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