Karenleigh A Overmann
Biographic Data
| ID | 92915 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Karenleigh A Overmann |
| GIVEN NAMES | Karenleigh A |
| FAMILY NAME | Overmann |
| SIGNATURE | OVERMANN K A |
| AFFILIATIONS | University of Colorado Colorado Springs |
| ORCID | 0000-0002-3950-122X |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 33 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 94 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 31 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 2 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2012 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2025 |
| H-INDEX | 5 |
Cultural Number Systems: A Sourcebook
Northern California: Pomo Numbers
Numbers in Australia
Philosophy and prehistory: New perspectives on minds, art, and culture
This article introduces the special issue “Philosophy and Prehistory: New Perspectives on Minds, Art, and Culture.” The primary motivation for the issue was to create a space where philosophy and evolutionary cognitive archaeology could intersect. We wanted to encourage cognitive archaeologists to reflect on their field from a philosophical perspective, and philosophers to consider key methodological, theoretical, or conceptual issues in evolutio…
Writing as an extended cognitive system
Inka Numbers, Khipu, and Yupana: A Reanalysis
We review the history of decipherment on the technologies used for numbers by the Inkas – khipus and yupanas . We offer a novel interpretation of the portable “checkerboard” yupana drawn in 1615, revealing a numerical algorithm. This analysis sheds new light on the Inka number system, questioning its inclusion of a concept of zero and its interpretation as a positional system. We conclude that Inka numbers and computational methods were likely no…
Oxford Handbook of Cognitive Archaeology
The Beginning of Time
The present analysis focuses on the material component of time, the devices used for measuring and counting it. The biological basis for subjective, experiential time is first reviewed, as are early strategies found cross-culturally for measuring and counting time objectively. These strategies include timekeeping by natural phenomena, using tallies to keep track of small periods of time, harnessing shadows for daily and annual time, and visualizi…
The Materiality of Numbers: Emergence and Elaboration from Prehistory to Present
This is a book about numbers – what they are as concepts and how and why they originate – as viewed through the material devices used to represent and manipulate them. Fingers, tallies, tokens, and written notations, invented in both ancestral and contemporary societies, explain what numbers are, why they are the way they are, and how we get them. Overmann is the first to explore how material devices contribute to numerical thinking, initially by…
Materiality of Numbers: Emergence and Elaboration from Prehistory to Present
Materiality of Numbers: Emergence and Elaboration from Prehistory to Present
Desana numerical symbols: An indigenous creation narrated by Diakuru and Kisibi
In 2006, a narrative of the Desana people included a system of graphic symbols reported as a historical Indigenous invention used during intertribal warfare to count the number of enemies and pass warning information. This paper outlines and evaluates the Desana graphic system. The Desana people are described, and their timeline of mythical events is compared to historical accounts of the region. Contemporary Desana spoken numbers are then charac…
Reckonings: Numerals, Cognition, and History
Numerical Origins: The Critical Questions
Four perspectives on numerical origins are examined. The nativist model sees numbers as an aspect of numerosity, the biologically endowed ability to appreciate quantity that humans share with other species. The linguistic model sees numbers as a function of language. The embodied model sees numbers as conceptual metaphors informed by physical experience and expressed in language. Finally, the extended model sees numbers as conceptual outcomes of …
Human species and mating systems: Neandertal-Homo sapiens reproductive isolation and the archaeological and fossil records
The present paper examined the assumption of strong reproductive isolation (RI) between Homo neanderthalensis and Homo sapiens, as well as the question of what form it might have taken, using insights from the parallel case of chimpanzee–bonobo hybridization. RI from hybrid sterility or inviability was thought unlikely based on the short separation-to-introgression timeline. The forms of RI that typically develop in primates have relatively short…
Teeth, tools and human becoming
This article focused on the cognitive implications of using the teeth as a tool, something the fossil dental record suggests was more associated with Neandertals than contemporary Homo sapiens
The false dichotomy: A refutation of the Neandertal indistinguishability claim
