CoChat
Sign Up
Cited by 58Language and cultural evolutionPleistocene-Era Hominins and ArchaeologyPhilosophy of Biology and Scientific Explanation

The DOI matches its Crossref record; 97 of the 98 references it cites were found in a registry or an index.

Evidence and Metaphor in Evolutionary Archaeology

Bamforth, Douglas B.·2002·American Antiquity
DOI 10.2307/1593821
Open this paper in CoChat — free account

Abstract

Evolutionary theory and terminology are widely used in recent archaeological work, and many evolutionary archaeologists have argued that the integration of such theory and terminology is essential to the future of our field. This paper considers evolutionary archaeology from two perspectives. First, it examines substantive claims that archaeology can study the operation of Darwinian evolution, either through a reliance on optimal-foraging theory or by linking the process of natural selection to archaeological data. It concludes that there are serious problems with both of these claims on Darwin: the relation between evolution and foraging theory has never been documented, and midrange arguments linking selection and archaeological data are unsustainable. Second, it argues that archaeologists rely metaphorically on evolutionary terminology to help make sense out of archaeological data. Although the use of evolutionary metaphor can be, and has been, problematic, it also offers a powerful conceptual framework for our research. However, this framework is only of one of a number of comparable frameworks that have been offered to our field, as a comparison of systems archaeology and evolutionary archaeology shows. /// La teoría y terminología evolucionarias son usadas ampliamente en el trabajo arqueólogico reciente, y muchos arqueólogos evolucionarios han argumentado que la integración de dicha teoría y terminología es esencial para el futuro de nuestro campo. Este escrito considera la arqueología evolucionaria desde dos perspectivas. Primero, examina pretensiones substantivas de que la arqueología puede estudiar el funcionamiento de la evolución Darwiniana, ya sea a través de la confianza en la teoria del abastecimiento óptimo o enlazando el proceso de la selección natural a los datos arqueológicos. Concluye que hay serios prolemas con estos dos alegatos sobre Darwin: la relación entre evolución y la teoría del abastecimiento nunca ha sido documentada, y los argumentos de mediano alcance enlazando la selección y los datos arquelógicos son insostenibles. Segundo, a pesar to eso, también los arqueólogos metafóricante confían en la terminologia evolucionaria para mejorar la comprensión de los datos arqueológicos. Aunque el uso de la metáfora evolucionaria puede ser, y ha sido, problemático, igualmente ofrece un marco conceptual poderosos para nuestra investigación. Sin embargo, este armazón ideológico es sólo una de varias estructuras de pensamiento comparables que han sido ofrecidas a nuestro campo, conforme un cotejo entre la arqueología de sistemas y la arqueología evolucionaria nos muestra.

Overview

Integrity signals

Registry

Crossref · 10.2307/1593821

Cites

97 of 97 references verified0 citation errors · 0 not checkable

Statistics

Recomputing p-values needs the paper’s full text.

Verification

Claims the paper makes

This paper’s full text isn’t openly available, so its claims and self-check weren’t run. The registry and citation checks still apply.

Claims other papers make about this one

Each is checked against this paper’s own text: does it say what the citing paper says it does?

  • The link between genes and phenotype in paleontology is obvious and relatively well-understood.

    “The problem of linking temporal patterns of change in paleontological data to evolution essentially does not arise because the link is so obvious and relatively well-understood”

    From What Is Evolution? A Response to Bamforth (2003) · cites this paper as Bamforth 2002

  • If 'paleontological data' were substituted for 'archaeological data' in Bamforth's quote and 'human' struck, all paleontologists would agree.

    “But notice that if we substituted”

    From What Is Evolution? A Response to Bamforth (2003) · cites this paper as Bamforth 2002

  • Phenotype is the outcome of an interaction between the information included in an organism's genes and the environment that organism occupies.

    “Bamforth (2002:445) defines phenotype as”

    From What Is Evolution? A Response to Bamforth (2003) · cites this paper as Bamforth 2002

  • Archaeological data pertain in virtually every case to the activities of groups of human beings whose social and/or familial relations are unknown, especially for analyses that aggregate data over large regions and long spans of time.

