Workshop - Past Material, Past Minds: Philosophy, Cognition & Archaeology

This workshop addresses methodological, theoretical and philosophical issues across cognitive archaeology and paleoanthropology. How are inferences drawn from material items to cognitive and social capacities? And from fossil and other specimens to demographic, behavioural and phylogenetic dynamics? What can knowing past minds tell us about the nature of cognition? How should cultural innovation and evolutionary novelties in the paleontological and archaeological records be treated? How should we understand the ontology of artefacts and specimens, and how does this relate to archaeological and paleoanthropological practice?