Cognitive archeology

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The cognitive archeology attempts from the archaeological legacies of the early people to draw conclusions about their thinking and cognitive drawing skills. The British archaeologist Colin Renfrew coined the term cognitive archeology in the 1980s and is considered to be the founder of this discipline.

Emergence

Renfrew explained his approach for the first time using the example of the cubes from Mohenjo-Daro , a place in the Indus Valley . These cubes are 4000 years old, made of carefully worked stone material and painted in different colors. They were evidently transported over considerable distances. These stone cubes vary in size, but their weights are always integer multiples of a certain unit. The smallest weigh a little over 800 grams, while others are four, eight and 64 times the weight. Finally, pan-like slabs were found that were 320 or 1600 times as heavy as the smallest stones. Renfrew concluded:

  • The people of the Indus Valley were aware that objects have a weight that depends on their size ( volume ).
  • They were able to such a relationship as a unit en conceived which can be assembled.
  • You could therefore have operated with numbers and a hierarchical order of them.
  • From this they developed a system - represented by the assortment of cubes - with which the weights of different objects can be measured and compared.

Furthermore, it can be assumed that they did this in order, for example, to record goods quantitatively. This would mean that the Mohenjodaro people traded and made a link between the weight of a commodity and its commercial value.

The Hypothesis of egalitarian cultures (from 1984)

A supplementary example is provided by Renfrew's treatise The Megalithic Cultures , in which he points out, among other things, the lack of differences in rank between the buried inside the large communal graves that have often been in use for centuries on the territory of present-day Britain. From this finding, which relates to an average of eight female and nine male deceased per generation, the author concludes in a summarizing hypothesis that it was " egalitarian groups " who built and used the megalithic buildings. In contrast, there are cultures that express their pyramidal hierarchy of power through occasional monumental graves for individual rulers.

The author calls this kind of interpretation, new in archeology, the cognitive-processual method. "Symbolic" aspects are also permitted for this, not just the well-known "functions" which, for example, discuss the technological advances made by a people over the centuries and generally led to the thesis of the Neolithic Revolution . Findings such as the indistinguishable nature of the buried within a communal crypt, which does not reveal any hierarchy, however, suggested aspects of the mentality of the creators of such facilities, for example their social behavior in everyday life. Another mental peculiarity is evident in the megalithic monuments that have become larger and more impressive over time, namely a fact that, in Renfrew's view, indicates that there was pronounced territorial competition between the various neighboring groups of these cultures, a kind of arms race . If you combine this method of reasoning with that of the "functions", a holistic view is made possible.

Problems of the specialist sciences

Renfrew deals in detail with hypothetical functions such as the gradually artificially increased soil productivity in prehistoric Britain , the average daily and annual productivity of individual people and entire population groups, their growth (reproduction) and the effort required to erect the various megalithic monuments. For example, he calculates around 18 million working hours for Silbury Hill with an estimated construction time of only two years, and for Stonehenge 30 million, which 7500 workers could have done within 40 months. The discussion of such factors is undoubtedly indispensable for the ambitious project of reconstructing in detail the origin and development of a prehistoric culture. Unfortunately, Renfrew's treatise leaves open the question, which is at least as important for this, as to whether the hypothetical equality of the megalithic peoples could have been based on a political-ideological agreement, or can be traced back to the social behavior of a certain way of life, whose roots may be in the biological origin of the People are to be looked for.

Interdisciplinary holism (perspective psychoanalysis)

The main question to be clarified here is whether the mean value of 17 deaths of both sexes per generation could correspond to the average size of such a way of life. In addition, whether the assumed equality of its members is generally a result of the principle of natural self-organization or the species-specific socialization during childhood. This particular under the variety of self-organizing phenomena does not need a power hierarchical behavior control from 'above' based on punishment and reward. As Brian Goodwin shows in his evolutionary theoretical study, after an initially apparently destructive phase, a balanced, harmonious social dynamic emerges in groups of children who are left to their own devices - sort of order out of chaos, as is the case with many processes in animate and inanimate nature .

