Mitteilungen der Gesellschaft für Urgeschichte — 20 (2011) 65 The Nature of Culture Synthesis of an interdisciplinary symposium held in Tübingen, Germany, 15-18 June 2011 Miriam N. Haidle 1 and Nicholas J. Conard 2 1 Forschungsstelle ‘The Role of Culture in Early Expansions of Humans’ Heidelberger Akademie der Wissenschaften Senckenberg Research Institute Senckenberganlage 25 D-69325 Frankfurt/Main miriam.haidle@uni-tuebingen.de 2 Universität Tübingen Institut für Ur- und Frühgeschichte und Archäologie des Mittelalters Abt. Ältere Urgeschichte und Quartärökologie & Tübingen-Senckenberg Center for Human Evolution and Paleoecology Schloss Hohentübingen, Burgsteige 11 D-72070 Tübingen nicholas.conard@uni-tuebingen.de Abstract: The aim of the interdisciplinary conference ‘The Nature of Culture’ was to introduce and discuss in detail both a proposal for a concept of culture and a model of the course of cultural evolution. Primatologists, Paleolithic archaeologists, paleoanthropologists, and cultural anthropologists contributed to the interdisciplinary dialogue. The basis of discussion was the proposal of the concept of culture with biological, historical-social, and individual dimensions and a model for the expansion of cultural capacities. Invited papers assessed selected parts of the proposed concept and model. The result was widely agreed upon: an integrative concept of cultural capacity and cultural performance that accounted for the evolutionary processes involved, as well as a new model of the expansion of cultural capacity. Altogether six steps of expansion have been identified. The first three – capacities for socially transmitted information, capacities for tradition, and basic cultural capacities – can also be observed in some animal species today. Participants agreed to focus on the archaeological record as the key source of evidence documenting cultural evolution instead of ethologically derived features that are difficult to be traced archaeologically. The researchers in attendance defined three more cognitive extensions of cultural capacities during the course of human evolution:  modular cultural capacities, based on the ability to produce tools with tools,  composite cultural capacities, based on the ability to combine different objects into single tool units, and  collective cultural capacities, based on the ability to perceive a group (of agents, objects, persons, things) as an acting entity of interdependent parts. Keywords: Cultural evolution, cultural capacity, cultural performance, basic culture, modular culture, composite culture, collective culture The Nature of Culture Synthese eines interdisziplinären Symposiums in Tübingen, Deutschland, 15.-18. Juni 2011 Zusammenfassung: Das interdisziplinäre Symposium ‚The Nature of Culture‘ hatte zum Ziel, ein integ- ratives Kulturkonzept und ein Modell der kulturellen Evolution vorzustellen und diese mit Primatologen, Archäologen, Paläoanthropologen und Kulturwissenschaftlern auszuarbeiten. Grundlagen der Diskus- sion waren der Vorschlag eines Kulturkonzepts mit biologischen, historisch-sozialen und individuellen