You know how you start googling for information on one thing but end up going down a completely different rabbit hole from the one you started on? This happened to me over the weekend and I found myself looking for more information on a story I came across while looking for something else entirely.

It all started this past weekend when I was watching Hondo, starring John Wayne and Ward Bond on cable. This is the story of the Army scout (Wayne) who comes across a soon-to-be-widowed woman (John Wayne shoots her husband) in West Texas who is under the protection of Victorio, the Apache chief.

Victorio was a real person, even if the widow and her new-found lover and his pissed off dog weren’t. So I got to wondering how much of the Hondo story was based on fact, etc….

Long story short: I started googling for Victorio and his battles and then started looking for Victorio Peak, which was supposed to be in the Diablo Mountains region near Van Horn, Texas. I used to live out that way, so when Google Earth pointed me to a place in White Sands, NM near Almagordo, I was initially confused. Turns out there are two Victorio Peaks. One in Texas and another about a hundred or so miles away in New Mexico.

And its the one in New Mexico, far from the place Victorio staged his last battle, that is possibly the more interesting!

In the links at the conclusion of this post^[1][2], you can read a couple of articles posted on the web that go into more detail, and I encourage you to read them. I’m not saying the stories are true, mind you. But they were both captivating reads!

Doc and Babe in the 1930s

The story could begin in the mid-1800s with the battles of Victorio, an Apache chief (and, arguably, in charge of Homeland Security at the time). But that’s a story for another time (I’ve been pondering what an archaeological survey of these battles might consist of).

Instead, I give you Milton Ernest “Doc” Noss and his eventually estranged wife Ova “Babe” Beckworth.

Doc and Babe

They were a handsome couple. Doc was a “foot doctor” (no record of sort of medical degree, however) and he and Babe lived in Hot Springs, now known as Truth or Consequences, NM.  One November day in 1937, Doc and Babe were part of a hunting party that camped near Victorio Peak. While ducking under a rock overhang to escape a light drizzle of rain, Doc discovered an entrance to a cave that had been covered by a stone. Thinking at first that he’d stumbled on an abandoned mine shaft, Doc and Babe kept the discovery under their collective hats, returning several days later with ropes and flashlights. What they allegedly discovered is straight out of an Indiana Jones story!

At the bottom of the narrow shaft was a chamber about the size of a small room with drawings around the walls. Doc thought these sketches were made by Indians, as they were crude and stick-like. Some were painted, while others were chiseled into the rock face. At the other end of the chamber, the shaft continued sloping downward. Descending another hundred and twenty feet before it leveled off, Doc found that the passageway emptied into a huge, natural cavern large enough “for a freight train to pass through.” He saw several smaller rooms chiseled from the rock along one wall.

As Doc inched his way across the great cavern, he made a terrifying discovery…a human skeleton. The hands were bound behind the back, and the skeleton was kneeling, securely tied to a stake driven into the ground, as if the person had been deliberately left there to die. Before leaving the room, he found more skeletons, most of them bound and secured to stakes like the first. Some skeletons were found stacked in a small enclosure, as if in a burial chamber. All told, he reportedly found twenty-seven human skeletons in the caverns of the mountain.

As Doc explored the side caverns of Victorio Peak, he found amazing riches amounting to extreme wealth by today’s standards. Jewels, coins, saddles, and priceless artifacts were everywhere, including a gold statue of the Virgin Mary. In one chamber, he found an old Wells Fargo box and leather pouches neatly stacked to the ceiling.

And gold bars. Lots of them.

The Noss Treasure?

Keep in mind, this was the 1930s. Franklin D. Roosevelt had just signed Executive Order 6102 in 1933, which forbade U.S. citizens from “Hoarding of Gold Coin, Gold Bullion, and Gold Certificates.” So, assuming the story of his find is true, what was old Doc supposed to do? From the stories I’ve read of Doc Noss, he was a bit of a shady character -a wheeler and a dealer. He allegedly brought up a bar or two at a time, smuggled them to Mexico and sold them on the black market at a price far below their worth.

