Local Diversity...Southern Neolithic settlements

Quaternary International xxx (2015) 1e13 Contents lists available at ScienceDirect Quaternary International journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/quaint ‘We have never been behaviourally modern’: The implications of Material Engagement Theory and Metaplasticity for understanding the Late Pleistocene record of human behaviour Patrick Roberts a, b, * a b Research Laboratory for Archaeology and the History of Art, University of Oxford, Dyson Perrins Building, South Parks Road, Oxford, OX1 3QY, UK School of Archaeology, University of Oxford, St Hugh's College, Oxford, OX2 6LE, UK a r t i c l e i n f o a b s t r a c t Article history: Available online xxx The emergence of the human mind is a topic that has been of considerable interest to the disciplines of archaeology, cognitive archaeology and neuroscience in recent years. Most research in this regard has tended to focus on what material culture associated with early Homo sapiens might reflect in terms of the timing and nature of early cognitive capacities and ‘behavioural modernity’. In recent years, however, both the concept of ‘behavioural modernity’ and its passive treatment of material culture have become highly criticised. Yet, until now, there has remained some confusion as to where to turn in its absence. Recently, Lambros Malafouris outlined the theoretical frameworks of Material Engagement Theory and Metaplasticity as a means to understand the active role of material culture in the constitution of the human mind. However, despite Malafouris' application of these theoretical frameworks to a series of case studies previously associated with human cognitive ‘modernity’ (including tool manufacture, early body ornamentation, and ritual art), the Late Pleistocene archaeological community has done little to engage with this work. In this paper I outline and then apply MET and Metaplasticity to two further case studies often considered pertinent to the development of human cognition in the Late Pleistocene e namely, long-distance resource sourcing and/or exchange and the development of composite technologies. In doing so, I hope to demonstrate that there is somewhere to turn in the wake of the statement ‘we have never been behaviourally modern’. © 2015 Elsevier Ltd and INQUA. All rights reserved. Keywords: ‘Behavioural modernity’ Cognitive archaeology Human mind Material Engagement Theory Metaplasticity Late Pleistocene 1. Introduction The abilities and origins of the kind of mind characteristic of our species, Homo sapiens, remain highly debated topics in anthropology, archaeology, and neuroscience. Since the late 20th century, many archaeologists and anthropologists have maintained something of a separation between fossil and genetic evidence for the emergence of the biological form of our species in Africa c. 200,000 years ago (Anatomically Modern Humans) (White et al., 2003; Trinkaus, 2005; Grine et al., 2007), and the emergence of an evolved ‘modern’ mind characteristic of our species as we understand it today (Behaviourally Modern Humans) (Klein, 1995; Mellars, 2005, 2006). This separation initially led to an intensive * Corresponding author. Research Laboratory for Archaeology and the History of Art, University of Oxford, Dyson Perrins Building, South Parks Road, Oxford, OX1 3QY, UK. E-mail address: patrick.roberts@rlaha.ox.ac.uk. search in Late Pleistocene archaeology for the when and where of the earliest material evidence for ‘modern’ minds and behaviour in the form of a ‘checklist’ that has included symbolic behaviour, concern with ornament and personal display, subsistence complexity and diversity, and refined technologies (Mellars, 2006; Conard, 2010; Henshilwood et al., 2011). Once uncovered, these material traces were characterised as representative of either ‘revolutions’ (Bar-Yosef, 2002; Mellars, 2007; Klein, 2008) or gradual trajectories of behavioural change (McBrearty and Brooks, 2000; Gamble, 2007; Mellars et al., 2007). In the last decade, a number of serious problems have emerged with the concept of ‘behavioural modernity’ as a threshold in H. sapiens (Wadley, 2001; Shea, 2011). These include: the association of certain material traces from the ‘behaviourally modern’ checklist with hominins other than H. sapiens (d'Errico, 2003; d'Errico et al., ~o, 2007; Joordens et al., 2014), evidence for the emer2003; Zilha gence and then disappearance of certain ‘behaviourally modern’ traits in Africa and elsewhere (Lombard, 2005; Lombard and http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.quaint.2015.03.011 1040-6182/© 2015 Elsevier Ltd and INQUA. All rights reserved. Please cite this article in press as: Roberts, P., ‘We have never been behaviourally modern’: The implications of Material Engagement Theory and Metaplasticity for understanding the Late Pleistocene record of human behaviour, Quaternary International (2015), http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/ j.quaint.2015.03.011 2 P. Roberts / Quaternary International xxx (2015) 1e13 Parsons, 2011), the apparent lack of ‘behavioural modernity’ in certain regions of the world even upon the arrival of H. sapiens (O'Connell and Allen, 2007; Petraglia et al., 2010), and preservation biases involved in the search for its ‘earliest’ material traces (Shea, 2011). Perhaps even more problematic is the way in which the conceptualisation of ‘behavioural modernity’ draws a dichotomy, not only between our species and other hominins (ancestral or otherwise), but also between ‘behaviourally modern’ humans and ‘non-behaviourally modern’ humans within the H. sapiens taxon. Such dichotomies seem strange from the perspective of Darwinian evolution and the rest of the animal kingdom, and also lend themselves to racial commentaries of biological haves and havenots (Shea, 2011). It is perhaps unsurprising then that a number of archaeologists have concluded that research may advance more readily without the concept of ‘modern human behaviour’, looking instead at more nuanced understandings of ‘complex cognition’ (Wadley, 2001; Wadley et al., 2009) and ‘behavioural variability’ (Shea, 2011, and see comments). However, there remains a fundamental problem with approaches to the Late Pleistocene record of material culture associated with H. sapiens. From a cognitive perspective, one of the primary issues with previous research has been the inference of unidirectional relationships between particular material traces and pre-existing, developed cognitive capacities. This approach has led to the archaeological use of material forms such as representational art, evidence for symbolism, reconstructions of tool-making behaviour, and complex technological systems to generalise about when certain capacities of the modern human brain emerged (Ambrose, 2001; Conard and Bolus, 2003; Henshilwood et al., 2009; Wadley et al., 2009). Contrastingly, neuroscientists have used MRI images and experiments undertaken on living human individuals to generalise capacities back across the archaeological record to explain particular behaviours or material forms (Dunbar, 2010a,b; 2012; Shultz et al., 2012). Although both approaches have provided a number of interesting insights into the development of the human mind, they have a tendency to fall into the ‘modern’ trap, critiqued by Latour (1993; Malafouris, 2010, 2013), that envisages an internal, omnipotent human mind that can act on a separate, external world. The idea that a given material trace can be passively reflective of an