The last decade has witnessed a sophistication and proliferation in the number of studies focused on the evolution of human cognition, reflecting a renewed interest in the evolution of the human mind in anthropology and in many other disciplines. The complexity and enormity of this topic requires the coordinated efforts of many researchers. This volume brings together the disciplines of palaeontology, psychology, anatomy, and primatology. Together, they address a number of issues, including the evolution of sex differences in spatial cognition, the role of archaeology in the cognitive sciences, the relationships between brain size, cranial reorganization and hominid cognition, and the role of language and information processing in human evolution.
Table of Contents:
List of Contributors
Forward
Philip Tobias
Acknowledgments
Introduction
April Nowell
PART I: ARCHAEOLOGY AND COGNITIVE SCIENCE
Chapter 1. The Role of Archaeology in Cognitive Science
Thomas Wynn
Chapter 2. The Re-Emergence of Cognitive Archaeology
April Nowell
PART II: ON THE GROUND: INTERPRETING MATERIAL AND NON-MATERIAL ARTIFACTS
Chapter 3. Memories out of Mind: The archaeology of the oldest memory systems
Francesco d’Errico
Chapter 4. A Pragmatic View of the Emergence of Paleolithic Symbol Using
Martin Byers
Chapter 5. Nonmaterial Artifacts: A Distributed Approach to Mind
Shirley Strum and Deborah Forster
PART III: PALEONEUROLOGY
Chapter 6. Archaeological Implications of Paleoneurology
Harry J. Jerison
Chapter 7. Intellectual Surplusage: The Role of Bipedalism
Sean C. Hogan and Gordon G. Gallup, Jr.
Chapter 8. Before or After the Split? Hominoid Brain Structures and the Evolution of the Human Mind
Katerina Semendeferi
PART IV: INFORMATION PROCESSING IN HUMAN EVOLUTION
Chapter 9. Multilevel Information Processing, Archaeology and Evolution
Philip Chase
Chapter 10. Behavioral Response to Variable Pleistocene Landscapes
Richard Potts
Chapter 11. The Fossil Evidence for the Evolution of Human Intelligence in Pleistocene Homo
Anne Weaver, Trenton W. Holliday, Christopher B. Ruff and Erik Trinkaus
PART V: A FINAL WORD: THE ORIGINS OF LANGUAGE
Chapter 12. On the Neural Bases of Spoken Language
Philip Lieberman
Chapter 13. Discovering the Symbolic Potential of Communicative Signs—The Origins of Speaking a Language.
William Noble and Iain Davidson
About the Author :
April Nowell is Professor and Chair of Anthropology at University of Victoria. She holds a PhD from the University of Pennsylvania.
