We have never been behaviourally modern’: The implications of Material Engagement Theory and...

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Quaternary International xxx (2015) 1e13

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‘We have never been behaviourally modern’: The implications ofMaterial Engagement Theory and Metaplasticity for understandingthe Late Pleistocene record of human behaviour

Patrick Roberts a, b, *

a Research Laboratory for Archaeology and the History of Art, University of Oxford, Dyson Perrins Building, South Parks Road, Oxford, OX1 3QY, UKb School of Archaeology, University of Oxford, St Hugh's College, Oxford, OX2 6LE, UK

a r t i c l e i n f o

Article history:Available online xxx

Keywords:‘Behavioural modernity’Cognitive archaeologyHuman mindMaterial Engagement TheoryMetaplasticityLate Pleistocene

* Corresponding author. Research Laboratory for ArArt, University of Oxford, Dyson Perrins Building, So3QY, UK.

E-mail address: [email protected].

http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.quaint.2015.03.0111040-6182/© 2015 Elsevier Ltd and INQUA. All rights

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a b s t r a c t

The emergence of the human mind is a topic that has been of considerable interest to the disciplines ofarchaeology, cognitive archaeology and neuroscience in recent years. Most research in this regard hastended to focus on what material culture associated with early Homo sapiens might reflect in terms of thetiming and nature of early cognitive capacities and ‘behavioural modernity’. In recent years, however,both the concept of ‘behavioural modernity’ and its passive treatment of material culture have becomehighly criticised. Yet, until now, there has remained some confusion as to where to turn in its absence.Recently, Lambros Malafouris outlined the theoretical frameworks of Material Engagement Theory andMetaplasticity as a means to understand the active role of material culture in the constitution of thehuman mind. However, despite Malafouris' application of these theoretical frameworks to a series of casestudies previously associated with human cognitive ‘modernity’ (including tool manufacture, early bodyornamentation, and ritual art), the Late Pleistocene archaeological community has done little to engagewith this work. In this paper I outline and then apply MET and Metaplasticity to two further case studiesoften considered pertinent to the development of human cognition in the Late Pleistocene e namely,long-distance resource sourcing and/or exchange and the development of composite technologies. Indoing so, I hope to demonstrate that there is somewhere to turn in the wake of the statement ‘we havenever been behaviourally modern’.

© 2015 Elsevier Ltd and INQUA. All rights reserved.

1. Introduction

The abilities and origins of the kind of mind characteristic of ourspecies, Homo sapiens, remain highly debated topics in anthropol-ogy, archaeology, and neuroscience. Since the late 20th century,many archaeologists and anthropologists have maintained some-thing of a separation between fossil and genetic evidence for theemergence of the biological form of our species in Africa c. 200,000years ago (Anatomically Modern Humans) (White et al., 2003;Trinkaus, 2005; Grine et al., 2007), and the emergence of anevolved ‘modern’ mind characteristic of our species as we under-stand it today (Behaviourally Modern Humans) (Klein, 1995;Mellars, 2005, 2006). This separation initially led to an intensive

chaeology and the History ofuth Parks Road, Oxford, OX1

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‘We have never been behavioleistocene record of human b

search in Late Pleistocene archaeology for the when and where ofthe earliest material evidence for ‘modern’minds and behaviour inthe form of a ‘checklist’ that has included symbolic behaviour,concern with ornament and personal display, subsistencecomplexity and diversity, and refined technologies (Mellars, 2006;Conard, 2010; Henshilwood et al., 2011). Once uncovered, thesematerial traces were characterised as representative of either‘revolutions’ (Bar-Yosef, 2002; Mellars, 2007; Klein, 2008) orgradual trajectories of behavioural change (McBrearty and Brooks,2000; Gamble, 2007; Mellars et al., 2007).

In the last decade, a number of serious problems have emergedwith the concept of ‘behavioural modernity’ as a threshold in H.sapiens (Wadley, 2001; Shea, 2011). These include: the associationof certain material traces from the ‘behaviourally modern’ checklistwith hominins other than H. sapiens (d'Errico, 2003; d'Errico et al.,2003; Zilh~ao, 2007; Joordens et al., 2014), evidence for the emer-gence and then disappearance of certain ‘behaviourally modern’traits in Africa and elsewhere (Lombard, 2005; Lombard and

urally modern’: The implications of Material Engagement Theory andehaviour, Quaternary International (2015), http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/

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P. Roberts / Quaternary International xxx (2015) 1e132

Parsons, 2011), the apparent lack of ‘behavioural modernity’ incertain regions of the world even upon the arrival of H. sapiens(O'Connell and Allen, 2007; Petraglia et al., 2010), and preservationbiases involved in the search for its ‘earliest’ material traces (Shea,2011). Perhaps even more problematic is the way in which theconceptualisation of ‘behavioural modernity’ draws a dichotomy,not only between our species and other hominins (ancestral orotherwise), but also between ‘behaviourally modern’ humans and‘non-behaviourally modern’ humans within the H. sapiens taxon.Such dichotomies seem strange from the perspective of Darwinianevolution and the rest of the animal kingdom, and also lendthemselves to racial commentaries of biological haves and have-nots (Shea, 2011). It is perhaps unsurprising then that a numberof archaeologists have concluded that research may advance morereadily without the concept of ‘modern human behaviour’, lookinginstead at more nuanced understandings of ‘complex cognition’(Wadley, 2001; Wadley et al., 2009) and ‘behavioural variability’(Shea, 2011, and see comments).

However, there remains a fundamental problem with ap-proaches to the Late Pleistocene record of material culture asso-ciated with H. sapiens. From a cognitive perspective, one of theprimary issues with previous research has been the inference ofunidirectional relationships between particular material traces andpre-existing, developed cognitive capacities. This approach has ledto the archaeological use of material forms such as representa-tional art, evidence for symbolism, reconstructions of tool-makingbehaviour, and complex technological systems to generalise aboutwhen certain capacities of the modern human brain emerged(Ambrose, 2001; Conard and Bolus, 2003; Henshilwood et al.,2009; Wadley et al., 2009). Contrastingly, neuroscientists haveused MRI images and experiments undertaken on living humanindividuals to generalise capacities back across the archaeologicalrecord to explain particular behaviours or material forms (Dunbar,2010a,b; 2012; Shultz et al., 2012). Although both approaches haveprovided a number of interesting insights into the development ofthe human mind, they have a tendency to fall into the ‘modern’trap, critiqued by Latour (1993; Malafouris, 2010, 2013), that en-visages an internal, omnipotent human mind that can act on aseparate, external world. The idea that a givenmaterial trace can bepassively reflective of an innate mental capacity suggests a static,unilinear association between defined internal minds and anexternal material world. Furthermore, ontologically, any imputedcognitive change becomes inextricably linked to a particular ma-terial result.

In the last few years Lambros Malafouris (2010, 2013) hasdeveloped the theoretical frameworks of ‘Material EngagementTheory’ and ‘Metaplasticity’ as ways to understand human mate-rialemind relationships and produce a more fruitful collaborationof archaeology and neuroscience. He argues that the importantchanges in the “dynamic bio-cultural construct” of the humanmindare constituted and brought forth by human mental and physicalinteraction with the material world. The human mind is anincomplete and unfinished project to be further shaped anddeveloped by its own potency for material interaction (Latour,1993; Malafouris, 2013). Although Malafouris (2007, 2008, 2010,2013) has provided an intriguing application of these theoreticalframeworks to particular case studies from the Late Pleistocenerecord of human, the wider archaeological literature for the LatePleistocene is yet to fully engage with these concepts. This hasmeant that the implications and potential of his insights for studiesof the earliest material culture produced by our species have beenlittle-explored, despite this being the area in which they mightresult in the greatest theoretical shift. Indeed, these frameworks donot only provide a means to move beyond searches for ‘behaviouralmodernity’ in the archaeological record e they also allow us to

Please cite this article in press as: Roberts, P., ‘We have never been behavioMetaplasticity for understanding the Late Pleistocene record of human bj.quaint.2015.03.011

move past our own ‘modern’ assumptions as to the relationshipbetween the material record and the human mind.

