Hostname: page-component-586b7cd67f-rdxmf Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-12-02T23:43:39.290Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Optimizing Engines: Rational Choice in the Neolithic?

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 January 2022

Kim Sterelny
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

This article has both substantive and methodological goals. Methodologically, it shows that rational choice theory (in its behavioral ecology form) is an especially important tool for guiding research in contexts in which agents appear to be acting against their best interests. The Neolithic transition is one such case, and the article develops a substantive conception of that transition, illustrating the heuristic power of behavioral ecology.

Type
Research Article
Information
Philosophy of Science , Volume 82 , Issue 3 , July 2015 , pp. 402 - 423
Copyright
Copyright © The Philosophy of Science Association

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.)

Footnotes

†

I would like to thank the Australian Research Council for generous grants that supported the research leading to this article. I presented drafts at Sydney University, the Australian National University, Cambridge, Paris, and the New Zealand Association of Philosophy; the work benefited much from feedback from those audiences. Peter Hiscock, Lawrence A. Kuznar, and Trevor Watkins (especially) gave generous and constructive feedback, as did two anonymous referees for this journal.

References

Asouti, Eleni, and Fuller, Dorian. 2013. “A Contextual Approach to the Emergence of Agriculture in Southwest Asia: Reconstructing Early Neolithic Plant-Food Production.” Current Anthropology 54 (3): 299–345.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Bar-Yosef, Ofer. 2010. “Warfare in Levantine Early Neolithic. A Hypothesis to Be Considered (with Commentaries and Response).” Neo-Lithics 10 (1): 6–73.Google Scholar
Belfer-Cohen, Anna, and Goring-Morris, Nigel. 2011. “Becoming Farmers: The Inside Story.” Current Anthropology 52 (S4): 209–20.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Bellwood, Peter, and Oxenham, Marc. 2008. “The Expansion of Farming Societies and the Role of the Neolithic Demographic Transition.” In The Neolithic Demographic Transition, ed. Bocquet-Appel, J.-P. and Bar-Yosef, Ofer, 13–34. New York: Springer.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Binford, Lewis. 1980. “Willow Smoke and Dogs’ Tails: Hunter-Gatherer Settlement Systems and Archaeological Site Formation.” American Antiquity 45 (1): 4–20.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Boehm, Christopher. 1999. Hierarchy in the Forest. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.Google Scholar
Boehm, Christopher 2012. Moral Origins: The Evolution of Virtue, Altruism and Shame. New York: Basic.Google Scholar
Bowles, Sam, and Choi, Jung-Kyoo. 2013. “Coevolution of Farming and Private Property during the Early Holocene.” Proceedings of the National Academy of Science 110 (22): 8830–35.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Bowles, Sam, and Gintis, Herbert. 2011. A Cooperative Species: Human Reciprocity and Its Evolution. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.Google Scholar
Childe, Gordon. 1936. Man Makes Himself. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Cohen, Mark Nathan. 2009. “Introduction: Rethinking the Origins of Agriculture.” Current Anthropology 50 (5): 591–95.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Conolly, James, Colledge, Sue, Dobney, Keth, Vigne, Jean-Denis, Peters, Joris, Stopp, Barbara, Manning, Katie, and Shennan, Stephen. 2011. “Meta-analysis of Zooarchaeological Data from SW Asia and SE Europe Provides Insight into the Origins and Spread of Animal Husbandry.” Journal of Archaeological Science 38:538–45.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Coon, Matthew. 2009. “Variation in Ohio Hopewell Political Economies.” American Antiquity 74 (1): 49–76.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Dennett, D. C. 1995. Darwin’s Dangerous Idea. New York: Simon & Shuster.Google Scholar
