ABSTRACT
Individual decision making and the transmission of cultural meanings, symbolism, and ideology have all influenced the evolution of prehistoric societies, but these processes generally leave behind relatively poor archaeological evidence. The systematic manner in which members of a culture responded to and transmitted ideas and information must have placed important limits on the direction and speed of cultural change. Consequently, the means of information processing employed within cultures presumably influenced significantly the course of cultural evolution. Unfortunately, archaeologists often can do little more than record highly equivocal evidence about the presence and nature of human information processing mechanisms in past societies. Obviously, archaeologists and cultural anthropologists generally cannot study directly the long term operation of various information-related mechanisms. Even for short term ethnographic research, the operation of these mechanisms is fairly complex and difficult to observe. Naturally, tracing the consequences of these mechanisms over lengthy periods adds further complications.
