Current and potential roles of archaeology in the development of cultural evolutionary theory.

ABSTRACT: Archaeology has much to contribute to the study of cultural evolution. Empirical data at archaeological timescales are uniquely well suited to tracking rates of cultural change, detecting phylogenetic signals among groups of artefacts, and recognizing long-run effects of distinct cultural transmission mechanisms. Nonetheless, these are still relatively infrequent subjects of archaeological analysis and archaeology's potential to help advance our understanding of cultural evolution has thus far been largely unrealized. Cultural evolutionary models developed in other fields have been used to interpret patterns identified in archaeological records, which in turn provides independent tests of these models' predictions, as demonstrated here through a study of late Prehistoric stone projectile p

SUBMITTER: Garvey R 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC5812970 | biostudies-literature | 2018 Apr

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature