Lucy to Language: The Benchmark Papers

2014 OUP hardcover edition. Unread copy in very good condition. From the cover: The concept of the social brain has become a popular topic in the last decade and has generated interest within the research community and contributed to a wide public examination of human culture, nature, mind, and instinct, as well as aspects of social and business organization. At its core, the hypothesis that our social life drove the dramatic enlargement of our brain bridges the dimensions of our evolutionary history and our contemporary experience. This has been the focus of a seven-year research project funded by the British Academy, the British Academy Centenary Research Project (otherwise known as the Lucy Project). The main aim of the Lucy Project has been to explore these two axes in an integrated set of studies whose focus was to link archaeology and, in its broadest sense, evolutionary psychology, which offers powerful, new explanatory insights. This approach redresses the past contribution from archaeology towards the study of evolutionary issues and ties evolutionary psychology into the extensive historical data from the past, allowing us to escape the confined timeframe of the comparatively recent human mind.In this volume of published and new papers, the contributors explore the question of just what it is that makes us so different, and why and when these uniquely human capacities evolved. Contents: I BACKGROUND 1. Mind the Gap: or Why Humans Aren't Just Great Apes - R.I.M. Dunbar 2. The Social Brain and the Shape of the Palaeolithic - Clive Gamble, J.A.J. Gowlett, and R.I.M. Dunbar II SOCIAL BRAIN AND COGNITION 3. The Social Brain Hypothesis: An Evolutionary Perspective on the Neurobiology of Social Behaviour - Susanne Shultz and R.I.M. Dunbar 4. Hominin Cognitive Evolution: Identifying Patterns and Processes in the Fossil and Archaeological Record - Susanne Shultz, Emma Nelson, and R.I.M. Dunbar 5. The Identity Model: A Theory to Access Visual Display and Hominin Cognition within the Palaeolithic - James Cole 6. The Longest Transition or Multiple Revolutions? Curves and Steps in the Record of Human Origins - J.A.J. Gowlett III PROCESSES OF SOCIAL BONDING 7. Relationships and the Social Brain: Integrating Psychological and Evolutionary Perspectives - Alistair Sutcliffe, R.I.M. Dunbar, Jens Binder, and Holly Arrow 8. Close Social Relationships: An Evolutionary Perspective - S.G.B. Roberts, Holly Arrow, J.A.J. Gowlett, Julia Lehmann, and R.I.M. Dunbar 9. The Brain Opioid Theory of Social Attachment: A Review of the Evidence - A.J. Machin and R.I.M. Dunbar IV COMMUNITY, TIME, AND COHESION 10. Time as an Ecological Constraint - R.I.M. Dunbar, A.H. Korstjens, and Julia Lehmann 11. Unravelling the Function of Community-level Organization - Julia Lehmann, Phyllis Lee, and R.I.M. Dunbar 12. Fireside Chat: The Impact of Fire on Hominin Socioecology - R.I.M. Dunbar and J.A.J. Gowlett 13. Bridging the Bonding Gap: The Transition from Primates to Humans - R.I.M. Dunbar V THE SOCIAL WORLD IN ANTIQUITY 14. Evolution of Primate Social Systems: Implications for Hominin Social Evolution - Susanne Shultz, Christopher Opie, Emma Nelson, Q.D. Atkinson, and R.I.M. Dunbar 15. The Road to Modern Humans: Time Budgets, Fission-fusion Sociality, Kinship and the Division of Labour in Hominin Evolution - R.I.M. Dunbar, Julia Lehmann, Amanda H. Korstjens, and J.A.J. Gowlett 16. The Costs of Being a High-latitude Hominin - Eiluned Pearce, Andrew Shuttleworth, Matt Grove, and R.H. Layton 17. Communities on the Edge of Civilization - Fiona Coward and R.I.M. Dunbar VI LANGUAGE, KINSHIP, AND CULTURE 18. The Elements of Design Form in Acheulean Bifaces: Modes, Modalities, Rules, and Language - J.A.J. Gowlett 19. Why Only Humans Have Language - R.I.M. Dunbar 20. Social Origins: Sharing, Exchange, and Kinship - Alan Barnard 21. Big Brains, Small Worlds: Material Culture and the Evolution of the Mind - Fiona Coward and Clive Gamble.…