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What Is Evolution? A Response to BamforthAuthor(s): Michael J. O'Brien, R. Lee Lyman, Robert D. LeonardSource: American Antiquity, Vol. 68, No. 3 (Jul., 2003), pp. 573-580Published by: Society for American ArchaeologyStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/3557109 .

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COMMENTS

WHAT IS EVOLUTION? A RESPONSE TO BAMFORTH

MichaelJ. O'Brien,R. Lee Lyman,andRobert D. Leonard

Douglas Bamforth 's recent paper in American Antiquity, "Evidence and Metaphor in Evolutionary Archaeology," charges

that Darwinism has little to offer archaeology except in a metaphorical sense. Specifically, Bamforth claims that arguments

that allegedly link evolutionary processes to the archaeological record are unsustainable. Given Bamforth's narrow view

of evolution-that it must be defined strictly in terms of changes in gene frequency-he is correct. But no biologist or pale-

ontologist would agree with Bamforth 's claim that evolution is a process that must be viewedfundamentally at the microlevel.

Evolutionary archaeology has argued that materials in the archaeological record are phenotypic in the same way that hard

parts of organisms are. Thus changes in the frequencies of archaeological variants can be used to monitor the effects of

selection and drift on the makers and users of those materials. Bamforth views this extension of the human phenotype as

metaphorical because to him artifacts are not somatic features, meaning their production and use are not entirely controlled

by genetic transmission. He misses the critical point that in terms of evolution, culture is as significant a transmission sys-

tem as genes are. There is nothing metaphorical about viewing cultural transmission from a Darwinian point of view.

El reciente trabajo de Douglas Bamforth que apareci6 en American Antiquity y Ilamado "Evidencia y mettifora en Arqueologia

Evolutiva" acusa al darvinismo de tener poco que ofrecer a la arqueologia excepto en un amplio sentido metaforico. Especi-

ficamente, Bamforth afirma que los argumentos que supuestamente conectan la seleccion y el desplazamiento con el registro

arqueologico son insostenibles. Dada la opini6n estrecha de la evolucio'n-que deber ser estrictamente definida en terminos

de cambios en frecuencia de genes-tiene razon. Pero ningin bi6logo o paleont6logo estaria de acuerdo con la acusacion de

Bamforth de que la evolucion es un proceso que deber ser considerado fundamentalmente al nivel micro. La arqueologia evo-

lutiva ha sostenido que los materiales en el registro arqueol6gico sonfenotipos de la misma manera que lo son las partes duras

de los organismos. De esta manera, los cambios en las frecuencias de las variantes arqueoldgicas pueden ser usados paraseguir de cerca los efectos de la seleccion y el desplazamiento en losfabricantes y usuarios de esos materiales. Bamforth con-

sidera esta extension de los fenotipos humanos como metaforica porque en su opinion los artefactos no son caracteristicas

somdticas, lo que quiere decir que su produccion y uso no estdn controlados completamente por transmision genetica. El no

capta el punto critico que en terminos de evolucion, la cultura es un sistema de transmision tan significante como los genes.

No hay nada metaforico en considerar la transmisi6n cultural desde un punto de vista darviniano.

~~TW e appreciate onstructive riticismsof

evolutionary archaeology (EA here-

after) (e.g., Boone and Smith 1998;Preucel1999;Schiffer1996;Shennan 002;Weiss

andHayashida2002) becausetheycause us bothtoclarifycertainpointswe havemadeand o recon-

siderotherpointsin a new light.Inresponding o

thesecriticisms,wehavebeen ablenotonlyto con-

centrateon highlighting epistemological differ-

ences between EA and, say, humanbehavioral

ecology (Lymanand O'Brien 1998) and behav-

ioralarchaeology O'Brienet al. 1998)butalso to

pointoutsignificant reasof agreement mong he

variousapproaches O'Brienand Lyman2000a,

2002a).By doing so we hope to set the stagefor

anevolutionary ynthesis narchaeology imilar o

thatwhich occurred n biology andpaleontology

in the late1930sandearly1940s,referredo astheNew Synthesis(Huxley1942).

