ANT200H5 Lecture Notes - Lecture 18: Shanidar Cave, Hyoid Bone, Flow Velocity
Document Summary
The study of past ways of thought through material remains. It is the archaeology of the human mind. Four principal realms of ancient cognition that we can investigate: How people went about describing and measuring their world. How people planned their monuments and settlements. Which material goods people valued most highly and perhaps viewed as symbols of wealth, authority, or power. In which manner people conceived the supernatural (called cult practice by anthropologists) The ability to use symbols in very complex ways . Symbols are arbitrary: there is often nothing to indicate that one particular word or sign should represent a given object in the world rather than another. The meanings ascribed to a symbol is specific to a particular cultural tradition. Words (both written and spoken) themselves are symbols. As yet there is no clear archaeological (physical) methodology for determining precisely when language arose. A couple of physical evidence may indicate the presence of language:
