The cognitive life of things
Subtitle: recasting the boundaries of the mind
By: edited by Lambros Malafouris & Colin Renfrew
Contributors: McDonald Institute for Archaeological Research
Series: McDonald Institute monographs; McDonald Institute monographs
Publisher: McDonald Institute for Archaeological Research; Distributed by Oxbow Books; USA [distributor], David Brown Co.
Published: 2010
Place of publication: Cambridge, UK; Oxford, UK; Oakville, CT
Language: eng
Number of pages: 147
ISBN-13: 9781902937519
Subjects: Material culture; Case studies; Psychological aspects
Description: "Things have a social life. They also lead cognitive lives, working subtly in our minds. But just how is it that human thought has become so deeply involved in and expressed through material things? There is today a wide recognition that material culture regulates and shapes the ways in which people perceive, think and act. But just how does that work? This is one of the most challenging research topics for the archaeology and anthropology of human cognition. The understanding of the working of past and present material culture - its cognitive efficacy - is becoming a key issue in the cognitive and social sciences more widely. This volume, with innovative case studies ranging from prehistory to the present, seeks to establish a cross-disciplinary framework and to set out future directions for research. Its aim is to redress the balance of the cognitive equation by at last bringing materiality firmly into the cognitive fold. But how can we integrate artefacts - material culture - into existing theories of human cognition? How do we understand the significant role of the human use of the things we have ourselves created in the development of human intelligence? The distinguished contributors here argue that the boundaries of the mind must now be understood as extending beyond the individual and to include the world of the artefact if we are fully to grasp how interactions among people, things, space and time have come, over thousands of years, to shape the transformations in human cognition that have made us what we are."--Publisher's description.
Notes: "This volume derives from the symposium "The cognitive life of things: recasting the boundaries of the mind" held at the McDonald Institute for Archaeological Research, between 7th and 9th April, 2006"--Page ix.

Includes bibliographical references and index.
Table of contents: title: The cognitive life of things: archaeology, material engagement and the extended mind / Lambros Malafouris & Colin Renfrew; title: Knapping intentions and the marks of the mental / Lambros Malafouris; title: Material surrogacy and the supernatural: reflections on the role of artefacts in 'off-line' cognition / Andy Clark; title: Minds, things and materiality / Michael Wheeler; title: The death of the mind / Chris Gosden; title: Metaphor and materiality in earliest prehistory / Fiona Coward & Clive Gamble; title: Technological conceptualization: cognition on the shoulders of history / Niels Johannsen; title: The exographic revoution: neuropsychological sequelae / Merlin Donald; title: Communities of things and objects: a spatial perspective / Carl Knappett; title: Imagining the cognitive life of things / Edwin Hutchins; title: Things and their embodied environments / Charles Goodwin; title: Explaining artefact evolution / David Kirsh.