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Why isn’t archaeology (more) Darwinian? A historical perspective

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 Journal of Evolutionary Psychology, 8(2010)2, 183–204
DOI: 10.1556/JEP.8.2010.2.7

WHY ISN’T ARCHAEOLOGY (MORE) DARWINIAN?

A HISTORICAL PERSPECTIVE
FELIX RIEDE

Abstract. At the time when archaeology emerged as a distinct academic discipline, references to
Darwin’s notions of descent with modification and natural selection were relatively common, es-
pecially amongst Scandinavian scholars. These references were, at times, remarkably explicit and
became more regular following the publication of Darwin’s key works in translation. Drawing on
biographical and archival sources as well as on an analysis of the contemporaneous reception of
these ideas this papers attempts to tease out some of the theoretical, methodological, and socio-
logical factors that led, ultimately, to a more or less wholesale rejection of Darwinism in archae-
ology in the middle part of the 20th century. Whilst 19th-century scholars were trained in a range
of disciplines and so able to work interdisciplinarily with ease, the increasing fragmentation of
domains of enquiry and the parallel and rapid increase in the volume of scientific knowledge re-
sulted in barriers to the integration of the social and evolutionary sciences. There remains much
confusion about the remit and scope of an evolutionary analysis of material culture change. An
undue focus on natural selection and a continued adherence to a typological view of material cul-
ture are particular barriers to a better and broader integration of evolutionary theory and archae-
ology. This historical analysis is presented in the hope of clearing up some of these misunder-
standings and to contribute to a sharper definition of evolutionary archaeology.

Keywords: Evolutionary Archaeology, Cultural Evolution, typology, population thinking, mate-

rial culture phylogenetics

1. INTRODUCTION

There are at least “three styles” (SMITH 2000: 27) in the evolutionary, Darwinian
analysis of human behaviour and culture: Human Behavioural Ecology (HBE),
Evolutionary Psychology/Evolutionary Psychology sensu strictu (following
DUNBAR and BARRETT 2007; EP/EPSS), and Cultural Evolution studies (CE) (see

1789-2082 © 2010 Akadémiai Kiadó, Budapest

184 FELIX RIEDE

also LALAND and BROWN 2002). A recent review in the pages of this journal (SEAR,
LAWSON and DICKINS 2007) provides an updated discussion of the developments in
these research fields and also argues strongly for a tighter integration across the
constituent study areas. The present paper focuses on Evolutionary Archaeology
(EA) identified by SEAR, LAWSON and DICKINS (2007: 19) as one of several “promi-
nent examples of new sub-disciplines” to have emerged out of the three main fla-
vours of human behavioural sciences. Whilst recent decades have witnessed a steep
increase in the application of evolutionary theory and methods to archaeological
materials (Table 1), the roots of such applications go back rather further.
Building on earlier efforts focussed on the history of North American archae-
ology (e.g. LYMAN and O’BRIEN 1997, 1999, 2000a, 2000b, 2001, 2003, 2004;
LYMAN, O’BRIEN and DUNNELL 1997a, 1997b; LYMAN, WOLVERTON and
O’BRIEN 1998; O’BRIEN and LYMAN 1999) and on its counterpart in Europe
(PERSSON 1999; RIEDE 2006b), this paper demonstrates that attempts to use Dar-
winian concepts of ‘descent with modification’ (= inheritance or social information
transmission across generations) and ‘selection’ (= differential representation of
variants across generations) played an important role in the formation of archae-
ology itself as an academic discipline. Highlighting the similarities between early
evolutionary biology and archaeology then allows a sharper formulation of those
divergent theoretical, conceptual and methodological developments that have con-
tributed significantly to the contemporary differences between the two subjects, and
the reasons why many archaeologists vehemently reject a Darwinian approach to
material culture change. I argue that the most significant barriers to appreciating the
contribution of evolutionary theory and method to archaeology is the still wide-
spread and largely uncritical or implicit adherence to a typological and normative,
rather than a population-thinking and materialist (MAYR 1959) framework by the
majority archaeologists, and an undue focus on natural selection as the only driving
force of evolutionary change by those sceptical of an evolutionary view of material
culture change (e.g. GRÄSLUND 1987; SHANKS and TILLEY 1993).
The population-perspective in biology, further discussed below, shifted the fo-
cus of attention not only towards variability but also towards how to quantify the
differences between species, genera, and other units of analysis. Part of the New
Synthesis, this conceptual revolution constituted a necessary epistemological ad-
justment needed to articulate increasingly detailed data from the field and labora-
tory with more sophisticated and inevitably statistical analytical methods. The
population perspective is consciously reductionist and sees even obviously coherent
entities (i.e. a finch, a butterfly, etc.) as composed of different attributes that have a
distribution across a population of such entities. Individual entities change ontoge-
netically, but evolutionary change only occurs in populations. Variation rather than
fixedness is of the greatest interest. In contrast, the typological perspective is mostly
qualitative and views species as types, and types as real, fixed and inherently bio-
logically meaningful. Variation is noise. In the corresponding application of this
view in cultural studies artefact types are seen as fixed, ethnically meaningful enti-

