Stylistic Analysis: A Critical Review of Concepts, Models, and Applications

Stylistic Analysis: A Critical Review of Concepts, Models, and Application

Style, Function and Cultural Transmission

Recent evolutionary approaches to the understanding of lithic variability take us back to long-standing issues in lithic studies to do with the claimed contrast between style and function and the Binford-Bordes debate of the 1960s concerning the factors that affect inter-assemblage variation. In fact, the style and function contrast is an unhelpful one, not least when considering the question of convergence. Taking the definition of style as ‘a way of doing’, all functions are carried out in locally specific ways that have a transmission history, although the extent to which the history of the attributes relevant to the function have been subject to random drift and innovation patterns, as opposed to selection, will vary. Moreover, in a subtractive technology like lithics the extent to which a transmission signal will be visible in an attribute like the angle of a cutting edge is unclear. The contrasting view is that, in the case of lithics, functional requirements will always call into existence the technical innovations to satisfy them, which in any case are not that difficult to find. The paper addresses these and related issues with reference to previous work by Shennan and colleagues on the use of material culture to identify within and between group variation, the extent to which isolation-by-distance in space and time can account for the similarities and differences between assemblages, and the role of phylogenetic methods

Palaeolithic Social Networks and Behavioural Modernity

In this chapter, we discuss some of the challenges researchers face when using formal analysis methods to study Palaeolithic social networks. We also present alternative and complementary methods that can mitigate those challenges; in particular, we argue that agent-based models are useful tools to test formal methods and explore network questions that cannot be answered solely from the archaeological record. We use such a model to show how different social behaviours are reflected in material networks, and to evaluate the accuracy of a popular method to reconstruct Palaeolithic networks. Finally, we identify a number of fruitful areas that could be targeted by Palaeolithic network analysts, as well as questions for which social network analysis techniques may be particularly well suited

The Western Stemmed Point Tradition: Evolutionary Perspectives on Cultural Change in Projectile Points During the Pleistocene-Holocene Transition

In this thesis I analyze the cultural techniques of Paleoindians in North America by examining the diversification and fusion of stemmed projectile point traditions using an evolutionary analysis. The Western Stemmed Point tradition has an extensive regional and temporal distribution throughout the Intermountain West and High Plains during the Paleoindian period. In an effort to determine how stemmed projectile point technologies relate to each other, I applied a phylogenetic approach to construct heritable patterns of projectile point histories. By measuring the physical traits of those points and using a macro-evolutionary theoretical approach, changes in artifact form can be acquired and heritable processes understood. This process was further complicated by our understanding of how culture is learned and shared. Techniques can be learned as individual units or even as sets of units, resulting in the differential persistence of individual traits. This analysis indicated that projectile point traits for blade and haft characteristics evolved in a mosaic fashion creating distinct patterns of vertical and horizontal transmission across space and time. Furthermore, the haft characteristics created important results that support the eastward expansion of stemmed projectile point traditions from the west

Measuring Cultural Relatedness Using Multiple Seriation Ordering Algorithms

Seriation is a long-standing archaeological method for relative dating that has proven effective in probing regional-scale patterns of inheritance, social networks , and cultural contact in their full spatiotemporal context. The orderings produced by seriation are produced by the continuity of class distributions and uni-modality of class frequencies, properties that are related to social learning and transmission models studied by evolutionary archaeologists. Linking seriation to social learning and transmission enables one to consider ordering principles beyond the classic unimodal curve. Unimodality is a highly visible property that can be used to probe and measure the relationships between assemblages, and it was especially useful when seriation was accomplished with simple algorithms and manual effort. With modern algorithms and computing power, multiple ordering principles can be employed to better understand the spatiotemporal relations between assemblages. Ultimately, the expansion of seriation to additional ordering algorithms allows us an ability to more thoroughly explore underlying models of cultural contact, social networks, and modes of social learning. In this paper, we review our progress to date in extending seriation to multiple ordering algorithms, with examples from Eastern North America and Oceania

Inferring processes of cultural transmission: the critical role of rare variants in distinguishing neutrality from novelty biases