innate mental capacity suggests a static, unilinear association between defined internal minds and an external material world. Furthermore, ontologically, any imputed cognitive change becomes inextricably linked to a particular material result. In the last few years Lambros Malafouris (2010, 2013) has developed the theoretical frameworks of ‘Material Engagement Theory’ and ‘Metaplasticity’ as ways to understand human materialemind relationships and produce a more fruitful collaboration of archaeology and neuroscience. He argues that the important changes in the “dynamic bio-cultural construct” of the human mind are constituted and brought forth by human mental and physical interaction with the material world. The human mind is an incomplete and unfinished project to be further shaped and developed by its own potency for material interaction (Latour, 1993; Malafouris, 2013). Although Malafouris (2007, 2008, 2010, 2013) has provided an intriguing application of these theoretical frameworks to particular case studies from the Late Pleistocene record of human, the wider archaeological literature for the Late Pleistocene is yet to fully engage with these concepts. This has meant that the implications and potential of his insights for studies of the earliest material culture produced by our species have been little-explored, despite this being the area in which they might result in the greatest theoretical shift. Indeed, these frameworks do not only provide a means to move beyond searches for ‘behavioural modernity’ in the archaeological record e they also allow us to move past our own ‘modern’ assumptions as to the relationship between the material record and the human mind. In this paper, I first explore the historical context of ‘behavioural modernity’ along with its recent critiques and alternatives. I then present and discuss ‘Material Engagement Theory’ and ‘Metaplasticity’ in more detail before applying them, in turn, to two specific case studies (i.e. material correlates of long-distance sourcing and/or exchange and composite technologies) argued to have key implications for the emergence of human cognition during the Late Pleistocene, as well as to the Late Pleistocene archaeological record more broadly. I argue that these theoretical approaches are well placed to make sense of the Late Pleistocene archaeological record on a number of different temporal and geographical scales. Furthermore, I argue that in the vacuum left by the assertion ‘we have never been behaviourally modern’ these approaches facilitate a more productive relationship between archaeology and neuroscience where the human mind meets the material world. 2. The problem of ‘behavioural modernity’ 2.1. Historical context The term ‘behavioural modernity’ was first used to describe a series of material changes seen in the European archaeological record at the onset of the Upper Palaeolithic period c. 40,000 years ago. These changes included a shift towards more varied and complex lithic technologies, the working of non-lithic media for tools, increasingly diverse subsistence strategies, long-distance procurement networks, and evidence for personal ornamentation and ‘symbolism’ (Mellars, 1973, 1996; Klein, 1992; Blades, 1999; Stiner et al., 1999; Valladas et al., 2001). The apparent dramatic florescence of these materials, and the fact that they only appeared with the arrival of H. sapiens, led to them being characterised as evidence for the influx of ‘behavioural modernity’ into Europe (Mellars, 1973). These novel traits were framed as crucial, ‘revolutionary’ adaptations to the harsh and oscillating environments of Europe, and intense interaction with indigenous Neanderthal populations, that facilitated human expansion and dominance across the European continent (Mellars, 2006; Mellars et al., 2013). Thus ‘behavioural modernity’ not only created a contrast between H. sapiens and indigenous Homo neanderthalensis, but also, by implying a behavioural change unique to the colonisation of Europe, formed a contrast between behaviourally modern European Upper Palaeolithic human populations and their ancestral, non-behaviourally modern, ‘non-European’ human populations. However, during the 1990s and early 2000s, archaeological finds in Africa began to question the evolutionary of significance of the Middle to Upper Palaeolithic shift in Europe. The Still Bay and Howiesons Poort techno complexes of southern Africa demonstrate much earlier evidence in Africa for technological diversity, including osseous toolkits, and personal ornamentation. The Still Bay technocomplex consists of bifacially worked lithic points and is primarily characterised at the sites of Blombos Cave and Sibudu Cave (Wadley, 2007; Jacobs et al., 2013). Associated layers at Blombos Cave producing evidence for bone points, pierced Nassarius kraussanus shell beads, and engraved ochre dated to between 75.5 and 67.8 ka (Henshilwood et al., 2002; Henshilwood, 2007). Interestingly, more recently, Blombos has produced evidence for incised ochre and paint production as early as 100 ka (Henshilwood et al., 2009; Jacobs et al., 2013). Similarly, although the Still Bay dates to a similar period at Sibudu Cave, recent work has suggested complex heat-treated technologies, and symbolic pigment use could extend as far back as 164 ka at Pinnacle Point (Marean et al., 2007; Brown et al., 2009). Alongside the Still Bay, Please cite this article in press as: Roberts, P., ‘We have never been behaviourally modern’: The implications of Material Engagement Theory and Metaplasticity for understanding the Late Pleistocene record of human behaviour, Quaternary International (2015), http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/ j.quaint.2015.03.011 P. Roberts / Quaternary International xxx (2015) 1e13 the Howiesons Poort complex, variably dated to 64.8e59.5 ka and 80e55 ka (Jacobs et al., 2008; Tribolo et al., 2009), is considered to provide evidence for some of the earliest multi-component composite lithic technologies in the world (McBrearty and Brooks, 2000; Barham, 2013). Associated finds include engraved ostrich eggshell at Diepkloof and Klipdrift Shelter (Texier et al., 2010; Henshilwood et al., 2014) as well as bone tools and potentially shell beads at Sibudu Cave (Backwell et al., 2008). Further, evidence for early technological complexity and personal ornamentation is provided by the discovery of several barbed bone points at the site of Katanda, Democratic Republic of Congo that have been dated to c. 89 þ 22/15 ka by TL, U-series and ESR dating (Brooks et al., 1995) and to 95.6 ± 13.9e59.1 ± 10.4 ka by OSL (Feathers and Migliorini, 2001). These African discoveries were used to suggest the development of human ‘modernity’ within or even before the Middle Stone Age in southern Africa (Foley and Lahr, 1997; McBrearty and Brooks, 2000; Mellars, 2006). However, although they pushed evidence for a cognitive shift further back in time, these studies retained the same material ‘checklist’ of ‘modernity’ formulated in Europe. Furthermore, the reliable dating of the earliest H. sapiens fossils in East Africa back to c. 200,000 years ago, including those from Omo and Herto in Ethiopia (Clark et al., 2003; White et al., 2003; Fleagle et al., 2008; Shea, 2008), seemed to confirm some temporal distinction between early Anatomically Modern Human fossils and Behaviourally Modern Human traces of behavioural complexity. This could, however, be the result of the almost complete lack of any archaeological record from between 200 and 120,000 years ago in southern Africa (Barham and Mitchell, 2008). Indeed, increasing evidence from the Levantine sites of Skhul and Qafzeh suggests that H. sapiens, accompanied by shell beads and pigment use, were extending their reach beyond Africa as early as 115 ka (Bar-Yosef, 1998; Vanhaeren et al., 2006), while evidence for bead production at Taforalt, Morocco c. 82 ka is older than evidence for the same practice in southern Africa (Bouzouggar et al., 2007). 