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This chapter discusses the attempts of pinpointing the origins of humans, i.e. Homo sapiens sapiens. Due to the recent advances in archaeology, specifically in archaeogenetics, it has been determined that the Homo sapiens sapiens originated in Africa 200,000 years ago, and that the speciation phase of human development occurred before that time. The chapter shows that cognitive archaeology would need to analyse more carefully the nature of mind, as well as seek further insight into the processes that underlie the achievements that characterise those different trajectories of development and change.

This chapter seeks to clarify the meaning that the notion of embodied cognition has in the archaeology of mind. It argues that notions of embodiment often run the risk of trivializing the claim that the body is crucial to mental life, ending up with some version of brain identity theory. To that end, the author differentiates “weak” embodiment from “radical” embodiment. He argues that the material engagement approach subscribes to the latter radical version, according to which cognition is grounded in situated action and is constrained by the specific details of bodily implementation (neural and extraneural) and the nature of local interactions with material things, techniques, and prostheses. The chapter ends with some discussion about the implications of radical embodiment in the archaeology of mind and the study of material culture.

The discipline of cognitive archaeology has now been around for well over four decades. In this introduction to the book the field’s mid-1970s antecedents are presented as a reaction to processual archaeology. The work of visionary pioneers like archaeologists Thomas Wynn, Glynn Isaac, Colin Renfrew, John Gowlett, and Iain Davidson, psychologist William Noble, evolutionary primatologist William McGrew, biological anthropologist Sue Taylor Parker, and evolutionary neurobiologist Kathleen Gibson is used to discuss how many of the same concerns and challenges are found in contemporary cognitive archaeology: questions of methodologies and theoretical frameworks, commonalities with other species, cultural accumulation and transmission, language evolution, and the turn toward constructs from philosophy of mind. These issues are illustrated in the chapters in this volume, contributed by authors, existing and emerging scholars in cognitive archaeology, who are united by the same goal: understanding the ancient mind from the archaeological record. The introduction also provides an overview of the book.

Evidence of feather extraction from scavenging birds by late Neanderthal populations, supposedly for ornamental reasons, has been recently used to bolster the case for Neanderthal symbolism and cognitive equivalence with modern humans. This argument resonates with the idea that the production and long-term maintenance of body ornaments necessarily require a cluster of abilities defined here as the material symbolism package. This implies the construction of abstract meanings, which are then mentally imposed to artifacts and socially shared through full-blown mindreading, assisted by a meta-representational language. However, a set of radical enactive abilities, mainly direct social perception and situated concepts, is sufficient to explain the emergence of ornamental feathers without necessarily involving the material symbolism package. The embodied social structure created by body ornaments, augmented through behavioral-contextual narratives, suffices to explain even the long-term maintenance of this practice without mentalism. Costly neurocentric assumptions conceiving the material symbolism package as a homuncular adaptation are eschewed by applying a non-symbolic interpretation of feathers as cognitive scaffolds. It will be concluded that the presence of body adornment traditions in the Neanderthal archaeological record does not warrant the cognitive equivalence with modern humans, for it does not constrain a meta-representational level of meaning.

Tom Wynn’s original work that looked at the evolution of stone tool technology using Piaget’s developmental sequence was the beginning of productive research into the evolution of hominin and human cognition. In this chapter, I evaluate those beginnings and discusses recent attempts to provide a more satisfactory understanding of changes in stone tool technologies, including work by Philip Barnard and William McGrew, subsequent work by Tom Wynn, and my own work with various collaborators. It suggests that some of the previous understandings of cognitive evolution were shaped by the fact that approaches to stone tools were largely determined in the nineteenth century. I propose some new ways of looking at stone tools and the sort of story that allows for more productive models of the evolution of human cognition.

This chapter discusses terracottas and Old Testament study and looks at two paradigm shifts in recent scholarship in the origins of Israelite religion and in cognitive archaeology. It next turns to examine some conceptual hazards with regard to toys, magic and fertility. Finaly clay and cuneiform texts in terms of inscribed terracottas in ancient Mesopotamia are discussed and the value of broad and extended perspectives are given. Finally the chapter looks at contrasting terracotta repertories in the areas of Canaan, Israel and Judah.

Contributions to evolutionary cognitive archaeology (ECA) now present a wide range of commitments to cognitive science itself. It is still common to find quasi-cognitive approaches that rely on terms with little to no grounding in formal cognitive science, but which also have practical utility, especially when discussing technical cognition. Many ECA practitioners now employ terms and concepts grounded in cognitive science, most often cognitive neuroscience, though most of these remain post hoc applications. A more powerful approach begins with a cognitive ability of interest, identifies representative activities that would leave an archaeological signature, and traces their development in archaeological record. Such an approach not only enhances the picture presented by the standard narrative of paleoanthropology but also puts ECA in a position to make positive contributions to cognitive science itself.

While stone tools provide only the narrowest keyhole view of the lives of our ancestors, new theory and methods that explicitly focus on the interaction of organisms and environments over time—niche construction, the evolution of development, phenotypic accommodation, and gene–culture co-evolution—provide opportunities for squeezing “mind” from enigmatic stones. Tool-making, like language and theory of mind, is a culturally transmitted skill acquired through extended practice. It is also a key component of a human cultural niche that supports our unique adaptive strategy of large brains, cooperative breeding, and extended development. As discussed in this chapter, by deploying methods from the neural and behavioral sciences to better understand this archaeologically visible behavior, we can hope to more broadly illuminate the evolution of the human mind, brain, and culture.