Evolutionary archaeology
There are two main approaches currently used to analyze archaeological remains from an evolutionary perspective: evolutionary archaeology and behavioral ecology. The former assumes that cultural change observed in the archaeological record can be best explained by the direct action of natural selection and other Darwinian processes on heritable variation in artifacts and behavior. The latter assumes that cultural and behavioral change results from phenotypic adaptations to varying social and ecological environments.
History of evolutionary theory in archaeology
Evolutionary archaeology in the 19th century
Over the past decades the term ‘evolution’ has undertaken several definitions and implications. However, when referring to “human history and the development of long term trends it is used interchangeably with social or sociocultural evolution”. The publication of Charles Darwin's On the Origin of Species profoundly influenced the biological and social sciences. However, 19th century evolutionary archaeologists were influenced by the unilineal evolutionary schemes of Herbert Spencer and others. Spencer embraced a teleological notion where evolution was seen as having an ultimate and definite goal. Spencerian theory incorporated a progressive, unilineal explanation of cultural evolution in which human societies were seen as progressing through a fixed set of stages, from “savagery” through “barbarism” to “civilization”. Thus, for much of the 19th century evolutionary theory in archaeology was centered around explaining cultural traits and human history and account for the significant differences between cultural groups and their current state of living. Initially it focused on human transitions from foragers to horticulturalist, to implementation of agriculture, and eventually rise of civilizations. Even into the early 20th century, evolutionary archaeologists, or cultural evolutionists, maintained a thoroughly non-Darwinian notion of evolution”.Evolutionary archaeology in the early-to-mid 20th century
"The social and political implications of early cultural evolutionary thinking, such as eugenics and other atrocities, understandably promoted a reaction, and the social sciences turned towards a thoroughly anti-biological stance: The Standard Social Science Model. Therefore, a strong resistance among social scientists rose arguing for limited biological restraints on human behavior. This reaction led to the acceptance of social influences and culture affecting and changing human behavior. The Standard Social Science Model, assumes that “culture is selected by free agents making active, unconstrained choices, and there has been a tendency to stress the vast plethora of different cultural practices rather than to look for cultural universals” .The acceptance of the Standard Social Science Model and rejection of explanatory evolutionary theories in anthropology, resulted in Darwinian theory not being applied by anthropologist and archaeologist. As Dunnell surmises, “In the 1950s due to the influence of Boasian school of thought, a dissatisfaction with the supposed Marxist connotations of evolution, and failure to accommodate a complex archaeological record, evolutionary theory was no longer a prevalent method used to explain archaeological phenomena”.
In the 1960s, Binford introduced a new explanatory framework in archaeology known as “New Archaeology” or “Processual Archaeology”. This framework incorporated an evolutionary foundation, which was previously omitted in archaeology. This was a crucial step in archaeology since it acknowledged the need for a scientific explanation in the archaeological record and not just descriptive accounts. Dunnell claims that even though the New Archaeology program insists on incorporating a scientific method, remnants of the early 1900s notion of evolution still remained, therefore ‘evolution’ as it is used in the hard sciences, has yet to be utilized with the same rigidity in the social sciences, specifically in archaeology.
Neo-Darwinian theory in archaeology
The modern evolutionary synthesis, also called neo-Darwinian theory, was developed in the 1930s and 1940s. In the 1970s and 1980s, with the groundbreaking works of E.O. Wilson. Hamilton and R. Dawkins, a shift occurred from social-cultural explanation of human behavior to the return of biological, reductionist explanations based on neo-Darwinian evolutionary theory. This is sometimes called the sociobiology approach. It provided a rich theoretical groundwork for analyzing culture in terms of modern evolutionary theory, but also developed “rigorous mathematical treatments of cultural change inspired by population genetic models”. With the works of Cavalli-Sforza and Feldman and Boyd and Richerson, evolutionary archaeology become a more utilized approach.Over the last three decades, two main evolutionary frameworks emerged in archaeology: Evolutionary Archaeology and Evolutionary Ecology. The former draws on analogies with genetic and biological evolution in that it focuses on variation in cultural traits and attempts to reconstruct their phylogenetic histories. The latter views variation in artifacts as reflecting adaptive human behavior.
