Phenetics,cladistics, and the search for the Alaskan ancestors of the Paleoindians: a reassessment of relationships among the Clovis,Nenana, and Denali archaeological complexes

Clovis, Nenana, and Denali are the earliest well-documented archaeological complexes in the New World. Clovis has been found at sites throughout the lower 48 states of the USA and in parts of Canada but not in Alaska, whereas Nenana and Denali have been found in Alaska but not elsewhere in North America. In 1991, Goebel and colleagues reported phenetic analyses of tool types from Clovis, Nenana, and Denali. They found that Nenana clustered more closely with Clovis than with Denali, and concluded from this that Nenana was likely ancestral to Clovis. Goebel et al.'s study has been cited frequently since it was published, and their conclusions have been widely accepted. Here we explain why analyses of the type performed by Goebel et al. are problematic and also demonstrate empirically that their results are dependent on the algorithm and distance measure used. We then reanalyze their dataset with a technique from biology called cladistics. Cladistics has replaced phenetics as the method of choice for reconstructing evolutionary relationships in biology, because it is more objective. The results of this analysis differ from those obtained by Goebel and colleagues. The results strongly suggest that Denali and Clovis are in fact more closely related to each other than either is to Nenana.     

Evolution of Polynesian bark cloth and factors influencing cultural change

The origin and dispersal of the first human inhabitants of the Polynesian Triangle have been studied from many perspectives and significant progress in our understanding of Polynesian prehistory has derived from an intermingling of linguistics, archaeology, and genetics. Contributions from the ethnographic record, however, have been limited by the dearth of comparative methods that are useful for reconstructing prehistory and identifying and analyzing cross-cultural trends. For more than fifty years, cladistic phylogenetic methods have been used to reconstruct the evolutionary history of biological systems from contemporary trait distributions. These rigorous methods are applied herein to reconstruct the prehistoric evolution and dispersal of Polynesian bark cloth, using ethnographic data recorded since European contact with Polynesian cultures. Contrary to expectation given the earlier settlement of Western Polynesia, the Eastern Polynesian bark cloth traditions retained many ancestral features. In contrast, a suite of innovations appear in the Western Polynesian bark cloth traditions and it is asserted herein that the distribution of these traits may be associated with the rise of the Tongan maritime Empire. Within Eastern Polynesia, the pattern of diversification of bark cloth traditions is consistent with the breakdown of interaction spheres late in the settlement era.     

Investigating the peopling of North America through cladistic analyses of Early Paleoindian projectile points

The initial colonization of North America remains a controversial topic. There is widespread agreement that Clovis and related cultures of the Early Paleoindian period (∼11,500–10,500 BP) represent the first well-documented indications of human occupation, but considerable differences of opinion exist regarding the origins of these cultures. Here, we report the results of a study in which data from a continent-wide sample of Early Paleoindian projectile points were analyzed with cladistic methods in order to assess competing models of colonization as well as several alternative explanations for the variation among the points, including adaptation to local environmental circumstances, cultural diffusion, and site type effects. The analyses suggest that a rapidly migrating population produced the Early Paleoindian projectile point assemblages. They also suggest that the population in question is unlikely to have entered North America from either the Isthmus of Panama or the Midatlantic region. According to the analyses, the Early Paleoindians are more likely to have entered North America via either the ice-free corridor between the Laurentide and Cordilleran ice sheets that is hypothesized to have opened around 12,000 BP, or the Northwest Coast.     

Investigating cultural evolution through biological phylogenetic analyses of Turkmen textiles

The debate on the evolution of culture has focused on two processes in particular, phylogenesis and ethnogenesis. Recently, it has been suggested that the latter has probably always been more significant than the former. This proposal was assessed by applying cladistic methods of phylogenetic reconstruction to a data set comprising decorative characters from textiles produced by Turkmen tribes since the 18th century. The analyses focused on two periods in Turkmen history: the era in which most Turkmen practised nomadic pastoralism and were organised according to indigenous structures of affiliation and leadership; and the period following their defeat by Tsarist Russia in 1881, which is associated with the sedentarisation of nomadic Turkmen and their increasing dependence on the market. The results indicate that phylogenesis was the dominant process in the evolution of Turkmen carpet designs prior to the annexation of their territories, accounting for c.70% of the resemblances among the woven assemblages. The analyses also show that phylogenesis was the dominant process after 1881, although ethnogenesis accounted for an additional 10% of the resemblances among the assemblages. These results do not support the proposition that ethnogenesis has always been a more significant process in cultural evolution than phylogenesis.     

Why is there a lack of Mode 3 Levallois technologies in East Asia? A phylogenetic test of the Movius–Schick hypothesis

The ‘Movius–Schick hypothesis’ claims that an absence of Levallois (Mode 3) technologies in East Asia is due to the lack of a strong ancestral Acheulean (Mode 2) tradition in that region. Hence, this hypothesis is based on the assumption that similarities between Acheulean handaxes and Levallois cores can be interpreted as being phylogenetically homologous (i.e. due to common technological ancestry) as opposed to being homoplasic (i.e. due to convergent technological evolution). Here, the phylogenetic basis of this hypothesis is tested using a formal cladistic procedure. Under the framework of an ‘iterative’ approach to phylogenetic analysis, a series of post-hoc tests and re-evaluations of results follow the initial cladistic analysis. Results of these combined analyses indicate that morphological similarities between Mode 2 Acheulean handaxes and Mode 3 Levallois cores can, most parsimoniously, be seen as phylogenetically homologous. Hence, these results support the tenets of the ‘Movius–Schick’ hypothesis in suggesting that a lack of Levallois industries in East Asia may be due to the paucity of an ancestral Acheulean tradition in that region. The implications of these phylogenetic analyses for the concept of Palaeolithic ‘Modes’ are discussed. It is further suggested that low demographic levels (i.e. small effective population sizes) in East Asia may have constrained the technological phylogenetic trajectory of East Asia compared with that seen in other regions of the Old World during the Lower Palaeolithic. In addition, it is hoped that several methodological issues discussed here will contribute to the growing field of cultural phylogenetic analysis.