Academics

Welcome

I am a Research Fellow in Creativity and Tutor in archaeology, anthropology, and human evolution at Keble. Before coming to Oxford, I was a Balzan Research Associate in Cognitive Archaeology at the McDonald Institute, Cambridge University (2005-8), and a graduate student at Darwin College from 2000 to 2005. My research in the archaeology of mind is cross-disciplinary and besides teaching over a broad range of archaeological and anthropological courses I am also responsible for developing the Creativity research cluster at Keble. Creativity is one of a number of identified interdisciplinary research clusters being strongly supported within Keble. It brings together researchers from a range of disciplines including Archaeology, Anthropology, Neuroscience, Literature and Geography.

Research Interests

My primary research interests lie in the archaeology of mind, the philosophy and semiotics of material culture, and the anthropology of the brain-artefact interface. In recent years, I have been working, with Colin Renfrew, on the development of Material Engagement Theory (MET) and the research field of ‘neuroarchaeology’. The broad aim of my work has been to further our understanding of the constitutive intertwining of the mind with the material world by exploring the long-term implications and causal efficacy of innovation and material culture in the functional architecture and evolution of human intelligence. For instance, what implications follow the seemingly unique human predisposition to reconfigure our bodies and extend our senses by using tools and material culture? What can we learn about human Cognitive and Sensory Enhancement (CSE) by looking at the origin of Homo sapiens and the emergence of ‘modern’ human intelligence?

While my work has been largely developed in relation to early human prehistory, it can also be seen as a form of philosophical anthropology trying to investigate contemporary problems in philosophy of mind and cognitive sciences in their broader antropological, historical and evolutionary foundation. For instance, much of my recent work is centered on current interdisciplinary debates on topics such as the extended mind hypothesis, enactive perception, distributed cognition, the emergence of human self, or the so-called human enhancement debate. I have been addressing empirical and theoretical topics extending from early stone tools, personal ornamentation and the ‘exographic’ symbolic technologies of more recent periods, to the latest innovations in neuro-prosthetics and cognitive enhancement. In addition, I have written a number of articles on the impact of material engagement in the emergence of human self-awareness, the development of numerical thinking, symbolism, aesthetics and human creativity.

My research approach to the above themes and questions is strictly cross-disciplinary. It bridges perspectives and methods from archaeology, philosophy, anthropology and neuroscience. Taking a long term, comparative approach and focusing on the intersection between neural and cultural plasticity I seek to re-examine a number of ‘common wisdom’ assumptions, on the one hand, about the cognitive life of things, and on the other, about the boundaries, ontology and uniqueness of the human mind.

(I welcome applications for doctoral supervision in these or related areas).

Recent Publications

• 'The aesthetics of material engagement' in Situated Aesthetics: Art Beyond the Skin, ed. Manzotti R (Exeter: Imprint Academic, 2011)
• 'Linear B as Distributed Cognition: Excavating a Mind not Limited by the Skin' in Excavating the Mind, ed. M Jessen N Johannsen & HJ Jensen (Aarhus: Aarhus University Press, 2011)
• (with C. Renfrew) (eds), The Cognitive Life of Things: Recasting the boundaries of the mind (Cambridge: McDonald Institute Monographs, 2010)
• 'Metaplasticity and the human becoming: principles of neuroarchaeology' in Journal of Anthropological Sciences, 88 (2010), 49-72
• 'The Brain-Artefact Interface (BAI): A challenge for archaeology and cultural neuroscience' in Social Cognitive and Affective Neuroscience, 5(2-3) (2010), 264-273
• 'The Cognitive Life of Things: Archaeology, Material Engagement and the Extended Mind' in The Cognitive Life of Things: Recasting the boundaries of the mind, ed. Malafouris L. & C. Renfrew (Cambridge: McDonald Institute Monographs, 2010)
• 'Knapping Intentions and the Marks of the Mental' in The Cognitive Life of Things: Recasting the boundaries of the mind, ed. Malafouris L. & C. Renfrew (Cambridge: McDonald Institute Monographs, 2010)
• 'Grasping the concept of number: How did the sapient mind move beyond approximation?' in The Archaeology of Measurement: Comprehending Heaven, Earth and Time in Ancient Societies, ed. Morley I. & C. Renfrew (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010)
• '(with Knappett C & P. Tomkins) Ceramics (as Containers)' in The Oxford Handbook of Material Culture Studies, ed. Hicks, D & M Beaudry (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2010)
• (with C. Renfrew and C. Frith) (eds), The Sapient Mind: Archaeology meets neuroscience (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009)
• '‘Neuroarchaeology’: Exploring the links between neural and cultural plasticity' in Progress in Brain Research, 178 (2009), 251-59
• 'Vital Materiality/Biothing' in Biothing, ed. Andrasek A. (Collection FRAC centre: Editions HYX, 2009)
• (with C. Knappett) (eds), Material Agency: Towards a non-anthropocentric approach (New York: Springer, 2008)
• (with C. Renfrew and C. Frith) (eds), The Sapient Mind: Archaeology meets neuroscience (Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society of London Series B 363, 2008)
• 'Beads for a Plastic Mind: The ‘Blind Man’s Stick’ (BMS) hypothesis and the active nature of material culture' in Cambridge Archaeological Journal, 18 (3) (2008), 401-14
• (with C. Renfrew), 'Steps to a ‘neuroarchaeology’ of mind: An introduction' in Cambridge Archaeological Journal, 18 (3) (2008), 381-5
• 'Between brains, bodies and things: tectonoetic awareness and the extended self' in Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society of London Series B, 363 (2008), 1993–2002
• (with C. Renfrew and C. Frith), 'Introduction. The Sapient Mind: Archaeology meets neuroscience' in Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society of London Series B, 363 (2008), 1935–8
• 'Is it ‘me’ or is it ‘mine’? The Mycenaean sword as a body-part' in Past Bodies, ed. Boric D. & J. Robb (Oxford: Oxbow Books, 2008)
• 'Material and Non-Human Agency: An Introduction' in Material Agency: Towards a non-anthropocentric perspective, ed. Knappett C. & L. Malafouris (New York: Springer, 2008)
• 'At the Potter’s Wheel: An argument for Material Agency' in Material Agency: Towards a non-anthropocentric approach, ed. Knappett C. & L. Malafouris (New York: Springer, 2008)
• 'The sacred engagement: outline of a hypothesis about the origin of human ‘religious intelligence’' in Cult in Context, Reconsidering Ritual in Archaeology, ed. Barrowclough D.A. & C. Malone (Oxford: Oxbow Books, 2007)
• 'Before and beyond representation: towards an enactive conception of the Palaeolithic image' in Image and Imagination: a Global History of Figurative Representation, ed. Renfrew C. & I. Morley (Cambridge: McDonald Institute for Archaeological Research, 2007)
• 'The cognitive basis of material engagement: where brain, body and culture conflate' in Rethinking Materiality: the Engagement of Mind with the Material World, ed. E. DeMarrais, C. Gosden & C. Renfrew (Cambridge: McDonald Institute for Archaeological Research, 2004)