Toy Story: Homophily, Transmission and the Use of Simple Simulation Models for Assessing Variability in the Archaeological Record

Abstract

The interpretation of spatial and temporal patterns in the archaeological record remains a long-standing issue in the discipline. Amongst many methods and interpretations, modelling of 'biased transmission' has proved a successful strategy to tackle this problem. Here, we investigate a type of biased transmission, homophily, that is the tendency of individuals to associate and bond with similar others. In contrast to other social sciences, homophily remains underused in archaeology. In order to fill this gap, we develop six distinct variants of a well-established modelling framework borrowed from social science, Axelrod's Cultural Dissemination Model. These so-called toy models are abstract models used for theory-building and aim at exploring the interplay between homophily and various factors (e.g. addition of spatial features such as mountains and coastlines, diffusion of innovations and population spread). The relevance and implications of each 'toy model' for archaeological reasoning are then discussed.

Along the Rivers and into the Plain: Early Crop Diversity in the Central and Western Balkans and Its Relationship with Environmental and Cultural Variables

“…Similarly, neutral drift remains a possible explanation for our research area, as previous studies have given conflicting results [19,29]. Other founder effects linked to migration include selective pressures of bottlenecks and homophily, both of which would have resulted in a reduced Neolithic 'package' [107]. Indeed, it may have been the desire/necessity to follow the narrowing zone of a Sub-Mediterranean climate (along the Danube) that increased selective pressures due to migration.…”

Self-Organized Cultural Cycles and the Uncertainty of Archaeological Thought

“…While developed in information theory, the concept of entropy is widely applied in various natural and social sciences to analyze systems' internal diversity. Archaeological applications mainly consider Shannon's (1948) entropy, also known as Shannon's diversity index (Bevan et al, 2013;Bobrowsky & Ball, 1989;Crema, 2015;Dickens Jr. & Fraser, 1984;Drost & Vander Linden, 2018;Fedorov-Davydov, 1987;Furholt, 2012;Gjesfjeld et al, 2020a, b;Gronenborn et al, 2014Gronenborn et al, , 2018Gronenborn et al, , 2020Justeson, 1973;Kandler & Crema, 2019;Neiman, 1995;Nolan, 2020;Premo & Kuhn, 2010;Shott, 2010). According to this approach, "unification" is not opposed to "diversity"; instead, both categories are considered to gradually replace each other.…”

“…As already discussed in archaeological studies (and beyond), the label "toy model" does not denigrate the model's relevance. Instead, application of toy models aims to understand the relationship between the key parameters, evaluate the effect of these parameters on model behavior, and avoid turning models into "black boxes" (Drost & Vander Linden, 2018). Following the logic of modeling in physics (Feynman, 1965), we develop the model to explain specific patterns and processes in the archaeological record and then test its utility to explain the results of other models.…”

Introducing Qualitative and Social Science Factors in Archaeological Modelling: Necessity and Relevance

“…Alternative pathways include more parsimonious approaches based upon incremental additions of parameters, a process admittedly easier to undertake with KISS models (e.g. Drost and Vander Linden 2018).…”