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 WHY ISN’T ARCHAEOLOGY (MORE) DARWINIAN? A HISTORICAL PERSPECTIVE 185

ties, much like pre-Darwinian naturalists viewed species as immutable, and god-
created. This perspective makes an investigation of change, i.e. of how one species
or artefact type changes into another very difficult indeed.

Table 1. Examples of articles and books reviewing or synthesising evolutionary analyses of

material culture, in chronological order beginning 1995. From this time onwards EA began to
form as a recognisable sub-discipline. There is a perceptible trend towards a greater focus on case
studies and applications in more recent publications. See the chapters and references in the listed
edited volumes for further information, and www.cobb.msstate.edu/lineage for a comprehensive,
systematic bibliographic listing of the EA literature

Author(s) Year Title Brief description

TELTSER 1995 Evolutionary Archaeology: Methodologi- Edited volume: mostly
cal Issues theoretical
MASCHNER 1996 Darwinian Archaeologies Edited volume: mostly
theoretical
O’BRIEN 1996 Evolutionary Archaeology: Theory and Edited volume: collected
Application early papers
BARTON and 1997 Rediscovering Darwin: Evolutionary The- Edited volume: case studies
CLARK ory and Archaeological Explanation
O’BRIEN and 2000 Applying Evolutionary Archaeology. A Monograph: ther-
LYMAN Systematic Approach ies/methods
HART and 2002 Darwin and Archaeology. A Handbook of Edited volume: terminol-
TERRELL Key Concepts ogy/concepts
O’BRIEN and 2002 Evolutionary Archaeology: Current Status Evolutionary Anthropology
LYMAN and Future Prospects
SHENNAN 2002 Genes, Memes and Human History: Darwin- Monograph: review
ian Archaeology and Cultural Evolution
O’BRIEN and 2003 Style, Function, Transmission: Evolution- Edited volume: case stud-
LYMAN ary Archaeological Perspectives ies/theories/methods
O’BRIEN et al. 2003 Cladistics and Archaeology Monograph:
methodological
COLLARD et al. 2006 Branching, blending, and the evolution of Evolution and Human Be-
cultural similarities and differences among haviour
human populations
LIPO et al. 2006 Mapping our Ancestors. Phylogenetic Ap- Edited volume: case studies
proaches in Anthropology and Prehistory
O’BRIEN 2008 Cultural Transmission and Archaeology: Edited volume: case stud-
Issues and Case Studies ies/theories/methods
SHENNAN 2008 Evolution in Archaeology Annual Review of Anthro-
pology
MUSCIO and 2009 Theoretical and Methodological Issues in Edited volume: case stud-
LÓPEZ Evolutionary Archaeology ies/theories/methods
SHENNAN 2009 Pattern and Process in Cultural Evolution Edited volume: case stud-
ies/theories/methods

