Linking Observed Learning Patterns to the Evolution of Cultural Complexity
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 2224348 |
|---|---|
| Authors | A V Bell (0000-0002-4670-384X, corresponding author) |
| Year | 2015 |
| Volume | 56 |
| Issue | 2 |
| Pages | 277-281 |
| Publication date | 2015-04-01 |
| Peer Reviewed | Yes |
| Open Access | No |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | Current Anthropology (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 0011-3204 • E-ISSN: 1537-5382 |
| Publisher | University of Chicago Press (PUBLISHER • US) |
| DOI | 10.1086/680438 |
| OpenAlex | W2029879663 |
| Language | EN |
| Citations received | 5 |
| References cited | 16 |
Demographic effects on cultural complexity are controversial. Some view the arguments for cultural drift and similar mechanisms as overstating the importance of difficulty in learning, socially or individually. Others stress that social learning is vital, and larger social groups with active cultural transmission yield greater cultural complexity. Using ethnographic data collected among women weavers in the South Pacific, I advance the debate by estimating learning parameters directly relevant to a theoretical model of the evolution of cultural complexity. Through a sensitivity analysis of the estimated model, I show potential learning effects on the production rate of a prestigious cultural good. I advocate further ethnographic work to understand the learning process in naturalistic contexts, as vital to advancing our knowledge of the origins and persistence (or not) of cultural complexity in past and contemporary societies
Biology · Cultural analysis · Cultural learning · Cultural transmission in animals · Ecological anthropology · Epistemology · Ethnography · Naturalism · Social learning · Social science · Sociocultural evolution · Sociology · Anthropology · Evolutionary Game Theory and Cooperation · History · Language and cultural evolution · Psychology · Social Psychology
Selection and adaptation in human migration
Fidelity and the Speed of the Treadmill
Cognitive affordances of South Scandinavian Mesolithic portable art as inferred from complexity and entropy measures
Do a few tools necessarily mean a few people? A techno-morphological approach to the question of group size at Gesher Benot Ya'aqov, Israel
The Evolution of Cultural Complexity
An experimental demonstration of the effect of group size on cultural accumulation
Experimental evidence for the influence of group size on cultural complexity
Apprenticeship
Wealth of Nations
A Theory of the Origin of the State
Demography and Cultural Innovation
Demography and Cultural Evolution
On the Relationship between Size of Population and Complexity of Social Organization
Population Size as an Explanation for Patterns in the Paleolithic Archaeological Record
| Unique citing works | 5 |
|---|---|
| Citations per year | 0,5 |
| Citation span | 2016 - 2026 (11) |
| Citation velocity | current |
| Highly cited | No |
| Citation types | Neutral: 5 |