Dietrich, Oliver, Heun, Manfred, Notroff, Jens, Schmidt, Klaus, and Zarnkow, Martin. 2012. “The Role of Cult and Feasting in the Emergence of Neolithic Communities: New Evidence from Gobekli Tepe, South-East Turkey.” Antiquity 86:674–95.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Drennan, Robert, Peterson, Christian, and Fox, Jake. 2010. “Degrees and Kinds of Inequality.” In Pathways to Power, ed. Price, Douglas and Feinman, Gary, 45–76. New York: Springer.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Ferguson, R. Brian. 2013. “The Prehistory of War and Peace in Europe and the Near East.” In War, Peace and Human Nature, ed. Fry, Douglas P., 191–240. Oxford: Oxford University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Fessler, Daniel, and Quintelier, Katinka. 2013. “Suicide Bombers, Weddings, and Prison Tattoos: An Evolutionary Perspective on Subjective and Objective Commitment.” In Cooperation and Its Evolution, ed. Sterelny, Kim, Joyce, Richard, Calcott, Brett, and Fraser, Ben, 459–83. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.Google Scholar
Finlayson, Bill, Kuijt, Ian, and Mithen, Stephen. 2011. “New Evidence from Southern Jordan: Rethinking the Role of Architecture in Changing Societies at the Beginning of the Neolithic Process.” Paleorient 37 (1): 123–35.Google Scholar
Finlayson, Bill, Mithen, Steven, Najjar, Mohammad, Smith, Sam, Maričević, Darko, Pankhurst, Nick, and Yeomans, Lisa. 2009. “Architecture, Sedentism, and Social Complexity at Pre-pottery Neolithic A WF16, Southern Jordan.” Proceedings of the National Academy of Science 108 (20): 8183–88.Google Scholar
Flannery, Kent. 1969. “Origins and Ecological Effects of Early Domestication in Iran and the Near East.” In The Domestication and Exploitation of Plants and Animals, ed. Ucko, P. J. and Dimbleby, G. W., 73–100. London: Duckworth.Google Scholar
Fuller, Dorian, Willcox, George, and Allaby, Robin. 2011. “Cultivation and Domestication Had Multiple Origins: Arguments against the Core Area Hypothesis for the Origins of Agriculture in the Near East.” World Archaeology 43 (4): 628–52.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Fuller, Dorian, Willcox, George, and Allaby, Robin 2012. “Early Agricultural Pathways: Moving Outside the ‘Core Area’ Hypothesis in Southwest Asia.” Journal of Experimental Botany 63 (2): 617–33.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Gambetta, Diego. 2009. Codes of the Underworld: How Criminals Communicate. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Gintis, Herbert. 2013. “Territoriality and Loss Aversion: The Evolutionary Roots of Property Rights.” In Cooperation and Its Evolution, ed. Sterelny, Kim, Joyce, Richard, Calcott, Brett, and Fraser, Ben. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.Google Scholar
Goring-Morris, Nigel, and Belfer-Cohen, Anna. 2011. “Neolithization Processes in the Levant: The Outer Envelop.” Current Anthropology 52 (S4): 195–208.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Gurven, Michael, and Hill, Kim. 2009. “Why Do Men Hunt? A Reevaluation of ‘Man the Hunter’ and the Sexual Division of Labor.” Current Anthropology 50 (1): 51–74.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hass, Jonathan, and Creamer, Winifred. 2006. “Crucible of Andean Civilization: The Peruvian Coast from 3000 to 1800 BC.” Current Anthropology 47 (5): 745–75.Google Scholar
Hawkes, Kristen, and Bird, Rebecca. 2002. “Showing Off, Handicap Signaling and the Evolution of Men’s Work.” Evolutionary Anthropology 11 (1): 58–67.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hawkes, Kristen, O’Connell, James F., and Coxworth, James E.. 2010. “Family Provisioning Is Not the Only Reason Men Hunt.” Current Anthropology 51 (2): 259–64.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hayden, Brian. 2007. “Rich Man, Poor Man, Beggar Man, Chief: The Dynamics of Social Inequality.” In Archaeology at the Millennium, ed. Feinman, Gary and Price, T. Douglas. New York: Springer.Google Scholar
Price, T. Douglas 2011. “Big Man, Big Heart? The Political Role of Aggrandizers in Egalitarian and Transegalitarian Societies.” In For the Greater Good of All: Perspectives on Individualism, Society, and Leadership, ed. Forsyth, D. and Hoyt, C., 101–18. New York: Macmillan.Google Scholar
Hayden, Brian, and Villeneuvre, Suzanne. 2010. “Who Benefits from Complexity? A View from Futuna.” In Pathways to Power: New Perspectives on the Emergence of Social Inequality, ed. Price, Douglas and Feinman, Gary, 95–145. New York: Springer.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Keen, Ian. 2006. “Constraints on the Development of Enduring Inequalities in Late Holocene Australia.” Current Anthropology 47 (1): 7–38.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kuijt, Ian. 2008. “The Regeneration of Life: Neolithic Structures of Symbolic Remembering and Forgetting.” Current Anthropology 49 (2): 171–97.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kuijt, Ian 2011. “Home Is Where We Keep Our Food: The Origins of Agriculture and Late Pre-pottery Neolithic Food Storage.” Paleoorient 37:137–52.Google Scholar
Kuijt, Ian, and Finlayson, Bill. 2009. “Evidence for Food Storage and Predomestication Granaries 11,000 Years Ago in the Jordan Valley.” Proceedings of the National Academy of Science 106 (27): 10966–70.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Kuznar, Lawrence. 2003. “Sacred Sites and Profane Conflicts: The Use of Burial Facilities and Other Sacred Locations as Territorial Markers—Ethnographic Evidence.” In Theory, Method and Technique in Modern Archaeology, ed. Jeske, Robert and Charles, Douglas, 269–86. Westport, CT: Praeger.Google Scholar
Laland, Kevin, and Brown, Gillian. 2011. Sense and Nonsense: Evolutionary Perspectives on Human Behaviour. 2nd ed. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Mace, Ruth. 1998. “The Coevolution of Human Fertility and Wealth Inheritance Strategies.” Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B 353:389–97.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Maynard Smith, John, and Harper, David. 2003. Animal Signals. Oxford Series in Ecology and Evolution. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Mithen, Stephen, Finlayson, Bill, Smith, Sam, Jenkins, Emma, Najjar, Mohammed, and Maričević, Darko. 2011. “An 11,600 Year-Old Communal Structure from the Neolithic of Southern Jordan.” Antiquity 85:350–64.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Mulder, Monique Borgerhoff, and Schacht, Ryan. 2012. “Human Behavioral Ecology.” In eLS. Chichester: Wiley.Google Scholar
Ostrom, Elinor. 1998. “A Behavioral Approach to the Rational Choice Theory of Collective Action.” American Political Science Review 92 (1): 1–22.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Price, T. Douglas, and Bar-Yosef, Ofer. 2010. “Traces of Inequality at the Origins of Agriculture in the Ancient Near East.” In Pathways to Power: New Perspectives on the Emergence of Social Inequality, ed. Price, Douglas and Feinman, Gary, 147–68. New York: Springer.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Feinman, Gary 2011. “The Origins of Agriculture: New Data, New Ideas.” Current Anthropology 52 (S4): 163–74.Google Scholar
Renfrew, Colin. 2013. “Centres of Congregation.” Neo-Lithics 13 (2): 30–34.Google Scholar
Sahlins, Marshall. 1968. “Notes on the Original Affluent Society.” In Man the Hunter, ed. Lee, R. B and DeVore, I., 85–89. New York: Aldine.Google Scholar
Schmidt, Klaus. 2010. “Göbekli Tepe—the Stone Age Sanctuaries: New Results of Ongoing Excavations with a Special Focus on Sculptures and High Reliefs.” Documenta Praehistorica 37:239–56.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Schmidt, Klaus 2012. Göbekli Tepe: A Stone Age Sanctuary in South- Eastern Anatolia. Berlin: ex oriente & ArchaeNova e.V.Google Scholar
