Hostname: page-component-78c5997874-4rdpn Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-19T02:31:26.802Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Ethnography, Archaeology, and the Late Pleistocene

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  10 February 2022

Kim Sterelny
Kim Sterelny*
Affiliation:
School of Philosophy, Australian National University, Canberra, Australia
*
Email: Kim.Sterelny@anu.edu.au
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

The use of ethnography to understand archaeology is both prevalent and controversial. This paper develops an alternative approach, using ethnography to build and test a general theory of forager behaviors, and their variations in different conditions, one which can then be applied even to prehistoric sites differing from contemporary experience. Human behavioral ecology is chosen as the framework theory, and forager social learning as a case study. The argument is then applied to social learning in the late Pleistocene, and hence to a famous archaeological puzzle: the late Pleistocene acceleration of technical innovation and regional differentiation.

Type
Article
Information
Philosophy of Science , Volume 89 , Issue 3 , July 2022 , pp. 415 - 433
Copyright
© The Author(s), 2022. Published by Cambridge University Press on behalf of Philosophy of Science Association

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

Barnard, Alan. 2011. Social Anthropology and Human Origins. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Bednarik, Robert G. 2011. “Ethnographic Analogy in Rock Art Interpretation.” Man in India 91 (2):223–34.Google Scholar
Berrocal, M. C. 2011. “Analogical Evidence and Shamanism in Archaeological Interpretation: South African and European Palaeolithic Rock Art.” Norwegian Archaeological Review 44 (1):1–20.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Bird, Rebecca, and Bird, Donald. 2005. “Martu Children’s Hunting Strategies in the Western Desert, Australia.” In Hunter-Gatherer Childhoods: Evolutionary, Developmental and Cultural Perspectives, edited by Barry Hewlett and Mihael Lamb, 129–146. New Brunswick: Aldine.Google Scholar
Bock, John. 2005. “What Makes a Competent Adult Forager.” In Hunter Gatherer Childhoods: Evolutionary, Developmental and Cultural Perspectives, edited by Barry Hewlett and Mihael Lamb, 109–128. New York: Aldine.Google Scholar
Boehm, Chris. 1999. Hierarchy in the Forest. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Boyd, Robert. 2018. A Different Kind of Animal. Princeton: Princeton University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Boyette, Adam. 2016. “Children’s Play and Culture Learning in an Egalitarian Foraging Society.” Child Development 87 (3):759–69.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Boyette, Adam, and Hewlett, Barry. 2017. “Autonomy, Equality, and Teaching among Aka Foragers and Ngandu Farmers of the Congo Basin.” Human Nature 28 (3):289–322.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Boyette, Adam, and Hewlett, Barry. 2018. “Teaching in Hunter-Gatherers.” Review of Philosophy and Psychology 9 (4):771–97.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Coe, Kathryn, Nancy E. Aiken, , and , Craig Palmer. 2006. “Once Upon a Time: Ancestors and the Evolutionary Significance of Stories.” Anthropological Forum 16 (1):21–40.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Currie, Adrian. 2016. “Ethnographic Analogy, the Comparative Method, and Archaeological Special Pleading.” Studies in History and Philosophy of Science Part A 55:84–94.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
d’Errico, Francesco, Backwell, Lucinda, Villa, Paola, Degano, Ilaria, Lucejko, Jeannette J., Bamford, Marion K., Higham, Thomas F. G. et al. 2012. “Early Evidence of San Material Culture Represented by Organic Artifacts from Border Cave, South Africa.” Proceedings of the National Academy of Science 109 (33):13214–219.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
