Behavioural Modernity

The origins of modern human behaviour have been constructed by some archaeologists as a question of the origins of symbolism. In this thesis I argue that consciousness is embodied and that body modifications are a key element in generating symbolic behaviour. I develop criteria by which body modification tools can be identified in the archaeological record thereby contributing evidence for the antiquity of modem human behaviour.
The possibility that body art preceded the first unequivocal archaeological evidence of symbolic behaviour has long been acknowledged but regarded as an intractable problem because of its archaeological invisibility. Archaeological evidence for body modifications shows that they were practiced from the Upper Palaeolithic, but the reliance on preservation of skeletal material and soft tissue, and the difficulty of interpreting ancient art, means that there are limitations to establishing its presence prior to this. The most abundant archaeological remains in the Palaeolithic are stone tools. I demonstrate that in more recent contexts stone tools are routinely used for head shaving, scarification, and surgery such as finger amputations and genital modifications. The presence of use-wear and human body residues on stone tool edges provides a means of detecting symbolic body practices that is not dependent on stylistic judgements of stone tool form, controversial "non-utilitarian" art objects, burials or changes in brain structure and size, none of which have satisfactorily proved that symbolic behaviour existed before 60 000 bp.
To test this I analyse a collection of flaked bottle glass razors used for shaving the head from the Andaman Islands. The results of this analysis are compared to a further series of glass and obsidian razors from Antigua, New Guinea, Mexico and Egypt, and experimental obsidian razors. I conclude that the combination of residues such as blood and hair, and wear traces that indicate a scraping/slicing motion, allow razor use to be identified on stone tools. This provides evidence with which to test for the presence of body modification in the archaeological record prior to 60 000 bp reflecting complex symbolic behaviour and hence an earlier genesis of language than is currently accepted.

The modern biological model of (human) evolution is that of a branching tree. By contrast, prevailing models for human cognitive evolution remain unilinear in character, representing a ladder. The linear ladder model is the result of the opposition of an ethnographic and a primate reference frame for cognition, representing the two ends of what by definition becomes a linear line of evolution. It forces all types of behaviour that are not considered fully “modern” to assume a position at a lower level of cognition. Thelinear model is in addition pushed by the (flawed) perception of a linear encephalizationtrend over time.The structure of this linear model isnot fundamentally based in either modern evolutionary theory or the archaeological record. The model itself is even structurally immune to constraints from pertinent data.Adopting a branching tree model instead has serious implications for views on hominin cognition and particularly the meaning of being “behaviourally modern”. In a branching model, “modern behaviour” no longer has a unique status as being by necessity the most sophisticated level of cognition, turning many of the traditional implications derived from the possession of“modern behaviour”moot.The challenge that adoption of a branching tree model creates is that ways have to be devised to account for unique cognitive expressions that are not covered by the existing framework of ethnography and primatology. In addition, notions about the “superiority” of “modern behaviour” over other forms of cognitive expression have to be abandoned.The advantage is that the model is structured to pertinent archaeological data and actually testable with archaeological data.Two case studies from the Lower and Middle Palaeolithic of Europe probe the construction of unique models for mobility strategies “bottom up”from archaeological data, providing a unique alternative to mobility modelsand their cognitive implications as derived from “bottom down” application of an ethno-primatological framework.

Body modification takes many forms, such as painting, tattooing, scarifying, piercing, shaving, hair cutting, binding and mutilation. A survey of ethnographic, historical, and contemporary literature shows that there is virtually no culture or people who did not practice at least one form of body modification. In this paper some of the reasons for doing so are explored, and the archaeological evidence for body modification in prehistory is examined. Unlike tool using, which chimpanzees and some birds engage in, modifying the body is a uniquely human activity that may have been one of the earliest forms of social or symbolic behaviour.

Newer biological theories attribute important adaptive functions to human art and thus provide an important, so far mostly overlooked factor that may explain the survival of modern humans and the disappearance of the Neanderthals. The oldest known objects unambiguously identifiable as art were found in Central and Western Europe and date from around 36 000 years ago. According to all that we know, they were created solely by modern humans who had migrated from Africa to Europe just a few thousand years before. Thus art seems to be the only fundamentally new characteristic that the ancestors of today's humans possessed compared to earlier and other hominids (e.g. Neanderthals or Homo erectus) and that can be proven on the basis of archaeological finds. Although this historical reconstruction is widely accepted no causal connection is seen between the ability of modern humans to produce art and their stunning evolutionary success. How would a Darwinian explanation of art look like? Does it help to understand the origins of art and its enormous significance for individuals and social groups?

behaviour of modern human populations as a baseline (i.e. 'modernity'). This is because the term 'behavioural modernity' creates a distinction between the 'modern' and 'non-modern'. A good measure of modernity must, by its very nature, differentiate Neanderthals from modern humans in order to be successful.

