Neoevolutionism

noun

noun ·Rare ·Advanced level

Definitions

Noun
  1. 1
    A school of anthropology, developed in the mid-20th century, concerned with long-term, evolutionary social change and with the regular patterns of development that may be seen in unrelated, widely separated cultures. uncountable

    "The so-called neoevolutionism or cultural materialism of Childe, however, had been preserved (in the works of R. McC. Adams, Braidwood, and others), as had the environmental school of Crawford, Fox, and Clark. […] Influences from cultural anthropology—neoevolutionism and functionalism—were pulling in the same direction."

  2. 2
    school of anthropology concerned with long-term culture change and with the similar patterns of development that may be seen in unrelated, widely separated cultures. wordnet

Synonyms

All synonyms
neo-evolutionism

Example

More examples

"The so-called neoevolutionism or cultural materialism of Childe, however, had been preserved (in the works of R. McC. Adams, Braidwood, and others), as had the environmental school of Crawford, Fox, and Clark. […] Influences from cultural anthropology—neoevolutionism and functionalism—were pulling in the same direction."

Etymology

From neo- + evolutionism.

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Data sourced from Wiktionary, WordNet, CMU, and other open linguistic databases. Updated March 2026.