Hostname: page-component-745bb68f8f-b95js Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2025-01-14T12:33:02.979Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

Inferences from absences

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  14 January 2025

Kim Sterelny*
Affiliation:
School of Philosophy, Research School of the Social Sciences, Australian National University, Acton, Canberra, Australia Kim.Sterelny@anu.edu.au
*
*Corresponding author.

Abstract

Stibbard-Hawkes shows that cultures using material symbols might well not leave traces of that practice in the archaeological record. The paper thus poses an important challenge: When is absence of evidence evidence of absence? This commentary uses behavioural ecology to make modest progress on this problem.

Type
Open Peer Commentary
Copyright
Copyright © The Author(s), 2025. Published by Cambridge University Press

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Alperson-Afil, N., Richter, D., & Goren-Inbar, N. (2007). Phantom hearths and the use of fire at Gesher Benot Ya'Aqov, Israel (2007). PaleoAnthropology, 3, 115.Google Scholar
Gould, R. A. (1980). Living archaeology. Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Klein, R. G. (2009). The human career: Human biological and cultural origins. University of Chicago Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kuhn, S. (2014). Signaling theory and technologies of communication in the Paleolithic. Biological Theory, 9, 4250.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kuhn, S. (2020). The evolution of paleolithic technologies. Routledge.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kuhn, S. and Stiner, M. C. (2007). Body ornamentation as information technology: Towards an understanding of the significance of early beads. In Mellars, P., Boyle, K., Bar-Yosef, O. and Stringer, C. (eds), Rethinking the human revolution. McDonald Institute for Archaeological Research, pp. 4554.Google Scholar
Marean, C. (2011). Coastal South Africa and the coevolution of the modern human lineage and the coastal adaptation. In Bicho, N., Haws, J. and Daviis, L. (eds), Trekking the shore. Springer, pp. 421440.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Marean, C. (2016). The transition to foraging for dense and predictable resources and its impact on the evolution of modern humans. Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society Series B, 371, 20150239.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
McDonald, J., & Harper, S. (2016). Identity signalling in shields: How coastal hunter-gatherers use rock art and material culture in arid and temperate Australia. Australian Archaeology, 82, 123138.CrossRefGoogle Scholar