D Hodgson
Biographic Data
| ID | 16210 |
|---|---|
| NAME | D Hodgson |
| GIVEN NAMES | D |
| FAMILY NAME | Hodgson |
| SIGNATURE | HODGSON D |
| AFFILIATIONS | University of York |
| ORCID | 0000-0003-1509-3732 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 27 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 149 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 27 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2000 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2023 |
| H-INDEX | 7 |
Beyond the image: Interdisciplinary and contextual approaches to understanding symbolic cognition in Paleolithic parietal art
Symbolic cognition-the ability to produce and use symbols, including (but not limited to) linguistic symbols-has often been considered a hallmark of human achievement. Given its importance, symbolic cognition has been a major topic of interest in many academic disciplines including anthropology, archeology, and the cognitive sciences.1-6 Paleolithic rock art holds vast potential for understanding the early roots of symbolically mediated behavior.…
Upper Palaeolithic art as a perceptual search for magical images
Perceptual psychology has provided a number of revealing insights into the phenomenon of palaeoart. The value of the discipline is underlined by the fact that it has provided new ways of exploring how Upper Palaeolithic cave art first arose, both on a theoretical and a practical level. Despite this, the approach has been accused of overstating the importance of perceptual factors to the detriment of cultural criteria. In this paper, I demonstrate…
"Comment on "Early evidence for symbolic behavior in the Levantine Middle Paleolithic: "A 120 ka old engraved aurochs bone shaft from the open-air site of Nesher Ramla, Israel" [Quat. Int. (2021) http…
Response to the critique by Mellet et al. of Hodgson’s Neurovisual Resonance Theory
The origin, significance, and development of the earliest geometric patterns in the archaeological record
Tracing Upper Palaeolithic Iconography: The Strange Case of Animal Tracks
The notion that the "Q" shaped motifs in Upper Palaeolithic art represent vulvae has become accepted dogma. This assumption is critically examined by showing that such motifs more closely resemble hoof prints. A number of examples of hoof prints made by large herbivores are illustrated highlighting this correspondence, which suggests such motifs should be reclassified as representing tracks made by certain animals
The Origins of Iconic Depictions: A Falsifiable Model Derived from the Visual Science of Palaeolithic Cave Art and World Rock Art
Archaeologists have struggled for more than a century to explain why the first representational art of the Upper Palaeolithic arose and the reason for its precocious naturalism. Thanks to new data from various sites across Europe and further afield, as well as crucial insights from visual science, we may now be on the brink of bringing some clarity to this issue. In this paper, we assert that the main precursors of the first figurative art consis…
Closely Observed Animals, Hunter-Gatherers, and Visual Imagery in Upper Paleolithic Art
Parallels are often made between the culture of San hunter-gatherers of southern Africa and that of European Upper Paleolithic hunter-gatherers. Despite different environmental conditions and lifestyles, the fact that both groups live by hunting provides a point of comparison that can afford insights into Ice Age art. Focusing on both groups' hunting relationships with prey animals can illuminate the intermeshing of human and animal traits in Upp…
Costly signalling, the arts, archaeology and human behaviour
The role of the arts has become crucial to understanding the origins of ‘modern human behaviour’ but is highly controversial as it is not clear why the arts evolved and persisted. I argue that the arts evolved as a by-product of biological traits and expressions of gene culture co-evolution that facilitated group cohesion through costly signalling that led to increasing but, ultimately, unsustainable population densities. This paper therefore str…
Are there alternative adaptive strategies to human pro-sociality? The role of collaborative morality in the emergence of personality variation and autistic traits
Selection pressures to better understand others' thoughts and feelings are seen as a primary driving force in human cognitive evolution. Yet might the evolution of social cognition be more complex than we assume, with more than one strategy towards social understanding and developing a positive pro-social reputation? Here we argue that social buffering of vulnerabilities through the emergence of collaborative morality will have opened new niches …
The symmetry of Acheulean handaxes and cognitive evolution
The visual brain and the early depiction of animals in Europe and Southeast Asia
The recent discovery that iconic depictions in caves on the Indonesian island of Sulawesi are more ancient than those from Upper Palaeolithic Europe raises questions as to when such images first arose and why the graphic outcomes from the two locations are so similar. In this paper, we show that these questions can be addressed by exploiting the extensive research carried out over the recent past on the psychology of perception and the neuroscien…
Decoding the Blombos Engravings, Shell Beads and Diepkloof Ostrich Eggshell Patterns