JEP 8(2010)2
186 FELIX RIEDE

This paper is an attempt to chart, following GAYON (1998), some of the ‘ra-
tional’ as well as ‘external’ reasons as to why archaeology as a whole is not, or not
more Darwinian. Theoretical, methodological as well as sociological reasons for the
current state of play will be touched upon.
It is widely acknowledged that the first formalisations of archaeological en-
quiry took shape in Denmark and Sweden in the later part of the 19th century (e.g.
DANIEL 1978; DANIEL and RENFREW 1988; TRIGGER 1989). This paper will draw
on direct citations from the contemporaneous Scandinavian literature as well as on
biographical work about the main protagonists to show that Darwinian thinking had
an important influence on their conceptualisations of material culture change in
prehistoric ‘deep time’. In the second part, the history of Scandinavian and more
broadly European EA will be intersected with key developments in biology. It is ar-
gued that the dissonance in methodological and theoretical developments in the two
disciplines has acted as a barrier to better integration. In particular, the focus away
from palaeontology towards the experimental and molecular branches of biology
has alienated archaeologists, despite the early recognition of much methodological
and conceptual overlap between these two disciplines: a database that is fragmented
and consists of hard parts only (i.e. fossilised bones vs. stone tools, ceramics and
the like), but with privileged access to long-term patterns and processes. This has
resulted in a delayed or virtually non-existent revision of important concepts and
methods such as population-thinking vs. typology (MAYR 1959) and tree-thinking
(O’HARA 1997) in archaeology. Recent EA approaches again explicitly stress the
original similarities between palaeobiology and archaeology (e.g. O’BRIEN and
LYMAN 2000), and models for an integrated Darwinian human science reserve a
space for archaeology reflecting these commonalities (MESOUDI and O’BRIEN
2009; Fig. 1), although not all evolutionary archaeologists share the view that such
integration is desirable or possible (MASCHNER and MARLER 2009).
Whilst HBE has provided a robust theoretical and empirical scaffolding for the
study of material culture function, it arguably is CE models and efforts to clarify the
dynamics of cultural transmission (e.g. BOYD and RICHERSON 1985; O’BRIEN
2008; RICHERSON and BOYD 2005) that have provided new impetus to EA
(MARWICK 2006). Empirical information on cultural transmission is available from
the archaeological record (EERKENS and LIPO 2007; RIEDE 2006a; TEHRANI and
RIEDE 2008) and such data can be used to provide a sound epistemological founda-
tion for the application of phylogenetic methods to study long-term material culture
evolution (e.g. BOYD et al. 1997; COLLARD, SHENNAN and TEHRANI 2006b;
SHENNAN 2008; TEHRANI and COLLARD 2009). Mirroring the more general debates
between HBE, CE and EP (see SEAR, LAWSON and DICKINS 2007), EA has had its
internal debates about the appropriateness, applicability or otherwise of these theo-
retical and methodological umbrella stances (see BAMFORTH 2003; BOONE and
SMITH 1998; LYMAN and O’BRIEN 1998; O’BRIEN et al. 1998, 2003b). Yet, recent
years have seen a definite move towards less dogmatic positioning (KUHN 2004;

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WHY ISN’T ARCHAEOLOGY (MORE) DARWINIAN? A HISTORICAL PERSPECTIVE 187

SHENNAN 2002a, 2008, 2009a). This paper is a contribution to an integrated human

evolutionary behavioural science (MESOUDI, WHITEN and LALAND 2006).

Figure 1. The classification of the sub-disciplines of evolutionary biology after FUTUYMA (1998),
and the proposed division of cultural evolutionary research fields following MESOUDI, WHITEN
and LALAND (2006) with the respective positions of palaeontology and EA highlighted

2. PRELIMINARY NOTE ON CULTURAL EVOLUTION

Cultural evolution in this paper refers to change over time in a system of social and
ecological information transmission that has Darwinian properties. It is not con-
cerned with either cultural evolutionism or the evolution of culture per se in relation
to cognitive or brain evolution. While there are many salient historical connections
between Darwin’s version of evolution and the brand of progressivist cultural evo-
lutionism inspired by E.B. Tylor, Henry Morgan and Herbert Spencer, and propa-
gated via the multi-lineal social evolution schemes of Marshall Sahlins, Leslie
White and others (BOWLER 1993a, 2003), these are distinct research fields today,
and their differences have been discussed multiple times (e.g. APEL and DARMARK
2009; DUNNELL 1988; PERSSON 1999). EA is concerned not with stages in cultural
developments, but with patterns and process in the formation and decimation of cul-
tural diversity over time (O’BRIEN et al. 2008; SHENNAN 2009b).
Equally, EA does strictly speaking not refer to the research into the evolution
of culture per se. Such studies have, at times, successfully used a typological
framework and developmental theories to examine stages in the evolution of cogni-
tion and its attendant cultural expression in early hominins (e.g. WYNN 2002). EA is
instead concerned with how culture changes as a result of social information trans-
mission dynamics. Often these changes will correlate with biological transmission
trajectories, creating what FOLEY (2002: 3) called the “parallel tracks in time” of
human evolution and archaeology – in other words gene-culture co-evolution
(BOYD and RICHERSON 1985; CAVALLI-SFORZA and FELDMAN 1981) – but culture

JEP 8(2010)2
188 FELIX RIEDE

change is not seen as a result of changes in gene frequencies. Instead, the Darwinian
dynamics internal to culture itself are put to the fore. It is these latter CE studies that
provide the richest source of inspiration for archaeologists and an important context
for understanding material culture changes over time (e.g. BETTINGER 2008;
EERKENS and LIPO 2007; MARWICK 2006).

