- 312-665-7822
John Terrell
Field Museum, Anthropology, Faculty Member
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University of Illinois at Chicago, Anthropology, Faculty MemberNorthwestern University, Anthropology, Faculty MemberUniversity of Wisconsin-Madison, Anthropology, Department Member add
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Anthropology, Archaeological Science, Social Network Analysis (SNA), Archaeology, Prehistoric Archaeology, Languages and Linguistics, and 20 moreHuman Evolution, Ethnicity, Island Biogeography, Asia-Pacific Prehistory, Material Culture Studies, Human Geography, History, Race and Ethnicity, Material Culture, Human Genetics, Pacific Island Studies, Pacific History, Pacific Islands Archaeology, Pacific Islands art, Lapita, Papua New Guinea (Pacific Islands art), Culture History, Baseline Probability Analysis, Landscape Archaeology, and Social Anthropology edit
Just as paleontologists draw upon the evolutionary theories and contemporary observations of students of the modern biota when predicting and interpreting biogeographical patterns within the fossil record, so too archeologists req uire... more
Just as paleontologists draw upon the evolutionary theories and contemporary observations of students of the modern biota when predicting and interpreting biogeographical patterns within the fossil record, so too archeologists req uire knowledge about the population dynamics of human groups, in order to model and fully comprehend the biogeography and evolution of prehistoric man and his cultures. In return, paleontologists and archeologists are in the best position to give theories and inferences the test of time. Acknowledging this give-and-take, this paper surveys human biological research in Melanesia since 1962 to learn how successful physical anthropologists have been in analyzing and interpreting the heterogeneity of the Melanesian peoples,' which has long provoked speculation about prehistoric migrations, ethnic conquests, and racial intrusions into the southwest Pacific. It is found that little has apparently been achieved in understanding geographic patterns of variation in genetic factors, anthropometric measurements, etc., in spite of recent progress in taking and assaying genetical data. Research problems seem poorly formulated; hypotheses advanced often appear trivial; insufficient attention has been given to non-genetic variables likely to be influencing the growth, maintenance, and stability of biological similarities and differences among local and regional populations. It is suggested that future research incorporating needed information about health, human ecology, population parameters, sociocultural variables, and other circumstances affecting gene frequencies, etc., should better enable physical anthropologists, archeologists and others to ascertain the events and processes that have led to the remarkable biological, ethnological, and linguistic diversity of Melanesians.
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On the Road of the Winds: An Archaeological History of the Pacific Islands before European Contact. Patrick Vinton Kirch. 2000. University of California Press, Berkeley. 446 pp. $45.00 (cloth), ISBN 0-520-22347-0. - Sigatoka: The Shifting Sands of Fijian Prehistory. Yvonne Marshall, Andrew Crosby...more
Froiilispint Restored Moai I statue) on Rapa Nui, with replicated obsidian and coral eyes I Photo by Therese Babmeau i University of California Press Berkeley and Los Angeles California University of California Press, Lid. London England... more
Froiilispint Restored Moai I statue) on Rapa Nui, with replicated obsidian and coral eyes I Photo by Therese Babmeau i University of California Press Berkeley and Los Angeles California University of California Press, Lid. London England First paperback pnnting .2002 O 2000 by Patnck ...
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Anthropologists after World War II were vocal in saying the apparent remoteness and marginality of islands in the Pacific made them laboratories of a sort. In 1997, however, Terry Hunt, Chris Gosden, and I reported that by then another... more
Anthropologists after World War II were vocal in saying the apparent remoteness and marginality of islands in the Pacific made them laboratories of a sort. In 1997, however, Terry Hunt, Chris Gosden, and I reported that by then another research agenda had replaced this old one in the Pacific. Rather than seeing these islands as distant and undeveloped human colonies scattered across a vast and empty expanse of sea, modern scholarship was discovering the Pacific had long been a sphere of human accomplishments, and the ocean itself had long been an avenue for interchange, not a barrier to human affairs. Today, however, it seems we were being too optimistic. Islands are still often described in ways suggesting they are basically remote, isolated, and bounded miniature worlds. As a scientific category, however, islands vary in their size, shape, environmental characteristics, degree of isolation, and the like, and I would argue that it is not a foregone conclusion that working on islands has a decided edge over doing field work anywhere else on Earth.
