Over the past decade, a major debate has taken place on the underpinnings of cultural changes in human societies. A growing array of evidence in behavioural and evolutionary biology has revealed that social connectivity among populations and within them affects, and is affected by, culture. Yet the interplay between prehistoric hunter–gatherer social structure and cultural transmission has typically been overlooked. Interestingly, the archaeological record contains large data sets, allowing us to track cultural changes over thousands of years: they thus offer a unique opportunity to shed light on long‐term cultural transmission processes. In this review, we demonstrate how well‐developed methods for social structure analysis can increase our understanding of the selective pressures underlying cumulative culture. We propose a multilevel analytical framework that considers finer aspects of the complex social structure in which regional groups of prehistoric hunter–gatherers were embedded. We put forward predictions of cultural transmission based on local‐ and global‐level network metrics of small‐scale societies and their potential effects on cumulative culture. By bridging the gaps between network science, palaeodemography and cultural evolution, we draw attention to the use of the archaeological record to depict patterns of social interactions and transmission variability. We argue that this new framework will contribute to improving our understanding of social interaction patterns, as well as the contexts in which cultural changes occur. Ultimately, this may provide insights into the evolution of human behaviour.

中文翻译：

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研究史前狩猎采集社会文化演化的多层次分析框架

在过去的十年中，关于人类社会文化变革的基础发生了一场重大辩论。行为和进化生物学方面越来越多的证据表明，人群之间以及人群内部的社会联系会影响文化，也受到文化的影响。然而，史前狩猎采集社会结构与文化传播之间的相互作用通常被忽视。有趣的是，考古记录包含大量数据集，使我们能够追踪数千年来的文化变迁：因此，它们提供了一个独特的机会来揭示长期的文化传播过程。在这篇综述中，我们展示了成熟的社会结构分析方法如何能够增加我们对累积文化背后的选择压力的理解。我们提出了一个多层次的分析框架，该框架考虑了史前狩猎采集者区域群体所嵌入的复杂社会结构的更精细方面。我们根据小规模社会的本地和全球网络指标及其对累积文化的潜在影响提出了文化传播的预测。通过弥合网络科学、古人口学和文化进化之间的差距，我们提请人们注意使用考古记录来描述社会互动和传播变异的模式。我们认为，这个新框架将有助于提高我们对社会互动模式以及文化变革发生背景的理解。最终，这可能会为人类行为的进化提供见解。