COGNITIVE ARCHAEOLOGY, ART, CEREMONIALISM Cognitive archaeology is the study of past ways of thought from material rema

1. COGNITIVE ARCHAEOLOGY, ART, & CEREMONIALISM Cognitive archaeology is the study of past ways of thought from material remains. It is, essentially, the archaeology of the human mind.

2. To understand prehistoric human cognition, archaeologists can investigate: how people went about describing and measuring their world how people planned their monuments and settlements (i.e., maps & models) which material goods people valued most highly and perhaps viewed as symbols of wealth, authority, or power the manner in which people conceived of the supernatural (called cult practice by anthropologists)

3. INVESTIGATING HUMAN SYMBOLIZING: It is generally agreed today that what most clearly distinguishes the human species from other life forms is our ability to use symbols in very complex ways � words themselves are symbols. As yet there is no clear archaeological methodology for determining precisely when language arose (we can look at fossil human anatomy but it, too, is ambiguous), but there are several lines of behavioral evidence we can use to look for its proxy � complicated cognitive abilities: design in tool manufacture. Increasing complexity and standardization through time consideration of planning time (the time elapsed between the conception of an act and its execution). EXAMPLE: Transport of raw materials to a distant manufacturing site. evidence of organized behavior: living floors and food sharing deliberate burial of human remains. Sungir, Russia (ca. 24,000 years ago, below)

4. The roughly 24,000 year-old Upper Paleolithic burial from Sungir, Russia of a man, 55-65 years old. Note the roughly 3,500 mammoth ivory beads and arctic fox teeth decorating the burial. They were probably originally sewn on to clothing or a shroud.