The debate regarding the status of the Blombos ochre engravings and shell beads for gauging the timeline of when cognitive abilities and symbolic intent appeared has been controversial. This is mainly due to the fact that what is referred to as symbolic is often too loosely defined and is therefore attributed to artefacts in an indiscriminate way. Recent evidence from various concurrent sites in southern Africa, including Blombos, provide the opp…
The Visual Brain, Perception, and Depiction of Animals in Rock Art
Several aspects of the depiction of animals in rock art can be explained by certain perceptual correlates relating to the visual brain and evolutionary factors. Recent evidence from neuroscience and the visual brain not only corroborates this claim but provides important new findings that can help delineate which graphic features relate to biological/genetic criteria. In addition to highlighting how the insights from visual science and evolutiona…
The Consequences of Human Behavior
Human behavior is founded on a complex interaction of influences that derive from sources both extraneous and intrinsic to the brain. It is the ways these various influences worked together in the past to fashion modern human cognition that can help elucidate the probable course of future human endeavor. A particular concern of this chapter is the way cognition has been shaped and continues to depend on prevailing environmental and ecological con…
Emanations of the Mind: Upper Paleolithic Art as a Visual Phenomenon
Recent research into perception, the visual brain, and neuropsychology has important implications for understanding Upper Paleolithic art. The relevant aspects of this research and how it relates to the art produced will be described. It will also be shown that the depiction of animals in caves provides particularly important evidence in this regard. Specific natural features and environmental conditions of the cave will be shown to have interact…
Accommodating Opposing Perspectives in the "Modern Human Behavior" Debate
Wild Thing, I Think I Love You: The Importance of Animals in Human Evolution: A Comment on Shipman
Determining the behavioural profile of early modern humans: Assimilating Population Dynamics and Cognitive Abilities
It has been assumed that the most productive approach for gauging when modern human behaviour emerged consists of considering when particular artefacts appeared in the archaeological record from which inferences can then be made as to the cognitive profile of those responsible. As a result, the florescence of artefacts that appeared approximately 40,000 BP is regarded as evidence of an important neuro-cognitive event. As anatomical modern humans …
Symmetry and humans: Reply to Mithen's ‘Sexy Handaxe Theory
In reply to Machin's criticism of Kohn and Mithen's (1999) 'Sexy Handaxe Theory' in a recent Antiquity debate (Machin 2008: 761-6), Mithen (2008: 766-9) states that sexual selection is still relevant to the symmetry of Acheulean handaxes because this provides the only theory that can account for the various features typical of such artefacts. This conclusion may be misconceived, however, due to the conflation of the various factors relating to sy…
The Visual Dynamics of Upper Palaeolithic Cave Art
Franco-Cantabrian cave art continues to be the focus of much speculation but despite the many theories put forward there has been little progress in explaining the range of perplexing features of this ‘art’. Only by regarding such wide-ranging and anomalous characteristics as central to this debate might some progress as to derivation be possible. The account presented in this article will demonstrate how the many ‘contradictions’ prevailing migh…
Altered States of Consciousness and Palaeoart: An Alternative Neurovisual Explanation
There has been much controversy recently regarding Lewis-Williams's assertion that altered states of consciousness and shamanism can explain Palaeolithic art. Evidence now seems to be accumulating that this account is unable to provide a sustainable explanation for Upper Palaeolithic depictions. This proposition will be explored and substantiated by examining further weaknesses contained therein. Additionally, in response to claims by those defen…
Graphic Primitives and the Embedded Figure in 20th-Century Art: Insights from Neuroscience, Ethology and Perception
Recent investigations into both cognitive science and the functional derivation of the visual brain as well as evolutionary dynamics have led to new and exciting ways of interpreting art. Abstract art has often been regarded as beyond the purview of such interpretations because of the very fact that it is abstract. However, as a visually guided activity, abstraction is eminently suited to an analysis from this perspective. This essay will demonst…
More on Acheulean Tools
Seeing the ‘Unseen: Fragmented Cues and the Implicit in Palaeolithic Art
Palaeolithic Art is generally thought to be based primarily upon the explicit conscious aspects of recognition and memory. Recent research into perception and cognition, however, has revealed a ‘hidden’ substructure of processing, known as implicit perception and memory, that functions in a different way to overt modes of cognisance but, yet, by dovetailing with consciously defined determinants helps to define how these are structured. As the mak…
The symmetry of Acheulean handaxes and cognitive evolution
The Origins of Iconic Depictions: A Falsifiable Model Derived from the Visual Science of Palaeolithic Cave Art and World Rock Art
