Reconciling material cultures in archaeology with genetic data requires robust cultural evolutionary taxonomies

Abstract

The analysis of ancient genomes is having a major impact on archaeological interpretations. Yet, the methodological divide between these disciplines is substantial. Fundamentally, there is an urgent need to reconcile archaeological and genetic taxonomies. However, traditional archaeological taxonomies are problematic because they are epistemologically weak and often laden with undue assumptions about past ethnicity and demography-they are a hindrance rather than a help in such a reconciliation. Eisenmann and colleagues have recently tackled this issue, offering a palette of potential solutions that circumvents traditional archaeological culture labels. We welcome renewed attention to nomenclature but take issue with such recent work that favours systems of taxonomic assignment for genomic groups that either do not include archaeological information at all or retain traditional cultural taxonomic categories. While superficially pragmatic, these administrative solutions do not address the substantive issues that the topic raises. We here present the argument that the only analytically viable solution to aligning genetic and cultural nomenclature is to conceptualise material culture as underwritten by a system of information transmission across generations that has similar structural properties to the genetic system of information transmission. This alignment facilitates the use of similar analytical protocols and hence allows for a true parallel analysis. Once culture change is also understood as an evolutionary process, a wealth of analytical methods for reconciling archaeological and genetic clusters becomes available.

All these Fantastic Cultures? Research History and Regionalization in the Late Palaeolithic Tanged Point Cultures of Eastern Europe

“…Villalba-Mouco et al (2019), for instance, suggest that, by 15,000 years ago, huntergatherers of distinctly different ancestry admixed with and replaced groups associated with the Magdalenian in parts of Europe. While this can be interpreted to indicate that Magdalenian foragers did not reach eastern Europe, as suggested by Rimantienė (1971), and that the Late Palaeolithic colonization of eastern Europe should instead be associated with the Epigravettian, as suggested by Bud'ko (1966), the logic of linking culturally defined groups with genetic clusters itself needs urgent attention (see Riede et al, 2019). The absence of secure radiocarbon dates associated with eastern European tanged point assemblages, as well as the paucity of organic remains including human remains suitable for genomic interrogration, make the matter more complicated by not allowing a secure placement of these assemblages in the wider chronological context of the Late Palaeolithic.…”

House of cards: cultural taxonomy and the study of the European Upper Palaeolithic

“…Although we do not expect genetic and archaeological data to mirror each other exactly, these strong differences are surprising, and a robust understanding of cultural taxonomy is necessary in order to evaluate their significance (cf. Riede et al 2019). Finally, specialists without a background in cultural taxonomy or material culture studies are making more frequent use of the archaeological record.…”

“…Both authors are endeavouring to produce shareable, re-usable data on lithic assemblages (e.g. Reynolds et al 2019;Riede et al 2019;Sauer & Riede 2019). While there is some effort involved in achieving this, it is not excessive in the context of the total amount of work needed to bring a study to publication.…”

CLIOdynamic ARCHaeology: computational approaches to Final Palaeolithic/Early Mesolithic archaeology and climate change

“…Tomášková 2003;Clark 2009). CLIOARCH's point of departure is the observation that many of the Final Palaeolithic stone tool type fossils-mostly defined some time ago-no longer hold the culture-historical diagnostic power once ascribed to them (Serwatka & Riede 2016), and that the many maps intended to portray contemporaneous cultural diversity are in evident contradiction to each other (Riede et al 2019). Critically, the methods and data used to define the original cultural units or their spatial representation are rarely, if ever, transparent or reproducible.…”