creators_name: Malafouris, Lambros
creators_id: lm243@cam.ac.uk
editors_name: Renfrew, Colin
editors_name: Morley, Iain
type: bookchapter
datestamp: 2008-07-24 09:55:33
lastmod: 2011-03-11 08:57:09
metadata_visibility: show
title: Before and Beyond Representation: Towards an enactive conception of the Palaeolithic image

ispublished: pub
subjects: phil-mind
subjects: evol-psy
subjects: bio-evo
full_text_status: public
keywords: Palaeolithic perception, cave art, representation, the extended mind, enactivism, cognitive archaeology, prehistoric imagery
abstract: For most archaeologists the meaning of prehistoric art appears to be grounded upon, if not synonymous with, the notion of representation and symbolism. This paper explores the possibility that the depictions we see already 30,000 years before present, for instance, at the caves of Chauvet and Lascaux, before and beyond representing the world, they first bring forth a new process of acting within this world and at the same time of thinking about it. It is argued that the unique ability of those early depictions to disrupt or question the ways the world is experienced under normal conditions makes possible for the visual apparatus to interrogate itself and thus acquire a sense of perceptual awareness not previously available. 

date: 2007-06-04
date_type: published
publication: Renfrew C. & I. Morley (eds) 2007 Image and Imagination: A Global History of Figurative Representation. Cambridge: The McDonald Institute, pp. 287-300
publisher: The McDonald Institute for Archaeological Research, University of Cambridge
refereed: TRUE
referencetext: Bar-Yosef, O., 2002. The Upper Paleolithic revolution. Annual
Review of Anthropology 31, 363–93.
Brooks, R.A., 1991. Intelligence without representation.
Artificial Intelligence 47, 39–59.
Clark, A., 1997. Being There: Putting Brain, Body and World
Together Again. Cambridge (MA): MIT Press.
Clark, A., 2003. Natural-Born Cyborgs: Minds, Technologies
and the Future of Human Intelligence. New York (NY):
Oxford University Press.
Clark, A. & D. Chalmers, 1998. The extended mind. Analysis
58(1), 10–23.
Clottes, J., 1996. Thematic changes in Upper Palaeolithic
art: a view from the Grotte Chauvet. Antiquity 70,
276–88.
Clottes, J. (ed.), 2001. La Grotte Chauvet. Paris: L’art Des
Origines, Editions du Seuil.
Clottes, J. & J.D. Lewis-Williams, 1998. The Shamans of Prehistory:
Trance and Magic in the Painted Caves. New York
(NY): Harry Abrams.
Costall, A., 1989. A closer look at ‘direct perception’, in Cognition
and Social Worldseds, eds. A. Gellatly, D. Rogers &
J.A. Svoboda. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 10–21.
Costall, A., 1990. Picture perception as ‘indirect’ perception,
in Ecological Perception Research, Visual Communication
and Aesthetics, ed. K. Landwehr. New York (NY):
Springer-Verlag, 15–22.
Costall, A., 1997. Things and things like them, in The Cultural
Life of Images, ed. B.L. Molyneaux. London & New
York (NY): Routledge, 49–59.
Davidson I. & W. Noble, 1989. The archaeology of perception.
Current Anthropology 30(2), 125–55.
Deacon, T.W., 1997. The Symbolic Species: the Co-evolution of
Language and the Brain. New York (NY): Norton.
Dehaene, S., 1997. The Number Sense. New York (NY): Oxford
University Press.
DeLoache, J., 2004. Becoming symbol-minded. Trends in
Cognitive Sciences, 8(2), 66–70.
DeLoache, J., S.L. Pierroutsakos, D.H. Uttal, K.S. Rosengren
& A. Gottlieb, 1998. Grasping the nature of pictures.
Psychological Science 9, 205–10.
Dennett, D., 1995. Darwin’s Dangerous Idea. New York (NY):
Simon & Schuster.
Dennett, D., 1996. Kinds of Minds. New York (NY): Basic Books.
Deregowski, J.B., 1995. Perception-depiction-perception, and
communication. Rock Art Research 12, 3–22.