Archaeologists have struggled for more than a century to explain why the first representational art of the Upper Palaeolithic arose and the reason for its precocious naturalism. Thanks to new data from various sites across Europe and further afield, as well as crucial insights from visual science, we may now be on the brink of bringing some clarity to this issue. In this paper, we assert that the main precursors of the first figurative art consis…
Shamanism, Phosphenes, and Early Art: An Alternative Synthesis
The visual brain and the early depiction of animals in Europe and Southeast Asia
The recent discovery that iconic depictions in caves on the Indonesian island of Sulawesi are more ancient than those from Upper Palaeolithic Europe raises questions as to when such images first arose and why the graphic outcomes from the two locations are so similar. In this paper, we show that these questions can be addressed by exploiting the extensive research carried out over the recent past on the psychology of perception and the neuroscien…
The Visual Dynamics of Upper Palaeolithic Cave Art
Franco-Cantabrian cave art continues to be the focus of much speculation but despite the many theories put forward there has been little progress in explaining the range of perplexing features of this ‘art’. Only by regarding such wide-ranging and anomalous characteristics as central to this debate might some progress as to derivation be possible. The account presented in this article will demonstrate how the many ‘contradictions’ prevailing migh…
Seeing the ‘Unseen: Fragmented Cues and the Implicit in Palaeolithic Art
Palaeolithic Art is generally thought to be based primarily upon the explicit conscious aspects of recognition and memory. Recent research into perception and cognition, however, has revealed a ‘hidden’ substructure of processing, known as implicit perception and memory, that functions in a different way to overt modes of cognisance but, yet, by dovetailing with consciously defined determinants helps to define how these are structured. As the mak…
More on Acheulean Tools
Costly signalling, the arts, archaeology and human behaviour
The role of the arts has become crucial to understanding the origins of ‘modern human behaviour’ but is highly controversial as it is not clear why the arts evolved and persisted. I argue that the arts evolved as a by-product of biological traits and expressions of gene culture co-evolution that facilitated group cohesion through costly signalling that led to increasing but, ultimately, unsustainable population densities. This paper therefore str…
Decoding the Blombos Engravings, Shell Beads and Diepkloof Ostrich Eggshell Patterns
The debate regarding the status of the Blombos ochre engravings and shell beads for gauging the timeline of when cognitive abilities and symbolic intent appeared has been controversial. This is mainly due to the fact that what is referred to as symbolic is often too loosely defined and is therefore attributed to artefacts in an indiscriminate way. Recent evidence from various concurrent sites in southern Africa, including Blombos, provide the opp…
Altered States of Consciousness and Palaeoart: An Alternative Neurovisual Explanation
There has been much controversy recently regarding Lewis-Williams's assertion that altered states of consciousness and shamanism can explain Palaeolithic art. Evidence now seems to be accumulating that this account is unable to provide a sustainable explanation for Upper Palaeolithic depictions. This proposition will be explored and substantiated by examining further weaknesses contained therein. Additionally, in response to claims by those defen…
The origin, significance, and development of the earliest geometric patterns in the archaeological record
Symmetry and humans: Reply to Mithen's ‘Sexy Handaxe Theory
In reply to Machin's criticism of Kohn and Mithen's (1999) 'Sexy Handaxe Theory' in a recent Antiquity debate (Machin 2008: 761-6), Mithen (2008: 766-9) states that sexual selection is still relevant to the symmetry of Acheulean handaxes because this provides the only theory that can account for the various features typical of such artefacts. This conclusion may be misconceived, however, due to the conflation of the various factors relating to sy…
Wild Thing, I Think I Love You: The Importance of Animals in Human Evolution: A Comment on Shipman
Beyond the image: Interdisciplinary and contextual approaches to understanding symbolic cognition in Paleolithic parietal art
Symbolic cognition-the ability to produce and use symbols, including (but not limited to) linguistic symbols-has often been considered a hallmark of human achievement. Given its importance, symbolic cognition has been a major topic of interest in many academic disciplines including anthropology, archeology, and the cognitive sciences.1-6 Paleolithic rock art holds vast potential for understanding the early roots of symbolically mediated behavior.…
Are there alternative adaptive strategies to human pro-sociality? The role of collaborative morality in the emergence of personality variation and autistic traits
Selection pressures to better understand others' thoughts and feelings are seen as a primary driving force in human cognitive evolution. Yet might the evolution of social cognition be more complex than we assume, with more than one strategy towards social understanding and developing a positive pro-social reputation? Here we argue that social buffering of vulnerabilities through the emergence of collaborative morality will have opened new niches …
