Maybe you will be interested in the work of the "Grupo Modernidad/Colonialidad" with Aníbal Quijano and Walter Mignolo amongst others. They study -on a theoretical level- how European civilization is constructed at the moment an "other" is met - the indigenous peoples in the Americas. This is understood as the starting point for a mixture between racism, class-discrimination and eurocentrism as a principle of knowing - all of them part of the coloniality of power. The indigenous peoples are unified into "indigenous" or "indians", placed on the lowest social level and considered as backwards and superstitious.

"The processes through which cultural distinction occurs" in the Americas is the result of an amazing, and maybe unique, example of cultural resistance through history. In my opinion, not to be misinterpreted by a mere constructivist perspective.

Thank you Philipp. I am aware of the literature around defining cultures based on others, and it is a brief part of the paper I am writing. But what Iʻm really interested in are pathways that result in cultural divergence over time. If you start with two sets of the same culture and place them in different environments they will evolve to be different cultures, and what are some of those interactions with place that make that divergence occur. Of course it is many things, and I am writing about the process as I interpret it from my own experiences, but I am wondering if there are other works out there discussing it and if I might just be saying the same things in a different way.

Francesco...what do you mean by cultural resistance in the case of the Americaʻs? Are you talking about post-contact with European? I am thinking more about the pre-contact divergences that happened. I totally agree with you that the development of any culture is highly complex and canʻt be understood by its pieces, but I also believe that there are strong pathways that stem from the interaction of people with a place that results in those cultures. Dependent on many, many things that alter the outcome, but the pathways through which those outcomes come to be I think are relatively constant across all societal-environment interactions around the world.

Excuse me Noa, I evidently misunderstood your question and your approach, that is in fact very interesting.

For what concern pre-contact cultures of native North America, maybe could be interesting rethinking to some "classical" case studies: Kwakiutl, for example, adapted a subarctic inland hunters-gatherers cultural background to the environment of the Pacific North West Coast, and one result is the intriguing cultural behaviour of the Potlach ritual. I know is one of the most famous and worn out anthropological studies, since Franz Boas....

By the way I am following a similar investigation, maybe with an opposite assumption: cultural pathways seem to me more as an infinite (and unpredictable) productive activity than a variable pattern of constants...

Francesco - No problem...these things are always harder to discuss over the internet without being able to fully explain what we mean. But thank you for your contributions.

I do want to continue this conversation to make sure that we really understand what we are each talking about. I agree in some ways that the possibilities are infinite. That is if you took two identical cultures and placed them on two identical islands, they would still culturally diverge over time because there are infinite possible ways in which to interact with the environment and society over time. However I see the overall pathways that that variation occurs in to be relatively similar. For instance if you transplanted these two identical cultures to two identical islands and they encountered new places and things, they would be forced to name them. The pathway of needing to name things is the same, but the manifestation would ultimately be different. Both would need to have a food supply that would likely be manifested as agriculture, and even if similar the exact forms the agriculture took would differ. Over time these differences multiply. In building agriculture, for instance, infrastructure would be build, which would then perpetuate through time and generations and influence the future of the culture as well.

So I see particular pathways of interactions between people and place, such naming, adapting survival to the place, establishment of infrastructure, etc. to all be pathways of cultural divergence. However the exact manifestations that could be created within each of these pathways is infinite.

I would love to hear your (or anyoneʻs) thoughts on that.

Seems to me that what you are discussing is just the process of cultural creation, regardless of who got to a land-mass first. If one considers that, going by the recent genetic analyses, humans only splintered from the original group maybe 75,000 years ago, there has been an amazing blossoming of difference. The ways "indigenous" groups created their cultures is part of that greater story, though I must add that I absolutely support strong protections for indigenous people and their cultures. So what you are asking about is the creation of culture in general, and of non-Western cultures in specific, no?

Hi Stephen. Yes, I'm really just interested in the creation of culture over time. It's not so much that I am not interested in western cultures, but the convoluted history of mixing and migration in western cultures makes, I believe, the processes much more difficult to understand. So in that sense I am more interested in non-western cultures because they have a longer, uninterrupted pathway to observe and attempt to understand.

Noa, I can see that. The Romans made a mess of Europe and the Middle East as far as continuity. Maori and other Polynesians have mostly in-tact cultures some say go back 18k years (I did my PhD in Welly, btw). Well, you have my attention. What's your goal here? I'm working on a chapter along these lines, so I could see some sharing of information.

Iʻll send you a message now.

Hmmm..nevermind I canʻt see easily how to send a message.

But that is excellent. Iʻve been chipping away at a paper on indigeneity, and it leads off with a major section on this concept of cultural development as a co-evolution of people and place. Although it is primarily anecdotal at the moment, I think it is still pretty strong and very thought provoking. But that is why I was looking for if there was other works out there already published, both for citations but also to make sure that even in an anecdotal sense that I would be adding something to the conversation. I would think that there would be a decent body of literature out there on this topic, but really canʻt find anything. Maybe using the wrong search terms. The best things I can find are by Sahlins in the 50ʻs and 60ʻs.

Iʻd be happy to talk about this more, and also happy to collaborate if that makes sense at all. Feel free to email me at [email protected]

Chris Stojanowski has written extensively on the ethnogenesis of native groups in the American Southeast. In particular, his 2010 book, "Bioarchaeology of Ethnogenesis in the Colonial Southeast," may be of interest to you. It looks at how forces of colonialism encouraged biological and cultural ethnogenesis that natives directed. I hope this helps. 

Thank you John.  Iʻll check it out.

There was a nice short article by Felicy Meakins on the Conversation the other day: This was about the evolution of Indigenous languages in Australia.

http://theconversation.com/while-old-indigenous-languages-disappear-new-ones-evolve-32559

The Native Languages of South America: Origins, Development, Typology.

Loretta O'Connor & Pieter Muysken, 2014

Ethnicity in Ancient Amazonia. 

Alf Hornborg & Jonathan D. Hill. 2011

A classic work on the subject is William Sturtevant's 1971 essay, Creek Into Seminole. More recently, Jonathan Hill's edited book, History, Power, and Identity: Ethnogenesis in the Americas, might be the most directly relevant.