In this paper, I first explore the historical context of ‘behaviouralmodernity’ along with its recent critiques and alternatives. I thenpresent and discuss ‘Material Engagement Theory’ and ‘Meta-plasticity’ in more detail before applying them, in turn, to twospecific case studies (i.e. material correlates of long-distancesourcing and/or exchange and composite technologies) argued tohave key implications for the emergence of human cognition dur-ing the Late Pleistocene, as well as to the Late Pleistocene archae-ological record more broadly. I argue that these theoreticalapproaches are well placed to make sense of the Late Pleistocenearchaeological record on a number of different temporal andgeographical scales. Furthermore, I argue that in the vacuum left bythe assertion ‘we have never been behaviourally modern’ theseapproaches facilitate a more productive relationship betweenarchaeology and neuroscience where the human mind meets thematerial world.

2. The problem of ‘behavioural modernity’

2.1. Historical context

The term ‘behavioural modernity’ was first used to describe aseries of material changes seen in the European archaeologicalrecord at the onset of the Upper Palaeolithic period c. 40,000 yearsago. These changes included a shift towards more varied andcomplex lithic technologies, the working of non-lithic media fortools, increasingly diverse subsistence strategies, long-distanceprocurement networks, and evidence for personal ornamentationand ‘symbolism’ (Mellars, 1973, 1996; Klein, 1992; Blades, 1999;Stiner et al., 1999; Valladas et al., 2001). The apparent dramaticflorescence of these materials, and the fact that they only appearedwith the arrival of H. sapiens, led to them being characterised asevidence for the influx of ‘behavioural modernity’ into Europe(Mellars, 1973). These novel traits were framed as crucial, ‘revolu-tionary’ adaptations to the harsh and oscillating environments ofEurope, and intense interaction with indigenous Neanderthalpopulations, that facilitated human expansion and dominanceacross the European continent (Mellars, 2006; Mellars et al., 2013).Thus ‘behavioural modernity’ not only created a contrast betweenH. sapiens and indigenous Homo neanderthalensis, but also, byimplying a behavioural change unique to the colonisation ofEurope, formed a contrast between behaviourally modern Euro-pean Upper Palaeolithic human populations and their ancestral,non-behaviourally modern, ‘non-European’ human populations.

However, during the 1990s and early 2000s, archaeologicalfinds in Africa began to question the evolutionary of significance ofthe Middle to Upper Palaeolithic shift in Europe. The Still Bay andHowiesons Poort techno complexes of southern Africa demon-strate much earlier evidence in Africa for technological diversity,including osseous toolkits, and personal ornamentation. The StillBay technocomplex consists of bifacially worked lithic points andis primarily characterised at the sites of Blombos Cave and SibuduCave (Wadley, 2007; Jacobs et al., 2013). Associated layers atBlombos Cave producing evidence for bone points, pierced Nas-sarius kraussanus shell beads, and engraved ochre dated to be-tween 75.5 and 67.8 ka (Henshilwood et al., 2002; Henshilwood,2007). Interestingly, more recently, Blombos has produced evi-dence for incised ochre and paint production as early as 100 ka(Henshilwood et al., 2009; Jacobs et al., 2013). Similarly, althoughthe Still Bay dates to a similar period at Sibudu Cave, recent workhas suggested complex heat-treated technologies, and symbolicpigment use could extend as far back as 164 ka at Pinnacle Point(Marean et al., 2007; Brown et al., 2009). Alongside the Still Bay,


P. Roberts / Quaternary International xxx (2015) 1e13 3

the Howiesons Poort complex, variably dated to 64.8e59.5 ka and80e55 ka (Jacobs et al., 2008; Tribolo et al., 2009), is considered toprovide evidence for some of the earliest multi-component com-posite lithic technologies in the world (McBrearty and Brooks,2000; Barham, 2013). Associated finds include engraved ostricheggshell at Diepkloof and Klipdrift Shelter (Texier et al., 2010;Henshilwood et al., 2014) as well as bone tools and potentiallyshell beads at Sibudu Cave (Backwell et al., 2008). Further, evi-dence for early technological complexity and personal ornamen-tation is provided by the discovery of several barbed bone pointsat the site of Katanda, Democratic Republic of Congo that havebeen dated to c. 89 þ 22/15 ka by TL, U-series and ESR dating(Brooks et al., 1995) and to 95.6 ± 13.9e59.1 ± 10.4 ka by OSL(Feathers and Migliorini, 2001).

These African discoveries were used to suggest the developmentof human ‘modernity’ within or even before the Middle Stone Agein southern Africa (Foley and Lahr, 1997; McBrearty and Brooks,2000; Mellars, 2006). However, although they pushed evidencefor a cognitive shift further back in time, these studies retained thesame material ‘checklist’ of ‘modernity’ formulated in Europe.Furthermore, the reliable dating of the earliest H. sapiens fossils inEast Africa back to c. 200,000 years ago, including those from Omoand Herto in Ethiopia (Clark et al., 2003; White et al., 2003; Fleagleet al., 2008; Shea, 2008), seemed to confirm some temporaldistinction between early Anatomically Modern Human fossils andBehaviourally Modern Human traces of behavioural complexity.This could, however, be the result of the almost complete lack ofany archaeological record from between 200 and 120,000 years agoin southern Africa (Barham and Mitchell, 2008). Indeed, increasingevidence from the Levantine sites of Skhul and Qafzeh suggests thatH. sapiens, accompanied by shell beads and pigment use, wereextending their reach beyond Africa as early as 115 ka (Bar-Yosef,1998; Vanhaeren et al., 2006), while evidence for bead produc-tion at Taforalt, Morocco c. 82 ka is older than evidence for the samepractice in southern Africa (Bouzouggar et al., 2007).

2.2. Challenges and alternatives

One of the main paradigms of ‘behavioural modernity’, as out-lined above, is that it is exclusive to ‘modern’ humans or H. sapiens,in opposition to co-existing hominin species such as H. nean-derthalensis. However, even in the region of its inception, Europe,this tenet has been significantly questioned (d'Errico, 2003;d'Errico et al., 2003; Zilh~ao, 2007). Evidence of so-called techno-logical complexity, symbolic behaviour and subsistence diversityhas been found associated with Neanderthal populations in Europeand the Levant (d'Errico, 2003; Shea, 2006; Zilh~ao et al., 2010),causing some to suggest that even on the basis of the ‘behaviourallymodern’ checklist, formulated from the European Upper Palae-olithic record, a further hominin species can be characterized as‘behaviourally modern’ (Zilh~ao et al., 2010). Furthermore, there isgenetic evidence that Neanderthals interbred to some extent withH. sapiens during long periods of coexistence in Eurasia, withmodern Eurasian H. sapiens populations sharing c. 4% of geneticinformation with extinct H. neanderthalensis (Green et al., 2010).Although it should be noted that both genetic similarities andmorphological variance could be the result of relatedness of thesehominin species via an ancestral hominin (Homo heidelbergensis)(Shea, 2011), the picture ofH. sapiens andH. neanderthalensis is nowmuch more complex than simple theories of modern versus non-modern once argued. Genetic evidence from the Denisovan homi-nin remains (Reich et al., 2011) further demonstrates the interac-tion between H. sapiens and other co-existent hominins thatcontinues to break down biological boundaries erected betweenpalaeontologically defined species.


