Debates in World Archaeology

The paper examines Neanderthal survival skills in Britain. Its starting point is that there are major tensions between the three main sources of relevant information -- archaeological, palaeoanthropological and palaeoenvironmental data and their subsequent interpretation -- that make our understanding of Neanderthal survival much more precarious than is generally supposed. The paper is speculative, and proffers questions not answers. It challenges the reader to look past the often mute material record, and to equip Neanderthals with a number of logically prerequisite but generally archaeologically invisible survival tools and practices, beyond the well-trodden paths of mobility, hunting and planning.

The author argues that, in studying ancient `art', it is important to remember that the researcher is placing objects into a category that has more to do with the development of modern art history than the contexts in which they were created and viewed. While aesthetic and stylistic comparisons often serve as the building blocks for the chronological frameworks that underpin understanding of these societies today, she argues that it is important to remember that the researcher is able to compare objects in ways that would clearly have been impossible in the past, and that it is crucial that archaeologists reflect on the notion of value and understand the aesthetic frameworks within which they work. In reflecting on the history of approaches to ancient art one can demonstrate the limitations and dangers of interpretative frameworks in which aesthetic value is prioritized above all else. The paper focuses on the study and display of Roman provincial art in Britain, but raises issues of wider relevance.

The author argues that it is important to be clear as to whether a theory such as evolutionary archaeology pertains to biological evolution, in which acquired change is obliterated at the end of each generation, or cultural change, in which acquired change is retained. In evolutionary archaeology the population is said to consist of artefacts, yet artefacts are said to be phenotypic. Neither proposition is necessarily problematic in and of itself, but the two could be regarded as inconsistent in that the first pertains to cultural change, whereas the second pertains to the biological evolution of humans. A first step to avoiding this problem would be to recognize that there is a need for a theory of change specific to human culture. Referring to ongoing work using a related approach to cultural change, the author suggests that the inconsistencies in evolutionary archaeology, though problematic, are not insurmountable. See also the response by R L Lyman and M J O'Brien, same issue, pages 697--703.

Reply to L G Straus, D J Meltzer and T Goebel in World Archaeology 37:4 (2005), pages 507--32.