In the debate about the demise of the Neandertal, several scholars have claimed that humanity’s nearest relatives were indistinguishable archaeologically, and thus behaviorally and cognitively, from contemporaneous Homo sapiens. They suggest that to hold otherwise is to characterize Neandertals as inferior to H. sapiens, a false dichotomy that excludes the possibility that the two human types simply differed in ways visible to natural selection, …
A New Look at Old Numbers, and What It Reveals about Numeration
In this study, the archaic counting systems of Mesopotamia as understood through the Neolithic tokens, numerical impressions, and proto-cuneiform notations were compared to the traditional number-words and counting methods of Polynesia as understood through contemporary and historical descriptions of vocabulary and behaviors. The comparison and associated analyses capitalized on the ability to understand well-known characteristics of Uruk-period …
The curious idea that Māori once counted by elevens, and the insights it still holds for cross-cultural numerical research
The idea the New Zealand Māori once counted by elevens has been viewed as a cultural misunderstanding originating with a mid-nineteenth-century dictionary of their language. Yet this “remarkable singularity” had an earlier, Continental origin, the details of which have been lost over a century of transmission in the literature. The affair is traced to a pair of scientific explorers, René-Primevère Lesson and Jules Poret de Blosseville, as reconst…
Squeezing Minds from Stones: Cognitive Archaeology and the Evolution of the Human Mind
On Tools Making Minds: An Archaeological Perspective on Human Cognitive Evolution
Using a model of cognition as extended and enactive, we examine the role of materiality in making minds as exemplified by lithics and writing, forms associated with conceptual thought and meta-awareness of conceptual domains. We address ways in which brain functions may change in response to interactions with material forms, the attributes of material forms that may cause such change, and the spans of time required for neurofunctional reorganizat…
Situated Cognition
Situated cognition examines how the human mind is affected by being in a physical body and a natural and sociomaterial environment, influencing how a person perceives, learns, knows, reasons, decides, and acts. Within the generic term “situated cognition” are various distinctions in which cognition is embodied, embedded, extended, distributed, dynamical, or enactive. In this entry, these views of cognition are explored through influential works i…
Materiality and Human Cognition
Thinking Materially: Cognition as Extended and Enacted
Human cognition is extended and enacted. Drawing the boundaries of cognition to include the resources and attributes of the body and materiality allows an examination of how these components interact with the brain as a system, especially over cultural and evolutionary spans of time. Literacy and numeracy provide examples of multigenerational, incremental change in both psychological functioning and material forms. Though we think materiality, it…
Number Concepts Are Constructed through Material Engagement: A Reply to Sutliff, Read, and Everett
Numerosity, Abstraction, and the Emergence of Symbolic Thinking
In this paper we tentatively propose that one of the feral cognitive bases for modern symbolic thinking may be numerosity, that is, the ability to appreciate and understand numbers. We proffer that numerosity appears to be an inherently abstractive process, which is supported by numerous human infant and monkey studies. We also review studies that demonstrate that the neurological substrate for numerosity is primarily the intraparietal sulcus of …
The role of materiality in numerical cognition
Materiality and Human Cognition
Material Scaffolds in Numbers and Time
The present article develops a framework for interpreting Upper Palaeolithic artefacts from an analysis of material complexity, numeration systems and timekeeping using cultural categorizations, insights on the emergence of number terms in language, and the astronomy practices of 33 contemporary hunter-gatherer societies. Our key findings suggest that astronomy originates in the ability to estimate and infer contextual relations among natural phe…
Beyond Writing: The Development of Literacy in the Ancient Near East
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.…
On Tools Making Minds: An Archaeological Perspective on Human Cognitive Evolution
Using a model of cognition as extended and enactive, we examine the role of materiality in making minds as exemplified by lithics and writing, forms associated with conceptual thought and meta-awareness of conceptual domains. We address ways in which brain functions may change in response to interactions with material forms, the attributes of material forms that may cause such change, and the spans of time required for neurofunctional reorganizat…
Dynamics of Learning in Neanderthals and Modern Humans. Cultural Perspectives
Thinking Materially: Cognition as Extended and Enacted