2.2. Challenges and alternatives One of the main paradigms of ‘behavioural modernity’, as outlined above, is that it is exclusive to ‘modern’ humans or H. sapiens, in opposition to co-existing hominin species such as H. neanderthalensis. However, even in the region of its inception, Europe, this tenet has been significantly questioned (d'Errico, 2003; ~o, 2007). Evidence of so-called technod'Errico et al., 2003; Zilha logical complexity, symbolic behaviour and subsistence diversity has been found associated with Neanderthal populations in Europe ~o et al., 2010), and the Levant (d'Errico, 2003; Shea, 2006; Zilha causing some to suggest that even on the basis of the ‘behaviourally modern’ checklist, formulated from the European Upper Palaeolithic record, a further hominin species can be characterized as ~o et al., 2010). Furthermore, there is ‘behaviourally modern’ (Zilha genetic evidence that Neanderthals interbred to some extent with H. sapiens during long periods of coexistence in Eurasia, with modern Eurasian H. sapiens populations sharing c. 4% of genetic information with extinct H. neanderthalensis (Green et al., 2010). Although it should be noted that both genetic similarities and morphological variance could be the result of relatedness of these hominin species via an ancestral hominin (Homo heidelbergensis) (Shea, 2011), the picture of H. sapiens and H. neanderthalensis is now much more complex than simple theories of modern versus nonmodern once argued. Genetic evidence from the Denisovan hominin remains (Reich et al., 2011) further demonstrates the interaction between H. sapiens and other co-existent hominins that continues to break down biological boundaries erected between palaeontologically defined species. 3 However, the eventual extinction of all hominin species other than H. sapiens would still imply some unique trait or capacity with regards to the latter (Mellars, 2005; Mellars et al., 2013). That said, consistent continuous traits or capacities of ‘Behaviourally Modern Humans’ in contrast to ‘Anatomically Modern Humans’ and other coexistent/ancestral hominins are somewhat hard to pinpoint given increasing archaeological evidence for discontinuity and geographical diversity in certain ‘modern’ material traces within Africa and beyond. For example, the recent dating of the Still Bay and Howiesons Poort in southern Africa leaves up to 6700 years of discontinuity between these assemblages (Jacobs et al., 2008). Furthermore, stone tool assemblages immediately post-dating the Howiesons Poort, between about 58,000 and 50,000 years ago, and arguably down to the Later Stone Age c. 25,000e20,000 years ago, have been considered “less sophisticated” (Jacobs and Roberts, 2009: 191), demonstrating a return to “earlier technological strategies” (McCall, 2007: 1749). Similarly, toolkits used to characterize the Upper Palaeolithic in Europe show substantial regional diversity (Fedele et al., 2008), while the hallmarks of symbolic and artistic expression during this time appear to be largely restricted, at least in the early stages of their appearance, to the Swabian Jura of Germany, in the case of bone and antler carvings (Conard and Bolus, 2003), and to central France and northern Spain in the case of parietal cave art. As argued by d'Errico and Stringer (2011) in their presentation of ‘saltation’ model of the evolution of human cognition, the nature of such discontinuity and regional variety is far more in tune with contextual ecological and demographic responses rather than any sweeping, ‘revolutionary’ cognitive or behavioural threshold. This problem also resurfaces in arguments that emphasize the lack of material traces of ‘behavioural modernity’ in some regions of the world, even following the arrival of H. sapiens. For example, there is a suggestion that there was an early, pre-Toba eruption (74,000 years ago), expansion of H. sapiens into Arabia and India (James and Petraglia, 2005; Groucutt and Petraglia, 2012; Boivin et al., 2013). Although still debated, if this is indeed the case, such an expansion is largely represented by toolkits demonstrating ‘Middle Palaeolithic’ affinities (James and Petraglia, 2005; Rose et al., 2011; Groucutt and Petraglia, 2012; Petraglia et al., 2012). A similar scenario has already been established at the Levantine sites of Skhul and Qafzeh (Bar-Yosef, 1998; Vanhaeren et al., 2006). Furthermore, although Australia and New Guinea were demonstrably occupied by H. sapiens from c. 45e40,000 years onwards, there is a relative scarcity of evidence for material traits traditionally used to define ‘behavioural modernity’ in Europe and Africa until the middle Holocene (Lourandos, 1997; O'Connell and Allen, 2007; Habgood and Franklin, 2008; Stern, 2009) (though see Smith (2013) for a review of evidence for complex subsistence strategies, ecological manipulation, and resource procurement in the deserts of Late Pleistocene Australia). Indeed, the stone tools recovered from the earliest sites with evidence for H. sapiens in Australia are described as ‘cores’ and ‘scrapers’, showing little difference from Grahame Clark's (1969) Mode 1 toolkits that described the Lower Palaeolithic tools of Africa associated with the first emergence of the genus Homo (Mulvaney and Kamminga, 1999). Although some have argued this to be evidence for a ‘losing’ of behavioural modernity (Jones, 1996), a more parsimonious explanation is that Late Pleistocene material traits are best viewed as responses to contextual pressures rather than as clear indicators of thresholds of cognitive change (Lombard and Parsons, 2011). From a more methodological standpoint, the search for the when and where of the earliest ‘modern’ traces are doomed by the very nature of the archaeological record itself. In terms of when, greater evidence of ‘modern’ behaviours later in the archaeological record of H. sapiens may purely reflect the fact that more Please cite this article in press as: Roberts, P., ‘We have never been behaviourally modern’: The implications of Material Engagement Theory and Metaplasticity for understanding the Late Pleistocene record of human behaviour, Quaternary International (2015), http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/ j.quaint.2015.03.011 4 P. Roberts / Quaternary International xxx (2015) 1e13 archaeological sites are preserved, and have been excavated, from recent time ranges (Shea, 2011). Similarly, with regards to where, politically sensitive situations across West and Central Africa, as well as much of the Middle East, mean that a huge spectrum of evidence for the earliest artefacts of H. sapiens will not have the chance to be excavated, even if present, for many years to come. These problems have led to the creation of alternative models for the investigation and interpretation of the Late Pleistocene material record. As early as 2001, Lyn Wadley critiqued the use of ‘checklists’ of modernity, instead encouraging a broader focus on ‘complex cognition’ (Wadley, 2001). Instead of using a ‘checklist’, Wadley has emphasized the importance of contextual and experimental