Culture of Science and Science of Culture: Contextualizing Evolution and Diversity

An active area of anthropological research is the reconstruction of regional population histories.  These efforts are often based on archaeological, skeletal and genetic records using modern scientific approaches of hypothesis testing and quantitative inference.  Additional approaches to accessing population histories utilize oral histories, cultural traditions, local traditional knowledge and other aspects of cultural variation.  Scientific approaches are typically strongly theoretically motivated, often based on evolutionary theory, and quantitative, while the humanistic approaches are less firmly theoretically based and emphasize qualitative methods of analysis.  As a result, researchers in the two intellectual traditions often dismiss, or even distrust, inferences and conclusions of the other based on a lack of appreciation of the analytical methods employed.  These contrasting scientific and humanistic approaches to understanding human history and diversity are, as a result, often divergent, but occasionally convergent.  Recent research among identifiable populations will be used as examples of the convergence of scientific and humanistic methods of analysis that are complementary and whose synergy have proven beneficial in a fuller and clearer understanding of human prehistory and the evolving relationship of early human communities to the environment.