27 research outputs found
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Lost for words: an extraordinary structure at the early Neolithic settlement of WF16
Extraordinariness is a useful concept for everyday life and for academic research, frequently invoked within archaeology. In this contribution I explore how this term might be defined and whether it is appropriate for a large early Neolithic structure excavated at the site of WF16 in the southern Levant, dating to c. 11,200 BP. I draw on research regarding categorisation, concepts and their relationships to words, to suggest that Structure O75 can usefully be considered as âextraordinaryâ because it does not comfortably fit into a category of finds
currently used by Neolithic archaeologists. To do so, a brief review of the history of Neolithic research is required because that has shaped the categories that archaeologists bring to the archaeological record and hence what might be viewed as either ordinary or extraordinary discoveries. I conclude that extraordinary objects such as Structure O75 are likely to have played an active role in the conceptual and linguistic developments that was associated with the transition from mobile hunting and gathering to sedentary farming communities
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The interpretation of Mesolithic structures in Britain: new evidence from Criet Dubh, Isle of Mull, and alternative approaches to chronological analysis for inferring occupation tempos and settlement patterns
The number of Mesolithic structures known in Britain has significantly increased since 2000, providing new opportunities for economic and social interpretations of this period. We describe a further structure, represented by features from the Mesolithic site of Criet Dubh, Isle of Mull. We compare the inferred Criet Dubh structure to other Mesolithic structures from Britain, notably those described by Waddington & Bonsall (2016) as âpit-housesâ. We then consider the implications of the radiocarbon dates from such structures for the temp of occupation and past settlement patterns. While the use of Bayesian analysis of radiocarbon dates has encouraged interpretations of prolonged occupation and sedentism, we propose alternative interpretations with patterns of intermittent occupation for Criet Dubh and the pit-houses, involving their re-use of after extended periods of abandonment within a sparsely populated landscape. The ability to debate such interpretations reflects the transformation in Mesolithic research made possible by the discovery of such structures, the use of multiple radiocarbon determinations, the application of Bayesian analysis, and the exploration of associations between cultural and environmental change. These developments have made the Mesolithic a particularly innovative period of study
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The flow of ideas: shared symbolism between WF16 in the south and Göbekli Tepe in the north during Neolithic emergence in south-west Asia
The transition from hunter-gatherer to farming lifestyles involved changes in all aspects of human lifeways: how food was acquired, technology, patterns of mobility, settlement size and architecture; demography and social relations; ideas of ownership, property, and ideology. With such all-encompassing change, a gradual emergence of farming is more likely than a short-term Neolithic revolution within each centre of origin. Similarly, the transition is likely to have been a spatially diffuse process: plant cultivation, animal herding, sedentism, and so forth, developing independently in different localities. New ideas, tools, cultivated seed and other items would have flowed through spatially extensive social networks, coalescing in favourable environmental and cultural circumstances to create a diversity of farming lifestyles. We provide further evidence for the social networks that underpinned the emergence of farming in SW Asia by describing previously unrecognised symbolic connections between the northern and southern Levant
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Music as a coevolved system for social bonding
Why do humans make music? Theories of the evolution of musicality have focused mainly on the value of music for specific adaptive contexts such as mate selection, parental care, coalition signaling, and group cohesion. Synthesizing and extending previous proposals, we argue that social bonding is an overarching function that unifies all of these theories, and that musicality enabled social bonding at larger scales than grooming and other bonding mechanisms available in ancestral primate societies. We combine cross-disciplinary evidence from archaeology, anthropology, biology, musicology, psychology, and neuroscience into a unified framework that accounts for the biological and cultural evolution of music. We argue that the evolution of musicality involves gene-culture coevolution, through which proto-musical behaviors that initially arose and spread as cultural inventions had feedback effects on biological evolution due to their impact on social bonding. We emphasize the deep links between production, perception, prediction, and social reward arising from repetition, synchronization, and harmonization of rhythms and pitches, and summarize empirical evidence for these links at the levels of brain networks, physiological mechanisms, and behaviors across cultures and across species. Finally, we address potential criticisms and make testable predictions for future research, including neurobiological bases of musicality and relationships between human music, language, animal song, and other domains. The music and social bonding (MSB) hypothesis provides the most comprehensive theory to date of the biological and cultural evolution of music
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The cognition of Homo neanderthalensis and H.sapiens: does the use of pigment necessarily imply symbolic thought?
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Excavating the prehistoric mind: the brain as a cultural artefact and material culture as biological extension.
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Tiny objects writ large: the private world of ice age art made public
Ice Age Art: Arrival of the Modern Mind was an exhibition at the British Museum from 27 February to 2 June 2013 exhibiting sculptures and engravings from the Ice Age of Europe and Eurasia, 40,000â10,000 years ago. It was accompanied by a lavishly illustrated book by Jill Cook with the same title, published by the British Museum Press. The exhibition was a sell-out, attracting considerable coverage in the press. Here I reflect critically on some aspects of the exhibition, exploring what such a display might tell us about ice age life, the modern mind and our present-day approach to displaying such objects