Flakes and ladders

What the archaeological record cannot tell us about the origins of language

Datos Bibliográficos

ID3919930
AutoresPaul Graves (University of Southampton, autor de correspondencia)
Año1994
Volumen26
Número2
Páginas158-171
Fecha de publicación1994-10-01
Peer ReviewedSí
Open AccessNo
TipoARTICLE
RevistaWorld Archaeology (JOURNAL)
Identificadores de la revistaISSN: 0043-8243 • E-ISSN: 1470-1375
EditorialInforma UK Limited (PUBLISHER • GB)
DOI10.1080/00438243.1994.9980270
OpenAlexW1994793948
IdiomaEN
Citas recibidas12
Referencias citadas30

The archaeological record does not furnish direct evidence for the origin of language, because it cannot be understood in terms of grammar, syntax, and semantic meanings. However, this should not lead to acceptance of a simple, Hawkesian, ‘Ladder of Inference’, where the social and symbolic are more remote from the archaeological base than function and technology. Practical tasks are organized as clusters of actions centred around artefacts rather than sequentially arranged in ‘grammars’. Here the different natures of media configure the ‘message’ in fundamentally different ways. Moreover, the ‘meaning’ of an artefact resides in its guidance of the user, rather than any semantic communication or message. Thus the design of artefacts is fundamentally social, embodying shared understandings and conventions of action, without being semantic. In the light of this analysis, claims that the origin of language can be detected in the archaeological record are disputed. The equation of ‘symbolic’ artefacts with language fails to treat material culture as part of a dynamic of action

Action (physics · Archaeological record · Archaeology · Epistemology · Function (biology · Grammar · Inference · Linguistics · Meaning (existential · Rule-based machine translation · Simple (philosophy · Syntax · Artificial Intelligence · Computer Science · Embodied and Extended Cognition · History · Language and cultural evolution · Media, Communication, and Education · Philosophy