Ergonomic clusters and displaced affordances in early lithic technology

Tool use can be considered in terms of purposeful behaviour. This emphasis on ‘purpose’ hides a host of assumptions about the nature of cognition and its relationship with physical activity. In particular, a notion of ‘purpose’ might assume that this is teleological which, in turn, requires a model of a desired end state of an action that can be projected onto the environment. Such a model is fundamental to traditional descriptions of cognition and a version of this can be found in the ‘template’ theory of stone-tool production (i.e. where the maker of the tool has a model in mind and attempts to reproduce this model in stone). Against this cognitive perspective, a number of approaches have been proposed that share their roots in the work of Gibson (i.e. ecological psychology) or Bernstein (i.e. dynamic systems). From these perspectives, ‘purpose’ is not a matter of a projection but opportunity; put simply, an action is performed until it need not be performed further. Trivial though this might sound, it has implications for how we define purpose and how this might apply to our understanding of tool use. We argue from a dynamic systems perspective and demonstrate the use of tools to crack bones for marrow extraction.

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Cognitive Archaeology and 'Cognitivism'mentioning

confidence: 99%

mentioning

confidence: 99%

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Purposeful tool use in early lithic technologies

Baber

Janulis

2020

“…There can be no doubt, however, that the Acheulean is the oldest cultural manifestation commonly seen to be relevant to these issues (e.g. Le Tensorer, 2006; Wynn, 2021). In this perspective, Acheulean bifaces, ranging through much more than a million years of human evolution, are likely to be illustrative in some respect of more widely operating factors and processes in early hominin behaviour.…”

Section: Approaches To Aesthetics In the Pastmentioning

confidence: 99%

Deep structure in the Acheulean adaptation: technology, sociality and aesthetic emergence

Gowlett

2020

This article considers the adaptive setting and probable origins of human aesthetic capabilities, using evidence of the Acheulean tradition in the last million years, and highlighting the importance of the preceding and enveloping social and technological contexts. Acheulean bifaces, made from about 1.75 to 0.1 Ma, often with an appearance of symmetry, give windows on crucial interlocking aspects of human intellectual evolution. These have been seen as the domains of technology, sociality and aesthetics, following Leroi-Gourhan, or in near-equivalence the ‘technological’, ‘sociological’ and ‘ideological/philosophical’ of L.A. White. These domains can be analysed to have a reality, in the sense that social worlds of the apes far antedate technology, which in turn is generally taken to be far older than a sense of aesthetic appreciation. The bifaces are helpful in illustrating early developments because they can be made only through bringing together a set of concepts linking form, function and technology of manufacture, in a recurring ‘deep structure’. As there are at least 6 to 12 necessary concepts, perhaps significantly more, the artefacts are essentially multivariable or multivariate. They thus impose high cognitive requirements in manufacture, pressing towards effective sequencing of steps so that not too many variables will be involved simultaneously. Support of such a knowledge base has social requirements of shared or collective intention. Biomechanical and functional necessities also exert pressures on concepts: rules maintained by all these requirements entail a notion of ‘appropriateness’ or ‘rightness’ that may have been a prime factor in driving evolution of a sense of aesthetics and even the shaping of moral feelings. As the rules are variably expressed through time and space in the Acheulean, some of the best information comes from seeing how far particular variables are ‘locked’ in relationships which recur to give the impression of deep structure.

“…As such self-organization may hold insights applicable to human cognitive evolution and tool use more generally, these insights from writing are applied to stone tools, with the goal of understanding how the ability to leverage material forms for cognitive purposes might have emerged. (Readers interested in illustrations of stone tools might consult the article by Wynn, 2021. )…”

Section: Applying Insights From a Self-organizing System To Stone mentioning

confidence: 99%

The material difference in human cognition

Overmann

2020

Humans leverage material forms for unique cognitive purposes: We recruit and incorporate them into our cognitive system, exploit them to accumulate and distribute cognitive effort, and use them to recreate phenotypic change in new individuals and generations. These purposes are exemplified by writing, a relatively recent tool that has become highly adept at eliciting specific psychological and behavioral responses in its users, capability it achieved by changing in ways that facilitated, accumulated, and distributed incremental behavioral and psychological change between individuals and generations. Writing is described here as a self-organizing system whose design features reflect points of maximal usefulness that emerged under sustained collective use of the tool. Such self-organization may hold insights applicable to human cognitive evolution and tool use more generally. Accordingly, this article examines the emergence of the ability to leverage material forms for cognitive purposes, using the tool-using behaviors and lithic technologies of ancestral species and contemporary non-human primates as proxies for matters like collective use, generational sustainment, and the non-teleological emergence of design features.