analyses in the investigation of what different material forms and techniques might demonstrate regarding human mental requirements and capacities (Wadley et al., 2009; Wadley, 2010). Similarly, John Shea more recently proposed looking at relative degrees ‘behavioural variability’ in the material record of H. sapiens and other hominins. Specifically, Shea (2011) uses Grahame Clark's (REF) Modes (1969) to demonstrate that lithic technological variability is no less at East African sites associated with early H. sapiens fossils than later MSA assemblages. However, although they move usefully beyond ‘behavioural modernity’, these approaches maintain that material traces can passively represent a particular distinctive threshold of either complexity or variability. This has been the fundamental ontological issue with approaches to the Late Pleistocene record of material culture to date. The absence of a material form or technique, or evidence for variability, earlier in the archaeological record does not necessarily mean a particular capacity was absent. For one thing relevant perishable materials may simply have not been preserved (Shea, 2011). Perhaps more importantly though, a particular material form is unlikely to passively equate, temporally or in kind, with the earliest formation of cognitive capacities we observe in humans today. This problem can also be seen in applications of neuroscience to human cognitive development. Many studies have used modern MRI scanning and experiments to discern certain cognitive or behavioural capacities that can then be matched with the archaeological record in order to discern their first appearance. For example, analysis of the effects of dance, song and social interaction on the human brain has led Dunbar (2003, 2010a,b) to suggest that expansions in the human brain are related primarily to increased social bonding. Findings such as these in modern neuroscience have then been extrapolated to suggest that the earliest evidence for personal adornment, in the form of shell beads and ochre staining, is simply reflective different, various aspects of a developed human brain (Gamble et al., 2011; Henshilwood and Dubreuil, 2011). Although such work provides interesting insight into the workings of the human mind, it largely neglects the active role the material record can have in shaping and developing human cognition and behaviour. Despite criticism by Karl Popper (1979) as early as the 1970s, it is only with increasing research in neuroscience, anthropology, and philosophy, that is emphasizing the active agency of objects within human social or biological worlds, that such a position is becoming unsustainable (Merleau-Ponty, 1962; Gell, 1998; Mithen and Parsons, 2008; Miller, 2010; Malafouris, 2009, 2010, 2013). the development of literacy and urbanization, agriculture, and broader considerations of the interaction between material culture and cognitive change (Hodder, 1999; Boivin, 2008; Gosden, 2008; Mithen and Parsons, 2008; Renfrew et al., 2008; Malafouris and Renfrew, 2010). However, although both research areas have produced a huge variety of stimulating insights across a series of archaeological periods and anthropological questions, their grounding in methodology has retained an ongoing ontological issue. As Malafouris (2013: 24) puts it: “Where in the archaeological record do we find cognition?” In a broader sense, this question hinges on the nature of collaboration between archaeology and neuroscience. Where do the cognitive and the archaeology meet? Until recently, archaeological theory and, indeed, cognitive archaeological theory, has seen the archaeological record as the unidirectional “external” material product of “internal” cognitive capacities and changes. Consequently, the search for prehistoric minds has been based on inferences as to how they might have shaped, formed, and developed the resulting archaeological record. Indeed, in the context of archaeological, anthropological, and neurological research into ‘behavioural modernity’ and cognitive ‘complexity’ this has led to the Late Pleistocene record of H. sapiens becoming a passive residue of an active cognitive capacity or change. As Lambros Malafouris (2013: 25) has argued, this perspective is representative of a broader ontological trend in Western society that erects a Cartesian dichotomy between the thinking, bounded, but active mind and the external, passive material world. In turn, this dichotomy also follows the broader ‘modern’ ontology of ‘purification’ that perceives a clean separation between the natural, non-human world and the human world, society and the self (Latour, 1993). In his book, ‘we have never been modern’, Bruno Latour (1993) argued that the history of scientific discovery and experiment, the political milieu of global warming and HIV/AIDs pandemic, as well as the production of biotechnologies, have demonstrated that this ‘modern’ ontological boundary between the natural and human world is easily deconstructed and essentially illusionary. The same can be argued for the Cartesian separation of mind and matter. In his 2013 book ‘How Things Shape the Mind’ Lambros Malafouris put forward Material Engagement Theory (MET) as a productive new methodological and theoretical framework in cognitive archaeology, one that challenges previously conceived boundaries of the mind and the material world. To frame his theory, Malafouris (2008, 2013) utilized the thought experiment of the blind man with a walking stick discussed by the phenomenological philosopher and anthropologist Maurice Merleau-Ponty (1962) and the anthropologist Gregory Bateson (1973). “Where does the blind man's self begin? At the tip of the stick? At the handle of the stick? Or at some point halfway up the stick?” -Bateson (1973, 318). “Where do we draw, and on what basis can we draw, a delimiting line across the extended system that determines the blind man's perception and locomotion?” -Malafouris (2013, 4) 3. Material Engagement Theory and the prehistoric mind The development of cognitive archaeology as a discipline has focused on two major threads of enquiry: the discernment of the cognitive changes that characterize human speciation (d'Errico et al., 2003; Mellars et al., 2007; Malafouris and Renfrew, 2008; Stout et al., 2008; Coolidge and Wynn, 2009; Malafouris, 2010) and more recent cognitive developments in our species, including In short, where is the ontological boundary best placed when we analyze human sensory and cognitive interaction with the material world? Are materials simply passive devices to be created and used by a bounded, omnipotent cognition and mind? Or are they, in fact, bound up with the formation, development, perception and even production of that mind? Please cite this article in press as: Roberts, P., ‘We have never been behaviourally modern’: The implications of Material Engagement Theory and Metaplasticity for understanding the Late Pleistocene record of human behaviour, Quaternary International (2015), http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/ j.quaint.2015.03.011 P. Roberts / Quaternary International xxx (2015) 1e13 Malafouris (2013) argues that this thought experiment demonstrates that we must ‘unlearn modernity’ in archaeology and cognitive archaeology if we are to properly understand the interaction of the human mind and the material world. If an archaeologist excavated the blind man's stick he/she might first consider the complexity of its shape and manufacture in considering the maker's cognitive