Além da Biologia: Teoria Evolutiva aplicada à Arqueologia e estudos de Cultura Material
Abstract
Since its proposal by Darwin and Wallace, the theory of biological evolution through natural selection and its developments (including neo-Darwinism and the synthetic theory of evolution) have been applied in many areas beyond the biological sciences, including cultural studies. Within this field, archaeology stands out as the discipline that studies the long-term record of human material culture and, therefore, presents an ideal opportunity to understand cultural change over time. In this context, the theoretical approach created by American archaeologist Robert Dunnell in the 1970s, called Evolutionary Archaeology, is one of the most successful applications of the Theory of Evolution outside of Biology. This approach is often combined with the Theory of Cultural Transmission, which transcends the field of archaeology and has also received important contributions from Ethology, Psychology, and other disciplines. The combined application of the theoretical assumptions of Evolutionary Archaeology and Cultural Transmission Theory, combined with methods often derived from the Biological Sciences, such as phylogenetic analyses and geometric morphometrics, has been successful in systematically recording changes (or the lack thereof) over time in the material culture of human groups. It also provides explanations for these phenomena, involving the concepts of selection and drift, and revisiting ideas that have always been central to archaeology, such as tradition, innovation, and persistence. In addition to a discussion of the state of the art and potential applications of Evolutionary Theory to material culture studies, we will present a case-study of the combined application of Evolutionary Archaeology and Cultural Transmission Theory to understand cultural evolution in eastern South America (Brazil) during the early Holocene.
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