Hostname: page-component-5b777bbd6c-4n89n Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2025-06-25T18:39:58.497Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Communication and Material Culture: Pleistocene Tools as Action Cues

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  14 October 2009

A. Martin Byers
A. Martin Byers
Affiliation:
Department of Social and Cultural Sciences, Vanier College, Montreal, Quebec, Canada, H4L 3X9 & Anthropology Department, McGill University, Montreal, Quebec, Canada, H3A 2T7
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

The gesture-call practices of early hominids were of a different order from those of their primate relatives, the ancestors of present day apes. The Tool-Cue Model postulates how our ancestors might have used tools both as functional instruments and as icons. The central thesis of the model treats communication as action systems mediated by signs, the central communicative action being the action cue: a communicative act that requires further behaviours to be satisfied. Tools are interpreted as framing devices, promoting the emergence of pragmatic/semantic duality. This latter feature is based on grammatical structures that include pragmatic and semantic meanings in the same utterance. Human language, i.e. symbolic pragmatics, appropriated the action cue meaning of tools and, simultaneously, transformed tools into symbolic ‘warrants’ by which modern humans transform both their speech and material behaviours into the types of social activities we intend. Post-Oldowan Lower and Middle Pleistocene lithics serve as empirical evidence in support of the Tool-Cue Model.

Type
Articles
Information
Cambridge Archaeological Journal , Volume 9 , Issue 1 , April 1999 , pp. 23 - 41
Copyright
Copyright © The McDonald Institute for Archaeological Research 1999

