Introduction to Physical Anthropology and Archaeology Lecture Summary

In this course we will look at the last six million years of our evolution and prehistory through the disciplines of physical anthropology and archaeology. Physical anthropologists attempt to piece together the past through fossil and skeletal remains, while archaeologists attempt to understand the past through the study of the objects that those in the past have manufactured and left behind.

Understanding Our Origins - Science and Myth
For many thousands of years, we as human beings have tried to understand our place on earth, and our relationship with other species and the natural environment. Prior to scientific understanding, Myths made "sense" of our existence. A myth is a story that usually invokes something supernatural as a way to explain some aspect of the natural world.

It is interesting to note that virtually all human cultures have some form of creation myth that explains the existence of the earth, plants, animals and human beings. In addition to providing answers to where we came from and what our purpose was, Creation Myths also served to order, rationalize, justify and stabilize social systems. As such, they often provide guidelines as to how people should live their lives in their society.

Not surprisingly, all Creation Myths reflect the environment, the history and the cultural system in each society that fashioned them.  For example, the stories in the book of Genesis are the result of Hebrew history and the social, cultural, and political environment in which the authors lived. The very fact that they were written down is a direct consequence of there being a writing system available at that time! In cultures, where no writing systems existed, their myths were held through oral histories, passed from one generation to the next through memory.

How does Science Explain our Existence?
Science is a method of inquiry that attempts to explain things through observation and testing. Myth is highly idiosyncratic and it differs from culture to culture and from time to time. While myth invokes the supernatural, science, is based on observations of the natural world. While Christianity holds that human beings are divinely appointed as custodians of other animal species, science states that humans are only unique because all animal species are unique in their own right.

From scientific observation, we know that similarities in molecular structure reveal that all living things are related to one another at some basic level. The degree to which we are related is defined by such things as: a) Physical Resemblance; b) Behavior; c) Anatomy ; and d) Molecular Structure. So, for example, we are more closely related to a chimpanzee than a dog; to a dog than a frog, and to a frog than a strain of bacteria…If you were to design the worlds largest family tree, all living things on earth could be traced (based upon molecular structure) to a single fore-bearer....a small bacteria that lived billions of years ago on an earth that was very different from our own.

So, if molecular structure demonstrates our similarities to other living organisms, what demonstrates our differences to other living things? You might begin by suggesting that the ability to: walk upright, or grasp and manipulate objects, or  communicate with symbols and sounds. These might distinguish us from other creatures and define us as human.

Or do they?
There are some non-human primates that occasionally walk upright and manipulate sticks and rocks as tools. What about communication? Even bees and ants communicate with other members of their species.

So what separates us form other animals?
While many animal species possess some or all of these traits...human beings have been able to elaborate and develop them to a much greater degree. This elaboration is what we call Human Culture. Human culture includes the values, norms, and lifestyles that structure and bring meaning to human behavior in a group setting. Because culture often involves the construction of specific types and styles of pottery, houses, clothing, and tools, it can also have a material reality. Archaeologists refer to this as Material Culture. Human cultures can vary considerably in both the behavior and material culture.

What is Culture?
The non-genetic means of adaptation to the environment (those things that people develop and pass down). According to some anthropologists, culture represents human kind’s exosomatic (or external means) of adaptation to the natural environment.

So what's the significance of this ability to adapt? 

It means that human beings, through culture, have been able to inhabit a variety of different ecosystems throughout the world. And this something to which no other single species can lay claim!

In nature, all living organisms occupy a specific place within the ecosystem or an "econiche" from which they procure matter and energy in the face of competition with other species. However, the concept of culture gives the human species a competitive advantage over all other species. This is very apparent in today’s world where many animal species are disappearing while human kind is flourishing.

Physical Adaptation
Now, while human beings have been able to adapt to a variety of different ecological settings by way of culture, there are physical means of adaptation including our genetics and physiology. For example, if the weather turns cold, you can shiver (physiological response), or put on a sweater (cultural response). If this cold is associated with the onset of the next ice age, then this could stimulate genetic changes (e.g. the development of short, stocky body types) that could compensate for  changes in climate. These are the kinds of changes can be considered evolutionary.

