Linguistic documentation projects typically involve the record of a
considerable amount of non-linguistic information concerning
traditional societies and technologies, which constitute an untapped
potential for studying the co-evolution between language and culture.
While Bayesian phylogenetic methods have proven effective for
reconstructing language family diversification histories and
estimating the age of proto-languages, their application to cultural
data remains insufficiently explored.  In this presentation, we show
how these methods can under certain conditions be applied to
non-linguistic data (looms), and propose a measure for comparing the
degree of similarity of linguistic and non-linguistic phylogenies,
taking the case of Kra-Dai languages and the looms used by the
speakers of these languages. Our findings suggest that a systematic
comparison of linguistic and technological phylogenies can illuminate
processes of cultural transmission and provide evidence for both
shared history and horizontal transfer.

The talk reports on joint work with Christopher D. Buckley, Emma Kopp, Thomas Pellard, and Robin J. Ryder.

https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/evolutionary-human-sciences/article/contrasting-modes-of-cultural-evolution-kradai-languages-and-weaving-technologies/5A71D64485DC03FB5D238DA9789C3E33