Style, Function, Neutral Traits, Evolution, and Classifi cation
Dwight Read · SSRN Electronic Journal · 2016
Style and function are intuitively appealing concepts we bring to archaeological classification based on our interaction in daily life with our own artifacts. In this interaction, we routinely distinguish between functional and stylistic aspects of artifacts and it is but a short step to extend our experiential knowledge to the domain of artifact classification by introducing a distinction between functional and stylistic types. We can distinguish a functional trait as one in which variation in the values for a trait have consequences at a phenomenological level in accordance with physical properties, mode of energy transfer involved in doing an activity with an artifact, and so on, when using an artifact with the trait in question for some task. In a stylistic trait, variation in the values for the trait has consequences at the ideational level and may thereby alter a conceptual relationship between the artifact on which that trait is embedded and the performance of an activity with that artifact. Evolutionary archaeologists, following Robert Dunnell, have mistakenlyargued that neutral traits should be equated with stylistic traits and the traits affected by selection should be equated with functional traits, even though both functional and stylistic traits are subject to selection.