The Search for a Paradigm in Archaeology Evolutionary Theory and the "Selectionist" School of Thought

Abstract

According to evolutionary archaeology (the "selectionist" school of archaeological theory) the archaeological record can be explained in terms of generic Darwinian processes of evolution. Evolution is seen as the differential persistence of cultural traits and as the differential reproductive success of individuals in result of the cultural traits they possess. However, one of the major criticisms of evolutionary archaeology is concerned with the absence of a defined unit of selection. Evolutionary biologist Richard Dawkins and others have suggested that the same generic process as biological evolution governs culture change and that culture evolves as a result of the differential replication of cultural units, the memes, that play an analogous role as genes. If this is so, it is suggested that the unit of selection that might be lacking in evolutionary archaeology is the meme. Since memetics (the study of memes as cultural replicators) is a theory of cultural change it has the potential to provide the explanatory framework for the temporal and spatial patterns of archaeological phenomena. Despite its potential, memetics seems to introduce Lamarckian processes of evolution in Ihe culture medium, which are not very explanatory. The purpose of this article is to show the potential of generic evolutionary processes in explanations of culture change and discuss the major problems involved in this theoretical approach.