The application of Darwinian principles to archaeology has a long history, with early archaeologists invoking Darwin's work to describe artifact change over time. While the concept of cultural evolution—broadly defined as change over time—has been mentioned in various archaeological traditions, a more formal definition emerged in the 1980s, initially influenced by sociobiology. This initial, rigid approach, which viewed artifacts as akin to paleobiological fossils, was later superseded by a dual-inheritance theory framework, offering a broader perspective on cultural change. Early debates focused on the extent to which culture change could be formally understood as evolutionary versus being merely an analogy. While cultural traits deviate from Mendelian inheritance, many behave sufficiently like coherent units of inheritance to exhibit emergent evolutionary properties. Mesoudi et al. (2006) proposed a synthesis aligning archaeology with paleobiology, emphasizing archaeology's role in studying long-term, macro-scale patterns of culture change. Garvey (2018) reiterated this alignment but noted archaeology's underutilized potential in advancing cultural evolution understanding. Existing reviews of cultural evolutionary theory (CET) in archaeology exist, but a systematic bibliometric mapping was lacking until this current study. This paper aims to map the development and research front of CET in archaeology, employing bibliographic data from the Web of Science and text mining to visualize trends and identify research gaps.

The paper reviews existing literature on the application of evolutionary theory in archaeology, highlighting the shift from a strictly selectionist approach to the broader dual-inheritance framework. It discusses the debate surrounding the analogy of cultural evolution to biological evolution, and the challenges posed by the differences between cultural and genetic inheritance. The paper also refers to previous attempts to synthesize the field of cultural evolution, including the work of Mesoudi et al. (2006) and Garvey (2018), emphasizing the unique contributions that archaeology can make to understanding long-term cultural change. The authors acknowledge existing reviews of CET in archaeology but highlight the lack of a systematic bibliometric mapping of the field.

The researchers queried the Web of Science Core Collection for publications related to 'cultural evolution' and 'cultural transmission' in archaeology and anthropology from 1981 to 2021. This resulted in 674 English-language publications. The bibliometrix package in R was used to process the data. A thesaurus was created by combining author-assigned keywords, unigrams, and bigrams from titles and abstracts. This thesaurus categorized keywords into first-order and second-order categories, creating an occurrence and incidence matrix of keywords across articles. To visualize thematic trends, the researchers calculated the yearly fraction of articles containing keywords from 'Methods' and 'Topics' categories. A bibliographic coupling network was constructed using the igraph package. This network linked articles based on shared cited references, with edge weights representing cosine similarity based on the total number of shared references. The Louvain community detection algorithm was used to identify clusters within the network, and closeness centrality was calculated to determine the core elements of the network. Statistical tests, including ANOVA and t-tests, were used to compare clusters based on closeness centrality. Finally, a chi-squared test and weighted log odds ratio analysis were used to identify keywords significantly associated with each cluster.

The analysis revealed a general growth in the use of CET in archaeology, particularly since the year 2000. Keywords related to cultural evolution and cultural transmission were the most frequent, followed by social learning. Memetics, while initially popular, declined in recent years. Modeling and simulation were the most frequent methods, although their relative frequency has recently decreased. Similarly, phylogenetic methods, while important early on, also declined in popularity, unlike in related fields. In contrast, geometric morphometric applications have remained relatively constant. The bibliographic coupling network analysis identified seven clusters, with clusters 3 and 4 representing the core of the network. Cluster 4, focusing on complex human behavior and cultural transmission in the Early Stone Age, exhibited the highest closeness centrality. Cluster 3, concentrating on foundational CET theory and methods, showed high internal coherence. Other clusters examined included those focusing on ethnoarchaeology and cultural complexity, niche construction theory, and the relationship between climate change, social adaptations, and Neolithic populations. Temporal trends within the clusters revealed increasing diversity in the field over time, possibly indicating a broader diversification of research themes within CET archaeology. The decline in the use of phylogenetic methods, despite their importance in related fields, is a notable finding, potentially due to a lack of easily accessible software implementing continuous character traits, or previous reservations about the use of such data. The study also shows a focus on hunter-gatherers, foragers, mobility, subsistence, and demography; while in the post-Paleolithic periods metallurgy stands out as an important research theme.

The findings suggest a vibrant and evolving field of CET in archaeology, with multiple research traditions and clusters visible in the network analysis. The study shows connections between evolutionary archaeology and broader notions of social evolution and vernacular uses of the term 'cultural evolution'. The relatively peripheral position of evolutionary archaeology within the broader CET field is noted, with most publications appearing in general archaeology journals rather than core CET journals. The analysis identifies three main types of articles: those focusing on translating and adapting biological evolutionary theory, those applying CET methods to archaeological questions, and those using CET as a general framework for purely archaeological studies. The apparent lack of macroevolutionary studies, despite the explicit alignment of evolutionary archaeology with paleobiology, is discussed, with suggestions made for potential future research directions focusing on the integration of phylogenetic methods with morphometric shape analysis, thereby facilitating studies of large-scale cultural change over time.

This study provides a bibliometric mapping of the field of cultural evolutionary theory and methods in archaeology, revealing a complex and dynamic research landscape. The central role of quantitative methods is highlighted, along with a recent shift in emphasis away from phylogenetic methods. The study suggests that recent advances in Bayesian phylogenetics, allowing for the integration of continuous character data, offer opportunities for future research in macroevolutionary archaeology. Future work should focus on bridging the gap between morphometric shape analysis and phylogenetics to address questions of long-term cultural change.

The study's reliance on the Web of Science database introduces potential biases, including underrepresentation of publications in languages other than English and certain types of publications (e.g., books). The interpretation of the network analysis is subject to the limitations of the chosen algorithms and parameters. The quantitative results should be seen as general trends, not precise measures. The analysis focuses mainly on the anglophone literature and might not fully capture the global usage of evolutionary theory within archaeology.