Cognitive archaeology and human evolution is a collection of articles written by archaeologists, psychologists and neuroscientists put together in a book edited by a French archaeologist, an American archaeologist, and an American psychologist. As one can guess from the editor list this book is a wonderful attempt to bring together archaeologists and cognitive scientists. In the words of Sophie A. de Beaune “This book presents the results of both empirical studies and theoretical speculations about the emergence and evolution of modern thinking with evidence coming from both archaeology and neuropsychology.” (p.2)
Though archaeological surveys have provided us with various evidences of the technological inventions throughout prehistoric period …show more content…
required for the cognitive archeological argument. First, a proper understanding of the question being asked is needed. Second, identify the set of actions enabled by the ability in question. Third, define a set of criteria by which these actions can be identified in the archaeological data.
This book also highlights the fact that evolutionary psychology does not seem to play much role in cognitive archaeology. Wynn explains this and writes that reasons for this are its overdependence on reverse engineering; a method that is less favored by archaeologists and its cultivated ignorance of the palaeoanthropological records.
Every chapter tries to link one or the other cognitive process to archaeology. It is quite difficult to link the ideas of people from different backgrounds into a coherent whole. Where chapter 4 talks about consciousness next chapter jumps on to the references one can make about the linguistic system of the prehistoric men from the information about the hand that they used for working (handedness). Also, authors seem to have different ideas about the goals of the field. Where for some it is to figure out how and when the higher mental processes like decision making, reasoning, thinking, language etc. started ; what can be said as the onset of these abilities (Rossano, de Beaune) and for others like (Tattersall, Wynn and Coolidge) main goal is to find out the earliest glimpse of “modern”