The Goals of Evolutionary Archaeology

In recent critiques of evolutionary archaeology, Boone and Smith (1998) have expressed a preference for evolutionary ecology, Spencer (1997) for processual archaeology, and Schiffer (1996) for behavioral archaeology. These various approaches to explanation ask different questions and employ interpretive principles different from those of evolutionary archaeology. Some of their questions, methods, and principles overlap with those of evolutionary archaeology, but only evolutionary archaeology simultaneously exploits the temporal dimension inherent in the archaeological record, acknowledges the critical distinction between immanent and configurational properties and between essentialist and materialist ontologies, and builds its explanations of the cultural past from a theory employing mechanisms external to the subject of change.