Recently, however, archaeologists have become critical of the very notion of ‘symbol’, frequently conceived along the lines of the usual definition, where ‘X (the signifier) represents Y (the thing signified), in context C’. For, while that is a perfectly reasonable definition of ‘symbol’ in some ways, it can promote the old mind-body dualism associated with Cartesian thinking, with the material symbol seen as the materialization of an abstract, mental concept. But the notion of the mind as something apart, enclosed within the human brain, is now being called into question. As Lambros Malafouris has emphasized, following philosophers such as Andy Clark, the mind is embodied: it cannot work without the body. Indeed, many skills are exercised through the fingers as much as among the brain cells. Moreover, ‘mind’ is in large measure a social phenomenon. Knowledge is shared between individuals, and it makes sense to speak here of the extended mind or even the dispersed mind.
We are now beginning to understand some of the relevant questions. Developments in neuroscience, including studies of the brain in action through functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI), hint that there is so much yet to learn. The vast differences in human culture that have emerged along the different trajectories of development over the past 60 000 years, all predicated upon much the same infant brain, show that the study of material engagement between humans and their world is only just beginning. That engagement is a knowledgeable one - in that sense it is ‘cognitive’. But it is also material: it leaves traces in the archaeological record. That is why cognitive archaeology has a great future.
See also: Engendered Archaeology; Identity and Power; Image and Symbol; Interpretive Art and Archaeology; Interpretive Models, Development of; Landscape Archaeology; Postprocessual Archaeology; Processual Archaeology; Ritual, Religion, and Ideology.
World History
