Talk:Cognitive archaeology

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Original Cognitive Archaeology

Renfrew's work in inferring social structure from tombs is good solid archaeology, but it's not mainstream cognitive archaeology, as it does not incorporate neuroscientific data in its interpretation. Nor does it discuss how social structure relates to cognition. Nor does it incorporate any of the 4E concepts that typify the British school of ECA.Hazegrae (talk) 17:25, 2 August 2021 (UTC)

Yes, it is true that Renfrew was too early for the neurological aspects because the modern imaging brain scanners did not yet exist. But on the other hand, it will be easy even for lay people to transfer the neurological details to Renfrew's articles that you wrote at the potter. The weakness of this excerpt from Malafouris' article seems to me to be that it no longer contains any reference to Renfrew's original cognitive archaeology. What is meant by "4E concepts"? 2003:C9:C723:4600:9CC6:C0A5:8009:BC6 (talk) 19:41, 2 August 2021 (UTC)

I agree that Renfrew's early work, while influencing the British school, did not explicitly reference neuroscience or concepts from the philosophy of mind. That still does not make it an optimal example for illustrating the concepts being discussed in the paragraph in the Wikipedia article, which is focused on what distinguishes the British school, which is its turn toward concepts from the philosophy of mind (which is where you will find the term 4E). If you want to add mention of this particular work by Renfrew, you might add it to the his page, where there is currently little mention of his cognitive work (except for a brief bit I added a few weeks ago). Alternatively, it could be added to the history section of the page on cognitive archaeology, where it would need to be expanded with discussion of how his later work differed from his initial efforts. Hazegrae (talk) 20:55, 2 August 2021 (UTC)

I understand. Insofar as the term Cognitive Archaeology is meant to describe only what constitutes the current mainstream in Brittany, Renfrew's early work would indeed be better placed in the "History" section. Particularly as there is, after all, currently no illustrative example there (the treatise The Megalithic Cultures dates from 1984).... I read the keyword "primate research" in the article - does this refer to findings that are based on Jane Goodall's ethological studies in the broadest sense? Which respectively determine the term "evolutionary" archaeology? 2003:C9:C723:4600:C8EA:A3C8:5C86:885C (talk) 10:50, 3 August 2021 (UTC)

The article says, "[The North American ECA school] focuses on understanding human cognitive evolution, either from the artifactual record of forms like stone tools, comparisons of ancestral tool use with that of contemporary species (typically but not exclusively, non-human primates), or both." Non-human primates are closely related to humans; how they use tools is thought to provide some (admittedly limited) insight into tool use by the lineage ancestral to contemporary humans. These studies are not based on Goodall's work (she was not focused on tool use per se), but rather, observations of veridical primate tool use and the archaeological signatures this produces; these data are compared to the archaeological record of tool-use by hominins. If you're interesting in learning about contemporary ECA research in this area, you might start with the references on the cognitive archaeology page under ECA. I can recommend others, like the chapter by McGrew et al. in the Squeezing Minds from Stones volume edited by Overmann and Coolidge. As for why "Evolutionary" cognitive archaeology, it's archaeology interested in understanding the evolutionary development of human cognition. ECA has a significantly different focus from the social archaeology that concerned Renfrew's work on megalithic cultures (see e.g., his 1983 article "The social archaeology of megalithic monuments" in Scientific American). Hazegrae (talk) 11:15, 3 August 2021 (UTC)