Building Ideas out of Wood. What Ancient Egyptian Funerary ‘Models’ Tell Us about Thought and Communication

Dados Bibliográficos

ID6043840
AutoresCamilla Di Biase-Dyson (0000-0001-9230-4762, Macquarie University, autor correspondente)
Ano2023
Volume33
Fascículo3
Páginas413-429
Data de publicação2023-08-01
Peer ReviewedSim
Open AccessSim
TipoARTICLE
PeriódicoCambridge Archaeological Journal (JOURNAL)
Identificadores do periódicoISSN: 0959-7743 • E-ISSN: 1474-0540
EditoraCambridge University Press (CUP) (PUBLISHER)
DOI10.1017/s0959774322000385
OpenAlexW4312069952
IdiomaEN
Referências citadas34

This paper unpacks the cognitive processes potentially involved in comprehending funerary ‘models’ from ancient Egypt. These objects comprise small scenes, usually made of wood, which have been found in burial chambers of pharaonic-era tombs. After considering the fittingness of the term ‘model’, the paper illustrates how a cognitive approach might better help us understand the purported functionality of these objects than has hitherto been the case. This approach, grounded in distributed cognition, draws on semiotics, figurative thought and communication theory and considers the priorities of both the theoretical sender and the theoretical receiver. The perspective of the sender comprises what could actually be built, given the confines of material, size, space and budget. The perspective of the receiver is tied to the factors that guarantee intelligibility, such as cultural primaries, medial awareness and aesthetic priming. It is argued that many of the cognitive processes driving comprehension may be based on transfer processes transcending culture and aesthetics, such as metonymy and metaphor, which occur both in the linguistic and the visual modality. In this way, we can ground discussions of model production and use in more fine-grained theoretical and methodological frameworks and achieve new insights into the communicative power of these objects

Aesthetics · Art · Cognition · Cognitive linguistics · Cognitive science · Communication source · Comprehension · Epistemology · Linguistics · Literal and figurative language · Metaphor · Polysemy · Semiotics · Sociology · Visual arts · Vocabulary · Categorization, perception, and language · Computer Science · History · Language and cultural evolution · Language, Metaphor, and Cognition · Philosophy · Psychology