creators_name: Malafouris, Lambros creators_id: lm243@cam.ac.uk, l.malafouris@gmail.com editors_name: Boric, Dusan editors_name: Robb, John type: bookchapter datestamp: 2009-05-16 16:36:17 lastmod: 2011-03-11 08:57:21 metadata_visibility: show title: Is it ‘me’ or is it ‘mine’? The Mycenaean sword as a body-part. ispublished: pub subjects: phil-mind subjects: cogarch full_text_status: public keywords: Mycenaean sword, past bodies, archaeology and embodiment, object agency, extended person, Mycenaean self, Myceanean warrior abstract: This paper argues that material culture has the ability to change and shape our bodies by transforming and extending the boundaries of our body schema. To explore this argument I concentrate on the relationship between the Mycenaean body and the Mycenaean sword. Focusing on the early Mycenaean period I propose that the centre of consciousness and bodily awareness for the Mycenaean person, and for the warrior in particular, is not some ‘internal’ Cartesian ‘I’, but the tip of the sword. Through the tip of the sword the Mycenaean person is simultaneously reach out, makes sense of and apprehends the world. The sword as an enactive sign brings about a whole new semiotic field of embodied activity offering a new means of engaging the world and as such a novel understanding of what is to be a Mycenaean person and body. date: 2008 date_type: published publication: J. Robb & D. Boric (eds) Past Bodies. Oxford: Oxbow Books publisher: Oxbow Books refereed: TRUE referencetext: Aglioti, S.A., Smania, N., Manfredi, M. and Berlucchi, G. 1996. Disownership of left hand and objects related to it in a patient with right brain damage. NeuroReport, 8: 293–296. Berlucchi, G. and Aglioti, S.A. 1997. The body in the brain: Neural bases of corporeal awareness. 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The Hand: How its use shapes the brain, language, and human culture. New York: Pantheon Books. citation: Malafouris, Dr Lambros (2008) Is it ‘me’ or is it ‘mine’? The Mycenaean sword as a body-part. [Book Chapter] document_url: http://cogprints.org/6432/1/Malafouris.ch12.PastBodies.pdf