scholarly journals Concepts and how they get that way

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Karenleigh A. Overmann
Keyword(s):  
Material Culture ◽  
Near East ◽  
Cognitive System ◽  
Ancient Near East ◽  
Social Aspects ◽  
Material Engagement Theory ◽  
Engagement Theory ◽  
Material Component ◽  
Multiple Material ◽  
Material Form

Drawing on the material culture of the Ancient Near East as interpreted through Material Engagement Theory, the journey of how material number becomes a conceptual number is traced to address questions of how a particular material form might generate a concept and how concepts might ultimately encompass multiple material forms so that they include but are irreducible to all of them together. Material forms incorporated into the cognitive system affect the content and structure of concepts through their agency and affordances, the capabilities and constraints they provide as the material component of the extended, enactive mind. Material forms give concepts the tangibility that enables them to be literally grasped and manipulated. As they are distributed over multiple material forms, concepts effectively become independent of any of them, yielding the abstract irreducibility that makes a concept like number what it is. Finally, social aspects of material use—collaboration, ordinariness, and time—have important effects on the generation and distribution of concepts.

scholarly journals Beyond Writing: The Development of Literacy in the Ancient Near East

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Karenleigh A. Overmann
Keyword(s):  
Object Recognition ◽  
Neural Activity ◽  
Near East ◽  
Motor Planning ◽  
State Level ◽  
Cognitive Change ◽  
Ancient Near East ◽  
Writing System ◽  
Material Engagement Theory ◽  
Engagement Theory

Previous discussions of the origins of writing in the Ancient Near East have not incorporated the neuroscience of literacy, which suggests that when southern Mesopotamians wrote marks on clay in the late-fourth millennium, they inadvertently reorganized their neural activity, a factor in manipulating the writing system to reflect language, yielding literacy through a combination of neurofunctional change and increased script fidelity to language. Such a development appears to take place only with a sufficient demand for writing and reading, such as that posed by a state-level bureaucracy; the use of a material with suitable characteristics; and the production of marks that are conventionalized, handwritten, simple, and non-numerical. From the perspective of Material Engagement Theory, writing and reading represent the interactivity of bodies, materiality, and brains: movements of hands, arms, and eyes; clay and the implements used to mark it and form characters; and vision, motor planning, object recognition, and language. Literacy is a cognitive change that emerges from and depends upon the nexus of interactivity of the components.

scholarly journals Beyond Writing: The Development of Literacy in the Ancient Near East

2016 ◽  
Vol 26 (2) ◽  
pp. 285-303 ◽  
Author(s):  
Karenleigh A. Overmann
Keyword(s):  
Object Recognition ◽  
Neural Activity ◽  
Near East ◽  
Motor Planning ◽  
State Level ◽  
Cognitive Change ◽  
Ancient Near East ◽  
Writing System ◽  
Material Engagement Theory ◽  
Engagement Theory

Previous discussions of the origins of writing in the Ancient Near East have not incorporated the neuroscience of literacy, which suggests that when southern Mesopotamians wrote marks on clay in the late fourth millennium, they inadvertently reorganized their neural activity, a factor in manipulating the writing system to reflect language, yielding literacy through a combination of neurofunctional change and increased script fidelity to language. Such a development appears to take place only with a sufficient demand for writing and reading, such as that posed by a state-level bureaucracy; the use of a material with suitable characteristics; and the production of marks that are conventionalized, handwritten, simple and non-numerical. From the perspective of Material Engagement Theory (MET), writing and reading represent the interactivity of bodies, materiality and brains: movements of hands, arms and eyes; clay and the implements used to mark it and form characters; and vision, motor planning, object recognition and language. Literacy is a cognitive change that emerges from and depends upon the nexus of interactivity of the components.

More than a Body

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Lambros Malafouris ◽  
Maria Danae Koukouti
Keyword(s):  
Material Culture ◽  
Material Engagement Theory ◽  
Material World ◽  
New Approach ◽  
Engagement Theory ◽  
The World ◽  
Material Engagement ◽  
The Mind ◽  
The Way

Merging notions of materiality and intercorporeality is becoming increasingly important in archaeology and anthropology, as material culture has brought the materiality of bodies and the materiality of things back to the center of attention. Material Engagement Theory (MET) offers a new approach to the study of the nature of interactions and relational transactions of people and things as well as understanding their role in shaping the mind. Using the example of pottery making, this paper explores how the material world now becomes an inseparable component of the way we think; mind and matter are one and must be studied as such. This is a new emphasis on the priority of material engagement as a prereflexive, preverbal capacity for basic thought through, with, and about things which emerges from our bodily engagement with the world. It resonates, extends, and complements the concept of “intercorporeality” (intercorporéité) as advanced by French philosopher Maurice Merleau-Ponty.

