"...[h]uman actors, and not reified systems, are the agents of culture change. Human actors devise complex strategies to solve their problems and meet their goals, and these strategies are neither random nor shaped solely by differential survival either at the population level as ecosystem would have, or at the level of the individual as more recent evolutionary cultural theorist claim. This is not to say that humans always “get it right” or that their actions do not have unforeseen consequences. It is simply to argue that human goals are relevant to cultural outcome."
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Brumfiel, E. M. 1992 Breaking and entering the ecosystem - gender, class, and faction steal the show. American Anthropologist 94, 551-567. (Brumfiel 1992: SS9) quoted in 1995 Shaffer, J.G. and D.A. Lichtenstein. "The Cultural Tradition and Paleoethnicity in South Asian Archaeology." In The Indo-Aryans of Ancient South Asia: Language, Material Culture and Ethnicity. G. Erdosy, (Ed.). Berlin: Walter de Gruyter, pp. 126-154.
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Elizabeth Brumfiel
Elizabeth M. Brumfiel (born Elizabeth Stern; March 10, 1945 – January 1, 2012) was an American archaeologist who taught at Northwestern University and Albion College. She had been a president of the American Anthropological Association.
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