Stibbard-Hawkes' target article is a welcome critique of models on the interplay between material culture and cognition. The paper rightly focuses primarily on symbolism and its materiality (or often lack thereof), paying particular attention to taphonomy and its challenges for the archaeological record. Stibbard-Hawkes' analysis advances a discourse that has tended to be data-poor, and hence largely theoretical in nature. He does so by providing quantitative and empirical ethnographic evidence that symbolic behaviour may have left archaeological signatures only in exceptional circumstances.
In the technological realm we have the same taphonomic concerns, particularly around early wooden tools such as expediently made tools like wooden clubs used by chimpanzees to crack nuts, and the wooden spears carefully crafted by hominins in the Middle Pleistocene. I propose to extend Stibbard-Hawkes' argument by suggesting that a direct relationship between technological complexity and “modern” cognition is not always evident. Early weaponry provides a useful case study.
I suggest that (1) we may not always fully recognise or understand design features of tools when we make an “at-a-glance” assessment with our Western lens; (2) we may also be failing to account for social complexity underpinning use of “simple” tools; and (3) placing technology on a progressive ladder has deep and problematic roots in Western colonial thinking.
Technological complexity is variably defined in the archaeological literature. It is often used in contrast with “simple,” one-piece tools including unhafted stone tools and untipped wooden spears. In human evolutionary studies, technological complexity can refer to tools having more than one component (e.g., Hoffecker, Reference Hoffecker2018), as in “composite” or “compound” tools. Alternatively, it can involve listing and categorising the number of actions and/or production steps (Haidle, Reference Haidle, De Beaune, Coolidge and Wynn2009; Leder et al., Reference Leder, Lehmann, Milks, Koddenberg, Sietz, Vogel and Terberger2024; Wadley, Hodgskiss, & Grant, Reference Wadley, Hodgskiss and Grant2009). With reference to weaponry, complexity can refer to composite weapons, such as a spear with a hafted stone point (e.g., see Lombard & Haidle, Reference Lombard and Haidle2012) or it can represent complexity of function – as in mechanically projected weapons (Shea & Sisk, Reference Shea and Sisk2010). Typically this is in contrast with so-called “simple” weapons, that is, those consisting of a single piece, and/or which are launched by hand. Technological complexity is often linked with more highly evolved cognition. Within weaponry studies, linear models have often shown innovations occurring through time, and imply that “simple” weapons are replaced by more complex ones, whereas all of these weapons have continued to be used by our own species.
Complexity of manufacture and design
The earliest known archaeological weapons are wooden spears and throwing sticks, produced by late Homo heidelbergensis or early Neanderthals. Haidle (Reference Haidle, De Beaune, Coolidge and Wynn2009) shows that classing wooden spears as “simple” underestimates the many steps and mental processes involved in manufacturing them. Although these objects may look like mere “sharpened sticks,” recent detailed analyses of examples from Schöningen (Germany) provide evidence of multiple steps in woodworking alongside a suite of features that show rich awareness of material properties and aerodynamics (Leder et al., Reference Leder, Lehmann, Milks, Koddenberg, Sietz, Vogel and Terberger2024; Milks et al., Reference Milks, Lehmann, Leder, Sietz, Koddenberg, Böhner and Terberger2023).
Socio-cultural complexity
Arguably, researchers of subsistence technologies, myself included, can over-focus on the practical and under-focus on socio-cultural aspects. This may in turn result in failure to consider complexity beyond the tool itself. Even though spears are often characterised by Western scholars as inferior to mechanically projected weapons, spear hunting is considered by those who practice it to be a particularly “complex skill” (Lew-Levy et al., Reference Lew-Levy, Ringen, Crittenden, Mabulla, Broesch and Kline2021). Learning to spear hunt begins in early childhood, and teaching it is classed as “costly” (Lew-Levy et al., Reference Lew-Levy, Bombjaková, Milks, Kiabiya Ntamboudila, Kline and Broesch2022). Particularly “costly” forms of teaching, like instruction involving language, could have evolved as a means of transmitting cumulative, complex knowledge such as that required for learning how to hunt, albeit with technologically “simple” weapons (Lew-Levy et al., Reference Lew-Levy, Bombjaková, Milks, Kiabiya Ntamboudila, Kline and Broesch2022).
