common

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ground. At the same time I stress, in voice with the vision of the editors, why a concern with language and effective terminology is so central to framing a more holistic twenty-first century investigation of the human career.

Although evolution and archaeology have had a long and close relationship, they still have not arrived at a satisfactory marriage. For example, the contributors to one recent collection that was aimed at reintroducing Darwinian thought to archaeology open their article by noting: an unfortunate parallel between evolutionary archaeology and the weather: everyone