However, the eventual extinction of all hominin species otherthan H. sapienswould still imply some unique trait or capacity withregards to the latter (Mellars, 2005; Mellars et al., 2013). That said,consistent continuous traits or capacities of ‘Behaviourally ModernHumans’ in contrast to ‘Anatomically Modern Humans’ and othercoexistent/ancestral hominins are somewhat hard to pinpointgiven increasing archaeological evidence for discontinuity andgeographical diversity in certain ‘modern’ material traces withinAfrica and beyond. For example, the recent dating of the Still Bayand Howiesons Poort in southern Africa leaves up to 6700 years ofdiscontinuity between these assemblages (Jacobs et al., 2008).Furthermore, stone tool assemblages immediately post-dating theHowiesons Poort, between about 58,000 and 50,000 years ago, andarguably down to the Later Stone Age c. 25,000e20,000 years ago,have been considered “less sophisticated” (Jacobs and Roberts,2009: 191), demonstrating a return to “earlier technological stra-tegies” (McCall, 2007: 1749). Similarly, toolkits used to characterizethe Upper Palaeolithic in Europe show substantial regional di-versity (Fedele et al., 2008), while the hallmarks of symbolic andartistic expression during this time appear to be largely restricted,at least in the early stages of their appearance, to the Swabian Juraof Germany, in the case of bone and antler carvings (Conard andBolus, 2003), and to central France and northern Spain in the caseof parietal cave art. As argued by d'Errico and Stringer (2011) intheir presentation of ‘saltation’ model of the evolution of humancognition, the nature of such discontinuity and regional variety isfar more in tune with contextual ecological and demographic re-sponses rather than any sweeping, ‘revolutionary’ cognitive orbehavioural threshold.

This problem also resurfaces in arguments that emphasize thelack of material traces of ‘behavioural modernity’ in some regions ofthe world, even following the arrival of H. sapiens. For example,there is a suggestion that there was an early, pre-Toba eruption(74,000 years ago), expansion of H. sapiens into Arabia and India(James and Petraglia, 2005; Groucutt and Petraglia, 2012; Boivinet al., 2013). Although still debated, if this is indeed the case, suchan expansion is largely represented by toolkits demonstrating‘Middle Palaeolithic’ affinities (James and Petraglia, 2005; Roseet al., 2011; Groucutt and Petraglia, 2012; Petraglia et al., 2012). Asimilar scenario has already been established at the Levantine sitesof Skhul and Qafzeh (Bar-Yosef, 1998; Vanhaeren et al., 2006).Furthermore, although Australia and New Guinea were demon-strably occupied by H. sapiens from c. 45e40,000 years onwards,there is a relative scarcity of evidence for material traits tradition-ally used to define ‘behavioural modernity’ in Europe and Africauntil the middle Holocene (Lourandos, 1997; O'Connell and Allen,2007; Habgood and Franklin, 2008; Stern, 2009) (though seeSmith (2013) for a review of evidence for complex subsistencestrategies, ecological manipulation, and resource procurement inthe deserts of Late Pleistocene Australia). Indeed, the stone toolsrecovered from the earliest sites with evidence for H. sapiens inAustralia are described as ‘cores’ and ‘scrapers’, showing little dif-ference fromGrahame Clark's (1969)Mode 1 toolkits that describedthe Lower Palaeolithic tools of Africa associated with the firstemergence of the genus Homo (Mulvaney and Kamminga, 1999).Although some have argued this to be evidence for a ‘losing’ ofbehavioural modernity (Jones, 1996), a more parsimonious expla-nation is that Late Pleistocene material traits are best viewed asresponses to contextual pressures rather than as clear indicators ofthresholds of cognitive change (Lombard and Parsons, 2011).

From a more methodological standpoint, the search for thewhen and where of the earliest ‘modern’ traces are doomed by thevery nature of the archaeological record itself. In terms of when,greater evidence of ‘modern’ behaviours later in the archaeologicalrecord of H. sapiens may purely reflect the fact that more



archaeological sites are preserved, and have been excavated, fromrecent time ranges (Shea, 2011). Similarly, with regards to where,politically sensitive situations across West and Central Africa, aswell as much of the Middle East, mean that a huge spectrum ofevidence for the earliest artefacts of H. sapiens will not have thechance to be excavated, even if present, for many years to come.These problems have led to the creation of alternative models forthe investigation and interpretation of the Late Pleistocenematerialrecord. As early as 2001, LynWadley critiqued the use of ‘checklists’of modernity, instead encouraging a broader focus on ‘complexcognition’ (Wadley, 2001). Instead of using a ‘checklist’, Wadley hasemphasized the importance of contextual and experimental ana-lyses in the investigation of what different material forms andtechniques might demonstrate regarding human mental re-quirements and capacities (Wadley et al., 2009; Wadley, 2010).Similarly, John Shea more recently proposed looking at relativedegrees ‘behavioural variability’ in the material record of H. sapiensand other hominins. Specifically, Shea (2011) uses Grahame Clark's(REF) Modes (1969) to demonstrate that lithic technological vari-ability is no less at East African sites associated with earlyH. sapiensfossils than later MSA assemblages. However, although they moveusefully beyond ‘behavioural modernity’, these approaches main-tain that material traces can passively represent a particulardistinctive threshold of either complexity or variability.

This has been the fundamental ontological issue with ap-proaches to the Late Pleistocene record of material culture to date.The absence of a material form or technique, or evidence for vari-ability, earlier in the archaeological record does not necessarilymean a particular capacity was absent. For one thing relevantperishable materials may simply have not been preserved (Shea,2011). Perhaps more importantly though, a particular materialform is unlikely to passively equate, temporally or in kind, with theearliest formation of cognitive capacities we observe in humanstoday. This problem can also be seen in applications of neurosci-ence to human cognitive development. Many studies have usedmodern MRI scanning and experiments to discern certain cognitiveor behavioural capacities that can then be matched with thearchaeological record in order to discern their first appearance. Forexample, analysis of the effects of dance, song and social interactionon the human brain has led Dunbar (2003, 2010a,b) to suggest thatexpansions in the human brain are related primarily to increasedsocial bonding. Findings such as these in modern neurosciencehave then been extrapolated to suggest that the earliest evidencefor personal adornment, in the form of shell beads and ochrestaining, is simply reflective different, various aspects of a devel-oped human brain (Gamble et al., 2011; Henshilwood and Dubreuil,2011). Although such work provides interesting insight into theworkings of the human mind, it largely neglects the active role thematerial record can have in shaping and developing humancognition and behaviour. Despite criticism by Karl Popper (1979) asearly as the 1970s, it is only with increasing research in neurosci-ence, anthropology, and philosophy, that is emphasizing the activeagency of objects within human social or biological worlds, thatsuch a position is becoming unsustainable (Merleau-Ponty, 1962;Gell, 1998; Mithen and Parsons, 2008; Miller, 2010; Malafouris,2009, 2010, 2013).

