Tales of tools and trees : phylogenetic analysis and explanation in evolutionary archaeology

Evolutionary theory has outgrown its natural habitat. Increasingly, researchers outside biology frame their questions and results in evolutionary terms, and propose counterparts to mechanisms and entities that are central to our understanding of the organic world. This "second Darwinian revolution" has not escaped philosophical scrutiny. Critical reflections (e.g., Sober 1991) have focused mostly on general theories of cultural evolution, such as dual-inheritance theory (Boyd and Richerson 1985), or on general issues such as the lack of clarity and unanimity concerning the unit and level of selection. However, research in evolutionary economics, engineering and archaeology rarely mentions general frameworks such as dual-inheritance theory and only occasionally discuss the possibilities of defining suitably general evolutionary concepts. Instead, the results reported are gained by applying specific tools and techniques to problems within a particular discipline. This paper focuses on one example of these "local" efforts at Darwinizing culture, namely phylogenetic reconstructions of tool traditions, as recently given by evolutionary archaeologists.