Cognitive competence, cultural failure?

Add a Comment

Comment by Peter Matthews on July 9, 2009 at 12:12pm

Session abstract
Based on the appearances of specialized blade industries, bone and antler tools, and art and body ornaments, debate on the origins of cognitive and cultural modernity was for decades centred in Europe. Ten years ago, the focus of the search for modernity shifted to Africa. The trait list of modern behaviour has recently been extended to include notational/incised pieces, fishing, shellfishing, mining, long distance exchange, simple and barbed points, microliths, pigment processing, and grindstones. The time frame for some of these traits in Africa has been expanded back to the Middle Pleistocene. But all perspectives in this debate currently exclude East and Southeast Asia, and the only evidence of modernity from this area to be widely discussed has been the colonization of Sahul/Australia across sea. For Europe, the assemblage of archaeologically visible cultural innovations is often portrayed as a ‘‘package’’, but such a claim cannot be made for the Indo-Pacific region. Habgood and Franklin (JHE 55, 2008) have recently stated that this “package” of cultural innovations did not exist as an entity from the beginning of Sahul settlement, and that its “components were gradually assembled over a 30,000 year period”. Thus, in the current stage of discussion, three main questions arise from an Indo-Pacific perspective that will be discussed in this session:

1. Is there pre-sapiens evidence from Asia for traits of modern human behaviour?

2. How valid is the current list of symptoms for detecting or refuting the existence of modern human behaviour?

3. Can other, more general and basic, aspects of modern human behaviour be identified?

Session speakers
Alfred Pawlik (Archaeological Studies Program, University of the Philippines): Modern packages in the Philippines prehistoric record. Any leftovers?

Ian Gilligan (ANU, Canberra): Clothing and modern human behaviour in Australia

Luidmila Lbova (Institute of Archaeology and Ethnography, Novosibirsk): Evidence of modern human behaviour in the early upper Palaeolithic stage in the Baikal zone.

Martin Porr (School of Social and Cultural Studies, University of Western Australia): Identifying behavioural modernity: lessons from Sahul.

Susan Bulmer: On the possible origins and historical significance of Papua New Guinea Pleistocene stone technology.