The Western lens
Stibbard-Hawkes points out that disparagement of small-scale societies is intimately intertwined with ideas of advances in technologies. The absence of composite and mechanically projected weapons played a significant role in portrayals by twentieth-century scholars of Aboriginal Tasmanian people's cognitive capacities. Noetling (Reference Noetling1911) suggested that their failure to add a stone point to a wooden spear indicated the lack of a “modern” mind. Decades later Jones (Reference Jones and Wright1977) wrote that their simple techno-complex portended a “strangulation of the mind” strongly implying that the population was “doomed” to fail anyway, thereby justifying their displacement and genocide by white settlers.
Models that are not linear or progressive already exist as frameworks within which to consider variability and innovation of material culture on human evolutionary timescales. For example, Shea and Sisk (Reference Shea and Sisk2010) make a case that it is unnecessary to highlight differences in cognition when exploring variability in hunting technologies, with time-budgeting and energetic constraints providing alternative explanations. Haidle et al. (Reference Haidle, Bolus, Collard, Conard, Garofoli, Lombard and Whiten2015, p. 53) propose a model which “does not imply a progressive ladder…but focuses on expansion of cultural capacities that extends the behavioral options and repertoire while retaining the possibilities of earlier states.” As well as evolutionary-biological factors, their model highlights the importance of historical-social and ontogenetic-individual dimensions.
I propose that so long as it remains unproven that increasing technological complexity tracks neatly and directly with cognition, we need to consider critically the roots of these models and their underlying assumptions. The adoption of at least an agnostic null hypothesis, if not a “cognitively modern” hypothesis, as proposed by Stibbard-Hawkes, is supported by this brief examination of the technological domain.
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Stibbard-Hawkes' target article is a welcome critique of models on the interplay between material culture and cognition. The paper rightly focuses primarily on symbolism and its materiality (or often lack thereof), paying particular attention to taphonomy and its challenges for the archaeological record. Stibbard-Hawkes' analysis advances a discourse that has tended to be data-poor, and hence largely theoretical in nature. He does so by providing quantitative and empirical ethnographic evidence that symbolic behaviour may have left archaeological signatures only in exceptional circumstances.
In the technological realm we have the same taphonomic concerns, particularly around early wooden tools such as expediently made tools like wooden clubs used by chimpanzees to crack nuts, and the wooden spears carefully crafted by hominins in the Middle Pleistocene. I propose to extend Stibbard-Hawkes' argument by suggesting that a direct relationship between technological complexity and “modern” cognition is not always evident. Early weaponry provides a useful case study.
I suggest that (1) we may not always fully recognise or understand design features of tools when we make an “at-a-glance” assessment with our Western lens; (2) we may also be failing to account for social complexity underpinning use of “simple” tools; and (3) placing technology on a progressive ladder has deep and problematic roots in Western colonial thinking.
Technological complexity is variably defined in the archaeological literature. It is often used in contrast with “simple,” one-piece tools including unhafted stone tools and untipped wooden spears. In human evolutionary studies, technological complexity can refer to tools having more than one component (e.g., Hoffecker, Reference Hoffecker2018), as in “composite” or “compound” tools. Alternatively, it can involve listing and categorising the number of actions and/or production steps (Haidle, Reference Haidle, De Beaune, Coolidge and Wynn2009; Leder et al., Reference Leder, Lehmann, Milks, Koddenberg, Sietz, Vogel and Terberger2024; Wadley, Hodgskiss, & Grant, Reference Wadley, Hodgskiss and Grant2009). With reference to weaponry, complexity can refer to composite weapons, such as a spear with a hafted stone point (e.g., see Lombard & Haidle, Reference Lombard and Haidle2012) or it can represent complexity of function – as in mechanically projected weapons (Shea & Sisk, Reference Shea and Sisk2010). Typically this is in contrast with so-called “simple” weapons, that is, those consisting of a single piece, and/or which are launched by hand. Technological complexity is often linked with more highly evolved cognition. Within weaponry studies, linear models have often shown innovations occurring through time, and imply that “simple” weapons are replaced by more complex ones, whereas all of these weapons have continued to be used by our own species.
