Cognitive Archaeology Notes

Cognitive Archaeology

Symbols in Archaeology

• When analyzing a symbolic artifact, it is crucial to consider the context in which it was used.
• Human ability to use symbols: The meaning attributed to symbols is arbitrary and heavily dependent on the specific context of discovery. Few symbols possess universal meaning.
• Importance of assemblage: Analyzing symbols in conjunction with other artifacts found in the same context provides a more comprehensive understanding.
• Cognitive archaeology focuses on investigating how human symbolizing faculties evolved.
• The close genetic relationship among humans suggests that cognitive abilities are generally similar across populations. However, it cannot be assumed that hominins or early humans had identical cognitive abilities.
• All human groups possess the capacity for complex speech, but the exact timing of language development prior to modern humans remains uncertain.
• The origin of self-consciousness is also uncertain, with the possibility that it emerged gradually over time.
• Tool design and manufacturing require skill and cognitive ability, including the use of a cognitive map.
• Manufacturing processes involve complex and standardized sequences of events, indicating intention and foresight in planning activities and artifact use.
• Evidence for intention and foresight includes the procurement of materials.
• Deliberate burial practices suggest feelings about the deceased, and adornment of the deceased indicates an intention to enhance aspects of the individual.
• Formation processes can impact burials, altering the archaeological record.
• The symbolic nature of depiction is evident in early art, with increasing evidence suggesting that the earliest depictions predate Homo sapiens.
• Examples of early symbolic behavior:
  • A mussel shell from Trinil, Java, with engraved zigzags, dating back at least 430,000 years.
  • A piece of red ocher with abstract engravings from Blombos Cave, South Africa, dating to 77,000 years ago.
• Paleolithic cave art, such as the paintings in Chauvet Cave, southern France, depict numerous animals, while engravings from Cussac Cave in the Dordogne, France, showcase mammoths.
• Portable art includes bone engravings, such as the engraving of three lions on a bone from the cave of La Vache in southwestern France, and bone carvings from La Garma cave in Spain.
• Venus figurines, found at sites like Zaraisk near Moscow and the Balzi Rossi caves at Grimaldi in northern Italy, should not be automatically interpreted as representations of a deity or religious/ritual objects. There is no clear evidence, and phallic-shaped objects are often overlooked.
• Burial of Boy and Girl, Sungir
  • Deliberate burial of the dead: a young girl (aged nine to ten) and an adolescent boy (aged twelve to thirteen) buried head-to-head at Sungir, northeast of Moscow, c. 27,000 years ago.
  • They wore a variety of pendants, bracelets, and other ornaments; their clothes were covered with numerous ivory beads, and the boy wore a belt of fox teeth. The entire burial was covered in red ocher.

Working with Symbols

• Humans use symbols to organize relationships with the natural world and with each other.
• Five uses of symbols:
  1. Establishment of Place: Marking and delimiting territory using symbolic markers and monuments.
  2. Symbols of Measurement: Developing units of time, length, and weight.
  3. Instruments of Planning: Defining intentions more clearly.
  4. Regulating and Organizing Relations: Organizing relations among human beings (e.g., money or badges).
  5. Representing and Regulating Relations with the Supernatural: Including religion and cult.
• Establishing Place: The Location of Memory
  • The importance of a center in establishing place. Examples: the hearth in a home, burial places, communal meeting places.
  • Landscape and its features structure a society’s worldview. This is applicable for both large and small societies.
  • Corporate structures indicate a focus on community rather than individual leadership.
  • Monuments mark time (e.g., the Ring of Brodgar, Orkney).
  • Individual and community memory is associated with places, highlighting the social and spiritual importance of landscape.
• Measuring the World
  • Units of measure (e.g., time, length, and weight) represent a fundamental cognitive step.
  • Units of measurement can be recovered in the archaeological record, including calendrical systems and seasonal turning points.
    • Measurements of weight include standard weights, such as those found in Mohenjodaro, indicating a concept of measuring weight/mass with units that depended on a system of numbering that equated to a notion of economic equivalence.
• Examples: The ceremonial center of Orkney, off the north coast of Scotland, a ritual landscape, which demonstrates that it was not only large, organized state societies that were capable of creating major public works.
• Planning: Maps for the Future
  • It is difficult to prove purposeful planning at the outset of a project due to limited material evidence.
  • High regularity can occur through a well-defined scheme but does not necessarily prove planning.
  • Early maps likely depicted existing features rather than envisaged future ones.
  • Finding evidence:
    • Models of buildings and sculptors’ trial pieces and models
    • Regularities that can’t have been an accident
    • Cities aligned with an astronomical feature (and reinforced by iconography)
    • Regularity in layout of streets and grids
    • Craft processes, for example those using metals
• Symbols of Organization and Power
  • Languages and records communicate information that can organize and manage people.
  • Symbols of power include pictorial representations (e.g., Shield Jaguar (Lintel 24)), prestigious objects, and scales of value (e.g., gold in Varna).
  • Displays of authority are more visible the more hierarchical the society.
• The Archaeology of Religion
  • A framework of beliefs that conceptualizes supernatural forces, included within a shared cognitive map of the world.
  • Archaeology of cult involves recognizing evidence for cult, such as:
    • Performance of ritual
    • Focusing of attention
    • Boundaries
    • Presence of the deity (some material form or image)
    • Participation and offering (can include material items)

The Impact of Literacy

• Writing is the most dominant of any system of symbols.
• Literature provides insights into the cognitive worlds of the past.
• Understanding of the social context is necessary to interpret the evidence correctly.
• Writing serves purposes such as describing the world, communication, documentation, social organization and control, and passing on knowledge.
• Examples of script:
  • Runic alphabet
  • Etruscan alphabet
  • Zapotec/Mixtec script
  • Aegean scripts: Linear A, Linear B
  • Greek alphabet
  • Hittite hieroglyphs
  • Mesopotamian cuneiform
  • Japanese script
  • Chinese characters
  • Brahmi alphabet
  • Rapa Nui script
  • Maya hieroglyphs
  • Egyptian hieroglyphs
  • Phoenician alphabet
  • Indus Valley script

Ontology

• Perceptions of consciousness, agency, intentions, and places different outside of Western systems
• Animacy perspective
• Relations between people, things, and places
• Mutual obligations of care
• Interdependence between human and non-human actors
• Blurring of boundaries
• Sentient beings - people’s perceptions may result in specific action that is visible in the archaeological record