Cultural Phylogenetics

Abstract

Although the use of neo-Darwinian models to explain culture change has become quite common in some subfields of archaeology, there remains much resistance within ‘interpretive’ archaeologies to what is perceived as the simplistic ‘biologisation’ of culture. Some recent work has sought to build bridges between evolutionary and interpretive archaeologies, with the topic of ‘learning’ emerging as a useful middle ground between these two standpoints. Yet significant barriers remain to a more thorough integration. Here I identify what appear to be two such barriers: one is the continued commitment in neo-Darwinian approaches to a Cartesian notion of ‘information’ and the second is the related adherence to the idea of distinct cultural ‘traits’. I draw on work in cognitive science and developmental biology that places heavy emphasis on the distributed and contextual nature of learning, such that the uptake of an innovative technology cannot be reduced to a process of information transfer for learning a new trait. A distributed and developmental approach is put into play through a case study tackling the variable regional and temporal adoption of the potter’s wheel across the Bronze Age east Mediterranean.