Seabright, Paul. 2010. The Company of Strangers: A Natural History of Economic Life. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Searcy, William, and Nowicki, Stephen. 2005. The Evolution of Animal Communication: Reliability and Deception in Signaling Systems. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.Google Scholar
Shultziner, Doron, Stevens, Thomas, Stevens, Martin, Stewart, Brian A., Hannagan, Rebecca, and Saltini-Semerari, Giulia. 2010. “The Causes and Scope of Political Egalitarianism during the Last Glacial: A Multi-Disciplinary Perspective.” Biology and Philosophy 25 (3): 319–46.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Smith, Bruce. 2001. “Low-Level Food Production.” Journal of Archaeological Research 9 (1): 1–43.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Sterelny, Kim. 2007. “Snafus: An Evolutionary Perspective.” Biological Theory 2 (2): 317–28.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Sterelny, Kim 2012. The Evolved Apprentice. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Sterelny, Kim 2014. “Cooperation, Culture, and Conflict.” British Journal for the Philosophy of Science, published online September 12. doi:10.1093/bjps/axu024.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Stordeur, Danielle. 2000. “New Discoveries in Architecture and Symbolism at Jerf El Ahmar (Syria), 1997–1999.” Neo-Lithics 10 (1): 1–4.Google Scholar
Testart, Alain, Forbis, Richard, Hayden, Hayden, Ingold, Tim, Perlman, Stephen, Pokotylo, David, Rowley-Conwy, Peter, and Stuart, David. 1982. “The Significance of Food Storage among Hunter-Gatherers: Residence Patterns, Population Densities, and Social Inequalities [and Comments and Reply].” Current Anthropology 23 (5): 523–37.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Vega, Margaret Brown. 2009. “Prehispanic Warfare during the Early Horizon and Late Intermediate Period in the Huaura Valley, Peru.” Current Anthropology 50 (2): 255–66.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Verhoeven, Marc. 2011. “The Birth of a Concept and the Origins of the Neolithic: A History of Prehistoric Farmers in the Near East.” Paleorient 37:75–87.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Watkins, Trevor. 2005. “From Foragers to Complex Societies in Southwest Asia.” In The Human Past, ed. Scarre, C., 200–233. London: Thames & Hudson.Google Scholar
Scarre, C. 2008. “Supra-Regional Networks in the Neolithic of Southwest Asia.” Journal of World Prehistory 21:139–71.Google Scholar
Scarre, C. 2010. “New Light on Neolithic Revolution in South-West Asia.” Antiquity 84:621–34.Google Scholar
Scarre, C. 2013. “Neolithicisation Needs Evolution, as Evolution Needs Neolithicisation.” Neo-Lithics 13 (2): 5–10.Google Scholar
White, Andrew. 2013. “Subsistence Economics, Family Size, and the Emergence of Social Complexity in Hunter-Gatherer Systems in Eastern North America.” Journal of Anthropological Archaeology 32:122–63.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Willcox, George. 2013. “The Roots of Cultivation in Southwestern Asia.” Science 341 (6141): 39–40.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Woodburn, James. 1982. “Egalitarian Societies.” Man 17 (3): 431–51.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Zahavi, A., and Zahavi, A.. 1997. The Handicap Principle: A Missing Piece of Darwin’s Puzzle. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Zeder, Melinda. 2011. “The Origins of Agriculture in the Near East.” Current Anthropology 52 (S4): 221–35.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Zhang, Hai, Bevan, Andrew, and Guo, Dashun. 2013. “The Neolithic Ceremonial Complex at Niuheliang and Wider Hongshan Landscapes in Northeastern China.” Journal of World Prehistory 26:1–24.CrossRefGoogle Scholar