Neuroarchaeology

Last updated

Neuroarchaeology is a sub-discipline of archaeology that uses neuroscientific data to infer things about brain form and function in human cognitive evolution. The term was first suggested and thus coined by Colin Renfrew and Lambros Malafouris. [1] [2]

Contents

Definition

As explained by archaeologist Dietrich Stout and evolutionary neuroscientist Erin E. Hecht, [3] : 146  neuroarchaoelogy "has specific theoretical implications that extend beyond the general sense of the neologism. It is thus useful to distinguish between Neuroarchaeology (narrow sense) and neuroarchaeology (general sense). As outlined by Malafouris, [2] Neuroarchaeology is an outgrowth of the cognitive-processual archaeology of Renfrew [4] and is explicitly grounded in Material Engagement Theory. [5] [6] Material Engagement Theory focuses on the role of objects in mediating human behavior, cognition, and sociality and is closely aligned with approaches to cognition as extended, [7] grounded, [8] situated [9] and distributed [10] developed in psychology, philosophy, anthropology, and elsewhere. Neuroarchaeology explicitly aims to: (1) incorporate neuroscience findings into cognitive archaeology, (2) promote 'critical reflection on neuroscience’s claims on the basis of our current archaeological knowledge', and (3) facilitate cross-disciplinary dialog." [2]

Neuroarchaeology combines the words "neuro-" as in "neuroscience," indicating its connection with the brain sciences, and "archaeology," meaning the study of human history and prehistory through excavation and other techniques designed to investigate the material record. [3] The term has "archaeology" as its primary component, with "neuro-" used adjectivally; thus, it means an archaeology informed by neuroscience, or evolutionary cognitive archaeology. [3] [11] It denotes a relatively new research area investigating questions related to interactions between brain, body, and world over cultural and evolutionary spans of time. [1]

Significance

In the 21st century, significant gains in understanding the brain through the cognitive sciences opened up new areas of collaboration between archaeology and neuroscience. This has enabled archaeologists to base hypotheses about the biological and neural substrates of human cognitive abilities on archaeological data, especially change in material forms like stone tools across time. Neuroscientific insights can also be applied in critically reviewing and challenging theories and assumptions about the inception of modern human cognition and behavior, including whether there even are such things. [12] Both neuroscience and neuroarchaeology seek to understand the human mind. However, the theories and methods of the two disciplines differ significantly. Neuroscience collects data on brain form and function in extant populations, while neuroarchaeolgy uses archaeological and neuroscientific data to examine change in brain form and function in extinct populations. To reconcile these theoretical and methodological differences, neuroarchaeology "aims at constructing an analytical bridge between brain and culture by putting material culture, embodiment, time and long term change at center stage in the study of mind." [13] : 49 

Over the past several decades, neuroscientific data have been an essential component of neuroarchaeological analyses. The converse is less certain, as neuroscience has yet to make much use of archaeology's ability to furnish critical data on the timing and context of developments in human cognitive evolution, provide unique insight into what materiality does in human cognition, and negotiate temporalities of cognitive change that are difficult to assimilate into neuroscientific theories and methods. [3]

Neuroarchaeology's interdisciplinary approach provides new opportunities for investigating the human mind and the role of material culture in human cognition and cognitive evolution. Specific focuses for neuroarchaeological research to date have included language, [14] symbolic capacity, [15] theory of mind, [16] technical cognition, [17] creativity, [18] aesthetics, [19] spatial cognition, [20] numeracy, [21] literacy, [22] and causal understanding. [23]

See also

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Cognitive science</span> Interdisciplinary scientific study of cognitive processes

Cognitive science is the interdisciplinary, scientific study of the mind and its processes. It examines the nature, the tasks, and the functions of cognition. Mental faculties of concern to cognitive scientists include language, perception, memory, attention, reasoning, and emotion; to understand these faculties, cognitive scientists borrow from fields such as linguistics, psychology, artificial intelligence, philosophy, neuroscience, and anthropology. The typical analysis of cognitive science spans many levels of organization, from learning and decision to logic and planning; from neural circuitry to modular brain organization. One of the fundamental concepts of cognitive science is that "thinking can best be understood in terms of representational structures in the mind and computational procedures that operate on those structures."

