# From material to cognitive landscapes

Avel Guénin-Carlut, Jadranka Verdonkschot, Laura Désirée Di Paolo, Felipe

Criado-Boado, Luis M Martínez, Andy Clark

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## To cite this version:

Avel Guénin-Carlut, Jadranka Verdonkschot, Laura Désirée Di Paolo, Felipe Criado-Boado, Luis M Martínez, et al.. From material to cognitive landscapes. 2026. hal-05471819

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# From material to cognitive landscapes

## An invitation to Active Inference in archaeology

Avel Guénin—Carlut ¹,³,⁴†*; Jadranka Verdonkschot ²†*; Laura Désirée Di Paolo ¹; Felipe Criado-Boado ²; Luis M. Martínez ⁵; Andy Clark ¹,⁶

1. University of Sussex (Brighton, UK)

2. Institute of Heritage Sciences, CSIC (INCIPIT-CSIC, Santiago de Compostela, ES)

3. Active Inference Institute

4. Kairos Research

5. Institute of Neurosciences (Alicante, ES)

6. Macquaire University, Department of Philosophy (Sydney, Australia)

<footnote>*: Shared first authorship</footnote>

<footnote>† [avel@kairos-research.org](mailto:avel@kairos-research.org)</footnote>

<footnote>‡ [jadranka.verdonkschot@incipit.csic.es](mailto:jadranka.verdonkschot@incipit.csic.es)</footnote>
Abstract

Archaeological interpretation fundamentally relies on the attribution of (cognitive, social, cultural) significance to the material remains left behind by past societies. This entails persistent challenges for archaeological theory; most notably in articulating the relationship between material organization and cultural systems, and in defining cultural meaning in the context of systematic re-use, transformation and re-construction of material landscapes. In particular, those challenges severely constrain the explanatory scope of structuralist approaches to archaeology, given their difficulty in accounting for diachronic change and fragmentary evidence.

We propose a re-articulation of the structuralist program in archaeology based on the Active Inference framework, a well-established neurocomputational framework describing cognition as an integrated, predictive process encompassing both perception and action. On its basis, we suggest that both material and cultural organization should be understood as complementary dimensions of a shared *common ground* to cognitive/material engagement. This common ground both constrains human agency by shaping perception and action; while being continuously reconstructed through human cognitive/material engagement.

Using the foundational example of Galician megalithic landscape archaeology as a case study, we show how this approach circumvents existing challenges in landscape archaeology. Rather than attempting to infer cultural systems and meaning from archaeological evidence alone, we suggest a methodology based on the reconstruction of cognitive and perceptual constraints embedded in material landscapes. We further argue that this constraint-based approach provides a formal framework for structural archaeology which integrates perception and action, synchrony and diachrony, and enables a richer interpretation of historical change from fragmentary evidence.

**Keywords:** Structural archaeology; Landscape archaeology; Monumentality; Active Inference; Common ground; Structure and agency.
## 0) Introduction

[0.1] Unlike other fields of the social sciences, archaeology's primary purpose is to draw inferences about the organization of societies from material culture. Often, this clashes with the lack of direct explanations of the rationality underlying the creation of material culture, either from living members of those societies (as is the case in sociology and cultural anthropology) or written documents describing the context of everyday life or political conflicts (as is the case in history). Thus, interpreting material cultures is central to archaeological methodology. In prehistoric research, this process is made much more arduous by the lack of direct knowledge about the context in which this material culture was produced. It is exactly this lack of immediate access to meanings and motivations that lead archaeology to confront directly the problem of interpretation and perspectives, maybe too often taken for granted in other social studies. Thus, what appears to be a limitation, the lack of direct explanations for material culture, can be understood as a source of methodological strength. By focusing on material traces, archaeological research can reveal aspects of the past obscured by established discourses, making it valuable even in research on recent conflicts (as we can see in the studies of for example the Spanish Civil War or World War II: González-Ruibal 2007; Harrison and Schofield 2010; Muñoz-Encinar 2023).

[0.2] Typically, archaeological methodology proceeds by abduction, attempting to infer what type of social and cognitive organization may have led to the creation of the landscapes and artifacts of a society. For example, Coolidge and Wynn (2016) explicitly define “cognitive archaeology” as the process of inferring which cognitive prerequisites would have been necessary for the production of certain cultural artifacts, given their observable features. While we agree that this abductive process is not only valuable, but also necessary to archaeological theory, we argue that it remains insufficient to account for the active role that material culture plays in the organization of minds and societies. In the present article, we argue that mind and material culture constitute two entangled dimensions of the same phenomenon, and that material culture is constitutive of the social and cognitive organization of a given society - rather than its cause, consequence, or mere representation. We propose that recognizing this entanglement allows archaeology to reconceptualize what have long appeared to be fundamental
limitations. Most notably, archaeology faces persistent problems rooted in the fragmentary nature of its evidence and the interpretive frames used to make sense of it. As materials are inherently perishable, and cultural context is often lost to time, archaeological records are indeed partial residues of past lives, shaped by decay, accident, and forgetting.

