We are looking for an innovative scholar with a background in the modelling of social transmission preferably with a specialisation in agent-based modelling or related techniques. The successful candidate would be associated with the project PLAY | OBJECT | PLAY (P|O|P), funded by the Aarhus University Research Foundation’s NOVA scheme. P|O|P aims to develop an integrative child-centred model of material culture change. Both narrative and quantitative archaeological models aimed at explaining technological change have primarily focused on the role of adults as innovators and transmitters of tool manufacturing skill. Drawing on existing cross-cultural datasets (eHRAF), the project will explore differences in object play behaviour and play objects across individual life-history and in different socio-ecological constellations (foragers, horticulturalists, agriculturalists), and on this basis develop an agent-based model for how societal factors may predict children’s acquisition and innovation of tools. These predictions will then be tested against the existing archaeological data from published and unpublished records to infer children’s material culture contributions in the deep past. Our particular aim is to explore cross-culturally to what degree play-based social learning may have contributed to adaptive/non-adaptive responses during times of environmental stress.
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