3. DARWINISM AND ARCHAEOLOGY IN 19TH-CENTURY

SCANDINAVIA

In 1873 the Swedish scholar HANS HILDEBRANDT (1842–1913) stated that “if any
science at present needs its Darwin, it is comparative archaeology” (HILDEBRANDT
1873: 17). Shortly before this statement was made, DARWIN’S (1859) Origin of
Species had been published in translation in Scandinavia (Sweden: DARWIN 1871,
1872a; Denmark: DARWIN 1872b, 1974). While it took some time for Darwin’s
groundbreaking idea to fully impact the Scandinavian countries (KJÆRGAARD and
GREGERSEN 2006), it was widely discussed in the well-connected, letter-writing
academic circles of 19th-century Sweden (BAUDOU 1999). In fact, Darwin himself
had a lively if little known interest in archaeology and had corresponded with a
considerable number of fellow scientists who could be classed as archaeologists or
antiquarians (EVANS 2009; RIEDE 2006). Hildebrandt, who like most of his contem-
poraries had training in what we would today call the social sciences, the humani-
ties as well as in the natural sciences, recognised the salient similarities in data
structure and investigative methods between archaeology and palaeontology. He
(HILDEBRANDT 1873: 16) makes clear reference to Darwin’s ideas:

One might call the new stage which archaeology has entered ‘the typologi-
cal stage’. Our next task is the establish the types, to ascertain which of them
are characteristic of each region, to search out the type’s affinities, and to un-
fold their history; and the type to be investigated in this sense is both the fin-
ished instrument and the smallest ornament which adorns it … The many simi-
lar objects are only ostensibly duplicates, the many axes … do not have the
same importance as number of specimens of an animal species in a zoological
museum. Slight differences appear in these axe specimens, and thus they do
not in general correspond to specimens of animals but to species and varieties;
here, the formation of varieties is greater on account of man’s influence on de-
velopments … Under the influence of two factors – the practical need and the
craftsman’s taste – a great many forms arise, each of which has to struggle for
its existence; one does not find what it needs for its existence and succumbs,
but the other moves forward and produces a whole series of forms.

Some years later, Hildebrandt confirms his position (HILDEBRANDT 1880: 54):

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WHY ISN’T ARCHAEOLOGY (MORE) DARWINIAN? A HISTORICAL PERSPECTIVE 189

The stations during this [cultural] development are the types, which corre-
spond to the species in the organic world, though not the species as they are
now, bilaterally ordered, but as they occur in palaeontology, chronologically
ordered. However, there is a difference in relation to the palaeontological se-
ries in that in the culture-historical series one can more clearly distinguish the
rise, the culmination and the fall. From this, it is also clear that the types of
cultural objects cannot be so sharply divided as the species in nature at the pre-
sent day; one finds transitional forms which have become constant, while oth-
ers show an uncertain fluctuation.

In line with earlier 19th-century scholars, Hildebrandt stresses the methodological

similarities between the historical or, as WHEWELL (1847: 639) calls them the “pa-
laetiological” sciences such as geology, archaeology and historical linguistics. He
notes that artefacts can be ordered by degrees of similarity akin to fossils. He also
notes that there are differences in the processes that bring about cultural diversity
and organic diversity, but that similar principles of change over time and selection
might apply. Hildebrandt also strongly emphasises the use of typology as a classifi-
cation tool. Formal typology had developed in archaeology as a means of systema-
tising the rapidly increasing amount of material that became available during the
19th century (e.g. DANIEL 1943). Hildebrandt was one of the main protagonists in
this development and was here pushing his own agenda (GRÄSLUND 1987).
Hildebrandt’s contemporary Oscar Montelius (1843–1921; see GRÄSLUND
1999) further elaborated both the use of typology in archaeology and its perceived
relationship to Darwin. In 1884 he wrote one of the earliest paper dedicated specifi-
cally to archaeological method and theory (MONTELIUS 1884: 1–2):

The methodology of prehistoric archaeology has long been like that of

natural science. Like the latter, the former has also entered a new stage. The
natural scientist is no longer content to describe the different species and to
study their lives. He tries to find out the internal connection that binds them
together and to show how one species has developed from the other. What the
species is to the natural scientist, the type is to the archaeologist. The produc-
tions of nature which resemble each other in all essentials and which have a
common origin are considered to belong to the same species. When it is a
question of the productions of human labour, the same definition can be used
of the type. The prehistoric archaeologist no longer regards it as his task to de-
scribe and compare the antiquities from different countries and to investigate
life in these countries in bygone days. He now tries to trace the internal con-
nection between the types and to show how one has developed from the other.
We call this typology. Before one has become familiar with the history of hu-
man culture, one is apt to consider individual freedom as so great that the types
in the world of human labour cannot play the same part as the species play in
the world of nature. However, one soon finds that they really do so and that the

JEP 8(2010)2
190 FELIX RIEDE

types of human works, like the animal and plant species, obey laws in their
evolution.

