Cultural evolutionary approaches to artifact variation over time and space: basis, progress, and prospects

It has becoming increasingly common for archaeologists to draw on evolutionary theory and methods to analyze artifactual variation over time and space. The term “evolution” and its traditionally biological connotations, however, can provide a source of confusion, which might cause hindrance to those trying to understand the growing array of case studies that utilize these methods. Given this, a brief review of the current theoretical basis for cultural evolutionary approaches is given, which largely draws on social transmission theory. Thereafter, recent advances in the field are discussed, which have involved both methodological developments and a flourishing of empirical examples of application. Finally, future directions are considered, which, as in any developing field, will probably involve further development of both its theoretical and empirical basis, and the interaction of the two. As David Clarke identified almost half a century ago, the great strength of the archaeological record is its power to reveal meaningful patterns of artifactual variation over temporal and spatial scales, especially in statistical terms. Cultural evolutionary approaches offer a set of theoretical and methodological tools to approach, discover, and scientifically analyze this potential wealth of information about past societies. Future developments will necessarily follow, but the place of this related body of theory and techniques within archaeology is now firmly established.