The archaeology of the social brain revisited: rethinking mind and material culture from a material engagement perspective

Abstract

The social brain hypothesis (SBH) has played a prominent role in interpreting the relationship between human social, cognitive and technological evolution in archaeology and beyond. This article examines how the SBH has been applied to the Palaeolithic material record, and puts forward a critique of the approach. Informed by Material Engagement Theory (MET) and its understanding of material agency, it is argued that the SBH has an inherently cognitivist understanding of mind and matter at its core. This Cartesian basis has not been fully resolved by archaeological attempts to integrate the SBH with relational models of cognition. At the heart of the issue has been a lack of meaningful consideration of the cognitive agency of things and the evolutionary efficacy of material engagement. This article proposes MET as a useful starting point for rethinking future approaches to human social cognitive becoming in a way that appreciates the co-constitution of brains, bodies and worlds. It also suggests how MET may bridge archaeological and 4E approaches to reconsider concepts such as the ‘mental template’ and Theory of Mind.

How to dig up minds: The intentional analysis program in cognitive archaeology

“…MET and 4 E‐cognition approaches in cognitive archaeology share a critical attitude toward traditional cognitivist approaches, which they frequently take to be Cartesian, mentalistic, or representationalist (see Barona, 2021; Gallagher & Ransom, 2016; Garofoli, 2018; Ihde & Malafouris, 2019; Malafouris, 2013; Wynn, Overmann, & Malafouris, 2021). MET, in this regard, opts for a “co‐extension of the mental and the physical” (Malafouris, 2013, p. 5).…”

Shrunken Social Brains? A Minimal Model of the Role of Social Interaction in Neural Complexity

“…To be more precise, the latest theoretical developments in cognitive science promote an embodied, embedded, extended, and enactive ("4E") approach to the mind (Newen et al, 2018), which argues that the basis of cognition is not limited to the brain but can spread out over brain, body, and environment. On this view, cognitive processes are underdetermined by brain structure, which undermines the underlying assumption of the social brain hypothesis (Barrett et al, 2007;Barona, 2021). Living in a world of enhanced sociocultural scaffolding of cognition would permit brains to become smaller but, importantly, without a reduction in overall cognitive capacity of the appropriately scaffolded person.…”

Materiality and cognitive development: Contemporary debates and empirical studies in early childhood

“…The increasing traction gained by 5E perspectives in recent years has significantly advanced our understanding of how materiality shapes human development, fostering new opportunities for (inter)action across multiple timescales and social contexts. This progress is exemplified by contributions stemming or gaining insights from frameworks such as Material Engagement Theory (e.g., Alessandroni & Malafouris, 2023;Barona, 2021;Gallagher & Ransom, 2016;Gubenko & Houssemand, 2022;Malafouris, 2013;Malafouris et al, 2023;March & Malafouris, 2023;Paolucci, 2021;Vietri et al, 2023).…”