Overview

Engaging critically with concepts of race, species, and otherness, this book contributes to current debates on human evolution. In a political climate marked by movements such as Black Lives Matter and policies like Donald Trump’s Executive Order 14168 against ‘gender ideology’, this volume brings together a group of leading scholars in archeology, paleoanthropology and human evolution to examine how narratives of human origins intersect with issues of race, gender, and anthropocentrism. Drawing on postcolonial and critical frameworks from the Humanities and Social Sciences, it interrogates key foundational concepts and assumptions underpinning evolutionary discourses.

Full Product Details

Author:   Oscar Moro Abadía ,  Martin Porr
Publisher:   Berghahn Books
Imprint:   Berghahn Books
ISBN:  

9781836954644

ISBN 10:   1836954646
Pages:   406
Publication Date:   15 April 2026
Audience:   Professional and scholarly ,  Professional & Vocational
Format:   Hardback
Publisher's Status:   Active
Availability:   In Print  
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Table of Contents

List of Illustrations Introduction: Alterity and Human Evolution: Deep-Time Perspectives on Difference and Variation Martin Porr and Oscar Moro Abadía Part I: Alterity and the (Biological) Species Concept Chapter 1. Science and the Sacred Jonathan Marks Chapter 2. The “Other” Homo Erectus: Individuals, Identity, and Inference in the Human Fossil Record Susan C. Antón Chapter 3. Species as Alterity: Moving Beyond Species in Paleoanthropology Sang-Hee Lee and Cathy Willermet Chapter 4. Like Us/Not Like Us: Critical Theory, Anthropology, and the Neanderthal Dilemma Brian Boyd Chapter 5. Alternative Evolutionary Pathways of Emotional Responses in Neanderthals and Anatomically Modern Humans (AMH), and the Co-evolution of Neurobiology and Culture Penny Spikins Part II: Alterity, History, and Reflexivity Chapter 6. Narratives of “Other” in the Emergence of the Genus Homo Lauren Schroeder, Yonatan Sahle, Sheela Athreya, and Rebecca Rogers Ackermann Chapter 7. Neanderthals and the Issue of Masculinity: The Role of Gender in Popular Neanderthal Discourse Susan Peeters and Hub Zwart Chapter 8. The Hero of Human Evolution: Deconstructing Illustrations of Human Evolution and Considering the Place of Children Michelle C. Langley Chapter 9. Normal Is Not What You Think It Is! Challenging the Ascription of Contemporary Normativity to Patterns and Processes in Human Evolution Agustin Fuentes Chapter 10. Interpreting Variability, Diversity, and Alterity in the Hominin Fossil Record Mathilde Lequin Part III: Against Alterity: Critical Intervention Chapter 11. Alterity Is a Violent Western Construct: In Indigenous Worldviews, We Are All Related Paulette Steeves Part IV: Alterity as an Ontological and Epistomological Challenge Chapter 12. A Critical Ontology of the Archaeology of Human Origins Benjamin Alberti Chapter 13. Thinking about “Radical” Alterity: Why Did Animal Image-Making Disappear in Paleolithic Europe? Oscar Moro Abadía, Margaret W. Conkey, Manuel R. González Morales, Bryn Tapper, Eduardo Palacio Pérez, and Amy Chase Chapter 14. Paleolithic Art as a Dynamic Symbolic System: From Worldviews to Image-Making Carole Fritz Chapter 15. The Alterity of Deep History and the Hospitality of Things Clive Gamble Chapter 16. Alterity Evolving: Evolution, Cognition, and Social Ontology Siobhan Guerrero Mc Manus Chapter 17. Multispecies Alterity: Interrogating Hominin, Animal and Techno-material Diversities of the Deep Past Shumon Tobias Hussain Index

Reviews

“I am quite simply stunned by this book… I feel certain that this book will become a landmark volume .” • Andrew M. Jones, Professor of Archaeology at the University of Southampton

Author Information

Oscar Moro Abadía is Professor at Memorial University of Newfoundland, Canada. Some of his recent publications include Deep-Time Images in the Age of Globalization: Rock Art in the 21st Century (with Margaret Conkey and Josephine McDonald; Springer, 2024) and Ontologies of Rock Art: Images, Relational Approaches and Indigenous Knowledges (with Martin Porr; Routledge, 2021).

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