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ABSTRACT:
Asserting that artifacts and behaviors are part of the human phenotypes Evolutionary Archaeology explains the archaeological
record in terms of the Darwinian theory of evolution. Sharing this common ground a great diversity of scopes has arisen, mainly
from the approaches of the Human Behavioural Ecology, Sociobiology, and Cultural Transmission Theory. All these selectionist
lines of reasoning expand the explanatory domain of the evolutionary research in a variety of topics, including social, technological,
and biological evolution. However, a complete unified paradigm in Evolutionary Archaeology has not emerged. This demands the
discussion of diverse epistemological, theoretical and methodological issues. At the core of the debate come out questions
such as the units of selection, the role of the cultural transmission, the construction of cultural lineages, the documentation
of neutral variation, the linkages between adaptive ecological behaviour and the broad time scale processes from which emerge
archaeological patterns, between others. This workshop will bring together researchers working in a wide range of time periods
and geographic areas, in order to generate a rich discussion ambience regarding the theoretical and methodological issues
that could lead to an unified Evolutionary Archaeology paradigm.
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