Complexity of manufacture and design
The earliest known archaeological weapons are wooden spears and throwing sticks, produced by late Homo heidelbergensis or early Neanderthals. Haidle (Reference Haidle, De Beaune, Coolidge and Wynn2009) shows that classing wooden spears as “simple” underestimates the many steps and mental processes involved in manufacturing them. Although these objects may look like mere “sharpened sticks,” recent detailed analyses of examples from Schöningen (Germany) provide evidence of multiple steps in woodworking alongside a suite of features that show rich awareness of material properties and aerodynamics (Leder et al., Reference Leder, Lehmann, Milks, Koddenberg, Sietz, Vogel and Terberger2024; Milks et al., Reference Milks, Lehmann, Leder, Sietz, Koddenberg, Böhner and Terberger2023).
Socio-cultural complexity
Arguably, researchers of subsistence technologies, myself included, can over-focus on the practical and under-focus on socio-cultural aspects. This may in turn result in failure to consider complexity beyond the tool itself. Even though spears are often characterised by Western scholars as inferior to mechanically projected weapons, spear hunting is considered by those who practice it to be a particularly “complex skill” (Lew-Levy et al., Reference Lew-Levy, Ringen, Crittenden, Mabulla, Broesch and Kline2021). Learning to spear hunt begins in early childhood, and teaching it is classed as “costly” (Lew-Levy et al., Reference Lew-Levy, Bombjaková, Milks, Kiabiya Ntamboudila, Kline and Broesch2022). Particularly “costly” forms of teaching, like instruction involving language, could have evolved as a means of transmitting cumulative, complex knowledge such as that required for learning how to hunt, albeit with technologically “simple” weapons (Lew-Levy et al., Reference Lew-Levy, Bombjaková, Milks, Kiabiya Ntamboudila, Kline and Broesch2022).
The Western lens
Stibbard-Hawkes points out that disparagement of small-scale societies is intimately intertwined with ideas of advances in technologies. The absence of composite and mechanically projected weapons played a significant role in portrayals by twentieth-century scholars of Aboriginal Tasmanian people's cognitive capacities. Noetling (Reference Noetling1911) suggested that their failure to add a stone point to a wooden spear indicated the lack of a “modern” mind. Decades later Jones (Reference Jones and Wright1977) wrote that their simple techno-complex portended a “strangulation of the mind” strongly implying that the population was “doomed” to fail anyway, thereby justifying their displacement and genocide by white settlers.
Models that are not linear or progressive already exist as frameworks within which to consider variability and innovation of material culture on human evolutionary timescales. For example, Shea and Sisk (Reference Shea and Sisk2010) make a case that it is unnecessary to highlight differences in cognition when exploring variability in hunting technologies, with time-budgeting and energetic constraints providing alternative explanations. Haidle et al. (Reference Haidle, Bolus, Collard, Conard, Garofoli, Lombard and Whiten2015, p. 53) propose a model which “does not imply a progressive ladder…but focuses on expansion of cultural capacities that extends the behavioral options and repertoire while retaining the possibilities of earlier states.” As well as evolutionary-biological factors, their model highlights the importance of historical-social and ontogenetic-individual dimensions.
I propose that so long as it remains unproven that increasing technological complexity tracks neatly and directly with cognition, we need to consider critically the roots of these models and their underlying assumptions. The adoption of at least an agnostic null hypothesis, if not a “cognitively modern” hypothesis, as proposed by Stibbard-Hawkes, is supported by this brief examination of the technological domain.
Financial support
Annemieke Milks is supported by a British Academy Postdoctoral Fellowship (PF21/210027).
Competing interest
None.