Understanding the human mind is essential for staying healthy, mentally, spiritually, and emotionally. This paper, which was also a part of my research for my final thesis (Ph. D. in Christian counseling), describes two approaches that... more
Understanding the human mind is essential for staying healthy, mentally, spiritually, and emotionally. This paper, which was also a part of my research for my final thesis (Ph. D. in Christian counseling), describes two approaches that can help us understand the mind. More importantly, it discusses the different facets the human mind has. And, when we use our mind right, we will develop healthy ways to respond to what happens within and around us.
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Psychology, Evolutionary Psychology, Anthropology, Perception, Decision Making, and 15 moreCultural Theory, Collaboration, Race and Ethnicity, Cognitive Neuroscience, Culture and Cognition, Lucid Dreaming, Deception, Sleep and Dreaming, Group Decision Making, Behaviorism, Healing, Self Deception, Human mind, Consciousness and Creativity, and Neurosciences
There can be no doubt that Peter Bellwood's First Farmers is a major new statement which presents a robustly expressed solution to one of those classic problems which provides a benchmark for theorization and justifies archaeology as... more
There can be no doubt that Peter Bellwood's First Farmers is a major new statement which presents a robustly expressed solution to one of those classic problems which provides a benchmark for theorization and justifies archaeology as a field. But agreement stops there. Few academic books published recently have evoked such highly charged reactions. On the one hand, First Farmers has impressed many critics, reached audiences far afield from traditional archaeological readerships, and garnered major book awards from professional bodies such as the Society for American Archaeology. On the other hand, it has been subjected to a level of concerted criticism rare in the academic world. As the reviews below show, it has clearly hit a nerve; the gloves are off.First Farmers polarizes scholars in complex ways. Much recent work on agricultural origins, particularly in Europe, has had a strongly indigenist and particularistic tone, averse to mass movements of peoples and ‘grand narratives’ in general. But even advocates of grand narrative in general may take exception to Bellwood's ‘language dispersals’ thesis. Similarly, the very attempt to bring together linguistic, genetic and archaeological data in an account of the past is controversial to some, but even those who aspire to this kind of interdisciplinary synthesis rarely agree on how it can be carried out.Neither the book nor its critics here are likely to be the last word on the subject. But whether one agrees with it or not, First Farmers is a welcome addition to the agricultural origins scene, which, at least in Europe, has been evolving over the last two decades towards a sort of eclectic middle-ground consensus in which difference of opinion is accommodated by eschewing bold generalization.
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millennia of art history. By stressing how few facts are separable from preconceptions, Bahn broadens the base of our scientific understanding. His volume is recommended highly. Bahn is more conversant with animal art than the human... more
millennia of art history. By stressing how few facts are separable from preconceptions, Bahn broadens the base of our scientific understanding. His volume is recommended highly. Bahn is more conversant with animal art than the human figure. He follows Pales and de St Pereuse (1976) in ignoring the shortened proportions of the lower body in Gravettian "Venuses" (one-third instead of onehalf), and thus perpetuates the erroneous idea that they do not deviate from normal reality. He also errs by suggesting sources cited in Chapter 6 (footnote 126) contain anatomical studies comparing female statuettes against actual modern women. The masculinity of the Hohlenstein-Stadel piece is also questionable. In spite of the catholic title, the book's limited geographical and chronological scope is a disappointment. Pleistocene artistic activity is treated as a worldwide phenomenon, but the focus is on the decorated caves and portable art of Franc-Cantabria during the Magdalenian of the European Upper Paleolithic. With a doctorate from Cambridge, and specialized publications in the prehistory of the Pyrenees, the author's traditional reliance on the animals of western European parietal art is understandable. However, the necessity of integrating the full richness of central and eastern European Ice Age assemblages into our thinking scarcely is acknowledged, and coverage is limited to female statuettes and atypical items.