Accommodating Opposing Perspectives in the "Modern Human Behavior" Debate
Graphic Primitives and the Embedded Figure in 20th-Century Art: Insights from Neuroscience, Ethology and Perception
Recent investigations into both cognitive science and the functional derivation of the visual brain as well as evolutionary dynamics have led to new and exciting ways of interpreting art. Abstract art has often been regarded as beyond the purview of such interpretations because of the very fact that it is abstract. However, as a visually guided activity, abstraction is eminently suited to an analysis from this perspective. This essay will demonst…
Shamanism, Phosphenes, and Early Art: An Alternative Synthesis
Gendered Modernities: Ethnographic Perspectives
Based on long-term ethnographic research, the book chapters explore the intersection of 'gender' and 'modernity' as they are mediated in the lives and subjectivities of diverse individuals and groups
Seeing the ‘Unseen: Fragmented Cues and the Implicit in Palaeolithic Art
Palaeolithic Art is generally thought to be based primarily upon the explicit conscious aspects of recognition and memory. Recent research into perception and cognition, however, has revealed a ‘hidden’ substructure of processing, known as implicit perception and memory, that functions in a different way to overt modes of cognisance but, yet, by dovetailing with consciously defined determinants helps to define how these are structured. As the mak…
Graphic Primitives and the Embedded Figure in 20th-Century Art: Insights from Neuroscience, Ethology and Perception
Recent investigations into both cognitive science and the functional derivation of the visual brain as well as evolutionary dynamics have led to new and exciting ways of interpreting art. Abstract art has often been regarded as beyond the purview of such interpretations because of the very fact that it is abstract. However, as a visually guided activity, abstraction is eminently suited to an analysis from this perspective. This essay will demonst…
More on Acheulean Tools
Altered States of Consciousness and Palaeoart: An Alternative Neurovisual Explanation
There has been much controversy recently regarding Lewis-Williams's assertion that altered states of consciousness and shamanism can explain Palaeolithic art. Evidence now seems to be accumulating that this account is unable to provide a sustainable explanation for Upper Palaeolithic depictions. This proposition will be explored and substantiated by examining further weaknesses contained therein. Additionally, in response to claims by those defen…
The Visual Dynamics of Upper Palaeolithic Cave Art
Franco-Cantabrian cave art continues to be the focus of much speculation but despite the many theories put forward there has been little progress in explaining the range of perplexing features of this ‘art’. Only by regarding such wide-ranging and anomalous characteristics as central to this debate might some progress as to derivation be possible. The account presented in this article will demonstrate how the many ‘contradictions’ prevailing migh…
Symmetry and humans: Reply to Mithen's ‘Sexy Handaxe Theory
In reply to Machin's criticism of Kohn and Mithen's (1999) 'Sexy Handaxe Theory' in a recent Antiquity debate (Machin 2008: 761-6), Mithen (2008: 766-9) states that sexual selection is still relevant to the symmetry of Acheulean handaxes because this provides the only theory that can account for the various features typical of such artefacts. This conclusion may be misconceived, however, due to the conflation of the various factors relating to sy…
Determining the behavioural profile of early modern humans: Assimilating Population Dynamics and Cognitive Abilities
It has been assumed that the most productive approach for gauging when modern human behaviour emerged consists of considering when particular artefacts appeared in the archaeological record from which inferences can then be made as to the cognitive profile of those responsible. As a result, the florescence of artefacts that appeared approximately 40,000 BP is regarded as evidence of an important neuro-cognitive event. As anatomical modern humans …
Wild Thing, I Think I Love You: The Importance of Animals in Human Evolution: A Comment on Shipman
The Consequences of Human Behavior
Human behavior is founded on a complex interaction of influences that derive from sources both extraneous and intrinsic to the brain. It is the ways these various influences worked together in the past to fashion modern human cognition that can help elucidate the probable course of future human endeavor. A particular concern of this chapter is the way cognition has been shaped and continues to depend on prevailing environmental and ecological con…
Emanations of the Mind: Upper Paleolithic Art as a Visual Phenomenon
Recent research into perception, the visual brain, and neuropsychology has important implications for understanding Upper Paleolithic art. The relevant aspects of this research and how it relates to the art produced will be described. It will also be shown that the depiction of animals in caves provides particularly important evidence in this regard. Specific natural features and environmental conditions of the cave will be shown to have interact…
