The Cognitive Dissonance of Cognitive Archaeology

Genevieve Dezso

ANTHRO 303: Introduction to Archaeological Theory

Winter Quarter 2013

Professor Hodder

Term Paper

The Cognitive Dissonance

of Cognitive Archaeology

Introduction

The discipline of archaeology has gone through tremendous philosophical change over

the past century. The divorce between processual and post-processual schools of thought has

created a theoretical rift that has become reflected in the subfield of cognitive archaeology. The

aim of cognitive archaeology is to understand the minds of past people through their material

remains- and that is about the only statement on which most cognitive archaeologists would be

willing to agree. Cognitive archaeology is not quite defined as a discipline and is technically an

emerging field of study that began to crystalize in the 1990s. The reason for its uncertain

identity, however, is not necessarily due to its novelty, but rather because cognitive archaeology

has become fragmented through disagreements over its fundamental premises. Is the mind

something that is possible to access in archaeology? And what is the mind? The answers to these

questions differ dramatically and are rooted in issues of epistemology. The history of

archaeology vacillates from avoidance of the mind to embracing its role in interpretation. Efforts

to understand the nature of the mind have led to competing statements about how the mind

interacts with the world. This paper will outline these arguments and ask whether contradictory

philosophies may not only be reconciled, but also integrated to increase the explanatory power of

cognitive archaeology. Possible approaches for combining these divergent views will be

proposed, along with an examination of how cognitive science may help to inform cognitive

archaeology.

Is the Mind Relevant?

The roots of cognitive archaeology go back to the beginning of explanation in

archaeology. Since then, the relevance of the mind has fluctuated as definitions of culture and

ways in which archaeologists interpret the material record have shifted over time. At the turn of

the century, archaeology concerned itself primarily with the chronological ordering and

description of artifacts. As patterns of change and variation emerged from the record, theories

developed to explain them. Cultural variation was explained by Boas as not only a product of

people’s history, but also as a phenomenon independent of environment, biology, and individual

motives (Harris 2001). Culture was seen as almost deterministic, a pattern of norms maintained

implicitly by members of a society and obtained through historical tradition and diffusion (Earle

and Preucel 1987). Gordon Childe wanted to reconstruct the social environment in order to

understand the lives of the people who produced the artifacts. He recommended archaeologists

treat artifacts as concrete expression of human thought and believed that “religion, beliefs,

magic, and ritual all leave their marks on the archaeological record no less conspicuously than

does technical knowledge” (Childe 1949). True to his Marxist influence, he explained changes in

the record as a result of the economic foundations of societies. Trends in society could be

interpreted and described using social, economic, and political paradigms “in conjunction with

empirical evidence” (Childe 1949).

Processualism Answers No, Not Really

The notion of empirical evidence was championed by the rise of New Archaeology,

headed by Lewis Binford in the 1960s. Binford saw archaeology as a science of culture process

rather than culture history and sought to explain human behavior through empirical observations

and cross-cultural generalizations. The positivist approach and “systemic view of culture” had a

connection with the psychological school behaviorism from early 20th century (Whitley 1992).

Cultural change is explained by external catalysts of changes in the environment, necessitating

shifts in human behavior which result in new forms of social phenomena. The perspective of

culture was functionalist, with Binford defining culture as “extra-somatic means of adaptation”

(Binford 2001). By this definition, archaeologists were forced to view all cultural manifestations

in the archaeological record as serving some function presumed to have beneficial consequences

for the people responsible for the record. Since there was no definitive way to account for factors

such as beliefs, experiences, and meanings using the hypothetico-deductive approach, these

phenomena were overlooked and avoided in explanation. In reference to the cognitive elements

in the archaeological record, Lewis Binford took the stance that “different kinds of phenomena

are never remote; they are either accessible or they are not” (Renfrew 2008). The mind was

therefore inaccessible and did not have a place in a theory where individuals are passive

reflectors of forces in their surrounding environments rather than intelligent human beings acting

out their own ideas or intentions. The functionalist perspective blinded archaeologists to the role

of agency, as “any consideration of ideas in the minds of ancient actors who created the

archaeological record tended to be summarily dismissed (Renfrew 1994).