Material Culture, Iconography, and the Prophets

2016 ◽  
Author(s):  
Brent A. Strawn
Keyword(s):  
Material Culture ◽  
Near East ◽  
Ancient Near East ◽  
Biblical Text ◽  
Near Eastern ◽  
Ancient Israel ◽  
The Many

This chapter probes one aspect of material culture—namely, ancient Near Eastern iconography—for its pertinence for the prophets. It focuses on lion imagery in the book of Amos and lion iconography in the ancient Near East, but especially in the archaeology of ancient Israel/Palestine. The artistic remains contribute to a better understanding of this motif in Amos, and the same holds true for the many other images and metaphors that may be found in both the biblical text and the archaeology. In certain cases, as with the lion in Amos, attention to the iconographic data can cast light not only on singular instances of an idea in a specific verse or two, but also on wider complexes of ideas across larger units, if not entire prophetic books. Still further, the iconographic data can sometimes contribute to—or, in fact, chasten—debates about a book’s composition and redaction history.

scholarly journals Thinking as “Thinging”: Psychology With Things

2019 ◽  
Vol 29 (1) ◽  
pp. 3-8 ◽  
Author(s):  
Lambros Malafouris
Keyword(s):  
Material Culture ◽  
Exact Nature ◽  
Mental Life ◽  
Human Consciousness ◽  
Main Argument ◽  
Material Engagement Theory ◽  
Human Psychology ◽  
Engagement Theory ◽  
Psychological Science ◽  
Transformative Potential

We live and we think inside a world of things made and found. Still, psychological science has shown little interest in understanding the exact nature of the relation between cognition and material culture. As a result, the diachronic influence and transformative potential of things in human mental life remains little understood. Most psychologists would see things as external and passive: the lifeless objects of human consciousness, perception, and memory. On the contrary, my main argument in this article is that things matter to human psychology and should be taken seriously. Although things usually pass unnoticed, they are anything but trivial. Things have a special place in human cognitive life and evolution. We think “with” and “through” things, not simply “about” things. In that sense, things occupy the middle space in between what are usually referred to as mind and matter. Material-engagement theory provides a way to describe and study that middle space where brain, body, and culture are conflated.

Bringing things to mind

2018 ◽  
pp. 754-772
Author(s):  
Lambros Malafouris
Keyword(s):  
Material Culture ◽  
Social Life ◽  
Human Intelligence ◽  
Human Beings ◽  
Material Engagement Theory ◽  
Enactive Cognition ◽  
Engagement Theory ◽  
4E Cognition ◽  
Strong Material ◽  
Material Engagement

Human intelligence and its evolution have always been inextricably linked with the material forms people make. Archaeology and anthropology may well testify that human beings are not merely embedded in a rich and changing universe of things; rather, human cognitive and social life is a process genuinely mediated and often constituted by them. The specific details, varieties, and forms of that process are not well understood and demand a cross-disciplinary approach. This chapter argues for the need to add a strong material culture dimension of research in the area of 4E (embodied–embedded–extended–enactive) cognition. Material engagement theory (MET) is proposed as a framework suitable for bridging the analytical gap between 4E cognition and the study of material culture. The notion of “thing-ing” is used to draw attention to the modes of cognitive life instantiated in acts of thinking and feeling with, through, and about things.

Hirbemerdon Tepe: a late third to mid second millennium BC settlement of the upper Tigris valley

2007 ◽  
Vol 57 ◽  
pp. 77-86
Author(s):  
Nicola Laneri ◽  
Stefano Valentini ◽  
Anacleto D'Agostino
Keyword(s):  
Material Culture ◽  
Near East ◽  
River Valley ◽  
Ancient Near East ◽  
Local Variety ◽  
Tigris River ◽  
Third Millennium ◽  
Significant Region ◽  
Cultural Interactions

AbstractThe increased number of archaeological activities, underway as a result of the projected construction of the Ilısu dam to be built along the Tigris river in southeastern Anatolia, have brought to light numerous structures associated with the material culture of the late third millennium to mid second millennium BC. The assemblages are characterised by a local variety of pottery, the so-called ‘Red Brown Wash Ware’, usually found in contexts associated with materials similar to those available from contemporaneous periods in northern Mesopotamia, northern Syria and Anatolia. As a consequence, this paper investigates the apparent cultural interactions which took place between the Mesopotamian and Anatolian regions during the above-mentioned period, drawing on recent data obtained at the site of Hirbemerdon Tepe located along the upper Tigris river valley in southeastern Anatolia. Through this overview, an additional objective is to bring to a broader public the material culture of this relatively little known yet increasingly significant region of the ancient Near East.

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