Cognitive Archaeology

[Palaeocory]

I've seen it but never tried! To be honest my pressure flaking is rubbish. The great thing about porcelain is that it knaps just like high quality flint - but it's not quite as hard. There's also no impurities or frost fracture or 'secret geodes' when you crack into a big bit of it. And I can make a mould and have 250 pieces the exact same size and weight, and train up participants using it... then measure the resulting 'assemblages'. Here is a poster I presented in the Spring that summarizes it and has a few photos:

https://www.academia.edu/12516652/C...Palaeolithic_22-23_April_University_of_Oxford

Now I just need to buy a kiln and wedge it into my one bedroom flat somewhere my husband wont mind...

 

[Tengu]

Ill stick to leather thank you...less finds to confuse me.

But I was turned down when I offered to make buckets for the Mary Rose, turns out you have to be in the guild...

 

[Goatboy]

Maybe slightly off topic but relevant to me is the lovely hand axe where the maker carefully worked 'round a little scallop type shell to make it a central decorative piece. Speaks a lot to me about the mental & artistic process that must've been going through their mind. A piece of stone age bling if you like. One of the prettiest things I've ever seen.

Sent via smoke-signal from a woodland in Scotland.

 

[Palaeocory]

Not at all! It is indeed beautiful - here is a photo:

While I'm not entirely convinced it was intentional (flint has lots of fossils in it, and it might just be a coincidence), it is truly a lovely piece. And at 400,000 years old, if it was left there as a pleasing aesthetic, that's quite poignant!

 

[Toddy]

I recorded a bundle of Acheulian handaxes when I was at University (one of the lecturers had specialised in the Mesolithic and had these from an earlier dig on a palaeolithic site). It meant that I handled them, measured them, accurately drew them.
Beautiful workmanship, crisp and fresh all these thousands of years later, very aesthetically pleasing too. There was something about a couple of them too that seemed to make them the work of one person. Like recognising handwriting or stitching by an individual. I'm told that flint knappers end up recognising their work and the work of others that they see often enough. Fletchers do it as well, as do masons, joiners, and leather and bone workers.

I reckon making is hard wired into human brains

M

 

[boatman]

Inheritability of traits is being studied and although you get the nature versus nature argument I do wonder if, along with the "collar stud" birthmark on the back of my neck my ancestors also had some of my traits.

To recognise that some finds from the past were possibly made by the same person or school opens yet another view of the past and the significance of this has yet to be properly drawn, see Bush barrow gold for example.

I eat, sleep, etc just like our ancestors so is it far-fetched to think they enjoyed a good meal? Cognitive?

 

[boatman]

I'll go further, out in my coracle and the chop gets up I bet some of my feelings have been shared with coraclers of the past. At Durrington Walls my pig targets shot at by visitors to the excavation with bow and arrow, satisfaction at a hit isn't that some way to the same feeling that the archers of the past that shot real pigs for feasts back when at least in a tiny way?

 

[sandbender]

"...Inheritability of traits is being studied..."

Being untidy and disorganised seems to run in several generations of Mrs Sandbenders family.

 

[Tengu]

Gosh, I must be your long lost relative then.

 

[Old Bones]

Hi Old Bones! You should come on the course in the summer

It sounds interesting, but between working and looking after the kids, I'm not sure I'd have much time! In fact thats been my excuse for not writing up and publishing for the last 16 years....

Notice that I have carefully avoided any mention of theortical archaeology, etc - it hurt my brain as an undergrad, and my brain turned to mush years ago.

To be fair, I was probably one of those who did end up 'fondling pots in a museum', so to speak, or rather crunching data - but thats sometimes the way it is.

Even those who are archaeobotanists do it…..one lady I knew actually recorded her own foods and excretions. Her stool samples were contrasted to the coprolites found in Roman forts in the UK.

OK, now thats dedication. Of course it does remind me of the old joke about not shaking hands at a coprologists conference....