Excavating the Mind
A part of the subject areas Archaeology, Psychology and
Out of stock
Edited by
Helle Juel Jensen,
Mads D. Jessen and
Niels Johannsen
With contributions by
Chris Gosden,
Mads Kähler Holst,
Niels Johannsen,
Janet Dixon Keller,
Annette Kjølby,
Carl Knappett,
Lambros Malafouris,
Kostalena Michelaki,
Deborah Olausson,
Robert W. Preucel,
Marianne Rasmussen,
John Robb,
David A. Warburton and
Svend Østergaard
More about the book
About the book
Excavating the mind deals with the relationship between the material culture of humans, i.e. our technologies, arts and environments, and our mental worlds.
Emphasizing the close interdependence of mind and matter, the volume resonates with current developments within sociology, psychology and the cognitive sciences, yet it aims to supplement the focus on modern, predominantly Western societies and individuals with studies of different cultural contexts and processes in the evolutionary and historical past as well as the ethnographic present.
With contributions from cognitive and social archaeology as well as anthropology, semiotics and the history of religion, the book combines well-illustrated case studies covering a wide chronological and geographic span - from Neolithic Europe to the present-day South Pacific - with incisive discussion of particular theoretical issues in the study of mind and material culture.
Excavating the mind is an original contribution to the multidisciplinary debate on the uniquely human entanglement of complex material cultures and mental worlds.
Table of contents
Debating the mind
Imitation, mirror neurons and material culture
Boxes or creepers? Containments and entanglements of mind and matter
On Being More-Than-One and Doubts About Mind
Linear B as Distributed Cognition. Excavating a Mind not Limited by the Skin
Cultural practice, material reference and the generation of meaning
Meaning in miniature. Semiotic networks in material culture
Of God Stones and Dance Plazas. The Material Meditation of Historical Consciousness
The Hall and the Church during Christianization. Building ideologies and material concepts
In small things remembered. Pottery decoration in Neolithic Southern Italy
Colourful Meaning. Terminology, Abstraction and the Near Eastern Bronze Age
Agency, technology and society
Making daggers and scouting for talents. Situated learning in Late Neolithic Scandinavia
Decision-making and Structuration. A study of minds behind private statues in New Kingdom Egyptian temples
Combined efforts. The cooperation and coordination of barrow-building in the Bronze Age
Literacy. A Tool of Modernity and Community in Vanuatu
Archaeology and the Inanimate Agency Proposition. A critique and a suggestion