[0.3] Yet, situating these limits within a framework that treats material culture as entangled with social and cognitive life allows for a more dynamic understanding, where objects are not mere residues of human action but active participants in shaping thought, practice, and society itself. In a bid to further develop the theoretical framework underlying archaeological research, we propose to formally ground our study of the mutually constructive integration between mind and material culture in the Active Inference Framework (discussed below). This is an approach to cognition which postulates that both perception and action flow from a single predictive process under the imperative of Variational Free Energy minimization (i.e. model coherence maximization). On this premise, it lends a critical role to social and material environment in shaping human experience and action (Ramstead et al. 2016; Constant et al. 2018; Veissière et al. 2020). Finally, but most importantly, it relies on the concept of context critically, as a means for shaping the flow of predictions over perceptive and active states (Veissière et al. 2020; Guénin--Carlut 2024; Kiverstein et al. 2025). Active Inference has already shown itself as a versatile and useful framework, applicable to archaeological theory to demonstrate the entanglement between material and cognitive dimensions of social organization (Guénin--Carlut et al. 2023), the active role played by material culture in the regulation of cognition (Guénin--Carlut and Albarracin 2024), as well as explain the patterns of cultural evolution of Palaeolithic lithic technology (Manrique et al. 2024).

[0.4] Following this line of analysis, we interpret the material and social dimensions of landscape as two dimensions of the same organization, rather than two independent domains constrained within a reciprocally causal relationship. We argue that this approach will provide a formal grounding for, and thus formally unify, different models of archaeological research and interpretation. In other words, we are suggesting what is hopefully a solution to the many divides in approaching archaeological thought. For example, we propose a bridge between
processualism and post-processualism by our account of the relation between
(social and cognitive) structures and the posterior search for meaning. Similarly,
we propose a common ground for the original structuralism which understands
social phenomena through an overall order which defines society; and the later
post-structuralism emphasizing the agency and subjectivity of humans within such
an order. Following the structure-hermeneutics divide, we argue indeed that social
structures operate as shared priors that shape how agents understand and act in
the world. Fundamentally, the integration and enactment of these norms is always
contextual and reconstructive, thus anchoring both the reproduction of "structure"
and its evolution in the common process of human engagement with the world.
Adopting this perspective, human agency is thus positioned at the center of social
dynamics and archaeological interpretation.

[0.5] Our approach hence aligns with previous attempts to integrate the subjective agency of human social activities within the study of social structure, e.g Lewin (1975)'s field theory; Giddens (1984)' structuration theory; Bourdieu (1972) variant of field theory; and others (Mead 1934; Goffman 1956; Archer 2003). However, by adopting a formal (mathematical) framework for human cognition, the approach we propose here paves the way for a more refined and systematic study of the relation between body, mind, and society. This is so because, on a theoretical level, Active Inference (and related enactive approaches to cognition) places embodied agency and contextuality at the core of cognition, enabling a finer conceptualization of how agents engage with(in) existing social fields. Specifically, we suggest that human cognition and social activities as embedded in, and constitutive of socio-cultural "forms of life" (sensu Wittgenstein 1953), which are in turn jointly implemented in patterns of social activities and in the shared material environment (Guénin--Carlut et al. 2023; Guénin--Carlut 2024). The formal nature of our approach furthermore enables the construction of computational models which allow to approach issues traditionally accessible only by means of subjective interpretation - such as the phenomenology of socio-material landscapes or the dynamics of social change.

[0.6] The present work aims to show how our cognitive approach might contribute to archaeological theories and understanding. In section 1 we will summarize the well-known structuralist approach which has taken on an enterprise similar to
ours, and present our critics to it. In section 2, we shall introduce the Active
Inference Framework, focusing on the methodological consequences of its
application to social sciences, and especially to archaeology. Once our theoretical
pillars are well established, we will run our approach on a practical example. In
section 3, we shall revise the structural model of Galician megalithic landscapes
proposed by Criado-Boado (Criado-Boado et al. 1986; Criado-Boado 1989; Criado-
Boado and Verdonkschot 2026), showing how the adoption of our model enables a
reconceptualization of existing academic research, opening new avenues for the
investigation of past social structure. Eventually, this work aims to offer a proof of
concept for future studies, laying a first stone for a new Active Inference approach
to archaeological research, in which body, mind, and society, as well as the
material and cognitive dimensions of human social organization will be seen as
integrated and their study as mutually beneficial.

1) The structuralist approach to archaeology and its
challenges

[1.1] Structuralism in the social sciences can be traced to Ferdinand de Saussure's approach to linguistics (de Saussure 1916), which proposed that communication relies on shared, abstract conventions. He argued that individual speech acts gain meaning not on their own, but through an underlying system of relations - what he called “langue” - that organizes and constrains how signs are used and understood. These rules are not necessarily consciously known but rather shape understanding at a fundamental level. Within the context of anthropological theory, Claude Lévi-Strauss in particular is credited with importing de Saussure's framework to the study of symbolic culture and social conventions (Lévi-Strauss 1958; 1962a; 1962b). By analogy to de Saussure's linguistic structuralism, Lévi-Strauss' approach understands *culture* as a shared system of rules or symbols (a structure) mediating human understanding of social interaction with the human and non-human world, including material artifacts. Those universal principles inject meaning to social activity by providing an abstracted signification to specific tokens. The structuralist school of anthropology is defined by the study of relations – relations between *signified* and *signifier*, of course, but also relations between the cultural concepts embedded in the shared structure. Most notably, binary oppositions (or
dualisms), such as life and death, nature and culture, wild and domesticated, etc., are understood to structure human thought by defining contrasts through which specific objects or events may be understood.