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One of the Lessons of modern economic geography, abstract theory of graphs, and contemporary thinking in theoretical biology appears to be that hierarchical control networks are one solution to the problem of what to do about systems that... more
One of the Lessons of modern economic geography, abstract theory of graphs, and contemporary thinking in theoretical biology appears to be that hierarchical control networks are one solution to the problem of what to do about systems that are so complex, they may be unstable, unworkable, uneconomical, or any of these in combination. The issue explored in this essay is : Had the dynamics of life in southern Bougainville Led to the evolution of a hierarchical (stratified) system of social contr...
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Sociology, Geography, Archaeology, Social Stratification, Polynesia, and 3 moreSoc, Melanesia, and Tahiti
An issue of continuing interest to Pacific archaeologiststhe question of Polynesian originsis examined (1) to illustrate a set of basic concepts (pattern, pathway, and process) helpful when talking about the origins, maintenance, and... more
An issue of continuing interest to Pacific archaeologiststhe question of Polynesian originsis examined (1) to illustrate a set of basic concepts (pattern, pathway, and process) helpful when talking about the origins, maintenance, and stability of similarities and ...
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Psychology and Creativity
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The bumper sticker that reads ‘‘Think Globally, Act Locally’’ offers sound advice for every scientist as well as every concerned citizen. Lateral thinking and big ideas are essential in science, but theory must work locally to work at... more
The bumper sticker that reads ‘‘Think Globally, Act Locally’’ offers sound advice for every scientist as well as every concerned citizen. Lateral thinking and big ideas are essential in science, but theory must work locally to work at all. This book by Stephen Oppenheimer about the impact of Southeast Asian cultures on the rest of the world during the early and middle Holocene shows both how fruitful it is to throw oneself into thinking globally in intellectually challenging ways and also how difficult it can be to bring big ideas down to earth. In many respects, Eden in the East is three books in one. Like the story of Goldilocks, one of these books (for the whole is more than the sum of the parts) will be picked up by the denizens of Internet chat rooms who love to champion far-out ideas about world history and the antediluvian origins of all things bright and beautiful. The second book (more precisely, this book’s second half) is perfect for those who love to rummage through world mythology for shrouded links between distant places. The third book (actually the first half of this one) may prove to be just right, however, for scholars who prefer their intellectual fare neither too hot nor too cold. On these pages, Oppenheimer serves up nothing less than an insightful deconstruction of currently dominant ideas about the origins of the Polynesians and all the other Austronesian-speakers in the world. Getting three different books between the same two covers may sound like a bargain, but I worry. After trying out the very big book that this volume aims to be (the jacket of the British edition says that ‘‘this astonishing book radically changes our conventional view of prehistory’’) and then after sampling the little book that begins halfway through in which Oppenheimer delves deeply into old myths about catastrophic floods and creation tales, I fear that many academics will not have the patience of Goldilocks to try the medium-sized and pro-
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Abstract Given what is now known or may be reasonably inferred about the geomorphological development of the northern shoreline of New Guinea—the second-largest island in the world with a land area of about 808,000 km2—this island has... more
Abstract Given what is now known or may be reasonably inferred about the geomorphological development of the northern shoreline of New Guinea—the second-largest island in the world with a land area of about 808,000 km2—this island has played a previously unexpected role in the prehistory of the Pacific, first as “barrier” and then later as “bridge” (or perhaps, more accurately, as “voyaging corridor”) between island Southeast Asia and Oceania. However, our field investigations since 1990 have shown us that people living on this tectonically unstable coastline have developed specific ways to handle the challenges of living in such a hazardous and changing environment. One of these strategies is the locally well-established institution of inherited friendship (more commonly referred to in the anthropological literature as “trade partnership”). The second, as yet still insufficiently documented on this coast, is the transgenerational management of resources.