d’Errico, Francesco, and Colage, Ivan. 2018. “Cultural Exaptation and Cultural Neural Reuse: A Mechanism for the Emergence of Modern Culture and Behavior.” Biological Theory 13 (4):213–227.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Eickelkamp, Ulricke. 2010. “Children and Youth in Aboriginal Australia: An Overview of the Literature.” Anthropological Forum 20 (2):147–66.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Ellis, E. M., Green, Jennifer, and Kral, Inge. 2017. “Family in Mind: Socio-spatial Knowledge in a Ngaatjatjarra/Ngaanyatjarra Children’s Game.” Research on Children and Social Interaction 1 (2):164–98.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Gamble, Clive. 2013. Settling the Earth. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Garfield, Zachary, Garfield, Melissa, and Hewlett, Barry. 2016. “A Cross-Cultural Analysis of Hunter-Gatherer Social Learning.” In Social Learning and Innovation in Contemporary Hunter-Gatherers, edited by Terashima, Hideaki and Hewlett, Barry, 19–34. Dordrecht: Springer.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Genz, Joseph, Jerome Aucan, Mark Merrifield, Finney, Ben, Joel, Korent, and Kelen, Alson. 2009. “Wave Navigation in The Marshall Islands: Comparing Indigenous and Western Scientific Knowledge of The Ocean.” Oceanography 22 (2):234–45.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Gould, Richard A. 1969. Yiwara: Foragers of the Australian Desert. Sydney & London: Collins.Google Scholar
Gould, Richard A. 1980. Living Archaeology. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Haagen, Claudia. 1994. Bush Toys: Aboriginal Children at Play. Canberra: Aboriginal Studies Press.Google Scholar
Hagino, Izumi, and Yamauchi, Taro. 2016. “High Motivation and Low Gain: Food Procurement from Rainforest Foraging by Baka Hunter-Gatherer Children.” In Social Learning and Innovation in Contemporary Hunter-Gatherers, edited by Terashima, Hideaki and Hewlett, Barry, 135–44. Dordrecht: Springer.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Henrich, Joseph. 2004. “Demography and Cultural Evolution: Why Adaptive Cultural Processes Produced Maladaptive Losses in Tasmania.” American Antiquity 69 (2):197–221.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Henrich, Joseph. 2016. The Secret of Our Success: How Culture is driving Human Evolution, Domesticating Our Species and Making Us Smarter. Princeton: Princeton University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Henrich, Joseph, and Gil-White, Francesco. 2001. “The Evolution of Prestige: Freely Conferred Deference as a Mechanism for Enhancing the Benefits of Cultural Transmission.” Evolution and Human Behavior 22 (3):165–96.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Hewlett, Barry. 2013. “Ekeloko, the Spirit to Create: Innovation and Social Learning Among Aka Adolescents of the Central African Rainforest.” In Dynamics of Learning in Neanderthals and Modern Humans, edited by Akazawa, Takeru, Nishiaki, Yoshihiro, and Aoki, Kenichi, 187–95. Tokyo: Springer.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hewlett, Barry. 2016. “Social Learning and Innovation in Hunter-Gatherers.” In Social Learning and Innovation in Contemporary Hunter-Gatherers, edited by Terashima, Hideaki and Hewlett, Barry, 1–15. Dordrecht: Springer.Google Scholar
Hewlett, Barry, Hudson, Janet, Boyette, Adam, and Fouts, Hillary. 2019. “Intimate Living: Sharing Space among Aka and other Hunter-Gatherers.” In Towards a Broader View of Hunter-Gatherer Sharing, edited by Lavi, Noa and Friesem, David, 40–56. Cambridge: McDonald Institute for Archaeological Research.Google Scholar
Heyes, Cecilia. 2018. Cognitive Gadgets: The Cultural Evolution of Thinking. Cambridge: Harvard University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hiscock, Peter. 2006. “Blunt and to the Point: Changing Technological Strategies on Holocene Australia.” In Archaeology of Oceania: Australia and the Pacific Islands, edited by Lilley, Ian 69–95. Oxford: Blackwell.Google Scholar
Hiscock, Peter. 2008. Archaeology of Ancient Australia. London: Routledge.Google Scholar
Hiscock, Peter. 2020. “Mysticism and Reality in Aboriginal Myth. Evolution and Dynamism in Australian Aboriginal Religion.” Religion Brain & Behavior 10 (3):321–44.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hopkinson, Tim, Nowell, April, and White, Michael. 2013. “Life Histories, Metapopulation Ecology and Innovation in the Acheulian.” PaleoAnthropology 2013:61–76.Google Scholar
Hrdy, Sarah B. 1999. Mother Nature: A History of Mothers, Infants, and Natural Selection. New York: Pantheon Books.Google Scholar
Hrdy, Sarah B. 2009. Mothers and Others: The Evolutionary Origins of Mutual Understanding. Cambridge: Harvard University Press.Google Scholar
Keen, Ian. 2006. “Constraints on the Development of Enduring Inequalities in Late Holocene Australia.” Current Anthropology 47 (1):7–38.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kelly, Lyn. 2015. Knowledge and Power in Prehistoric Societies: Orality, Memory, and the Transmission of Culture. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kelly, Robert. 2013. The Lifeways of Hunter-Gatherers: The Foraging Spectrum. Cambridge, Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kelly, Robert, Pelton, Spencer, and Robinson, Erick. 2019. “Studying Sharing from the Archaeological Record: Problems and Potential of Scale.” In Towards a Broader View of Hunter-Gatherer Sharing, edited by Lavi, Noa and Friesem, David, 143–52. Cambridge: McDonald Institute.Google Scholar