[1.2] These oppositions may not always be explicitly called upon in human thought or discourse, but they are to be understood as organizing principles defining the meaning of any given symbol or concept. Combined with a multi-level analysis (similarly to the linguistic delineation of pragmatics, semantics, phonetics, etc.), and a relational approach to the function of given symbols or institutions in the context of a broader network, the study of such dualities forms the foundation of anthropological structuralism. Together, those principles are understood to provide a foundation to the study of the *synchronic* dimension of culture, i.e. the study of a cultural structure at a given point in time (Lévi-Strauss 1962a; 1962b). We would argue that, in this aspect, anthropological structuralism did contribute greatly to the study of how social patterns are grounded in the way human minds navigate and make sense of reality - and conversely, how human minds are grounded in those patterns. The approach presented here aims to expand on how to integrate the complementary *diachronic* dimension of culture, i.e. the study of changes in cultural systems. To be fair to Lévi-Strauss, he did acknowledge the necessity for a diachronic account of culture, and he did attempt to approach it in his study of the shift from “Untamed Thought” to “Domesticated Thought” (Lévi-Strauss 1958). However, by his own admission, this enterprise should rely on further study of the origins of thought by physical anthropology - or, as we will argue, by the alliance of cognitive science and social archaeology.

[1.3] Indeed, structuralism falls short of providing a meaningful account of the processes underlying cultural change. Given its theoretical premises, it explains social activity by calling upon cognitive invariants within given cultural contexts, i.e. the symbolic structure of human experience and social activity, which are understood to *correspond* to specific communicative acts. A given utterance, at a given point in time and in a given context, can only be understood as “cat” or “tree” or “boat”, and then inherits all of the cognitive properties tied to that cultural concept. Human cognition is therefore reduced (at least in the context of social interaction) to an algorithm-like process applying the rules of culture. In that framework, it appears mysterious how human minds may produce genuine
novelty in the course of their social activity. Either they act within the context
presupposed by structuralism and reproduce existing structure; or they produce
novelty and therefore act outside of it. Put differently, if we acknowledge that
structuralism succeeds in showing how structures shape the very act of thinking
about the world, then the need to explain how these structures themselves are
formed and how they evolve or change becomes even more pressing. These
questions remain largely untouched in Lévi-Strauss's work, leaving a significant
gap in understanding the dynamics of cultural transformation.

[1.4] However, the most salient problem in applying the structural project in archaeological research is methodological in nature. Explicit linguistic account of the specific concepts and rules regulating a given archaeological context tend to be absent and the symbolic dimension of the social context must be reconstructed from the material traces alone. Recent discussions (Stibbard-Hawkes 2025; Sterelny 2025; Di Paolo et al. 2025) highlight the interpretative risks of such reconstructions, particularly when meaning is inferred from the presence—or absence—of artifacts. Systems of meaning embedded in material engagement with the world (rather than social, linguistic interaction) are overwhelmingly likely to rely primarily on non-linguistic, perhaps non-symbolic representations (Malafouris 2013). In consequence, the structuralist assumption of coherence within a given cultural structure may not apply in full. Recent attempts at resolving this tension have focused on the cognitive processes driving human engagement with materiality, and especially the way material culture and landscapes shape human cognition (Criado-Boado et al. 2019). In this approach, cultural structure is not to be understood as a purely cognitive construct through which humans engage with the world, but on the contrary as a system embedded in materiality – and therefore, to some extent, accessible by the means of archaeological methodology.

[1.5] This approach draws from Criado-Boado (1989)'s research on the conceptualization of megalithic architecture in the necropolis of the Serra do Barbanza. Criado-Boado and colleagues indeed proposed that this archaeological landscape was intentionally constructed to embed specific cultural notions of space and time – thus introducing a structuralist approach to archaeology. Initial qualitative analysis of the geographic position, spatial organization, and visual qualities suggested that the megalithic monument marking this landscape
collectively worked to signify the relevant routes to navigate the landscape (Criado-Boado 1989; Criado-Boado and Villoch Vázquez 2000). In successive years, the integration of Geographical Information Systems enabled an explicit, quantitative confirmation of this hypothesis. Indeed, they demonstrated a systematic association between the primary natural mobility corridor of the Serra do Barbanza and the spatial distribution of the megalithic monuments (Llobera 2014; Fábrega-Álvarez and Parcero-Oubiña 2019; Verdonkschot et al. forthcoming). Specifically, a person navigating the landscape could identify and follow the paths of least effort to travel through the regions by going from burial mound to burial mound, walking each time towards the next visible monument. In other words, the funerary monuments built throughout the Serra do Barbanza act as beacons signaling the optimal pathways of navigation to travel across its rugged surface.

[1.6] The presence of such “structured visibility networks” suggests a profound and specialized understanding of the landscape, based on the basic visual and motor engagement entailed by spatial navigation. Furthermore, dolmens are often placed in significant positions, where they mark geological transitions (sometimes transition which were long erased by geological change by the time of dolmen erection) while optimizing their visibility and enhancing natural features of the landscape (Criado-Boado 1989; Criado-Boado and Villoch Vázquez 2000; Verdonkschot et al. - forthcoming). Taken together, these elements suggest the existence of a cultural system embedded in monumentalization that encodes a long-term memory of the landscape. This cultural system is the core element of the *structural model* of megalithic space, as developed in the works cited above and most recently in Criado-Boado and Verdonkschot (2026). According to this model, the human re-structuration of material landscapes constitutes intentional translations of cultural perceptions and practices: a domestication of space. This approach has contributed significantly to prehistoric archaeology, well beyond megalithic studies. It formalizes the notion of landscape as a product of human-developed cultural structures, rather than the material embedding in which human cultural activity unfolds. In doing so, it established the conceptual foundations of Landscape Archaeology.

