An HBE Perspective on Niche Construction

Summary

This is an abstract from the "The Extended Evolutionary Synthesis and Human Origins: Archaeological Perspectives" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology.

Decades of research in human behavioral ecology (HBE) demonstrates that questions about human ecological and reproductive adaptations generally lead to questions about cooperation. Partly for this reason, much recent research in HBE has focused on issues such as marriage, cooperative child raising, and exchange and social support (including food sharing). Here, we review some recent trends in HBE and suggest that, by expanding its’ focus beyond functional questions to Tinbergen’s other forms of evolutionary explanation, and especially through a deeper interest in history, social structure, and cultural phylogeny, current work in the field addresses some of the critiques made by proponents of the Extended Evolutionary Synthesis (EES). We suggest that a similar shift in perspective can enhance our understanding of human biological and cultural evolution in deep time. However, we argue that some of the tools of the Modern Synthesis (e.g., game theory, foraging theory, and life history models) remain the strongest theoretical grounding for developing niche construction hypotheses and testing them in the archaeological record. We illustrate this approach through an agent-based model that combines diet breadth with life history constraints to examine the relative cost of maintaining cooperative networks in a context of fluctuating resource availability.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Society for American Archaeology 84th Annual Meeting, Albuquerque, NM (2019)   •
• The Extended Evolutionary Synthesis and Human Origins: Archaeological Perspectives

Keywords

Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 24299