Montelius, like Hildebrandt, highlights the similarity between archaeology and pa-
laeontology, and the use of typology as an ordering method, but also notes that the
goal of archaeology is not (at least, not only or not primarily) to simply reconstruct
past life, but to investigate and explain change over time in material culture. He
recognised historical constraints (~phylogenetic inertia) on material culture change
and links these changes to evolutionary principles.
Although at the time of his death, Montelius did not own any works by Darwin
(LUNDQVIST 1943), his personal notes show a lively interest in evolution beginning
during his student days (BAUDOU 1999). This interest is reflected in his later pro-
motion of evolutionary principles in archaeology. In 1899 he published a paper that
was originally delivered at an interdisciplinary conference and bears the remarkable
title Typologien eller utvecklingsläran tillämpad på det menskliga arbetet – Typol-
ogy or the Theory of Evolution Applied to Human Labour (MONTELIUS 1899). It is
worth quoting at length (MONTELIUS 1899: 267–268):

That I wish to speak at a conference of natural scientists about the typo-

logical method is not, however, due so much to the great importance of this
method to the archaeologist as to the possibility that it may be of interest to the
natural scientist to see, one the one hand, how we use, generally speaking, the
same method as he does – in that we collect as large a material as possible and
arrange it so that the results are immediately obvious – and, on the other, how
we stand, in respect to the theory of evolution, on a purely Darwinian ground.
That, as regards the productions of nature, it is possible to follow the evolution
of one form or one species from the other has, of course, as we are all aware,
long been known. But it is only recently that we have discovered, in the way
that I have just shown, that a quite similar development can actually also be
shown as regards that productions of human labour. This should interest the
natural scientist so much the more as man is, of course, in himself, regarded as
a product of nature, also an object of his studies.

Several points are worth noting here. First, by 1899 the sciences had diversified and
diverged so much at an institutional level that interdisciplinarity required some ef-
fort. This trend first affected the broader and more easily delineated divisions of so-
cial sciences, humanities and natural sciences, but would later plague even individ-
ual disciplines such as biology to the point that it ultimately necessitated the New
Synthesis to create and highlight the commonalities between such seemingly dis-
tinct fields of enquiry as genetics, cell biology and palaeontology (HUXLEY 1943;
MAYR 1991; MAYR and PROVINE 1980). I will return to this below. Second, Mon-
telius continues to stress the typological approach as both useful in archaeology and
as similar to the working methods of biologists, which it was at that time (HULL

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WHY ISN’T ARCHAEOLOGY (MORE) DARWINIAN? A HISTORICAL PERSPECTIVE 191

1965; MAYR 1959). Thirdly, Montelius does not particularly stress the role of selec-
tion as an explanatory mechanism of change. Montelius evidently sees humans as
products of evolution and hence argues that evolutionary principles should be appli-
cable in the sphere of human affairs too. Unlike Hildebrandt, however, who always
mentions selection in combination with evolution, Montelius seems more interested
in patterns of change over time.
Mapping and explaining patterns of material culture change over time had al-
ways been Montelius’ primary interest and his (precocious) downplaying of selec-
tion in material culture evolution is reflected in his last statement on evolution. This
appeared – at the pinnacle of his career, but in the middle of what HUXLEY (1943:
22) termed the “eclipse of Darwinism” – in a monograph on, ironically perhaps, the
typological method in archaeology. MONTELIUS (1903: 20) writes that …

… it is in actual fact rather amazing that Man in his labours has been and is
subject to the very same laws of evolution. Is human freedom indeed so lim-
ited as to deny him the creation of any desired form? Are we forced to go, step
by step, from one form to the next, be they ever so similar? Prior to studying
these circumstances in depth, one can be tempted to answer such question with
«no». However, since one has investigated human labours rather more closely,
one finds that clearly, the answer has to be «yes». This evolution can be slow
or fast, but at all times Man, in his creation of new forms, needs to conform to
the very same principles that hold sway over the rest of nature.

There is no direct mention of selection here, but rather an emphasis on the step-wise
and gradual modification of form over time, of descent with modification, and of
phylogenetic constraints. Montelius, like Darwin, was a gradualist. He is one of the,
if not the, originator of the typological method in archaeology, and his reading of
the biological literature at the time gave him no reason to doubt its utility. His for-
mal representations of culture change and the methods used to study it are very
much like similar methods used in palaeontology (Fig. 2). This similarity in data
structure, analytical and graphic methods between archaeology and palaeontology
was widespread at this time (LYMAN 2009; LYMAN and O’BRIEN 2000a) and fur-
ther underlines the similarity of the two disciplines in the period between 1873 and
1900. The great difference is that whilst biology underwent a fundamental crisis and
renewal in the first half of the 20th century, archaeology became embroiled in the
political agendas of this period and, at least from the perspective adopted here,
failed to review and revise some its most central premises on, for instance, typol-
ogy. As late as 1929, Montelius’ protégé NILS ÅBERG (1929: 508) writes that “ty-
pology is the application of Darwinism to human labour”. Åberg here provides a
useful example on two grounds: Firstly, he is one of the very few archaeologists in
the years between 1903 and 1978 – that year sees the publication of Dunnell’s state-
ment paper on material culture evolution – who at all refer to Darwinism with re-

