Our species has the peculiar ability to accumulate cultural innovations over multiple
generations, a phenomenon termed 'cumulative cultural evolution'(CCE). Recent years have …

Here, I discuss two broad versions of human cultural evolution which currently exist in the
literature and which emphasize different underlying dynamics. One, which originates in …

From emails to social media, from instant messaging to political memes, the way we produce
and transmit culture is radically changing. Understanding the consequences of the massive …

The study of ancient cultures is hindered by the incomplete survival of material artifacts, so
we commonly underestimate the diversity of cultural production in historic societies. To …

Social Archaeology and Material Worlds aims to forefront dynamic and cutting-edge social
approaches to archaeology. It brings together volumes about past people, social and …

The extent to which larger populations enhance cumulative cultural evolution (CCE) is
contentious. We report a large-scale experiment (n= 543) that investigates the CCE of …

A widely accepted view in the cultural evolutionary literature is that culture forms a dynamic
system of elements (or 'traits') linked together by a variety of relationships. Despite this, large …

Experimental work in the field of language evolution has shown that novel signal systems
become more structured over time. In a recent paper, Kirby, Tamariz, Cornish, and Smith …

Demography is central to biological, behavioral, and cultural evolution. Knowledge of the
demography of prehistoric populations of both Homo sapiens and earlier members of the …

Humans have a unique capacity to innovate, transmit and rely on complex, cumulative
culture for survival. While an important body of work has attempted to explore the role of …