Peter Jordan has written what I believe will come to be recognised as one of the most influential books in evolutionary anthropology and archaeology of this decade. It is important as it nimbly engages with what is arguably the fundamental concern of a significant number of social anthropologists and archaeologists, that of how the complex interactions between social structure and human agency contribute to the development of cultural traditions. Despite a now vast literature and a substantial degree of polemic, very few scholars have sought to formalise and test hypotheses about these relationships. Drawing from research spanning the past two decades, Jordan succeeds in developing the first book-length treatment of the topic that not only includes a nuanced quantitative analysis but also provides a road map for future scholars to continue with further studies. Beyond general theory and method, Jordan's book is also about hunter-gatherers in the northern hemisphere and how their craft histories are affected by their social and ecological matrices.
In Chapter 1, Jordan makes the case that technologies can be investigated as social traditions, which are thus characterised historically by descent with modification and studied using trait lists based upon “design grammars” (p. 4). He identifies three themes central to the research described in later chapters that permit him to address cultural evolutionary process from social learning and cultural transmission between individuals (propagation of cultural traditions), to the formation of cultural lineages as affected by vertical, oblique and horizontal inheritance (coherence in cultural traditions), and finally, the degree to which lineages develop independently or become “bundled together” (p. 5) (congruence among cultural traditions). It is this multi-scalar approach that is essential to a comprehensive examination of social structures and individual decision-making underlying the historical development of cultural lineages. In essence, it permits Jordan to view craft history simultaneously bottom-up (impacts of micro-evolutionary process) and top-down (impacts of macro-evolutionary process). A major contribution embedded within this work under the cultural congruence theme is the first comprehensive testing of the Boyd et al. (Reference Boyd, Borgerhoff-Mulder, Durham, Richerson, Weingart, Mitchell, Richerson and Mason1997) hypotheses regarding macro-scale cultural evolution (culture as species, hierarchically integrated system, assemblages of many units and collections of ephemeral entities).
Chapter 2 provides a primer for evolutionary analysis and shows clearly how this approach can be useful for formalising and testing hypotheses about human agency and cultural traditions. There are several contributions in this chapter worth highlighting. First, Jordan draws creatively upon the concept of chaîne operatoire to understand the internal logic behind craft traditions, which can in turn define key traits for evolutionary analysis. Second, he explains the basics of phylogenetic networks, trees and co-phylogenetic analyses in such a way that any interested student or professional will be able to gain a basic understanding of the logic and utility of such approaches. Finally, he offers a hypothetical case study to illustrate the entire approach from data collection to quantitative analysis and development of implications.
Chapters 3–5 form the core of the volume and take the reader through Jordan's studies of ethnographic material culture from north-west Siberia, North America's central north-west coast and northern California. The north-west Siberia data derive from the Khanty, a group with whom Jordan conducted extensive ethnoarchaeological research. Jordan tests hypotheses about propagation and coherence of cultural traditions centred on five male crafts. He finds that storage platforms and shrines have the least coherence due to common individual modification of critical design elements. In contrast, skis, dugout canoes and sledges tend to have a higher degree of coherence with “design recipes” (p. 203) transmitted and applied far more faithfully to meet functional requirements among other things. The coherence of Coast Salish craft traditions on the north-west coast is affected substantially by gender. Long houses feature high coherence and distinct branching histories due to vertical transmission (e.g. father to son) and conformist bias (Richerson & Boyd Reference Richerson and Boyd2005). Likewise, the notion that canoe manufacture is also characterised by strong vertical descent although congruence with language does not hold well given the propensity of canoe makers to move between villages. In contrast, women's basketry traditions do not form coherent lineages as upon marriage women move frequently between villages and borrow concepts from other women. Finally, Jordan finds interesting contrasts in craft traditions between indigenous groups in north-west and north-east California. In the north-west, ceremonial dress and basketry have very mixed traditions, linked respectively to participation in community festivals and women's movement at marriage, in the latter case, much akin to the Coast Salish. Also similar to the Coast Salish, north-west houses form relatively coherent lineages. In contrast, north-east groups appear to have had stronger “transmission isolating mechanisms” (p. 44) or TRIMS (Durham Reference Durham1992) linked to their tribelet-based land-holding systems leading to far more coherent basketry and ceremonial dress traditions. Houses, however, were not routinely reproduced in a highly faithful manner due to frequent local innovation by builders.
Jordan offers an array of conclusions in Chapter 6 that will be discussed, debated and tested by scholars for some time into the future. He recognises that some craft traditions can form coherent cultural lineages while others do not, thereby negating the old debate that culture changes entirely via ethnogenesis or phylogenesis. Clearly, culture can change either way and it is the variation inherent in these histories that is interesting. Jordan's study shows that variability in craft transmission and lineage history is affected by a host of structural variables including the craft technology itself, its uses, gender, marriage rules, learning traditions, ritual practices and inter-group socio-political relationships. Jordan also finds that, in some cases, crafts are bound up with other traditions into more complex packages, thus showing congruence with language and other crafts. Returning to the Boyd et al. (Reference Boyd, Borgerhoff-Mulder, Durham, Richerson, Weingart, Mitchell, Richerson and Mason1997) hypotheses, Jordan finds evidence that culture can be structured as a hierarchically integrated system and as an assemblage of many units. Overall, this is a masterful contribution that should be read and widely discussed by students and scholars of material culture history, social anthropology and archaeology.
