Podcast

Why cultures change - audio

Professor Felipe Fernández-Armesto (William P. Reynolds Professor of History, University of Notre Dame, Indiana USA )

Archaeology and History are among many academic fields dedicated to the scrutiny, description and characterization of how cultures change; typically, practitioners show a lot of interest in why particular changes happen, but the problem of why they happen at all is rarely addressed except in the context of debate over whether the laws of evolution, or some similar laws, govern culture. The lecturer raids not just history and archaeology but …