What’s the Theory?

There are a lot of “theories” to explain Doc Noss’ treasure. Some think it was the Casa del Cueva de Oro, Spanish for the House of the Golden Cave, and was a cache of wealth established by Don Juan de Onate in the 16th century. Others think Noss may have chanced upon the treasure of Felipe La Rue, a 18th century French priest that was in search of riches he’d heard in stories and that he established a wealthy gold mine there in the Hembrillo Basin where Victorio Peak, once known as Soledad Peak, is. The peak was renamed in honor of Victorio, who used the site for a stronghold and stood off U.S. Army soldiers in the 19th century.

Victorio Peak

But did Doc and Babe Noss really find a cache of wealth in the 20th century?

This is where the story has a twist. Doc had filed a claim on the site for prospecting by the end of the 30s but ended up collapsing the entrance in a attempt to blast a wider entrance. He had a few hundred bars brought to the surface by now, but Executive Oder 6102 was still in effect, so his desperation for cash put him in a dilemma.  In 1949, 12 years after his alleged discovery, Doc Noss was shot in the head by a “business associate,” apparently wanting his gold.

But it doesn’t end there. In 1951, the U.S. Army, somewhat evolved from the days when it chased Victorio, annexed the land that Victorio Peak sits on as part of the White Sands Missile Range. This is the period following World War II where we were now in a nuclear arms race and White Sands was where much of the nuclear weapons were being tested. Babe fought for decades to work her inherited claim, but the Army had full control of the surface of the land.

What follows are a few tales of conspiracy and intrigue. Even an airman first class and a captain who apparently found an open fissure and reported seeing gold bars in a cavern. The Army excavated the site using Gaddis Mining Company in 1963 with no results. A member of the Noss family was finally given permission to excavate for two weeks in 1972, but also came up dry.

Victorio Peak: Courtesy Google Earth

To this day, the heirs to Babe Noss are still trying to access the site, which is still part of White Sands Missile Range.

My thoughts are that the site was part of an elaborate scam that involved seeding a mine to scam people out of their cash. Still, there’s always that romantic hope that a buried treasure sits there waiting for the right person to discover it. There may or may not have really been a treasure, but the story is ripe for a movie!

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1. McGuire, Bonnie (2010). The Treasure of Victorio Peak. http://www.mcguiresplace.net/The%20Treasure%20of%20Victorio%20Peak/
2. Paul, Lee (date unk). The Strange Mystery of Victorio Peak. http://www.theoutlaws.com/gold7.htm

An archaeologist from from Ankara University, Fikri Kulako
lu, reports the discovery of a 4,000 year old skeletonwhich has evidence of “a successful brain operation” in which the patient survived.

This sort of trephination isn’t unheard of in the ancient world, but it’s probably the oldest example of medically purposed trephination that I’ve heard of. Still, it isn’t too big a stretch to imagine that it might have been done. The technology wouldn’t have needed to be more complex than a sharp stone. The understanding that such an operation might be beneficial can seem to be a stretch of imagination, but it speaks to the cognitive ability of humanity.

We see ourselves as existing within our heads. Not our feet, stomach, or even our chest -but behind the two eyes and between the two ears that we use to sense the world around us. Perhaps the first person to be trephined this way in this Assyrian tradesman’s culture was done so in an effort to remove a foreign object, behind which cerebral fluid collected (what we would, today, call a subdural hematoma). Patients suffering a hematoma show almost immediate improvement with draining, so all it would take is a single observation to make a connection that a local “healer” can exploit.

Brain injuries that result in subdural hematoma are also frequently accompanied by seizures. So it isn’t improbable that the connection between seizures and built up fluid would be made. This might explain evidence of trephinations where obvious injuries aren’t present in the cranial remains. But then it might also be that the injured bone was removed, leaving no evidence of the injury itself.