3. Material Engagement Theory and the prehistoric mind

The development of cognitive archaeology as a discipline hasfocused on two major threads of enquiry: the discernment of thecognitive changes that characterize human speciation (d'Erricoet al., 2003; Mellars et al., 2007; Malafouris and Renfrew, 2008;Stout et al., 2008; Coolidge and Wynn, 2009; Malafouris, 2010)and more recent cognitive developments in our species, including


the development of literacy and urbanization, agriculture, andbroader considerations of the interaction between material cultureand cognitive change (Hodder, 1999; Boivin, 2008; Gosden, 2008;Mithen and Parsons, 2008; Renfrew et al., 2008; Malafouris andRenfrew, 2010). However, although both research areas haveproduced a huge variety of stimulating insights across a series ofarchaeological periods and anthropological questions, theirgrounding in methodology has retained an ongoing ontologicalissue. As Malafouris (2013: 24) puts it: “Where in the archaeo-logical record do we find cognition?” In a broader sense, thisquestion hinges on the nature of collaboration between archae-ology and neuroscience. Where do the cognitive and the archae-ology meet?

Until recently, archaeological theory and, indeed, cognitivearchaeological theory, has seen the archaeological record as theunidirectional “external” material product of “internal” cognitivecapacities and changes. Consequently, the search for prehistoricminds has been based on inferences as to how they might haveshaped, formed, and developed the resulting archaeological record.Indeed, in the context of archaeological, anthropological, andneurological research into ‘behavioural modernity’ and cognitive‘complexity’ this has led to the Late Pleistocene record of H. sapiensbecoming a passive residue of an active cognitive capacity orchange. As Lambros Malafouris (2013: 25) has argued, thisperspective is representative of a broader ontological trend inWestern society that erects a Cartesian dichotomy between thethinking, bounded, but active mind and the external, passive ma-terial world. In turn, this dichotomy also follows the broader‘modern’ ontology of ‘purification’ that perceives a clean separationbetween the natural, non-human world and the human world,society and the self (Latour, 1993). In his book, ‘we have never beenmodern’, Bruno Latour (1993) argued that the history of scientificdiscovery and experiment, the political milieu of global warmingand HIV/AIDs pandemic, as well as the production of bio-technologies, have demonstrated that this ‘modern’ ontologicalboundary between the natural and human world is easily decon-structed and essentially illusionary. The same can be argued for theCartesian separation of mind and matter.

In his 2013 book ‘How Things Shape the Mind’ Lambros Mala-fouris put forward Material Engagement Theory (MET) as a pro-ductive new methodological and theoretical framework incognitive archaeology, one that challenges previously conceivedboundaries of themind and thematerial world. To frame his theory,Malafouris (2008, 2013) utilized the thought experiment of theblind man with a walking stick discussed by the phenomenologicalphilosopher and anthropologist Maurice Merleau-Ponty (1962) andthe anthropologist Gregory Bateson (1973).

“Where does the blind man's self begin? At the tip of the stick?At the handle of the stick? Or at some point halfway up thestick?”

-Bateson (1973, 318).

“Where do we draw, and on what basis can we draw, a delim-iting line across the extended system that determines the blindman's perception and locomotion?”

-Malafouris (2013, 4)

In short, where is the ontological boundary best placedwhenweanalyze human sensory and cognitive interaction with the materialworld? Are materials simply passive devices to be created and usedby a bounded, omnipotent cognition and mind? Or are they, in fact,bound up with the formation, development, perception and evenproduction of that mind?



Malafouris (2013) argues that this thought experiment dem-onstrates that we must ‘unlearn modernity’ in archaeology andcognitive archaeology if we are to properly understand the inter-action of the human mind and the material world. If an archaeol-ogist excavated the blindman's stick he/shemight first consider thecomplexity of its shape andmanufacture in considering themaker'scognitive capabilities. Further consideration may then lead thearchaeologist to consider the production of the stick in relation tobroader social capacities or problem-solving abilities of that samemind. However, what such an advance up Christopher Hawkes'(1954) ladder of inference would miss entirely is the stick's activerole in developing and constituting theman's sensory and cognitivecapabilities to feel his way within the world. Arguably, the mostimportant cognitive aspect of the blind man's interaction with hisstick is how the stick and mind mutually constitute each other tocreate a newmaterial-mind hybrid, to borrow Latour's term (1993),and a new pathway of cognition which cannot be investigated if aboundary is drawn at any point between the two. In broaderapplication to archaeology, we “need only replace the stick withany of the numerous artifacts and innovations that constitute thediverse archaeological inventory of prehistoric material culture”(Malafouris, 2013, 4e5). In essence, Material Engagement Theoryseeks to refocus methodology and theory on the dynamic processin which material and mental worlds promote and shape the ca-pacities and developments of each other.

However, movement away from treating material culture as theend result of a deterministic, unilinear relationship between innateneurocognitive capacity and the material world does not mean thatit is impossible to use the material record to understand pastcognitive structures and changes, albeit in a more dynamic andmultidirectional manner. Far from it since the analysis of the blindman's stick is crucial to understanding how the man's existingneural structures and sensory capacities might have combinedwiththis material object of given material characteristics to build newneural pathways and possibilities in his movement and sensoryunderstanding of the world. To take another example, in his dis-cussion of the development of an “extra-neural” numerical senseduring the emergence of tokens and writing in Mesopotamia,Malafouris (2010,115) asks how the intraparietal area of the humanbrain changed in order to develop true human numerosity from amore general “number sense” shared with other species. In arguingthat the use of clay tokens actively enabled this change he is notsaying that they are disconnected from changes in particular neuralstructures and therefore useless in the search for changes in humancognition. Quite the opposite, the tokens provide an active, multi-directional linkage between the neural andmaterial world at a timeof significant structural change.

Such a perspective is allied with that developed in neuro-constructivism in the field of evolutionary psychology. Neuro-constructivism has demonstrated that cognitive developmentoccurs through a process of “probabilistic epigenesis” (Gottlieb,2002, 2003). Rather than viewing brain development as genedriven and determined, it is instead seen as a bidirectional processinfluenced by genetic, behavioural, environmental, and socio-cultural factors (Gottlieb, 2007). As Griffiths and Stotz (2000; 31)state, humans do not inherit a mind “but the ability to develop amind”. Consequently, the same genotype can have a myriad ofdifferent neural, cognitive, and behavioural outcomes. However,neuroconstructivism does not ignore the structural or limitingboundaries of the human brain (Mareschal et al., 2007). Neuralchange is seen as coming about as a result of engagement withpreviously existing “partial representations” or minimal conditionsin order to build new, “abstract representations” (Mareschal et al.,2007). Transformation will not occur if the neural system is notsufficiently flexible, the minimal conditions are not present, or if it


is outcompeted by amore efficient neural pathway or network. As aconsequence, certain changes may not be possible until a geneticmutation breaks the limits of plasticity (see below) or makespossible new connections and networks that can then be broughtforth by environmental and contextual engagement of the mindwith the world.

4. Metaplasticity

MET has significant implications for how we view the origins ofthe ‘human’ mind. Instead of perceiving the brain as a hard-wired,internal, bounded organ that is biologically constant in certain ca-pacities following human speciation (Evans et al., 2005), the brain isan ongoing, dynamic product of consistent cultural activity andmaterial engagement (Malafouris, 2013). In looking at materialindicators of human cognition, MET suggests that there is no singleevolutionary event or moment where the brain becomes defini-tively ‘human’. Instead, increasing genetic evidence is demon-strating that the human brain is part of a continuous evolutionaryprocess even on historical timescales (Cochran and Harpending,2010). Under the terms of MET it becomes impossible to view thehumanmind as some revolutionary event of evolution, the pinnacleof a trajectory towards sophistication and specialization that weidentify with our own abilities and achievements. Instead, thehuman mind is extraordinary in its “ever-increasing projectiveflexibility” (Malafouris, 2013; 46) or plasticity that enables its fluidand fruitful interaction with a number of different environmental,cultural and material contexts. This distinctive characteristic of thehuman mind is what Malafouris (2013) terms ‘Metaplasticity’.