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Colin Renfrew</span> British archaeologist

Andrew Colin Renfrew, Baron Renfrew of Kaimsthorn, is a British 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.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Cognitive neuroscience</span> Scientific field

Cognitive neuroscience is the scientific field that is concerned with the study of the biological processes and aspects that underlie cognition, with a specific focus on the neural connections in the brain which are involved in mental processes. It addresses the questions of how cognitive activities are affected or controlled by neural circuits in the brain. Cognitive neuroscience is a branch of both neuroscience and psychology, overlapping with disciplines such as behavioral neuroscience, cognitive psychology, physiological psychology and affective neuroscience. Cognitive neuroscience relies upon theories in cognitive science coupled with evidence from neurobiology, and computational modeling.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Cognition</span> Act or process of knowing

Cognition is the "mental action or process of acquiring knowledge and understanding through thought, experience, and the senses". It encompasses all aspects of intellectual functions and processes such as: perception, attention, thought, imagination, intelligence, the formation of knowledge, memory and working memory, judgment and evaluation, reasoning and computation, problem-solving and decision-making, comprehension and production of language. Cognitive processes use existing knowledge to discover new knowledge.

Modularity of mind is the notion that a mind may, at least in part, be composed of innate neural structures or mental modules which have distinct, established, and evolutionarily developed functions. However, different definitions of "module" have been proposed by different authors. According to Jerry Fodor, the author of Modularity of Mind, a system can be considered 'modular' if its functions are made of multiple dimensions or units to some degree. One example of modularity in the mind is binding. When one perceives an object, they take in not only the features of an object, but the integrated features that can operate in sync or independently that create a whole. Instead of just seeing red, round, plastic, and moving, the subject may experience a rolling red ball. Binding may suggest that the mind is modular because it takes multiple cognitive processes to perceive one thing.

Social cognition is a topic within psychology that focuses on how people process, store, and apply information about other people and social situations. It focuses on the role that cognitive processes play in social interactions.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">David Kirsh</span> Canadian cognitive scientist

David Kirsh is a Canadian cognitive scientist, and Professor / Past Dept. Chair of Cognitive Science at University of California, San Diego (UCSD), where he heads the Interactive Cognition Lab. From 2020-2023 he was the President of the Academy of Neuroscience for Architecture (ANFA), where he remains on the Board of Directors.

Cognitive archaeology is a theoretical perspective in archaeology that focuses on the ancient mind. It is divided into two main groups: evolutionary cognitive archaeology (ECA), which seeks to understand human cognitive evolution from the material record, and ideational cognitive archaeology (ICA), which focuses on the symbolic structures discernable in or inferable from past material culture.

The cognitive revolution was an intellectual movement that began in the 1950s as an interdisciplinary study of the mind and its processes, from which emerged a new field known as cognitive science. The preexisting relevant fields were psychology, linguistics, computer science, anthropology, neuroscience, and philosophy. The approaches used were developed within the then-nascent fields of artificial intelligence, computer science, and neuroscience. In the 1960s, the Harvard Center for Cognitive Studies and the Center for Human Information Processing at the University of California, San Diego were influential in developing the academic study of cognitive science. By the early 1970s, the cognitive movement had surpassed behaviorism as a psychological paradigm. Furthermore, by the early 1980s the cognitive approach had become the dominant line of research inquiry across most branches in the field of psychology.

The evolution of human intelligence is closely tied to the evolution of the human brain and to the origin of language. The timeline of human evolution spans approximately seven million years, from the separation of the genus Pan until the emergence of behavioral modernity by 50,000 years ago. The first three million years of this timeline concern Sahelanthropus, the following two million concern Australopithecus and the final two million span the history of the genus Homo in the Paleolithic era.

Enactivism is a position in cognitive science that argues that cognition arises through a dynamic interaction between an acting organism and its environment. It claims that the environment of an organism is brought about, or enacted, by the active exercise of that organism's sensorimotor processes. "The key point, then, is that the species brings forth and specifies its own domain of problems ...this domain does not exist "out there" in an environment that acts as a landing pad for organisms that somehow drop or parachute into the world. Instead, living beings and their environments stand in relation to each other through mutual specification or codetermination" (p. 198). "Organisms do not passively receive information from their environments, which they then translate into internal representations. Natural cognitive systems...participate in the generation of meaning ...engaging in transformational and not merely informational interactions: they enact a world." These authors suggest that the increasing emphasis upon enactive terminology presages a new era in thinking about cognitive science. How the actions involved in enactivism relate to age-old questions about free will remains a topic of active debate.

Neuroanthropology is the study of the relationship between culture and the brain. This field of study emerged from a 2008 conference of the American Anthropological Association. It is based on the premise that lived experience leaves identifiable patterns in brain structure, which then feed back into cultural expression. The exact mechanisms are so far ill defined and remain speculative.

Educational neuroscience is an emerging scientific field that brings together researchers in cognitive neuroscience, developmental cognitive neuroscience, educational psychology, educational technology, education theory and other related disciplines to explore the interactions between biological processes and education. Researchers in educational neuroscience investigate the neural mechanisms of reading, numerical cognition, attention and their attendant difficulties including dyslexia, dyscalculia and ADHD as they relate to education. Researchers in this area may link basic findings in cognitive neuroscience with educational technology to help in curriculum implementation for mathematics education and reading education. The aim of educational neuroscience is to generate basic and applied research that will provide a new transdisciplinary account of learning and teaching, which is capable of informing education. A major goal of educational neuroscience is to bridge the gap between the two fields through a direct dialogue between researchers and educators, avoiding the "middlemen of the brain-based learning industry". These middlemen have a vested commercial interest in the selling of "neuromyths" and their supposed remedies.