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The Dead Sea Scrolls were discovered in 1947 caves near Qumran on the Dead Sea by a Bedouin shepherd. Stored for nearly 2 millennia in clay jars or pots, the scrolls survived with the help of the dry climate and have been the subject of intense study and research, mostly by biblical scholars, over the last few decades.

The conclusion has long been that the scrolls were written by a Jewish cult from Qumran known as the Essenes, who practiced their traditions between the 2nd century BCE to about the 1st century CE. This conclusion is based on many things, such as the proximity of the scroll caves to Qumran where the cult was based, the dating of the scrolls themselves, Essene customs (eg. ritual bathing) included in the scrolls, and the general congruity and thematic connection between the scrolls themselves.

On a recent National Geographic documentary, Writing the Dead Sea Scrolls, which featured “biblical archaeologist” Robert Cargill, Cargill suggests that the scrolls were written by multiple Jewish sects and that all or, at least some, of the scrolls may have originated from the Temple in Jerusalem, which legend says was under siege by the Romans around 70 CE.

One of the key pieces of evidence that Cargill cites is a recently deciphered inscription, “Lord I have returned,” found on the sides of a 2,000 year old cup. The code used on the cup is similar to that used in the Dead Sea Scrolls.

From this, Cargill seemed to conclude that the Essenes were once a part of the priestly class at the Temple in Jerusalem. I have to admit that the presentation was one in which the opinions of several scholars were drawn from, but I got the distinct impression that Cargill was in agreement with the multiple origins of the scrolls, particularly with the Temple origin. I’m going to re-watch the program, however.

While it’s possible and holds a certain level of probability, it still doesn’t explain the overall congruity of the Dead Sea scrolls, the fact that the Essenes were well-established in Qumran prior to 70 CE, and the lack of incongruent scrolls that one might expect if suddenly a group of fleeing priests were to appear in Qumran with texts they sought to preserve. I find it more likely that the Essenes were in limited contact with the outside world, at least for trading certain goods if not sharing academic and cult knowledge. This would explain the use of clay pottery from other regions.

It might even explain why a similar code appears elsewhere. Perhaps this practice of “coding” texts from non-priestly readers was adopted by the Essenes by sources that were ancestral to both the Essenes and the Temple Priests. Perhaps an Essene traveled to the Temple and left his cup, either through trade or accident. Perhaps a Temple Priest traveled to Qumran and obtained a cup as a gift. Perhaps…

I think it would be interesting if there were a way to show that fleeing priests from the Temple in Jerusalem arrived in Qumran with the Essenes. But I just don’t see that there’s enough evidence to arrive at that conclusion. I recognize, however, that archaeology surrounding mythical places like the Temple are important to “biblical archaeologists” and such reinforcement is a powerful psychological benefit to those who are invested in the religious beliefs that surround the myth of the site.

And, just to clarify, I use the term “myth” not to imply that the Temple didn’t exist. Rather, that there is a set of beliefs in a “power” surrounding the site that is, itself, mythical and not based in reality.

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I am not responsible for any keyboards for those who tried reading this with their morning hot cup of joe!

If you’ve never visited xkcd, you should!

In a nation so divided, we often forget where true freedom comes from: the human spirit and the hearts and minds of men and women who wanted more for themselves and their families. As we celebrate our nations Independence on the Fourth of July, we should put aside the xenophobia and bigotry that so often accompanies the rhetoric of those who claim to be patriots. Our nation is essentially the product of invasion and bigotry combined with a desire to create a better, more democratic nation, free of the tyranny of kings and theocracy. We displaced the rightful residents, nearly 500 nations of natives, and forged a new, united and democratic one in their place.

Right or wrong, we now stand as potentially the greatest nation on the planet. But we’re fast losing to nations who are learning from our mistakes. If we want to redeem our transgressions and make the sacrifices of our ancestors (which includes Native Americans, Mexicans, and early immigrants from Europe) count for something, we’ll need to find common ground. We’ll need to find ways of solving problems of illegal immigration in ways that exclude bigotry and prejudice.

