NEOEVOLUTIONISM

school of anthropological thought concerned with long-term, directional, evolutionary culture change and with the regular patterns of development that may be seen in unrelated, widely separated cultures. Neoevolutionist anthropology, a development of the mid-20th century, addresses the relation between the long-term progressive change (general evolution) characteristic of human culture in general, and the short-term, localized social and ecological adjustments that cause specific cultures to differ from one another as they adapt to their own unique environments (specific evolution). Further, neoevolutionists investigate the ways in which different cultures adapt to similar environments and examine the similarities and differences in the long-term cultural developments of comparable groups. Because most neoevolutionists are interested in the environmental and technological adjustments of the groups they study, many are identified with the cultural ecological approach to ethnography. Neoevolutionary anthropological thought emerged in the 1940s, in the work of the American anthropologists Leslie A. White and Julian H. Steward and others. White, who was interested in general evolution, hypothesized that cultures became more advanced as they became more efficient at harnessing energy, both through technology and social organization. Steward, in classifying native cultures of North and South America, focused on the parallel developments of unrelated groups in similar environments; he discussed evolutionary change in terms of what he called levels of sociocultural integration and multilinear evolution. In the years since White's and Steward's seminal work, neoevolutionary approaches were, variously, accepted, challenged, rejected, and revised. Nonetheless they continued to generate a lively controversy among archaeologists and anthropologists interested in long-term cultural and social change.