In this contribution, we address a major puzzle in the evolution of human material culture: If
maturing individuals just learn their parental generation's material culture, then what is the …

Cultural evolutionary theory conceptualises culture as an information-transmission system
whose dynamics take on evolutionary properties. Within this framework, however, innovation …

How did human symbolic behavior evolve? Dating up to about 100,000 y ago, the engraved
ochre and ostrich eggshell fragments from the South African Blombos Cave and Diepkloof …

Biologists and anthropologists have extensively documented how many animals—human
and non-human—modify their immediate surroundings, some subtly, others extensively …

A large body of evidence testifies to the ideological significance of wheeled vehicles and
draught animals in large parts of Western Eurasia during the late 4th and 3rd millennium BC …

For a long time in archaeology, agency has been synonymous with human action. While it
might well be argued that most archaeologists still tend to understand agency that way, a …

All too often archaeological objects are found as stray finds. As such, they have little or no
contextual information, which often makes them difficult to handle analytically and in terms of …

In 1977 James Deetz, one of the most creative pioneers of processual social archaeology,
published a deceptively compact popular book on archaeology entitled In Small Things …

Artefacts are the primary resources of archaeological research, and they provide us with
evidence about the evolution of hominin sensory-motor and cognitive capacities. Extended …

Talking about the origins of religion implies working from some overall picture of what
religion is. Needless to say, this picture should not leave out any cardinal points, ie any of …