Themostrecentcriticismof EA is by DouglasBamforth 2002), who maintains hat the use of

evolutionary heoryandprinciples n archaeologyis strictly metaphorical.Accordingto Bamforth

(2002:435),anyargumentshat inkselection,orfor

that matterany other evolutionary process, to

archaeologicaldata are "unsustainable."Other

Michael J. O'Brien ? Department f Anthropology,Universityof Missouri, Columbia,MO 65211

R. Lee Lyman * Department f Anthropology,Universityof Missouri, Columbia,MO 65211

Robert D. Leonard * Department f Anthropology,Universityof New Mexico, Albuquerque,NM 87131

AmericanAntiquity,68(3), 2003, pp. 573-580

CopyrightO2003 by the Society forAmericanArchaeology

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archaeologistsave latly ejectedEA,butBamforth

is oneof the fewto offera detailedexplanationor

so doing.Hisconsiderableffortsnotwithstanding,Bamforth'sarguments flawedandunconvincing.

Bamforth otonlymischaracterizesarwinism utdraws whatat best can be labeleda caricature f

EA, which we suspect s attributableo his making

onlyacursory xaminationf thenow-extensiveit-

erature n thesubject.Bamforths selective n his

citationsand leaves out, for example,the book-

length treatmentof EA by O'Brien and Lyman

(2000b) hatbecameavailable yearandhalfbefore

his revisedmanuscriptwas accepted.Had Bam-

forthread hatbook,oranyof anumberof articles

writtennthe mid-to-late1990s,many

of the ssues

he raises,especially hosehaving o do withparal-lels betweenEAandpaleontology,wouldhavebeen

addressed.Would heyhave beenaddressedo his

satisfaction?Probablynot. We suspectthat even

hadheread hoseworks,Bamforthwould not have

alteredhisopinionorhis article.He stillwouldhave

claimed hatEA-and hefingershumanbehavioral

ecology as well-uses evolutionary theory

metaphoricallyo study hepast.

Why can Bamforthmake such a claim?First,like otheranthropologists eforehim,anddespiteall evidence to the contrary,Bamforthbuilds an

inaccuratedistinctionbetweenhumanityand the

restof thenaturalworld.Like it ornot,cultureand

its material onsequencesaretheresult of biolog-ical phenomena.Followingthis,Bamforthasserts

thatarchaeologistssingevolutionaryheorydo not

makeanyuseful connectionsbetweenevolution-

aryprocessand he material ecord.Thisargumentcanbe madeonlyunderhisnarrow,eductionist ef-

inition of evolution. Bamforthadoptsa familiar

argumentativegambit:Structure he premise in

sucha waythat he conclusionhas to be true.And

in Bamforth's ase it works,butonlyrhetorically.If we were to view evolutionsolely in his terms,then we wouldagreewithhim thatEA would not

evenbe possible,let alonehaveanymeritas a sci-

entificapproachostudying hepast.But we do not

agreewith his limiteddefinitionof evolution,nor

dobiologistsorpaleontologists.We focus muchof

ourattentionhereon the issue of what evolutionentailsbecauseBamforth's ntire ase restsonhow

one defines the term-as does the case of anyoneinvolved nhistorical cience.This is anythingbut

a semantic ssue.

Evolution Is More Than Genes

Bamforth 2002:436)assumesas his starting oint"theuniversally nderstoodmeaningof 'evolution'

[which] refers most fundamentallyto changes

through ime in the relative requencyof genes ina given biologicalpopulation."He does this "not

because[evolution] annotmeansomethingmore

generalbut becauseusing this narrowdefinition

helpsto identify mportantimits onarchaeology'saccess to evolutionary process" (Bamforth

2002:436).No oneseriouslydoubts heroleplayed

by genes in evolution,but it is only a role. The

importantpointis, evolutionmeanssignificantlymore thansimplychangesin allelic frequencies,andit is in that

expandedarena hat

archaeology,biology, andpaleontology itcomfortably.As has

been pointedoutnumerous imes,Darwinhadno

accurate hypothesis of biological heritability,

althoughhe knewthat it was critically mportantto evolution.His theoryof descentwith modifica-

tion can be writtensimply,without referenceto

genes, by using the more generalterm replica-tors-an entitythatpasses on its structure uring

reproduction Godfrey-Smith2000; Hull 1988).