    “He continues,”

    From What Is Evolution? A Response to Bamforth (2003) · cites this paper as Bamforth 2002

  • Archaeologists cannot directly observe the actual processes of evolution that operated in the past; they must infer them from patterns in material culture.

    “He points out that”

    From What Is Evolution? A Response to Bamforth (2003) · cites this paper as Bamforth 2002

Citations

Cites

Flagged first, then by citations

1 of the 98 references couldn’t be matched to a known paper.

Research works printed but not linked: 19

  1. Bamforth, 1997, Rediscovering Darwin,, 109
  2. Niemann, 1999, Discussion on the Limits of Evolutionary Archaeology, Paper Presented at the 64th Annual Meeting of the Society for American Archaeology, Chicago
  3. Hill, 1988a, Human Reproductive Behavior,, 277
  4. Kelly, 1995, The Foraging Spectrum.
  5. Kacelnik, 1997, Human Nature,, 21
  6. O’Brien, 1990, Variation, Selection, and the Archaeological Record, Archaeological Method and Theory, 2, 31
  7. Taylor, 1948, American Anthropological Association Memoir 69.
  8. Gould, 2000, Alas Poor Darwin,, 101
  9. Flannery, 1973, Research and Theory in Current Archaeology,, 47
  10. Grafen, 1984, Behavioral Ecology: An Evolutionary Approach,, 62
  11. Bamforth, 1989, Darwin, Sex, and Status.
  12. Gowlett, 1997, Rediscovering Darwin,, 49
  13. Krebs, 1997, Behavioral Ecology: An Evolutionary Approach.
  14. Winterhalder, 1980, Hunter-Gatherer Foraging Strategies.
  15. Bamforth, 2001, Radiocarbon Calibration, Tree-Rings, Climate, and the Course of War in the Middle Missouri., Paper presented at the 66th Annual Meeting of the Society for American Archaeology, New Orleans.
  16. Neff, 1992, Ceramics and Evolution, Archaeological Method and Theory 4:141–193.
  17. Hill, 1996, Ache Life History.
  18. Irons, 1979, Evolutionary Biology and Human Social Behavior,, 257
  19. Hill, 1988b, Human Reproductive Behavior,, 291

Cited by

Sorted by citations

Related

Metadata

Authors
Bamforth, D. B.
Affiliations
University of Colorado Boulder (US)
Corresponding author
Bamforth, Douglas B.
ORCID
Bamforth, Douglas B.
Venue
American Antiquity
Publisher
Cambridge University Press (CUP)
Published
2002-07
Volume
67
Issue
3
Pages
435-452
ISSN
  • 0002-7316 (ISSN-L)
  • 2325-5064
DOI
10.2307/1593821
OpenAlex
W2033203011
Cited by
58
References
98
Citations by year
2025: 1 · 2024: 1 · 2023: 4 · 2021: 2 · 2019: 2 · 2018: 1 · 2016: 4 · 2015: 4 · 2014: 2 · 2013: 1 · 2012: 1
FWCI
59.66
Type
journal article
Language
en
Open access
closed
Licence
www.cambridge.org/core/terms (unspecified, 5317 d)
Locations
American Antiquity (publishedVersion)
Topics
  • Social Sciences › Cultural Studies › Language and cultural evolution
  • Social Sciences › Anthropology › Pleistocene-Era Hominins and Archaeology
  • Social Sciences › Arts and Humanities › History and Philosophy of Science › Philosophy of Biology and Scientific Explanation
Keywords
evolutionary archaeology, evolutionary theory, Darwinian evolution, optimal foraging theory, natural selection, evolutionary metaphor, archaeological theory, conceptual framework

About these checks

Registry, retraction, Cites and statistics results are computed, not judged, with one exception: a printed reference that no index lists is read once by a model before it counts as a citation error. Claims are extracted by a model and kept only when their quote appears verbatim in the text; each cited source is then checked, with a model’s help, for whether it says what the claim relies on. Those verdicts can be wrong — read the claim’s quote and the cited source before relying on one.

Statistics and arithmetic are recomputed, not judged.

Confidence bands are shown only for fields calibrated on our annotated test set. None is calibrated yet, so no band is shown.

What counts as a claim ›How we measure confidence ›How we check this ›

Are you an author, or do you see a problem with this page? Request a review