Robert C. Dunnell's Systematics in prehistory at 50

Abstract

2021 marked the fiftieth anniversary of the publication of Robert C. Dunnell's (1971) diminutive yet dense Systematics in Prehistory. At the height of the debate between Culture History and New Archaeology, Dunnell's work sought to address a more fundamental issue that was and still is relevant to all branches of prehistoric archaeology, and especially to the study of the Palaeolithic: systematics. Dunnell himself was notorious and controversial, however, but the importance of his work remains underappreciated. Like other precocious works of that tumultuous time Systematics in Prehistory today remains absent from most course reading lists and gathers dust on library shelves. In this contribution we argue for a greater appreciation of its as yet unfulfilled conceptual and analytical promise. In particular, we briefly chart its somewhat delayed impact via evolutionary archaeology, including how it has also influenced non-Anglophone traditions, especially in South America. The obstinate persistence of classification issues in palaeoanthropology and palaeoarchaeology, we argue, warrants a second look at Dunnell's Systematics.

Mapping the field of cultural evolutionary theory and methods in archaeology using bibliometric methods

“…While influential in many ways (cf. Riede et al, 2022), this overly rigid approach was swiftly superseded by a conceptualisation of cultural evolution rooted in dual-inheritance theory (cf. Marwick, 2006;Shennan, 2008Shennan, , 2011.…”