From Neural Synapses to Culture-Historical Boundaries: An Archaeological Comment on the Plastic Mind
This paper contributes with a study of how something that is initially introduced as a ‘technology of spatial distribution’ develops into a ‘technology of the mind’. Boundaries are a phenomenon deeply rooted in social perception and cognitive categorization, which also involves material processes th...
| Published in: | Journal of cognition and culture |
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| Main Author: | |
| Format: | Electronic Article |
| Language: | English |
| Check availability: | HBZ Gateway |
| Journals Online & Print: | Drawer...
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| Fernleihe: | Fernleihe für die Fachinformationsdienste |
| Published: |
Brill
2014
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| In: |
Journal of cognition and culture
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| Further subjects: | B
Conceptual plasticity
inertia
concretization
bounded rationality
prehistoric boundaries
long-term perspective
critical mass
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| Online Access: |
Volltext (Verlag) |
| Summary: | This paper contributes with a study of how something that is initially introduced as a ‘technology of spatial distribution’ develops into a ‘technology of the mind’. Boundaries are a phenomenon deeply rooted in social perception and cognitive categorization, which also involves material processes that can sometimes be studied in an archaeological record. In later prehistory, the physical instantiation of this technology offered a solution to a wide range of economic and social problems, posed by an increasingly filled-in and more permanently settled landscape. Important aspects of its initial conceptual and cultural incorporation lasted more than a millennium. However, once this technology attached conceptually as well as culturally, it entailed a quantitative acceleration and became part of a long-term development, the social and juridical consequences of which can be traced far up in historical times. This case is used to discuss the importance of unfolding both the plastic aspects of human cognition and the slow, protracted and long-term aspects involved in cultural changes. |
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| ISSN: | 1568-5373 |
| Contains: | In: Journal of cognition and culture
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| Persistent identifiers: | DOI: 10.1163/15685373-12342135 |