Evolutionary archaeology
Cultural traits
EA focuses on cultural "traits" and conceives of them as analogies to genes. That is, cultural traits and genes both have the three characteristics necessary for natural selection as well as non-selective processes, such as drift. Defining the terms "culture" and "cultural traits" are key to effective EA research. Richerson and Boyd, define culture as "information capable of affecting individual’s behavior that they acquire from other members of their species through teaching, imitation, and other forms of social transmission". "Information" is employed as a broad term incorporating ideas, knowledge, beliefs, values, skills, and attitudes.Variation, selection, and inheritance are necessary for changes of material remains observed in the archaeological record. These traits can go extinct as a result of competition, change in function or become vestigial, and adapt to their environment, as demonstrated by the work of human behavioral ecologists. They can be identified as analogous traits of exhibit the process of convergent evolution. Geographical distribution of cultural traits can vary through diffusion and can be explained by an evolutionary framework. Mesoudi et al., argues that Darwinian theory became successful without the knowledge of Mendelian inheritance, therefore cultural evolution does not have to rely on memes or "particulate cultural transmission, a topical issue but one of great contention".
Evolutionary Archaeology is based on the notion that claims culture exhibits key Darwinian evolutionary properties. Therefore, on this basis, EA should follow the same, methods, and approaches that are used to study biological evolution and by doing so it can productively be applied to the study of human culture. By incorporating a comparison with the biological sciences, EA claims that the analysis of cultural will have scientific merit and lead to more progressive theoretical framework, that has yet to be employed in the analysis of cultural and social anthropology . EA emphasizes the role of natural selection in affecting human behavior and do not consider the need to understand changing cultural traditions as part of their framework.
Evolutionary archaeologist claim EA is not employing scientific metaphors from biology to explain archaeological process, but instead these evolutionary outlooks can elucidate the effect "on the questions asked, the taxonomies employed, and the role of archaeology as a discipline in a wider scientific and public landscape". Runciman claims that the goal of archaeologists working within an evolutionary paradigm is to explain how and why particular cultural traits become more common than others over time.
Shennan states that even though archaeologist seek to understand human history and prehistory, the theoretical framework and methods should not be limited to teleological explanations of 'progress', but archaeologist should play to their strengths, "which undoubtedly lie in the characterization of long-term patterning in past societies".
Overall as summarized by Mesoudi it is necessary to understand individual choices and historical events because they are parts of evolutionary history. Especially since humans, unlike other species, are continuously generating and altering the social and physical environments to which they have to adapt.
Phylogenetics
According to Mesoudi it is necessary to treat cultural traits as analogous to biological characters. By using this analogy, it allows anthropologists and archaeologists, to apply strict phylogenetic methods to cultural data, no differently than evolutionary biologists. The logic behind this approach is that like biologists, anthropologists share the same fundamental goals. The first goal is to reconstruct the historical timeline of a specific trait, and the second goal is to distinguish and identify patterns of change.Mesoudi states that there have been several anthropological and archaeological studies utilizing this approach and have been deemed successful by "determining whether a group of traits are related by descent, whether their spread was associated with other traits, or whether they generated selection for other traits".
Specifically, this phylogenetic approach is crucial for archaeologists who are seeking to employ evolutionary paradigms in their research. Just like paleobiologists, archaeologists seek to answer similar research questions and tasks. In sum, their goals are “identifying prehistoric artifacts, reconstructing lineages of these artifacts and of the people associated with them, and revealing the evolutionary relationships between these lineages”. Even the means of gathering data are similar if not the same. Both paleobiologist/paleontologist and archaeologists engage in excavations to retrieve information about past specimens. Evolutionary archaeologists, thus, have shared the similar tools and methodological trajectories as paleobiologists. For example, O’Brien & Lyman uses the evolutionary “population thinking” explanatory frameworks, while Mace & Holden use cladistics and Neiman and uses models of selection or drift. Mesoudi positions, that only in recent development have archaeologist started utilizing these phylogenetic approached in analyzing material remains and human history.