Lambros Malafouris

At the Potter’s Wheel: An Argument for Material Agency

Consider a potter throwing a vessel on the wheel. Think of the complex ways brain, body, wheel and clay relate and interact with one another throughout the different stages of this activity and try to imagine some of the resources (physical, mental or biological) needed for the enaction of this creative process. Focus, for instance, on the first minutes of action when the potter attempts to centre the lump of clay on the wheel. The hands are grasping the clay. The fingers, bent slightly following the surface curvature, sense the clay and exchange vital tactile information necessary for a number of crucial decisions that are about to follow in the next few seconds. What is it that guides the dextrous positioning of the potter’s hands and decides upon the precise amount of forward or downward pressure necessary for centring a lump of clay on the wheel? How do the potter’s fingers come to know the precise force of the appropriate grip? What makes these questions even more fascinating is the ease by which the phenomena which they describe are accomplished. Yet underlying the effortless manner in which the potter’s hand reaches for and gradually shapes the wet clay lies a whole set of conceptual challenges to some of our most deeply entrenched assumptions about what it means to be a human agent.

Beads for a Plastic Mind: the ‘Blind Man's Stick’ (BMS) Hypothesis and the Active Nature of Material Culture

In this article I employ the example of the ‘Blind Mans stick’ (BMS) in order to redraw the traditional boundaries that separate brains, bodies and things. It is argued that the functional anatomy of the human brain is a dynamic bio-cultural construct subject to continuous ontogenetic and phylogenetic remodelling by behaviourally important and socially embedded experiences. These experiences are mediated and sometimes constituted by the use of material objects and artefacts (like the stick) which for that reason should be seen as continuous and active parts of the human cognitive architecture. Based on the above premises I use the example of the Blombos shell beads in order to explore the role of early body decoration in the emergence of human self awareness.

The brain–artefact interface (BAI): a challenge for archaeology and cultural neuroscience

Cultural neuroscience provides a new approach for understanding the impact of culture on the human brain (and vice versa) opening thus new avenues for cross-disciplinary collaboration with archaeology and anthropology. Finding new meaningful and productive unit of analysis is essential for such collaboration. But what can archaeological preoccupation with material culture and long-term change contribute to this end? In this article, I introduce and discuss the notion of the brain-artefact interface (BAI) as a useful conceptual bridge between neuroplastisty and the extended mind. I argue that a key challenge for archaeology and cultural neuroscience lies in the cross-disciplinary understanding of the processes by which our plastic enculturated brains become constituted within the wider extended networks of non-biological artefacts and cultural practices that delineate the real spatial and temporal boundaries of the human cognitive map.

Between brains, bodies and things: tectonoetic awareness and the extended self.

This paper presents the possible outline of a framework that will enable the incorporation of material culture into the study of the human self. To this end, I introduce the notions of extended self and tectonoetic awareness. Focusing on the complex interactions between brains, bodies and things and drawing a number of different and usually unconnected threads of evidence from archaeology, philosophy and neuroscience together, I present a view of selfhood as an extended and distributed phenomenon that is enacted across the skin barrier and which thus comprises both neural and extra-neural resources. Finally, I use the example of a gold Mycenaean signet ring to explore how a piece of inanimate matter can be seen (sometimes) as a constitutive and efficacious part of the human self-system.

Metaplasticity and the Primacy of Material Engagement

Humans (not just brains) have been evolving as relational self-conscious beings that undergo situated ontogenetic histories and lead creative cognitive lives. More than just evolving (in the restricted Darwinian sense of variation under natural selection), we have been altering our own developmental paths by making and changing the material means by which we engage the world (in a more extensive sense that blends Bergsonian creative evolution with niche-construction). We create things that very often alter the ecology of our minds, re-configure the boundaries of our thinking and the ways we make sense of the world. The plasticity of the mind is embedded and inextricably enfolded with the plasticity of culture – I call that metaplasticity. This ongoing relational transaction at the heart of human becoming has long been recognized in archaeology, philosophy, and anthropology. It also seems natural in view of the way materiality conspicuously envelops our everyday life and thinking. Yet our understanding of the anthropological and evolutionary implications of this seemingly unique human predisposition to reconfigure our bodies and extend our minds is severely constrained by several inherited conceptual splits that structure the way we think about the process of thinking in archaeology, anthropology, and beyond. This article explores how a neuroarchaeology of mind grounded on a theory of material engagement can help us to understand the changing prosthetic alignments (communicative, epistemic, or ontological) between brains, bodies, and things. Doing so, I want to highlight what is typically cast in the shadow and to re-instantiate the cognitive life of things and the priority of material engagement in the making and evolution of human intelligence.

Introduction. The sapient mind: archaeology meets neuroscience.

The turn of the twenty-first century has seen a new era in the cognitive and brain sciences that allows us to address the age-old question of what it means to be human from a whole new range of different perspectives. Our knowledge of the workings of the human brain increases day by day and so does

Process archaeology (P-Arch)

Abstract We advocate a Process Archaeology (P-Arch) which explores modes of becoming rather than being. We advance three theoretical postulates we feel will be useful in understanding the process of becoming. And then six temporal propositions, with the latter arranged from the briefest to the longest timescale. We lay down the basic conceptual foundation of our approach using the example of pottery making and we follow the process of creativity in between the hand of the potter and the affordances of clay. This specific creative entanglement of flow and form on a fast bodily timescale provides our grounding metaphor for an archaeology of becoming over the long term. Subsequent propositions provide the basis for exploring issues of longer-term material engagement and change.

Prosthetic gestures: how the tool shapes the mind.

I agree with Vaesen that it is a mistake to discard tool use as a hallmark of human cognition. I contend, nonetheless, that tools are not simply external markers of a distinctive human mental architecture. Rather, they actively and meaningfully participate in the process by which hominin brains and bodies make up their sapient minds.

Models, Mathematics and Materials in Digital Architecture

Today computing power and sophisticated digital tools are changing architectural design. Scripting and new design software is becoming ubiquitous and opens new opportunities for tech savvy designers, in turn computation seems set to fundamentally re-structure design practices. In the field of digital architecture , a number of critical voices have emerged from within its own ranks, vitally engaging with its theory and practice. These critiques universally assume that designers are, in fact, facing a new terrain for design thinking and that there consequently is a need to formulate a rationale for digital design research. If this is so, how can we begin to understand this new digital terrain, and what might its impact be on creativity and cognition? We approach these questions through the lens of Material Engagement Theory , exploring how computers and digital design research are changing the stakes for imaginative and creative thinking in architecture. We find that the potential of digital tools for bringing together vastly heterogeneous worlds might indeed extend the creative capacities of savvy designers, but that this relies on much more than a simple understanding of computation and involves materials, transactions and affect at several levels and temporal scales .

Creativity as a Developmental Ecology

Although fundamental to learning and making, the notion of creativity in university culture often implies an internalized and reflective cognitive process, resulting in something judged to be unique or even useful. This perspective is under challenge within anthropology, where there have been calls to see creativity as a situated, ordinary, and central feature of human life. In this chapter, we consider creativity in ecological terms, as the joining of relationships in a dynamic world to find or sustain form. As a prime example of creativity in the lived world, we follow the orchestration of perception and improvisation involved in the Nattilingmiut caribou hunt in the Central Canadian Arctic. Through this context, we examine the role of creative material engagement in shaping human awareness and experience.