Post-Processualism Answers Yes, Really

The processualist paradigm was rejected by the post-processualist movement that

developed in the 1980’s, which perceived the positivist approach to be limiting because of the

diversity, inherent ambiguity and complexity in all societies that had been revealed in the

archaeological record (Abramiuk 2012). Post-processual archaeology dealt with the perceived

weaknesses of processualism by examining what people were thinking in the past and generating

alternative ways to explain the archaeological record. The definition of culture shifted to a

system of values and beliefs, with Hodder taking a perspective reminiscent of Franz Boas, in

viewing the archaeological record as products of the actions of people whose perspectives were

defined by historical circumstances (Abramiuk 2012). The materialist focus of processualism

dehumanized prehistory and the remedy was to include in interpretation more of the values,

ideas, beliefs, and cognitive processes that make the human species unique (Whitley 1992). It

became important to reconstruct the details of how individuals in the past were uniquely situated,

historically, socially, and physically. The approach echoed that of Childe, but differed in that the

objective was to understand the record as a result of meaningful actions particular to the society

in question. Whereas the processual approach focused on empirical observations, or the

archaeological data, and saw them as independent of theory and used to test theory, the

interpretive approach focused on the analysis of archaeological material, the archaeologist’s

experiences, and interpretation of the material (Shanks and Tilley 1992). The approach involved

hermeneutics, which recognizes that archaeologists bring into the interpretive process subjective

views, and those views add another layer of interpretability to the interpretations that unfold

during the formation of the archaeological record. It became possible to analyze the minds of the

humans behind the artifacts, but it became essential to consider the minds of the archaeologists

behind them as well. Although many argue that there does not exist a method of examining the

thought processes of prehistoric people, the point is made that all archaeologists routinely discuss

concepts in prehistoric minds when they suggest, for example, that a particular object gave

prestige or social status to individuals. Even statements concerning ancient economies and the

use of settlement areas make assumptions about “past attitudes toward dirt, space, and so forth”

(Hodder and Hutson 2003).

What is the Mind?

Regardless of whether archaeologists find the mind to be something that is possible to

elucidate or not, they still have ideas as to what the mind is. These ideas differ, of course, so

much so as to merit question in terms of how both have managed to be maintained

simultaneously. Attempts at defining the mind tend to lead to descriptions and debates about how

the mind interacts with the world. This disparity is illustrated, in part, by the dichotomy of the

Binford-Bordes debate. One views the mind as universal and rational while the other conceives it

to be relative and empirical.

Binford’s Rational and Universal Mind

Since Binford perceived culture as the mind’s way of realizing an optimal solution for

adapting to the environment, the driving force behind human action is considered to be reason.

Although the mind is not purely rational, in a vacuum or disconnected from sensory experience,

the sensory information it receives from the world simply provides a foundation upon which

humans make decisions. Binford envisioned that the mind would use the knowledge about

behaviors that brought favorable outcomes to actively make decisions that were ultimately based

on reason. The mind, in this sense an “organ” that functions with the purpose of making optimal

decisions for survival, is also deemed to be something with which all humans are universally

equipped. Since the mind is universal, people who adapt to similar natural environments will

tend to generate similar types of tools or solutions to the same problem. The mind in this view is

not dependent on the individual or social group but rather shaped by the natural environment.

Change the natural environment, and the behavior of the individuals and their culture will

consequently change. The significance in variation of human behavioral adaptation therefore, is

that there exist multiple optimal solutions to environmental problems. The “shared

neurophysiological structure “can conceive of different optimal solutions,” as long as the

environmental conditions interacting with this common structure are nuanced differently”

(Abramiuk 2012). It is out of these various environmental niches that diversity of “life styles,

levels of organizational complexity, beliefs, customs, social rituals, such as marital and burial

practices- in short, all of the organizationally different ways in which human beings engage each

other and the world” is generated (Binford 2001). Binford’s view of the mind is reflected through

his interpretation of Middle Paleolithic stone tool assemblages (Abramiuk 2012). The variability

in the stone tools is explained as serving different functions and a result of specialization, which

is a consequence of a rational and universal mind.