Human cognition is extended and enacted. Drawing the boundaries of cognition to include the resources and attributes of the body and materiality allows an examination of how these components interact with the brain as a system, especially over cultural and evolutionary spans of time. Literacy and numeracy provide examples of multigenerational, incremental change in both psychological functioning and material forms. Though we think materiality, it…
The false dichotomy: A refutation of the Neandertal indistinguishability claim
In the debate about the demise of the Neandertal, several scholars have claimed that humanity’s nearest relatives were indistinguishable archaeologically, and thus behaviorally and cognitively, from contemporaneous Homo sapiens. They suggest that to hold otherwise is to characterize Neandertals as inferior to H. sapiens, a false dichotomy that excludes the possibility that the two human types simply differed in ways visible to natural selection, …
Number Concepts Are Constructed through Material Engagement: A Reply to Sutliff, Read, and Everett
On the Nature of Numerosity and the Role of Language in Developing Number Concepts: A Reply to Everett
Teeth, tools and human becoming
This article focused on the cognitive implications of using the teeth as a tool, something the fossil dental record suggests was more associated with Neandertals than contemporary Homo sapiens
The curious idea that Māori once counted by elevens, and the insights it still holds for cross-cultural numerical research
The idea the New Zealand Māori once counted by elevens has been viewed as a cultural misunderstanding originating with a mid-nineteenth-century dictionary of their language. Yet this “remarkable singularity” had an earlier, Continental origin, the details of which have been lost over a century of transmission in the literature. The affair is traced to a pair of scientific explorers, René-Primevère Lesson and Jules Poret de Blosseville, as reconst…
Numerosity, Abstraction, and the Emergence of Symbolic Thinking
In this paper we tentatively propose that one of the feral cognitive bases for modern symbolic thinking may be numerosity, that is, the ability to appreciate and understand numbers. We proffer that numerosity appears to be an inherently abstractive process, which is supported by numerous human infant and monkey studies. We also review studies that demonstrate that the neurological substrate for numerosity is primarily the intraparietal sulcus of …
Material Scaffolds in Numbers and Time
The present article develops a framework for interpreting Upper Palaeolithic artefacts from an analysis of material complexity, numeration systems and timekeeping using cultural categorizations, insights on the emergence of number terms in language, and the astronomy practices of 33 contemporary hunter-gatherer societies. Our key findings suggest that astronomy originates in the ability to estimate and infer contextual relations among natural phe…
On the Nature of Numerosity and the Role of Language in Developing Number Concepts: A Reply to Everett
Creativity, cognition and material culture: An introduction
Preview this article: Creativity, cognition and material culture: An introduction, Page 1 of 1 /docserver/preview/fulltext/pc.22.1.001in-1.gif
Numerosity Structures the Expression of Quantity in Lexical Numbers and Grammatical Number
Using data from the World Atlas of Language Structures and other sources, this study analyzed 905 languages for the presence of grammatical number (GN) and lexical numbers (LNs) to investigate what the distribution of these linguistic features might suggest about the relationship between language and numerosity, the perceptual system for quantity. Nearly 7% of the sample had LNs but lacked GN, and GN never occurred without LNs, implying that LNs …
Dynamics of Learning in Neanderthals and Modern Humans. Cultural Perspectives
The role of materiality in numerical cognition
Number Concepts Are Constructed through Material Engagement: A Reply to Sutliff, Read, and Everett
Beyond Writing: The Development of Literacy in the Ancient Near East
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.…
Thinking Materially: Cognition as Extended and Enacted
Human cognition is extended and enacted. Drawing the boundaries of cognition to include the resources and attributes of the body and materiality allows an examination of how these components interact with the brain as a system, especially over cultural and evolutionary spans of time. Literacy and numeracy provide examples of multigenerational, incremental change in both psychological functioning and material forms. Though we think materiality, it…
Situated Cognition
Situated cognition examines how the human mind is affected by being in a physical body and a natural and sociomaterial environment, influencing how a person perceives, learns, knows, reasons, decides, and acts. Within the generic term “situated cognition” are various distinctions in which cognition is embodied, embedded, extended, distributed, dynamical, or enactive. In this entry, these views of cognition are explored through influential works i…