Knauft, Bruce. 2005. The Gebusi: Lives Transformed in a Rainforest World. New York: McGraw-Hill.Google Scholar
Konner, Melvin. 2005. “Hunter Gatherer Infancy and Childhood: The !Kung and Others.” In Hunter Gatherer Childhoods, edited by Hewlett, Barry and Lamb, Michael, 19–63. New Brunswick: Aldine.Google Scholar
Konner, Melvin. 2011. Evolution of Childhood. Cambridge: Harvard University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Koster, Jeremy, McElreath, Richard, Hill, Kim, Yu, Douglas, Shepard, Glenn Jr., van Vliet, Nathalie, Gurven, Michael et al. 2020. “The Life History of Human Foraging: Cross-cultural and Individual Variation.” Science Advances 6 (26):eaax9070.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Kuhn, Steven. 2020. The Evolution of Paleolithic Technologies. London: Routledge.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kuhn, Steven, and Stiner, Mary C.. 2007a. “Body Ornamentation as Information Technology: Towards an Understanding of the Significance of Early Beads.” In Rethinking the Human Revolution, edited by Mellars, Paul, Boyle, Karen, Bar-Yosef, Ofer, and Stringer, Chris, 45–54. Cambridge: McDonald Institute for Archaeological Research.Google Scholar
Kuhn, Steven, and Stiner, Mary C.. 2007b. “Palaeolithic Ornaments: Implications for Cognition, Demography and Identity.” Diogenes 214 (2):40–8.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Laland, Kevin, and Brown, Gillian. 2002. Sense and Nonsense: Evolutionary Perspectives on Human Behaviour. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Lew-Levy, Sheina, Kissler, Stephen M., Boyette, Adam H., Crittenden, Alyssa N., Mabulla, Ibrahim A., and Hewlett, Barry S.. 2020. “Who Teaches Children to Forage? Exploring the Primacy of Child-to-child Teaching Among Hadza and BaYaka Hunter-Gatherers of Tanzania and Congo.” Evolution and Human Behavior 41 (1):12–22.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Lew-Levy, Shiena, Adam Boyette, Alan Crittenden, Hewlett, Barry, and Lamb, Michael. 2020. “Gender-Typed and Gender-Segregated Play Among Tanzanian Hadza and Congolese BaYaka Hunter-Gatherer Children and Adolescents.” Child Development 91 (4):1284–301.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Lew-Levy, Shiena, Noa Lavi, Rachel Reckin, Cristóbal-Azkarate, Jurgi, and Ellis-Davies, Kate. 2018. “How Do Hunter- Gatherer Children Learn Social and Gender Norms? A Meta- Ethnographic Review.” Cross-Cultural Research 52 (2):213–55.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Lew-Levy, Shiena, Rachel Reckin, Noa Lavi, Cristóbal-Azkarate, Jurgi, and Ellis-Davies, Kate. 2017. “How Do Hunter-Gatherer Children Learn Subsistence Skills? A Meta-Ethnographic Review.” Human Nature 28 (4):367–94.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Lewens, Tim. 2015. Cultural Evolution: Conceptual Challenges. Oxford: Oxford University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Lewis, Hannah M., Vinicius, Lucio, Strods, Janis, Mace, Ruth, and Migliano, Andrea B.. 2014. “High Mobility Explains Demand Sharing and Enforced Cooperation in Egalitarian Hunter-gatherers.” Nature Communications 5 (1):5789.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Lewis, Jerome. 2016. “Play, Music, and Taboo in the Reproduction of an Egalitarian Society.” In Social Learning and Innovation in Contemporary Hunter-Gatherers, edited by Terashima, Hideaki and Hewlett, Barry, 147–58. Dordrecht: Springer.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Lewis, Jerome. 2019. “Sharing Pleasures to Share Rare Things: Hunter-gatherers’ Dual Distribution Systems in Africa.” In Towards a Broader View of Hunter-Gatherer Sharing, edited by Lavi, Noa and Friesem, David, 99–112. Cambridge: McDonald Institute.Google Scholar
Lowe, Pat. 2002. Hunters and Trackers of the Australian Desert. Dural, NSW: Rosenberg Publishing.Google Scholar
Marlowe, Frank W. 2010. The Hadza: Hunter-Gatherers of Tanzania. Berkeley: University of California Press.Google Scholar
McBrearty, Sally, and Brooks, Allison. 2000. “The Revolution That Wasn’t: A New Interpretation of the Origin of Modern Human Behavior.” Journal of Human Evolution 39 (5):453–63.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Meggitt, Mervyn. 1965. Desert People: A Study of the Walbiri Aborigines of Central Australia. Sydney: Angus and Robinson.Google Scholar
