The Material Culture of Calculation

Some remarks on number concept development in the Near East and Europe

“…This process exemplifies the characteristic detachment of the measure concept from the object that is to be measured which is also to be observed in Near Eastern measurement systems (Damerow 1999). Given that the axe bars formally belonged to the axe category, we can imagine the possible nature of some of the rationalization processes and the emergence of increasingly distinct messages, which in this particular case were metrological messages.…”

“…The model presented by Schmandt-Besserat can be usefully combined with Peter Damerow's (1999) theoretical approach. Damerow summarized the development of numeracy from the perspective of cognitive evolution in the following stages:…”

“…The transformations performed with the symbols no longer represented the fundamental arithmetical activities by means of real objects directly; rather, they now represented mental operations and the concepts are reflectively abstracted from them.A third stage of development was finally achieved by coding, in written language, these concepts and the mental operations that constituted them, i.e. they were submitted to formal rules for logical transformation in a form specified in writing (Damerow 1999).

Figure 2A model of early accounting in one-to-one correspondence.

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“…A third stage of development was finally achieved by coding, in written language, these concepts and the mental operations that constituted them, i.e. they were submitted to formal rules for logical transformation in a form specified in writing (Damerow 1999).…”

“…This form of development is based on individual cognitive achievements that lead to the modification of existing representations and to the construction of new ones. These representations become part of a culture by being embedded in existing paths of tradition, so that they can be integrated into the process of reproduction in this culture (Damerow 1999).…”