Material Culture and Cognition

Culture and Cognition

Recent work in cognitive psychology and social cognition bears heavily on concerns of sociologists of culture. Cognitive research confirms views of culture as fragmented; clarifies the roles of institutions and agency; and illuminates supraindividual aspects of culture. Individuals experience culture as disparate bits of information a d as schematic structures that organize that information. Cu...

Culture and Cognition 2

Many of the cognitive psychologists have assumed that human mind is universal, and have inferred that, even if they observe cultural differences, they are the consequences of different cultural stimuli. However, some social psychologists have demonstrated cultural differences in cognition (e.g., Nisbett, Peng, Choi, & Norenzayan, 2001). They abandon the universality view and proposed an interac...

Culture and Cognition

Archaeology and material culture

This outstanding collection of papers documents the quality and quantity of historical archaeology research conducted on the island of Jamaica over the past thirty years. Jamaica offers a significant location for the investigation of the colonial enterprise in the Americas. Beginning with Spanish explorations and conquest in the sixteenth century, followed by British accession in 1655, the isla...

The co-evolution of tools and minds: cognition and material culture in the hominin lineage

The structuring of our environment to provide cues and reminders for ourselves is common: We leave notes on the fridge, we have a particular place for our keys where we deposit them, making them easy to find. We alter our world to streamline our cognitive tasks. But how did hominins gain this capacity? What pushed our ancestors to structure their physical environment in ways that buffered think...