JEP 8(2010)2
192 FELIX RIEDE

gards to specifically material culture change, and secondly, he adheres strongly to a

typological view of the world.
In sum, we have an archaeology that after some initial delay identifies the sali-
ent conceptual and methodological similarities between organismal and material
culture change over long periods of time. This continues all the way up to the be-
ginning of the 20th century, when new discoveries in cell and molecular biology be-
gan to cast doubt on the very fundamentals of Darwin’s theory (e.g. BOWLER 1983;
NORDENSKIÖLD 1926). Specialist fields of enquiry and, most importantly perhaps,
education became divided into the academic territories still recognised today. Pa-
laeontology fell from grace as biology’s most important supplier of evolutionary
evidence, and into relative obscurity. The new generation of archaeologists were
mostly trained in the humanities and did not, perhaps could not see any merit in en-
gaging in interdisciplinary work with palaeontologists, let alone other biologists.
Whilst there are exceptions (GANDERT 1950), archaeology had parted ways with
palaeontology.

Figure 2. (A) Montelius’ formal depiction of cultural changes over time where such change is
gradual and anagenetic/phyletic. (B) An extension of Montelius’ scheme including a cladogenic
event. As in the culture-historical approach in the US, the seriation methods of Montelius were
designed (and thus also limited) to tracking anagenetic change (LYMAN and O’BRIEN 2006)

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WHY ISN’T ARCHAEOLOGY (MORE) DARWINIAN? A HISTORICAL PERSPECTIVE 193

4. REJECTION AND RENEWAL DURING THE 20TH CENTURY

The history of biology during the 20th century is well-charted (e.g. BOWLER 1993b;
MAYR 1991), a process that eventually resulted in the almost cathartic renewal of
the New Synthesis in the 1940 (MAYR 1942; HUXLEY 1943) and the subsequent
rapid, highly productive and on-going development of an extremely robust body of
theory and data. Archaeology in the meantime had retracted into an introspective,
empiricist, and often nationalistic phase (TRIGGER 1989). If reference was made to
theories of evolution it was to an increasingly outdated 19th-century variant of
‘crude’ phyletic Darwinism (e.g. NARR 1978; SACKETT 1991) or cultural neo-
evolutionism (DUNNELL 1988; PERSSON 1999). In an edited volume entitled Evolu-
tion and Anthropology: A Centennial Appraisal MAYR (1959: 28) brought the un-
suitability of typology as a means to study change over time in some population-
level property (such as genes or culture: SPERBER 1996) to the direct attention of
anthropologists and archaeologists:

The ultimate conclusions of the population thinker and the typologist are
precisely the opposite. For the typologist, the type (eidos) is real and the varia-
tion an illusion, while for the populationist the type (average) is an abstraction
and only the variation is real. No two ways of looking at nature could be more
different.

Little notice was taken and typological approaches, most commonly handed down
from the early days of archaeological enquiry, still dominate most if not all archaeo-
logical periods (e.g. BISSON 2000). An application of either Darwinian theory or
any of its attendant methods was unthinkable. BREW (1943: 53) sums up the preva-
lent opinion: “phylogenetic relationships do not exist between inanimate objects”.
The interpretation of Hildebrandt’s and Montelius’ references to evolution by
later commentators is revealing. ALMGREN (1967) for instance notes that Montelius
had to have some kind of theoretical notion that supported his typological series and
that the popularity of Darwinism at the time suggested itself. GRÄSLUND (1999:
166), too, argues that Montelius mentioned Darwinism merely as “a tool of instruc-
tive comparison”, that biological and cultural evolution were analogies only, rather
than examples of similar processes at work, a criticism that continues to be raised:
(BAMFORTH 2002). However, GRÄSLUND (1987: 104) bases his opinion largely on
the following position:

As is evident, Montelius – unlike Hildebrand – never referred to the theory

of natural selection, the actual explanatory theory in Darwinism. Without this
theory, i.e. the theory of ‘the struggle for existence’, which gives rise to the
natural selection which is the real driving force in evolution, little remains of
the special character of Darwinism.

