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All that glitters is not gold: The false-symbol problem in archaeology

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  14 January 2025

Claudio Tennie Open the ORCID record for Claudio Tennie [Opens in a new window]  and
Ronald J. Planer
Claudio Tennie*
Affiliation:
Faculty of Science, Working Group Early Prehistory and Quaternary Ecology, University of Tübingen, Tübingen, Germany claudio.tennie@uni-tuebingen.de https://sites.google.com/view/claudiotennie
Ronald J. Planer
Affiliation:
School of Liberal Arts, University of Wollongong, Wollongong, Australia rplaner@uow.edu.au https://scholars.uow.edu.au/ronald-planer
*
*Corresponding author.
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Abstract

Stibbard-Hawkes forcefully alerts us to the pitfall of false-negative reasoning in symbolic archaeology. We highlight the twin problem of false-positive reasoning in what we call the “false-symbol problem.” False symbols are intuitively special entities that, owing to their non-utilitarian nature, invite symbolic interpretation. But they are not symbolic. We link the false-symbol problem to work in comparative primate cognition, taking “primate art” as our main example.

Type
Open Peer Commentary
Information
Behavioral and Brain Sciences , Volume 48 , 2025 , e18
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Copyright
Copyright © The Author(s), 2025. Published by Cambridge University Press

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