Temporal integration

In the preceding chapters we have considered models and empirical data that seek to describe and explain the spatial processes and configurations of human ecosystems. Two modal categories, mobile hunter-gathers and sedentary farmers, were considered in order to emphasize the variability in spatial behavior. But discussion was necessarily synchronic in order to emphasize the geographical expression of phenomena that archaeologists traditionally view in temporal perspective. A time axis is essential, however, in order to examine the dynamics of individual human ecosystems as well as the record of continuity and change in human history. These diachronic objectives differ in scale rather than in substance, because the trajectory of continuity and change represents the longer-term interactions and transformations of multiple human ecosystems.

Seen in the perspective of thousands or millions of years of prehistory, the archaeological record demonstrates significant changes in human form as well as in cultural behavior: (a) tangible “modernization” of the genus Homo from our Tertiary apelike ancestors toward the living peoples of today, (b) an overall increase in intellectual capacity, and (c) a substantial increase in cultural complexity. These biological and cultural changes represent a fundamental evolution in which the two variables were inextricably interwoven. Beyond these basic premises, there is little agreement at the level of semantics, conceptualization, or processual interpretation.

The paradigms favored for the investigation of human origins are unsuitable to examine phenomena of the last 5 or 10 millennia.