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Stimulated Variation and Cascades: Two Processes in the Evolution of Complex Technological Systems

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Abstract

Michael Schiffer’s theoretical and methodological contributions to archaeology are substantial. For the last two decades, Schiffer has become increasingly interested in the history of electrical technology, including portable radios, electric automobiles, eighteenth-century electrostatic technology, and, most recently, nineteenth-century electric light and power systems. Schiffer has long held a behavioral view, which focuses analytical attention on interactions between humans and material things, including complex technological systems (CTSs). For Schiffer, two key aspects of the evolution of CTSs are stimulated variation, defined as an increase in invention resulting from changing selective conditions, and cascading, defined as sequential spurts of invention that occur through the recognition of emergent performance problems in a CTS. To attain maximum usefulness, these concepts should be placed in a modern evolutionary framework that correctly identifies, and does not oversell, the role played by cultural selection. Research on individual and social learning provides the critical link between Schiffer’s stimulated variation and cascade models and the diffusion of CTSs.

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Notes

  1. As Wimsatt (1999, p. 283) noted, the seeming arbitrariness of cultural traits as cultural fragments provides “our ability to re-package and re-articulate cultural products into seemingly arbitrary larger or smaller constructions to be replicated and transmitted as units.” In other words, “most cultural products are also compound products” (Wimsatt 1999, p. 285)—a characteristic not lost on early ethnologists. Driver and Kroeber (1932, p. 213), for example, had this to say: “Are our elements or factors, the culture traits, independent of one another? While we are not prepared to answer this question categorically, we believe that culture traits are in the main if not in absolutely all cases independent…. Essential parts of a trait cannot of course be counted as separate traits: the stern of a canoe, the string of a bow, etc. Even the bow and arrow is a single trait until there is question of an arrow-less bow. Then, we have two traits, the pellet bow and arrow bow.” Similarly, Barnett (1953, p. 356) remarked, there are “persistent linkages between idea-sets as they diffuse across ethnic boundaries. Artifacts of this sort are called complexes because the analyst finds them to be made up of more than one component.”

  2. Several archaeological studies have drawn inspiration in part from Schiffer’s treatment of stimulated variation and the cascade model. For example, Lyman and O’Brien (2000) used a variety of data sets, including Schiffer’s (1996) radio data, to show the usefulness of clade-diversity diagrams for exploring the origination of novel variants and explaining the history of artifact lineages. Similarly, Lyman et al. (2008, 2009) and VanPool et al. (n.d.) used clade-diversity diagrams to examine the evolution of prehistoric weapon-delivery systems in western North America, beginning with the atlatl and dart and ending with the bow and arrow.

  3. There is some evidence that S-shaped curves can arise through a number of plausible asocial processes as well, even if the assumption of a well-mixed population with no spatial heterogeneity in resources is accepted (Hoppitt et al. 2010). This possibility does not affect discussion here.

  4. If indeed there is one. The challenge of this approach is in defining the full landscape of possible inventions. Ancient Polynesians built ocean-going canoes, but they could not have invented jet skis. We might wonder, though, what else was on the Polynesian design landscape that they might have ventured upon?

  5. There is an extensive literature in the social sciences on computing the costs of learning. For an early example, using utility curves, see Friedman and Savage (1948). For a useful summary from the perspective of human behavioral ecology, see Fitzhugh (2001).

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Acknowledgments

We thank Jim Skibo and Jeff Reid for their kind invitation to MJO to participate in the Society for American Archaeology symposium on Mike Schiffer’s work; the Leverhulme Trust (U.K.) for funding the “Tipping Points” program at Durham University; Melody Galen for creating the figures; and a reviewer whose thoughtful comments greatly improved the paper.

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  1. Department of Anthropology, University of Missouri, Columbia, MO, USA

    Michael J. O’Brien

  2. Department of Anthropology, Bristol University, Bristol, UK

    R. Alexander Bentley

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  1. Michael J. O’Brien
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  2. R. Alexander Bentley
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Correspondence to Michael J. O’Brien.

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O’Brien, M.J., Bentley, R.A. Stimulated Variation and Cascades: Two Processes in the Evolution of Complex Technological Systems. J Archaeol Method Theory 18, 309–335 (2011). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10816-011-9110-7

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