Replicators ave heability oincreasenfrequency

exponentially, but there is a limited supply of

resources heycanuse to do so. Thus,replicators

compete or thosematerials, nd hosethatarebet-

tercompetitorsare more successful atreplicatingthemselves.Thisnotion of replicatorss asimpor-tantto EA as it is to biology andpaleontology-a

point that we and others have made repeatedly

(Leonardand Jones 1987; Lymanand O'Brien

1998;Neff2000, 2001;O'BrienandLyman2000a,

2002a).Thenotion of competitionbetweenreplicators

and heirresultingdifferentialeproductionefines

evolution via naturalselection, but it leaves out

driftand othersortingprocesses(VrbaandGould

1986) that influencethe differential eproductionofreplicators.Theseprocessesbecamepartof evo-

lutionary heoryonly in thedaysof the New Syn-thesis-a period n which Darwin'smechanismof

natural election andthe ideas of geneticistswere

wed to form the modem version of evolutionary

theory.Didbiologists mmediatelyadopta defini-tion of evolution as genetic change?No. Ernst

Mayr,a chiefarchitect f theSynthesis,notedthat

to him and othernaturalistsn the 1940s,"evolu-

tion was not a change n gene frequenciesbut the

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COMMENTS

twin processesof adaptivechangeand the originof [taxonomic]diversity"Mayr1991:147).Given

ourreadingof Mayr's(1942) firstmajorbook on

evolution,his retrospectivetatements accurate.

Whatabout aterdefinitions-those madewell

after heunification f thenaturalistsnd hegeneti-cists? JohnEndler's 1986:5)definition s typical:Evolution is "anynet directionalchange or anycumulative hangein the characteristics f organ-isms or populationsover many generations-inotherwords,descent with modification. t explic-

itlyincludes heoriginaswell asthespreadof alle-

les,variants,raitvalues,orcharactertates."Endler

(1986:14)also statesthat evolution"ismore than

merelya

changein traitdistributions r allele fre-

quencies." notherwords,contraryo Bamforth's

allegeduniversally nderstood, fundamental"ef-

inition,(1) phenotypic raitsandcharacters ather

thanustgenescanchangeboth heir tatesand heir

frequencies of expression;(2) they can changewithin a populationas a resultof vertical trans-

mission,or whatDarwin ermeddescentwith mod-

ification;and (3) they can also change between

populationsas a resultof horizontalransmission,orwhatEndler efers o as"spread." inally, none

of the leadingtextbooks n evolutionarybiology,evolution is definedwithoutreference to genes.MarkRidley(1993:5)states hat"Evolutionmeans

change,change nthe formandbehaviorof organ-isms betweengenerations,"nd in theglossaryto

thatbook Ridley (1993:634) definesevolution as

"thechangein a lineageof populationsbetween

generations." hesechanges,spreadovergeolog-ical time,are whatpaleontologists tudy.

In short, hereis no evidence to supportBam-

forth's"universally nderstood" efinitionof evo-

lution.Inpaleontology,a discipline hatBamforth

holdsupas modelof howevolutionary heorycan

be applied to the study of the past in non-

metaphoricalterms, George Gaylord Simpson

(1949a:205-206)notedshortlyafter heSynthesisthatevolution"maybe consideredas change in

genetic compositionof populations,as morpho-

logic changein ancestral-descendentines, or as

taxonomicprogressionand diversificationwithin

a lineorcomplexof largeraxonomic cope.Thereare husgenetic,morphologic, nd axonomic ates

of evolution." fewyearsearlier n his bookTempoandMode in Evolution,which formedpartof the

frameworkor theSynthesis,Simpson 1944:xxix)

attemptedowedknowledgeof geneticswithpale-

ontologybutadmittedhat"One annotdentifyany

particularet of alleles in fossils, butone can rec-

ognizephenomenahatarecomparablewith those

causedby

allelesunderexperimental

onditions."

That s, paleontologistsmust assume that hephe-

notypic changes theyperceiveamonga sequenceof fossils comprisinga lineagerepresentgenetic

change.This fact is still admittedby paleontolo-

gists (e.g., Eldredge1989, 1999),and talwayswill

be.Evenbiologistswho call on the fossil recordas

evidenceofevolutionadmit his.Forexample,biol-

ogist John Moore (2002:90) recently observed,"evolutions ahistorical cience,whichmeans hat

verylittle can be verified

bydirect observation."

