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Resisting Innovation? Learning, Cultural Evolution and the Potter’s Wheel in the Mediterranean Bronze Age

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Cultural Phylogenetics

Part of the book series: Interdisciplinary Evolution Research ((IDER,volume 4))

Abstract

Although the use of neo-Darwinian models to explain culture change has become quite common in some subfields of archaeology, there remains much resistance within ‘interpretive’ archaeologies to what is perceived as the simplistic ‘biologisation’ of culture. Some recent work has sought to build bridges between evolutionary and interpretive archaeologies, with the topic of ‘learning’ emerging as a useful middle ground between these two standpoints. Yet significant barriers remain to a more thorough integration. Here I identify what appear to be two such barriers: one is the continued commitment in neo-Darwinian approaches to a Cartesian notion of ‘information’ and the second is the related adherence to the idea of distinct cultural ‘traits’. I draw on work in cognitive science and developmental biology that places heavy emphasis on the distributed and contextual nature of learning, such that the uptake of an innovative technology cannot be reduced to a process of information transfer for learning a new trait. A distributed and developmental approach is put into play through a case study tackling the variable regional and temporal adoption of the potter’s wheel across the Bronze Age east Mediterranean.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    Wengrow (2011) also offers a challenge to the neo-Darwinian assumption of contact being a sufficient condition for the diffusion of traits. He critiques Boyer’s notion that counter-intuitive traits (like monster images) will simply spread as if by contagion—a kind of ‘epidemiology’ of culture model.

  2. 2.

    The ‘wheel-fashioning’ technique involves the application of rotative kinetic energy to a coil-built body. It differs from ‘wheel throwing’, which entails the use of rotative kinetic energy to draw up the clay body ‘from the hump’ and no involvement of coils. Both methods can be grouped together under the broader term of ‘wheel made’.

  3. 3.

    Work in progress by Maria Choleva should throw light on the question of the emergence of the wheel-fashioning technique in the Peloponnese during the Middle Helladic period.

  4. 4.

    With many thanks to Evangelia Kiriatzi and Walter Gauss, Personal communication in 2015

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Acknowledgements

I am grateful to Larissa Mendoza Straffon for her patience in waiting for my final draft. Thanks also to Iro Mathioudaki, Maria Choleva, Vasif Şahoğlu and Evangelia Kiriatzi for their invaluable advice on pottery technologies in mainland Greece and Anatolia.

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  1. Department of Art, University of Toronto, Toronto, ON, Canada

    Carl Knappett

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Correspondence to Carl Knappett .

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  1. Centre for the Arts in Society, Leiden University, Leiden, The Netherlands

    Larissa Mendoza Straffon

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Knappett, C. (2016). Resisting Innovation? Learning, Cultural Evolution and the Potter’s Wheel in the Mediterranean Bronze Age. In: Mendoza Straffon, L. (eds) Cultural Phylogenetics. Interdisciplinary Evolution Research, vol 4. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-25928-4_5

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