Inheritance and Cultural Evolution

It may seem strange but I recently wrote my first book review in my life. With 35 years and almost 8 years as a graduate, I could probably have done a lot more. The book I reviewed is an anthology devoted to the application of phylogenetic methods in archaeology, entitled Cultural Phylogenetics: Concepts and Applications in Archaeology, edited by Larissa Mendoza Straffon (2016). I could write more about the book in this context, but I will just leave it there and instead recommend those interested in cultural evolution to read the review, which has been published before print with Systematic Biology, and can be downloaded (in a preprint version) from here.

While the review itself serves more as an introduction to the volume, which is definitely worth reading for those interested in evolution in a broader sense, a more critical reflection about the problem of inheritance in cultural evolution can be found in recent post I wrote for David Morrison's Blog on Phylogenetic Networks, which you can find here.