Adaptation, "agency," and Pacific prehistory

[John Edward Terrell]

Colleagues,

The annual meetings of the Society for American Archaeology (SAA) are being
held this year here in Chicago.  John Hart (New York State Museum) and I
have organized a symposium for the SAA called "Key Concepts in Modern
Evolutionary Archaeology."

My own paper for this symposium takes a look at the concept of "adaptation"
in anthropology & archaeology, and offers a case study which takes another
look at why Polynesia got settled fairly late in prehistory (ca. 3,000 years
ago) in spite of the fact that our kind got to Australia, western Melanesia,
and southeast Asia something like 45-50,000+ years ago.

So while aimed toward archaeologists, my paper is about a concept relevant
to anthropology as well as archaeology, and it is about a part of the world
& its past that this list is all about too.

A draft of this paper is available on the web:

http://www.fmnh.org/candr/anthro/anthro_sites/ngrp/SAA_1999.htm

Comments and suggestions are welcome.  The paper will be given here in
Chicago on the 27th


John Edward Terrell, Ph.D., Director
New Guinea Research Program (NGRP)
The Field Museum, Chicago, IL 60605 USA
Voice:  (312) 922-9410 X330    Fax: 312/922-2230
http://www.fmnh.org/candr/anthro/anthro_sites/ngrp
http://archaeology.org/9811/abstracts/pacific.html
http://intarch.ac.uk/antiquity/terrell.html
http://www.bioanth.org/Chicago