In neuroscience, ‘neuroplasticity’ refers to in vivo changes inneural pathways and synapses due to changes in activity, envi-ronment and neural processes. Going against the traditionalconsensus that the brain is a physiologically static organ, researchinto neuroplasticity over the last two decades has concerned itselfwith how and why the brain can change throughout life (Pascual-Leone et al., 2005). This plasticity can occur on a variety of bio-logical levels, ranging from cellular changes to large-scale corticalremapping. One of the more well-known examples of neuro-plasticity is research into neural responses to limb amputation. Inparticular, amputees often experience ‘phantom limbs’ whereby aperson continues to feel pain or sensation in an amputated limb.Neuroplasticity research has demonstrated that the experience ofthis phenomenon is related to cortical remapping, whereby corticalactivity in certain parts of the brain becomes misinterpreted by thearea of the cortex formerly responsible for the amputated limb (Floret al. 1995; Moseley and Brugger, 2009). This and other work intochronic pain (Flor, 2003), sensory prostheses (Kral and Sharma,2012), brain damage (Cutler et al., 2005), and meditation (Lazaret al., 2005) has increasingly demonstrated that the brain “trulydoes change itself” in different environmental, physical, andactivity-based contexts (Moseley and Brugger, 2009). Such neuralplasticity is not, however, limited to humans. Other mammals,birds, and amphibians have all been shown to demonstratehormone-related seasonal changes in neural connectivity andmapping (Takami and Urano, 1984; Barnea and Nottebohm, 1994;Xiong et al., 1997).

We are therefore left to search a little harder for the distinctiveneural character of the human brain. In 2003, the neuroscientistsZhang and Linden (2003: 896) coined the term ‘Metaplasticity’ todescribe the emergent, higher-order properties of synaptic plas-ticity that are apparently exclusive to the human brain. ‘Meta-plasticity’, in essence, refers to the plasticity of neuroplasticity, orthe potential for activity and context-dependent changes in theplastic state of neurons and their pathways. For example, a numberof studies of the brains of human musicians have demonstrated



plastic changes with instrumental practice, including an increase ingrey-matter volume in the sensorimotor cortex (Gaser and Schlaug,2003) and enlarged cortical somatosensory representations of thefingers for musicians (Elbert et al., 1995). However, musicians havealso demonstrated metaplastic changes in the excitability andplasticity of the motor systemwith long-term musical practice. Forexample, Watanabe et al. (2007) demonstrate that musicians whostarted musical training before the age of seven learn motor per-formance tasks better than both non-musicians and musicians thatstarted later in life. Consequently, musicians not only developplastic neural changes in motor and sensory skills, but also developan increased ability to learn new motor and sensory tasks and ca-pabilities, or ‘metaplasticity’ (Rosenkranz et al., 2007). On a broaderscale, proponents of metaplasticity argue that it is the extent andcapacity of the human brain to be plastic in relation to environ-mental, cultural, social and physical forces that makes it neuro-logically distinctive.

In the context of MET, Malafouris adapts the term ‘Meta-plasticity’ more specifically to describe the extent of the humanbrain's plasticity and interactivity in its engagement with the ma-terial world. In essence, what makes us human is the fact that wehave a “plastic mind which is embedded and inextricably enfoldedwith a plastic culture” (Malafouris, 2013; 46). For example, struc-tural MRI scans obtained from London taxi drivers and controlsubjects show significantly larger hippocampal volumes of taxidrivers, correlated to the amount of time spent as a taxi driver(Maguire et al., 2000). Maguire et al. (2000) suggested that thisimpressive structural changewas related to a taxi drivers' extensivetraining and experience in London navigation. However, Malafourisargues that the introduction of GPS and the extension of the bio-logical memory of taxi drivers may have equally important cogni-tive implications. For Malafouris and MET, it is not the location orextent of the neuroplastic change per se that is important, but howthese changes emerge from the brain's interaction with variouscultural andmaterial practices. No other species demonstrates sucha propensity for plastic neural changes through material interac-tion. We are ‘metaplastic’ in the sense that our mental engagementwith the material world consistently increases the propensity andcapacity of our brains to show plastic response and interactivitywith that same material world. This adds a cognitive dimension toTimothy Taylor's (2011) description of the ‘artificial ape’. The hu-man mind is not unique for being modern or sophisticated, it isunique in the extent of its reciprocal and plastic engagement withthe material and cultural worlds around us.

5. Material Engagement Theory and Metaplasticity applied tothe Late Pleistocene record of human behaviour

On the basis of the above principles, MET and Metaplasticityhave much to offer the cognitive archaeology and archaeology ofthe Late Pleistocene record. Firstly, MET and Metaplasticity providesome insight into what makes our mind particularly ‘human’,namely the degree of plasticity, or metaplasticity, that the humanmind has in forming new networks, both internally and with theexternal, material world. This increased plasticity could have beenassociated with a genetic mutation in our species that facilitatedgreater potential for co-constitution of the humanmind and humanmaterial culture than had previously been the case in our ancestorsand nearest relatives. Such a change may be associated with theenlarged pre-frontal cortex (PFC) of H. sapiens that might havefavoured higher connectivity within the PFC itself and other regionsof the neocortex (Rilling and Insel, 1999). Another candidatemay bethe higher proportion of white matter in the human PFC that isthought to have facilitated long-distance connections with otherregions of the brain (Schoenemann et al., 2005). However, although


perhaps initiated by a genetic change, the metaplastic nature of thehuman brain also means that it never instantaneously became the‘modern’ or ‘fully human’ brain we see today. Rather, material in-teractions and changes to its environmental and social conditionshave meant that the human brain has been, and still is, in a state ofconstant becoming.

This point also has implications for how we approach and un-derstand the material record of the Late Pleistocene that has sooften been searched for material correlates of ‘modernity’,‘complexity’, or particular cognitive capacities. Rather than treatingthem as part of a checklist or as passive material indicators, thesedifferent material elements each have their own story to tell as tohow they engagedwith existing structures of a meta-plastic humanbrain to produce new and dynamic trajectories of the early humanmind. Where classical cognitive archaeological approaches to thisperiod have limited themselves to what cognitive capacities arerepresented by particular material artefacts, MET offers the po-tential to add insight into how new neural structures may havedeveloped through human bodily and cognitive interaction withdifferent material elements. Lambros Malafouris (2007, 2010, 2013)has already applied the frameworks of MET and Metaplasticity toLate Pleistocene material evidence for personal ornamentation,ritual representation, and parietal art. Here I will add to these an-alyses by testing the efficacy of MET and Metaplasticity as explan-atory tools in the emergence of long-distance procurement, andwhat I call ‘spatial affinity’, and the development of compositehunting technologies during the Late Pleistocene. I will thenconclude with a broader discussion of the Late Pleistocenearchaeological record from a perspective of METandMetaplasticity.