Bordes’ Empirical and Relative Mind

An alternative explanation, however, is that the variability of the stone tools is a result of

stylistic differences. Bordes does not see differences in tool types as evidence that the tools

served disparate functions; “rather , he sees these differences as reflecting different ways that

people learned to make tools serving similar functions” (Abramiuk 2012). Whereas Binford sees

the mind as a process through which optimal solutions are sought, the mind for Bordes is the

product of society, and as such it acquires its content through learning and copying. In this case

the term “empirical” does not carry the connotation of objectivity as it usual does in Binfordian

theory. It instead refers to the subjective personal experiences of the individual. For Bordes, the

main influence on the thoughts and decisions of a mind is not that it has a universal structure

inclined toward reason, but rather that it is subject to cultural and social preferences. People are

seen as having differing beliefs and histories which contribute to the distinctive cultural mind

frames. The mind frames and behaviors are considered to be the products of learning, observing,

and emulating the unique cultural surrounding. Therefore, the knowledge of tool-making, or of

any behavior, is not a result of a universal capacity to reason and cannot be compared cross-

culturally. Since individuals of different social groups placed in the same natural environment

produce different behaviors and cultures, this is explained as evidence that the mind is relative

(Abramiuk 2012).

Boundaries of the Mind

Like Binford, Renfrew (1994/2008) perceives the mind as having a universal quality. In

his view of the mind however, the universality does not imply a purpose in that humans seek

solutions which are most optimal. It applies rather to how the mind operates in its capacity to

respond to complex problems by generating solutions, which may or may not be optimal.

Renfrew considers the mind to be “a series of functions of the symbol, of various ways in which

symbols may operate” (Renfrew 2008). The abstract process in which the mind manipulates

symbols is done in an intelligent and computational manner (Abramiuk 2012). These processes,

however, are not perceived as taking place exclusively within the brain. In fact, a major caveat of

cognitive archaeology is the tendency to assume a Cartesian dualism, where mind is contrasted

with matter, because the attitude tends to equate the mind with the brain and situates its workings

within that boundary. Although the brain exists in the body, the mind is considered “embodied,”

working through the body to interact, perceive, and be shaped by the world (Renfrew 2008). The

mind also works beyond the body through extensions such as a blind man’s stick, an engineer’s

pencil, or the whole-body experience and process of making a pot (Renfrew 2008).

Conceiving the mind as a process of computation implies that such processes can operate

in mediums that exist outside of the mind. The computational paradigm allows the capabilities of

the mind to be extended through culture, not only to communicate but to think and reason

(Abramiuk 2012). The boundaries of the mind are challenged by notions of the extended mind,

also called externalism (Clark and Chalmers 1998). Processes such as the recording of concepts

and storage of information can take place on external devices, or “exograms,” rather than internal

biological memory, or “engrams” (Donald 1991). There are potentially hundreds of devices used

not just for storage but also for thinking, including pen and paper, calculators, and computers

(Donald 1991). Whereas engrams have an expiration date concomitant with an individual’s

lifespan, exograms have the potential for unlimited preservation and sharing, resulting in the

development of knowledge. For example, the effective writing system of the Late Pre-classic

Maya created the foundation for their advancements in history, mathematics, and astronomy

(Abramiuk 2012). According to Donald (1991), the utilization of culture to extend the mind

became rampant with the appearance of Homo sapiens, implying a significant role in the

development of human cognition.

Material Engagement Theory

Another way of thinking about the mind that emphasizes its externalization yet rejects the

computational paradigm is Material Engagement Theory (MET). This theory has become so

predominant in cognitive archaeology that it would appear to be the defining approach of the

field (Abramiuk 2012). However, the theory appears to be one of several statements about how

the mind interacts with the world and what the boundaries of the mind actually are, rather than

the defining methodology. There are two positions within the concept of materiality, with one

being more extreme than the other.

