Macroevolutionary Achaeology in 2015: Testing Historical and Evolutionary Hypotheses, for example, about Arctic Migration Pulses

Summary

Macroevolutionary archaeology seeks to examine cultural evolutionary processes at multiple hierarchical scales spanning artifact technology to economic, social, and political strategies. This approach offers the opportunity for scholars to test general hypotheses about tempo and mode of evolutionary change and it also lends itself to the development of formal tests of general hypotheses about human history in the longue durée. In this paper we present a review of current research in macroevolutionary archaeology and follow with a case study testing the independent (Paleoeskimo and Neoeskimo) arctic pulses hypothesis using archaeological data. It provides an opportunity to discuss the challenges and prospects of this research strategy. It also permits us to engage in a rigorous examination of a major hypothesis regarding human cultural and biological history, so far only rigorously tested using genetic data. Our approach incorporates a variety of phylogenetic and network models to assess potential cultural factors associated with arctic migrations during the past 5500 years. We seek to offer implications for understanding arctic migrations as case studies in cultural macroevolutionary process.

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

• Evolutionary Theory and Archaeology, Part II: Applications of Human Behavioral Ecology, Macroevolutionary Approaches, and Costly Signaling   •
• Society for American Archaeology 80th Annual Meeting, San Francisco, CA (2015)

Keywords

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