capabilities. Further consideration may then lead the archaeologist to consider the production of the stick in relation to broader social capacities or problem-solving abilities of that same mind. However, what such an advance up Christopher Hawkes' (1954) ladder of inference would miss entirely is the stick's active role in developing and constituting the man's sensory and cognitive capabilities to feel his way within the world. Arguably, the most important cognitive aspect of the blind man's interaction with his stick is how the stick and mind mutually constitute each other to create a new material-mind hybrid, to borrow Latour's term (1993), and a new pathway of cognition which cannot be investigated if a boundary is drawn at any point between the two. In broader application to archaeology, we “need only replace the stick with any of the numerous artifacts and innovations that constitute the diverse archaeological inventory of prehistoric material culture” (Malafouris, 2013, 4e5). In essence, Material Engagement Theory seeks to refocus methodology and theory on the dynamic process in which material and mental worlds promote and shape the capacities and developments of each other. However, movement away from treating material culture as the end result of a deterministic, unilinear relationship between innate neurocognitive capacity and the material world does not mean that it is impossible to use the material record to understand past cognitive structures and changes, albeit in a more dynamic and multidirectional manner. Far from it since the analysis of the blind man's stick is crucial to understanding how the man's existing neural structures and sensory capacities might have combined with this material object of given material characteristics to build new neural pathways and possibilities in his movement and sensory understanding of the world. To take another example, in his discussion of the development of an “extra-neural” numerical sense during the emergence of tokens and writing in Mesopotamia, Malafouris (2010, 115) asks how the intraparietal area of the human brain changed in order to develop true human numerosity from a more general “number sense” shared with other species. In arguing that the use of clay tokens actively enabled this change he is not saying that they are disconnected from changes in particular neural structures and therefore useless in the search for changes in human cognition. Quite the opposite, the tokens provide an active, multidirectional linkage between the neural and material world at a time of significant structural change. Such a perspective is allied with that developed in neuroconstructivism in the field of evolutionary psychology. Neuroconstructivism has demonstrated that cognitive development occurs through a process of “probabilistic epigenesis” (Gottlieb, 2002, 2003). Rather than viewing brain development as gene driven and determined, it is instead seen as a bidirectional process influenced by genetic, behavioural, environmental, and sociocultural factors (Gottlieb, 2007). As Griffiths and Stotz (2000; 31) state, humans do not inherit a mind “but the ability to develop a mind”. Consequently, the same genotype can have a myriad of different neural, cognitive, and behavioural outcomes. However, neuroconstructivism does not ignore the structural or limiting boundaries of the human brain (Mareschal et al., 2007). Neural change is seen as coming about as a result of engagement with previously existing “partial representations” or minimal conditions in order to build new, “abstract representations” (Mareschal et al., 2007). Transformation will not occur if the neural system is not sufficiently flexible, the minimal conditions are not present, or if it 5 is outcompeted by a more efficient neural pathway or network. As a consequence, certain changes may not be possible until a genetic mutation breaks the limits of plasticity (see below) or makes possible new connections and networks that can then be brought forth by environmental and contextual engagement of the mind with the world. 4. Metaplasticity MET has significant implications for how we view the origins of the ‘human’ mind. Instead of perceiving the brain as a hard-wired, internal, bounded organ that is biologically constant in certain capacities following human speciation (Evans et al., 2005), the brain is an ongoing, dynamic product of consistent cultural activity and material engagement (Malafouris, 2013). In looking at material indicators of human cognition, MET suggests that there is no single evolutionary event or moment where the brain becomes definitively ‘human’. Instead, increasing genetic evidence is demonstrating that the human brain is part of a continuous evolutionary process even on historical timescales (Cochran and Harpending, 2010). Under the terms of MET it becomes impossible to view the human mind as some revolutionary event of evolution, the pinnacle of a trajectory towards sophistication and specialization that we identify with our own abilities and achievements. Instead, the human mind is extraordinary in its “ever-increasing projective flexibility” (Malafouris, 2013; 46) or plasticity that enables its fluid and fruitful interaction with a number of different environmental, cultural and material contexts. This distinctive characteristic of the human mind is what Malafouris (2013) terms ‘Metaplasticity’. In neuroscience, ‘neuroplasticity’ refers to in vivo changes in neural pathways and synapses due to changes in activity, environment and neural processes. Going against the traditional consensus that the brain is a physiologically static organ, research into neuroplasticity over the last two decades has concerned itself with how and why the brain can change throughout life (PascualLeone et al., 2005). This plasticity can occur on a variety of biological levels, ranging from cellular changes to large-scale cortical remapping. One of the more well-known examples of neuroplasticity is research into neural responses to limb amputation. In particular, amputees often experience ‘phantom limbs’ whereby a person continues to feel pain or sensation in an amputated limb. Neuroplasticity research has demonstrated that the experience of this phenomenon is related to cortical remapping, whereby cortical activity in certain parts of the brain becomes misinterpreted by the area of the cortex formerly responsible for the amputated limb (Flor et al. 1995; Moseley and Brugger, 2009). This and other work into chronic pain (Flor, 2003), sensory prostheses (Kral and Sharma, 2012), brain damage (Cutler et al., 2005), and meditation (Lazar et al., 2005) has increasingly demonstrated that the brain “truly does change itself” in different environmental, physical, and activity-based contexts (Moseley and Brugger, 2009). Such neural plasticity is not, however, limited to humans. Other mammals, birds, and amphibians have all been shown to demonstrate hormone-related seasonal changes in neural connectivity and mapping (Takami and Urano, 1984; Barnea and Nottebohm, 1994; Xiong et al., 1997). We are therefore left to search a little harder for the distinctive neural character of the human brain. In 2003, the neuroscientists Zhang and Linden (2003: 896) coined the term ‘Metaplasticity’ to describe the emergent, higher-order properties of synaptic plasticity that are apparently exclusive to the human brain. ‘Metaplasticity’, in essence, refers to the plasticity of neuroplasticity, or the potential for activity and context-dependent changes in the plastic state of