The Archaeology of Perception: Traces of Depiction and Language [and Comments and Reply]

Davidson, Iain; Noble, William; Armstrong, David F.; Black, Leo; Calvin, William H.; Davis, Whitney; Falk, Dean; Foster, Mary LeCron; Graves, Paul; Halverson, John; Hewes, Gordon W.

doi:10.1086/203723

Cited by 261 publications

(87 citation statements)

References 59 publications

Supporting

Mentioning

Contrasting

Order By: Relevance

“…But authorities disagree sharply on what this combination of rarity and simplicity implies. To some-for example, Bednarik, 113 Gibson, 108 Hayden, 114 and Marshack 115 -it means that modern cognitive abilities were present but were weakly expressed before 50 ky ago, while to others-for example, Chase and Dibble, 116,117 Davidson and Noble, 118 Mellars, 119 Tattersall, 120 and myself-it suggests that the fully modern capacity for culture may have appeared only about this time.…”

Section: ) Is It Really True That Modern Behavioral Markers Appear Wmentioning

confidence: 99%

Archeology and the evolution of human behavior

2000

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Section: ) Is It Really True That Modern Behavioral Markers Appear Wmentioning

confidence: 99%

Archeology and the evolution of human behavior

2000

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

“…At that time, Alexander Marshack suggested that several engravings on Upper Palaeolithic bones were 'notations' revealing "a practical and a symbolic sense of coming of time, as well as varied techniques either for utilizing or making notational slates and marking off units of time" (Marshack 1972, p. 90). Archaeological interests in cognition were fuelled by the rise of cognitive archaeology in the 1980s, a discipline seeking to reconstruct the origins of cognitive behaviors from the scientific analysis of the archaeological record (Renfrew 1982;Davidson and Noble 1989;Donald 1991;Renfrew and Zubrow 1994;see Nowell 2001). However, it was in the 1990s when an increasing number of archaeologists began to interpret personal ornaments as reflecting important cognitive abilities.…”

Section: Cognitive Approachesmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…For instance, Rudolf Botha has argued that Henshilwood did not provide the theoretical underpinnings for using the world 'language' in the context of recent discussion on the topic (Botha 2008(Botha , 2009). Additionally, shells and ornaments have been considered important archaeological proxies for exploring other cognitive human faculties, including memory (Wynn and Coolidge 2010;Nowell 2010), musicality (Mithen 2005(Mithen , 2009, symbolization (d 'Errico et al 2003;Zilhão 2007), perception (Davidson and Noble 1989), and numeracy and the concept of time (Overmann 2013).…”

Section: Cognitive Approachesmentioning

confidence: 99%

Palaeolithic Personal Ornaments: Historical Development and Epistemological Challenges

Abadía

Nowell

2014

J Archaeol Method Theory

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Since the 1990s, archaeological publications concerned with Palaeolithic personal ornaments have diversified. This proliferation has resulted in an intense exploration of the multiple roles, whether symbolic, cultural or social, that these items might have played in prehistoric groups. As a result of this process, there is now a broad consensus that these body adornments are important for exploring the origins of cognitive, artistic and symbolic behavior from an evolutionary perspective. This view contrasts with the conceptualization of Palaeolithic ornaments prevalent during the greater part of the twentieth century. At that time, these objects were rarely considered in debates concerning human evolution, art and symbolism. To explain this shift in the understanding of beads, pendants and other similar artifacts, we explore in this paper the history and the epistemology of the concept of 'ornament' in the field of Palaeolithic archaeology. In particular, we analyse the factors underlying why the same kinds of objects have been historically described in very diverse ways. We conclude by pointing out some of the epistemological challenges posed by the current revalorization of personal ornaments.

show abstract

“…What constitutes the earliest archaeological evidence of this nature has been a matter of rather intense debate (e.g. Bednarik, 1992Bednarik, , 1995Chase, 1991;Chase & Dibble, 1987Davidson & Noble, 1989;Dibble, 1989;Duff, Clark & Chadderdon, 1992;Gowlett, 1984;Marshack, 1976Marshack, , 1988.…”

Section: Archaeological Correlates Of Symbolismmentioning

confidence: 99%

Humanity from African Naissance to Coming Millennia

Klein¹,

Tobias²,

Raath³

et al. 2001

The South African Archaeological Bulletin

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

The first 2.5 million years of hominid history is characterized by limited dispersals similar to those of the living great apes whose home range sizes very little between years. Unlike our closest relative Pan, who are particulary vulnerable during dispersal because the distribution of their resources is highly habitat specific and predation takes a relatively higher toll than it does in r-selected animals, hominids are widely dispersed after 1.8 Ma. Hominid dispersal must have entailed either a shift in the types of resources exploited or a technological advance to ensure resource availability or both. Using data from ecology, geochronology, morphology, and paleontology we assess the initial hominid dispersal from Africa and the relationship to patterns of dispersal in nonhuman primates and large mammals of both 'widely dispersing' and 'non-dispersing' species. The dispersal rates of Plio/Pleistocene hominids differ from those of nonhuman primates and are typical of widely-dispersing large mammals. In fact, H. erectus first appears in Java almost immediately after its appearence in Africa, yet its first appearence in Java is contemporaneous with that of Colobus, Macaca, and Pongo that had already inhabited mainland Asia for millions of years. Although the timing of the first hominid dispersal pre-dates significant technological advances, the energy required by larger hominid body/brain sizes suggest a shift to exploitation of highprotein packages that, according to correlation between faunal and chronometric sequences, is itself dispersing. These data suggest that it is at the origin of H. erectus (sensu lato) that our uniquely human dispersal capabilities began to emerge and that this dispersal is not primarily due to the technological innovation of the Acheulean tradition. IntroductionThe global distribution of Homo sapiens contrasts with the restricted ranges of our closest living primate relative, Pan. Yet for some three million years after our lineages diverged, both were apparently exclusively African phenomena, as Pan remains today. These current biogeographic differences are reflected in home range (HR) sizes that are some 15 to 100 times greater in recent human huntergatherers than in Pan. (23 hectares in Pan, 330-2600 in humans; Leonard and Robertson, 2000). Although an extensive literature considers the significance of the behavioral repertoire that allows the final, relatively late, dispersal of Homo sapiens into Australasia, North and South America, and Siberia (e.g., Lindly & Clark, 1990;Roberts et al., 1991; Davidson & Noble, 1992; Jelinek, 1994; Waters et al., 1997), the origin of this difference in dispersal patterns is not well understood.The original hominid dispersal from Africa has been viewed as a largely hominid (technologically) driven rather than ecologically driven phenomenon. Such scenarios are based on the idea that widely dispersed ex-African hominids are not found before 1.0 ma (Pope, 1983) or are not found before the development of the Acheulean (Wolpoff, 1999), and thus that th...

show abstract

The Archaeology of Perception: Traces of Depiction and Language [and Comments and Reply]

Cited by 261 publications

References 59 publications

Archeology and the evolution of human behavior

Archeology and the evolution of human behavior

Palaeolithic Personal Ornaments: Historical Development and Epistemological Challenges

Humanity from African Naissance to Coming Millennia

Contact Info

Product

Resources

About