Evaluating Cultural Transmission Processes from Mesolithic Geometric Projectile Models using Experimental Protocols

Cultural evolution has been a central topic in research addressing interactions between Mesolithic groups and Neolithic populations in Europe, commonly explored through of material culture such as ceramic decoration, personal ornaments, and geometric microliths. This study focuses on the experimental characterization of the factors that promoted cultural evolutionary processes in geometric microliths, specifically assessing the effects produced by different transmission mechanisms under distinct learning models. To this end, morphometric variation generated during the replication of these projectile forms was quantified using two experimental designs: linear transmission chains and constant groups. Our results complement previous studies that have examined cultural evolutionary dynamics through computational simulations and provide an empirical framework for testing models of cultural change in prehistoric contexts. By grounding these processes in experimentally derived morphometric variability, this study offers a basis for evaluating how different learning strategies shape the transmission, maintenance, and transformation of lithic technologies over time.