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Article purchase

Temporarily unavailable

References

Armstrong, D.F., Stokoe, W.C. & Wilcox, S.E., 1994. Signs of the origin of syntax. Current Anthropology 35(4), 349–68.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Austin, J.L., 1962. How To Do Things with Words. Cambridge (MA): Harvard University Press.Google Scholar
Bednarik, R.G., 1992. Palaeoart and archaeological myths. Cambridge Archaeological Journal 2(1), 27–43.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Bednarik, R.G., 1995. Concept-mediated marking in the Lower Palaeolithic. Current Anthropology 36(4), 605–34.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Bhaskar, R., 1978. A Realist Theory of Science. Hassocks: Harvester Press.Google Scholar
Bhaskar, R., 1979. The Possibility of Naturalism. Brighton: Harvester Press.Google Scholar
Binford, L.R., 1962. Archaeology as anthropology. American Antiquity 28(2), 217–25.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Binford, L.R., 1965. Archaeological systematics and the study of culture process. American Antiquity 31, 203–10.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Binford, L.R., 1989. Debating Archaeology. New York (NY): Academic Press.Google Scholar
Braun, D.P., 1995. Style, selection, and historicity, in Cair, & Neitzel, (eds.), 123–41.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Burling, R., 1993. Primate calls, human language, and nonverbal communication. Current Anthropology 34(1), 25–53.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Byers, A.M., 1991. Structure, meaning, action and things: the duality of material cultural meaning. Journal for the Theory of Social Behaviour 21(1), 1–30.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Byers, A.M., 1992. The action–constitutive theory of monuments: a strong pragmatist version. Journal for the Theory of Social Behaviour 22(4), 403–46.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Byers, A.M., 1994. Symbolling and the Middle–Upper Palaeolithic: a theoretical and methodological critique. Current Anthropology 35(4), 369–99.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Carr, C., 1995. Building a unified middlerange theory of artefact design: historical perspectives, and tactics, in Cair, & Neitzel, (eds.), 151–70.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Carr, C. & Neitzel, J.E., 1995a. Integrating approaches to material style in theory and philosophy, in Cair, & Neitzel, (eds.), 3–20.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Carr, C. & Neitzel, J.E. (eds.), 1995b. Style, Society, and Person: Archaeological and Ethnological Perspectives. New York (NY): Plenum Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Chase, P.G., 1991. Symbols and Palaeolithic artefacts: style, standardization, and the imposition of arbitrary form. Journal of Anthropological Archaeology 10, 193–214.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Chase, P.G. & Dibble, H.L., 1992. Scientific archaeology and the origins of symbolism: a reply to Bednarik. Cambridge Archaeological Journal 2(1), 43–51.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Cheney, D.L. & Seyfarth, R.M., 1990. How Monkeys See the World: Inside the Mind of Another Species. Chicago (IL): University of Chicago Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Clark, G.A. & Lindly, J.M., 1989. The case for continuity: observations on the biocultural transition in Europe and Western Asia, in Mellars, & Stringer, (eds.), 626–76.Google Scholar
Davidson, I. & Noble, W., 1989. The archaeology of perception: traces of depiction and language. Current Anthropology 30(2), 125–58.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Dibble, H.L., 1989. The implications of stone tool types for the presence of language during the Lower and Middle Palaeolithic, in Mellars, & Stringer, (eds.), 415–31.Google Scholar
Dibble, H.L., 1991. Mousterian assemblage variability on an interregional scale. Journal of Anthropological Research 47(2), 239–57.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Duff, A.I., Clark, G.A. & Chadderdon, T.J., 1992. Symbolism in the early Palaeolithic: a conceptual odyssey. Cambridge Archaeological Journal 2(2), 211–29.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Fodor, J.A., 1983. The Modularity of Mind: an Essay on Faculty Psychology. Cambridge (MA): MIT Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Gibson, K.R. & Ingold, T., 1993. Tools, Language and Cognition in Human Evolution. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Giddens, A., 1976. New Rules of Sociological Method. London: Hutchinson.Google Scholar
Giddens, A., 1979. Central Problems in Social Theory. London: MacMillan.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Giddens, A., 1981. A Contemporary Critique of Historical Materialism. London: MacMillan.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Giddens, A., 1984. The Constitution of Society. Berkeley (CA): University of California Press.Google Scholar
Hockett, C.F. & Ascher, R., 1964. The human revolution. Current Anthropology 5(3), 135–68.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hodder, I., 1982a. Theoretical archaeology: a reactionary view, in Symbolic and Structural Archaeology, ed. Hodder, I.. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1–16.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hodder, I., 1982b. Symbols in Action: Ethnoarchaeological Studies of Material Culture. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Hodder, I., 1982c. The Present Past. New York (NY): Pica Press.Google Scholar
Hodder, I., 1985. Post-processual archaeology, in Advances in Archaeological Method and Theory, vol. 8, ed. Schiffer, M.B.. New York (NY): Academic Press, 1–26.Google Scholar
Hodder, I., 1989. Post-modernism, post-structuralism and post-processual archaeology, in The Meanings of Things, ed. Hodder, I.. London: Unwin Hyman, 64–78.Google Scholar
Ingold, T., 1993a. Tool-use, sociality and intelligence, in Gibson, & Ingold, (eds.), 429–45.Google Scholar
Ingold, T., 1993b. Tools, techniques and technology, in Gibson, & Ingold, (eds.), 429–45.Google Scholar
Knight, C., Power, C. & Watts, I., 1995. The human symbolic revolution: a Darwinian account. Cambridge Archaeological Journal 5(1), 75–114.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Lindly, J.M. & Clark, G.A., 1990. Symbolism and modern human origins. Current Anthropology 31(3), 233–61.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Mellars, P., 1989a. Technological changes across the Middle-Upper Palaeolithic transition: economic, social and cognitive perspectives, in Mellars, & Stringer, (eds.), 338–65.Google Scholar
Mellars, P., 1989b. Major issues in the emergence of modern humans. Current Anthropology 30(3), 349–84.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Mellars, P., 1991. Cognitive changes and the emergence of modern humans. Cambridge Archaeological Journal 1(1), 63–76.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Mellars, P. & Stringer, C.S. (eds.), 1989. The Origins and Dispersal of Modern Humans: Behavioural and Biological Perspectives. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press.Google Scholar
Mithen, S., 1994. Technology and society during the Middle Pleistocene: hominid group size, social learning and industrial variability. Cambridge Archaeological Journal 4(1), 3–32.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Mithen, S., 1996a. The Prehistory of the Mind: a Search for the Origins of Art, Religion and Science. London: Thames & Hudson.Google Scholar
Mithen, S., 1996b. On early Palaeolithic’ concept mediated marks’, mental modularity, and the origins of art. Current Anthropology 37(4), 666–70.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Mithen, S., 1998. Commentary on ‘Neanderthal and Early Modern Human behavioral variability: a regional-scale approach to lithic evidence for hunting in the Levantine Mousterian’, by Shea, J.J.. Current Anthropology 39 (Supplementary), S67–S69.Google Scholar
Noble, W. & Davidson, I., 1996. Human Evolution, Language and Mind: a Psychological and Archaeological Inquiry. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Pinker, S., 1994. The Language Instinct: How the Mind Creates Language. New York (NY): William Morrow.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Roe, P.G., 1995. Style, society, myth, and structure, in Carr, & Neitzel, (eds.), 27–76.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Sackett, J., 1982. Approaches to style in lithic archaeology. Journal of Anthropological Archaeology 1, 59–112.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Sackett, J., 1985. Style and ethnicity in the Kalahari: a reply to Wiessner. American Antiquity 50, 154–9.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Sackett, J., 1986a. Style, function and assemblage variability: a reply to Binford. American Antiquity 51, 628–34.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Sackett, J., 1986b. Isochrestism and style: a clarification. Journal of Anthropological Archaeology 5, 266–77.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Searle, J.R., 1969. Speech Acts: an Essay in the Philosophy of Language. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Searle, J.R., 1979. Expression and Meaning: Studies in the Theory of Speech Acts. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Searle, J.R., 1983. Intentionality: an Essay in the Philosophy of Mind. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Searle, J.R., 1995. The Construction of Social Reality. New York (NY): The Free Press.Google Scholar
Shanks, M. & Tilley, C., 1987. Social Theory and Archaeology. 2nd edition. Albuquerque (NM): University of New Mexico Press.Google Scholar
Taylor, C., 1985. Theories of meaning, in Human Agency and Language, edited papers of Taylor, Charles. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 248–92.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Tilley, C., 1990a. Claude Levi-Strauss: structuralism and beyond, in Tilley (ed.), 3–81.Google Scholar
Tilley, C. (ed.), 1990b. Reading Material Culture. Oxford: Basil Blackwell.Google Scholar
Voss, J.A. & Young, R.L., 1995. Style and the self, in Carr, & Neitzel, (eds.), 78–99.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Whiten, A., 1993. Comment on Burling. Current Anthropology 34, 45–6.Google Scholar
Wiessner, P., 1983. Style and social information in Kalahari San projectile points. American Antiquity 48, 253–76.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Wiessner, P., 1985. Style or isochrestic variation? A reply to Sackett. American Antiquity 50, 160–63.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Wobst, M., 1977. Stylistic behaviour and information exchange, in Papers for the Director: Research Essay in Honour of James S. Griffin, ed. Cleland, C.E.. (Anthropological Papers 61.) Ann Arbor (MI): University of Michigan, Museum of Anthropology, 317–42.Google Scholar
Wynn, T., 1979. The intelligence of later Acheulian hominids. Man 14, 371–91.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Wynn, T., 1991. Tools, grammar and the archaeology of cognition. Cambridge Archaeological Journal 1(2), 191–206.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Wynn, T. & McGrew, W.C., 1989. An ape's view of the Oldowan. Man 24, 383–98.CrossRefGoogle Scholar