Cognitive biology is an emerging science that regards natural cognition as a biological function. It is based on the theoretical assumption that every organism—whether a single cell or multicellular—is continually engaged in systematic acts of cognition coupled with intentional behaviors, i.e., a sensory-motor coupling. That is to say, if an organism can sense stimuli in its environment and respond accordingly, it is cognitive. Any explanation of how natural cognition may manifest in an organism is constrained by the biological conditions in which its genes survive from one generation to the next. And since by Darwinian theory the species of every organism is evolving from a common root, three further elements of cognitive biology are required: (i) the study of cognition in one species of organism is useful, through contrast and comparison, to the study of another species' cognitive abilities; (ii) it is useful to proceed from organisms with simpler to those with more complex cognitive systems, and (iii) the greater the number and variety of species studied in this regard, the more we understand the nature of cognition.

Thomas G. Wynn is an American archaeologist known for his work in cognitive archaeology. He is a pioneer of evolutionary cognitive archaeology; his article "The intelligence of later Acheulean hominids" is considered a classic in the field. He taught at the University of Colorado, Colorado Springs from 1977 to 2022, where he now holds the title Distinguished Professor Emeritus.

Frederick L. Coolidge is an American professor of psychology known for his work in cognitive archaeology. He has taught at the University of Colorado, Colorado Springs since 1979. With Karenleigh A. Overmann, he currently co-directs the Center for Cognitive Archaeology at the University of Colorado, Colorado Springs. He also teaches for the Centre for Cognitive and Brain Sciences at the Indian Institute of Technology Gandhinagar, India.

Karenleigh A. Overmann is a cognitive archaeologist known for her work on how ancient societies became numerate and literate. She currently directs the Center for Cognitive Archaeology at the University of Colorado, Colorado Springs. Before becoming an academic researcher, Overmann served 25 years of active duty in the U.S. Navy.

The Sapient paradox is a question that can be formulated as "why there was such a long gap between emergence of genetically and anatomically modern humans and the development of complex behaviors?" Homo sapiens emerged as a species somewhere between 60,000 and 100,000 years ago, but the behaviour that is associated with modern humans began to emerge and accelerate only 10,000 years ago. The question was first formulated by archaeologist Colin Renfrew in 1996.

Lambros Malafouris is a Greek-British cognitive archaeologist who has pioneered the application of concepts from the philosophy of mind to the material record. He is Professor of Cognitive and Anthropological Archaeology at the University of Oxford. He is known for Material Engagement Theory, the idea that material objects in the archaeological record are part of the ancient human mind.