Accommodating Opposing Perspectives in the "Modern Human Behavior" Debate
The Visual Brain, Perception, and Depiction of Animals in Rock Art
Several aspects of the depiction of animals in rock art can be explained by certain perceptual correlates relating to the visual brain and evolutionary factors. Recent evidence from neuroscience and the visual brain not only corroborates this claim but provides important new findings that can help delineate which graphic features relate to biological/genetic criteria. In addition to highlighting how the insights from visual science and evolutiona…
Decoding the Blombos Engravings, Shell Beads and Diepkloof Ostrich Eggshell Patterns
The debate regarding the status of the Blombos ochre engravings and shell beads for gauging the timeline of when cognitive abilities and symbolic intent appeared has been controversial. This is mainly due to the fact that what is referred to as symbolic is often too loosely defined and is therefore attributed to artefacts in an indiscriminate way. Recent evidence from various concurrent sites in southern Africa, including Blombos, provide the opp…
The symmetry of Acheulean handaxes and cognitive evolution
The visual brain and the early depiction of animals in Europe and Southeast Asia
The recent discovery that iconic depictions in caves on the Indonesian island of Sulawesi are more ancient than those from Upper Palaeolithic Europe raises questions as to when such images first arose and why the graphic outcomes from the two locations are so similar. In this paper, we show that these questions can be addressed by exploiting the extensive research carried out over the recent past on the psychology of perception and the neuroscien…
Are there alternative adaptive strategies to human pro-sociality? The role of collaborative morality in the emergence of personality variation and autistic traits
Selection pressures to better understand others' thoughts and feelings are seen as a primary driving force in human cognitive evolution. Yet might the evolution of social cognition be more complex than we assume, with more than one strategy towards social understanding and developing a positive pro-social reputation? Here we argue that social buffering of vulnerabilities through the emergence of collaborative morality will have opened new niches …
Closely Observed Animals, Hunter-Gatherers, and Visual Imagery in Upper Paleolithic Art
Parallels are often made between the culture of San hunter-gatherers of southern Africa and that of European Upper Paleolithic hunter-gatherers. Despite different environmental conditions and lifestyles, the fact that both groups live by hunting provides a point of comparison that can afford insights into Ice Age art. Focusing on both groups' hunting relationships with prey animals can illuminate the intermeshing of human and animal traits in Upp…
Costly signalling, the arts, archaeology and human behaviour
The role of the arts has become crucial to understanding the origins of ‘modern human behaviour’ but is highly controversial as it is not clear why the arts evolved and persisted. I argue that the arts evolved as a by-product of biological traits and expressions of gene culture co-evolution that facilitated group cohesion through costly signalling that led to increasing but, ultimately, unsustainable population densities. This paper therefore str…
Tracing Upper Palaeolithic Iconography: The Strange Case of Animal Tracks
The notion that the "Q" shaped motifs in Upper Palaeolithic art represent vulvae has become accepted dogma. This assumption is critically examined by showing that such motifs more closely resemble hoof prints. A number of examples of hoof prints made by large herbivores are illustrated highlighting this correspondence, which suggests such motifs should be reclassified as representing tracks made by certain animals
The Origins of Iconic Depictions: A Falsifiable Model Derived from the Visual Science of Palaeolithic Cave Art and World Rock Art
Archaeologists have struggled for more than a century to explain why the first representational art of the Upper Palaeolithic arose and the reason for its precocious naturalism. Thanks to new data from various sites across Europe and further afield, as well as crucial insights from visual science, we may now be on the brink of bringing some clarity to this issue. In this paper, we assert that the main precursors of the first figurative art consis…
Response to the critique by Mellet et al. of Hodgson’s Neurovisual Resonance Theory
The origin, significance, and development of the earliest geometric patterns in the archaeological record
Upper Palaeolithic art as a perceptual search for magical images
Perceptual psychology has provided a number of revealing insights into the phenomenon of palaeoart. The value of the discipline is underlined by the fact that it has provided new ways of exploring how Upper Palaeolithic cave art first arose, both on a theoretical and a practical level. Despite this, the approach has been accused of overstating the importance of perceptual factors to the detriment of cultural criteria. In this paper, I demonstrate…
Psychology (19 works) · History (15 works) · Philosophy (15 works) · Archaeology (14 works) · Aesthetic Perception and Analysis (12 works) · Archaeology and Rock Art Studies (12 works) · Cognitive science (12 works) · Neuroscience (11 works) · Art (10 works) · Epistemology (10 works)