The Cultural Macroevolution of Lithic Technological Strategies in Northern and Western North America During the Upper Pleistocene and Holocene

Macroevolutionary analysis provides the opportunity to ask questions concerning the major drivers of long-term continuity and change in the cultural record. In this study we address the evolution of lithic technological operational strategies spanning the last 20,000 years primarily in the northwestern and northern portions of North America. We measure systemic technological variation on a maximum of 159 site components with 124 artifact types spanning cores and a wide range of bifaces, unifaces, and flake-based tools. Drawing on these data we test hypotheses that technological evolution was (1) primarily the result of within-genetic group inheritance; (2) subject to environmental selective pressures; and (3) periodically affected by inter-regional cultural transmission between different groups of people. Results implicate three technological lineages that partially match associated ancient genetic lineages and also substantially co-associate with ecologically distinct geographic regions (Arctic, North Pacific Rim, and Continental Interior) despite origins in other contexts. Additional outcomes include identification of confounding effects of inter-assemblage variation and the likely operation of additional macroevolutionary processes including convergent evolution and the Lazarus effect. Finally, based upon our analytical outcomes we argue that archaeologists should not rely upon un-examined strict maximum likelihood settings in phylogenetic analysis.