Evolutionary Biological Methods and Cultural Data

As BENTLEY ET AL. note in chapter 8 of this volume, Darwinian approaches to archaeology are rapidly gaining popularity, fueled in part by the recognition that cultural evolution can be fruitfully studied by adapting the analytical tools that evolutionary biologists and paleobiologists use to study biological evolution. The goal of this chapter is to illustrate how two of these methods, population genetics modeling and cladistic techniques of phylogenetic reconstruction, can be used to explain temporal and geographic variation in cultural phenomena as a result of transmission, innovation, and selection. We will begin by discussing the conceptual foundations of this novel approach. We will then outline some of the ways in which models rooted in population genetics theory have been used to investigate cultural evolution. Lastly, we will discuss some cultural evolutionary applications of the cladistic method of phylogenetic reconstruction.

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