Collections and cultural transmission: Museum as a niche (re)construction site

Abstract

Since the end of XX century, an aboundancy of studies exploring the evolutionary perspective on human culture and the mechanisms underlying this process offered theoretical grounds and novel paradigms and approaches, thus allowing for more clear foundations of the field of cultural evolution (CE). Starting from this body or theory and the possible significance of material culture for cultural transmission, this paper considers evolutionary aspects of musealization and the role of museums in cumulative cultural evolution, by taking the perspective of the Niche construction theory (NCT). The argumentation is based on the view of a museum as a cultural niche and the dialectics of preservation and reconstruction in cultural transmission processes in analogy with museum conservation-interpretation dilemma. It ends with the conclusion that a museum can be seen as a niche re-construction site, thus offering a solution to the dilemma, where the notion of cultural niche implies persistence of cultural elements, but allowing, at the same time, for construction of knowledge in each generation.