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Geography, Archaeology, Prehistoric Archaeology, Environmental Science, Geomorphology, and 15 morePacific Island Studies, Coastal Geomorphology, Physical Anthropology, Papua New Guinea, Medicine, Multidisciplinary, Pleistocene, Pacific Archaeology, Humans, Fossils, Radiocarbon Dating, Skull, PLoS one, Papua New Guinea archaeology, and Swamp
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Geography and New Guinea
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History, Archaeology, Oceania (Archaeology), Archaeometry, Obsidian, and 14 morePacific Archaeology, Ancient Trade & Commerce (Archaeology), Prehistory, Oceania archaeology, LA-ICP-MS, Commerce, PXRF, Dating, Newspaper, Chemical Analysis, Source, Melanesia Anthropology, Full Text Vol 5, and X ray Fluorescence
... At a time JOHN TERRELL is Curator of Anthropology and Director of the New Guinea Research Program at The Pield Mu-seum in Chicago as well as Adjunct Professor of Anthropology at Northwestern University and the University of Illinois... more
... At a time JOHN TERRELL is Curator of Anthropology and Director of the New Guinea Research Program at The Pield Mu-seum in Chicago as well as Adjunct Professor of Anthropology at Northwestern University and the University of Illinois at Chicago. ...
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How, asks John Terrell in this richly illustrated and original book, can we best account for the remarkable diversity of the Pacific Islanders in biology, language, and custom? Traditionally scholars have recognized a simple racial... more
How, asks John Terrell in this richly illustrated and original book, can we best account for the remarkable diversity of the Pacific Islanders in biology, language, and custom? Traditionally scholars have recognized a simple racial division between Polynesians, Micronesians, Melanesians, Australians, and South-east Asians: peoples allegedly differing in physical appearance, temperament, achievements, and perhaps even intelligence. Terrell shows that such simple divisions do not fit the known facts and provide little more than a crude, static picture of human diversity.
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Psychology and Routledge
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ABSTRACT No abstract is available for this article.
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... Ibid: 55. 14. Teviotdale and Skinner 1947: 346. 407 ... in 1773(21) and a boar and a sow at QueenCharlotte's Sound, earlier in the same year.(22) It does not seem likely, however, that these introductions were so... more
... Ibid: 55. 14. Teviotdale and Skinner 1947: 346. 407 ... in 1773(21) and a boar and a sow at QueenCharlotte's Sound, earlier in the same year.(22) It does not seem likely, however, that these introductions were so success ful that pigs could have spread as far as the Thames. ...
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Exploring Prehistory on the Sepik Coast of Papua New Guinea Edited by John Edward Terrell and Esther M. Scheellter Fieldiana Anthropology (New Series) 42, 2011. Held Museum of Natural History, Illinois. ISSN 0071-4739 303 pages. $US85.... more
Exploring Prehistory on the Sepik Coast of Papua New Guinea Edited by John Edward Terrell and Esther M. Scheellter Fieldiana Anthropology (New Series) 42, 2011. Held Museum of Natural History, Illinois. ISSN 0071-4739 303 pages. $US85. Exploring Prehistory on the Sepik Coast of Papua New Guinea is a detailed report of Terrell and Schechter's 1990 and 1993-94 museum and field research along the north coast of mainland Papua New Guinea (PNG). The fieldwork extended along 350km of coastline, and aimed to investigate four major questions: 1) to what degree were coastal communities along this coastline in contact with each other in the past? 2) To what degree were cultural practices in each community distinctive? 3) How isolated was the north coast of mainland PNG from broader cultural developments elsewhere in the western Pacific? 