Studying Human Origins: Disciplinary History and Epistemology (Amsterdam Archaeological Studies, 6) - Hardcover

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 9053564640 ISBN 13: 9789053564646

Publisher: Amsterdam University Press, 2001

Synopsis

This history of human origin studies covers a wide range of disciplines. This important new study analyses a number of key episodes from palaeolithic archaeology, palaeoanthropology, primatology and evolutionary theory in terms of various ideas on how one should go about such reconstructions and what, if any, the uses of such historiographical exercises can be for current research in these disciplines. Their carefully argued point is that studying the history of palaeoanthropological thinking about the past can enhance the quality of current research on human origins.

The main issues in the present volume are the uses of disciplinary history in terms of present-day research concerns, the relative weight of cultural and other 'external' contexts, and continuity and change in theoretical perspectives. The book's overall approach is an epistemological one. It does not, in other words, primarily address anthropological data as such, but our ways of handling such data in terms of our most fundamental, but usually quite implicit theoretical presuppositions.

About this title

About the Author

|Wil Roebroeks is Professor of Palaeolithic Archaeology at Leiden University, the Netherlands

Review

Studying Human Origins makes an important contribution to the history of ideas and anthropological thought, as well as to palaeoanthropological and archaeological research Anthropological Theory

Edition details

• Publisher: Amsterdam University Press
• Publication date: 2001
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 9053564640
• ISBN 13: 9789053564646
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 174
• Editor: Corbey Raymond, Roebroek Wil