Chasing characters up trees: investigating the evolution of cultural traits using phylomemetics

Title

Chasing characters up trees: investigating the evolution of cultural traits using phylomemetics

 

Abstract

Anthropologists, linguists, stemmatologists, archaeologists and biologists share a common interest in reconstructing historical relationships among the entities they study. Computational phylogenetics (or, in the case of culture, “phylomemetics”) provides a powerful tool-kit for achieving this goal. However, while phylogenies (evolutionary trees representing common ancestry) can be ends in themselves, they can also be used to address other questions apart from historical relationships. In this talk I will discuss two case studies in which a phylomemetic approach was used to focus on the evolution of traits rather than taxa. The first case study concerns patterns of stability and change in an urban legend, ‘Bloody Mary’. The second looks at the impact of changing social and economic contexts on the production of traditional tribal rugs in Iran. Each study provides different insights into the potential of phylomemetics to study processes of cultural conservation, change and contamination.

 

About the Presenter

Jamie Tehrani is a Lecturer in Anthropology at Durham University, UK. He gained his PhD in Anthropology from University College London (UCL) in 2005 before taking up a postdoc at the Institute of Archaeology, UCL, in 2006. In 2007 he moved to Durham on a Research Councils UK Fellowship. His research focuses on evolutionary approaches to culture, particularly traditional crafts, narratives and fairy tales.