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The Historical Development of an Evolutionary Archaeology

A Selectionist Approach

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Darwinian Archaeologies

Part of the book series: Interdisciplinary Contributions to Archaeology ((IDCA))

Abstract

Increasingly in the last several years there has been a growing number of archaeologists who are beginning to take note of the fact that Darwinian evolution offers a powerful means of explaining variation in the material record. The approach has been variously termed evolutionary, or selectionist, archaeology, and though it is still in a formative stage, there are clear signs of future growth and development. Although Darwinian evolutionary archaeology has not enjoyed the meteoric rise seen in the overnight sensation of the 1960s, processual archaeology, there are now in preparation or in press several edited books on the subject (e.g., Teltser 1995; O’Brien 1996), as well as numerous evolutionarily focused articles in leading archaeological journal (e.g., Dunnell 1978a, 1980; Leonard and Jones 1987; Rindos 1989; O’Brien and Holland 1990, 1992; Neff 1992; O’Brien et al 1994) and monographs (e.g., Feathers 1989; Braun 1990; Dunnell 1992, 1995; O’Brien and Holland 1995a,b).

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O’Brien, M.J. (1996). The Historical Development of an Evolutionary Archaeology. In: Maschner, H.D.G. (eds) Darwinian Archaeologies. Interdisciplinary Contributions to Archaeology. Springer, Boston, MA. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4757-9945-3_2

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