Defining and Measuring Diversity in Archaeology: Another Step Toward an Evolutionary Synthesis of Culture

by Metin I. Eren (Editor), Briggs Buchanan (Editor)

Overview

Calculating the diversity of biological or cultural classes is a fundamental way of describing, analyzing, and understanding the world around us. Understanding archaeological diversity is key to understanding human culture in the past. Archaeologists have long experienced a tenuous relationship with statistics; however, the regular integration of diversity measures and concepts into archaeological practice is becoming increasingly important. This volume includes chapters that cover a wide range of archaeological applications of diversity measures. Featuring studies of archaeological diversity ranging from the data-driven to the theoretical, from the Paleolithic to the Historic periods, authors illustrate the range of data sets to which diversity measures can be applied, as well as offer new methods to examine archaeological diversity.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781800734302
Publisher:	Berghahn Books, Incorporated
Publication date:	07/18/2022
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	358
Sales rank:	871,759
File size:	14 MB
Note:	This product may take a few minutes to download.

About the Author

Metin I. Eren is an Associate Professor of Anthropology at Kent State University and a Research Associate at the Cleveland Museum of Natural History. He is Co-Director of the Kent State University Experimental Archaeology Laboratory and has conducted research in North America, Europe, Africa, and Asia. A master flintknapper, Eren knaps, uses, shoots, and breaks stone technologies from across the Stone Age to figure out how they work and to better understand technological evolution.

Briggs Buchanan is an Associate Professor of Anthropology at the University of Tulsa. He studies hunter-gatherers from the Pleistocene (specializing in the Paleoindian period of North America) to the ethnographic present. He uses theory and techniques from human evolution and ecology (such as cladistics, economic theory, scaling theory, and networks) to develop quantitative theory and mechanistic understandings of hunter-gatherer lifeways.

Table of Contents

List of Illustrations

Foreword
Michael J. O’Brien and David Hurst Thomas

Introduction: On the Challenges of Measuring Diversity in Archaeology
Briggs Buchanan and Metin I. Eren

Chapter 1. Dispersion and Diversity: Parfleche Variation on the Great Plains vs. the Columbia Plateau
Stephen J. Lycett

Chapter 2. The Diversity of North America’s “Old Copper” Projectile Points
Michelle R. Bebber and Anne Chao

Chapter 3. Diversity in Hunter-Gatherer Architecture
Brian Andrews, Danielle Macdonald, and Brooke Morgan

Chapter 4. The Potential of Coverage-Based Rarefaction in Zooarchaeology
J. Tyler Faith and Andrew Du

Chapter 5. Diversity and Lithic Microwear: Quantification, Classification, and Standardization
W. James Stemp and Danielle A. Macdonald

Chapter 6. Intensification Mechanisms Driving Dietary Change among the Great Plains Big Game Hunters of North America
Erik Otárola-Castillo, Melissa G. Torquato, and Matthew E. Hill

Appendix 6.1: Summary Information for Archaeological Sites Used in This Study

Chapter 7. Challenges and Prospects of Richness and Diversity Measures in Paleoethnobotany
Alan Farahani and R. J. Sinensky

Appendix 7.1: Abundance of Reproductive Plant Parts Recovered from the Las Capas Site, Southeastern Arizona, 1220–730 BCE 205

Chapter 8. Quantifying Evenness of Paleoindian Projectile Point Forms within Geographic Regions of Eastern North America
Matthew T. Boulanger, Ryan P. Breslawski, and Ian A. Jorgeson

Chapter 9. Thinking about Diversity in Material Culture at Multiple Scales
Steven L. Kuhn

Chapter 10. Measuring and Comparing Class Diversity in Archaeological Assemblages: A Brief Guide to the History and State-of-the-Art in Diversity Statistics
Robert K. Colwell and Anne Chao

Epilogue: Diversity Metrics are Convenient, but Their Archaeological Meanings Are Still Obscure
R. Lee Lyman

Index

Editorial Reviews

“I think it is an important volume for archaeologists to mine the work of all of these incredible researchers for a greater understanding of what diversity can tell us about within our assemblages and regions, and the chapters provide approaches for a diversity of archaeological materials that has something for almost any archaeologist no matter what their specialty or focus.” • Christopher Wolff, Universityat Albany

From the Publisher