Gathers together internationally renowned scholars in archaeology and the behavioural sciences.
These papers bring an interdisciplinary approach to bear on what is arguably the central question in the study of human social evolution:
How did the simple hunting and foraging bands of the Upper Palaeolithic evolve into the institutionally complex societies of the so-called Neolithic Revolution?
The contributors to this volume are leading experts from the fields of archaeology, anthropology, sociology, psychology, and game theory, all of whom share a common evolutionary perspective.
The ideas presented here form a major addition to the widespread current interest in evolutionary theory as applied to human behaviour. Readership: Scholars and students of archaeology, anthropology, sociology, psychology, game theory.
The volume is edited by W G Runciman, Senior Research Fellow at the University of Cambridge, and Fellow of the British Academy.
The papers arise from a joint conference of the British Academy and the Novartis Foundation held at the Academy in April 2000.
| CONTENTS - Notes on Contributors
- Preface
- Ofer Bar-Yosef, From Sedentary Foragers to Village Hierarchies: The Emergence of Social Institutions
- Alasdair Whittle, Different Kinds of History: On the Nature of Lives and Change in Central Europe, c. 6000 to the Second Millennium BC
- Richard Bradley, The Birth of Architecture
- Colin Renfrew, Commodification and Institution in Group-Oriented and Individualizing Societies
- Jerome H Barkow et al., Social Competition, Social Intelligence, and Why the Bugis Know More about Cooking than about Nutrition
- Ken Binmore, How and Why did Fairness Norms Evolve?
- Robert A Foley, Evolutionary Perspectives on the Origins of Human Social Institutions
- Peter J Richerson & Robert Boyd, Institutional Evolution in the Holocene: The Rise of Complex Societies
- W G Runciman, From Nature to Culture, from Culture to Society
- Index
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