Materiality and Human Cognition
Squeezing Minds from Stones: Cognitive Archaeology and the Evolution of the Human Mind
On Tools Making Minds: An Archaeological Perspective on Human Cognitive Evolution
Using a model of cognition as extended and enactive, we examine the role of materiality in making minds as exemplified by lithics and writing, forms associated with conceptual thought and meta-awareness of conceptual domains. We address ways in which brain functions may change in response to interactions with material forms, the attributes of material forms that may cause such change, and the spans of time required for neurofunctional reorganizat…
The curious idea that Māori once counted by elevens, and the insights it still holds for cross-cultural numerical research
The idea the New Zealand Māori once counted by elevens has been viewed as a cultural misunderstanding originating with a mid-nineteenth-century dictionary of their language. Yet this “remarkable singularity” had an earlier, Continental origin, the details of which have been lost over a century of transmission in the literature. The affair is traced to a pair of scientific explorers, René-Primevère Lesson and Jules Poret de Blosseville, as reconst…
Numerical Origins: The Critical Questions
Four perspectives on numerical origins are examined. The nativist model sees numbers as an aspect of numerosity, the biologically endowed ability to appreciate quantity that humans share with other species. The linguistic model sees numbers as a function of language. The embodied model sees numbers as conceptual metaphors informed by physical experience and expressed in language. Finally, the extended model sees numbers as conceptual outcomes of …
Human species and mating systems: Neandertal-Homo sapiens reproductive isolation and the archaeological and fossil records
The present paper examined the assumption of strong reproductive isolation (RI) between Homo neanderthalensis and Homo sapiens, as well as the question of what form it might have taken, using insights from the parallel case of chimpanzee–bonobo hybridization. RI from hybrid sterility or inviability was thought unlikely based on the short separation-to-introgression timeline. The forms of RI that typically develop in primates have relatively short…
Teeth, tools and human becoming
This article focused on the cognitive implications of using the teeth as a tool, something the fossil dental record suggests was more associated with Neandertals than contemporary Homo sapiens
The false dichotomy: A refutation of the Neandertal indistinguishability claim
In the debate about the demise of the Neandertal, several scholars have claimed that humanity’s nearest relatives were indistinguishable archaeologically, and thus behaviorally and cognitively, from contemporaneous Homo sapiens. They suggest that to hold otherwise is to characterize Neandertals as inferior to H. sapiens, a false dichotomy that excludes the possibility that the two human types simply differed in ways visible to natural selection, …
A New Look at Old Numbers, and What It Reveals about Numeration
In this study, the archaic counting systems of Mesopotamia as understood through the Neolithic tokens, numerical impressions, and proto-cuneiform notations were compared to the traditional number-words and counting methods of Polynesia as understood through contemporary and historical descriptions of vocabulary and behaviors. The comparison and associated analyses capitalized on the ability to understand well-known characteristics of Uruk-period …
Desana numerical symbols: An indigenous creation narrated by Diakuru and Kisibi
In 2006, a narrative of the Desana people included a system of graphic symbols reported as a historical Indigenous invention used during intertribal warfare to count the number of enemies and pass warning information. This paper outlines and evaluates the Desana graphic system. The Desana people are described, and their timeline of mythical events is compared to historical accounts of the region. Contemporary Desana spoken numbers are then charac…
Reckonings: Numerals, Cognition, and History
The Materiality of Numbers: Emergence and Elaboration from Prehistory to Present
This is a book about numbers – what they are as concepts and how and why they originate – as viewed through the material devices used to represent and manipulate them. Fingers, tallies, tokens, and written notations, invented in both ancestral and contemporary societies, explain what numbers are, why they are the way they are, and how we get them. Overmann is the first to explore how material devices contribute to numerical thinking, initially by…
Materiality of Numbers: Emergence and Elaboration from Prehistory to Present
Materiality of Numbers: Emergence and Elaboration from Prehistory to Present
Psychology (20 works) · Cognition (17 works) · Computer Science (16 works) · Philosophy (16 works) · Archaeology (15 works) · History (15 works) · Cognitive science (14 works) · Epistemology (13 works) · Sociology (12 works) · Neuroscience (10 works)