Emergence of Mind
Iain Davidson
Archaeology and Palaeoanthropology
School of Geography, Planning, Archaeology and Palaeoanthropology
University of New England, Armidale, NSW 2351, AUSTRALIA
Recent discussions of the emergence of mind have emphasised the need to consider evidence from all of the disciplines of primatology, psychology, and linguistics as well as physical anthropology and the archaeology of subsistence, stone artefacts, bone tools, ochre, art and the spatial organisation of activities within sites and across landscapes. Views have polarised around two hypotheses: an early emergence to account for the evidence of expansion of brain size, the earliest appearance of regular use of stone tools and changes in subsistence at the time of the emergence of the first fossils that physical anthropologists call Homo; a late emergence, probably associated with the use of symbols and dated some time between the appearance of fully modern humans, Homo sapiens, in Africa and the colonisation of Australia. In this session, data relevant to both early and late hypotheses are presented in the light of understandings of primatology, psychology and linguistics by specialists in physical anthropology, and the archaeology of subsistence, stone artefacts, bone tools, ochre, and the spatial organisation of activities within sites and across landscapes. In particular there are papers about the latest tantalising evidence from the Middle Stone Age of southern Africa.
papers:
Author 1 Author 2 Title
Barnham Seeing Yellow: Pigment use in the Zambian Middle Stone Age
Bunn The behaviour ecology of carcass acquisition and utilisation by Pio-pliocene Homo in east Africa
Davidson Cranial Capacity and the Emergence of Mind
Hewitt The need to communicate precise information about time and place as a selection pressure for the evolution of speech.
Mclarnon The role of enhanced breathing control in the evolution of human language
Sinclair Quinney “Archaics”, “moderns”, and the “muddle in the middle’
Wadley Cultural modernity in the MSA of Southern Africa: What is the evidence
Watts Skin-changing ritual performance in the Middle Stone Age
White The Misuse of Stone Tools
Wynn Did Homo Erectus Cognition include a technical module