4) To what degree can the Field Museum of Natural History's ethnographic collection for this region be informed by, and inform, contemporary anthropological research? Ceramics form a focus of this research, although other materials are also covered. The volume is divided into 15 chapters (with eight data-rich Appendices) preceded by a brief Foreword. Chapter 1 (Research Issues, by Terrell) problematises the archaeology of the north coast in broader geographical perspective to set up the volume's (and project's) aims. Chapter 2 (Language, Ethnicity, and Material Culture on the Sepik Coast, by Terrell) explores the Field Museum's ethnographic collections, undertaking computer-aided social network analysis by which notions of community isolation can be investigated for the north coast. Chapter 3 (Context and Relevance, by Terrell, Pope and Golf) gives details of the north coast's geographical and palaeoenvironmental setting as a way of locating human adaptations, focusing on 'inherited friendships' ('trade partnerships') and the 'transgenerational management of resources' as local and regional adaptations to a challenging environment. Chapter 4 (History of Investigations, by Terrell) maps the history of research in this region, incorporating social anthropology and, to a greater extent, archaeology and museum collecting. Chapter 5 (Archaeological Surveys, by Terrell) presents the results of field surveys undertaken between the Serra Hills and Wewak (west and east of Aitape respectively) by the authors in 1993 and 1994. Chapter 6 (Archaeological Excavations, by Terrell) presents the results of six excavations (at sites 'Sumalo Hill'; 'Mt Mario'; 'NGRP16'; 'NGRP22'; 'NGRP23'; 'NGRP46') undertaken in the Aitape area of the Sepik coast and Tumleo Island in 1996. These represent the first archaeological excavations in the broader region. Chapter 7 (Prehistoric Pottery Wares in the Aitape Area, by Terrell and Schechter) explores decorations on the excavated ceramics through their 'attributes' (= particular decorative conventions), 'attribute themes' (= associations of various attributes) and 'motifs' (= the patterned positioning of attribute themes on a vessel surface, such as banding along a particular part of a pot). Four distinct, ceramic wares of different ages are identified through computer-aided seriation: in increasing age, Wain, Aiser, Sumalo and Nyapin wares. These are said to represent some 1500 to 2000 years of ceramics, and to belong to 'a single, distinct, and stylistically evolving local ceramic tradition'. Chapter 8 (Historic and Modern Pottery in the Aitape Area, by Schechter) explores vessel shapes from the excavated ceramics, and compares these with ethnographic pots held by the Field Museum of Natural History. Four types are identified, two of which--platters, and bowls with carinations--only occur in the archaeological assemblages. The authors also explore vessel use and manufacturing techniques. Chapter 9 (Wooden Platters and Bowls in the Ethnographic Collections, by Terrell) compares ethnographic ceramic and wooden platters held by the Field Museum of Natural History with Lapita wares from further to the east, and concludes that decorations found on the ethnographic platters represent continuities from earlier Lapita symbolic systems dating back at least 3300 years (see also Terrell and Schechter 2007 for a more detailed exploration of this idea). …
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Geographic variation among the Pacific Islanders, who are traditionally subdivided into Micronesians, Polynesians, and Melanesians, has long ex-cited research and speculation about the prehistory and dispersal of peoples out into the... more
Geographic variation among the Pacific Islanders, who are traditionally subdivided into Micronesians, Polynesians, and Melanesians, has long ex-cited research and speculation about the prehistory and dispersal of peoples out into the realm of Oceania. This survey of ...
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Geography, Archaeology, Geology, Oceania (Archaeology), Papua New Guinea, and 14 morePacific Archaeology, Prehistory, Provenance studies of archaeological material, Oceania archaeology, Geochemical sourcing, Obsidian Sourcing, Mainland, Archipelago, Pacific prehistory, Obsidian in Prehistory, pXRF Applications in Archaeology, Geochemical Characterization of Obsidians, New Guinea, and peninsula
How do researchers use dynamic network analysis (DYRA) to explore, model, and try to understand the complex global history of our species? Reduced to bare bones, network analysis is a way of understanding the world around us — a way... more
How do researchers use dynamic network analysis (DYRA) to explore, model, and try to understand the complex global history of our species? Reduced to bare bones, network analysis is a way of understanding the world around us — a way called relational thinking — that is liberating but challenging. Using this handbook, researchers learn to develop historical and archaeological research questions anchored in DYRA. Undergraduate and graduate students, as well as professional historians and archaeologists can consult on issues that range from hypothesis-driven research to critiquing dominant historical narratives, especially those that have tended to ignore the diversity of the archaeological record.
