The empirical case against the ‘demographic turn’ in Palaeolithic archaeology

TY - JOUR

T1 - The empirical case against the ‘demographic turn’ in Palaeolithic archaeology

AU - Collard, Mark

AU - Vaesen, Krist

AU - Cosgrove, Richard

AU - Roebroeks, Wil

N1 - Funding. M.C.’s work is supported by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research of Canada, the Canada Research Chairs Programme, the Canada Foundation for Innovation, the British Columbia Knowledge Development Fund and Simon Fraser University. K.V. received support from the Netherlands Organization for Scientific Research (VIDI-grant 016.144312). R.C. and W.R. are supported by the Australian Research Council (discovery grants nos DP120100580 and DP150100586). Acknowledgements. M.C. is grateful to Rob Foley, Marta Lahr, Lawrence Martin and Chris Stringer for inviting him to participate in the Major Transitions in Human Evolution meeting. We thank the following people for their assistance with this paper: Claes Andersson, JeanMarc Argentin, Raymond Corbey, Andre Costopoulos, Helen Eaton, Rob Foley, Denis French, Lola Greeno, Rex Greeno, Huw Groucutt, Peter Hiscock, Curtis Marean, Jim O’Connell, Dwight Read, Eleanor Scerri, George Serras, Christian Tryon, Pierre Vermeersch, Patrick at the Sawtooth ARI Gallery in Launceston, Tasmania and two anonymous reviewers. We also thank the Tasmanian Museum and Art Gallery Aboriginal Reference Group for permission to work on the material from Oatlands Shelter, Tasmania. Lastly, we thank the National Museum of Australia and the La Havre Museum for giving permission to reproduce some of the images used in this paper.

PY - 2016/7/5

Y1 - 2016/7/5

N2 - Recently, it has become commonplace to interpret major transitions and other patterns in the Palaeolithic archaeological record in terms of population size. Increases in cultural complexity are claimed to result from increases in population size; decreases in cultural complexity are suggested to be due todecreases in population size; and periods of no change are attributed to low numbers or frequent extirpation. In this paper, we argue that this approach is not defensible. We show that the available empirical evidence does not support the idea that cultural complexity in hunter–gatherers is governed by population size. Instead, ethnographic and archaeological data suggest that hunter–gatherer cultural complexity is most strongly influenced by environmental factors. Because all hominins were hunter–gatherers until the Holocene, this means using population size to interpret patterns in the Palaeolithic archaeological record is problematic. In future, the population size hypothesis should be viewed as one of several competing hypotheses and its predictions formally tested alongside those of its competitors.This article is part of the themed issue ‘Major transitions in human evolution’.

AB - Recently, it has become commonplace to interpret major transitions and other patterns in the Palaeolithic archaeological record in terms of population size. Increases in cultural complexity are claimed to result from increases in population size; decreases in cultural complexity are suggested to be due todecreases in population size; and periods of no change are attributed to low numbers or frequent extirpation. In this paper, we argue that this approach is not defensible. We show that the available empirical evidence does not support the idea that cultural complexity in hunter–gatherers is governed by population size. Instead, ethnographic and archaeological data suggest that hunter–gatherer cultural complexity is most strongly influenced by environmental factors. Because all hominins were hunter–gatherers until the Holocene, this means using population size to interpret patterns in the Palaeolithic archaeological record is problematic. In future, the population size hypothesis should be viewed as one of several competing hypotheses and its predictions formally tested alongside those of its competitors.This article is part of the themed issue ‘Major transitions in human evolution’.

KW - palaeolithic archaeology

KW - cultural change

KW - cultural complexity

KW - hunter-gatherer technology

KW - population size

KW - demography

U2 - 10.1098/rstb.2015.0242

DO - 10.1098/rstb.2015.0242

M3 - Article

VL - 371

SP - 1

EP - 10

JO - Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences

JF - Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences

SN - 0962-8436

IS - 1698

M1 - 20150242

ER -