Cognition and Material Culture: The Archaeology of Symbolic Storage

by Colin Renfrew (Editor)

The fifteen papers in this volume explore how human beliefs have been externalised and `stored' in material form, thus making very intangible ideas exist in a permanent, tangible form. The volume benefits from a culturally and temporally comparative approach. Mind and cognitive archaeology and external symbolic storage (Colin Renfrew); Hominid enculturation and cognitive evolution (Merlin Donald); Palaeolithic origins of artificial memory an evolutionary perspective (Francesco d'Errico); Material artefacts, symbolism, sociologists and archaeologists (David Halle); Mimesis, imagination and role-play (David Harris); Rock handmaiden to studies of cognitive evolution (Thomas Dowson); Digging for the role of material objects in cultural evolution (Mark Lake); Personal experience and the significance of external symbolic storage for the emergence of modern human cognition (E J Lowe); The supernatural beings of prehistory and the external storage of religious ideas (Steven Mithen); Chinese burial sources of information on thought and belief (Jessica Rawson); Social relations and the idea of externality (Marilyn Strathern); Some problems with the notion of external symbolic storage and the case of Neolithic material culture in Britain (Julian Thomas); Symbolic the origin of a spatial perspective (Ezra Zubrow and Patrick Daly); Mind and a dialectical perpsective (Robert Hinde); Material culture and concluding thoughts (Merlin Donald).

Genres: History, Archaeology

Hardcover

First published December 1, 1999

About the author

Andrew Colin Renfrew, Baron Renfrew of Kaimsthorn was an English archaeologist, paleolinguist and Conservative peer noted for his work on radiocarbon dating, the prehistory of languages, archaeogenetics, neuroarchaeology, and the prevention of looting at archaeological sites.

Renfrew was also the Disney Professor of Archaeology at the University of Cambridge and Director of the McDonald Institute for Archaeological Research and was a Senior Fellow of the McDonald Institute for Archaeological Research.

Reviews

[Merve]

3.80