Abstract
The following chapter provides a brief overview of two central objectives of evolutionary cognitive archaeology (ECA). The first objective concerns the approaches that evolutionary cognitive archaeologists utilize to infer mind frames. These approaches (or methods) and the cognitive inferences they help the archaeologist make will be discussed chronologically from their earliest sightings in the archaeological literature. The second objective to be treated in this chapter concerns the mechanisms of cognitive evolution. Although natural selection is still considered to be the main mechanism behind cognitive evolution, other mechanisms that show promise have also been proposed and, as such, will be examined. The chapter concludes with a short discussion of the two chapters that follow this one and their contribution to the field of ECA.
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Notes
- 1.
It is similarly clear that Darwin (1888, p. 54) had a well-formed notion that relative brain size (to body size) could serve as a metric for comparing cognitive capabilities among different species—what we would refer to today as encephalization quotient.
- 2.
Darwin believed that it was mental (or cognitive) changes that drive changes to the neural substrate rather than the reverse. Whereas the brain was seen as an anchor point for the mind—and therefore a useful index for understanding the mind—the mind was something not entirely neurophysiological but also extrasomatic (Darwin 1888, pp. 54–55). This is exemplified in his belief that the reason for the smaller brain sizes in domestic rabbits in relation to wild rabbits is their confinement which restricts their “intellect, instincts, senses, and voluntary movements” (p. 55). This extrasomatic view is further anecdotally implied in Darwin’s recognition that even though the cerebral ganglia are proportionally larger than those of other insects, he still wonders how such impressive mental powers of ants can fit on “the quarter of a pin’s head” (p. 54). His proposal that it is through culture that the natural selection of mental faculties is actualized in cognitive evolution largely explains the leading role of the mind (or cognition) and the role of the brain as an evolutionary by-product, albeit an important one.
- 3.
These simpler proposals for addressing certain cultural developments do not directly depend on biological evolutionary or cognitive evolutionary explanations. Recall that Leroi-Gourhan hypothesized that during the Upper Paleolithic, increased fluidity of an underlying syntactic aptitude was responsible for both improved linguistic communication and increased technic complexity; however, Jelinek (1977, p. 15) has suggested that increased complexity during the Upper Paleolithic might have been driven by a shift in pedagogical practices. Lower Paleolithic assemblages largely appear to be the products of rote behavior with minimal innovation. As a result, the techniques involved in their manufacture were likely passed on through demonstration and imitation. Variability in the assemblages does not appear to increase significantly until the end of the Middle Paleolithic, which may be explained by a less directly guided form of passing on knowledge, such as that provided by verbal instruction.
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Abramiuk, M.A. (2019). A Brief Overview of Evolutionary Cognitive Archaeology. In: Prentiss, A. (eds) Handbook of Evolutionary Research in Archaeology. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-11117-5_18
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