References

  1. 1 2 Renfrew, Colin; Malafouris, Lambros (2008). "Steps to a 'neuroarchaeology' of mind, Part 1, Introduction". Cambridge Archaeological Journal. 18 (3): 381–385. doi:10.1017/s0959774308000425. S2CID   231810895.
  2. 1 2 3 Malafouris, Lambros (2009). "'Neuroarchaeology': Exploring the links between neural and cultural plasticity". In Chiao, Joan Y (ed.). Cultural neuroscience: Cultural influences on brain function. Progress in Brain Research 178. Amsterdam, the Netherlands: Elsevier. pp. 253–261. ISBN   9780080952215.
  3. 1 2 3 4 Stout, Dietrich; Hecht, Erin E (2015). "Neuroarchaeology". In Bruner, Emiliano (ed.). Human paleoneurology. Springer Series in Bio-/Neuroinformatics 3. Berlin: Springer. pp. 145–175. doi:10.1007/978-3-319-08500-5_7. ISBN   978-3-319-08499-2.
  4. ↑ Renfrew, Colin (1994). "Towards a cognitive archaeology". In Renfrew, Colin; Zubrow, Ezra B W (eds.). In the ancient mind: Elements of cognitive archaeology. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. pp. 3–12. ISBN   9780521456203.
  5. ↑ Malafouris, Lambros (2004). "The cognitive basis of material engagement: Where brain, body and culture conflate". In DeMarrais, Elizabeth; Gosden, Chris; Renfrew, Colin (eds.). Rethinking materiality: The engagement of mind with the material world. Cambridge: McDonald Institute for Archaeological Research. pp. 53–61. ISBN   9781902937304.
  6. ↑ Renfrew, Colin (2004). "Towards a theory of material engagement". In DeMarrais, Elizabeth; Gosden, Chris; Renfrew, Colin (eds.). Rethinking materiality: The engagement of mind with the material world. Cambridge: McDonald Institute for Archaeological Research. pp. 23–32. ISBN   9781902937304.
  7. ↑ Clark, Andy; Chalmers, David J (1998). "The extended mind". Analysis. 58 (1): 7–19. doi:10.1093/analys/58.1.7. JSTOR   3328150.
  8. ↑ Barsalou, Lawrence W (2008). "Grounded cognition". Annual Review of Psychology. 59: 617–645. doi:10.1146/annurev.psych.59.103006.093639. PMID   17705682. S2CID   22345373.
  9. ↑ Lave, Jean; Wenger, Etienne (1991). Situated learning: Legitimate peripheral participation. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. ISBN   9780521423748.
  10. ↑ Hutchins, Edwin (1995). Cognition in the wild. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. ISBN   9780262275972.
  11. ↑ Malafouris, Lambros (2008). "Between brains, bodies and things: Tectonoetic awareness and the extended self". Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological Sciences. 363 (1499): 1993–2002. doi:10.1098/rstb.2008.0014. PMC   2606705 . PMID   18292056.
  12. ↑ Roberts, Patrick (2016). "'We have never been behaviourally modern': The implications of Material Engagement Theory and metaplasticity for understanding the Late Pleistocene record of human behaviour". Quaternary International. 405: 8–20. Bibcode:2016QuInt.405....8R. doi:10.1016/j.quaint.2015.03.011.
  13. ↑ Malafouris, Lambros (2010). "Metaplasticity and the human becoming: Principles of neuroarchaeology" (PDF). Journal of Anthropological Sciences. 88: 49–72. PMID   20834050.
  14. ↑ Putt, Shelby Stackhouse (2019). "The stories stones tell of language and its evolution". In Overmann, Karenleigh A; Coolidge, Frederick L (eds.). Squeezing minds from stones: Cognitive archaeology and the evolution of the human mind. New York: Oxford University Press. pp. 304–318. ISBN   9780190854614.
  15. ↑ Wynn, Thomas; Coolidge, Frederick L (2010). "Beyond symbolism and language: An introduction to Supplement 1, working memory". Current Anthropology. 51 (S1): S5–S16. doi:10.1086/650526. S2CID   142942270.
  16. ↑ Cole, James (2019). "Knapping in the dark: Stone tools and a theory of mind". In Overmann, Karenleigh A; Coolidge, Frederick L (eds.). Squeezing minds from stones: Cognitive archaeology and the evolution of the human mind. New York: Oxford University Press. pp. 355–375. ISBN   9780190854614.
  17. ↑ Stout, Dietrich; Passingham, Richard E; Frith, Christopher D; Apel, Jan; Chaminade, Thierry (2011). "Technology, expertise and social cognition in human evolution". European Journal of Neuroscience. 33 (7): 1328–1338. doi: 10.1111/j.1460-9568.2011.07619.x . PMID   21375598. S2CID   5661351.
  18. ↑ Wynn, Thomas; Coolidge, Frederick L (2014). "Technical cognition, working memory and creativity". Pragmatics & Cognition. 22 (1): 45–63. doi:10.1075/pc.22.1.03wyn.
  19. ↑ Wynn, Thomas; Tony, Berlant (2019). "The handaxe aesthetic". In Overmann, Karenleigh A; Coolidge, Frederick L (eds.). Squeezing minds from stones: Cognitive archaeology and the evolution of the human mind. New York: Oxford University Press. pp. 278–303. ISBN   9780190854614.
  20. ↑ Hodgson, Derek (2019). "Stone tools and spatial cognition". In Overmann, Karenleigh A; Coolidge, Frederick L (eds.). Squeezing minds from stones: Cognitive archaeology and the evolution of the human mind. New York: Oxford University Press. pp. 200–224. ISBN   9780190854614.
  21. ↑ Overmann, Karenleigh A (2019). "Materiality and the prehistory of number". In Overmann, Karenleigh A; Coolidge, Frederick L (eds.). Squeezing minds from stones: Cognitive archaeology and the evolution of the human mind. New York: Oxford University Press. pp. 432–456. ISBN   9780190854614.
  22. ↑ Overmann, Karenleigh A (2016). "Beyond Writing: The Development of Literacy in the Ancient Near East". Cambridge Archaeological Journal. 26 (2): 285–303. doi:10.1017/S0959774316000019. S2CID   163840618.
  23. ↑ Haidle, Miriam Noël (2014). "Building a bridge—An archeologist's perspective on the evolution of causal cognition". Frontiers in Psychology. 5 (1472): 1472. doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2014.01472 . PMC   4268908 . PMID   25566147.
This page is based on this Wikipedia article
Text is available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply.
Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.