Cognitive archaeology

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Cognitive archaeology is a theoretical perspective in archaeology which focuses on the ways that ancient societies thought and the symbolic structures that can be perceived in past material culture.


"Archaeologists can tell from which mountain source a stone axe came, what minerals there are in a bronze bracelet, how old a dug-out canoe is. They can work out the probable cereal-yield from the fields of a Late Bronze Age farm. These are objective matters. But the language, laws, morals, religion of dead societies are different. They belong to the minds of man. Unless they were written down, and even then only if they were recorded accurately, we shall find it hard to recapture them."

Aubrey Burl, Rites of the Gods (1981).[1]




Some archaeologists such as Lewis Binford have critiqued cognitive archaeology, stating that it is only people's actions rather than their thoughts that are preserved in the archaeological record. However it can be argued that even this evidence of actions is still the product of human thought and would have been governed by a multitude of experiences and perspectives. Thus one can see Cognitive Archaeology as a development of Processual Archaeology in that the combination of material culture and actions can be further developed into a study of the ideas which drove action and used objects. This method attempts to avoid the pitfalls of Post-Processual Archaeology by retaining the 'scientific' aspects of Processual Archaeology while reaching for the higher social levels of ideas.


Archaeologist Thomas Huffman defines cognitive archaeology as the study of prehistoric ideology: the ideals, values, and beliefs that constitute a society's worldview. [2] Cognitive archaeologists use the principles of sociocultural anthropology to investigate such diverse things as material symbols, the use of space, political power, and religion. For example, Huffman uses oral history sources from Zimbabwe and Portuguese documents to attempt to explain symbols discovered in the ruins of Great Zimbabwe, specifically connecting the Shona people's historical association of the right with men and the left with women to the placement of entrances to stone structures. This cognitive archaeological approach may be problematic in its logical leaps and incomplete use of archaeological sources, as historian David Beach has pointed out, demonstrating the care that must be used when attempting to explain deep-time intentionality using archaeological evidence. [3]

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  1. ^ Burl 1981. p. 15.
  2. ^ Huffman, Thomas (1986). "Cognitive studies of the iron age in Southern Africa". World Archaeology 18: 84–95. doi:10.1080/00438243.1986.9979990. 
  3. ^ Beach, David (1998). "Cognitive Archaeology and Imaginary History at Great Zimbabwe". Current Anthropology 39: 47. doi:10.1086/204698. 


  • Burl, Aubrey (1981). Rites of the Gods. London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson. ISBN 978-0460043137. 

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