5.1. Long-distance procurement: the development of a material‘spatial affinity’

Material evidence for ‘personal ornamentation’ has been amajor battleground in discussions of Late Pleistocene cognition.Some have suggested that evidence for the manufacture andwearing of shell beads and the engraving and smearing of ochrefrom 75 ka at Blombos Cave, South Africa, as well as a series of othersites in southern Africa, North Africa, and the Near East(Henshilwood et al., 2004; Bouzouggar et al., 2007; d'Errico et al.,2008; Bar-Yosef Mayer et al., 2009), is evidence for the develop-ment of a ‘symbolic capacity’ in our species (Henshilwood andDubreuil, 2011). More specific, cognitive explanations have sug-gested that the development of such behaviour is demonstrative ofthe expansion of higher association areas of the temporal and pa-rietal cortices and the development of theory of mind(Henshilwood and Dubreuil, 2011) or an expansion of the neocortexand the ‘social’ brain (Gamble et al., 2011). However, from an METperspective, more recent theories have seen personal ornamentsgiven more active roles as scaffolding for the development of newneural networks linked to ordinality as counters and signifiers ofspace and time (Wynn et al., in press) or the emergence of aperspective of the self (Malafouris, 2010). Here I want to build onthese MET perspectives to look at one particular aspect of some ofthese personal ornaments, as well as othermaterial elements foundduring the Late Pleistocene, the long-distance nature or spatialspecificity of their origins.

Evidence suggests that during the Early Stone Age of Africa ourhominin ancestors began to select particular raw materials fromcertain geographic areas with which to make their tools (Stoutet al., 2005). Appreciation of material qualities was initiallyapplied to those found in the vicinity of hominin archaeologicalsites, but from 2 mya onwards certain raw materials began to betransported for distances of greater than 1 km, and by 1.6 myadistances of 13 km (F�eblot-Augustins, 1990; Marwick, 2003). The



sheer quantities of some of the transported stone found at some ofthese sites demonstrate the extent of shared hominin practice andsourcing. By c. 1 mya some hominin sites have evidence for in-stances of transport of stone materials for distances of up to 100 km(Marwick, 2003). However, it is only from c. 100 ka onwards, duringthe Late Pleistocene, that raw material movement expandsconsiderably, both spatially and in terms of the types of materialsbeing transported. Movement of stone resources regularly exceeds100 km with shells, amber, and stones coming from over 1000 kmaway from source, almost certainly the result of social exchangesrather than human movement (Taborin, 1993; F�eblot-Augustins,1997; Gamble, 1999). Indeed, it is also pertinent to note thatmany of the earliest ornaments, on which arguments of ‘symbol-ism’ have been based, almost solely come from marine contexts,even when sites are located in reach of animal bones and teeth,freshwater resources, and molluscs that could form an equallyviable substrate (d'Errico et al., 2005; Bouzouggar et al., 2007;d'Errico et al., 2009). The environmental differences and distancesover which these ornaments were to eventually travel was only toexpand as the Pleistocene moved to its termination (Bar-Yosef,2002; Vanhaeren et al., 2004; d'Errico et al., 2009; Perera, 2010;Perera et al. 2011).

Some have argued that these increasing distances in raw ma-terial procurement were part of increased human mobility or de-mographic expansion that simply led to a wider spatial regionavailable for material exploitation (Ambrose, 2001). It has also beensuggested that such a sudden concern with personal ornamenta-tion and social exchange of resources represents increasing humanconcern with social networks, in the face of demographic or envi-ronmental pressures, or indeed cognitive change (Gamble et al.,2011; Henshilwood and Dubreuil, 2011; Shultz et al., 2012). How-ever, such explanations fail to account for the particular selection orignoring of certain resources or spatial zones in the first instance,especially in association with the development of personal orna-ments, or the long trajectory of hominin and human resourcesourcing and exploitation in the second. Furthermore, in both cases,the material record of raw material choice and personal orna-mentation is a passive reflection of external pressures or cognitivechange. I argue that MET allows us to link a trajectory of increas-ingly intensive sourcing of distant resources, and the eventual focusof ‘distant’ resources in the construction of ornaments, through theactive material engagement of the developing human mind withresource properties, spatial coordinates, and ornamentalsignificance.

Rawmaterial appreciation and the deliberate sourcing of certainresources is witnessed in modern primates as well as crows (Hunt,1996; Visalberghi et al., 2009). However, rarely in the animalkingdom are resources obtained from beyond a certain ‘locale’ andcertainly not over distances of 20 km. While early homininexploitation of distant resources could simply be representative ofopportunistic gathering during subsistence mobility, the fact thatdistant stones were deliberately exploited, and local stones withhighly usable properties were ignored (Braun et al., 2008, 2009),raises an interesting expansion of scale in terms of resource se-lection. What might have started as an appreciation of rawmaterialsource quality appears to have gained an increasingly spatialelement in hominin tool-making. Indeed, it is not hard to envisagehow the material manipulation of good, workable stone withinexisting hominin toolmanufacture processes, may have initiated anassociation of favourable properties with certain spatial co-ordinates in the minds of our hominin ancestors. Increases in thisspatial scale apparently continued from 1 mya. Here, transport orexchange over 100 km must have surely involved added cognitiveappreciation beyond rawmaterial properties, perhaps the incipientlinkage of aesthetics, favourable geographical circumstances, or


even social connections to an existing framework of raw materialappraisal.

From 100 ka I suggest that the integration of rawmaterial choiceand sourcing with other aesthetic and social qualities in the mindsof our ancestors became evenmore substantial. This coincides withthe introduction of a different type of material form, ornaments. If,as Malafouris (2010) argues, shell beads are part of the emergenceof ‘self’ in the human mind, then the addition of spatial coordinatesand an aesthetic and social appreciation of place into this emergingnetwork could have equally resulted in the emergence of ideas of‘spatial affinity’ or having some form of social and emotionalconnectionwith a place (Gamble, 2007). For example, in the case ofBlombos Cave, marine mammal and shell resources were heavilyexploited for food throughout the duration of site occupation (c.100e70 ka). The increasing distance of these resources from the siteat the time of ornament production (c. 20 km), however, likelymeant that humans attached some form of spatial coordinates tothis set of resources. It is therefore interesting that the shell beadornaments of Blombos are made from Nassarius kraussianus shells(d'Errico et al., 2005). If these beads encouraged the cognitiveemergence of the self then they may also have encouraged thecognitive emergence of some form of association with the localcoastline. This increased concern with social structuring of space isalso seen in increased ordering or division of living space during theAfrican Middle Stone Age (Deacon, 2001; Wadley, 2006). Indeed, atBlombos, Henshilwood and Dubreuil (2011) have made the tenta-tive suggestion that a construction of a quartzite and calcrete‘barrier’ c. 72 ka could have been a conscious attempt to separatethe occupied area of the cave from an external, ‘other’, as well asmerely for more practical warmth and shelter.

Increasing concerns with spatial affinity are perhaps even moreevident in the Wet Zone rainforest rockshelter sites of Sri Lanka.Here at 36 ka humans focused their subsistence on rainforest re-sources, such as small semi-arboreal and arboreal mammals, aswell as freshwater marine mammals and rainforest floral resourcessuch as canarium nuts (Perera et al., 2011). However, the sole itemsof long-distance exchange, from distances of over 50 km and from acompletely different environmental context, are marine shell beadsand shark teeth (Perera, 2010; Perera et al., 2011). No degradation-resistant ‘ornamental’ materials are made from local, rainforestresources, though monkey and jungle fowl bones are re-used in theproduction of single and double bone points (Perera, 2010). Instead,ornaments worn by these people have geographic, and probablyalso social, affinities with the coast. Here, the sourcing of raw ma-terials has become almost completely devoid of simple mechanicalproperties, with the cognitive importance of these materials almostcertainly being related to linked spatial coordinates imbued with asocial or geographical significance to those wearing them. I arguethat the basic framework of raw material sourcing and properties,when enacted through a series of material objects of increasingdistance, and increasingly non-mechanical function, facilitated thedevelopment of linkages between raw material sourcing, orna-mentation and the wider spatial coordinates of geographical andsocial significance. The florescence of long-distance materials dur-ing the Late Pleistocene, whether exchanged or gathered, notably inthe form of ornaments and aesthetic items, represents the emer-gence of a concept of spatial ‘affinity’.