The fossil recordparticularlydoes "notactuallyshow the process of change of one species into

another-it could not, since fossils are not livingandso do notmutate, eproduce,ndundergoelec-

tion"(Moore2002:82).And yet mutation, epro-duction,andselectionarepreciselywhatBamforth

allegesthatpaleontologists tudydirectly.Because paleontologistscannotdirectlyper-

ceive eithergenesorchanges nfrequencies f alle-

les over time, they spent considerable time

worrying bouthowtoadapthebiological-species

concept that emerged from the Synthesis (e.g.,Arkell and Moy-Thomas 1940; Imbrie 1957;

Sylvester-Bradley956).Ultimately,heyacknowl-

edgedthat ossil "species"were unitsboundedby

morphometric riteriaratherthanby genetic or

behavioral(reproductivebehavior,particularly)ones(Newell1949;Simpson1940).As aresult, os-

sil taxa weretypicallydefinedon the basis of mul-

tiplespecimens Newell 1956).Theseassumptionsandprocedures ave carriedover to modempale-

ontology (e.g., RaupandStanley1978).As pale-

ontologistRichardFox (1986:73)put it, labelingone setof fossils speciesA andanother et speciesB comprisesan"interpretationivento fossil evi-

dence by the mind,withinthe theoretical rame-

work of a species concept." That theoretical

framework,rrespective f the chosenspeciescon-

cept, is Darwinism.

In his efforts odiscreditEA,Bamforthgnores

these points. Instead,he attemptsto show thatwhereasEA uses evolutionarymetaphor, aleon-

tology's "success in studying evolution is

undoubted"Bamforth2002:440). He pointsout

that "archaeologists annotdirectlyobserve the

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AMERICANANTIQUITY

actualprocessesof evolutionthatoperatedn the

past;instead,we are forcedto infer the operationof these (and other)processes from patterns n

materialculture" p. 440). We agree.If Bamforth

were familiarwiththepaleontologicaliterature,ewouldrecognize hathe is making he samepointsthatpaleontologistshavebeenmaking ordecades

aboutthe fossil record.He continues,"Further-

more,archaeological atapertainnvirtually verycase to the activities of groupsof humanbeingswhosesocialand/or amilial elations reunknown,andthisis especiallytruefor analysesthataggre-

gatedata romsites scattered ver argeregionsand

long spansof time" p.440).Again,we agree.But

noticethat f we substituted paleontologicalata"for "archaeological ata" n the abovequoteand

struckheword"human,"llpaleontologistswould

agree.Andyet theydo not characterizewhattheydo as metaphorical, or shouldthey.

Despite what he sees as parallels between

archaeologyandpaleontology, o Bamforth hose

similaritiesare "superficial nd profoundlymis-

leading.Theprimary ata hatpaleontologists tudyare observationsof the skeletal remains of past

organisms.... The problemof linking temporalpatternsof changein paleontologicaldata to evo-

lutionessentiallydoesnotarisebecausethelinkis

so obviousandrelativelywell-understood"Bam-forth2002:440).Herethe linkto which Bamforth

is referrings thatbetweengenes andphenotype.Bamforth(2002:445) defines phenotypeas "the

outcomeof an interaction etween he information

included n anorganism'sgenes andthe environ-

mentthatorganismoccupies."We agree.He also

notes hatEA hasexpanded

his erm o includearti-

facts as partof the "extendedphenotype," ut he

viewsthisextensionasmetaphorical. here s noth-

ing metaphorical bout t. As EA haspointedout

time and again (Dunnell 1989; Leonard2001;Leonardand Jones 1987; O'Brien and Holland

1995;O'BrienandLyman2000b),pots,projectile

points,houses,andmyriadothercultural eatures

are phenotypic n the sameway thatanimal"arti-

facts"are.Being as tiedto genes as Bamforth s,heshouldunderstandhatmanyculturaleatures-

weaponsandclothing o namea few-function in

thesamemanner s a chitinous helldoes: o ensure

the survival of germ-line replicators(Dawkins

1982). Instead,he misses thepoint, claimingthat

EA "metaphorically equates the information

requiredo produceanartifactwithgeneticinfor-

mation"(Bamforth2002:445).This is incorrect.