https://www.berghahnbooks.com/title/TerrellModeling
https://www.berghahnbooks.com/title/TerrellModeling
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Drawing on current research in anthropology, cognitive psychology, neuro-science, and the humanities, Understanding the Human Mind explores how and why we, as humans, find it so easy to believe we are right-even when we are outright... more
Drawing on current research in anthropology, cognitive psychology, neuro-science, and the humanities, Understanding the Human Mind explores how and why we, as humans, find it so easy to believe we are right-even when we are outright wrong. Humans live out their own lives effectively trapped in their own mind and, despite being exceptional survivors and a highly social species, our inner mental world is often misaligned with reality. In order to understand why, John Ed-ward Terrell and Gabriel Stowe Terrell suggest current dual-process models of the mind overlook our mind's most decisive and unpredictable mode: creativity. Using a three-dimensional model of the mind, the authors examine the human struggle to stay in touch with reality-how we succeed, how we fail, and how winning this struggle is key to our survival in an age of mounting social problems of our own making. Using news stories of logic-defying behavior, analogies to famous fictitious characters, and analysis of evolutionary and cognitive psychology theory, this fascinating account of how the mind works is a must-read for all interested in anthropology and cognitive psychology. John Edward Terrell is internationally known for his pioneering research and publications on human biological and cultural diversity, social network analysis , human biogeography, and the peopling and prehistory of the Pacific Islands. Gabriel Stowe Terrell is studying industrial relations with an emphasis on conflict resolution techniques, organizational behavior, and labor history.
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Evolutionary Psychology, Anthropology, Perception, Decision Making, Trust, and 15 moreCultural Theory, Social Cognition, Collaboration, Race and Ethnicity, Cognitive Neuroscience, Culture and Cognition, Self-deception, Lucid Dreaming, Deception, Stupidity, Sleep and Dreaming, Group Decision Making, Behaviorism, Consciousness and Creativity, and Neurosciences
Ever since Darwin, the world has been struggling with the mystery of human diversity. As the historian Peter Bowler has written, an evolutionary interpretation of the history of life on the earth must inevitably extend itself to include... more
Ever since Darwin, the world has been struggling with the mystery of human diversity. As the historian Peter Bowler has written, an evolutionary interpretation of the history of life on the earth must inevitably extend itself to include the origins of the human race. But this has proved to be a difficult and controversial task. Understanding human origins means accounting not only for the obvious differences between people and cultures around the world, but also for the unity of Homo sapienS≪/i> as a single biological species. As Stephen Jay Gould has said, flexibility is the hallmark of human evolution. Because so much of who we are is learned rather than genetically predetermined, a satisfactory understanding of human evolution--to use old parlance--must account both for the human body and the human soul.
At any single moment of time, it is always possible to find instances where people seem to live in their own world, speak in their own distinctive ways, and have their own exclusive cultural traits and practices. Over the course of time, however, it is not so easy to find places where these dimensions of our diversity stay together. The essays in this collection show why we must stop thinking that race, language, and culture go together, and why we should be wary of the commonsense beliefs that human races exist and that people who speak different languages come from fundamentally different biological lineages.
At any single moment of time, it is always possible to find instances where people seem to live in their own world, speak in their own distinctive ways, and have their own exclusive cultural traits and practices. Over the course of time, however, it is not so easy to find places where these dimensions of our diversity stay together. The essays in this collection show why we must stop thinking that race, language, and culture go together, and why we should be wary of the commonsense beliefs that human races exist and that people who speak different languages come from fundamentally different biological lineages.
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How, asks John Terrell in this richly illustrated and original book, can we best account for the remarkable diversity of the Pacific Islanders in biology, language, and custom? Traditionally scholars have recognized a simple racial... more
How, asks John Terrell in this richly illustrated and original book, can we best account for the remarkable diversity of the Pacific Islanders in biology, language, and custom? Traditionally scholars have recognized a simple racial division between Polynesians, Micronesians, Melanesians, Australians, and South-east Asians: peoples allegedly differing in physical appearance, temperament, achievements, and perhaps even intelligence. Terrell shows that such simple divisions do not fit the known facts and provide little more than a crude, static picture of human diversity.