Neuroimaging has revealed a strong connection between theintraparietal sulcus (IPS), which appears to be the locus of ordinalrepresentation in children and adults, and areas involved in spatialcognition (Kaufmann et al., 2009; Wynn et al. in press). Wynn et al.(in press) argue that the integration of these areas, through inter-action with strings of beads, led to increased ordinality and orga-nization of space and time during the Late Pleistocene. On the otherhand, Henshilwood and Dubreuil (2011) have argued that



expansion of the higher association areas of the temporal and pa-rietal cortices underlay human theory of mind and perspectivetaking, witnessed in concerns with personal ornamentation at thistime. However, in combination, the co-development of these re-gions, as well as their potential interaction, through ongoingengagement with rawmaterials and their spatial settings, andmostspecifically personal ornaments, could have led to a linkage be-tween concepts of the ‘self’, spatial mappings of raw materialproperties, and an organization of space into zones of spatial af-finity. However, instead of seeing ornaments as the eventual resultof these neural changes, MET enables us to see them as a materialenabler.

Furthermore, MET can link the long-distance sourcing of stonesources and ornaments during the Late Pleistocene to a lengthytrajectory of raw material engagement in our hominin ancestorsthat continued beyond the Late Pleistocene and into later periodsof prehistory and history through an idea of material, social, andgeographical ‘affinity’. Indeed, under MET, the sporadic evidencefor Neanderthal ornamentation (Langley et al., 2008; Zilh~ao et al.,2010), alongside their largely ‘local’ stone resource sourcing ofwithin 70 km (Marwick, 2003), is explicable. While the Neander-thal brain was plastic enough to begin to interact with concepts of‘self’ and a social aesthetic (Malafouris, 2010), as well as clearlypossessing spatial affinity at the scale of site usage and organiza-tion, and resource choice (Henry et al., 2004), these material in-teractions and neural linkages were limited to regional or localroutes and networks. By contrast, the metaplastic human brainregularly engaged with materials from different biomes, largedistances, and also with different social connections within amuch-extended and much more intensive system of spatial ordi-nance. It is perhaps this that enabled H. sapiens to maintain andapply social connections and sophisticated resource use strategiesacross the whole variety of the world's environments, and developnew and varied ways of holding a material sense of space andaffinity that have today reached the realms of photographs andsocial media.

5.2. Composite tools and composite minds

Examples of compound hunting tools can be found in associa-tion with H. neanderthalensis in Europe. For example, a range ofworked wooden pieces at Sch€oningen dated to c. 400 ka, includinga fire charred ‘spit’ or stave (Thieme, 2005) and several pieces withend-notches, show potential evidence for the hafting of stone flakes(Thieme, 2005). Furthermore, the use of birch-bark tar has beenfound on two stone flakes from 200 ka in Italy (Mazza et al., 2006).However, it is only with the appearance of our species in Africa, andmore particularly southern Africa, that there is a widespreadintroduction of adhesives and compound, hafted technologiesduring the Late Pleistocene in conjunction with the Still Bay andHowiesons Poort lithic technologies. These new compound tech-nologies show two key differences when compared to those fromearlier, European contexts. Firstly, the associated adhesives ofteninvolve the combination of raw materials whose properties, at facevalue, are not obviously suitable for hafting. Unlike tar that has clearadhesive properties when heated, sand and ochre have no obvioushafting benefits until they are carefully combined with plant resinsunder certain temperatures and chemical conditions (Wadley et al.,2009; Wadley, 2010). Secondly, whereas the compound technolo-gies of Neanderthals always involved the connection of a stone to astick that would then be thrust or thrown, some composite tech-nologies of the Middle Stone age of Africa have been linked to bowtechnologies (McBrearty and Brooks, 2000; Brooks et al., 2006;Shea, 2011) that stand on a whole new plane of composition inboth manufacture and use.


The emergence of composite toolkits has been linked toparticular cognitive changes (Gamble et al., 2011; Hensilwood andDubreuil, 2011). For example, Wadley et al. (2009) argue that thedevelopment of compound adhesives made from red ochre mixedwith plant gums involved the deliberate affectation of physicaltransformations, the control of chemical conditions such as pH, anda refined control of temperature and fire exposure. Wadley (2010)has argued that these processes necessitated a competency formulti-tasking and abstract thought in determining that two ma-terial elements, when placed together, could produce a compoundwith different properties and applications. Wadley et al. (2009) linkthis to increased connectivity in part of the prefrontal cortex thathas been linked to the capacity for novel, sustained multilevel op-erations (Amati and Shallice, 2007). Similarly, Barham (2010) hasargued that the process of hafting itself demonstrates a conceptualunderstanding of material properties and combination. Further-more, Barham argues that the development of composite tools andtheir use requires recursive analogical reasoning that also un-derpins complex language (Bickerton, 2007). As a result, he seescomposite technologies as a proxy for early language capacity.However, although both arguments make interesting associationsbetween these new forms of hunting technology and cognitivecapacities of the emerging humanmind, the material product is leftas a passive consequence of this change. Here, I want to look at howMET can combine this material evidence with the metaplastic hu-man mind to elucidate a more dynamic and active trajectory ofincreasingly composite technologies and hunting strategies and,indeed, composite minds.

Our primate relatives, as well as other species, have showncognitive understanding that they can use the material world as anextension of themselves to achieve the effective completion of atask (Hunt, 1996; Inoue-Nakamura and Matsuzawa, 1997; Matsu-zawa, 2001; Visalberghi et al., 2009). In human infants the explo-ration of object properties and their spatial consequences has beenassociated with a coordination of so-called ‘ventral’ and ‘dorsal’channels of the visual and parietal cortex in which the ‘ventral’stream is associated with object identity and properties while the‘dorsal’ processes spatial and temporal information (Mareschalet al., 2007). It has also been argued that connections betweenthe parietal and frontal lobes of the brain enable sensory-motorcoordinates to be developed that allow object recognition andunderstanding to be developed into more abstract forms of action(Milner and Goodale, 1995; Mareschal et al., 2007). Importantly forus here, it is considered that an infant will only truly come to un-derstand the properties of an object and its potentials in an abstractsense if they ‘engage’ in volitional action in relation to it and itsenvironment (Mareschal et al., 2007). This object interaction hasalso been argued to occur in parallel with trends of habituation andproactivity that, through interaction between the hippocampusand the brain cortex, involves the eventual conversion of habitu-ated representations into more abstract scenarios of investigationand engagement.

I argue that MET offers an essential mechanism in under-standing how human interaction with the material world,through the neural structures above, could bring about newneural networks and connections in an understanding of mate-rial properties and their potentiality. Shared with extant apes,our hominin ancestors most likely had an abstract appreciationthat throwing something at another object would have a certaineffect. Indeed, the development of stone working demonstratesthat hominins knew that by using the material world as anextension of themselves they could bring about certain changes.Through this material engagement it is clear that the homininmind developed a basic appreciation of objects and their prop-erties, as well as their potential for action beyond their biological



body. Continued interaction with materials of differing proper-ties, for example the length of reach of a branch as opposed tojust a stone, likely led to connections being made between thefavourable properties of different materials and the potential thatsuch properties could be combined at a more abstract level toachieve certain goals. As a result, material engagement withstone, wood, and bitumen could lead to a relatively simpleconcept of a composite spear that would enable close-quarterexploitation of mobile prey, while keeping the target at a dis-tance, as has been argued for Neanderthal communities (Bergerand Trinkhaus, 1995; Trinkhaus, 2012).

