Alex Bentley 
Professor and Head of Anthropology, University of Tennessee
Interests: Cultural evolution, computational social science, prehistoric Europe and Southeast Asia
Professor Alex Bentley
Anthropology Department
University of Tennessee
Knoxville, TN 37996
Michael J. O'Brien, R. Alexander Bentley and William A. Brock (2019). The Importance of Small Decisions. (M.I.T. Press, 2019)
The Acceleration of Cultural Change: From Ancestors to Algorithms
by R. Alexander Bentley and Michael O'Brien (M.I.T. Press, 2017)
This book charts how the transmission of culture has changed from millennia of being thin and deep — knowledge inherited from ancestors over many generations — to broad and shallow, with information shared widely and focused on prediction of the next moment. We suggest that in the future, artificial intelligence could be put to work to solve the problem of information overload, learning to integrate concepts over the vast idea space of digitally stored information.
From our hunter-gatherer days, we humans evolved to be excellent throwers, chewers, and long-distance runners. We are highly social, crave Paleolithic snacks, and display some gendered difference resulting from mate selection. But we now find ourselves texting while driving. The collective acceleration of cultural and technological evolution explains this development.
The evolutionary psychology of individuals—the drive for “food and sex”—explains some of our current habits, but today we are following social media bots as much as we are learning from our ancestors. We are radically changing the way culture evolves; long-evolved cultural knowledge is discounted by online algorithms, which prioritize popularity and recency.
I'll Have What She's Having: Mapping Social Behavior - by Alex Bentley, Mark Earls and Michael O'Brien (MIT press, 2011)
Humans are social creatures. I'll Have What She's Having zooms out from the individual, to small groups, to the complexities of populations. It describes, among other things, how buzzwords propagate and how ideas spread; how the ‘swine flu’ scare became an epidemic; and how focused social learning by a few gets amplified as copying by the masses.“This is a tight little tome ... has enough social science and sociology to probably qualify for a quite reasonable degree in this area.... one could easily get a subset of your degree in anthropology. Now blend this scientific treatise with some modern marketing theory and you have a fascinating read.” - Financial Times Adviser, April 2012
“Their case is strong ... the real value of this book is in its attempt to work out what our copying instinct means for predicting the behaviour of large populations. The authors cleverly show how the resulting patterns diverge from what is predicted by classical economics.” - Financial Times, Nov 2011
"Many nice details" - Steven Poole, The Guardian.
“An extremely intelligent book, short and well expressed” Kevin Duncan, Greatest Hits Blog.
The Edge of Reason: Science and Religion in Modern Society, edited by Alex Bentley (Continuum Press, 2008)
The Edge of Reason explores cultural evolution, science and religious belief in society. A diverse, international group of scholars - from atheist to agnostic to devout - travels through cultural belief systems in anthropology, the prehistoric religions of archaeology, religion in neuroscience and biology, and views in cosmology, theology and philosophy.
"A wonderful contribution to the science/religion dialogue" — Francisco Ayala
"It will challenge not only ideological atheists but also religious theists." - Reform
Complex Systems and Archaeology
edited by R.A. Bentley & H.D.G. Maschner (U. Utah Press, 2003)
"A significant pioneer effort."
—John H. Bodley, Washington State University
Handbook of Archaeological Theories
edited by R.A. Bentley, H.D.G. Maschner,C. Chippendale (AltaMira, 2007)
A comprehensive picture of the theoretical foundations of archaeology. Readers will gain a sense of the power that theory has for building interpretations of the past, while recognizing the wonderful archaeological traditions that created it. With extensive bibliography, it is an ideal reference for contemporary archaeological theories.
"A book that should be in every library as the default guide for the latest archaeological theory."— Antiquity, March 2010
Professor Alex Bentley
Anthropology Department
University of Tennessee
Knoxville, TN 37996