Archaeoethnology

Description

Peter N. Peregrine:

"Comparative research is a necessary tool in evolutionary science. It is only through comparison that we can identify diversity, and it is the creation and maintenance of diversity that evolutionary science attempts to understand. Within anthropology, comparative research is usually called cross-cultural research or ethnology. The unit of analysis in such research is the culture. What constitutes a culture is rather loosely defined, but includes sharing a common language, a common economic and socio-political system, and some degree of territorial continuity. Because any given population within a culture will show some divergence from the others, a culture is usually represented by a particular community, and because cultures are always changing, the representative or focal community is described as of a particular point in time.

Cross-cultural research makes two fundamental assumptions. First, that a culture can be adequately represented by a single community. And second, that cultures can be compared. The first assumption is based on the idea that any definition of culture will be broad enough that any given community in a culture will share fundamental features of behavior and organization with others similarly defined. The second is based on the uniformitarian assumption underlying all evolutionary science: if an explanation accurately reflects reality, “measures of the presumed causes and effects should be significantly and strongly associated synchronically” (Ember and Ember 1995:88).

Archaeoethnology attempts to extends traditional cross-cultural research in two dimensions.

First, it attempts to add new cases to those which can be used for comparison, and hence increases the sample size for cross-cultural research (but see section 1.C below).

Second, and perhaps more importantly, archaeoethnology attempts to provide a way to determine whether the presumed cause of some phenomenon actually precedes its presumed effects. Like all forms of comparative research, archaeoethnology seeks to identify regular associations between variables and to test explanations for why those associations exist. Unlike ethnology using extant or recent cultures, the associations identified through archaeoethnology can be either synchronic or diachronic, and the explanations for them can be tested both synchronically and diachronically. Because of its ability to identify and test explanations diachronically, archaeoethnology is uniquely suited to exploring both unilinear and multilinear trends in cultural evolution. Unilinear trends refer to either progressive or regressive changes in societal scale, complexity, and integration that take place over a long period of time and large geographical areas. Archaeoethnology can examine change over a long period of time to determine empirically whether unilinear trends are present, and test explanations for those trends by determining whether presumed causes actually precede presumed effects. Similarly, multilinear evolutionary processes, those that create the specific features of different societies within the larger, unilinear trends, can be tested diachronically to see if presumed causes precede assumed effects. Such research is perhaps best carried out using the eHRAF Collection of Archaeology. The diachronic nature of archaeoethnology also makes it uniquely suited to exploring patterns of migration, innovation, and diffusion, and to investigating the roles of these processes in cultural evolution. A synchronic study of a given region might suggest that a trait diffused through cultures in a region, and perhaps might suggest the source and path of the diffused trait. Only a diachronic study can demonstrate diffusion empirically, pinpoint the source of a given trait, and chart the path of its diffusion through time. In short, the purpose of archaeoethnology is to establish and explain long-term processes of cultural stability and change."

(https://www.researchgate.net/publication/245534439_Atlas_of_Cultural_Evolution)