The creation, use and manipulation of these initial compositeforms could have facilitated increasing linkages between the areasof object processing and engagement, and working memory andideas of abstract causality associated with the prefrontal cortexwithin the meta-plastic human brain. As a result, the human mindcould begin to combine material elements and their properties inmore scientific processes, where the properties of the finishedproduct were investigated through the addition of different mate-rials and maintenance of different chemical or physical conditions.Therefore, where Wadley (2010) envisages the development ofcompound adhesives as the result of certain capacities of workingmemory and multilevel abstraction, I would argue that the processof producing such composite materials actively fostered the con-struction of neural connections betweenworkingmemorymodulesand neural representation of abstract and concrete concepts. Assuch, it is easier to see how the less plastic minds of Neanderthalscould produce composite forms as the logical result of their con-stituent parts, but only the meta-plastic human mind could engagewith materials on a level of abstraction that would lead to its ownreconfiguring of material properties and their potentials for com-bination and use. Whereas classical cognitive archaeology wouldstruggle to explain why the appearance of enhanced workingmemory led to a discontinuous and geographically variable recordof composite expression, MET argues that it is only through a dy-namic process of material engagement with certain materials andproperties that certain neural configurations would becomematerially evident.

The same process can also be seen in the potential uses of thehafted technologies themselves. Whereas Neanderthals are gener-ally seen as solely exploiting spear hunting in close-quarters, onlyH. sapiens have been linked with the development of bow and ar-row technologies (McBrearty and Brooks, 2000; Shea and Sisk,2010). While the plasticity of Neanderthal minds could integratehafted technologies as a simple extension of themselves either inclose quarter thrusting or direct throwing, they were not able toengage with the idea of developing a composite mechanism thatcould propel these tools. By contrast, the metaplastic human mindwas able to turn an understanding of material properties into amore dynamic abstraction whereby composite mechanisms couldenact propulsion, accuracy, and balance in a way and at a distancethat is not possible by simply throwing a composite shaft. While, aswith classical cognitive archaeology, MET may envisage these dif-ferences as a result of the increasing metaplasticity of the substrateof the humanmind as opposed to those of our nearest relatives, thematerial results are not innate, unilinear consequences. Rather, it isthrough a process of intensive material engagement with com-posite construction, and proactive thinking about both static anddynamic properties, that the levels of abstraction possible forhumans to produce everemore complex technological strategiesbecame possible. Indeed, MET presents us with a window throughwhich we can begin to understand how the human mind becameincreasingly intertwined with the material world to expand,dominate, and invent in a variety of global ecologies from the LatePleistocene onward (Taylor, 2011).


6. Discussion and conclusion

While I have focused here on two particular material casestudies, I also hope to have demonstrated that the tenets of METand Metaplasticity also make the Late Pleistocene record easier tointerpret on a broader spatial and temporal scale. Firstly, MET andNeuroplasticity can comfortably incorporate evidence for the ma-terial engagement of H. neanderthalensis, Homo erectus, and othermembers of our hominin lineage with materials that have previ-ously been considered only possible through the workings of a‘modern’ mind.

For example, it is unsurprising under MET and MetaplasticitythatH. erectus at Trinil in Javawere engraving shells (Joordens et al.,2014) or that Neanderthals in Europe and the Near East couldengage with ornaments and a use of space (Henry et al., 2004).However, it remains undeniable that it is only with the emergenceof our own species, with enhanced levels of neural plasticity, ormetaplasticity, that engagement with the material world couldbring about a widespread and hitherto unparalleled engagementwith artistic abstraction, ornamentation, long-distance exchange,and technological sophistication and composition, and the sameextent of resulting neural restructuring. Furthermore, whereas theslightly less plastic brains of our close hominin relatives werelimited to more sporadic material engagements with such behav-iours and materials, H. sapiens demonstrate consistent patterns ofneural reorganisation and development through active coexistencewith the material world in its earliest prehistory, throughout his-tory, and into the present day (Malafouris, 2013).

MET and Metaplasticity can also explain instances of disconti-nuity in elements of so-called ‘behavioural modernity’ in the LatePleistocene record of H. sapiens. For example, in Southeast Asia,upon arrival H. sapiens were producing a limited number of bonetools from the West Mouth area of Niah Cave, Borneo (Rabett et al.,2006). Dated by association to 44,941 ± 329 cal. BP (OxA-15630)these materials are found at the same site as the oldest fossil of H.sapiens from Southeast Asia in the form of the ‘Deep Skull’, andother human fragments, dated by stratigraphic association to c.40e41 ka. Evidence from the caves also demonstrates human usageof the Bornean tropical environment in the form of wild boar andmonkey hunting (Cucchi et al., 2009), arguably through trapping,and plants that would have required toxin removal before con-sumption (Rabett, 2012). However, following this early presence,the widespread occurrence of bone tools and shell beads acrossSoutheast Asia only occurs around the Terminal Pleistocene-EarlyHolocene transition (Rabett, 2012). Similarly, although Australia isconsidered to have been occupied by H. sapiens from at least 40 ka,and some evidence is suggestive of the arrival of personal orna-mentation at this time (Morse, 1993; Balme, 2000), major techno-logical change and symbolic florescence is not seen until theTerminal Pleistocene/Early Holocene (Hiscock, 2002; Brumm andMoore, 2005). Under MET and Metaplasticity, the human mind isa continually constituted, fluid entity with no single trajectory orhard-wired programme. Instead of seeing variability and disconti-nuity as problems, MET and Metaplasticity can focus on how andwhy different material and environmental potentialities may leadto different mindematerial interactions and expressions.

In presenting MET and Metaplasticity in the context of the LatePleistocene archaeological record I hope to have demonstrated aviable theoretical alternative to the concept of ‘behaviouralmodernity’. Although this model has faced much criticism over thelast decade or so (Wadley, 2001; Shea, 2011), there has been un-certainty as to where archaeology and cognitive archaeologyshould look for a new methodological or theoretical frameworkwith which to investigate the development of the early humanmind (Shea, 2011; see comments). There has also been a reluctance



to drop what has become convenient shorthand for many inter-esting material features within the Late Pleistocene record of hu-man behaviour. MET and Metaplasticity do not necessitatemethodological overhaul (Malafouris, 2013). They remain depen-dent on detailed scientific material studies and experimentalresearch into the technical requirements and processes behindearly human material culture as well as on systematic research inneuroscience to elucidate the operation and structural state of thehuman brain during learning, actions, and material engagement.Furthermore, MET and Metaplasticity still face the same basic is-sues of sample size, preservation bias, well-developed palae-oenvironmental and palaeoclimatic contextual data, and thenecessity of reliable and extensive dating that any Late Pleistocenearchaeological theoretical frameworkmust acknowledge. However,what MET and Metaplasticity do is refocus our theoretical ques-tions and ontological perceptions so as to place the materials of theLate Pleistocene record on an equal footing with emerging humanbrains.

Acknowledgments

I would like to thank one anonymous reviewer, Antonis Ilio-poulos, Peter Mitchell, Lyn Wadley and Klint Janulis for theirstimulating and constructive comments on earlier drafts of thismanuscript. I would also like to acknowledge the Natural Envi-ronmental Research Council and the Institute of Archaeology,University of Oxford for their funding and support, without whichthis contribution would not have been possible.

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We have never been behaviourally modern’: The implications of Material Engagement Theory and...

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