The original, moderate version of materiality concerns itself with the view that the

interaction of people with things is a two-way street (e.g. Hodder and Hutchins 2003; Meskell

2004). As humans physically engage with their environment, whether it be through

“manufacturing goods, utilizing tools, or moving materials,” those objects act back to shape our

“physicality, perspectives and, in so doing, our mind frames” (Abramiuk 2012). The processes in

which people participate to engage with the material world simultaneously involve a material

reality and a cognitive aspect. As such, the actions that people take on the material world have

consequences that are both material and cognitive. For example, “the skill of skiing, like that of

surfing, does not lie in the brain: it cannot fully be learned from a book. It is a product of

engagement with the material world” (Renfrew 2008).

In the more forceful and avant-garde view of MET, as proposed by Malafouris (2013),

mind and matter influence each other because they are not separate domains in the first place. In

this view, the mind and matter are seen as being codependent through the medium of the body,

resulting in ideas and attitudes finding themselves inscribed “in” objects. In other words, the

mind is things. Rather than human interactions with the world being reflections of underlying

thought processes, they are claimed to be the thought processes themselves (Hutchins 2010). The

emphasis on the connectivity of the mind with things is illustrated by the concept of cognition as

an ecosystem in which all elements are part of a “web of mutual dependence” (Hutchins 2010).

The focus on the interconnectedness of things is similar to Hodder’s Entanglement Theory

(Malafouris 2013). However, Malafouris, ever obfuscating, maintains the distinction that

Entanglement Theory “remains concerned with building a particularly archaeological

understanding of the social process” whereas MET “focuses mainly on the process and the

making of the human mind.” Malafouris acknowledges that “nonetheless, the two approaches are

clearly complementary when it comes to answering the question of how humans and things have

become entangled.”(In other words, “please don’t come after me Ian Hodder.”)

The view appears reactionary, not only to a bounded view of the mind, but to the

conventional way of doing material engagement. At first this version of materiality appears to

align with the more conventional view in that it seeks to ask “why we humans…make things,

and how those things, in return, make us who or what we are” (Malafouris 2013). But Malafouris

accuses cognitive archaeology of being “trapped in a Cartesian universe,” of not “taking material

culture seriously,” and of neglecting that “the way we think is the property of a hybrid

assemblage of brains, bodies, and things” (Malafouris 2013). He criticizes the assumption that

the human individual is the “analytic unit and ontological locus of human cognition”, along with

Renfrew for equating the “cognitive” with the “symbolic.” Ironically, although attempting to be

materialist and rejecting of duality, the position itself is technically a form of dualism that can be

described as “double-aspecticism” (Abramiuk 2012). And while attempting to shed and expand

the boundaries of the mind, extreme MET places limitations on how the mind can be studied.

This is because “its premise for understanding the mind in the past relies on the idea that the

material world determines the shape of the mind—both in terms of its functioning and in terms

of the products it generates” (Abramiuk 2012).

Reconciliation

The perspectives on whether we can address the mind in archaeology and what the mind

is anyway conflict so much as to fragment the field of cognitive archaeology. Is it possible to

reconcile the views? It might be possible to understand the gaps in competing perspectives and

whether they can be bridged by looking at how Renfrew combines elements of different theories,

how Abramiuk considers divergent views as complementary approaches, and how these ideas

apply to cognitive archaeology in the field.

Symbolic Systems and Materiality (Renfrew)

Renfrew appears to combine elements of theories that fall on opposite sides of the

spectrum, including the idea of the mind as rational, universal, and computational, with theory of

materiality. The reconciliation emerges from the inter-dependency of concepts of symbolism,

institutional facts, and material engagement. Renfrew (1994) views humans as “symbolic

animals” and stresses the reconstruction of different ways in which symbols were used in the

past. In his view, the mind operates through the manipulation of symbols to represent the reality

it perceives. For example, the symbolic relationship allows a stone weight to relate to some

property that exists in the real world (Renfrew 2008). The stone cubes used as weights in the

Indus Valley civilizations were used to symbolize quantity and became a system for units of

mass (Renfrew 2008). The symbolic concept originated, moreover, from the engagement with

the material reality of weight, by the experience of holding a heavy object and perceiving it as

heavy. Engagement with the world may influence the conception of symbols, but the

“institutional facts” that the symbols create form a structure within which engagement with the

world is defined. Forms of engagement are dependent upon shared understandings within a

community. For example, “the ordering of rank, with the chief in a bronze age society or the

monarch in a contemporary kingdom, is not a natural ‘given’. It is the result of the developments

in society that depend upon convention and the acceptance of convention, on a kind of implicit

social contract” (Renfrew 2008). The social conventions, or institutional facts, operate through

and depend on symbols that are at once both material and cognitive. For example, marriage,

symbolized by the exchange of rings, involves social expectations of practices of living together

or regarding property (Renfrew 2008). The symbolic system approach is applicable to

understanding cultural remains. For example, the immensity of the pyramids of Giza suggest a

monumental undertaking in construction that would have required an elaborate belief system

(Abramiuk 2012).

