Evaluating competing models of human technological adaptation

Harris, Jacob, Phoenix AZ

Investigators

Abstract

This award is funded in whole or in part under the American Rescue Plan Act of 2021 (Public Law 117-2). This award was provided as part of NSF's Social, Behavioral and Economic Sciences Postdoctoral Research Fellowships (SPRF) program. The goal of the SPRF program is to prepare promising, early career doctoral-level scientists for scientific careers in academia, industry or private sector, and government. SPRF awards involve two years of training under the sponsorship of established scientists and encourage Postdoctoral Fellows to perform independent research. NSF seeks to promote the participation of scientists from all segments of the scientific community, including those from underrepresented groups, in its research programs and activities; the postdoctoral period is considered to be an important level of professional development in attaining this goal. Each Postdoctoral Fellow must address important scientific questions that advance their respective disciplinary fields. Under the sponsorship of Dr. Brian Wood at the University of California, Los Angeles, this postdoctoral fellowship award supports an early career scientist investigating the relative roles of culture and cause-and-effect cognition in the formation and maintenance of technological traditions. This project seeks to (1) build upon theoretical and experimental research as to the importance of causal knowledge and culture in the evolution of technology using empirical data; (2) produce a comprehensive theoretical model of technological evolution; and (3) assemble a detailed archive of the current projectile technological stylistic and mechanistic variation. Competing models of human evolution differentially emphasize the roles of cumulative culture and individual cause-and-effect knowledge in the evolution of complex technology. This project will examine the capacities that underlie our ability to manufacture complex technologies, an ability that has underwritten our evolutionary success and subsequent expansion across the world’s habitats. Previous studies examining the relative roles of causal understanding and culture in the development of complex technologies are largely theoretical and limited by the uncertainty of their external validity. The goal of this project is to evaluate competing models of human technological adaptation using empirical data. The opportunity to examine these processes in a naturalistic setting, allows us to test the generality of prior research findings arising from experimental settings. To address the research objectives of this project, a combination of technology-focused interviews, structured behavioral observations, and guided focal-follows will be performed. The proposed project will contribute new knowledge about the relative importance of cultural, cognitive, and environmental covariates necessary in the manufacture, use, and evolution of complex technology by testing hypotheses about technological expertise and material culture variation within an ethnographic context. Finally, the proposed project will provide a detailed portrait of material cultural variation that can be compared to other cultural contexts and used to track the evolution of this technology over time. This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.