A quantitative workflow for modeling diversification in material culture

Gjesfjeld, Erik; Silvestro, Daniele; Chang, Jonathan L.; Koch, Bernard; Foster, Jacob G.; Alfaro, Michael E.

doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0227579

Cited by 13 publications

(17 citation statements)

References 29 publications

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“…Others have explored the evolution of more complex cultural entities including Paleo-Inuit lithic technological strategies (111), Neolithic subsistence economies (112), sociopolitical organizations (113,114), and other cultural configurations (115)(116)(117)(118)(119). There has also been significant research concerning macroevolutionary processes associated with cultural diversity (120)(121)(122)(123).…”

Section: Theoretical Framework Aligned With the Eesmentioning

confidence: 99%

Theoretical plurality, the extended evolutionary synthesis, and archaeology

Prentiss

2021

Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. U.S.A.

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The study of cultural evolution now includes multiple theoretical frameworks. Despite common influence from Darwinian evolutionary theory, there is considerable diversity. Thus, we recognize those most influenced by the tenets of the Modern Synthesis (evolutionary archaeology, cultural transmission theory, and human behavioral ecology) and those most aligned more closely with concepts emerging in the Extended Evolutionary Synthesis (cultural macroevolution and evolutionary cognitive archaeology). There has been substantial debate between adherents of these schools of thought as to their appropriateness and priority for addressing the fundamentals of cultural evolution. I argue that theoretical diversity is necessary to address research questions arising from a complex archaeological record. Concepts associated with the Extended Evolutionary Synthesis may offer unique insights into the cultural evolutionary process.

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Section: Theoretical Framework Aligned With the Eesmentioning

confidence: 99%

Theoretical plurality, the extended evolutionary synthesis, and archaeology

Prentiss

2021

Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. U.S.A.

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“…When there is high-fidelity, mutually intelligible reproduction of relevant cultural objects by actors across space and time, core sets of ideas and supporting objects will circulate and persist amongst an appreciable portion of the population. We call each idea, along with its representative objects, that endures across actors a "cultural lineage" (Gjesfjeld et al, Feb. 2020). In our empirical study, we consider each Metal band and subgenre to be a unique lineage represented publicly by recordings, musician-actors, and linguistic labels.…”

Section: Cultural Forms As Evolving Populations Of Lineagesmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…LiteRate, adapted from current methods in macroevolutionary biology (Gjesfjeld et al, Feb. 2020;Silvestro et al, 2014b;Silvestro, Salamin, and Schnitzler, 2014a). LiteRate cuts through stochastic noise in empirical rates by concatenating an a priori unknown number of birth-death processes together to estimate diversification rates in a population of cultural objects.…”

Section: Birth-death Process Modelsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…In the second half of this paper, we introduce a statistical framework that allows analysts to test hypotheses about the role of evolutionary mechanisms in cultural change using diversification rates. Here we present a novel unsupervised machine-learning/non-parametric approach that cuts through stochastic noise in historical data to identify major shifts in the diversification rates of cultural populations over time (Gjesfjeld et al, Feb. 2020). We then propose more mechanistic models specific to certain evolutionary mechanisms (e.g., competition for cultural/cognitive resources, growth of cultural carrying capacity due to key innovation, and exogenous environmental effects), and compare their ability to explain these significant shifts.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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The Evolutionary Dynamics of Cultural Change (As Told Through the Birth and Brutal, Blackened Death of Metal Music)

Koch¹,

Silvestro²,

Foster³

2020

Preprint

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When, how, and why does culture change over time? Sociological theory and mechanisms to explain cultural change are underdeveloped. This study links contemporary sociological theories of culture to a burgeoning cultural evolution literature emerging across other social sciences. By shifting our analytical focus from social actors to cultural representations and material "cultural things," our theory is able to explain change over large and long frames of analysis using formal evolutionary mechanisms. Complementing this theory, the paper introduces a suite of novel methods to explain change in the historical trajectories of populations of cultural things (e.g., musical groups, hashtags, laws, technologies, and organizations) through diversification rates. We deploy our theory and methods to study the history of Metal Music over more than four decades, using a complete dataset of all bands active between 1968-2000. Over the course of its history, we find strong evidence that the genre has been fundamentally shaped by competition for the cognitive resources actors can invest in learning about and reproducing this cultural form over time.

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“…These deficiencies lead to substantial problems for estimating long-term changes in cultural diversity and how these changes relate to various cultural, environmental, and demographic processes [e.g. 39,8,21,9,40,35,24,22,12,25]. Nevertheless, the archaeological record is often the only direct empirical evidence of past cultural traditions and the forces affecting them.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Analysing the Diversification of Cultural Variants using Longitudinal Richness Data

Gjesfjeld¹,

Crema²,

Kandler³

2020

Preprint

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One of the most significant challenges for cultural evolution is the inference of macroevolutionary patterns from historical and archaeological sources of cultural data. Here, we examine the utility of diversification rate analysis for observing trends in the mode and tempo of cultural evolution using simulated cultural data sets. We explore a range of scenarios in which transmission modes, population size, and innovation rates change over time and generate population-frequency data. From this data, we extract longitudinal richness and further reduce its completeness through time-averaging and random sampling. Given that perfect population-level frequencies can rarely be assumed or even approximated from historical data, these simulated scenarios provide the grounds for exploring the inferential power of longitudinal richness data. Results suggest that diversification rate analysis can identify profiles of underlying changes in population size, innovation rates, and cultural transmission. Furthermore, our results highlight a series of methodological outcomes that can be used to enhance future research into the dynamic patterns of cultural evolution.

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A quantitative workflow for modeling diversification in material culture

Cited by 13 publications

References 29 publications

Theoretical plurality, the extended evolutionary synthesis, and archaeology

Theoretical plurality, the extended evolutionary synthesis, and archaeology

The Evolutionary Dynamics of Cultural Change (As Told Through the Birth and Brutal, Blackened Death of Metal Music)

Analysing the Diversification of Cultural Variants using Longitudinal Richness Data

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