The Foundations of Cognitive Archaeology

Abstract

An empirically supported proposal for synthesizing multiple approaches to the study of the mind in the past. In The Foundations of Cognitive Archaeology, Marc Abramiuk proposes a multidisciplinary basis for the study of the mind in the past, arguing that archaeology and the cognitive sciences have much to offer one another. Abramiuk draws on relevant topics from philosophy, biological anthropology, cognitive psychology, cognitive anthropology, and archaeology to establish theoretically founded and empirically substantiated principles of a discipline that integrates different approaches to mind-related archaeological research. Abramiuk discusses the two ways that archaeologists have traditionally viewed the human mind: as a universal or as a relative interface with the environment. He argues that neither view by itself can satisfactorily serve as a basis for gleaning insight into all aspects of the mind in the past and, therefore, the mind is more appropriately studied using multiple approaches. He explains the rationale for using these approaches in mind-related archaeological research, reviewing the literature in both cognitive psychology and cognitive anthropology on human memory, perception, and reasoning. Drawing on archaeological and genetic evidence, Abramiuk investigates the evolution of the mind through the Upper Paleolithic era—when the ancient mind became functionally comparable to the modern human mind. Finally, Abramiuk offers a model for the establishment of a discipline dealing with the study of the mind in the past that integrates all the approaches discussed.

The Odyssey of Dental Anxiety: From Prehistory to the Present. A Narrative Review

“…Along the way, the great change in human consciousness and, arguably, in humans' emotions and anxieties, probably started some 100,000 years ago, with an event that some archeologists have named the Sapient Paradox (Mellars, 1991; Ramachandran, 2000; Iacoboni et al, 2005; Gabora, 2007; Renfrew, 2008; Richerson et al, 2010; Sterelny, 2011; Abramiuk, 2012; Garofoli and Noel Haidle, 2014). …”

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“…To see why, it is useful to situate ourselves in archaeology's history. As Alison Wylie tells it, archaeology is marked by “crisis debates”: A more‐or‐less regular oscillation between two philosophical extremes (see Wylie, ; Chapman & Wylie, ; also Abramiuk, , ch. 1).…”

Human brain activity during stone tool production

“…Binford (1965:204), for example, thought "paleopsychology" was too speculative for objective study. The post-processual critique, as it came to be called, pointed out that processual archaeology was a flawed approach to interpreting the archaeological record because it could not directly test its claims, only indirectly through experimental and comparative work, such as ethnoarchaeology (Abramiuk 2012). More importantly, post-processualism was largely a critique of the assertion that objective archaeological interpretations were possible through the application of the scientific method, a key tenet of processualism.…”

“…As a result of the post-processual critique, two camps of cognitive archaeologists emerged (Abramiuk 2012), one from the cognitive-processual school that focused on explaining how people in the past thought (e.g. Renfrew 1983), and the other from the post-processual school that focused on what people in the past thought about (e.g.…”

“…H. sapiens), it would be largely untenable in the discipline of evolutionary cognitive archaeology. From here on, the narrative will follow the development of evolutionary cognitive archaeology, not cognitive archaeology in general, which diverged to the point that processual and post-processual cognitive archaeologists no longer found the other camp's research to be complementary to their own research, and where only recently have attempts been made to treat the two as the same discipline (Abramiuk 2012).…”