Is Wright-Fisher reproduction an appropriate null model for cultural transmission via objects?

Summary

For various reasons many archaeologists are interested in identifying what kinds of social learning operated in past societies. One approach to this problem that has proved increasingly popular since it was pioneered by Neiman in the 1990s is use of the Wright-Fisher population genetics model of reproduction as a null model for human cultural transmission. The basic idea is that a mismatch between the amount of cultural diversity predicted by the neutral allele theory and that actually observed (e.g. artefact types) provides evidence for interesting biases in social learning, such as conformism or anticonformism. Archaeological applications of this null hypothesis have to date produced a variety of results, but it has recently been demonstrated by Premo that the time-averaged nature of many archaeological assemblages may lead to false inferences about the presence of biases in social learning. In this paper we investigate a further concern, which is that disanalogies between biological and cultural reproduction may similarly result in false inferences. In particular, cultural transmission via material objects may produce levels of diversity that do not match those predicted by the Wright-Fisher model even if social learning was unbiased.

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This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Society for American Archaeology 80th Annual Meeting, San Francisco, CA (2015)   •
• Evolutionary theory and archaeology, Part I: Cultural transmission, cultural evolution, and evolutionary archaeology

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