Human Origins Contributions from Social Anthropology [Paperback]

Human Originsbrings together new thinking by social anthropologists and other scholars on the evolution of human culture and society. No other discipline has more relevant expertise to consider the emergence of humans as the symbolic species. Yet, social anthropologists have been conspicuously absent from debates about the origins of modern humans. These contributions explore why that is, and how social anthropology can shed light on early kinship and economic relations, gender politics, ritual, cosmology, ethnobiology, medicine, and the evolution of language.

Morna Finneganis an independent researcher who has published on the sexual egalitarianism of Central African hunter-gatherers, with a particular focus on the relationship between ritual and political domains.

&makes a substantial contribution to what Alan Barnard in his afterword refers to as a new configuration of anthropological ideas, a larger and more comprehensive anthropology. The volume's two major goals are to reengage social anthropology with research on human origins and, in so doing, to apply insights from sociocultural studies to evolutionary interpretations of symbolic culture, sociality, and cultural variation.? Choice

This work provides an important link between social anthropology and evolutionary anthropology, developing a cross-disciplinary approach to understanding human origins.? Dimitri Bondarenko, The Russian Academy of Sciences

Hilary Callanis Director Emerita of the Royal Anthropological Institute, having served as Director from 2000 to 2010. She has held various academic positions in anthropology and international education.

Introduction
Camilla Power, Morna Finnegan and Hilary Callan

Chapter 1.Forty Years On: Biosocial AnthropologlcO