Rethinking Human Adaptation: Biological And Cultural Models

Rada Dyson-hudson · Michael A. Little · Eric Alden Smith

Jun 2019 · Routledge

About this ebook

Most anthropologists agree that a comprehension of adaptation and adaptive processes is central to an understanding of human biological and behavioural systems. However, there is little agreement among archaeologists, cultural anthropologists, and human biologists as to what adaptation means and how it should be analyzed. Because of this lack of a common underlying theory, method, and perspective, the subdisciplines have tended to move apart, and anthropology is no longer the integrated science envisaged at its inception in the nineteenth century. In this book, the authors–both biological and cultural anthropologists–use a common theoretical framework based on recent evolutionary, ecological, and anthropological theory in their analyses of biological and social adaptive systems. Although a synthesis of the subdisciplines of anthropology lies somewhere in the future, the original essays in this volume are a first attempt at a unified perspective.

About the author

Dr. Rada Dyson-Hudson is associate professor in the Department of Anthropology, Cornell University. In the past, she was associate professor and research associate in the Department of Pathobiology at the School of Hygiene, Johns Hopkins University. Her attempt to reconcile the implications of natural selection theory with a commitment to social equality led to a rethinking of human adaptation and, among other things, the organization of the symposium at the American Anthropological Association of which this book is a result. Dr. Michael A. Little is professor of anthropology at the State University of New York at Binghamton. He has been scientific coordinator of the Human Adaptability Section of the International Biological Program and is coauthor of Ecology, Energetics, and Human Variability (1976).