CSV of all projectile point attributes considered in this study from Current and potential roles of archaeology in the development of cultural evolutionary theory

Archaeology has much to contribute to the study of cultural evolution. Empirical data at archaeological timescales are uniquely well suited to tracking rates of cultural change, detecting phylogenetic signals among groups of artefacts, and recognizing long-run effects of distinct cultural transmission mechanisms. Nonetheless, these are still relatively infrequent subjects of archaeological analysis and archaeology's potential to help advance our understanding of cultural evolution has thus far been largely unrealized. Cultural evolutionary models developed in other fields have been used to interpret patterns identified in archaeological records, which in turn provides independent tests of the models, as demonstrated here through a study of late Prehistoric stone projectile points from the U.S. Southwest. These tests may not be straightforward, though, because archaeological data are complex, often representing events aggregated over many years (or centuries or millennia) while processes thought to drive cultural evolution (e.g. biased learning) operate on much shorter timescales. To fulfil archaeology's potential, we should continue to develop models specifically tailored to archaeological circumstances, and explore ways to incorporate the rich contextual data produced by archaeological research.This article is part of the theme issue ‘Bridging cultural gaps: interdisciplinary studies in human cultural evolution’.

考古学可为文化演化研究提供诸多重要洞见。处于考古学时间尺度（archaeological timescales）下的实证数据，具有独特适配性，可用于追踪文化变迁速率、在多组人工制品（artefacts）中检测系统发育信号（phylogenetic signals），以及辨识不同文化传播机制（cultural transmission mechanisms）的长期效应。尽管如此，这类研究在考古分析中仍属相对小众的议题，考古学助力深化人类对文化演化认知的潜力，迄今仍未得到充分释放。其他领域所构建的文化演化模型，已被用于解读考古记录中辨识出的模式，而这些模式反过来又可为模型提供独立验证——正如本文通过对美国西南部史前晚期石制投射尖的研究所呈现的那样。不过这类检验往往并不直接明了，原因在于考古数据本身极为复杂：其记录的事件通常是多年（乃至数百年、数千年）的聚合结果，而被认为驱动文化演化的过程（如偏向性学习）则仅作用于短得多的时间尺度。为充分发挥考古学的研究潜力，我们应持续开发适配考古学研究情境的专属模型，并探索如何整合考古研究产出的丰富背景数据（contextual data）。本文隶属于专题专辑《弥合文化鸿沟：人类文化演化的跨学科研究》（Bridging cultural gaps: interdisciplinary studies in human cultural evolution）。