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Evolutionary Biology, Archaeology, Prehistoric Archaeology, Social Networks, Pacific Island Studies, and 15 moreSociolinguistics, Evolutionary genetics, Evolution, Physical Anthropology, Social Network Analysis (SNA), Linguistics, Biogeography, Evolutionary Ecology, Pacific Archaeology, Pacific History, Human Variation, Pacific Islands, Human biogeography, Pacific Islands Archaeology, and Evolutionary Biogeography
This lively, provocative text presents a new way to understand friendship. Professor John Terrell argues that the ability to make friends is an evolved human trait not unlike our ability to walk upright on two legs or our capacity for... more
This lively, provocative text presents a new way to understand friendship. Professor John Terrell argues that the ability to make friends is an evolved human trait not unlike our ability to walk upright on two legs or our capacity for speech and complex abstract reasoning. Terrell charts how this trait has evolved by investigating two unique functions of the human brain: the ability to remake the outside world to suit our collective needs, and our capacity to escape into our own inner thoughts and imagine how things might and ought to be. The text is richly illustrated and written in an engaging style, and will appeal to students, scholars, and general readers interested in anthropology, evolutionary and cognitive science, and psychology more broadly.
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Evolutionary Biology, Neuroscience, Sociology, Cognitive Psychology, Evolutionary Psychology, and 25 moreArchaeology, Anthropology, Biological Anthropology, Human Evolution, Social Anthropology, Languages and Linguistics, Social Networks, Pacific Island Studies, Sociolinguistics, Social and Cultural Anthropology, Evolutionary genetics, Social Neuroscience, Pacific Islands art, Evolution, Social Network Analysis (SNA), Linguistics, Cognitive Neuroscience, Cultural Anthropology, Pacific Archaeology, Pacific History, Evolution and Human Behavior, Pacific Islands, Pacific Islands Archaeology, Evolutionary Biogeography, and Asia/Pacific
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Archaeology, Prehistoric Archaeology, Social Sciences, Landscape Archaeology, Mesolithic Archaeology, and 27 moreArchaeological Method & Theory, Cultural Landscapes, Hunters, Fishers and Gatherers' Archaeology, Neolithic Archaeology, Origins of Agriculture, Paleoethnobotany, Landscapes in prehistory, Plant domestication (Prehistoric Archaeology), Archaeological Theory, Pastoral landscapes (Archaeology), Niche Construction Theory, Subsistence systems (Archaeology), Subsistance Strategies (Archaeology), Mesolithic/Neolithic, Ancient Agriculture & Farming (Archaeology), Prehistory, Hunter-Gatherer Archaeology, Neolithisation, Neolithic, Animal domestication, Prehistoric Archeology, Mesolithic-Neolithic transition, Domestication, Prehistoric agriculture, Neolithization, Agricultural Revolution, and Crop domestication
Archaeologists have been using many of the diagnostic and visualization tools of what is now widely known as social network analysis (SNA) at least since the early 1970s. Unfortunately, it has evidently been easy to mistake similarity in... more
Archaeologists have been using many of the diagnostic and visualization tools of what is now widely known as social network analysis (SNA) at least since the early 1970s. Unfortunately, it has evidently been easy to mistake similarity in the methods used for shared commonality in research goals and key assumptions. Seen as a body of theory rather than as a set of formal methods, the goodness of fit between the aims and a priori assumptions of modern SNA and the goals of contemporary archaeology is far less than what most archaeologists would surely wish for. Furthermore, it is not a good idea—and can be misleading—to label what can be achieved using formal network methods as “network analysis,” “network science,” and so forth. A more accurate (although perhaps less appealing) way of labeling what is involved is captured by phrases such as “relational thinking” and “contingency analysis.” Nonetheless, when used as a set of exploratory techniques for data analysis and visualization rather than as a predetermined view of history or causation, there are good reasons for keeping the “networks revolution” going in archaeology.
