Abstract
This article furnishes a theoretical framework, drawn from behavioral archaeology and built around the phenomenon of technology transfer, for studying any instance of technological differentiation—the proliferation of a technology's functional variants. This process is important to anthropologists because it can help us to understand some important causes of technological change found in societies simple and complex. Technological differentiation arises because, as a technology is transferred from one community to another, it is redesigned to have a mix of performance characteristics more appropriate for carrying out utilitarian and/or symbolic functions in specific activities of recipient communities. Use of the technology‐transfer framework for constructing proximate explanations of technological differentiation is illustrated with 18th–century electrical technology. [Keywords: technology transfer, technological differentiation, history of electricity, 18th‐century science, behavioral theory]
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