Accidents of History: Conceptual Frameworks in Paleoarchaeology

Abstract

A moment’s reflection will show that the various analytical units commonly used by paleolithic archaeologists in western Eurasia (e.g., Aurignacian,Mousterian) are ‘accidents ofhistory,’ created for the most part by French prehistorians between c. 1880 and c. 1940 in order to solve chron- ological problems in the years before absolute dating methods had become available. Whether or not it makes sense to continue to use them as any- thing other than a vague and general lingua franca is addressed here, along with the question of what ‘transitions’ between these units might mean or imply about prehistoric human behavior. Since the units themselves are ‘accidents of history,’ the tran- sitions between them might not mean anything at all from the behavioral ecology perspective adopted by some American and European workers. The essay compares and contrasts the conceptual frameworks of culture history (CH) and human behavioral ecology (HBE), focusing on archaeological monitors of human adaptation and how these change, or fail to change, at analytical unit boundaries.