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Text is an abstract of a conference paper, Jakarta, September 2016
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This is a conference paper presented At the National Museum of Prehistory in Taiwan in November 2018. This paper is about shared governance with communities outside museums, and the critical global importance of heritage management.... more
This is a conference paper presented At the National Museum of Prehistory in Taiwan in November 2018.
This paper is about shared governance with communities outside museums, and the critical global importance of heritage management.
Here is the description of the conference:"This conference is also dedicated to the opening of the new archaeological museum at Tainan, which will be a branch of the National Museum of Prehistory. All its collections will be from archaeological sites excavated within the Tainan Industrial Park during the last 20 years or so, which covers a long history from 5000-3000BP. The conference theme is to stress the importance of combining archaeological research with cultural anthropological approaches, in combination with museum studies, in order to generate greater public interests of archaeological investigations. Another aim is to explore different ways of constructing current Austronesian identities through archaeological and museum studies of these collections."
This paper is about shared governance with communities outside museums, and the critical global importance of heritage management.
Here is the description of the conference:"This conference is also dedicated to the opening of the new archaeological museum at Tainan, which will be a branch of the National Museum of Prehistory. All its collections will be from archaeological sites excavated within the Tainan Industrial Park during the last 20 years or so, which covers a long history from 5000-3000BP. The conference theme is to stress the importance of combining archaeological research with cultural anthropological approaches, in combination with museum studies, in order to generate greater public interests of archaeological investigations. Another aim is to explore different ways of constructing current Austronesian identities through archaeological and museum studies of these collections."
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Social networks and geographic systems: models & hypothesis testing in archaeology and anthropology John Edward Terrell, Field Museum of Natural History, Chicago My mother used to say you can't have an argument with someone if you don't... more
Social networks and geographic systems: models & hypothesis testing in archaeology and anthropology John Edward Terrell, Field Museum of Natural History, Chicago My mother used to say you can't have an argument with someone if you don't at least agree on a few things. She encouraged us to look for those shared commonalities, although not necessarily so that we could be argumentative and disagreeable. In science, as in life, such agreeable things are often called assumptions. Here is a familiar example. Since the last war, biological evolutionists and social scientists have argued a lot about how and even whether natural selection has shaped what it means to be human. Such debate has generally taken it for granted that competition is the name of the game of life, and cooperation is an exception to the rule of Darwinian logic running counter to the probabilities of game theory. Given these two assumptions, there has long been consensus at least in evolutionary biology that understanding cooperation as a biological and social phenomenon demands a special kind of mathematical end run around competition to account for it, a clever ruse called inclusive fitness. Many have put their reputations on the line also for the claim that genes are selfish. Some have even gone further and have ironically insisted that competition between groups rather than between individuals can strengthening within-group cohesiveness and competitive prowess. While I will not argue the case here, these assumptions are unnecessary. Counter to them is the following fundamental proposition. As a species, we are quintessentially social creatures, so much so that the precondition of human survival is now and always has been the individual plus his or her relationships with others. As Matthew Lieberman at the University of California, Los Angeles, has stated the proposition: " we think people are built to maximize their own pleasure and minimize their own pain. In reality, we are actually built to overcome our own pleasure and increase our own pain in the service of following society's norms. " Many plausible explanations have been proposed for why we are so social. The evolutionary bottom line, however, is a telling one. As the psychologists Lane Beckes and Jim Coan have argued, being social gives us a decided advantage in the struggle for existence—a social baseline of emotional support and security. So much so, that perhaps far more than most of us realize, our human connections with others are in effect an extension of the way the human brain interacts with the world. I would also add that being social means we often can get things done we couldn't do on our own. Scientists today are grappling with some of the larger implications of this view of human life. For instance, the late anthropologist Fredrik Barth once remarked that practically all social science reasoning relies on the commonsense conviction that our planet is populated by discrete groups of people that can be variously labeled as populations, ethnic groups, tribes, societies, cultures, or races. This misunderstanding of human diversity—often called typological or categorical thinking—takes it as self-evident that things naturally come in different kinds, or types, that can be labeled as such. From this perspective, the words we use to describe things are like empty containers into which we can put things once we have grasped the essential " meaning " of these verbal containers.