Dataset and Code for 'Art Styles, A Cognitive Model' (Farsi, 2025)" (Keep it concise, reflecting the content and your name for attribution

This study considers art styles as the intersection of art and writing during the Proto-Elamite period. The dataset comprises approximately 400 Proto-Elamite and Linear Elamite artifacts (tablets, seals, pottery) drawn from published corpora of Susa, Tepe Yahya, and Konar Sandal ( Desset 2022; Mon 2020). Each object was coded for degree of pictoriality, abstraction, and motif–script integration. These qualitative scores generated the fuzzy-logic input values. To investigate this relationship, we analyze visual culture from Susa I to the Neo-Elamite period, employing a Cultural Phylogenetic Tree (Table 3, Cognitive Model, No. 2) informed by Mesoudi’s theory of cultural evolution (2011; 2016). Our approach draws from key concepts in Evolutionary Cognitive Archaeology (Wynn & Coolidge, 2017; 2018; Malafouris, 2004; 2013; Hodder; Overmann, 2016; 2017; 2022; Garafouli, 2016). Mesoudi (2016; 2011) conceptualizes cultural evolution as a Darwinian process analogous to biological evolution, involving variation, competition, and inheritance, though cultural transmission differs in its mechanisms, such as social learning and innovation. A total of 400 artefacts (seal impressions, tablets, and painted ceramics) from the Susa I–Neo-Elamite sequence were coded according to four input variables derived from stylistic and semiotic observation, that Each variable was normalised to a 0–1 scale and assessed qualitatively for each artefact stage.