UMMA Brown Bag: Cultural Transmission and Artifact Variation: Projectile Points as Ethnic Markers?

The Cultural Transmission and Artifact Variation (CTAV) project is designed to explore environmental, social, and evolutionary aspects of artifact variation using archaeological models of cultural transmission (the transfer of information between people). One of several specific goals of this multi-year, collections-based study is to understand whether “functional” classes of artifacts (here, projectile points) might also have conveyed social information under particular circumstances. This debate is not new, but CTAV approaches the problem through comparative analysis of various dimensions of point variability. I will present theoretical foundations and preliminary results of this ongoing research.