Archaeological Systematics and Cultural Evolution: Retrieving the Honour of Culture History

Abstract

This article attempts to show how archaeological systematics can be predicated on evolutionary theory, and to determine what kind of theories of cultural evolution would be best suited to provide a theoretical framework for archaeological classification. Appropriate Darwinian models of cultural evolution are briefly outlined. This is followed by a discussion of biological taxonomy and its relation to evolutionary theory. Binford's processualist 'new systematics' and culture-historical space-time systematics are then examined from a Darwinian culture-evolutionary perspective. Despite its explicitly evolutionist rhetoric, processual archaeology is found to be fundamentally non-evolutionary. However, elements from culture-historical space-time systematics can be used in the construction of a framework for archaeological systematics informed by Darwinian cultural-evolutionary theory, in a manner similar to the way species-level classification in biology is informed by biological evolutionary theory.