Fashion versus reason – then and now

Abstract

Analogies between modern practice and prehistoric material culture are becoming increasingly useful for archaeologists, including those interested in branding studies, for example (e.g. Wengrow, in press) and at formal research centres such as the AHRC Centre for the Evolution of Cultural Diversity and the Santa Fe Institute. Studies of modern cultural change – at a level of detail that most archaeologists can only dream about – can lead to related insights about prehistoric culture change through time. Modern fashion analysis can be methodologically similar to testing, for example, the degree to which certain prehistoric transitions reflect demographic change (e.g. Shennan 2000; Henrich 2004). How much of the Upper Palaeolithic ‘revolution’ in cave art is due to increases in population in western Europe? Although the data are trickier to obtain, the goal is basically the same – subtract what is considered background (e.g. population size) fromwhat is of interest to the researcher (e.g. instances of particular art motifs). In Neolithic Germany, for example, pottery designs can be treated as the ‘fashions’ and numbers of longhouses are used to estimate population size (e.g. Shennan & Wilkinson 2001; Bentley & Shennan 2003).

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