Posing Questions for a Scientific Archaeology

Subjects:

• Anthropology » Archaeology
• Anthropology » Anthropology (General)

Reviews:

• ...suited for professional archaeologists and graduate students.
  —Choice March 2002
• A lot of work, effort, and time is involved in the doing of evolutionary archaeology. Exisiting data cannot be used to address evolutionary questions. We must learn aspects of disciplines that hold an essentialist ontology and that focus on immanent (atemporal and aspatial or universal) properties and processes. Darwinian evolution comprises a theory that, with some thoughtful work, provides explanations rather than interpretations. Doing evolutionary archaeology will be rewarding because of the theoretically founded- and thus empirically testable-conclusion that it will generate. This is a book well worth having.
  —Journal of Anthropological Research 2002

Table of Contents:

• Preface
• Posing Questions for a Scientific Archaeology by Terry L. Hunt, Carl P. Lipo, and Sarah L. Sterling
• Building Components of Evolutionary Explanation: A Study of Wedge Tools from Northern South America by Kimberly D. Kornbacher
• The Engineering and Evolution of Hawaiian Fishhooks by Michael T. Pfeffer
• Building the Framework for An Evolutionary Explanation of Projectile Point Variation: An Example from the Central Mississippi River Valley by Kris H. Wilhelmsen
• Social Complexity in Ancient Egypt: Functional Differentiation Reflected in the Distribution of Standardized Ceramics by Sarah L. Sterling
• Community Structures in Late Mississippian Populations of the Central Mississippi Valley by Carl P. Lipo
• Dietary Variation and Village Settlement in the Ohio Valley by Diana M. Greenlee
• Resource Intensification and Late Holocene Human Impacts on Pacific Coast Bird Populations: Evidence from the Emeryville Shellmound Avifauna by Jack Broughton
• Evolutionary Bet-Hedging and the Hopewell Cultural Climax by Mark E. Madsen
• Index