Cultural Evolution: Contemporary Viewpoints

by Gary M. Feinman (Editor), Linda Manzanilla (Editor)

Overview

Drawing on Kent Flannery's forty years of cross-cultural research in the area, the contributors to this collection reflect the current diversity of contemporary approaches to the study of cultural evolutionary processes. Collectively the volume expresses the richness of the issues being investigated by comparative theorists interested in long-term change, as well as the wide variety of data, approaches, and ideas that researchers are employing to examine these questions.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781461541738
Publisher:	Springer-Verlag New York, LLC
Publication date:	12/06/2012
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
File size:	9 MB

Table of Contents

I. Introduction.- 1. Cultural Evolutionary Approaches and Archaeology: Past, Present, and Future.- II. Technological Change and Economic Specialization.- 2. Guilá Naquitz Revisited: Agricultural Origins in Oaxaca, Mexico.- 3. The Evolution of theTipití: A Study in the Process of Invention.- 4. Accelerated Technological Change in Archaeology and Ancient History.- 5. High-Intensity Household-Scale Production in Ancient Mesoamerica: A Perspective from Ejutla, Oaxaca.- III. Political Complexity and Its Emergence.- 6. Lightning and Jaguars: Iconography, Ideology, and Politics in Formative Cuicatlán, Oaxaca.- 7. Games, Players, Rules, and Circumstances: Looking for Understandings of Social Change at Different Levels.- 8. Modeling Tributary Economies and Hierarchical Polities: A Prologue.- 9. The Development of Administration from Collective to Centralized Economies in the Mesopotamian World: The Transformation of an Institution from System-Serving to Self-Serving.- IV. Conclusions.- 10. A Concluding Perspective on the Theoretical Contributions of Kent V. Flannery: Tenets for the Next Century of U.S. Archaeology.- Postscript.- Comprehensive Bibliography of Kent V. Flannery.

Editorial Reviews

'All of the chapters are top-knotch, and several make major strides toward understanding the emergence of complexity in more comprehensive theoretical terms. Flannery is definitely to be commended for stimulating such a broad body of research on the cultural evolution of political and economic complexity. Would I buy this book? My answer is another "Yes". Every faculty member interested in the subject certainly should add it to his professional library.'

Journal of Anthropological Research, 58 (2002)

‘...this volume's coverage encompasses much of the diversity in conventional cultural evolutionary and processual paradigms and some of the chapters offer quite contemporary solutions to hitherto divisive issues. Overall, the contributions, written by renowned senior scholars, have the quality, depth, and breadth to be of wide interest to current evolutionary archaeologists.'

Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute, 8:4 (2002)

"In summary, this volume's coverage encompasses much of the diversity in conventional cultural evolutionary and processual paradigms and some of the chapters offer quite contemparary solutions to hitherto diversive issues. Overall, the contributions, written by renowned senior scholars, have the quality, depth, and breadth to be of wide interest to current evolutionary archaeologists." (Marilyn Masson; Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute, 8:4)

From the Publisher