It’s been a week since the end of the inaugural CES conference in Jena, part-hosted by the Max Planck Institute for the Science of Human History. It was great to be at a conference where everyone was playing with the same rules: evolution is a general framework used to explain human and animal behavioural and artefact variation. I’m not sue how much CES differs from the Human Behaviour and Evolution Society meetings (HBES).

Ethan talking about evolution and agriculture

I gave a talk with my co-author Fiona Jordan that was well-received. We use Bayesian phylogentic analyses to examine the evolution of agricultural traits in the Pacific. Major conclusion thus far: new environments encountered in Polynesia explain the radiation of diverse techniques.

Ethan Cochrane, Joe Brewer, and Jamie Tehrani talking shop.

A highlight of the conference was seeing old colleagues and meeting new ones. The excellent German beer and food didn’t hurt.

Next year’s conference will be in Tempe, Arizona, at ASU. I encourage more archaeologists to attend, especially those interested in macroevolutionary studies, as these were somewhat lacking in Jena.