Evolutionary Theory (Other Keyword)

DOCUMENT Citation Only Carl Lipo. Mark Madsen.

At scales where individual copying events are not measurable but the regional archaeological record is rich enough to support models more detailed than phylogenies, seriation can play a unique role as a diachronic measurement tool for linking cultural transmission models to data composed of assemblages of artifact class frequencies. As a first step towards fitting cultural transmission models to regional-scale transmission scenarios, we develop a iterative deterministic seriation algorithm. We...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Kristina Walters. Lorena Craig.

This paper presents results from co-phylogenetic analysis of Earth-Diver creation myths and regional language history. This study seeks to understand process of dissemination of traits of historically congruent cultural traditions across time and geographic space. We hypothesize creation myths and language have parallel evolutionary history and form a combined set of core cultural traditions. Thus creation stories and language will map closely together. Results from phylogenetic methods and...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Kristin Safi.

Peer polity interaction has been suggested as a primary driver of interaction among communities with Chaco-style great houses. Unfortunately, the peer polity model lacks underlying theory and therefore using it to empirically examine the relationships between great house groups is difficult. We propose instead that costly signaling theory is a better framework for evaluating the construction of these monumental structures, the ritual or group level activities associated with their use, and...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Michael Charlton.

All metallurgical systems conform to the scientific laws defined for chemical, physical and thermodynamic interactions. These laws place clear limitations on the range of technological possibility, but, more importantly, create technological opportunity. Some metallurgical opportunities will be better suited to particular socioeconomic and natural environments than others. Models derived jointly from Materials science and Geology on one hand and evolutionary sciences on the other can offer...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Mary Stiner. Steven Kuhn.

Short-term constraints that motivate people are an important part of the process social and economic change. Proximate decision (optimality or satisficing) models are particularly useful in archaeology because they play upon basic resource needs and costs in situations where behavior cannot be observed directly. These models are not enough, however, to account for the larger processes by which repeated interactions change the nature of the co-evolving species and the conditions of selection...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Carl Lipo. Mark Madsen. Robert Dinapoli. Terry Hunt.

This is an abstract from the "Defining and Measuring Diversity in Archaeology" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Due to the effects of drift on small and isolated populations, island environments pose particular evolutionary challenges in the retention of richness and diversity of cultural information. Such variation, however, can have significant fitness consequences particularly when environmental conditions change in an unpredictable fashion:...

DOCUMENT Citation Only J. Stephen Athens.

This resource is a citation record only, the Center for Digital Antiquity does not have a copy of this document. The information in this record has been migrated into tDAR from the National Archaeological Database Reports Module (NADB-R) and updated. Most NADB-R records consist of a document citation and other metadata but do not have the documents themselves uploaded. If you have a digital copy of the document and would like to have it curated in tDAR, please contact us at comments@tdar.org.