Donald, M., 1991. Origins of the Modern Mind: Three Stages
in the Evolution of Culture and Cognition. Cambridge
(MA): Harvard University Press.
Donald, M., 1998. Material culture and cognition: concluding
thoughts, in Cognition and Material Culture: the Archaeology
of Symbolic Storage, eds. C. Renfrew & C. Scarre.
(McDonald Institute Monographs.) Cambridge: Mc-
Donald Institute for Archaeological Research, 181–7.
Ellis, W.H., 1938. Sourcebook of Gestalt Psychology. London:
Routledge & Kegan Paul.
d’ Errico, F., 1995. New model and its implications for the
origin of writing: La Marche antler revisited. Cambridge
Archaeological Journal 5(1), 3–46.
d’ Errico, F., 1998. Paleolithic origins of artificial memory systems,
in Cognition and Material Culture: the Archaeology
of Symbolic Storage, eds. C. Renfrew & C. Scarre. (Mc-
Donald Institute Monographs.) Cambridge: McDonald
Institute for Archaeological Research, 19–50.
d’Errico, F., 2003. The invisible frontier: a multiple species
model for the origin of behavioral modernity. Evolutionary
Anthropology 12, 188–202.
d’Errico, F. & A. Nowell, 2000. A new look at the Berekhat
Ram figurine: implications for the origins of symbolism.
Cambridge Archaeological Journal 10(1), 123–67.
Dehaene, S., 1997. The Number Sense. New York (NY):
Oxford University Press.
Fauconnier, G. & M. Turner, 1998. Conceptual integration
networks. Cognitive Science 22(2), 133–87.
Fauconnier, G. & M. Turner, 2002. The Way We Think: Conceptual
Blending and the Mind’s Hidden Complexities. New
York (NY): Basic Books.
Foley, R.A., 1995. Humans Before Humanity: an Evolutionary
Perspective. Oxford: Blackwell Publishers.
Forge, A., 1970. Learning to see in New Guinea, in Socialization:
the Approach from Social Anthropology ed. P. Mayer.
New York (NY): Tavistock, 269–99.
Fritz C. & G. Tosello, 2007. The hidden meaning of forms:
methods of recording paleolithic parietal Art. Journal
of Archaeological Method and Theory 14(1), 48–80.
Gell, A., 1998. Art and Agency: an Anthropological Theory.
Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Gibson, J.J., 1966. The Senses Considered as Perceptual Systems.
Boston (MA): Houghton Mifflin.
Gibson, J.J., 1979. The Ecological Approach to Visual Perception.
Boston (MA): Houghton Mifflin.
Grainer, J. & C. Whitney, 2004. Does the Huamn mind raed
words as a wlohe? Trends in Cognitive Sciences 8(2),
58–9.
Gregory, R.L., 1980. Perceptions as hypotheses. Philosophical
Transactions of the Royal Society B 290, 181–97.
Gregory, R.L., 1990. Eye and Brain: the Psychology of Seeing.
Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Gregory, R.L., 2005. Knowledge for vision: vision for knowledge.
Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B
360, 1231–51.
Harris, P., 2000. Work of the Imagination. Oxford: Blackwell
Publishers.
Halverson, J., 1992a. The first pictures: perceptual foundations
of Palaeolithic art. Perception 21, 389–404.
Halverson, J., 1992b. Paleolithic art and cognition. The Journal
of Psychology 126(3), 221–36.
Hoffman, D.D., 1998. Visual Intelligence: How We Create What
We See. New York (NY): Norton.
Humphrey, N., 1998. Cave art, autism, and the evolution
of the human mind. Cambridge Archaeological Journal
8(2), 165–91.
Hurley, S.L.,1998. Consciousness in Action. Cambridge (MA):
Harvard University Press.
Hutchins, E., 2005. Material anchors for conceptual blends.
Journal of Pragmatics 37, 1555–77.
Ingold, T., 1993. Introduction: tools, techniques and technology,
in Tools, Language and Cognition in Human
Evolution, eds. K. Gibson & T. Ingold. Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 337–45.
Ingold, T., 1998. Totemism, animism, and the depiction of
animals, in Animal, Anima, Animus, eds. M. Seppala,
J.P. Vanhala & L. Weintraub. Pori: Frame/Pori Art
Museum, 181–207.
