New topic Cognition and Ideology Good News: no annotative references! Bad News: An exercise on the Panels in Zimmerman West Wing ( we need to take a field trip and look at them) Exercise (2) is on the WEB. In that exercise you will discuss the panels as “ideology” and compare them to McGuire’s article: Dialogues with the Dead. –DUE DATE: 4/14

Cognitive Studies In Archaeology: Science or Post- Processual? No simple answer to this question. Cognitive studies can be within either science or post-processualism depending on the question being asked –Johnson (textbook) recognizes this problem, using the phrase “cognitive processualism”. –Post processualists raised the topic within archaeology. Humans have big brains, create culture; cognitive aspects of cultural construction in past societies should be a topic of investigation –Cognitive science and evolutionary psychology become part of cutting edge research in the later 1980s and 1990s.

Science and Cognition HEE: remember the assumption: selection has shaped our brains to maximize reproductive success… to make “optimal” decision according to historical setting Humans are big brained animals, and the development of that brain has implications for the development of diversified and endless variable cultural patterns, including ( of course) language, music and art. –Donald’s example in Cognition and Material Culture about the difference between Chimpanzees and human

Cognition and Post Processualism Mind gives meaning to experience Expression of cognition through collective action, symbolic action –Cosmology, ideology, agency/action McGuire’s Dialogues with the Dead

Crucial definitions Thought: Mental activity; intellectual activity, forming ideas in the mind --- in science, pure concepts Brain: biological structure that accepts sensory information and processes that information---- makes sense out of light, sound, touch, smell. The brain makes sense out of sensory experience. –Animal brain composed of seris of more or less autonomous structures. Driving and talking on cell phones Mind: integrates all the sensory experience into something coherent. Integrates across all modules of the brain through the CEO--- the frontal lobes –In Donald’s article, consciousness and mind are synonyms. Not accepted by all cognitive scientists. Consciousness may have the additional dimension of awareness.

Donald’s article: Cognition and Material Culture Key Question: –What is the truly modern mind? Can we build a model that suggests when that transformation occurred, and what criteria can we use to specify this transformation? Modern Human Mind: combination of genetics and enculturation. –What’s enculturation? Humans transmit knowledge all the time as representation- ---speech, art, gesture, writing, speaking Collective cognition: memory of generations of representation, and we call that collective representation CULTURE.

Culture: Stored Representation C CC C I III I Relationship between individual cognition and Cultural representation

Stages of Cognitive Evolution Episodic Memetic Mythic theoretic

Karl Marx Peter Bourdieu Anthony Giddens Conflict, Power and Ideology

Social Formation InfrastructureSuperstructure Ideology Political-Judicial Forces ofRelations of ProductionProduction Means of Relations OfProduction KARL MARX’S SOCIAL STRUCTURE conflict

StructurationTheory Action and reaction occur in all social situations. It is this interaction that Giddens perceives when he describes people as agents. People have a “practical consciousness” and they read, interpret, and act according the structures in which they live and which they create. The concept of power is closely related to that of action. Definition of Power: Asymmetry in relations Post-modernism has a different conception of power. Power is aspect of all interactions. Individuals have and exercise power (dominance and resistance are examples of power). Thus there is not just ”power over “. There is “power to”.

Ideology: How does ideology relate to conflict and power? Definition: Ideology 1.Marx’s definition: “ false consciousness” 2.McGuire: Instrumental