Today’s post is by a guest blogger. My lovely and talented spouse received one of those chain-emails circulated by the tea-bagger crowd which depicted several photos of brown-skinned people making rude gestures and displaying the U.S. flag upside down. Doubtless, these were photographs without original context and intended to sow seeds of hatred and animosity towards those of “brown skin” from otherwise well-meaning U.S. citizens who perhaps are only getting one perspective.

My wife’s words in response:

Do any of you actually know anyone personally who is trying to immigrate to this country (legally or illegally)?

Can anyone who has received this email tell me who is in the pictures?

Can anyone tell me where the pictures were taken?

How do you know that people depicted in the pictures aren’t legal Citizens (their skin color perhaps – isn’t that prejudice in it’s finest)?

Can anyone also prove to me that the actions depicted by the men in the pictures were unprovoked by the person who was taking them. I sincerely doubt they were (as they are directed directly at the picture taker). This also tells me that someone who claims to be a respectful American likely went out and insulted folks they did not know – this happens every day by Americans who were born here.

The Mexicans I know work their butts off for very little money and live in conditions that an American teenager would NEVER CONSIDER, all to make a life that is better for their families. The Mexicans I know are friendly and glad to be here and are doing their best to make ends meet. They shop at Garage Sales for all their clothes, They dress up every Sunday for church, They live as communities who care for and look out for one another and invite their neighbors to join them.

How many of you reading this email can can name every person who lives in at least a three house radius of yours? Mine can, and they are Mexican.

Our prison systems are filled to capacity with AMERICANS. We don’t have enough space for our native born criminals. We should look at ourselves before we judge others!

I can honestly say that my neighborhood is 90% Mexican. And it’s one of the safest places I’ve ever lived. Not only is crime in my neighborhood non-existent, but the fellowship and kindness is unparalleled. My neighbors are mostly native-born American citizens. Some are first and second generation immigrants. A few are here illegally. I love them all. Every one. And I trust them every single day with my life, my property, and the safety of my daughter who plays with their kids on the same streets as they. They work hard, they pay taxes, and they give back to the community and the state. They shop in local stores, restaurants, and spend money in our local economy. They have my admiration and respect.

And I have varied degrees of pity and embarrassment for sheltered, privileged white Americans who think themselves somehow their betters.

On a day where Freedom should Ring, I’m proud to say I’m not a slave to the bigotry and hatred that dominates the lives of so many people.

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Patterns of thought can be effectively inferred from the material remains of the past. Nicholas Toth^[1]Â Â conducted experiments in flintknapping in which he discovered patterns he proposed as evidence of right-handedness in hominids reaching into the archaeological record as far back as 1.9 Ma. The study isn’t without its critics^[2], but the idea that archaeologists can apply method and theory to the material record which can provide inferences about handedness is important since this would also imply a point at which lateralization of the human brain is occurring as well. Laterality would indicate physical changes in the Homo brain that might allow for language capability, improved motor control, and other specialized adaptations and higher brain functions^[3].

Wynn and Coolidge^[4] ) apply the theory of cognitive archaeology to their hypothesis that it was a marked change in human cognitive ability that made it possible for Homo sapiens to displace H. neanderhalensis, which successfully occupied Europe for more than 200,000 years. They note that humans and Neandertals met at least twice in prehistory, once at around 80,000 years ago and again at around 40,000 years ago. The first meeting was one in which the Neandertals migrated into the Near East at the beginning of the last ice age, out-competing their human cousins who appear to have migrated back into Africa. The second encounter, which happened 40,000 years later had a very different outcome. Within just 10,000 years, the Neandertals went extinct after anatomically modern H. sapiens migrated into central Europe. Anatomically, these humans and their Near Eastern predecessors just 40,000 years prior were indistinguishable. Yet there must have been some marked advantage, according to Wynn and Coolidge, which allowed this new turn of events. For the Neandertals, their status quo served them well. No significant innovation appears evident in the archaeological record for 200,000 years until the arrival of H. sapiens. Their hearths were simple and “ad hoc,” (p.45), they made no apparent use of art or depictions, jewelry or other personal adornments that survived in the archaeological record, until perhaps their encounters with H. sapiens.