Not Contrasting but Complementary (Abramiuk)

Abramiuk argues that a discipline of the study of the mind can be realized by

incorporating all seemingly contrasting approaches. Rather than treating approaches as being

contingent on a particular theoretical stance, they can be presented as a series of practical

approaches that can be used in a complementary manner, relying on one another in order to

achieve a holistic view of the mind in the past. He argues, as Whitley (1992) suggests, that

research can be both interpretive and explanatory at the same time, one simply analyzing ‘what’

was thought in the past and the other ‘how’ it was thought. In any situation an archaeologist may

need to use more than one approach. Abramiuk advocates that the focus should be on “not which

approach should be utilized, but which approach can be utilized?” He distinguishes six

approaches; general comparative, direct historical, structural, associative, material, and

conditional. Their validity and conditional nature is demonstrated by how they can be applied to

different archaeological scenarios.

Both the general comparative and the direct historical approaches rely on ethnographic

information. I conceive of the former as the “horizontal” version that compares similar societies

over space regardless of their position in time, and the latter to be the “vertical” version that is

concerned with comparing present day societies with those of the past. The argument behind the

general comparative approach is that human groups that share basic societal characteristics, such

as a common subsistence strategy, will share many other societal characteristics that can be

inferred. The direct historical approach holds the premise that people who are part of the same

culture as those in the past are historically connected and will share similar cultural values. For

example, the modern Maya may serve as living models of the ancient Maya, because many of the

traditions maintained by the groups today are inherited as they were from the ancient Maya

(Abramiuk 2012).

The structural approach relies on the notion that the human mind is composed of

“universal concepts which are culturally encoded,” as well as a learned or cultural structure, and

that the meanings attributed to things can be reconstructed (Abramiuk 2012). Through structural

analysis, the cultural “encodements” may be deciphered to reveal the universal concepts behind

them as well as the culturally distinctive mind frames. For example, in the 50s , rather than

indirectly infer through ethnographic comparison, Max Raphael had the idea that cave paintings

represented mind frames of clan struggles and concepts linked in the minds of all people. The

most well-known structuralist was Claude Levi-Strauss, whose insight was that myths as well as

kinship patterns were culturally distinctive manifestations of an underlying universal mental

structure.

The associative method recognizes the importance of considering the context of material

remains. The premise is that humans past and present tend to think in terms of associations and

as a result behaviorally express those associations. The evidence sought in archaeological

remains through this approach is for thematically related groupings that reflect associated

concepts. Abramiuk notes, for example, the inference that pigs were associated with prestige in

Neolithic China from the discovery that pig skulls were found with other apparently prestige

items in certain graves while other graves contained neither. This approach allowed for the

creation of other indirect possible meanings of cave paintings. The archaeologist Laming-

Emperaire, noticing the context of painting locations within a cave as being less accessible and

therefore possibly sacred, acknowledged that this may imply a ritualistic rather than artistic

interpretation.

The materiality and conditional approaches appear to fall into the distinction between

identifying the “what” or the “how” of the mind. The materiality approach attempts to

reconstruct the direct “percepts” (or mind frames) of people in the past as they interacted with

objects in their environment. By eliciting the most likely percepts individuals would have been

exposed to, the potential exists to derive the beliefs and semantic concepts. The conditional

approach, primarily focused on “how” people thought in the past, operates from the premise that

behaviors responsible for the manifestation of the archaeological record were contingent on

specific cognitive capacities being present. The assertion is that the mind can be objectively

studied by deducing the intervening cognitive capabilities that would have been necessary to

produce the cultural remains in question. (Then the inference of the denotative meanings of those

remains can be made using the materiality approach.) For example, in Wynn’s (1979) analysis of

Acheulean handaxes, he finds that in the condition that the retouching of the bifaces is in

evidence, it indicates the conceptual capabilities of the maker to relate a whole to its parts. In a

hypothetical example, if an archaeologist were to come across a large building, the inference can

be made that it had to be erected at some point, the process of which requires the cognitive

capability of planning.

