Modelling demographic dynamics and cultural evolution: The case of the early and mid-Holocene archaeology in the highlands of South America

Abstract

Based upon the modelling of the dynamics of populations occupying low-quality environments with varying technological innovation rates, this work constructs some generalizations about expected patterns of cultural evolution which could be documented in the regional archaeological record of populations which occupied heterogeneous and spatially-structured environments. These expectations are discussed on the basis of the archaeological record of the Puna of Argentina and Chile. This record supports the derived hypothesis that from the early Holocene to the end of the mid-Holocene, the rate of adaptive cultural evolution increased as human populations increased in size. Cultural flow was an important mechanism for the technological transfer of adaptive technological innovations between local populations connected through larger social networks which exceeded the Puna region, since the beginnings of the human colonization of the area when the risk of local extinction was high. More broadly, the archeological record of the Puna region supports the theoretical prediction that population pressure was not the cause of the major trends in cultural evolution, but the consequence. Based on this, the interrelation between population size dynamics and cultural evolution is highlighted.