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Technology as Human Social Tradition outlines a novel approach to studying variability and cumulative change in human technology-prominent research themes in both archaeology and anthropology. Peter Jordan argues that human material culture is best understood as an expression of social tradition. In this approach, each artifact stands as an output of a distinctive operational sequence with specific choices made at each stage in its production. Jordan also explores different material culture traditions that are propagated through social learning, factors that promote coherent lineages of tradition to form, and the extent to which these cultural lineages exhibit congruence with one another and with language history. Drawing on the application of cultural transmission theory to empirical research, Jordan develops a descent-with-modification perspective on the technology of Northern Hemisphere hunter-gatherers. Case studies from indigenous societies in Northwest Siberia, the Pacific Northwest Coast, and Northern California provide cross-cultural insights related to the evolution of material culture traditions at different social and spatial scales. This book promises new ways of exploring some of the primary factors that generate human cultural diversity in the deep past and through to the present.

Technology and civilization. --- Hunting and gathering societies. --- Technological complexity. --- Prehistoric peoples --- Social evolution. --- Social learning. --- Intercultural communication. --- Cross-cultural communication --- Cultural evolution --- Cultural transformation --- Culture, Evolution of --- Cavemen (Prehistoric peoples) --- Early man --- Man, Prehistoric --- Prehistoric archaeology --- Prehistoric human beings --- Prehistoric humans --- Prehistory --- Complexity, Technological --- Food gathering societies --- Gathering and hunting societies --- Hunter-gatherers --- Hunting, Primitive --- Civilization and machinery --- Civilization and technology --- Machinery and civilization --- Material culture. --- Communication --- Culture --- Cross-cultural orientation --- Cultural competence --- Multilingual communication --- Technical assistance --- Learning --- Socialization --- Evolution --- Social change --- Human beings --- Antiquities, Prehistoric --- Anthropology --- Industries, Primitive --- Ethnology --- Subsistence hunting --- Civilization --- Social history --- Technology --- Anthropological aspects --- Philosophy --- Humanism. --- SOCIAL SCIENCE --- Cultural. --- Archaeology. --- Philosophy. --- Social aspects. --- 1900 - 1999. --- SOCIAL SCIENCE / Archaeology. --- SOCIAL SCIENCE / Anthropology / Cultural. --- Prehistoric peoples - Material culture. --- Primitive societies --- anthropology. --- archaeology. --- cultural diversity. --- cultural lineages. --- cultural transmission theory. --- cumulative change. --- descent with modification. --- global history. --- human cultural material. --- human technology. --- hunter gatherers. --- indigenous societies. --- language history. --- material culture. --- northern california. --- northern hemisphere. --- northwest siberia. --- operational sequence. --- pacific northwest coast. --- social learning. --- social traditions. --- social. --- technology. --- tradition. --- variability.