Kanizsa, G., 1979. Organisation of Vision: Essays on Gestalt
Perception. New York (NY): Praegervon.
Kennedy, J.M. & J. Silver, 1974. The surrogate functions of
lines in visual perception: evidence from antipodal
rock and cave artwork sources. Perception 3, 313–22.
Kirsh, D. & P. Maglio, 1994. On distinguishing epistemic
from pragmatic action. Cognitive Science 18, 513–49.
Koffka, K., 1935. Principles of Gestalt Psychology. New York
(NY): Harcourt, Brace, & World.
Klein, R., 2000. Archeology and the evolution of human
behavior. Evolutionary Anthropology 9, 17–36.
Kubovy, M. & A.O. Holcombe, 1998. On the lawfulness
of grouping by proximity. Cognitive Psychology 35,
71–98.
Leslie, A., 1987. Pretense and representation: the origins of
‘theory of mind’. Psychological Review 94, 412–26.
Lewis-Williams, D., 2002. The Mind in the Cave: Consciousness
and the Origins of Art. London: Thames & Hudson.
Lewis-Williams, D., 2003. Overview (in review feature): ‘The
Mind in the Cave: Consciousness and the Origins of
Art’. Cambridge Archaeological Journal 13(2), 263–79.
Malafouris, L., 2004. The cognitive basis of material engagement:
where brain, body and culture conflate,
in Rethinking Materiality: the Engagement of Mind with
the Material World, eds. E. DeMarrais, C. Gosden
& C. Renfrew. (McDonald Institute Monographs.)
Cambridge: McDonald Institute for Archaeological
Research, 53–62.
Malafouris, L., 2005. Projections in Matter: Material Engagement
and the Mycenaean Becoming. Unpublished
PhD dissertation, Cambridge University.
Malafouris, L., in press. The sacred engagement: outline
of a hypothesis about the origin of human ‘religious
intelligence’, in Cult in Context eds. D. Barrowclough,
C. Malone & S. Stoddart. Oxford: Oxbow Books.
Malafouris, L., forthcoming. Grasping the concept of
number: how did the sapient mind move beyond
approximation?, in Measuring the World and Beyond:
the Archaeology of Early Quantification and Cosmology,
eds. C. Renfrew & I. Morley. (McDonald Institute
Monographs.) Cambridge: McDonald Institute for
Archaeological Research.
Malafouris, L. & C. Renfrew (eds.), forthcoming. The Cognitive
Life of Things: Recasting the Boundaries of the Mind.
(McDonald Institute Monographs.) Cambridge: Mc-
Donald Institute for Archaeological Research
Marr, D., 1982. Vision. New York (NY): W.H. Freeman &
Sons.
Marshack, A., 1990. Early hominid symbol and evolution
of the human capacity, in The Emergence of Modern
Humans, ed. P. Mellars. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University
Press, 457–98.
Maturana, H.R. & F.J. Varela, 1980. Autopoiesis and Cognition:
the Realization of the Living. Dordrecht: Reidel.
McBrearty, S. & A. Brooks, 2000. The revolution that wasn’t:
a new interpretation of the origin of modern human
behavior. Journal of Human Evolution 39(5), 453–563.
McPherron, S.P., 2000. Handaxes as a measure of the mental
capabilities of early hominids Journal of Archaeological
Science 27, 655–63.
Mellars, P., 1989. Major issues in the emergence of modern
humans. Current Anthropology 30, 349–85.
Mellars, P., 1991. Cognitive changes and the emergence of
modern humans in Europe. Cambridge Archaeological
Journal 1(1), 63–76.
Mellars, P., 1996a. The Neandertal Legacy: an Archaeological
Perspective from Western Europe. New Jersey (NJ):
Princeton University Press.
Mellars, P., 1996b. Symbolism, language, and the Neanderthal
mind, in Modelling the Early Human Mind,
eds. P. Mellars & K. Gibson. (McDonald Institute
Monographs.) Cambridge: McDonald Institute for
Archaeological Research, 15–32.
