Thinking Through Material Culture

Knappett, Carl

doi:10.9783/9780812202496

Cited by 356 publications

(60 citation statements)

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“…Since the NMRT takes the human cultural milieu to be a mere byproduct of brainbound cognitive devices, or at most as an externalization and expansion of internally specified cognitive properties (see Malafouris and Renfrew 2010;Zahidi and Myin 2016;contra Donald 1991), it presupposes that culture exerts no effect on the developmental process itself. 15 We propose instead that the creative production of artifacts, social engagement, and the resulting formulation of social norms, customs, and linguistic codes creates new affordances for action and perception, and brings forth a new way of conceptualizing reality, thus becoming constitutive of cognition itself (Knappett 2005;Wilson 2010;Malafouris 2013;Iliopoulos and Garofoli 2016).…”

Section: Discussion: the Biocultural Becoming Of Mindreadingmentioning

confidence: 99%

The biocultural emergence of mindreading: integrating cognitive archaeology and human development

Fenici

Garofoli

2017

J Cult Cogn Sci

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According to the thesis of natural mindreading (NMRT), mindreading-i.e., the capacity to attribute mental states to predict and explain behavior-is an intrinsic component of the human biological endowment, thus being innately specified by natural selection within particular neurocognitive structures. In this article, we challenge the NMRT as a phylogenetic and ontogenetic account of the development of the socio-cognitive capacities of our species. In detail, we argue that basic capacities of social cognition (e.g., the traces of early systems of bodily ornamentation within the archeological record, and infants' selective attention at others' beliefs in spontaneous-response false belief tasks) do not involve meta-representational mindreading but are better explained by appealing to situated embodied capacities acquired in social interaction. While we acknowledge that more flexible capacities of social cognition (e.g., those implied by the use of political emblems in industrialized societies, or by 4-year-olds' success in elicitedresponse false belief tasks) involve genuine mindreading, we argue that this ability is elicited and scaffolded by linguistic communication. We conclude that mindreading has emerged as the outcome of a highly derivative long-term constructivist process of biocultural becoming that led to a relatively recent restructuring of the human mind in multiple worldly locations at different times. In particular, we conjecture that humans gradually converged on establishing linguistic practices allowing the understanding of others' actions in terms of mental reasons. These practices were bequeathed to further generations, and continue nowadays to scaffold the acquisition of mindreading in early childhood.

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Section: Discussion: the Biocultural Becoming Of Mindreadingmentioning

confidence: 99%

The biocultural emergence of mindreading: integrating cognitive archaeology and human development

Fenici

Garofoli

2017

J Cult Cogn Sci

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“…Such a rematerialization thus stands in opposition to those 'archaeological studies from the mid-1990s onwards [that] seem to be founded more on people's practical beingin-the-world' (Olsen, 2003: 91). From the obdurate to the ephemeral, from material fetish to material culture, from 'entanglement' to 'enactment', there are many materialities at play (see, for example, edited volumes by Buchli, 2002;Graves-Brown, 2000;Hicks and Beaudry, 2010;Knappett and Malafouris, 2008;Tilley et al, 2006;Meskell, 2008; see also Gosden, 2005;Gosden and Knowles, 2001;Gosden and Marshall, 1999;Hodder, 2011;Knappett, 2005;Olsen, 2010;Tilley, 1999Tilley, , 2007.…”

Section: Materials Culture Matter and The Immaterialsmentioning

confidence: 97%

Human geography and archaeology

Hill

2014

Progress in Human Geography

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This essay explores the scope for greater engagement between human geographers and archaeologists, by taking a first step towards identifying convergences in theoretical development and possible topics for dialogue. Focusing on cultural geography and contemporary archaeology, I examine the changing role of matter and time within the field of archaeology. In doing so, I reflect on the opportunities for dialogue that are opened up as archaeologists rethink a series of ideas that have for many years remained fundamental to archaeological endeavour.

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“…As recent theorists of "material agency" suggest, rather than "debating what or who is or is not an agent," we should consider agency "as a situated process in which material culture is entangled." 20 And what better example to flesh this out than the one theatrical prop we've occasionally used as a seat of discussion, all along. As many will remember, Bert States regarded the inauguration of the chair, on the realistic stage of the 1850s, as a great "preconventional shock" that affected the whole phenomenology of its acting.…”

Section: Affordances For Interpretationmentioning

confidence: 98%

From Props to Affordances: An Ecological Approach to Theatrical Objects

Paavolainen¹

2010

tsy

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Thinking Through Material Culture

Cited by 356 publications

References 0 publications

The biocultural emergence of mindreading: integrating cognitive archaeology and human development

The biocultural emergence of mindreading: integrating cognitive archaeology and human development

Human geography and archaeology

From Props to Affordances: An Ecological Approach to Theatrical Objects

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