Informed by Neuroscience

According to Bruce Trigger, “what is needed is a better understanding, derived from

psychology and neuroscience, of how the human brain shapes understanding and influences

behavior” (Renfrew 2008).The diverging viewpoints of cognitive archaeology may find some

reconciliation through the knowledge advanced by the sciences dedicated to the mind. The

objective of cognitive archaeology to study how the mind operated in the past and how it has

evolved may be investigated to a certain degree through the understanding of the brain, at least in

part, as a product of biological processes and mechanisms and cultural influences. Cognitive

archaeology rather than being limited by the biological view of the brain, may both be informed

by it and expand on it, contributing behavioral information. As illustrated in the attempt at

replicating the figure below, Abramiuk visualizes that neuroscience and archaeology may be

used to explain how the mind operated in the past by checking and balancing each other, together

providing a “well-supported yet dynamic empirical foundation from which inferences concerning

the mind in the past may be made.”

How did the mind work in the past?

Archaeology behavior mind brain neuroscience

(Abramiuk 2012: 258)

Rationality and Psychology

Binford’s view that humans act based on reason to optimize their benefit is problematic

when analyzed in the context of psychology. Psychologist Ariely discusses in his book,

Predictably Irrational: The hidden forces that shape our decisions, how certain modes of

thinking appear to defy rationality. One of the reasons has to do with relativity, in terms of how

people compare things. People often regard their environment in terms of their relation to others,

and they are influenced by the ease or difficulty with which certain things can be compared. For

example, if given the following options for a honeymoon - Paris with free breakfast, Rome with

free breakfast, and Rome with no breakfast included, most people would probably choose Rome

with the free breakfast. Since it is easier to compare things that are similar, the option of the trip

to Paris, although effectively the equivalent Rome, becomes inferior only when compared to

Rome with the free breakfast. When presented with the options of either Paris with free breakfast

or Rome with free breakfast, choices distributed evenly. Relativity helps people make decisions,

but since they experience the influence from the bias of comparison, those decisions are not

always technically rational. The implied predictability of this bias however, supports the

processualist view of the mind as being universal.

Materiality and Psychology

The materiality approach attempts to understand the percepts or mind frames to which

individuals would have been exposed and relies heavily on the assumption that those individuals

were perceiving their environment directly. This view is problematic when considering the

psychological literature pertaining to how percepts or mind frames are formed. In certain cases,

percepts are not formed by personal engagement with the environment, but by the influence of

other concepts. When an individual is lacking in his knowledge about some aspect, he must rely

on his “knowledge and presuppositions to fill the incompleteness (Abramiuk 2012). In this way,

percepts may be formed indirectly by concepts rather than directly by the environment. Since the

materiality approach is founded in the reality of direct sensory perception of objects in the

environment, understanding how that perception can be skewed is also important. Ariely presents

an argument that our sense are not always reliable since expectations can override our senses,

partially blinding us from the truth. He determined that previous knowledge can change actual

sensory experience after a series of experiments where students visiting a pub tasted two types of

beer, one of which was laced with vinegar. The majority preferred the altered brew, unless they

were told in advance that it had vinegar. Those that were made aware afterward still preferred the

altered brew, confirming that the beforehand knowledge is what altered the sensory experience.

Since mind frames can be formed and influenced by concepts, and sensory perception can be

influenced by expectation, cognitive archaeology must recognize the mind as simultaneously

universal and relative in terms of its functioning and more complicated in terms of its

relationship with the environment.

In terms of psychology, materiality holds ground in the premise that the things that the

mind has made act back to shape the mind. Things can shape the mind especially when they

involve a form of engagement. This is because interaction involves behavior, and as the

professor of neurology Hanna-Pladdy claims, “behaviors can change your brain” (Gray 2012).