In searching for what changes might have occurred to H. sapiens at around 40,000 years ago, Wynn and Coolidge describe recent research in genetics, including that of the FOXP2 gene which was found to be closely associated with language articulation and comprehension and, perhaps, responsible for the abilities of speech and language in humans. While this gene is present in many mammalian species, the version in humans “underwent some unique changes during recent evolution (p. 48).” Additional research, however, has shown this gene to be shared with Neandertals in its human form, implying that the changes occurred prior to the last common ancestor to H. sapiens and Neandertals, eliminating it from list of suspects responsible for the new cognitive advances that gave H. sapiens the advantage over their Neandertal cousins 40,000 years ago.

However, another genetic change these authors explore is the MCPH1 gene, expressed in the fetal brain and perhaps responsible for increased brain size and capability and estimated to have first appeared at around 37,000 years ago where -consistent with the period in which H. sapiens began to dominate the Neandertals. Still, Wynn and Coolidge argue that there must be more than a single genetic change to account for the disparity that is assumed to have existed between the mental capabilities of H. sapiens and Neandertals at their second encounter. They do, in later work, explore the role of the human parietal cortex^[5] as a means of increased ability to form concepts such as ontological categories and the results of combinations of these categorical concepts into new, completely abstract concepts and ideas that exist only in the human mind. A non-allometric expansion of the parietal cortex, they propose, would account for the sudden appearance of abstract thought in the material record at around 32,000 years ago as well as the ability to plan and strategize, and thus out-compete the Neandertals. But they admit support for this hypothesis is “paradoxically thin” (p. 78) due to the non-allometric aspect -leaving no outward change in human cranial remains to be discovered and the limitations of artifacts that can survive as examples of technology and subsistence in the material record.

One artifact that Wynn and Coolidge do focus on is the Hohlenstein-Stadel figurine (fig. 1), which represents a half-man, half-lion and dates to human culture in Southwestern Germany at about 32,000 years ago, approximately 8,000 years after the expansion of H. sapiens into Neandertal territory. The artifact itself might not mark the actual beginning of abstract thought and planning, the cognitive change that might have made it possible for H. sapiens to dominate and out-compete the Neandertals, since it may very well be that “it took a very long time for significant differences in technology, subsistence practices and social interactions to develop” (Wynn and Coolidge 2008:51). It may also be that there are other, older artifacts waiting for discovery which are more consistent with the 40,000 year old migration of H. sapiens into Europe.

The Hohlenstein-Stadel figurine itself is a good representation of abstract thinking and executive function because of its subject: a Löwenmensch, or “lion-man.” In order for the individual who carved this 28 cm tall figurine to do so, he would have had to hold in his mind two ontological categories: one of a man and one of a lion, with all the characteristics and features of these two categories understood by the individual. In addition, this individual would have necessarily had to be able to conceive of and execute in figurine form, an abstract combination of these two categories. As Wynn and Coolidge point out, “a Löwenmensch,or lion-man, is not of this earth. It melds the cognitively distinct categories of lion and person into a single, abstract entity, endowed no doubt with many features we cannot see.”

Certainly cognitive archaeology can be applied to many other questions of human activity and to the material records of all periods of human history and prehistory. Other applications can easily involve weights and measurements, inferring what standards earlier cultures used in architecture or trade (Renfrew 2009; Renfrew and Bahn 1996). Questions of not only how were weights used by a culture might be explored, but also how did a culture arrive at using a particular weight as a standard to begin with, such as with the stone cubes used as weights in the Indus Valley (3300-1300 BCE). Archaeologists can also use methods and theory of cognitive archaeology to explore the ritual and religious aspects of society and how symbols are used to define their beliefs, or to infer the nature of elite status and the effects elite power on populations subjugated by them. Another example were cognitive archaeological theory can be applied is in exploring the nature of architectural planning as a cognitively held concept such as with the regularity found in the ruins of Mohenjodaro, a city of the Indus Valley civilization, which indicates intention of design. These and many others are examples of how the archaeological record can be used by theory and methods associated with cognitive archaeology to obtain useful insight and information that can both help answer and provide research questions on how past cultures thought and how their thoughts affected the world around them -perhaps even how the world around them affected their thoughts.