[1.7] While this approach constitutes a quite direct extension of structuralism to the novel domain of material landscapes, it also outlines its fundamental challenges.
Indeed, megalithism has been a prominent phenomenon in the Galician region
from 4400-4300 BCE - slightly later than the first evidences of agriculture in the
area (Sáez et al. 2010). The materialization of the earliest megalithic monuments is
no less than the culmination of a broader process in which a society adopted a new
way of thinking, establishing the conceptual embedding of a different
understanding of time and space (Criado-Boado and Verdonkschot 2026). But at
the same time, megaliths continued to be built, in varying forms, until
approximately the first half of the third millennium BCE, and even thereafter these
structures were frequently re-used and re-constructed (Criado-Boado and Fábrega
Valcarce 1989; Fábregas Valcarce and Vilaseco Vázquez 2006). These extensive
palimpsests, i.e. the continuous re-use of material landscapes, implies the re-
construction of their cultural meaning through time (Lucas 2008; Mlekuz 2012).
This implies a fundamental challenge for structuralism: assuming we could
reconstruct the synchronic meaning of material landscapes, which point of time
should be understood to reflect their singular underlying meaning? This suggest
the imperative necessity for structuralist archaeology to account for the evolution
of the prehistoric landscapes and their cultural systems of meaning - i.e. the
diachronic dimension of structural archaeology.

[1.8] In the coming sections, we will be discussing how structural archaeology can leverage contemporary cognitive science to revisit these questions, drawing in particular from the XSCAPE project's reinterpretation of the historical study of Galician landscapes discussed above. We will propose to formalize this approach through the concept of the "common ground", borrowed from the field of socio-linguistics (Stalnaker 2002). In its initial field, it refers to the space of premises, or prior beliefs, that are accepted in the context of a social interaction. Critically, common ground is conceptualized as a dynamic structure, one that recursively shapes and is shaped by the interactions occurring within it. Thus, this concept offers a non-reductive account of diachronicity in linguistic interaction, as the structure of the common ground evolves through use and is continuously reconstituted by ongoing activity. Our proposal is to extend this concept to the cognitive experience of material landscapes. Based on prior literature, we argue that material environments can embody and transmit norms, expectations and affordances (premises for engagement) that guide behavior and perception in culturally meaningful ways. This approach foregrounds the intentional role of
human activity in shaping these environments, while also recognizing how such environments in turn shape cognitive and social processes. To support this claim, challenging the traditional separation between mind and matter, we will draw on the neurocomputational Active Inference framework.

## 2) Active Inference and the construction of the socio-cognitive “common ground”

[2.1] Active Inference largely derives from an effort to formally ground predictive processing, a family of related frameworks which described human perception as a process based on the prediction of incoming stimuli by neuronal populations based on an underlying model (or, formally, a set of prior beliefs) about their causes. The predictive approach appeared to solve important issues brought about by the classical cognitivist view of perception as a process based on the explicit computation of symbolic information about objects in the world, as exposed e.g. in the work of Brooks (1991a; 1991b) and Varela et al. (1991). By recasting perception as probabilistic inference under a generative model, predictive processing accounts for how cognitive agents infer complex structures from sparse and noisy sensory data, thereby enabling flexible looking, understanding, and adaptive action (Körding and Wolpert 2004; Tenenbaum et al. 2006; 2011; Martinez et al. 2014; Ullman and Tenenbaum 2020). Yet, it remained unclear how the organic activity of neuronal populations could implement an explicit representation of objects in the world, or perform mathematical operations about such representations. The work of Friston and colleagues aimed to provide an explanation from first principles to this phenomenon. They started by proposing the *Free Energy Principle* (FEP), the idea that neuronal population produces predictive behavior through the minimization of an information quantity known as *Variational Free Energy* (VFE) (Friston et al. 2006; 2010). They then moved on to proving that this principle is followed by arbitrary dynamical systems, assuming the partition between an observed and observing system as well as the presence of noise (Friston 2019; Da Costa et al. 2021; Ramstead et al. 2022; Friston et al. 2023).

[2.2] In parallel, largely as a computational corollary to the Free Energy Principle, Active inference emerged. It distinguishes itself from other predictive approaches since it postulates perception and action as integrated within the same predictive
process (Friston et al. 2009; 2010; 2016). In other words: if the FEP is verified, then
the basic principle underlying cognition is VFE minimization in neuronal activity,
which would eventually apply to the “passive” processes through which we
understand our surroundings, as well as to the “active” processes through which
we act on them. A full discussion of the computational and philosophical
implications of this approach is beyond the scope of the present text. However, we
can summarize them through Hohwy (2016)'s concept of *self-evidencing*. According
to Active Inference, neuronal activity implements not only a model of the world,
but also a model of ‘what’ the system is as an ‘agent’. Put another way: agents do
not only gather evidence for their predictive model of the world; they also gather
evidence for their own continued existence as the form of life they are, and they do
so by taking actions that are the most coherent with the sensations they expect to
experience. For example, an agent like a fish would likely expect themselves to be
in water, and to experience the sensations associated with it. Were they to be
placed onto the beach or on the wood of a boat, they will experience strongly
unexpected sensations (i.e. suffocation) and would immediately take corrective
action to go back into their expected environment (i.e. struggling). It is in fact this
second dimension of “gathering evidence” for a prior model by taking action to
enforce its predictions which lent its name to the Active Inference framework.

[2.3] Active Inference derives a large extent of its legitimacy from the mathematical framework of the FEP. However, we should also highlight that it seems to dissolve many foundational issues in cognitive science. We alluded above to problems with the classical cognitivist view of prediction. Specifically, we refer to what is known in engineering as the ‘inverse problem’, which goes as follows. Assuming we had access to a complete picture of the *forward model* which describes how objects in the world cause our sensations, inferring which of those object causes a specific array of sensations requires the computational *inversion* of that model. For on-the-fly decisions in high-dimensional spaces, this inversion poses serious problems, such as extremely high computational cost, prohibitively long time to convergence, and extreme sensitivity to both noise and ambiguity. In other words, this process is entirely inadequate to guide a cognitive agent’s behavior, as this requires to take adequate decisions quickly, at minimal costs, and in noisy and ambiguous circumstances. In other words, no productive, quick and cheap answer could rely on inverse engineering. Incidentally, the same problem applies to motor planning:
even assuming that an agent might have complete access and knowledge of how
their motor commands influence their motor trajectory, inferring the motor
sequence to produce a given goal would also require the inversion of a forward
model. Active Inference completely circumvents the inverse problem by predicting
upcoming sensations and actions based on a simplified forward model of the few
parameters of the world that are relevant to behavioral regulation (Hipólito et al.
2021; Hipólito 2022). Additionally, its findings are continuously coherent with
available neurocomputational evidence (Walsh et al. 2020).

