Evolutionary archaeology : theory and application /

This festschrift for Robert Dunnell includes seven of his papers, two by the late David Rindos, two coauthored by editor Michael O'Brien, and one each by Hector Neff, David Braun, and R.D. Leonard and G.T. Jones. All but the essays by Braun and Rindos appear in Evolutionary Archaeology, ed. by Patrice Teltser (1995). "Evolutionary archaeology" as defined by this group began with Dunnell's 1978 paper, inspired by reading Stephen Jay Gould's essays, arguing that others neglect the essential role of natural selection in cultural evolution. Dunnell proposed a "modern scientific evolutionary archaeology" based on the principle that artifacts are as much part of human phenotypes as are somatic features, and therefore (says editor O'Brien) "subject to [natural] selection" for fitness. Eschewing "progress" and stages, Dunnell premises unceasing selection of behavior and artifacts for greater fitness. Gould has in recent years emphasized contingency and apparent presence of nonadaptive, nondeleterious features, for which Dunnell declares Gould's "recent work ... simply bad biology." This reviewer finds Dunnell's "method" reductionist, dogmatic, and at odds with recent concern in archaeology for identifying human agency. The volume presents one narrow school, useful principally for graduate seminars. A. B. Kehoe; Marquette University