Mind in the Making: The Cognitive Life of Recycled Stone Tools

Understanding the Palaeolithic mind is one of archaeology’s greatest challenges, a quest long dominated by the “mental template” model that separates mind from matter. This talk challenges this assumption and proposes instead a framework where cognition is enacted, embodied, and formed through a dynamic engagement with the material world.

This theoretical problem will be explored through the practice of collecting and recycling old, human-made flint items during the Late Lower Palaeolithic of Israel (ca. 500-200,000 years ago). This practice does not appear to be a response to resource scarcity, and is thus suggested to be a deliberate choice. First, the act of collecting these old items, as well as creating the new recycled products themselves, can be viewed as physical practices of memory preservation. Second, observing the recycling process of these old items is suggested to reveal a profound cognitive shift in how early humans approached material during making. When working with an old, existing item whose form was already defined, the maker could not easily impose a preconceived mental form. Instead, it is suggested that the maker engaged and actively negotiated with the stone’s existing history, boundaries, and affordances.

Ultimately, this talk will propose that these prehistoric tools embed within themselves much more than prehistoric economic and functional lifeways. The talk will suggest that stone tool making was a tangible domain where early human ingenuity unfolded.

The AWRC have reserved a lunch table in hall for Cluster members where you will have a chance to meet with Bar over lunch. The talk at 1.15 pm in the Levett Room will be catered with coffee/tea and cakes (all welcome).