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Exploring the Effects of Assemblage Accumulation on Diversity and Innovation Rate Estimates in Neutral, Conformist, and Anti-Conformist Models of Cultural Transmission

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Abstract

Recent research has shown that accumulation and time averaging can affect the neutrality tests used in evolutionary archaeology. This study builds upon this line of research and explores the effects of assemblage accumulation and time averaging on diversity estimates and innovation rate estimates commonly used in evolutionary archaeology by simulating three kinds of transmission processes (neutral, conformist, and anti-conformist). Accumulation often results in equifinality, but in some cases, it is possible to identify the specific transmission process by looking at the patterns of covariation of diversity measures and the duration of an assemblage accumulation. The relevance of simulation results is illustrated by an archaeological example.

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Notes

  1. The t E is the maximum likelihood estimator of theta parameter, although biased (Ewens 1972).

  2. However, Premo and Scholnick (2011) demonstrated that the spatial scale of transmission might affect the difference between t F and t E in such way to create false patterns of departure from neutrality even if the underlying transmission process was neutral.

  3. This seems like a reasonable assumption for most classes of material culture, but it is still an assumption. The timescale of cultural transmission for a particular class of material culture is actually an empirical issue, and it has to be determined and justified for each specific context. It is possible that for certain classes of material culture, the timescale of transmission events is linked to human generation length (e.g., if a potter learns a particular decoration from a teacher and then continues to apply the same decoration each time that a new pot is made). Given that this paper is primarily theoretical, the assumption that cultural transmission occurs each time that a new artifact is produced is preferred for its simplicity.

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Acknowledgments

This research was undertaken as a part of the project No. 177008 funded by the Ministry of Education and Science of the Republic of Serbia. I am most grateful to Mark Madsen for allowing me to cite his unpublished work and for the useful comments and suggestions. Dr. Mladen Nikolić provided comments and suggestions regarding the simulation algorithms and proofs. I would like to express my sincere gratitude to the reviewers, Professor Michael O’Brien and the anonymous reviewer, for their observations and comments, as well as for the helpful and detailed suggestions. The responsibility for errors and shortcomings is exclusively mine.

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The author declares that he has no conflict of interest.

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  1. Department of Archaeology, Faculty of Philosophy, University of Belgrade, Čika Ljubina 18-20, Belgrade, 11000, Serbia

    Marko Porčić

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Correspondence to Marko Porčić.

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Porčić, M. Exploring the Effects of Assemblage Accumulation on Diversity and Innovation Rate Estimates in Neutral, Conformist, and Anti-Conformist Models of Cultural Transmission. J Archaeol Method Theory 22, 1071–1092 (2015). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10816-014-9217-8

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