Such distinctions are beyond the means and scope of cognitive archeology. Their claim to a holistic view could, however, have pointed to the already well-investigated way of life of the evolutionarily closest relatives of Homo sapiens, because by comparing primate and human ethology it is possible to determine the nature of both the assumed equality and the territorial competition among the shed light on megalithic races from a fundamentally biological perspective. See Gombe's Chimpanzee War , the documentation of a relatively young branch of science, which Jane Goodall was encouraged to justify through an interdisciplinary assignment, given by her mentor and paleoanthropologist Louis Leakey. This report brought to light the following essential aspects:

  • A highly developed form of life in terms of social behavior and consciousness, which is known as the horde. It consists neither of an overly powerful individual ruler with 'his' harem (cf. Freud's Darwinian primal horde ), nor of a network of monogamous 'families', but of two gender groups, the male of which seems to have a maximum size. If it is exceeded by newly recruited offspring, two parties form, a split through emotional alienation and the emigration of the inferior 'offshoot'.
  • The groups of men who are strangers or who have become strangers to one another show a pronounced territorial behavior that in many ways can take on human-like features, since their consciousness has not evolved sufficiently to be politically compatible with their enemies. If such teams get into territorial cul-de-sacs (overpopulation crises), they fight each other to the point of annihilation of those parties that prove to be in some aspect less well suited to the factors of the respective economy ( natural selection law , Darwin).
  • The ability to negotiate political contracts, as a means of bridging overpopulation crises (lack of food) by means of self-control of the urge to fight, and thus also to protect one's own social community from unnecessary suffering, characterizes Homo sapiens. So the primate ethologist Frans de Waal .

This statement corresponds to Aristotle's definition of man as a zoon politikon : "Anyone who does not participate in political alliances is either a god or an animal." Freud, before his eyes, the difference that exists between instinctively formed communities and those based on political agreements come about, adds to this polarizing announcement the demand to explore both the behavior of primates in their respective forms of life, as well as that of prehistoric humanity in the future, set up in the awareness that his model of natural coexistence in the " Darwinian Urhorde ”is a hypothesis that can neither be accepted nor corrected without knowledge of this kind.

For a long time, scientists who point out the cognitive processes behind the appropriate objects were considered outsiders in the research community that consisted of tangible evidence. Freud's interpretation of the symbols of ancient myths and his comparison of soul research with an archaeological excavation - not least his call to examine Darwin's hypothesis about the original form of social togetherness, was often not taken seriously, and also those that applied the symbolic content in their area Archaeologists have occasionally been ridiculed for being paleopsychologists by dismissing their interpretation of the material remains as pure speculation. The founder of this discipline, Colin Renfrew, rejected such criticism, but also recognized the limits of his method: “Cognitive archeology cannot find out what people used to think. But as they thought ”.

Striving for a holistic approach in scientific research broadens the horizon. There were findings like those of Jane Goodall and Colin Renfrew, the absence of which at that time compelled Freud to pass on his metapsychological attempt to shape the model of the healthy human soul in its equally natural social relationships to the generations after him: “... time such a theoretical determination had not yet come. "

Cognitive Archeology Today

Modern cognitive sciences have given cognitive archeology additional impulses. Since then, scientists have been trying to integrate findings from related disciplines, in particular from anthropology and evolutionary psychology . Central questions of this research direction are:

The researchers try to answer these questions on the basis of archaeological and anthropological finds.

Steven Mithen is one of the most important representatives of cognitive archeology today . In his book "The prehistory of the mind" he describes how the human mind developed. In doing so, he falls back on the now established notion of cognitive domains and relates them to the material legacies. According to Mithen, these show that the early representatives of the Homo genus - before Homo sapiens - had cognitive abilities in many respects that are comparable to today's humans, but only as long as these abilities only claimed one domain, such as " intuitive physics" , "intuitive biology" or "intuitive psychology". According to this, the human mind worked like a pocket knife: for every task there are certain responsible modules in the brain. But only Homo sapiens was able to establish connections between these domains. According to this, the emergence of art, religion and scientific thinking almost 50,000 years ago can be traced back to a development towards the cognitively fluid mind .