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194 FELIX RIEDE

I argued above that the reason why Montelius never referred directly to natural se-
lection is that he chose to prioritise ‘descent with modification’ over ‘natural selec-
tion’ in his application of Darwinism ‘to the products of human labour’. In addition,
and more importantly, the above statement reveals that Gräslund is, like other ar-
chaeologists of that period (e.g. SHANKS and TILLEY 1993), out-of-date with re-
gards to evolutionary theory. The Darwinism, and by extension the Evolutionary
Archaeology he critiques is that of the 19th century. So even if his criticism of Mon-
telius’ use of evolutionary concepts has validity in a historical context, it is not valid
as a criticism of the application of modern evolutionary theory to material culture
change (RIEDE 2005). Darwinism has gone through a series of fundamental theo-
retical and conceptual changes since the time of Darwin and contemporary Evolu-
tionary Archaeology at least partly reflects these changes.
Important amongst these developments is the cladistic revolution in palaeon-
tology, which significantly reinvigorated this research field (GEE 2000). It was
quickly recognised – albeit not by archaeologists – that phylogenetic methods can
be used to study many historical relationships (PLATNICK and CAMERON 1977), and
as far as the underlying rationale (i.e. tree-thinking) “isn’t necessarily tied to living
things … all it requires is descent and inheritance” (O’HARA 1997: 325) phyloge-
netic methods are as applicable to the tracking-by-proxy of “learning lineages”
(HARMON et al. 2006: 209) manifest in craft items as they are to tracking-by-proxy
genetic lineages manifest in fossilised hard tissue. Cladistic and other phylogenetic
methods are today regularly used in EA (e.g. COLLARD and SHENNAN 2008;
COLLARD et al. 2006a).
A second major change in evolutionary theory has been the rise of the neutral
theory (KIMURA 1983). This important development has allowed an integration of
many micro-evolutionary processes into the general theory of evolution and has, to
some degree at least, dethroned selection as the prime mover in evolution (LEIGH
2007; OHTA and GILLESPIE 1996), without diminishing the ‘special character of
Darwinism’. The tools of the neutral theory of evolution are now also part and par-
cel of the toolkit of evolutionary-minded archaeologists (e.g. BENTLEY and
SHENNAN 2005; MESOUDI and LYCETT 2009; NEIMAN 1995).
While some early so-called ‘selectionist’ formulations of EA were heavily fo-
cused on systematics and selection (e.g. DUNNELL 1971, 1978; O’BRIEN and
HOLLAND 1992), and so engendered considerable criticism, the field has moved on
in many ways. Rapid progress is being made towards a better understanding of ac-
tual social information transmission processes (APEL 2008; EERKENS and LIPO
2007; SHENNAN 1996, 2002b; SHENNAN and STEELE 1999; STARK, BOWSER and
HORNE 2008; WELLS, STRICKLAND and LALAND 2006), and tree- and network-
based phylogenetics, the comparative method (MACE and HOLDEN 2005; MACE,
HOLDEN and SHENNAN 2005; O’BRIEN et al. 2003a), neutral models (BENTLEY and
SHENNAN 2005), as well as optimal foraging theory and its derivatives (BOONE
2002; KUHN 2004) each play their methodological and explanatory role (SHENNAN
2002a, 2008).

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5. DISCUSSION AND CONCLUSION

19th-century Darwinism ≠ Darwinism today. Although Darwin’s notion of descent

with modification still holds today, many important aspects of his theory have been
filled out, added to, and modified (Fig. 3). When looking for the historical com-
monalities and differences between biology and an evolutionary archaeology it is
important to compare like with like. Montelius’ formulations of evolution were
fully adequate when seen in the light of 19th-century Darwinism. They are not ade-
quate when compared against contemporary Darwinism. Contemporary evolution-
ary approaches to material culture change have taken on board many of the concep-
tual and theoretical changes that characterise today’s biology, albeit with some time
lag. Such a lag is characteristic of theoretical developments in archaeology, which
as a subject has a tendency (for better or for worse) to borrow theories from other
disciplines. It is also, however, a result of two tragic deaths: David Clarke’s in 1976
and Ben Cullen’s in 1995.

Figure 3. A timeline of significant events and phases in the development of evolutionary biology
(in black) and of Evolutionary Archaeology (in grey). In archaeology the phase up to about 1900
is generally referred to as antiquarian, the following phase to the 1960s as culture-historical,
from the 1960s to the 1980s as processual, and the remaining phase as post-processual. This last
phase is theoretically heterogeneous, but dominated by sociological and anthropological concerns
and theoretical inspirations

In 1968, Clarke (1937–1976) published Analytical Archaeology (CLARKE

1968), which had as its goal “the characterization of diachronic patterns and proc-
esses through the application of analytical methodologies” (SHENNAN 2004: 4). It
prefigured in a variety of ways the Darwinian archaeology that was to emerge some