Merleau-Ponty, M., 1962. Phenomenology of Perception.
Routledge & Kegan Paul, 14.
Mithen, S., 1996. The Prehistory of Mind. London: Thames
& Hudson.
Mithen, S., 1998a. Introduction, in Creativity in Human Evolution
and Prehistory, ed. S. Mithen. London & New York
(NY): Routledge, 1–15.
Mithen, S., 1998b. Introduction, in Creativity in Human
Evolution and Prehistory, ed. S. Mithen. London &
New York: Routledge, 1-15.
Mithen, S. 1998c. A Creative Explosion? Theory of Mind,
Language and the Disembodied Mind of the Upper
Palaeolithic, in Creativity in Human Evolution
and Prehistory, ed. S. Mithen. London & New York:
Routledge, 165-191.
Mithen, S., 2000. Palaeoanthropological perspectives on the
theory of mind, in Understanding Other Minds: Perspectives
from Autism and Cognitive Neuroscience, eds.
S. Baron-Cohen, H.T. Flusberg & D. Cohen. Oxford:
Oxford University Press, 488–502.
Noble, W. & I. Davidson, 1991. The evolutionary emergence
of modern human behaviour: language and its archaeology.
Man 26, 223–53.
Noble, W. & I. Davidson, 1996. Human Evolution, Language
and Mind: a Psychological and Archaeological Inquiry.
Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Noë, A., 2005. Action in Perception. Cambridge (MA): MIT Press.
O’Regan, J.K., 1992. Solving the “real” mysteries of visual
perception: the world as an outside memory. Canadian
Journal Of Psychology 46:3 461-488.
O’Regan, J.K. & A. Noë, 2001. A sensorimotor appraoch to
vision and visual perception. Behavioral and Brain Sciences
24(5), 939–73.
Palmer, S.E., E. Rosch & P. Chase, 1981. Canonical perspective
and the perception of objects, in Attention and
Performance IX, eds. J. Long & A. Baddeley. Hillsdale
(NJ): Erlbaum, 135–51.
Peirce, C.S., 1955. Philosophical Writings of Peirce, ed. B. Justus.
New York (NY): Dover Publications.
Renfrew, C., 2001a. Symbol before concept, material engagement
and the early development of society, in
Archaeological Theory Today, ed. I. Hodder. Cambridge:
Polity Press, 122–40.
Renfrew, C., 2001b. Commodification and institution in
group-oriented and individualizing societies. Proceedings
of the British Academy 110, 93–117.
Renfrew, C., 2004. Towards a theory of material engagement,
in Rethinking Materiality: the Engagement of Mind
with the Material World, eds. E. DeMarrais, C. Gosden
& C. Renfrew. (McDonald Institute Monographs)
Cambridge: McDonald Institute for Archaeological
Research, 23–31.
Solso, L.R., 1994. Cognition and the Visual Arts. Cambridge
(MA) & London: MIT Press.
Steiner, D.T., 1998. Images in the Mind: Statues in Archaic and
Classical Greek Literature and Thought. Princeton (NJ)
& Oxford: Princeton University Press.
van Gelder, T., 1995. What might cognition be, if not computation?
Journal of Philosophy XCII(7), 345–81.
Varela, F.J., E. Thompson & E. Rosch, 1991. The Embodied
Mind: Cognitive Science and Human Experience. Cambridge
(MA): MIT Press.
Wertheimer, M., 1938. Laws of organization in perceptual
forms, in A Sourcebook of Gestalt Psychology, ed. W.D.
Ellis. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 71–88. [First
published 1923, in Psychol. Forschung 4, 301–50.]
Wittgenstein, L., 1953/1958. Philosophical Investigations. 3rd
edition. Oxford: Blackwell.
Wynn, T., 2002. Archaeology and cognitive evolution. Behavioral
and Brain Sciences 25, 389–403.








citation:   Malafouris, Lambros  (2007) Before and Beyond Representation: Towards an enactive conception of the Palaeolithic image.  [Book Chapter]     
document_url: http://cogprints.org/6134/1/Ch.21Malafouris.Beyond_and_Before_representation_2.pdf