neurons and their pathways. For example, a number of studies of the brains of human musicians have demonstrated Please cite this article in press as: Roberts, P., ‘We have never been behaviourally modern’: The implications of Material Engagement Theory and Metaplasticity for understanding the Late Pleistocene record of human behaviour, Quaternary International (2015), http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/ j.quaint.2015.03.011 6 P. Roberts / Quaternary International xxx (2015) 1e13 plastic changes with instrumental practice, including an increase in grey-matter volume in the sensorimotor cortex (Gaser and Schlaug, 2003) and enlarged cortical somatosensory representations of the fingers for musicians (Elbert et al., 1995). However, musicians have also demonstrated metaplastic changes in the excitability and plasticity of the motor system with long-term musical practice. For example, Watanabe et al. (2007) demonstrate that musicians who started musical training before the age of seven learn motor performance tasks better than both non-musicians and musicians that started later in life. Consequently, musicians not only develop plastic neural changes in motor and sensory skills, but also develop an increased ability to learn new motor and sensory tasks and capabilities, or ‘metaplasticity’ (Rosenkranz et al., 2007). On a broader scale, proponents of metaplasticity argue that it is the extent and capacity of the human brain to be plastic in relation to environmental, cultural, social and physical forces that makes it neurologically distinctive. In the context of MET, Malafouris adapts the term ‘Metaplasticity’ more specifically to describe the extent of the human brain's plasticity and interactivity in its engagement with the material world. In essence, what makes us human is the fact that we have a “plastic mind which is embedded and inextricably enfolded with a plastic culture” (Malafouris, 2013; 46). For example, structural MRI scans obtained from London taxi drivers and control subjects show significantly larger hippocampal volumes of taxi drivers, correlated to the amount of time spent as a taxi driver (Maguire et al., 2000). Maguire et al. (2000) suggested that this impressive structural change was related to a taxi drivers' extensive training and experience in London navigation. However, Malafouris argues that the introduction of GPS and the extension of the biological memory of taxi drivers may have equally important cognitive implications. For Malafouris and MET, it is not the location or extent of the neuroplastic change per se that is important, but how these changes emerge from the brain's interaction with various cultural and material practices. No other species demonstrates such a propensity for plastic neural changes through material interaction. We are ‘metaplastic’ in the sense that our mental engagement with the material world consistently increases the propensity and capacity of our brains to show plastic response and interactivity with that same material world. This adds a cognitive dimension to Timothy Taylor's (2011) description of the ‘artificial ape’. The human mind is not unique for being modern or sophisticated, it is unique in the extent of its reciprocal and plastic engagement with the material and cultural worlds around us. 5. Material Engagement Theory and Metaplasticity applied to the Late Pleistocene record of human behaviour On the basis of the above principles, MET and Metaplasticity have much to offer the cognitive archaeology and archaeology of the Late Pleistocene record. Firstly, MET and Metaplasticity provide some insight into what makes our mind particularly ‘human’, namely the degree of plasticity, or metaplasticity, that the human mind has in forming new networks, both internally and with the external, material world. This increased plasticity could have been associated with a genetic mutation in our species that facilitated greater potential for co-constitution of the human mind and human material culture than had previously been the case in our ancestors and nearest relatives. Such a change may be associated with the enlarged pre-frontal cortex (PFC) of H. sapiens that might have favoured higher connectivity within the PFC itself and other regions of the neocortex (Rilling and Insel, 1999). Another candidate may be the higher proportion of white matter in the human PFC that is thought to have facilitated long-distance connections with other regions of the brain (Schoenemann et al., 2005). However, although perhaps initiated by a genetic change, the metaplastic nature of the human brain also means that it never instantaneously became the ‘modern’ or ‘fully human’ brain we see today. Rather, material interactions and changes to its environmental and social conditions have meant that the human brain has been, and still is, in a state of constant becoming. This point also has implications for how we approach and understand the material record of the Late Pleistocene that has so often been searched for material correlates of ‘modernity’, ‘complexity’, or particular cognitive capacities. Rather than treating them as part of a checklist or as passive material indicators, these different material elements each have their own story to tell as to how they engaged with existing structures of a meta-plastic human brain to produce new and dynamic trajectories of the early human mind. Where classical cognitive archaeological approaches to this period have limited themselves to what cognitive capacities are represented by particular material artefacts, MET offers the potential to add insight into how new neural structures may have developed through human bodily and cognitive interaction with different material elements. Lambros Malafouris (2007, 2010, 2013) has already applied the frameworks of MET and Metaplasticity to Late Pleistocene material evidence for personal ornamentation, ritual representation, and parietal art. Here I will add to these analyses by testing the efficacy of MET and Metaplasticity as explanatory tools in the emergence of long-distance procurement, and what I call ‘spatial affinity’, and the development of composite hunting technologies during the Late Pleistocene. I will then conclude with a broader discussion of the Late Pleistocene archaeological record from a perspective of MET and Metaplasticity. 5.1. Long-distance procurement: the development of a material ‘spatial affinity’ Material evidence for ‘personal ornamentation’ has been a major battleground in discussions of Late Pleistocene cognition. Some have suggested that evidence for the manufacture and wearing of shell beads and the engraving and smearing of ochre from 75 ka at Blombos Cave, South Africa, as well as a series of other sites in southern Africa, North Africa, and the Near East (Henshilwood et al., 2004; Bouzouggar et al., 2007; d'Errico et al., 2008; Bar-Yosef Mayer et al., 2009), is evidence for the development of a ‘symbolic capacity’ in our species (Henshilwood and Dubreuil, 2011). More specific, cognitive explanations have suggested that the development of such behaviour is demonstrative of the expansion of higher association areas of the temporal and parietal cortices and the development of theory of mind (Henshilwood and Dubreuil, 2011) or an expansion of the neocortex and the ‘social’ brain (Gamble et al., 2011). However, from an MET perspective, more recent theories have seen personal ornaments given more active roles as scaffolding for the development of new neural networks linked to ordinality as