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Cultural Transmission Theory and the Archaeological Record: Providing Context to Understanding Variation and Temporal Changes in Material Culture

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Abstract

Cultural transmission (CT) is implicit in many explanations of culture change. Formal CT models were defined by anthropologists 30 years ago and have been a subject of active research in the social sciences in the ensuing years. Although increasing in popularity in recent years, CT has not seen extensive use in archaeological research, despite the quantitative rigor of many CT models and the ability to create testable hypotheses. Part of the reason for the slow adoption, we argue, has been the continuing focus on change in central tendency and mode in archaeology, instead of change in dispersion or variance. Yet archaeological research provides an excellent data source for exploring processes of CT. We review CT research in the anthropological sciences and outline the benefits and drawbacks of this theoretical framework for the study of material culture. We argue that CT can shed much light on our understandings of why material technology changes over time, including explanations of differential rates of change among different technologies. We further argue that transmission processes are greatly affected by the content, context, and mode of transmission and fundamentally structure variation in material culture. Including ideas from CT can provide greater context for explaining and understanding changes in the variation of artifacts over time. Finally, we outline what we feel should be the goals of CT research in archaeology in the coming years.

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  1. Department of Anthropology, University of California Davis, One Shields Ave, Davis, California, 95616, USA

    Jelmer W. Eerkens

  2. Department of Anthropology, California State University Long Beach, 1250 Bellflower Blvd, Long Beach, California, 90840, USA

    Carl P. Lipo

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Eerkens, J.W., Lipo, C.P. Cultural Transmission Theory and the Archaeological Record: Providing Context to Understanding Variation and Temporal Changes in Material Culture. J Archaeol Res 15, 239–274 (2007). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10814-007-9013-z

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