ArticleProceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America2014
Particularism and the retreat from theory in the archaeology of agricultural origins.
Article in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, 2014. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 27 papers.
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27 citing papers in PubMed.
- Human-Plant Coevolution: A modelling framework for theory-building on the origins of agriculture.PloS one · 2022Article
- Fishing intensification as response to Late Holocene socio-ecological instability in southeastern South America.Scientific reports · 2021Article
- The archaeology of climate change: The case for cultural diversity.Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America · 2021Article
- Theoretical plurality, the extended evolutionary synthesis, and archaeology.Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America · 2021Article
- Let's go fishing: A quantitative analysis of subsistence choices with a special focus on mixed economies among small-scale societies.PloS one · 2021Article
- New Food Crop Domestication in the Age of Gene Editing: Genetic, Agronomic and Cultural Change Remain Co-evolutionarily Entangled.Frontiers in plant science · 2020Article
- Ecology of a widespread large omnivore,Ecology and evolution · 2019Article
- Re-analysis of archaeobotanical remains from pre- and early agricultural sites provides no evidence for a narrowing of the wild plant food spectrum during the origins of agriculture in southwest Asia.Vegetation history and archaeobotany · 2019Article
- Sedentism and plant cultivation in northeast China emerged during affluent conditions.PloS one · 2019Article
- The global geography of human subsistence.Royal Society open science · 2018Article
- The Emergence of Animal Management in the Southern Levant.Scientific reports · 2018Article
- The Role of Humans in a Protracted Transition From Hunting-Gathering to Plant Domestication in the Fertile Crescent.Frontiers in plant science · 2018Article
- Herding Ecologies and Ongoing Plant Domestication Processes in the Americas.Frontiers in plant science · 2018Review
- Domestication as a model system for the extended evolutionary synthesis.Interface focus · 2017Review
- Assessing elements of an extended evolutionary synthesis for plant domestication and agricultural origin research.Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America · 2017Article
- Population growth as a driver of initial domestication in Eastern North America.Royal Society open science · 2016Article
- The development of plant food processing in the Levant: insights from use-wear analysis of Early Epipalaeolithic ground stone tools.Philosophical transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological sciences · 2015Article
- Were Fertile Crescent crop progenitors higher yielding than other wild species that were never domesticated?The New phytologist · 2015Article
- Optimal foraging theory and niche-construction theory do not stand in opposition.Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America · 2015Article
- Reply to Mohlenhoff et al.: Human behavioral ecology needs a rethink that niche-construction theory can provide.Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America · 2015Article
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3 authors.
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No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
The introduction of new analytic methods and expansion of research into previously untapped regions have greatly increased the scale and resolution of data relevant to the origins of agriculture (OA). As a result, the recognition of varied historical pathways to agriculture and the continuum of management strategies have complicated the search for general explanations for the transition to food production. In this environment, higher-level theoretical frameworks are sometimes rejected on the grounds that they force conclusions that are incompatible with real-world variability. Some of those who take this position argue instead that OA should be explained in terms of local and historically contingent factors. This retreat from theory in favor of particularism is based on the faulty beliefs that complex phenomena such as agricultural origins demand equally complex explanations and that explanation is possible in the absence of theoretically based assumptions. The same scholars who are suspicious of generalization are reluctant to embrace evolutionary approaches to human behavior on the grounds that they are ahistorical, overly simplistic, and dismissive of agency and intent. We argue that these criticisms are misplaced and explain why a coherent theory of human behavior that acknowledges its evolutionary history is essential to advancing understanding of OA. Continued progress depends on the integration of human behavior and culture into the emerging synthesis of evolutionary developmental biology that informs contemporary research into plant and animal domestication.
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