counters and signifiers of space and time (Wynn et al., in press) or the emergence of a perspective of the self (Malafouris, 2010). Here I want to build on these MET perspectives to look at one particular aspect of some of these personal ornaments, as well as other material elements found during the Late Pleistocene, the long-distance nature or spatial specificity of their origins. Evidence suggests that during the Early Stone Age of Africa our hominin ancestors began to select particular raw materials from certain geographic areas with which to make their tools (Stout et al., 2005). Appreciation of material qualities was initially applied to those found in the vicinity of hominin archaeological sites, but from 2 mya onwards certain raw materials began to be transported for distances of greater than 1 km, and by 1.6 mya blot-Augustins, 1990; Marwick, 2003). The distances of 13 km (Fe Please cite this article in press as: Roberts, P., ‘We have never been behaviourally modern’: The implications of Material Engagement Theory and Metaplasticity for understanding the Late Pleistocene record of human behaviour, Quaternary International (2015), http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/ j.quaint.2015.03.011 P. Roberts / Quaternary International xxx (2015) 1e13 sheer quantities of some of the transported stone found at some of these sites demonstrate the extent of shared hominin practice and sourcing. By c. 1 mya some hominin sites have evidence for instances of transport of stone materials for distances of up to 100 km (Marwick, 2003). However, it is only from c. 100 ka onwards, during the Late Pleistocene, that raw material movement expands considerably, both spatially and in terms of the types of materials being transported. Movement of stone resources regularly exceeds 100 km with shells, amber, and stones coming from over 1000 km away from source, almost certainly the result of social exchanges blot-Augustins, rather than human movement (Taborin, 1993; Fe 1997; Gamble, 1999). Indeed, it is also pertinent to note that many of the earliest ornaments, on which arguments of ‘symbolism’ have been based, almost solely come from marine contexts, even when sites are located in reach of animal bones and teeth, freshwater resources, and molluscs that could form an equally viable substrate (d'Errico et al., 2005; Bouzouggar et al., 2007; d'Errico et al., 2009). The environmental differences and distances over which these ornaments were to eventually travel was only to expand as the Pleistocene moved to its termination (Bar-Yosef, 2002; Vanhaeren et al., 2004; d'Errico et al., 2009; Perera, 2010; Perera et al. 2011). Some have argued that these increasing distances in raw material procurement were part of increased human mobility or demographic expansion that simply led to a wider spatial region available for material exploitation (Ambrose, 2001). It has also been suggested that such a sudden concern with personal ornamentation and social exchange of resources represents increasing human concern with social networks, in the face of demographic or environmental pressures, or indeed cognitive change (Gamble et al., 2011; Henshilwood and Dubreuil, 2011; Shultz et al., 2012). However, such explanations fail to account for the particular selection or ignoring of certain resources or spatial zones in the first instance, especially in association with the development of personal ornaments, or the long trajectory of hominin and human resource sourcing and exploitation in the second. Furthermore, in both cases, the material record of raw material choice and personal ornamentation is a passive reflection of external pressures or cognitive change. I argue that MET allows us to link a trajectory of increasingly intensive sourcing of distant resources, and the eventual focus of ‘distant’ resources in the construction of ornaments, through the active material engagement of the developing human mind with resource properties, spatial coordinates, and ornamental significance. Raw material appreciation and the deliberate sourcing of certain resources is witnessed in modern primates as well as crows (Hunt, 1996; Visalberghi et al., 2009). However, rarely in the animal kingdom are resources obtained from beyond a certain ‘locale’ and certainly not over distances of 20 km. While early hominin exploitation of distant resources could simply be representative of opportunistic gathering during subsistence mobility, the fact that distant stones were deliberately exploited, and local stones with highly usable properties were ignored (Braun et al., 2008, 2009), raises an interesting expansion of scale in terms of resource selection. What might have started as an appreciation of raw material source quality appears to have gained an increasingly spatial element in hominin tool-making. Indeed, it is not hard to envisage how the material manipulation of good, workable stone within existing hominin tool manufacture processes, may have initiated an association of favourable properties with certain spatial coordinates in the minds of our hominin ancestors. Increases in this spatial scale apparently continued from 1 mya. Here, transport or exchange over 100 km must have surely involved added cognitive appreciation beyond raw material properties, perhaps the incipient linkage of aesthetics, favourable geographical circumstances, or 7 even social connections to an existing framework of raw material appraisal. From 100 ka I suggest that the integration of raw material choice and sourcing with other aesthetic and social qualities in the minds of our ancestors became even more substantial. This coincides with the introduction of a different type of material form, ornaments. If, as Malafouris (2010) argues, shell beads are part of the emergence of ‘self’ in the human mind, then the addition of spatial coordinates and an aesthetic and social appreciation of place into this emerging network could have equally resulted in the emergence of ideas of ‘spatial affinity’ or having some form of social and emotional connection with a place (Gamble, 2007). For example, in the case of Blombos Cave, marine mammal and shell resources were heavily exploited for food throughout the duration of site occupation (c. 100e70 ka). The increasing distance of these resources from the site at the time of ornament production (c. 20 km), however, likely meant that humans attached some form of spatial coordinates to this set of resources. It is therefore interesting that the shell bead ornaments of Blombos are made from Nassarius kraussianus shells (d'Errico et al., 2005). If these beads encouraged the cognitive emergence of the self then they may also have encouraged the cognitive emergence of some form of association with the local coastline. This increased concern with social structuring of space is also seen in increased ordering or division of living space during the African Middle Stone Age (Deacon, 2001; Wadley, 2006). Indeed, at Blombos, Henshilwood and Dubreuil (2011) have made the tentative suggestion that a construction of a quartzite and calcrete ‘barrier’ c. 72 ka could have been a conscious attempt to separate the occupied area of the cave from an external, ‘other’, as well as merely for more practical warmth and shelter. Increasing concerns with spatial affinity are perhaps even more evident in the Wet Zone rainforest rockshelter sites of Sri Lanka. Here at 36 ka humans focused their subsistence on rainforest resources, such as small semi-arboreal and arboreal mammals, as well as freshwater marine