[2.4] In simpler words, Active Inference agents bypass the necessity of an exhaustive computation of their sensory and active states by making a near-optimal use of context to gather only the most relevant evidence to anticipate future sensations as well as regulate their own behavior (see Guénin--Carlut 2025b for a discussion of the formal relation between contextuality and Active Inference). The term of “context” should be understood quite broadly as the array of background information available to the agent and which guide the allocation of their cognitive and metabolic resources. For example, a usual, well-known, or low-stress context that can mostly be navigated by habit (e.g. one’s office space, or a family reunion) should call for the inhibition of low-level sensory information, allowing the agent to focus on more high-level thoughts. On the contrary, a novel or high-stress context (e.g. hearing someone tiptoeing around you while you are in the forest alone at night) should lead you to intensely focus on this (low-level) sensory information so as to modify your internal model of the world, and potentially make urgent decisions. Importantly, context does not only include external sensory input, but also interoception (the perception of one’s internal states) and proprioception (the perception of one’s muscle activity). For example, perceiving that one is unable to provide strong metabolic effort should discourage high-arousal response to one’s environment (and vice versa). The mutual feedback between bodily and cognitive activity through interoception is generally understood by Active Inference proponents to be the basis of affective experience (Seth 2013; Seth and Friston 2016), as well as the key mechanism integrating body and mind.

[2.5] More importantly for our present argument, context also includes the background knowledge of an agent about their social and cultural context. For example,
(Goffman 1956, 18–19) discusses the social conventions surrounding hospitality in the Scottish highland community he studied. In short, hosts are generally expected to provide alcoholic drinks for their guests. But the specific nature of the drink being offered must also reflect the relative standing of both parties in the community, with spirits being reserved to the most prestigious guests one could expect. Put simply, there is nothing about a wine bottle that provides direct sensory evidence that it is appropriate to offer to a farmer but not a doctor. If people in this community expected specific drinks to be offered to guests of specific status, it is necessarily because they have learned to do so – probably by observing the attitude of their parents in the same situation, and inferring what a given drink is expected to signify. This reflexive attitude, by which humans disengage from their own sensorimotor experience and consider what a given cue or action would signify to others, is generally understood by Active Inference proponents to be the core driver of the enculturation of human cognition (Veissière et al. 2020; Guénin–Carlut 2024). Because of it, humans act in a context largely defined by a shared, collectively defined and maintained system of expectation about the abstract implications and the social implications of specific acts enacted in specific contexts, which we generally agree to call *culture*.

[2.6] For the sake of specificity, we propose to conceptualize this background system of expectation as a *common ground* for social interaction and cognitive engagement. As defined in sociolinguistics, the concept of a common ground refers to the set of propositions that are accepted as the background information of a conversation (Stalnaker 2002). For example, if we were to ask: “Did Tina improve her guitar play?”, we would be assuming that Tina does play guitar, and any response that does not specifically challenge that assumption would pragmatically allow it to integrate the common ground of the interaction. Táíwò (2018) proposes to explore the socio-political implications of this concept through Anderson’s “Emperor’s New Clothes” fable, where an Emperor is conned into buying non-existent clothes that the conmen insist are invisible to the stupid and incompetent. Due to this statement, and until it is challenged, anyone pointing the absence of the clothes is exposed to the risk of being perceived as stupid or incompetent – or worse, exposing the Emperor’s gullibility. Hence, none of his advisors does. However, on the day of a public procession, a child – hidden by the anonymity of the crowd, and unaware of the social implications torturing the imperial advisors – cries out that
the Emperor is naked. However, humans are embodied beings, and (as discussed above) are in a great part regulated by (non-linguistic) expectations over sensorimotor activity. Following Guénin--Carlut and Dubourg (2024), we propose to apply the same concept of the “common ground” to the set of expectations that are (implicitly or explicitly) shared into a specific social context.

[2.7] Although essentially a play on words, we believe that the specific notion of the common ground is best to convey the cognitive processes underlying social interactions. Humans navigate social landscapes as they do material ones: intentionally, but constrained by its topography and by their own situation within it. When traversing a rugged landscape, one may choose to try running up a cliff if they were so inclined. However, more likely they will make their way around it without ever considering such an absurd idea. In much the same manner, one may choose to tell the Emperor to his face that he has been walking around naked for a while, but they're more likely to avoid even thinking of the deep dissonance (and danger) brought by this action. In the most intuitive sense of the word, this does not quite constitute an active choice – to his advisors, the Emperor will simply not elicit the idea of calling him out on his (non-existent) clothing. Because of the intrinsic entanglement of perception and action under Active Inference, the norms of our engagement with the world are to a great extent embedded in our direct experience of the world – as defined by our cultural and material context. Drawing from Guénin--Carlut and Albarracin (2024), we call this property *embedded normativity*. As operationalized here, this concept provides us with a motivation to treat the material landscapes experienced by humans as equipped with cognitive premises regarding the norms of engagement with the world, as we set out to do in the previous part.

