Style, Function, Transmission

Foundations of Archaeological Inquiry

by Michael J. O'Brien (Editor)

Darwin's theory of evolutionary descent with modification rests in part on the notion that there is heritable continuity affected by transmission between ancestor and descendant. It is precisely this continuity that allows one to trace hylogenetic histories between fossil taxa of various ages and recent taxa. Darwin was clear that were an analyst to attempt such tracings, then the anatomical characters of choice are those least influenced by natural selection, or what are today referred to as adaptively neutral traits. The transmission of these traits is influenced solely by such mechanisms as drift and not by natural selection. The application of Darwin's theory to archaeological phenomena requires that the theory be retooled to accommodate artifacts. One aspect that has undergone this retooling concerns cultural transmission, the mechanism that affects heritable continuity between cultural phenomena. Archaeologists have long traced what is readily interpreted as heritable continuity between artifacts, but the theory underpinning their tracings is seldom explicit. Thus what have been referred to as artifacts styles underpin such tracings because styles are adaptively neutral. Other traits are referred to as functional. In their introduction to Style, Function, Transmission , Michael O’Brien and R. Lee Lyman outline in detail the interrelations of a theory of cultural descent with modification and the concepts of drift, style, and function. The chapters in the volume specifically address the issues of selection and drift and their relation to style and function. In non-polemic presentations, contributors specify empirical implications of aspects of cultural transmission for evolutionary lineages of artifacts and then present archaeological data for those implications.

368 pages, Paperback

First published March 19, 2003

About the author

More info: http://www.tamusa.edu/officeofthepres...

My main areas of research focus on the integration of evolutionary theory into the social sciences, in particular archaeology and anthropology.

In the late 1990s, I began concentrating on the use of phylogenetic methods, especially cladistics, in archaeology. This was extremely controversial, as was the application of evolutionary principles to cultural phenomena generally. Today, however, evolutionary theory is well at home in archaeology, and studies employing phylogenetic methods appear routinely.

No one thinks or works in a vacuum, and over the years I've benefited from collaborative interactions with numerous archaeologists and other social scientists, especially Lee Lyman and Todd VanPool (University of Missouri) and Alex Mesoudi (Durham University). More recently, I have collaborated extensively with Mark Collard (Simon Fraser University), Briggs Buchanan (University of Tulsa), and Matt Boulanger (University of Missouri) on various aspects of Paleoindian occupation of North America.

I also collaborate with Kevin Laland (St Andrews University) on niche-construction theory as it applies to the archaeological record and with Alex Bentley (Bristol University) and Buz Brock (University of Missouri) on a wide range of topics, especially human learning and decision making in the face of unclear risks and payoffs. Our new paper, "Mapping collective behavior in the big-data era," came out earlier this year in Behavioral and Brain Sciences.

On the personal side, I have a wonderful wife, Gloria, five grown kids, and a lazy cat, Marley, who pretty much rules the house.