WhatEA has done is to view genes andcultureas

transmission ystemsthatact to create variation.

Whetheror not that variation omes underselec-tivecontrol,orwhether t driftsalongin a popula-tion,is anothermatter. mportanto ourpointhere

is that no evolutionaryarchaeologistwe know of

haseverequatedculturalnformationwithgeneticinformation.Even more mportantly,here s noth-

ing metaphorical boutviewingcultural ransmis-

sion from a Darwinianpoint of view (Boyd and

Richerson1985; Durham1991). That statement

should be obvious (Bettinger and Eerkens

1999:239):It seemsclear o us thatcultural ransmissionmustaffectDarwinian itness-how coulditbe otherwise?And Darwinian itness mustalsobearon culturalransmission.gain,howcould hatnotbe true?At minimum, umansmusthave the biological,hence, geneticallytransmitted,bility or the cultural ransmis-sion of behaviors that certainly affectDarwinianitness. It is obvious,at the sametime,thatcultural ransmissioniffersn fun-damentalways from any form of genetictransmission.. Again, his s whatwewouldexpect.... [A]swithsexualreproduction,hehumanuse of cultural ransmissions simplytheexploitingof anevolutionary pportunity.Todenythat would mplythat theculturallymediatedevolutionary uccess of anatomi-

callymodernhumanss merelyserendipitoushappenstance.

Units of cultural ransmissioncan be defined

theoretically s "the argestunitsof sociallytrans-

mittedinformation thatreliably

andrepeatedlywithstand transmission" Pocklingtonand Best

1997:81).EA measures"theeffectof transmission

onvariability,and] ulture-historicalypes,ascon-

ceivedby archaeologists, reentirely[reasonable

proxies or]the unitof culturalransmission"LipoandMadsen2001:100;emphasis n original).The

replicativesuccess of these units is what evolu-

tionary archaeologistsseek to explain (Leonard

2001).Thoseunits hatare unctionalwillbe sorted

by natural election; hose thatarestylisticwill be

sortedbythevagariesoftransmission.Whetherhe

formerunits,as manifest n artifacts,nfluence he

biological reproductivesuccess of their human

bearers s an empiricalmatter, he assessmentof

which requiresthe time depth provided by the

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COMMENTS

archaeologicalecord O'BrienandHolland1992).Sometimes heywill, andsometimes heywill not.

AnddespiteBamforth's laims,EAhas useda bat-

tery of methods,includingfrequencyand occur-

rence seriation, clade-diversity diagrams, andcladograms,o determinehisempirically Lymanand O'Brien 2000; O'Brien and Lyman2000b;O'Brienet al. 2001,2002). WhatEA hasnot done

is todevelopa scale to measure hanginggenefre-

quenciesbetween generations.Neither has pale-

ontology.

Darwinism and a

"Largely Unchanging Species"

Perhapsheunderlyingeason hatBamforth doptsthe positionhe does-including his idiosyncraticdefinitionof evolutionandhis approval f paleon-

tology butnotEA as anevolutionary cience-is

capturedn this sentence:"Outsideof researchon

thearchaeologyof humanancestors,archaeologi-cal data consistof observationsmade on thearti-

facts and features eft behindby a single, largely

unchangingspecies"(Bamforth2002:440). Here

Bamforth oundscuriously ike a macroevolution-

ist-one whose interest snot in the

day-to-dayturnover f individualswithina speciesbut npat-ternsandratesof changeamong ineagesthat ead

totheoriginandmultiplicationf species.Wehave

detailed nnumerous lacesthatcertainmacroevo-

lutionary oncepts,suchaspunctuatedquilibrium

(O'Brien and Lyman2000b), and macroevolu-

tionarymethods, uchascladisticsandclade-diver-

sitydiagramsLymanandO'Brien2000;O'Brien

and Lyman 1999, 2000b, 2002a; O'Brien et al.

