Deflating the myth of isolated communities

Individual mobility at early settlements raises questions about tenets of culture history From its early foundations, two schools of thought have dominated academic anthropology's perspective on deep human history ( 1 ). Whereas cultural evolution has charted broad, step-like trajectories towar...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Science (American Association for the Advancement of Science) 2019-11, Vol.366 (6466), p.682-683
Main Authors: Feinman, Gary M., Neitzel, Jill E.
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Anthropology
Anthropology, Cultural
Europe
Humans
PERSPECTIVES
Schools
Socioeconomic Factors
Traditions
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Summary:Individual mobility at early settlements raises questions about tenets of culture history From its early foundations, two schools of thought have dominated academic anthropology's perspective on deep human history ( 1 ). Whereas cultural evolution has charted broad, step-like trajectories toward large human aggregations, culture history subdivides cultural traditions in space and time. Guided by these perspectives, generations of archaeologists have pegged the transition from mobile foraging to permanent villages as a transformational shift in the human past. But new findings, including the deft integration of multiple lines of evidence by Mittnik et al. ( 2 ) on page 731 of this issue, raise questions about the categorical juxtaposition of mobility and sedentism.
ISSN:0036-8075
1095-9203
DOI:10.1126/science.aaz6574