Preface ......................................................... 9
Introduction .................................................... 1
1 Analogies ................................................... 13
Analogies in science ........................................ 13
Analogies in archaeology .................................... 14
Models and analogies ........................................ 16
Analogy as a process ........................................ 18
The structure of analogy .................................... 19
Truth and validity .......................................... 21
Entities and relations ...................................... 23
An ideal case ............................................... 26
Strengthening the analogy ................................... 27
The practice of analogy ..................................... 32
The analogical algorithm .................................... 33
A reading grid .............................................. 36
A corpus of texts ........................................... 38
A choice of focus ........................................... 41
Conclusion .................................................. 42
2 The comparative method ...................................... 43
Early ethnographic parallels ................................ 44
The impact of the three-age system .......................... 48
A revolution in antiquarian thought? ........................ 48
The dualism of Sven Nilsson and Daniel Wilson ............... 51
Comparative ethnography, folklore and 'the parallax of
man' ........................................................ 54
An important device ......................................... 58
The antiquity of man and early social evolutionism .......... 59
The first generation of social evolutionists ................ 60
The function of contemporary savagery ....................... 63
Ethnographic enthusiasm ..................................... 69
Degenerationism and classical evolutionism .................. 71
Degenerationist doubts ...................................... 72
A second round .............................................. 74
Morgan's scheme ............................................. 79
A zenith of similarity ...................................... 80
Evolutionist fragmentation .................................. 82
Archaeology and anthropology diverge ........................ 82
Tylor and the Tasmanians .................................... 84
The comparative method's swan-song: Sollas .................. 89
Divergence of opinion ....................................... 91
Conclusion .................................................. 92
3 Ethnoarchaeology ............................................ 95
The dormancy of ethnographic analogy ........................ 95
Innovations in the Interbellum .............................. 97
Marxism and folklore ....................................... 101
Postwar pessimism in Britain ............................... 105
The situation in the United States ......................... 112
Cultural continuity ........................................ 114
The dilemma of the New Archaeology ......................... 115
The new analogy and the New Archaeology .................... 115
Fieldwork and cautionary tales ............................. 120
Hypothetico-deductive reasoning or the benefits of
testing .................................................... 124
Between critique and inspiration ........................... 128
The heyday of ethnoarchaeology ............................. 129
The impossibility of independent testing ................... 130
A thriving subdiscipline ................................... 135
Beyond analogy? ............................................ 138
Place and population: a case study ......................... 145
Source and subject-side strategies ......................... 154
Decline and fall of ethnoarchaeology ....................... 157
The isolation of hunter-gatherer ethnoarchaeology .......... 158
Anthropological doubts about hunter-gatherers .............. 163
Contextual ethnoarchaeology ................................ 165
Post-processual archaeology ................................ 175
An age of extremes ......................................... 185
Conclusion ................................................. 186
The strength of ethnoarchaeological analogies .............. 188
Optimism, pessimism and the redundancy of analogy .......... 192
4 Primate models ............................................. 195
The idea of a primate model ................................ 195
First episode: from primate anatomy to human anatomy ....... 197
Second episode: from living to fossil anatomy .............. 200
Third episode: from primate behaviour to human behaviour ... 202
Fourth episode: from primate behaviour to early human
behaviour .................................................. 205
Converging circumstances ................................... 210
Baboons .................................................... 212
Washburn's baboons: from typical primates to terrestrial
specialists ................................................ 213
The canonization of the baboon model ....................... 227
Why baboons? ............................................... 231
Social carnivores and geladas .............................. 234
From subsistence to society: the social carnivore analogy .. 235
From dentition to diet: the gelada analogy ................. 240
Remote sources and logical consistency ..................... 245
Chimpanzees ................................................ 247
The feminist critique ...................................... 248
A perfect analogy .......................................... 253
The seductiveness of similarity ............................ 258
Bonobos .................................................... 259
The disputed bonobo model .................................. 259
Bonobo behaviour ........................................... 265
Entrapped by resemblance ................................... 267
The crisis of traditional modelling ........................ 268
The weaknesses of referential modelling .................... 269
Phylogenetic comparison or cladistics of behaviour ......... 274
Behavioural ecology ........................................ 278
Ethoarchaeology ............................................ 281
The ongoing lure of referential models ..................... 284
Beyond single-species models ............................... 286
Conclusions ................................................ 288
The strength of primate models ............................. 288
A change in approach ....................................... 291
Primate modelling, primatology and archaeology ............. 293
5 A comparative history of debates ........................... 297
The comparative method and ethnoarchaeology ................ 297
Projections and processes .................................. 297
Ethnoarchaeology and primate modelling ..................... 300
The impact of functionalism ................................ 300
Archaeologists and primate models .......................... 301
Primatologists and ethnographic models ..................... 303
Divergent debates .......................................... 309
Primate modelling and the comparative method ............... 312
Proximity, privilege, projection and paradoxes ............. 312
Differences ................................................ 316
Similarity but no continuity ............................... 317
Conclusion ................................................. 321
Epilogue ................................................... 329
References ................................................. 331
Curriculum Vitae .............................................. 373
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