Hostname: page-component-5c6d5d7d68-wtssw Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-08-16T14:12:39.588Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Individuals, Groups and the Palaeolithic Record: A Reply to Clark

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  18 February 2014

Steven Mithen
Steven Mithen*
Affiliation:
Department of Archaeology, Reading University, Whiteknights, PO Box 218, Reading RG6 2AA
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Extract

I am very grateful to Geoff Clark for his comment on my ecological interpretation of Palaeolithic art (PPS 58, 107–109, see Mithen 1990, 1991). I had no idea that it was a ‘post hoc accommodative argument’ with an ‘underaxiomatised’ theoretical framework and ‘unwieldy systematics’. I suppose this means he doesn't like it. Clark says that my interpretation reminds him of a Chinese meal — initially satisfying but not ‘sticking with you’ for very long. In 1992 Clark wrote that ‘Mithen's … work goes a long way to explaining the art of this period’ (Lindly & Clark 1990, 61) — he seems to have taken two years to digest the Chinese meal of my interpretation.

Clark's main objection is that I tried to develop a theoretical framework around individual decision making and then attempted to use this to interpret the variability and patterning in Palaeolithic art and other elements of the archaeological record. He objects to this on paradigmatic grounds, seeing no rationale for models of individual agency, but primarily on operational grounds, arguing that individuals cannot be monitored in the archaeological record.

Type
Research Article
Information
Proceedings of the Prehistoric Society , Volume 59 , Issue 1 , 1993 , pp. 393 - 398
Copyright
Copyright © The Prehistoric Society 1993

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Appellaniz, J. M. 1991. Modelo de analisis de la autoria en el arte figurativo de Paleolitico. Cuadernos de Arqueologia de Deusto 13.Google Scholar
Barkow, J., Cosmides, L. & Tooby, J. (eds) 1993. The Adapted Mind: Evolutionary Psychology and the Generation of Culture. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Barton, N. 1992. Hengistbury Head. Volume 2. The Later Upper Palaeolithic and the Early Mesolithic Sites. Oxford: Oxford Committee for Archaeology.Google Scholar
Boden, M. 1990. The Creative Mind. London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson.Google Scholar
Borgerhoff Mulder, M. 1987. Adaptation and evolutionary approaches in anthropology. Man 22, 25–41.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Bradley, R. 1984. The Social Foundations of Prehistoric Britain. London: Longman.Google Scholar
Clark, G. 1989. Romancing the stones: biases, style and lithics at La Riera. In Henry, D. O. & Odell, G. H. (eds), Alternative Approaches to Lithic Analysis, 27–50. Archaeological Papers of the American Anthropological Association, no. 1.Google Scholar
Clark, G. A. 1992. A comment on Mithen's ecological interpretation of Palaeolithic art. Proceedings of the Prehistoric Society 58, 107–109.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Dawkins, R. 1976. The Selfish Gene. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Dawkins, R. 1982. The Extended Phenotype. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Dunbar, R. 1982. Adaptation, fitness and evolutionary tautology. In King's College Sociobiology Group (eds), Current Problems in Sociobiology, 9–28. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Dunbar, R. 1988. Darwinizing man: a commentary. In Betzig, L. et al. (eds), Human Reproductive Behaviour: A Darwinian Perspective, 161–69. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Earle, T. W. & Preucel, R. W. 1987. Processual archaeology and the radical critique. Current Anthropology 28, 501–38.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Giddens, A. 1985. The Constitution of Society: A Theory of Structuration. Cambridge: Polity Press.Google Scholar
Hinde, R. 1976. Interactions, relationships and social structure. Man 11, 1–17.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hinde, R. 1987. Individuals, Relationships and Culture. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Hodder, I. 1985. Post-processual archaeology. In Schiffer, M. (ed.), Advances in Archaeological Method and Theory 8, 1–25, New York: Academic Press.Google Scholar
Jochim, M. 1983. Palaeolithic cave art in ecological perspective. In Bailey, G. (ed.), Hunter-Gatherer Economy in Prehistory, 212–19. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Krebs, J. & Davis, N. 1987. Introduction to Behavioural Ecology. Oxford: Blackwell Scientific Publications.Google Scholar
Layton, R. 1989. Are sociobiology and social anthropology compatible? The significance of sociocultural resources in human evolution. In Standen, V. and Foley, R. (eds), Comparative Socioecology: The Behavioural Ecology of Humans and Other Mammals, 433–55. Oxford: Blackwell Scientific Publications.Google Scholar
Layton, R. 1992. Australian Rock Art. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Lindly, J. & Clark, G. A. 1990. On the emergence of modern humans. Current Anthropology 31, 59–63.Google Scholar
Midgley, M. 1980. Beast and Man: The Roots of Human Nature. London: Methuen.Google Scholar
Miller, D. & Tilley, C. 1984. Ideology, power and long term social change. In Miller, D. & Tilley, C. (eds), Ideology, Power and Prehistory, 147–52. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Mithen, S. 1989. Evolutionary theory and post-processual archaeology. Antiquity 63, 483–94.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Mithen, S. 1990. Thoughtful Foragers: A Study of Prehistoric Decision Making. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Mithen, S. 1991. Ecological interpretations of Palaeolithic art. Proceedings of the Prehistoric Society 57, 103–14.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Mithen, S. 1993 (in press). Simulating prehistoric hunter-gatherer societies. In Gilbert, N. and Doran, J. (eds), Simulating Societies. London: University College London Press.Google Scholar
Morphy, H. 1989. On representing ancestral beings. In Morphy, H. (ed.) Animals into Art, 144–60. London: Unwin Hyman.Google Scholar
Pigeot, N. 1987. Magdaléniens d'Etiolles: Economie de Debitage et Organisation Sociale (Suppl. 25 Gallia Prehistoire). Paris: CNRS.Google Scholar
Renfrew, C. 1983. Towards an Archaeology of Mind. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Renfrew, C. & Bahn, P. 1991. Archaeology: Theories, Methods and Practice. London: Thames & Hudson.Google Scholar
Renfrew, C. & Zubrow, E. 1994 (in press). The Ancient Mind. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Roebucks, W. 1988. From Flint Scatters to Early Hominid Behaviour: A Case Study of Middle Pleistocene Riverside Settlements at Maastrict-Belvedere. Analecta Praehistorica Leidensai.Google Scholar
Shennan, S. 1986. Towards a critical archaeology? Proceedings of the Prehistoric Society 52, 327–56CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Straus, L. G. 1992. Iberia before the Iberians. Albuquerque: New Mexico Press.Google Scholar
Straus, L. G. & Clark, G. A. 1986. La Riera Cave: Stone Age Hunter-Gatherer Adaptations in Northern Spain. Tempe: Arizona State University.Google Scholar
Tacon, P. 1989. Art and the essence of being: symbolic and economic aspects of fish among the peoples of western Arnhamn Land, Australia. In Morphy, H. (ed.) Animals into Art, 236–52. London: Unwin Hyman.Google Scholar
Williams, G. C. 1966. Adaptation and Natural Selection. Princeton: Princeton University Press.Google Scholar
Wynne-Edwards, V. C. 1962. Animal Dispersion in Relation to Social Behaviour. Edinburgh: Oliver Boyd.Google Scholar
Wynne-Edwards, V. C. 1986. Evolution through Group Selection. Oxford: Blackwell.Google Scholar