[2.8] The process by which premises about one's engagement with the world affect concrete cognitive dynamics can literally and formally be modeled as a physical force guiding their attention towards cues maximizing the coherence of their world- and self-model (Guénin--Carlut 2024). However, and unlike classical formulations of anthropological structuralism, the framework we propose here does not conceptualize the underlying structure as a system of abstract, *a priori* regularities which are supposed to superimpose onto patterns of perception and action. On the contrary, the “context” which structures an agent's action is also (by
construction) perpetually reconstructed through every social action they undertake or observe, every trace left in the environment by peers or geological processes, every variation of their metabolic activity. Hence, explicitly accounting for the contextual aspect of cognition enables us to integrate without tension both the synchronic and diachronic aspect of culture. The premises defining a given context structure human engagement with the world, while the very same engagement in turn structures the context of future engagement with the world – enabling a meaningful account of the open-ended dynamics of human culture and cognition (Guénin--Carlut 2024; 2025a). In order to intuitively capture this aspect of our framework, we will structure our analysis around the specific concept of the common ground of social interaction, as we have introduced it above. The common ground (like the literal ground) defines the context we are acting in, and hence constrains our agency. But at the same time, it is shaped by human agency – both in almost accidental ways, such as desire paths; and in extremely deliberate ones, such as monumental architecture.

### 3) The common ground in archaeological inference: from material to cognitive landscapes

[3.1] Provided that the discussion in section 2 is grounded in an adequate model of human cognition, it provides an intuitive yet analytically rigorous picture of the entanglement between the socio-cognitive dimension of human activity (i.e. its projection of meaning onto the world) and its material dimension (i.e. the material culture left behind for us to study). More formally, it proposes a principled model of how the material world – as we can study it through the means of archaeology – is embedded in broader socio-cultural forms of life defining the logic of both material and socio-cognitive organization (Guénin--Carlut 2022; Guénin--Carlut et al. 2023; Criado-Boado et al. 2024). The core intuition is that, just as socio-cognitive structures of meaning constrain and construct one's experience of the material world, the material structure of one's world constrains and constructs the socio-cognitive organization of one's experience. This suggests, at least in principle, the possibility of a rigorous methodology for the inference of structures of meaning (or some elements thereof) from material evidence alone, given the known constraints of the human mind. We will attempt to show the relevance of
principled reasoning based on the notions introduced above. Hence, we argue that the notion of a multi-modal (material, social, cognitive...) common ground may serve as a powerful conceptual backbone to archaeological inquiry - if and when we keep in mind the *contextual* nature of its perception and construction by single agents, and its compelling effect on one's actions.

[3.2] First, let us demonstrate the logic of a multi-modal common ground. Drawing on Guénin--Carlut and Dubourg (2024), this can be understood as a shared system of linguistic, emotional and embodied norms steering perception and behavior. Its robust transmission within a society is ensured by grounding these norms in the shared social and material niche. The core logic of our approach is that the norms embedded in a given context can be characterized as a system of (linguistic and non-linguistic) premises on one's behavior, thus regulating social and material engagement. The same applies, without loss of generality, to the material organization of the world: built landscapes and monuments embody premises that guide and constrain action. They are perceived in the context of prior socio-cultural context, while simultaneously contributing to the ongoing construction of that very context. For example, the construction of megalithic monuments not only marked and structured the landscape, but also organized collective labor, coordinated social roles, and reinforced shared conceptions of space and time. In other words, by building megaliths, cultural norms became directly embedded into the material world (sensu Guénin--Carlut and Albarracin 2024).

[3.3] For our present purpose, this line of analysis holds two main consequences. First, the material organization of the world assumes an active role in the constitution of sociocultural organization, rather than being a simple (by)product of, or background for, the latter. In itself, this claim is not new to archaeological research (see e.g. Malafouris and Renfrew 2010; Ingold 2011; Malafouris 2013), but its integration in the philosophically and mathematically grounded Active Inference framework allows it to move beyond a merely descriptive account. The way we experience the world, in our interactions with other people, with objects, and with non-human agents, is inherently different whether we are in an open field or in a crowded city; in the intimate settings of a friend's home or standing alone in front of a brooding man seated on an elevated throne. Second, the organization of a material landscape is fundamentally embedded within (or, informally, entangled
with) the broader context of the socio-cultural organization, rather than simply
interacting with it causally. Indeed, the world is not simply perceived in its full
material structure, and then analyzed through socio-cultural concepts to motivate
specific decisions. On the contrary, the very process of engaging with the world is
already defined by prior cultural background.

[3.4] At first glance, this line of reasoning might seem to undermine the very project of socio-cognitive archaeology that we are advancing. If the organization of material landscapes—as they were experienced by culturally situated agents—is inseparable from cultural knowledge systems now irretrievably lost, then how could we possibly recover their meaning? Our claim is that, insofar as our account of the integration between cognition and the material world is correct, we do not need to recover that meaning. While the specific cultural significance of past material landscapes may indeed be lost to time, we can nonetheless take their constructive role in shaping socio-cultural organization at face value. This does not imply that structural analysis grants access to meaning or intention. Rather, it reveals patterns of organization. This distinction matters. Structure (in the sense we understand it here) is not simply cognitive meaning, but is also embedded in the material organization of the world. Thus, this approach enables us to interpret elements of material organization as individual premises or constraints over human cognition. Hence, in addition to sidestepping the question of the “real” intention behind monumentalization, our approach enables a cognitive grounding of the emerging program of archaeology of absence (e.g. Bille et al. 2010; Vos 2021; Sawday 2023).

