Cognitive Archaeology (Other Keyword)

1-2 (2 Records)

Cognitive Archaeology and the Minimum Necessary Competence Problem (2021)
DOCUMENT Citation Only Ross Pain. Anton Killin.

This is an abstract from the "Inference in Paleoarchaeology" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Cognitive archaeology faces the problem of minimum necessary competence: as the most sophisticated thinking of ancient hominins may have been in domains that leave no archaeological signature, it is safest to assume that tool production and use reflects only the lower boundary of cognitive capacities. Cognitive archaeology involves selecting a model from...


Performativity and Pedagogy: the Effect of Verbal and Nonverbal Instruction on Experimental Acheulian Handaxe Symmetry (2015)
DOCUMENT Citation Only Emma Dellopoulos. Shelby Putt.

The Acheulian techno-complex is comprised mostly of bifacal handaxes, which became increasingly symmetrical through time, especially after 400kya. Symmetry has recently been considered a highly significant aspect of the Acheulian toolkit. It has many potential opportunities for a better understanding of the evolution of cognition in early Homo; however, little is known about how this complex skill was transmitted. Could the increasing symmetry of handaxes in the archaeological record be evidence...