Darwinism and Historical Archaeology

Abstract

In its classic formulation, Darwinism is a theory about why certain organisms do better in particular environments than do other organisms and hence over time leave more descendants. The theory says nothing about the archaeological record. Thus, archaeologists interested in applying a Darwinian perspective to the study of the material record have had to spend considerable time in constructing logical theoretical and methodological arguments as to how this can be accomplished in a nonreductionistic manner (e.g., Hurt and Rakita, 2001; Lipo et al., 2006a; Lyman and O’Brien, 1998; O’Brien, 1996a; O’Brien and Lyman, 2000, 2002a, 2003a, 2003b; O’Brien et al., 1998).