Hanna-Pladdy authored a study on how musical instrument training increases cognitive ability,

memory skills, and reduces the effects of the mental decline associated with aging. Surprisingly,

also beneficial is engaging in the behavior of playing video games- not simple linear ones, but

action-packed, “shoot-em up” ones. Action-packed video games, full of unpredictable threats and

challenges, tutor players to translate sensory information quickly and train the mind to become

efficient in decision making. According to the scientists, the improved skills for making speedy

and precise decisions manifests “not just for the act of gaming, but for unrelated and rather dull

tasks” as well (Choi 2010). The interaction with the video game shapes the mind in such a way

that it changes how it applies itself to the rest of the world as well.

Summary and Conclusion

Although the common objective of cognitive archaeologists is to analyze the mind of the

past through material remains, they don’t seem to be able to agree on how accessible the mind is,

what the mind is, nor where the mind is. The conflicting views on the mind emerge from the

underlying rift between processual and post-processual schools of thought in archaeology. As

definitions of culture changed throughout history, from a product of people’s history, to a

function of optimality, to a system of relative values and beliefs, so too did the mind shift in its

relevance to archaeology. Attempts to define the mind range from explaining it as rational and

universal to relative and product of culture. Its function has been defined as operating through

symbols in a computational manner, a process which is not limited by the boundaries of the

brain. The externalism of the processes of the mind allows for the potential of unlimited

preservation and sharing of knowledge, leading to intellectual explosions and possibly defining

us as human beings. A predominating view in cognitive archaeology, which is arguably an

alternative concept for how the mind functions, is the emphasis of the connectivity of the mind

with things and how things shape the mind.

Are these conflicting convictions as contradictory as they seem? Renfrew appears to

achieve reconciliation through the apparent inter-dependency of concepts that simultaneously

involve a universal yet culture-processed view of the mind, a relative yet structuralist view of

culture/ percepts or “institutional facts”, and a reflexive context of material engagement.

Abramiuk does not see differing approaches as being contradictory at all, but rather

complementary and all necessary for a holistic understanding of the mind in the past. Both

Renfrew’s approach and all of the approaches outlined by Abramiuk have legitimate applications

in real archaeological scenarios. Cognitive archaeology may benefit from an open dialogue with

the fields of psychology and neuroscience. Findings in psychology challenge the conception of

rational choice. According to Ariely, the mind is not rational, but it is still predictable, implying a

universal quality. The concepts that found theories of materiality are also informed by findings in

psychology. Materiality depends on the idea that people interact with and perceive their

environments directly. Yet, mind frames are often influenced by concepts instead of experience,

especially when personal engagement with the environment is lacking. Direct sensory

experiences are also subject to distortion based on preconceived attitudes. At the same time,

psychology seems to support that things do shape the mind, especially with the more behavioral

engagement that they elicit.

The path to defining cognitive archaeology as a field will likely follow that of

archaeology in general. The struggle in the construction of the discipline may involve many

shifts in theory, but the settling of the conflict may eventually take place on the ground, so to

speak. The approaches that end up constituting the field may simply be the ones that are practical

in application to field-work. The rift created by the processual/post-processual debates of the

1980s may have artificially forced apart theories that are in reality complementary, but perceived

as separate because of the association with one camp or another. The perception of varying

approaches in a polarized context may cause scholars to dismiss views that are relevant and

useful. Archaeology is always growing and acquiring new information and ways of thinking

about “things”. The encouragement of new or the development of existing approaches will help

in the investigation of the mind, whether in the domain of philosophy or neuroscience. The more

insights we have into the mind, the more tools we have in the reconstruction of the

archaeological record. Reconstruction of behavior is essential to understanding our history, and

understanding the mind is essential to understanding ourselves. The brain is, after all, the most

important organ in the body— that is… according to the brain.

Works Cited

Abramiuk, M. A. (2012). The Foundations of Cognitive Archaeology. MIT Press.

Ariely, D. (2008). Predictably irrational: The hidden forces that shape our decisions. Harper.

Binford, L. R. (2001). Constructing frames of reference: an analytical method for archaeological

theory building using ethnographic and environmental data sets. University of California,

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