Profile

Dr Jamie Tehrani

RCUK Fellow in the Department of Anthropology

Member of the Centre for the Coevolution of Biology and Culture

Contact (email at jamie.tehrani@durham.ac.uk)

Biography

I am interested in the evolution of cultural similarities and differences among populations, and how they relate to linguistic and genetic patterns. I was trained in social anthropology at the London School of Economics (1995 – 1999) and gained a Master’s degree in Human Evolution and Behaviour at University College London (2000). I remained at UCL to study for a PhD in Anthropology (2005), writing my thesis on the transmission of craft traditions in Iranian tribal groups. In 2006 I took up a postdoctoral research fellowship at the AHRC Centre for the Evolution of Cultural Diversity (CECD) at University College London, before joining Durham in 2007 as a RCUK Fellow.

Research Groups

Research Interests

The evolution and transmission of tradition
The phylogenetic analysis of culture
The spread of rug-weaving in Western and Central Asia
Cross-cultural analysis of folktales
Tattooing and body ornamentation across cultures

Selected Publications

Books: sections

Tehrani, J. & Layton, R. 2009. Genes versus culture. In Thinking About Almost Everything. Amin, A. & O'Neill, M. Profile Books. 54 - 57.
Tehrani, J. & Collard, M. 2009. The evolution of material culture diversity among Iranian tribal populations. In Pattern and Process in Cultural Evolution. Shennan, S. University of California Press. 99-111.
Collard, M., Shennan, S. & Tehrani, J. 2006. Branching versus blending in macroscale cultural evolution: a comparative study. In Mapping Our Ancestors. Lipo, C., O'Brien, M., Collard, M. & Shennan, S. New Brunswick: Aldine Transaction. 53-63.
Collard, M. & Tehrani, J. 2005. Phylogenesis versus ethnogenesis in Turkmen cultural evolution. In The Evolution of Cultural Diversity: A Phylogenetic Approach. Mace, R., Holden, C. & Shennan, S. London: UCL Press. 109-132.

Journal papers: academic

Tehrani, J.J., Collard, M. & Shennan, S.J. 2010. The cophylogeny of populations and cultures: reconstructing the evolution of Iranian tribal craft traditions using trees and jungles. Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society (In Press).
Bentley, R.A., Layton, R.H. & Tehrani, J.J. 2009. Kinship, marriage and the genetics of past human dispersals. Human Biology 81(2-3): 159-179.
Tehrani, J. & Collard, M. 2009. On the relationship between inter-individual cultural transmission and population-level cultural diversity: a case study of weaving in Iranian tribal populations. Evolution and Human Behavior 30(4): 286-300. (Additional information)
Tehrani, J. J., Bentley, R. A. & O'Brien, M. J. 2008. Language is nothing special: Response to "Across the curious parallel of language and species evolution" by J. Whitfield. PLoS Biology 6(e186). (Additional information) (View publication online)
Tehrani, J. & Riede, F. 2008. Towards an archaeology of pedagogy: learning, teaching and the generation of material culture traditions. World Archaeology 40(3): 316 - 331. (Additional information)
Collard, M, Shennan, SJ & Tehrani, JJ 2006. Branching, blending, and the evolution of cultural similarities and differences among human populations. Evolution And Human Behavior 27(3): 169-184. (Additional information) (View publication online)
Tehrani, J. 2006. The role of ethnography in the science of cultural evolution (Comment on Mesoudi, Whiten and Laland). Behavioural and Brain Sciences 29: 363-364.
Tehrani, J. & Collard, M. 2002. Investigating cultural evolution through biological phylogenetic analyses of Turkmen textiles. Journal of Anthropological Archaeology 21(4): 443-463. (Additional information) (View publication online)

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Media Contacts

Available for media contact about:

Anthropology: Tribal rugs and the origins of weaving
Anthropology: The evolution of cultural diversity
Anthropology: Cultural transmission
Anthropology: The evolution of fairy tales and folk stories

Supervises

Mr Vittorio Magnano
Mrs Roya Farid
Mr Michel de-Vreeze