[3.5] Let us get back to the example of monumentality, now focusing on megalithic landscapes. Archaeologically, beyond their significance in terms of funerary use and ancestral cults, the construction of such landscapes reflects group dynamics, requiring coordination, collective labor and the distribution of effort. However, rather than taking material landscapes as a *product* or *sign* of social processes, we take the contrapositive stance: we can study their role as agents in these processes. As mentioned in section 1, the presence of megalithic monuments, through their scale, placement and visual prominence, domesticate the landscape, thus structuring movement and perception. Crucially their funerary function anchors the spatial and social structures to ancestors: the monuments embed memory in
the landscape and of its experience. This can easily act as a sensori-motor grounding for the construction of an imagined community defined by the inhabitancy of a certain space. The common ground of this experience is therefore a highly intuitive basis for feelings of belonging, and by extension, grounds the embedding of any norms, values, or feeling culturally associated to a certain monument into collective identity. In the following paragraphs, we apply a more detailed “common ground” analysis based on the experience of vision-based spatial navigation to the aforementioned case of the Serra do Barbanza.

[3.6] As noted by critics of Criado-Boado's structural approach, we have no methodology to probe the minds of the (long-deceased) architects of the necropolis to find out whether or not they specifically intended for their monuments to mark an optimal path in the Serra. Hence, the idea that its spatial organization constituted the straightforward implementation of prior cultural systems of knowledge remains unverifiable. However, we may very well analyze the basic perceptual constraints entailed by those constructions, and assess their role in *structuring* human perception of that landscape. The specific rounded shape of those funerary monuments makes them highly salient in the visual experience of the landscape, once they are identified as such. We also know that the memory of travel routes constitutes a challenging task for human cognition, which continuously recruits the comparison of one's position to salient points of the landscape given cultural systems of knowledge representing a linear series of points of reference (see e.g. the description of Aboriginal songlines by Chatwin (2012), or Careri (2017)'s reflections on “walkscapes”). Hence, assuming only basic cognitive competence and the structure imposed on sensori-motor experience by the domesticated landscape, it is overwhelmingly likely that travelers across the Serra would rapidly identify the megalithic network, adopting them as an afferent system of reference for navigation. We can therefore assume that the necropolis worked as a cultural system of knowledge for spatial navigation, without reference to the specific intent or cultural representations of its builders.

[3.7] A more challenging task is to situate this necropolis within the broader, largely unknown, common ground. It seems natural to assume that travelers passing through, even without a refined cultural background, could readily recognize the dolmens as human-made, since their architectural features are unlikely to result
from natural processes. This recognition entails a perceptual link between the monumentalization (or “domestication”) of the landscape and the sensori-motor experience of moving through it. In other words, even culturally unskilled travelers could intuit that efficient navigation of the Serra depended on the intentional shaping of the material landscape by local communities. At the same time, this perspective intersects with important questions that archaeology seeks to answer about the functions of such monuments and the experiences of culturally skilled agents. For instance, were the dolmens built by specific groups for their own deceased members, or restricted to certain social classes? These questions are addressed in current bio-archaeological research (e.g. Díaz-Zorita Bonilla et al. 2024). Some have suggested that the dolmens resulted from organized public works, in which architecture functions as a form of practice (e.g. McFadyen 2016; Harris 2021). If so, how were these efforts organized—within democratic or autocratic structures? Were rituals performed at the dolmens, and of what nature (as proposed in Bueno-Ramírez et al. 2019)? While such questions animate ongoing research projects and interpretative debates, the association between death, monumentality, and spatial navigation in the Serra do Barbanza ultimately emerges from the material organization of the landscape itself.

[3.8] Based on the present account of the Serra do Barbanza, we may reassess the contribution of our “common ground” framework to the framework of structural archaeology. Our approach retains the core postulate of anthropological structuralism, i.e. that cultural systems of knowledge shape human interaction with and experience of the world. However, it does not treat these systems as fixed structures, transmitted intact across generations and then translated into material and social patterns. Instead, we consider them as an ever-changing common ground embedded in shared priors and material constraints over both perception and action, defined within a given socio-cultural context. By definition, this common ground is perpetually reconstructed by human actions and their effects on the material landscape, each action shaping the context in which the world is understood and further actions are decided. Hence, explicitly accounting for the contextual nature of human cognition enables us to formally ground the core elements of the structuralist methodology, while also providing a basic framework to explain the transmission and change of cultural structure. Furthermore, this approach suggests a methodology for inferring the norms embedded in a given
material landscape - without assuming the existence of a predefined, all-
encompassing cultural system. Indeed, because humans perceive their social
reality in the context of the basic constraints of their perception and spatial
navigation, we can infer from a material landscape a system of sensori-motor
premises that shape how skilled agents experience the world. Through their
embedded normativity, these premises contribute to constructing a broader, multi-
modal common ground - a shared framework defining cultural structure.

4) Conclusion

[4.1] We have hereby articulated a re-definition of the structuralist approach to archaeology, hinging on the reconstruction of a *common ground* integrating norms which are - implicitly or explicitly - embedded in the material, cognitive, social, and cultural dimensions of one's experience. Our approach is fundamentally based on the Active Inference framework, a neurocomputational theory describing perception and action as jointly driven by a predictive process where agents anticipate (formally, minimizing Variational Free Energy about) upcoming sensations. As we explained in section 2, cognition under Active Inference is a process of self-evidencing (Hohwy 2016), where agents “gather evidence” about their own existence by realizing predictions about themselves and their environment. Thus, Active Inference entails a high level of permeability between social and cognitive processes – assuming the existence of a reflexive attitude, enabling agents to understand both their own and other’s behavior through the assumption of shared norms (e.g. Veissière et al. 2020; Guénin--Carlut and Albarracin 2024; Guénin--Carlut 2024; Constant et al. 2024). We conceptualize the aforementioned common ground as the shared system of norms, beliefs and generally expectations characterizing a given social and material context.

