Handbook of Evolutionary Research in Archaeology

Dr. Anna Marie Prentiss is an archaeologist specializing in the prehistory of the Great Plains, Pacific Northwest, and Western Arctic regions of North America and Chilean Patagonia.  She has a methodological specialty in lithic technology and theoretical interests in the archaeology of villages and towns, social inequality, hunter-gatherer mobility and technological organization, and the cultural evolutionary process. She is currently editor of the SAA Archaeological Record, the magazine of the Society for American Archaeology.​

“This volume covers a lot of ground at considerable depth. … readers of this volume should gain an excellent understanding of the current status of evolutionary research in archaeology in all its contradictions, complexity, and insight. … this compelling volume indicates that this approach proves extremely robust in explaining the development of human behavior.” (Christopher Morgan, American Antiquity, Vol. 85 (4), 2020)

• Microevolution.- Introduction to Cultural Microevolutionary Research in Anthropology and Archaeology.- Cultural Transmission and Innovation in Archaeology.- Natural Selection, Material Culture, and Archaeology.- Analyzing Cultural Frequency Data: Neutral Theory and Beyond.- Macroevolution.- Cultural Macroevolution.- Landscape Revolutions for Cultural Evolution?: Integrating Advanced Fitness Landscapes into the Study of Cultural Change.- The Uses of Cultural Phylogenetics in Archaeology.- Contributions of Bayesian Phylogenetics to Exploring Patterns of Macroevolution in Archaeological Data.- Cultural Macroevolution and Social Change.- Human Ecology.- Human Ecology.- Human Behavioral Ecology and Zooarchaeology.- Human Behavioral Ecology and Plant Resources in Archaeological Research.- Costly Signaling Theory in Archaeology.- Human Behavioral Ecology and Technological Decision-Making.- Demography, Environment, and Human Behavior.- Niche Construction Theory and Human Bio-Cultural Evolution.- Evolutionary Cognitive Archaeology.- A Brief Overview of Evolutionary Cognitive Archaeology.- Embodied Cognition and the Archaeology of the Mind: A Radical Reassessment.- Evolution and the Origins of Visual Art: An Archaeological Perspective.