Introduction to Archaeology: Class 17

ã Copyright Bruce Owen 2002

• Cognitive archaeology is a hot topic, but no one is exactly sure what it is
• Basically: What people thought in the past, when they thought it, how they came to think it, and how that affected other things
• Two broad foci:
• Origins and development of modern human thinking abilities
• When did people start thinking like we do, why, how, etc.
• Content and influence of thought, as opposed to environment, economics, etc.
• What religious ideas have people had, why, and how did that affect their lives and developments in their societies?
• How did people understand and explain their world, both the physical world and the social (economic, political, etc.) world?
• that is, what have people's ideologies been?
• In part, this is a reaction to the excesses of the New Archaeology and the processual approach, which tended to emphasize
• adaptation to the environment
• economic or material determinism
• a systemic view of society in which subsystems or subgroups acted in certain ways in response to certain conditions
• instead, the cognitive archaeology approach emphasizes individuals and what they think as being of interest and having a causal role
• in order to understand what people were doing in the past, cognitive archaeologists say you have to understand what they were thinking
• their cognitive abilities (in the case of very early humans who may or may not have been fully modern in their psychology)
• their ideology and cosmological framework for the world
• which shapes their understanding of and response to conditions they encounter
• Thomas divides cognitive archaeology into four areas, which blend together somewhat
• Cosmology
• he emphasizes astronomy here, incorrectly
• cosmology is the understanding of the cosmos, the whole universe.
• it includes ideas about the origin of the world, how the world and living things were created, etc.
• it also includes ideas about how the world works
• physics is part of one kind of cosmology
• other cosmologies emphasize spirits in living and even inanimate things
• others emphasize witches, that is, the power of individual people to cause events, such that a lightning strike or elephant rampage are literally caused by a specific person consciously (or not) making it happen
• Azande example
• Ritual and religion
• Religion is hard to define, although we all think we know it when we see it...
• One's understanding of the supernatural and one's relation to it
• May (or may not) overlap somewhat with cosmology
• Ritual: stereotyped activities carried out in accordance with religion (and to some extent with cosmology)
• often intended to influence the world by influencing the supernatural; in this case it verges more towards cosmology...
• Ideology
• one's system of ideas about society, culture, politics
• divine right of kings, democracy, free-market capitalism, socialism, etc.
• a set of ideas that makes sense of social organization, power relations, differential wealth, etc.
• often manipulated to advance individual or group interests
• to legitimize the status quo or to justify changing it
• Iconography
• one's system of visual symbols and relations among them that express ideas, even if only in a vague way
• usually art, decoration, sculpture, etc.
• writing systems might be regarded as an extreme example, but are usually treated separately
• Examples of cognitive archaeology studies:
• of the "origins of modern cognitive abilities" type:
• shift from early Homo Oldowan style tools to Homo erectus Acheulean tools (handaxes, etc.)
• made to a specific shape
• more visualization and planning required
• that is, increasingly complex cognition
• Handedness in stone tool manufacture - origins of modern cognition
• research done by Nick Toth
• No right vs. left-handed bias detected in earliest Oldowan pebble tools
• around 2.5 mya
• made by early members of the genus Homo, or late Australopithecines
• thus they probably lacked the strong "lateralization" of brain function found in modern humans
• so they probably thought in a very different way
• but handedness is apparent in Acheulean tools
• starting around 1.8 mya
• made by Homo erectus and early Homo sapiens
• mostly right-handed
• thus probably the strong lateralization of modern humans had appeared
• goes along with larger brains, longer juvenile dependency, reduced sexual dimorphism that probably means long-term male-female pair bonding
• suggests a shift towards a human way of thinking
• Magdalenian figurines
• Venus of Willendorf, etc.
• mostly female, but some male and many indeterminate
• all ages and body shapes
• some faceless, some not
• some with headgear or hairdos
• what were the creators of these figurines thinking?
• ritual, fertility, etc.?
• sex, made by men?
• pregnancy, made by women?
• different things in different times and places?
• some animals or anthropomorphic animals
• representational, or intentionally mythical/supernatural/anthropomorphized?
• Alexander Marshack's analysis of the La Marche antler
• extensively described in Thomas
• Magdalenian (Upper Paleolithic) cave site, 13,000-12,000 BC
• is this evidence of observing phases of the moon?
• if so, it suggests modern-like thinking
• relatively complex cosmology
• problems of objectivity and interpretation, alternate explanations of marks
• of the "reconstructing ideology, religion, etc. and its effects on society" type:
• Conrad and Demarest interpretation of Chimu state's expansion
• capital at Chan Chan is composed of a series of walled compounds, each built by a successive ruler
• each continued to operate after his death, to revere his remains
• supported by the lands that the ruler had conquered
• each new king thus had to expand the state in order to finance his own royal compound
• this is known in part from ethnohistoric accounts, supported by the archaeological evidence of the compounds
• if correct, it is a great example of how ideas about cosmology and religion had a profound effect on the "real world" of secular power, militarism, the expansion of a state or empire, etc.
• Moche iconography
• straightforward weaving shop scenes, etc. look like representations of real life... probably
• if so, they allow some fairly straightforward interpretations
• in this case, fairly large-scale textile workshops with weavers and high-status overseers
• probably many other useful details to be teased out
• warfare scenes: realistic, or ritualized, or mythological?
• Chris Donnan: presentation theme (and other themes not discussed in class)
• Figures A, B, C now all found in actual burials
• some multiple examples of the same "figure"
• with the appropriate paraphernalia
• suggests that the scenes were actually carried out by high-status people whose role in life was largely to be that particular figure in these rituals
• that implies a lot about the ritual nature of high status among the Moche
• and the nature of the Moche state
• not to mention the real life experiences of at least some Moche people
• Donnan has been doing this all through the processual archaeology years, when some belittled his work as unscientific "art history"
• He is still at it, and does not particularly consider himself a "cognitive archaeologist", either
• what does that mean about all these labeled "types" of archaeology?
• sacrifice scene, corresponding copper cups
• throne and prisoners scene
• Jeff Quilter's hypothetical reconstruction of a Moche myth based on art
• Chavín iconography
• San Pedro cactus
• Shamans transforming?
• drug paraphernalia
• complex, esoteric iconography; reversible images...
• travelling oracle?