2001,2002),are

directlyapplicableo

archaeology.Importantly,hose methodscan be used to studytheremainsof asingle speciessuch asHomosapi-ens. The critical ssue is not thatone, two, orten

taxa areinvolved;rather, he issue is a matterof

carefullychoosingone's analyticalunits (LymanandO'Brien2002;O'BrienandLyman2002b).EA

will oftenbe forcedto studyonlymacroevolution-

ary changebecause the analogueof microevolu-

tionary change among organisms is genetic,

somethingno paleontologisthas ever claimed to

be able to monitordirectly.Archaeologistsarein

the samesituation;hey studychangein artifacts,notchange n the ideasbehind he artifactsLymanandO'Brien2001).

As we have noted elsewhere (O'Brien and

Lyman2000c),mostarchaeologistsave ittleprob-lem withthe factthatsome 5-6 millionyearsagothe line thatproduced himpanzeesdiverged rom

the line thatproducedhominids and eventually

membersof thegenusHomo.Whenwe see fossilslinedup in a certainway,and we can see thepro-found changesthat hominids have gone through

during he last5-6 millionyears,we askourselves,what else but evolution could have caused such

large-scalechange?Bamforthwould agree.But

whatabout hangeover he ast100,000years?Can

we seeenoughmorphologicalhangeover hat panto indicateevolutionhas takenplace?Sometimes

we can,or at eastour axonomic fforts uggestwe

can,althoughtis moredifficult o see the cumula-tive changes n phenotypesseparatedby 100,000

yearsthan t is inphenotypes eparated y5-6 mil-

lion years. Why? Because variousevolutionary

processeshave had 50-60 times longerto effect

change nthe latter ample han n theformer.This

means that he effectsaremuchmore evident han

theyarewhena shorterperiodof time is involved.

Supposewe shortenheperiod o 10,000years.Do

we seeany arge-scalehange?Notveryoften.Does

thismean

thatevolution

hasstoppedoperating nhumans?No,itmeanssimply hat nthevastmajor-

ityof casesthe timespan s tooshorteventobeginto see thelarge-scale hangesthatwe customarilyassociate with evolution. Bamforthwants to see

these arge-scale hangessothathe canfeel assured

that evolutionhas takenplace. To him, anythingless thanthat s not evolution,or at least it is not

worth studying. He would profit from readingJonathanWeiner's 1994)TheBeakofthe Finchor

PeterGrant's1999)Ecology

andEvolutionfDar-win's Finches.Bothbooksmake t plainthatonce

in awhileevolution anbe seenempiricallyn suc-

cessive generationsof organisms,and we do not

needto reach he molecular evel to see it.

Archaeologistsarenot alonein failingto rec-

ognize the complementarity of micro- and

macroevolutionary erspectiveswhen it comes to

humanevolution.Severalprominent volutionary

biologists andpaleontologists e.g., Gould 1996;

Huxley1956;Simpson1949b)havealsostated hat

humansarea"single, argelyunchanging pecies."Under this view, evolutionaryprocesses such as

selection and drift do not operate on humans

becauseourcapacity orculturehasdecoupledus

from evolution. f suchis thecase,andcultureand

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its attendanteatureshave createda gulf between

humans and evolutionaryprocesses, then a Dar-

winian perspectiveis nonapplicableto the vast

majority f thearchaeologicalecord.Wecontend,

however, that culture is simply one adaptiveresponse that a particular ineage of organismsevolved. As such, it does not exemptits bearers

fromevolutionaryprocesses.

Invokingcultureas a decouplingagentlocates

cause in the wrong place. Culture s a different

mode of transmissionthan genes are (Aunger

2002), but the difference does not lead to the

inescapableconclusionthathumansas organismshaveevolved themeans o stop evolving.Do these

differences ndicate hatselection and driftplayatbest minimalrolesinreshufflingboth somaticand

nonsomaticcharacters?No. Humans odayareno

more immune o evolutionary rocessesthan heywere30,000yearsago.Weagreewith whatat east

one evolutionarybiologist said aboutculture:It

merelyaltered"thecomponents f fitness[and he]directionalhanges"prompted yselection."What

has happened s that the [selective]environment,theadjudicatorf whichgenotypesare it,hasbeen

altered" Lerer 1959:181).Ignoring he simple dichotomybetweenlong-

term,cumulativeevolutionary esults and short-

term aspects of evolutionis responsiblefor the

questionthat bothersBamforth.Thatquestion s,"Where'sheevolution?"keptics uchas Bamforth

are ooking or thebigresultsandmissing hepointthat hose arge-scale, umulativeesultsare heend

