Abstract
The interpretation of spatial and temporal patterns in the archaeological record remains a long-standing issue in the discipline. Amongst many methods and interpretations, modelling of ‘biased transmission’ has proved a successful strategy to tackle this problem. Here, we investigate a type of biased transmission, homophily, that is the tendency of individuals to associate and bond with similar others. In contrast to other social sciences, homophily remains underused in archaeology. In order to fill this gap, we develop six distinct variants of a well-established modelling framework borrowed from social science, Axelrod’s Cultural Dissemination Model. These so-called toy models are abstract models used for theory-building and aim at exploring the interplay between homophily and various factors (e.g. addition of spatial features such as mountains and coastlines, diffusion of innovations and population spread). The relevance and implications of each ‘toy model’ for archaeological reasoning are then discussed.
Highlights
David Clarke famously described archaeological knowledge as ‘a sparse suspension of information particles of varying size, not evenly randomly distributed in archaeologicalDrost and Vander Linden space and time’ (Clarke 1973: 10), leading to his definition of archaeology as ‘the discipline with the theory and practice for the recovery of unobservable hominid behaviour patterns from indirect traces in bad samples’ (Clarke 1973: 17)
Despite these many advances, one issue, central to Clarke’s analytical archaeology, remains contentious: how do we interpret variations in the material record, and especially patterns in the spatial and temporal distribution of certain material traits? This question might not be listed amongst the grand challenges of the discipline (Kintingh et al 2014), yet it underscores many of the archaeological theoretical debates of both the twentieth and twenty-first centuries (Roberts and Vander Linden 2011)
Rather than developing and using a standardised descriptive tool, the results of each model are reported using distinct techniques and measures, so as to tackle both the distinct behaviours of each toy, and to address the intuition that first motivated each approach. While this approach precludes ready comparison between the toy models, our purpose is to better identify and understand the changes in behaviour resulting from individual models, and this is best achieved by adapting our analytical approach to each case
Summary
David Clarke famously described archaeological knowledge as ‘a sparse suspension of information particles of varying size, not evenly randomly distributed in archaeologicalDrost and Vander Linden space and time’ (Clarke 1973: 10), leading to his definition of archaeology as ‘the discipline with the theory and practice for the recovery of unobservable hominid behaviour patterns from indirect traces in bad samples’ (Clarke 1973: 17). We are much better at capturing as many as possible of these elusive ‘information particles’ and, arguably, a lot of knowledge about the past have been produced in the meantime. Despite these many advances, one issue, central to Clarke’s analytical archaeology, remains contentious: how do we interpret variations in the material record, and especially patterns in the spatial and temporal distribution of certain material traits? Whilst Binford sought an answer in his technomic, socio-technic and ideotechnic categories, the key point is that his work opened the door for the exploration of the many factors shaping material culture, and beyond the entire archaeological record, a debate fought by many over the years and still raging today
Sign-in/Register to view highlights & summary Sign-in/Register to access full text options 
Free) 
Talk to us
Join us for a 30 min session where you can share your feedback and ask us any queries you have
Schedule a call
