ABSTRACT
In this chapter, the author reviews phylogenetic approaches that have been used in physical anthropology. In particular, he highlights some of the insights that can be gleaned from many decades of phylogenetic analysis performed by bioarchaeologists-physical anthropologists who specialize in human skeletal remains from archaeological contexts. The author provides a brief history of phylogenetic studies conducted on human skeletal materials from the American Southwest. The sources of data for bioarchaeologists are the human skeletons excavated from archaeological sites. There are several reasons why bioarchaeological techniques and methodological advances in biodistance approaches are relevant to cultural phylogenetics research. First, both bioarchaeologists and archaeologists are interested in asking similar questions of their data sets. Second, it has been suggested by those who reject evolutionary models for cultural phenomena that the reticulate nature of cultural transmission precludes a cladistic approach. Finally, both archaeologists and bioarchaeologists acknowledge that cultural transmission is often accompanied by or occurs together with genetic transmission.