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196 FELIX RIEDE

decades later, and still reads fresh today (SHENNAN 1989, 2004). Like Montelius,
Clarke’s primary interest lay with the explanation of long-term material culture
change as a result of transmission processes. He drew on then-current developments
in systematics, especially numerical taxonomy (SOKAL and SNEATH 1963) and
used, amongst other methods, tree-building algorithms to examine archaeological
data. Around the time of Clarke’s death, systematics was rocked by the cladistic
revolution (GEE 2000; SCOTT-RAM 1990) and one can only speculate about how
much earlier phylogenetics would have become part of the archaeological analytical
toolkit had Clarke not passed away.
With Clarke’s death in 1976, his works began to gather dust on library shelves.
It took until the early 1990s for a new “Darwinian resurgence” (CULLEN 1993: 179)
to gather pace, following a general trend of applying evolutionary reasoning to hu-
mans and human culture (SEAR, LAWSON and DICKINS 2007). Early examples of
this methodological diversification included the above-mentioned selectionist ap-
proaches as well as memetics-like perspectives, such as Cullen’s (1964–1995) Cul-
tural Virus Theory that argued for the decoupling of biological and cultural inheri-
tance, and that cultural traits can be modelled as parasite-like with regards to their
human ‘hosts’ (CULLEN 1995, 1996a, 1996b; STEELE, CULLEN and CHIPPINDALE
1999). While actual replicators, i.e. memes, are by no means necessary for a worka-
ble model of cultural evolution (BLOCH 2000; HENRICH, BOYD and RICHERSON
2008 – but see GERS 2008), these discussions all contributed to a more deliberate
reductionism in analytically tackling material culture change, paralleling in some
ways the shift from a typological to a population perspective. A memetic or trait-
based view of culture only really makes sense from a population perspective. In ad-
dition, there may be some methodological mileage in viewing cultural lineages as
‘historically associated’. The biologists PAGE and CHARLESTON (1998) have argued
that the association between host and parasite is just one of many historical associa-
tions in the biological world that can be studied using so-called co-phylogenetic
methods. RIEDE (2009) has recently extended this view to associations between bio-
logical lineages and material culture, and between different cultural lineages as a
potentially useful extension of the cultural phylogenetic approach. More generally,
however, this discussion about whether and if so, how Darwinian models are appli-
cable to long-term material culture change resulted in a more mature sub-discipline
characterised by both internal diversity but also a broadly shared outlook (SHENNAN
2002).
With SHENNAN (2004: 3–4) this paper argues that “the aim of archaeology is
to obtain valid knowledge about the past … This does not mean that we are con-
demned to producing teleological accounts of “progress” leading to the present, but
that we should investigate the past in a way that plays to archaeologists’ strengths,
which undoubtedly lie in the characterization of long-term patterning in past socie-
ties”. Shennan proceeds to argue that neo-Darwinian models and methods provide
the best framework to study such long-term sequences of material culture change. I
have shown here that this argument is not new. Hildebrandt and Montelius made

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WHY ISN’T ARCHAEOLOGY (MORE) DARWINIAN? A HISTORICAL PERSPECTIVE 197

exactly the same point, arguing that archaeology is to cultural studies as palaeontol-
ogy is to biology. Seen in the contexts of their own contemporaneous discourses,
the arguments are by and large identical. The important difference is that between
1903 and 1995, archaeologists have in fact been able to incorporate some of the im-
portant up-dates of Darwinian theory. Defining EA’s remit, scope and contribution
– or in HILDEBRANDT’S (1873: 1) words its “task, requirements and rights” – in this
way makes it perhaps a less grand and ambitious, but certainly a much better de-
fined field of study. This paper has attempted a “rational reconstruction of history
… along the axis of method and concept” (GAYON 1998: xv) with regards to the
development of EA. Not all archaeological data has to be explained with reference
to evolution, just like many biologists get on with their work without thinking much
or at all about evolution. In the final instance, however, an overarching framework
such as the one provided by Darwinian theory is required for us to make sense of
long-term patterns of culture change (sensu DOBZHANSKY 1973) and true syntheses
can only be achieved in collaboration with other human sciences (MESOUDI and
O’BRIEN 2009).

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

I thank Alex Mesoudi, Rob Foley, Michael Lamb and Djuke Veldhuis (all Univer-
sity of Cambridge) for organising a very stimulating conference, where this paper
was first presented. In particular I thank Alex Mesoudi for sharing his timeline fig-
ure with me. This work was sponsored by the British Academy (Post-doctoral Re-
search Fellowship), the AHRC Centre for the Evolution of Cultural Diversity
(UCL), and the Institute for Anthropology, Archaeology & Linguistics (University
of Aarhus, DK).

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