[4.2] Because of the joint predictive process driving perception and action under Active Inference, we can say that the norms guiding an agent's engagement with the world are then *embedded* in their perception of the world – and therefore constrained by their social and material context. In other words, cultural systems may not determine the content of human minds, but they participate in defining the *context* in which they engage with their world. In our opinion, this framework validates the historical structuralist program while significantly improving on its
formulation, by grounding it on neurophysiological, up-to-date research. Hence,
we can derive from first principles the way culturally afferent norms and beliefs
shape behavior by structuring the human experience of the world, with very
minimal assumptions about the specificity of human cognition. Contemporary
authors have furthermore stressed the importance of context in the Active
Inference approach to cognition to account for individual agency in one's
engagement with cultural systems, e.g. through the constructive role of
interoceptive sensations and self-directed speech (Guénin--Carlut 2024; 2025a).
Accounting for the contextual dimension of agency addresses the main lines of
criticism towards classical formulation of structuralism.

[4.3] Indeed, it enables an explicit account of the diachronic evolution of cultural structure through cognitive engagement with the world – as premised on the synchronic structure of a cultural system in a given context (Guénin--Carlut 2024; 2025a). Thus, we suggest that cultural systems do not exist “up there”, in the Platonic realm of cultural representations. Instead, they are embedded in the material and social environment, continuously (re)integrated by humans through their agentive engagement with the world, and (re)constructed in the process. Hence, we would consider the present framework to constitute a cognitively informed, ontologically coherent, and formally grounded update of classical structuralism. On a conceptual level, its core commitment lies in the active role we lend to the material landscape as an agent in the construction of socio-cultural forms of life (Guénin--Carlut et al. 2023). As noted above, the latter are taken to be co-constituted by both the cognitive and material dimensions of social activity, hence bringing about a fundamental *entanglement* between the two. Rather than asking *what cultural systems may have produced the landscape surrounding us*, we can therefore ask *how cultural systems may be shaped by this landscape*.

[4.4] Together, these considerations arguably dissolve the major difficulties with structuralist archaeology described in section 1, and provide a novel way forward for structuralist archaeology. Most obviously, it dissolves the fundamental tension between synchrony and diachrony present in Lévi-Strauss’ own structuralist thought. Both the engagement with the world premised on existing cultural systems and the evolution of the latter are indeed explained through the same process of cognitive engagement, assuming the contextuality of cognition
(Guénin--Carlut 2025b; 2025a). Just as importantly, it provides an explicit model for the relation between materiality and culture as *embedded normativity* (Guénin--Carlut and Albarracin 2024). Thus, it provides strong motivation for the very coherence of structural archaeology, understood as the inquiry in cultural systems from material evidence alone. In perhaps more subtle, but equally relevant manner, it entails the absence of a single “real” cultural relevance for material landscapes. The continuous pattern of re-use and re-construction, the evolution of society through and around monumentalization – those are not to be understood as exceptional events disrupting the coherence of cultural systems, but rather as the very processes through which material landscapes are equipped with meaning.

[4.5] This shift in perspective motivates an inferential approach based on the reconstruction of the system of *premises* embedded in a given material landscape, given the basic constraints of human cognition – as described in section 3. For example, a wall will elicit the perception of separation between an inside and outside space; and a particularly salient mountain will elicit its use as a reference point in visual perception as well as spatial navigation. Critically, such inferences do not rely on any assumptions regarding the specific cultural meaning projected onto elements of the landscape, or even on the assumption that such meaning is stable in time or robustly similar between individuals within the same cultural area. It is based only on the assumption that whichever social activity happened in the context of that specific material landscape – which reconstruction may be challenging, but is possible with the normal means of material archaeology. Hence, this approach can provide basic constraints over the general shape and flow of the cognitive landscape experienced by agents in the relevant cultural area. Such constraints may in and of themselves provide answers to some archaeological questions, or at least they may provide a robust basis for the reconstruction of a broader, multi-modal common ground regulating social behavior.

[4.6] Last but not least, the fact that this approach is explicitly based on a specific computational framework of human cognition enables the development of computational experiments aimed at probing the cognitive experience of given material landscapes. We may very well reproduce relevant features of the landscape *in silico*, throw in basic agents powered by implementations of Active Inference, and study the structure of their material and social engagement. In
doing so, we may produce objective, unambiguous results regarding the effects of
given features of the landscape, grounded on explicit assumptions about the
cognitive architecture and the cultural concepts (if any) through which our target
population engages with the landscape. For example, Constant et al. (2021; 2024)
developed a computational experiment aimed to assess how and whether
geometric patterns found on archaeological pottery may structure visual
perception. In principle, the same approach could be extended to the role of visual
perception of the material landscape in spatial navigation, and perhaps to the
study of how the cognitive experience of any given landscape may transfer to social
activity (see Albarracin et al. Forthcoming). The road towards the conception of
such *in silico* experiments is admittedly long and challenging, and requires active
cooperation between expert archaeologists and modelers. However, the possibility
of grounding the phenomenological interpretation of material landscapes on
explicit formal hypotheses is more than enough to justify this effort in our opinion.
Acknowledgements

This article was supported by the XSCAPE project under the European Research Council Synergy Grant ERC-2020-SyG 951631; and the MILESTONE project, funded by the Spanish State National Research Agency under Grant PID2023-152882NB-I00. We'd also like to thank the participants in our "From Material Landscape to Cognitive Landscapes" workshop during the 2024 European Association of Archaeology conference for the discussions that led to the redaction of this article.

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