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date: 16 April 2021

Abstract and Keywords

<p>Studying human evolution means getting to grips with the fundamental question of what it actually means to be ‘human’. Is humanity best defined by our genes, our physical biology, or our behaviour, or some combination of all three? Multiple lines of evidence are available from a range of disciplines, including archaeogenetics, biological anthropology, and archaeology, but each also has its weaknesses, and different disciplines often work from very different definitions of ‘human’ which are inevitably informed by—and impact on—broader cultural ideas about human nature and origins. This chapter discusses the ways in which archaeologists and anthropologists can integrate these often conflicting perspectives on what humans and our ancestors are, what we do and why, into a coherent account of how and why we ‘became human’.</p>

Keywords: human evolution, Palaeolithic archaeology, biological anthropology, aDNA, socio-ecology, cognition

Fiona Coward

Fiona Coward is Lecturer in Archaeological Science at Bournemouth University. Her research into the evolution of hominin and human social and cultural lives, and especially the co-evolution of cognition and material culture, has been presented internationally and published in a variety of peer-reviewed journals including Science, Journal of Archaeological Science and Cambridge Archaeological Journal as well as in several edited volumes, including Social Brain, Distributed Mind, Approaches in Regional Network Analysis, The Cognitive Life of Things and The Sapient Mind. She is a fellow of the Royal Anthropological Institute and from September 2013 she will be Associate Editor of the Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute.

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