1. Toth, Nicholas (1985). Archaeological Evidence for Preferential Right-Handedness in the Lower and Middle Pleistocene and Its Possible Implications. Journal of Human Evolution 14:607-614
2. Patterson, L.W. and J.B. Sollberger (1986). Comments on Toth’s Right-Handedness Study. Lithic Technology 15:109-111
3. Donald, Merlin (1998). Hominid Enculturation and Cognitive Evolution. In Mind and Matter: Cognition and Material Culture. C. Renfrew and C. Scarre, ed. Pp. 7-17. Oxford: Oxbow Books
4. Wynn, Thomas, and Frederick L. Coolidge (2008).  A Stone-Age Meeting of Minds. American Scientist 96:44-51
5. Wynn, Thomas, Frederick Coolidge, and Martha Bright (2009). Hohlenstein-Stadel and the Evolution of Human Conceptual Thought. Cambridge Archaeological Journal 19(1):73-83

The questions of what people of the past thought, how they arrived at these thoughts, and to what extent did the thoughts of people affect the world around them fall under the auspices of cognitive archaeology. In method and theory, cognitive archaeology is relatively new, providing archaeologists with glimpses into past ways of thought through the material remains of those who did the thinking^[1][2]

Cognitive archaeology has two main, but broad-reaching, foci^[3], the first of which is to examine the origins and evolution of modern human cognition, asking questions such as when did people begin to think as we do and where might cognitive capacities have emerged in our primate ancestors. The second broad focus is that which explores the extent to which human thought influenced the perceptions of the world around them as well as how they chose to interact with it, developing cultures and societies as a result.

One of the central methods employed in cognitive archaeology is to study the ways in which past cultures symbolically represented their thoughts. Renfrew describes symbols as that with which “we speak with, and to a large extent what we think with. The way the human mind routinely employs symbolism is through the use of ontological categories, which are special mental concepts that allow the human mind to store and categorize vast amounts of information without having to know the details of every single member of a category^[4]. The idea. or concept of ANIMAL carries with it information that causes most human minds to draw immediate inferences that are separate from that of TOOL. Within these categories reside sub-categories which, likewise, have their own shared inferences. Boyer uses the analogy of the ontological category TIGER and points out that one would expect that if a tiger were dissected and examined, one would not need to dissect and examine all tigers to understand that their insides are the same.

As symbols, ontological categories are useful in making inferences about what people think, but it’s necessary first to understand the contexts of those symbols. Renfrew and Bahn use the analogy of the United States flag, the “Stars and Stripes” which quickly evokes a mental image to those familiar with the flag and its meaning. But to those unfamiliar with it, the meaning and history it symbolizes are both completely lost. The ontological category of STARS AND STRIPES is controlled by cultural context and without an assemblage of additional information, the meaning is lost to the observer. His point, therefore, is that archaeologists must take great care in preserving the contexts of their discoveries as “it is the assemblage, the ensemble, that matters, not the individual object in isolation”. In addition, alternative explanations and hypotheses must also be considered and tested thoroughly against each other in order to make effective or useful inferences about the past.

To help put human cognition in a perspective useful for study, Renfrew and Bahn draw on the work of Karl Popper and his theory of reality which includes three interacting worlds. The first world, Popper described as the world of physical objects. The second is that of subjective experiences and thought processes. World three, for Popper, is that which includes products of the human mind and the “products of human activity, such as houses or tools, and also [...] works of art” . For those archaeologists who concern themselves with the first broad focus of cognitive archaeology, investigating the origins of modern human thought and cognition, it is this third world of Popperian cosmology that they are most interested in. Where in both time and space did people begin to exhibit modern human cognition? Or, as Renfrew and Bahn quote John Eccles, “how far back in prehistory can we recognize the beginning, the origin, the most primitive world 3 existence”? According to Renfrew and Bahn, Eccles sees tool culture as this origin but Popper disagreed, attributing language to the beginning of a world 3 existence for humans. Both are certainly topics of investigation for archaeologists.

