The Structure of the Lower Pleistocene Archaeological Record: A Case Study From the Koobi Fora Formation [and Comments and Reply]

Stern, Nicola; Bunn, Henry T.; Kroll, Ellen M.; Haynes, Gary; McBrearty, Sally; Sept, Jeanne; Willoughby, Pamela R.

doi:10.1086/204164

Cited by 97 publications

(57 citation statements)

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“…Rather, inter-male competition may have been similarly strong as it is in baboons (Foley and Lee 1989;Plavcan and van Schaik 1997), which tends to reduce levels of cooperation among males. Indeed, what was once thought to be evidence for "home bases" among early Palaeolithic hominids is now discounted, as the accumulations of tools and bones are considered to have been caused by transport in streams or flash floods (Binford 1987;Stern 1993). All we can say at this stage is that the typical chimpanzee strategy of building nests wherever individuals happen to find themselves at nightfall would have been constrained by the occurrence of fewer suitable sites in more open savannah/woodland environments.…”

Section: Phylogeny and Function For Human Higher Ff Groupsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Fission‐Fusion Dynamics

Aureli¹,

Schaffner²,

Boesch³

et al. 2008

Current Anthropology

840

296

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Section: Phylogeny and Function For Human Higher Ff Groupsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Fission‐Fusion Dynamics

Aureli¹,

Schaffner²,

Boesch³

et al. 2008

Current Anthropology

840

296

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“…In most archeological contexts, it is equal folly to attempt chronological resolution even so finely as to individual lifetimes; most archeological deposits are time-averaged over coarser scales (Shott 2008b;2010a, b;Stern 1993). This condition makes typical point assemblages free combinations of specimens made by many people over considerable time; they are the compound of synchronic variation between individuals, of variation over individuals' lifetimes, and of variation over many lifetimes-each one's flow distributed in many channels.…”

Section: What Kind Of Units Are Points and Types?mentioning

confidence: 99%

History Written in Stone: Evolutionary Analysis of Stone Tools in Archeology

Shott

2011

Evo Edu Outreach

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Populations of living things evolve over time, but do other things? Evolution involves transmission, be it of genes, ideas, or designs. What is transmitted, how and by whom, influences tempo and mode of evolution. In recent years, archeologists have applied evolutionary logic and processes to their study of things made and used by ancient people. Despite differences in subject units and in modes and patterns of transmission, evolutionary processes and the transmission modes that accompany them are worth seeking in archeological data. Stone spear points are abundant in the archeological record, yet we lack a theory to explain the creation, duration, and divergence of point types. Evolutionary studies of New World Late Pleistocene Paleoindian points are a step toward such theory, but limit the form of data and the evolutionary processes considered. An alternative in the study of Paleoindian points is geometric morphometric methods that do not constrain how point size and form are characterized nor assume branching divergence between taxa. Evolutionism should not dominate archeology, but it should become a major area of research within the field.Keywords Points . Evolution . Geometric morphometrics Archeology is a thing of cycles. Nineteenth century archeology cycled between ordering past time, exemplified in Thomsen's Three-Age system, function or adaption, and metaphysical evolutionism (Trigger 1996:121-138, 315-384). Culture history arose anew early in the twentieth century. Then mid-century processualists invoked function to explain patterns of evidence. More recently still, culture history returned, clad in the armor of dual-inheritance theory and brandishing a cladistic lance. This incarnation denies much role to function yet severely constrains social process; it is culture history on mathematical steroids. For nearly two centuries, then, archeology has cycled between history, function, and evolution.In each cycle, the dominant view largely precluded or denied alternatives; the archeological record was evidence either of passing style, function, or progressive evolution, rarely of all in complex interaction. As a result, archeology's intellectual history is a chronicle of cycling fads, not steady progress. We keep exploring only to arrive where we started, but never knowing the place any better. Unresolved cycling imparts a Manichaean quality to archeological thought, a tendency to advocate views categorically opposed to others rather than to reconcile or integrate them.It may be time for new approaches. Archeology should consider at once the roles of history, function, and evolution in the trajectories of change in past cultures and their components. Doing so requires new theory that Clarke (1968) adumbrated but that remains badly underdeveloped (Shott 2010a) and methods that are new, at least to archeology. This paper argues that archeology should consider an evolutionary approach to the study of artifact lineages that are common in the material record. That approach requires some new theory, whos...

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“…These concerns, incidentally, go well beyond this regional case to form one of the most pressing current archaeological issues, about the time resolution of archaeological deposits (Bailey, 1981;Bailey, 1987;Murray, 1999;Stern, 1993).…”

Section: Abandonment Theory Refuse Disposal and Residential Longevitymentioning

confidence: 99%

“…However, recent awareness about the complexity of temporal interpretation of archaeological deposits casts doubt on the relevance of the 'very short term' to many archaeological deposits (Bailey, 1981(Bailey, , 1987Fletcher, 1992;Rensink, 1995). At the heart of the issue is the recognition that our radiometric methods come with inbuilt limits of precision, beyond which no finer temporal resolution is possible (Murray, 1999;Stern, 1993).…”

Section: The Time Span Represented By the Wadi Hammeh Phase I Depositsmentioning

confidence: 99%