A Very Remote Period Indeed: A Sum Greater Than Its Parts: Multi-Disciplinary Perspectives on Later Human Evolution

What are you doing this weekend? If you're in the San Francisco area, you should come to the AAAs, specifically to attend this session I'm in entitled "A Sum Greater Than Its Parts: Multi-Disciplinary Perspectives on Later Human Evolution." It's being organized by Jamie Clark (University of Alaska Fairbanks) and Adam Van Arsdale (Wellesley College), and it will be jam-packed with human evolutionary goodness. Both Adam and John Hawks (who's also participating) have already mentioned it, so I figured I'd get in on the action too, and list the program here, for any interested readers (you can also find it online here); you can also click on the presentation titles for the abstracts.

A Sum Greater Than Its Parts: Multi-Disciplinary Perspectives on Later Human Evolution

Room: Imperial A

Date/time: Saturday Nov. 17, 2012, 1:45-5:15

Session Abstract:

In anthropology departments across the country- as in the field as a whole- the boundaries between the sub-fields of the discipline are often being drawn more starkly than ever. This reflects the ongoing debates about scientific vs. humanistic anthropologies as well as the increasing specialization of knowledge required for successful scholarship. And yet, even in the face of the increasing fractionation of our field, certain avenues of anthropological inquiry are actually becoming more multi-disciplinary in nature. A particularly noteworthy example is found in the study of later human evolution. Researchers from an array of fields—paleoanthropology, archaeology, behavioral and evolutionary ecology, genetics, linguistics, cognitive psychology, and primatology—produce independent and overlapping datasets that address the behavioral and biological evolution of our species. It is only by embracing the contribution of scholars across sub-field- and disciplinary- boundaries that the complexity of recent human evolution can be understood.

The purpose of this session is to bring together scholars who approach the study of human evolution from different perspectives, both to demonstrate the unique contributions being made by the disciplines represented, and as a means of highlighting the critical importance of collaborative work to a more deeply nuanced understanding of the later evolution of our species.

1:45 PM

Blurred Boundaries and Constructed Niches: Interweaving the Individual, the Group and the Community In Human Evolution

Agustin Fuentes (University of Notre Dame)

2:00 PM

Why Humans (especially simple foragers) Are So Egalitarian

Frank W Marlowe (University of Cambridge)

2:15 PM

Territoriality, Tolerance and Testosterone: Hormonal Correlates of Male Chimpanzee Behavior and Their Implications for Human Evolution

Marissa Sobolewski (University of Michigan), John Mitani (University of Michigan) and Janine Brown (Smithsonian Institution)

2:30 PM

A Primate Perspective On the Evolution of Human Life History

Tanya M Smith (Harvard University), Andrew Bernard (Freelance Nature Photographer), Ronan Donovan (Freelance Nature Photographer), Zarin Machanda (Harvard University), Amanda Papakyrikos (Wellesley College) and Richard Wrangham (Harvard University)

2:45 PM

Childhood, Play and the Evolution of Cultural Capacity In Neanderthals and Early Modern Humans

April Nowell (University of Victoria and University of Victoria)

3:00 PM

Discussant

Milford H Wolpoff (University of Michigan)

3:15 PM - Break

3:30 PM

Fuzzy Boundaries: The Importance of High-Resolution Datasets for Studying Behavioral Change Across Transitional Periods In the Later Pleistocene

Jamie L Clark (University of Alaska Fairbanks)

3:45 PM

Cultural Diversity and Rates of Change In Structured Populations: A Review of Some Recent Models and Their Implications for Understanding the Appearance of Behavioral Modernity During the Paleolithic