With rock paintings dealt David Lewis-Williams , the chair of cognitive archeology in South Africa holds. He interprets some of the South African rock art as an expression of prehistoric shamanism . In some of the motifs shown, such as nosebleeds , people clapping or mixed animals and humans, he sees typical characteristics of trance states . However, critics doubt that this explanation applies to all rock art. Lewis-Williams' thesis, however, coincides with the assumption that some of the cave paintings in France were created in a trance or under the influence of drugs. The question of the cognitive roots concerns, besides the rock paintings, all forms of prehistoric art. In many cases, shamanistic explanations compete with those that interpret the early works of art as an expression of magical thinking, religion or social prestige.

In the 2000s, Colin Renfrew himself took up cognitive archeology again. How do people and things interact? In a society, is a symbolic meaning first developed in the abstract in the consciousness and then implemented with objects or does it arise through ritualization of the practical handling of things?

A permanent exhibition on “human understanding” at the Monrepos Research Center and Museum for Human Behavioral Evolution in Neuwied has been explaining since 2014 how early human history has determined our behavior to this day.

Cognitive archeology in German-speaking countries

Cognitive archeology has remained a branch of research that is largely pursued in the Anglo-Saxon field. However, there are exceptions. The Frankfurt archaeologist Cornelis Bol uses cognitive science methods to analyze the transition from the archaic to the classical in ancient Greece (approx. 700 to 500 BC). This upheaval was accompanied by many artistic, scientific and social developments. According to Bol, a cognitive upheaval took place, in which pictorial representations had an important influence. Bol's investigations are also an example of the application of cognitive science methods within classical archeology .

The Austrian science journalist and prehistorian Elisabeth Pühringer, in turn - like Colin Renfrew - has dealt with units of measurement and weight systems. On the basis of the weight relations of the cast cake or pieces of it, she tries to prove a weight scheme for the early Bronze Age. For every form of trade, units of measurement are necessary to define the value and countervalue of the goods traded. The scheme created by Pühringer of the weight relations of raw metal bars for cast cakes indicates a kind of number system in Central Europe 5000 years ago. The raw metal pieces may therefore be a premium currency.

literature

  • Bol, Cornelis: Early Greek Images and the Origin of Classics. Perspective, cognition and reality. ISBN 3831604576 .
  • Lewis-Williams, David: Cognitive and Optical Illusions in San Rock Art Research. Current Anthropology , Vol. 27, No. 2. (Apr., 1986), pp. 171-178.
  • Mithen, Steven: The prehistory of the mind. 2003, ISBN 075380204X .
  • Renfrew, Colin: Archeology and Language: The Puzzle of Indo-European Origins. 1989, ISBN 0140552413 .
  • Renfrew, Colin and Ezra BW Zubrow (Eds.): The Ancient Mind. , Cambridge University Press, Cambridge 1994, ISBN 0521434882 .

See also

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Article Die Megalithkulturen in: Spectrum of Sciences , January 1984.
  2. ↑ Brian Goodwin: The Leopard Losing Its Spots .
  3. ↑ Florian Freistetter: The most irrational of all numbers. Retrieved May 8, 2020 .
  4. ↑ Philip Bethgen and Rafaela von Bredow: Hippie or killer monkey? In: Der Spiegel. Retrieved August 26, 2019 .
  5. ↑ Sigmund Freud: The man Moses and the monotheistic religion . ISBN 978-3-15-018721-0 , pp. 180 .
  6. ^ Sigmund Freud: mass psychology and ego analysis . ISBN 978-3-86820-056-0 , The Mass and the Primal Horde, Chapter X.
  7. ^ Sigmund Freud: Collected works . tape XIV , S. 33-96 .
  8. ^ Colin Renfrew: Symbol before concept. In: Ian Hodder (Ed.): Archaeological Theory Today . Polity Press 2001. pp. 122-140.
  9. ^ Colin Renfrew: Towards a theory of material engagement. In: E. Demarrais, C. Gosden, C. Renfrew (Eds.): Rethinking Materiality . Mc Donald Archaeological Institute 2004, pp. 23-32.
  10. ^ Ian Hodder: Entangled - An Archeology of the Relationships between Humans and Things . John Wiley & Sons 2012, ISBN 978-0-470-67211-2 , p. 34 f.
  11. ^ Website of the Monrepos permanent exhibition human understanding
  12. ^ Elisabeth Pühringer: The way into primeval times. Archeology and film. Dissertation, University of Vienna 2000 (unpublished)