If human cognitive evolution is looked at in a series of stages, as suggested by psychologist Merlin Donald then a useful model would begin with a stage in human development that would be consistent with the cognitive abilities of non-human primates, what Donald calls an episodic culture. This first stage would then transition to a memetic culture stage, consistent with Homo erectus and our inferences of their abilities based on the material record so far. The second transition would be to a linguistic or mythic culture, characteristic of early H. sapiens and involving the ability to use language and share oral narratives. From there, a transition into a theoretic culture would permit the use of external symbolic storage. That is, humans would have the ability to write down or record in some fashion information that couldn’t fit efficiently into ontological categories. Renfrew (1998) notes that Donald regards the mythic culture stage as being inclusive of the cave paintings found in Upper Paleolithic cultures in Europe and the theoretic culture stage as beginning at the early writing of cultures such as that in Mesopotamia at around 3500 BCE^[5] . Renfrew, however, takes some issue with this and suggests an additional stage of external symbolical storage between the mythic and theoretic stages is necessary. The basis for this is to be inclusive of early agrarian societies that had “permanent settlements, monuments and valuables. ” These cultures had a clear need to store information, such as astrological and seasonal information, needed for the successful timing of planting and harvesting. Earlier cultures may have also needed to store information about their hunting or migration strategies or to symbolize their religious or supernatural beliefs.

Renfrew cautions us to bear in mind, however, that a model of cognitive stages need not be sequential, pointing out that, while there is much theory and reason involved in human learning, we still learn rote behaviors through mimesis and repetition, establishing motor sequences. He also describes the paradoxes associated with accepting a model such as this. If there is, indeed, an evolutionary progression that can be observed in the material record, what then should we make of modern or recent non-literate societies? Would they necessarily be included as members of the same theoretic culture phase we consider ourselves to now be in? Or would their lack of writing exclude them? What of individuals who are non-literate yet reside within the milieu of a modern urban culture? Questions such as these not only demonstrate what Renfrew calls “the past/present” paradox, but also serve as a caution when attempting to make analogies between modern or recent hunter-gatherer societies and past cultures to which we seek to understand, such as the those of the Upper Paleolithic.

I’ll post a second part over the weekend that takes the theory and method part above, and looks at how cognitive archaeology can be applied.

1. Renfrew, Colin and Paul Bahn (1996). What Did They Think: Cognitive Archaeology, Art and Religion. In Archaeology. Pp. 369-402. New York: Thames and Hudson
2. Renfrew, Colin (2009).  Prehistory: The Making of the Human Mind. New York: Random House
3. Renfrew, Colin (2009).  Prehistory: The Making of the Human Mind. New York: Random House
4. Boyer, Pascal (2001). Religion Explained: The Evolutionary Origins of Religious Thought. New York: Basic Books
5. Lloyd, Seton (1984). The Archaeology of Mesopotamia: From the Old Stone Age to the Persian Conquest. New York: Thames and Hudson

I just wanted to share two blogs I found via a recent Google search:

The Dig Girl

and

Bioarchaeologists: We Dig Bones!

They both seem to be blogs of the more personal experience type, which is great. I love reading the personal experiences of other archaeologists.

Here’s hoping they’ll both join us in the next Four Stone Hearth! I’ve been very bad about not participating and will definitely submit a post for the next fortnight’s edition. I’ll be posting on the topic of Cognitive Archaeology prior to the weekend, giving an overview of the subject as well as a few resources for those interested.

The next installment of this wonderful blog carnival is being hosted at Sorting Out Science on May 12th. So get writing and visit Sam Wise to get his submission criteria. Perhaps he’ll be using his contact page which has a convenient form.