A Very Brief History of Anthropology
Franz Boas is considered the farther of North American Anthropology. He helped define anthropology as a holistic science, and wanted it to be as rigorous as the physical sciences. North American Anthropology was largely derived from the practice of salvage anthropology which sought to save "disappearing" native cultures of the America's.

Anthropology is still considered a holistic discipline that seeks to understand the human condition. While it no longer attempts to "salvage" cultures, it is still characterized by it's four traditional subfields. (1) Physical Anthropology is concerned primarily with the biological aspects of human beings. Areas of study include forensic and medical anthropology; DNA studies; human dietary practices; and, human and primate evolution. (2) Archaeology is concerned with cultures of both the past and the present and how material culture reflects and sustains the economic, social and ideological aspects of human culture. (3) Linguistic Anthropology deals with human language and how it operates as a means of sustaining and transmitting elements of culture within and between human groups. (4) Sociocultural Anthropology deals with "living" human cultures. Traditionally, cultural anthropologists studied pre-industrial societies. To remain vital, cultural anthropologists have more recently focused their research on urban industrial nations and are now addressing topics such as racism, homelessness, gender, and other relevant social issues.

The Scientific Method involves the collection of data to generate repeatable scientific observations, and the subsequent organization of these observations into generalizations. An hypothesis is a statement based on existing laws, knowledge, and intuition. Hypotheses are tested empirically through the collection and analysis of data. When hypotheses are confirmed repeatedly by many observations, general laws are sometimes established. Experimental science attempts to recreate natural processes in a controlled laboratory setting. In contrast, observational science is based on the detailed observation of events in nature in an attempt to discern patterns. The philosophy of science maintains that the implementation of the scientific method requires an objective, unbiased viewpoint. Of course, this is often difficult to achieve or maintain...especially if you are engaged in observational science like anthropology.

Early Evolutionary Ideas on the Origins of Living Things
James Ussher, a 17thC Irish Cleric and Archbishop used genealogical information obtained from the bible to establish the day of creation, 4004BC. His calculations were widely accepted. Although Ussher was incorrect, his calculations were a careful study and literal interpretation of the bible.
Carolus Linneaus developed one of the first comprehensive systems of classification for animals based on religious notions of creation. His doctrine later became known as the Fixity of Species. Linneaus’ classification was essentially hierarchical and it attempted to organize animal species according to the "plan" or "themes" that God had in mind when he created them. No evolutionary implications were intended in Linneaus' scheme, rather, it was simply an organizational tool.
This static view of living things was challenged by George-Louis Leclerc, Compte de Buffon and Jean Baptiste Lamarck. Rather than seeing each living thing as the product of a separate act of creation, Buffon argued that the animals and plants of his day had descended from a common ancestor. Buffon believed that contemporary animals and plants still held some essential characteristics of their founding ancestor and that changes in the descendants of plants and animals were the influenced by different kinds of environments.
Jean Baptiste Lamarck argued that natural processes still active in the world were capable of producing not only modification, but also radical change and improvement in living organisms. These improvements were triggered by attempts to solve environmental problems. For example, Lamarck suggested that the long neck of the giraffe was the end result of many generations of giraffe’s literally stretching their necks out to reach succulent leaves on trees. This theory became known as the Inheritance of Acquired Characteristics, or the Use/Disuse Theory.

Genetics now tells us that Lamarck's ideas were inaccurate, since genetic traits can only be passed on via genetically coded information contained within sex cells (i.e. eggs and sperm).

Catastrophism and Uniformitarianism
With the rise of the Industrial Revolution in Europe, excavations for the construction of canals, mines, quarries and railway tunnels revealed that the earth was comprised of different geological layers that sometimes contained the remains of strange fossils.
 
Georges Cuvier proposed the concept of Catastrophism, which suggested the occurrence of many supernatural catastrophes that had occurred on earth since its creation. Each event had wiped the earth clean of many living creatures.  The survivors of these events then continued on - perhaps with the aid of newly created animal species.

