Lithic morphological variability as a proxy for Palaeolithic linguistic ability : a knapping training study exploring cultural transmission, theory of mind and language
The identification of Palaeolithic symbolic material culture has often been taken as an indication of cognitive complexity, which limits interpretations to rare, late and localised events. This thesis develops an alternative method of interpretation through an empirical and psychologically supported chain of inference which avoids these limitations. It tests a hypothesis which predicts that material culture produced by varying methods of social learning will differ in their range of relative morphological variability due to varying levels of copy error. For Palaeolithic assemblages, high levels of standardisation might only be possible with the high fidelity transmission involved in complex social learning methods which utilise theory of mind (the ability to think about thoughts). Theory of mind, in turn, is highly correlated to linguistic ability; as both these abilities are gradient, using theory of mind as a proxy for language ability means Palaeolithic communities can be attributed with not just a binary presence or absence of language, but semantic and syntactic abilities which correlate with stages of theory of mind acquisition in modern humans. This thesis presents a knapping experiment where participants
Stade, Cory Marie
Lithic morphological variability as a proxy for Palaeolithic linguistic ability : a knapping training study exploring cultural transmission, theory of mind and language. The identification of Palaeolithic symbolic material culture has often been taken as an indication of cognitive complexity, which limits interpretations to rare, late and localised events. This thesis develops an alternative method of interpretation through an empirical and psychologically supported chain of inference which avoids these limitations. It tests a hypothesis which predicts that material culture produced by varying methods of social learning will differ in their range of relative morphological variability due to varying levels of copy error. For Palaeolithic assemblages, high levels of standardisation might only be possible with the high fidelity transmission involved in complex social learning methods which utilise theory of mind (the ability to think about thoughts). Theory of mind, in turn, is highly correlated to linguistic ability; as both these abilities are gradient, using theory of mind as a proxy for language ability means Palaeolithic communities can be attributed with not just a binary presence or absence of language, but semantic and syntactic abilities which correlate with stages of theory of mind acquisition in modern humans. This thesis presents a knapping experiment where participants
lithic morphological variability proxy palaeolithic linguistic ability training study_explore cultural_transmission theory_mind language identification palaeolithic symbolic material_culture often take indication cognitive complexity limit interpretation rare late localised event develops alternative_method interpretation empirical psychologically support chain inference avoids limitation test_hypothesis predict material_culture produce vary method social learn differ range relative morphological variability due varying level copy error palaeolithic assemblage high_level standardisation might possible high transmission involve complex social learn method utilise theory_mind ability think thought theory_mind turn highly correlate linguistic ability ability gradient use theory_mind proxy language ability mean palaeolithic community attribute binary presence_absence language semantic_syntactic ability correlate stage theory_mind acquisition modern_human present participant