Y. Ben-Oren

Shifting from correlations to dynamics in the study of human prehistorical resilience to extreme climatic shifts

The paper argues for examining cultural and demographic dynamics preceding climatic shifts to better understand human resilience to extreme climate changes.

Modeling effects of inter-group contact on links between population size and cultural complexity

The paper models how inter-group contact affects the relationship between population size and cultural complexity, finding that connectivity can increase tool repertoire size even in smaller populations.

Cultural specialization as a double-edged sword: division into specialized guilds might promote cultural complexity at the cost of higher susceptibility to cultural loss

This paper models how cultural specialization can increase cultural complexity but also raise the risk of cultural loss during population bottlenecks.