The modern biological model of (human) evolution is that of a branching tree. By contrast, prevailing models for human cognitive evolution remain unilinear in character, representing a ladder. The linear ladder model is the result of the opposition of an ethnographic and a primate reference frame for cognition, representing the two ends of what by definition becomes a linear line of evolution. It forces all types of behaviour that are not considered fully "modern" to assume a position at a lower level of cognition. The linear model is in addition pushed by the (flawed) perception of a linear encephalization trend over time. The structure of this linear model is not fundamentally based in either modern evolutionary theory or the archaeological record. The model itself is even structurally immune to constraints from pertinent data. Adopting a branching tree model instead has serious implications for views on hominin cognition and particularly the meaning of being "behaviourally modern". In a branching model, "modern behaviour" no longer has a unique status as being by necessity the most sophisticated level of cognition, turning many of the traditional implications derived from the possession of "modern behaviour" moot. The challenge that adoption of a branching tree model creates is that ways have to be devised to account for unique cognitive expressions that are not covered by the existing framework of ethnography and primatology. In addition, notions about the "superiority" of "modern behaviour" over other forms of cognitive expression have to be abandoned. The advantage is that the model is structured to pertinent archaeological data and actually testable with archaeological data. Two case studies from the Lower and Middle Palaeolithic of Europe probe the construction of unique models for mobility strategies "bottom up" from archaeological data, providing a unique alternative to mobility models and their cognitive implications as derived from "bottom down" application of an ethnoprimatological framework.

Based on the analyses of tool behaviour in cognitive terms it has been shown recently, that an expansion of cultural capacities occurred through the Middle Stone Age in Sub-Saharan Africa (Lombard/Haidle 2012). In this talk I argued that a rather similar observation can be made regarding the capacities of symbolic communication through ritual behaviour in the late Homo lineage. With a combination of theories from evolutionary biology, cognitive science and cultural anthropology applied to the constantly growing archaeological record it can be shown that an expansion of cognitive capacities to communicate symbolically through collective rituals probably occurred within that time span too. I presented three types of archaeological evidence which may represent early symbolic-ritual behaviour in the Palaeolithic record, namely ochre, burials as well as their predecessors, and personal ornaments. Thus, ritual behaviour is not restricted to Homo sapiens alone, but can also be connected with Neanderthals. There may be some sporadic evidence for ritual behaviour in Homo heidelbergensis as well, such as mortuary activity and pigment use. For that reason it is likely that ritual behaviour is a part of human nature with a deep evolutionary history, which is also confirmed by some new observations in Primatology, let alone the massive ethnographic record of rituals which occur in almost all known human cultures on the planet.

This book examines the first human colonization of Asia and particularly the tropical environments of Southeast Asia during the Upper Pleistocene. In studying the unique character of the Asian archaeological record, it reassesses long-accepted propositions about the development of human 'modernity.' Ryan J. Rabett reveals an evolutionary relationship between colonization, the challenges encountered during this process – especially in relation to climatic and environmental change – and the forms of behaviour that emerged. This book argues that human modernity is not something achieved in the remote past in one part of the world, but rather is a diverse, flexible, responsive and ongoing process of adaptation.

• Tackles the Asian record, one of the most under-studied and least-published, but richly endowed, enigmatic areas of the Palaeolithic world – as indicated by recent discoveries in Southeast Asia, China and Siberia • Covers the character of the Southeast Asian record, which has long inspired debate on the subject of human cultural development, an area which has never been satisfactorily incorporated into traditional models of early humanity • The unique perspective provided by Palaeolithic archaeology on the behavioural evolution of our species is well-placed to make a major contribution to the ecologically and climatically-oriented paradigm that is emerging within Western science more generally

Our knowledge of early Australasian societies has significantly expanded in recent decades with more than 220 Pleistocene sites reported from a wide range of environmental zones and depositional contexts. The uniqueness of this dataset has played an increasingly important role in global debates about the origins and expression of complex behaviour among early modern human populations. Nevertheless, discussions of Pleistocene behaviour and cultural innovation are yet to adequately consider the effects of taphonomy and archaeological sampling on the nature and representativeness of the record. This chapter investigates the effect of preservation and sampling on the Pleistocene archaeological record of Sahul and explores the implications for understanding early cultural diversity and complexity on this continent. In contrast to previous interpretations, which have concluded that Sahul’s Pleistocene archaeological record of complex behaviours (behavioural modernity) is ‘elusive’ and similar to that of Middle Palaeolithic Eurasia, the results of this study argue that this record shows more similarities to contemporary African and Eurasian modern human records, especially once taphonomic factors are taken into account.