The concept of Uniformitarianism was originally devised by James Hutton and furthered by Charles Lyell who proposed that the earth was far older than previously suspected and that the earth's surface had been continually laid down, eroded, and laid down again in a continual cycle of natural rather than divine processes.
 
Charles Darwin, a naturalist employed on the HMS Beagle, studied the wildlife of the Galapagos Islands reported on various species of finches that he observed living in different ecological niches on these islands. He noted that the beak reflected adaptation to specific food sources. Darwin explained this variation in terms of Malthus’ theories on Population Growth, and Lyell's principle of Uniformitarianism.

Those finches that lacked this adaptation were weeded out by Natural Selection. From this, Darwin felt that this process of population expansion, variation, colonization, and adaptation had eventually produced the 13 species of finches that he had observed on the Galapagos Islands. Although Darwin had managed to plausibly explain why such variation existed among the finches of the Galapagos, he did not know how the process which he had described, actually worked.
 
Darwin’s ideas on Natural Selection and Evolution were shared by Alfred Russell Wallace, a young naturalist who came to many of the same conclusions independently and is considered the co-founder of many of the theories that are popularly attributed to Charles Darwin.

Foundation of Genetics
Working independently of Darwin, Father Gregor Mendel conducted experiments with pea plants that revealed that genes remained intact when they were transferred from parent to offspring. Furthermore, Mendel discovered that certain characteristics (e.g. the colour of a pea’s seed) was inherited separately and independently of other characteristics (e.g. the pea's size). Mendel’s experiments thus demonstrated a mechanism by which variation in physiological traits could be generated. Natural selection, as defined by Darwin, then acted on that variation.

The Development of Cultural Evolutionary Theory
As Evolutionary Theories for the geological and natural world were gradually accepted, the question as to the origins and antiquity of human beings was raised. Researchers such as Charles Lyell, establish that stone tools found in association with extinct animal remains in places like the Somme Valley in France were a quarter of a million years old.

As the antiquity of human kind became more apparent, attempts were made to organize the artifacts that were being recovered. One of the first attempts to do this was the "Three Age" Classification System devised by Christen Thomsen in the 1820s. Tools were classified into the Stone Age (earliest), the Bronze Age (middle), and the Iron Age (latest).

Excavations of 35,000-year-old sites in France revealed that human culture had changed considerably through time, but the physical appearance of human beings appeared to have changed very little. The exploration and colonization of Africa, Asia, and the New World by Europeans in the 16th to 18th centuries had revealed a huge range of variation in culture types, which required explanations as to how they might be related to Europeans.

Anthropologists began to categorize human cultures into Progressive Evolutionary Frameworks based on technology, social relations, and political structure. Hunter-gatherers, for example, represented the bottom rung of an evolutionary ladder that saw societies move from "primitive" to "advanced". While this type of classification is faulty on many levels, scholars could not rationally explain how and why some cultures "progressed" while others remained in a state of "primitiveness".

At first a vitalistic argument was proposed in which the ability to progress was viewed as an innate feature of some societies, but not others. However, by the 1950s and 1960s, Julian Steward, an American Anthropologist, and Grahame Clark, a British Archaeologist, developed an alternative mechanism that became known as Cultural Ecology. Cultural Ecology maintains that culture represents a uniquely human form of adaptation to the environment. Thus, the diversity of human culture reflects a diversity of adaptations aimed at living successfully in a particular ecological niche.
 
This perspective of cultural ecology was adopted by archaeologist Lewis Binford who became disenchanted with archaeology’s preoccupation with describing material culture and placing it in chronological order. He felt that archaeologists should really be examining the adaptive processes that structured prehistoric economies, technologies, forms of socio-political organization, and belief systems. Binford advocated the use of rigid scientific methods in archaeological research in an attempt to understand the cultural processes that allowed people to adapt to their environment. His new brand of archaeology became known as "Processual Archaeology".

In recent years, critics of Processual Archaeology have pointed out that archaeology cannot be practiced in an objective way because our view of the past is biased by our gender, socioeconomic status, ethnicity, and personal experiences. As a solution, these Post-Processual Archaeologists advocate the adoption of a reflexive viewpoint that acknowledges our biases.

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