Neutral evolution assumes that there are no selective forces distinguishing different variants in a population. Despite this striking assumption, many recent studies have sought to assess whether neutrality can provide a good description of different episodes of cultural change. One approach has been to test whether neutral predictions are consistent with observed progeny distributions, recording the number of variants that have produced a given number of new instances within a specified time interval: a classic example is the distribution of baby names. Using an overlapping generations model we show that these distributions consist of two phases: a power law phase with a constant exponent of -3/2, followed by an exponential cut-off for variants with very large numbers of progeny. Maximum likelihood estimations of the model parameters provide a direct way to establish whether observed empirical patterns are consistent with neutral evolution. We apply our approach to a complete data set of baby names from Australia. Crucially we show that analyses based on only the most popular variants, as is often the case in studies of cultural evolution, can provide misleading evidence for underlying transmission hypotheses. While neutrality provides a plausible description of progeny distributions of abundant variants, rare variants deviate from neutrality. Further, we develop a simulation framework that allows for the detection of alternative cultural transmission processes. We show that anti-novelty bias is able to replicate the complete progeny distribution of the Australian data set

The archaeology of rock art in Northern Africa

The first reports on the rock art of north Africa were written in the mid-nineteenth century. Since then, rock art has become a key area of African archaeological research. Commencing with a short background on the environmental setting, this chapter reviews past research and major theoretical perspectives through to the present, highlighting contributions to wider debates. The main geographical, temporal, and archaeological frameworks of north African rock art are summarized in broad chronological order, beginning with late Pleistocene engravings up to ‘Camel art’ of more recent, historical age. Despite current hurdles faced in today’s research environment, rock art studies are of great importance in north Africa, especially when undertaken by African scholars. This precious, irreplaceable, nonrenewable cultural resource is of great educational value, and its preservation, teaching, and dissemination may contribute to a renewed awareness of the cultural value of rock art for future generations

A Case for the One-offs: Improvisation and Innovation Within a Copper Age Potting Community

Unique objects are often poorly integrated into discussions about the social organization of production or technological processes. Often they are frustratingly interpreted as ritual or prestige objects, or they are simply consigned to footnotes in archaeological reports. This does not do them justice and their contextualization may provide greater insight into the social factors involved in production activities. This paper attempts to demonstrate what unique, or one-off, objects can tell us about technological systems and how improvisational technical choices can lead to innovation within society. It focuses on a particular example of pottery production and usage at the Copper Age site of San Blas (Spain) and how two particular vessels on the surface appear to be unique one-off products. This paper shows that one-off objects may in fact be opening the door to innovation through acts of improvisation within existing socially sanctioned production aesthetics and object ideals.Support has come directly and indirectly through the Universidad de Sevilla, University of Cambridge and EDIA (Empresa de Desenvolvimento e Ingra-estruturas do Alqueva, S.A)

Cadena Operativa, redes tecnológicas e interpretaciones sociológicas

In this paper, I first argue that technological analysis of archaeological assemblages in terms of chaînes opératoires is a privileged qualitative approach to reconstruct technological networks, namely networks of socially linked object-makers. This is a first step before explaining dynamic phenomena such as diffusion of techniques or emergence of shared norms at the population level. The second step is to call upon sociological regularities since archaeology alone cannot provide a fine-grained temporal resolution to evaluate how micro-level interactions might have scaled up in changes. In the second part of the paper, I give archaeological examples and illustrate how to use sociological regularities for explaining past dynamics.En este documento, sostengo en primer lugar que el análisis tecnológico de las cerámicas arqueológicas en términos de Cadenas Operativas es un enfoque cualitativo privilegiado para reconstruir las redes tecnológicas, es decir, las redes de productores de objetos socialmente vinculados. Se trata de un primer paso antes de explicar fenómenos dinámicos como la difusión de técnicas o la aparición de normas compartidas a nivel de la población. El segundo paso consiste en recurrir a regularidades sociológicas, ya que la Arqueología por sí sola no puede proporcionar una resolución temporal ajustada para evaluar cómo las interacciones a nivel microeconómico podrían haber incrementado en los cambios. En la segunda parte del documento, doy ejemplos arqueológicos e ilustro cómo utilizar las regularidades sociológicas para explicar la dinámica del pasado