From primitives to primates : a history of ethnographic and primatological analogies in the study of prehistory /
Where do our images about early hominids come from? In this fascinating in-depth study, David Van Reybrouck demonstrates how input from ethnography and primatology has deeply influenced our visions about the past from the 19th century to this day - often far beyond the available evidence. Victorian...
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| Format: | Electronic eBook |
| Language: | English |
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Leiden :
Sidestone Press,
©2012.
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| Online Access: | CONNECT CONNECT |
Table of Contents:
- Preface; Introduction; Analogies; Analogies in science; Analogies in archaeology; Models and analogies; Analogy as a process; The structure of analogy; Truth and validity; Entities and relations; An ideal case; Strengthening the analogy; The practice of analogy; The analogical algorithm; A reading grid; A corpus of texts; A choice of focus; Conclusion; The comparative method; Early ethnographic parallels; The impact of the three-age system; A revolution in antiquarian thought?; The dualism of Sven Nilsson and Daniel Wilson; Comparative ethnography, folklore and 'the parallax of man'
- An important deviceThe antiquity of man and early social evolutionism; The first generation of social evolutionists; The function of contemporary savagery; Ethnographic enthusiasm; Degenerationism and classical evolutionism; Degenerationist doubts; A second round; Morgan's scheme; A zenith of similarity; Evolutionist fragmentation; Archaeology and anthropology diverge; Tylor and the Tasmanians; The comparative method's swan-song: Sollas; Divergence of opinion; Conclusion; Ethnoarchaeology; The dormancy of ethnographic analogy; Innovations in the Interbellum; Marxism and folklore.
- Postwar pessimism in BritainThe situation in the United States; Cultural continuity; The dilemma of the New Archaeology; The new analogy and the New Archaeology; Fieldwork and cautionary tales; Hypothetico-deductive reasoning or the benefits of testing; Between critique and inspiration; The heyday of ethnoarchaeology; The impossibility of independent testing; A thriving subdiscipline; Beyond analogy?; Place and population: a case study; Source and subject-side strategies; Decline and fall of ethnoarchaeology; The isolation of hunter-gatherer ethnoarchaeology.
- Anthropological doubts about hunter-gatherersContextual ethnoarchaeology; Post-processual archaeology; An age of extremes; Conclusion; The strength of ethnoarchaeological analogies; Optimism, pessimism and the redundancy of analogy; Primate models; The idea of a primate model; First episode: from primate anatomy to human anatomy; Second episode: from living to fossil anatomy; Third episode: from primate behaviour to human behaviour; Fourth episode: from primate behaviour to early human behaviour; Converging circumstances; Baboons.
- Washburn's baboons: from typical primates to terrestrial specialistsThe canonization of the baboon model; Why baboons?; Social carnivores and geladas; From subsistence to society: the social carnivore analogy; From dentition to diet: the gelada analogy; Remote sources and logical consistency; Chimpanzees; The feminist critique; A perfect analogy; The seductiveness of similarity; Bonobos; The disputed bonobo model; Bonobo behaviour; Entrapped by resemblance; The crisis of traditional modelling; The weaknesses of referential modelling; Phylogenetic comparison or cladistics of behaviour.