Naveh, Danny. 2016. “Social and Epistemological Dimensions of Learning Among Nayaka Hunter-Gatherers.” In Social Learning and Innovation in Contemporary Hunter-Gatherers: Evolutionary and Ethnographic Perspectives, edited by Terashima, Hideaki and Hewlett, Barry, 125–34. Dordrecht: Springer.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Nowell, April, and White, Michael. 2010. “Growing Up in the Middle Pleistocene.” In Stone Tools and the Evolution of Human Cognition, edited by Nowell, April and Davidson, Ian, 67–82. Boulder: University of Colorado Press.Google Scholar
Pargeter, Justin, MacKay, Alex, Mitchell, Peter, and Shea, John. 2016. “Primordialism and the ‘Pleistocene San’ of southern Africa.” Antiquity 90 (352):1072–9.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Powell, Alan, Shennan, Stephen, and Thomas, Michael. 2009. “Late Pleistocene Demography and the Appearance of Modern Human Behavior.” Science 324 (5932):1298–301.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Premo, Luke S., and Kuhn, Steven. 2010. “Modeling Effects of Local Extinctions on Culture Change and Diversity in the Paleolithic.” PLOS One 5 (12):e15582.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Richerson, Peter J., and Boyd, Robert. 2005. Not By Genes Alone: How Culture Transformed Human Evolution. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
Sahlins, Marshall. 1968. “Notes on the Original Affluent Society.” In Man the Hunter, edited by Lee, Richard and DeVore, Irvan, 85–89. New York: Aldine Publishing Company.Google Scholar
Salali, Gul Deniz, Chaudhary, Nikhil, Bouer, Jairo, Thompson, James, Vinicius, Lucio, and Migliano, Andrea B.. 2019. “Development of Social Learning and Play in BaYaka Hunter-gatherers of Congo.” Scientific Reports 9 (1):11080.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Shennan, Stephen. 2008. “Canoes and Cultural Evolution.” Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 105 (9):3175–6.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Smith, Eric A., Bird, Rebecca B., and Bird, Donald. 2003. “The Benefits of Costly Signaling: Meriam Turtle Hunters.” Behavioral Ecology 14 (1):116–26.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Sterelny, Kim. 2007. “SNAFUS: An Evolutionary Perspective.” Biological Theory 2 (3):317–28.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Sterelny, Kim. 2012. The Evolved Apprentice. Cambridge: MIT Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Sterelny, Kim. 2015. “Optimizing Engines: Rational Choice in The Neolithic?” Philosophy of Science 82 (3):402–23.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Sterelny, Kim. 2021. “Foragers and Their Tools: Risk, Technology and Complexity.” Topics in Cognitive Science 13 (4):728–49.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Sugiyama, Michelle S. 2017. “Oral Storytelling as Evidence of Pedagogy in Forager Societies.” Frontiers in Psychology 8:471Google Scholar
Tennie, Claudio, Premo, Luke S., Braun, David, and McPherron, Shanon. 2017. “Early Stone Tools and Cultural Transmission: Resetting the Null Hypothesis, with commentaries and a response.” Current Anthropology 58 (5):652–72.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Tucker, Bram, and Young, Alyson. 2005. “Growing up Mikea: Children’s Time Allocation and Tuber Foraging in Southwestern Madagascar.” In Hunter Gatherer Childhoods, edited by Hewlett, Barry and Lamb, Michael, 147–71. New Brunswick, Aldine.Google Scholar
VanPool, Christine. 2009. “The Signs of the Sacred: Identifying Shamans Using Archaeological Evidence.” Journal of Anthropological Archaeology 28 (2):177–90.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Whitehouse, Harvey, and Hodder, Ian. 2010. “Modes of Religiosity at Catalhoyuk.” In Religion in the Emergence of Civilization, edited by Hodder, Ian, 122–45. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Wrangham, Richard. 2017. “Control of Fire in the Paleolithic: Evaluating the Cooking Hypothesis.” Current Anthropology 58 (S16):S303–13.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Wylie, Alison. 1982. “An Analogy by Any Other Name is Just as Analogical.” Journal of Anthropological Archaeology 1 (4):382–401.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Wylie, Alison. 1985. “The Reaction against Analogy.” Advances in Archaeological Method and Theory. 8:63–111.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Wylie, Alison. 2013. “Collateral Evidence: Ethnographic Analogy Revisited.” John Mulvaney Lecture, Australian National University.Google Scholar