products f countless mall-scale hanges hat ook

placeover a very longtimeperiod.Paleontologistsdo nothave accessto the fine detailthat archaeol-

ogists can see, but they do not doubt that their

macroscalepicturecomprises iterallymillions of

tinystructures nd routineprocessesthatwenton

day afterday, centuryaftercentury,millennium

after millennium. They accept such detail as

axiomatic, ust as they acceptthatgenetic changewasbehind omeofthechange heysee.Conversely,

archaeologists rarely have access to anything

approachinghe evolutionarybig picture,butwe

shouldnotget

so lostindetail hatwe forget hat t

is thosedetails hatcumulatively re evolution.

Conclusions

In his penultimate ection,Bamforth 2002:447)

states, "like evolutionaryarchaeology,systems

archeologywas goingto finallymake us scientists

... and lead us toward theoretical integration with

otheracademicdisciplines."We find Bamforth's

statement-indeed, this entire section of his arti-

cle-irrelevant. Thatsystems heory ailed omakearchaeologya science implies nothingaboutthe

successor failureof EA or of anyother ntellectual

programhatoffers scienceas a solution to manyof theproblems n whicharchaeologists reinter-

ested. Moreto thepoint,EA is not someprescrip-tive exercisethat,if followed,turnsone instantlyintoa scientist.All EAdoes-all it cando-is offer

a coherent,theoretically grounded approachto

examining he archaeological ecord.EA rests on

the premise that objects in the archaeologicalrecord,because heywerepartsof pastphenotypes,were shapedby the sameevolutionaryprocessesas were the somatic featuresof their makersand

users. This is a shorthandway of sayingthat the

possessorsof theobjectswereactedon by evolu-

tionaryprocesses.Bamforth 2002:449) closes his review of EA

by stating,"Rigorous echnicalanalysisandcare-

fulconsideration othof multiple inesofevidence

andof multiplepotential xplanationsorpatternsin thatevidenceare whatmakeus competent ci-

entists,not ourcommitmento any particularhe-

oretical perspective. Systems archaeologyfoundered n large partbecause it failed to deal

withissueslikethese,andwe are well on ourwayto seeingwhetherornotevolutionary rchaeologywill have the same fate."All we can askis, where

does Bamforth hinkscientificexplanation omes

from f notin largepart romtheory?Tous,expla-nation is one

parttheoryand one

partempiricalstandard(Leonard 2001; O'Brien and Lyman

2000b). EA has been particularlylear on where

the theorycomes from-Darwinism as generallyunderstood y biologistsandpaleontologists.thas

beenequallyclear that heempirical tandardsre

derived romthat heory,notsimplyfromreceived

archaeologicalwisdom.The datarequirementsor

EA arehigh,buttheyusuallyare in science.

In sum, we find Bamforth'spresentationnot

only unconvincingbutdisappointingor reasons

thatgo farbeyondthis particulardiscussion.As

Bamforthnotes,othersocial sciences are ncreas-

ingly embracingthe explanatorypower of Dar-

winianevolutionaryheory e.g.,Cziko1995).And

therearegood reasonsfor this. Evolutionaryhe-

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COMMENTS

ory, as its growthin sociology, economics, psy-

chology, andanthropologyattests,now arguably

explainsmorehumanbehavior hananyother he-

oretical perspective. Yet many anthropologistschoose to distancethemselves fromevolutionary

theory or thesimplereason hat heydeeplydesire

for humanityto be distinct from the biologicalrealm,despiteallevidenceto thecontrary.Twenty

years ago this attitudemight have been simplyunfortunate. ow itis decidedlymoreproblematic,as notonly does evolutionary heorygive us great

insightsinto the past andpresent, t is also clear

that many problems that confront humanity

today-global warming,deteriorationf the ozone

layer,globalreduction fbiodiversity, eneticengi-

neering,AIDS,cloning, ncreasingbacterial esis-tance to antibiotics, cultural extinction-will

requireknowledgeof evolutionaryheory o solve.

Acknowledgments.We gratefullyacknowledgecommentsbyTimKohler,Geoff Clark,and threeanonymousreviewerson

how to improvethe manuscript.Maria Sol Colina translated

the abstract nto Spanish.

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