Cultural Transmission and Diversity Among Hunter-Gatherers of the Subarctic and Subantarctic

Summary

The behavioral ecological approach Kelly champions in the Foraging Spectrum has clearly enhanced our understanding of hunter-gatherer diversity. Still, despite important developments in modeling and comparative analysis in the twenty years since first publication, occasional stark contrasts between groups living in similar environments suggest that ecological factors and adaptive behaviors cannot alone account for the impressive record of ethnographic and archaeological diversity. We consider one such case—contemporaneous hunter-gatherers of the Subarctic and Subantarctic—from the perspective of cultural transmission theory to restate the special role of culture in explaining hunter-gatherer diversity.

SAA 2015 abstracts made available in tDAR courtesy of the Society for American Archaeology and Center for Digital Antiquity Collaborative Program to improve digital data in archaeology. If you are the author of this presentation you may upload your paper, poster, presentation, or associated data (up to 3 files/30MB) for free. Please visit http://www.tdar.org/SAA2015 for instructions and more information.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Society for American Archaeology 80th Annual Meeting, San Francisco, CA (2015)   •
• Foraging Spectra: Hunter-Gatherer Diversity in Prehistory

Keywords