mammals and rainforest floral resources such as canarium nuts (Perera et al., 2011). However, the sole items of long-distance exchange, from distances of over 50 km and from a completely different environmental context, are marine shell beads and shark teeth (Perera, 2010; Perera et al., 2011). No degradationresistant ‘ornamental’ materials are made from local, rainforest resources, though monkey and jungle fowl bones are re-used in the production of single and double bone points (Perera, 2010). Instead, ornaments worn by these people have geographic, and probably also social, affinities with the coast. Here, the sourcing of raw materials has become almost completely devoid of simple mechanical properties, with the cognitive importance of these materials almost certainly being related to linked spatial coordinates imbued with a social or geographical significance to those wearing them. I argue that the basic framework of raw material sourcing and properties, when enacted through a series of material objects of increasing distance, and increasingly non-mechanical function, facilitated the development of linkages between raw material sourcing, ornamentation and the wider spatial coordinates of geographical and social significance. The florescence of long-distance materials during the Late Pleistocene, whether exchanged or gathered, notably in the form of ornaments and aesthetic items, represents the emergence of a concept of spatial ‘affinity’. Neuroimaging has revealed a strong connection between the intraparietal sulcus (IPS), which appears to be the locus of ordinal representation in children and adults, and areas involved in spatial cognition (Kaufmann et al., 2009; Wynn et al. in press). Wynn et al. (in press) argue that the integration of these areas, through interaction with strings of beads, led to increased ordinality and organization of space and time during the Late Pleistocene. On the other hand, Henshilwood and Dubreuil (2011) have argued that Please cite this article in press as: Roberts, P., ‘We have never been behaviourally modern’: The implications of Material Engagement Theory and Metaplasticity for understanding the Late Pleistocene record of human behaviour, Quaternary International (2015), http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/ j.quaint.2015.03.011 8 P. Roberts / Quaternary International xxx (2015) 1e13 expansion of the higher association areas of the temporal and parietal cortices underlay human theory of mind and perspective taking, witnessed in concerns with personal ornamentation at this time. However, in combination, the co-development of these regions, as well as their potential interaction, through ongoing engagement with raw materials and their spatial settings, and most specifically personal ornaments, could have led to a linkage between concepts of the ‘self’, spatial mappings of raw material properties, and an organization of space into zones of spatial affinity. However, instead of seeing ornaments as the eventual result of these neural changes, MET enables us to see them as a material enabler. Furthermore, MET can link the long-distance sourcing of stone sources and ornaments during the Late Pleistocene to a lengthy trajectory of raw material engagement in our hominin ancestors that continued beyond the Late Pleistocene and into later periods of prehistory and history through an idea of material, social, and geographical ‘affinity’. Indeed, under MET, the sporadic evidence ~o et al., for Neanderthal ornamentation (Langley et al., 2008; Zilha 2010), alongside their largely ‘local’ stone resource sourcing of within 70 km (Marwick, 2003), is explicable. While the Neanderthal brain was plastic enough to begin to interact with concepts of ‘self’ and a social aesthetic (Malafouris, 2010), as well as clearly possessing spatial affinity at the scale of site usage and organization, and resource choice (Henry et al., 2004), these material interactions and neural linkages were limited to regional or local routes and networks. By contrast, the metaplastic human brain regularly engaged with materials from different biomes, large distances, and also with different social connections within a much-extended and much more intensive system of spatial ordinance. It is perhaps this that enabled H. sapiens to maintain and apply social connections and sophisticated resource use strategies across the whole variety of the world's environments, and develop new and varied ways of holding a material sense of space and affinity that have today reached the realms of photographs and social media. 5.2. Composite tools and composite minds Examples of compound hunting tools can be found in association with H. neanderthalensis in Europe. For example, a range of €ningen dated to c. 400 ka, including worked wooden pieces at Scho a fire charred ‘spit’ or stave (Thieme, 2005) and several pieces with end-notches, show potential evidence for the hafting of stone flakes (Thieme, 2005). Furthermore, the use of birch-bark tar has been found on two stone flakes from 200 ka in Italy (Mazza et al., 2006). However, it is only with the appearance of our species in Africa, and more particularly southern Africa, that there is a widespread introduction of adhesives and compound, hafted technologies during the Late Pleistocene in conjunction with the Still Bay and Howiesons Poort lithic technologies. These new compound technologies show two key differences when compared to those from earlier, European contexts. Firstly, the associated adhesives often involve the combination of raw materials whose properties, at face value, are not obviously suitable for hafting. Unlike tar that has clear adhesive properties when heated, sand and ochre have no obvious hafting benefits until they are carefully combined with plant resins under certain temperatures and chemical conditions (Wadley et al., 2009; Wadley, 2010). Secondly, whereas the compound technologies of Neanderthals always involved the connection of a stone to a stick that would then be thrust or thrown, some composite technologies of the Middle Stone age of Africa have been linked to bow technologies (McBrearty and Brooks, 2000; Brooks et al., 2006; Shea, 2011) that stand on a whole new plane of composition in both manufacture and use. The emergence of composite toolkits has been linked to particular cognitive changes (Gamble et al., 2011; Hensilwood and Dubreuil, 2011). For example, Wadley et al. (2009) argue that the development of compound adhesives made from red ochre mixed with plant gums involved the deliberate affectation of physical transformations, the control of chemical conditions such as pH, and a refined control of temperature and fire exposure. Wadley (2010) has argued that these processes necessitated a competency for multi-tasking and abstract thought in determining that two material elements, when placed together, could produce a compound with different properties and applications. Wadley et al. (2009) link this to increased connectivity in part of the prefrontal cortex that has been linked to the capacity for novel, sustained multilevel operations (Amati and Shallice, 2007). Similarly, Barham (2010) has argued that the process of hafting itself demonstrates a conceptual understanding of material properties and combination. Furthermore, Barham argues that the development of composite tools and their use requires recursive analogical reasoning that also underpins complex language (Bickerton, 2007). As a result, he sees composite technologies as a proxy for early language capacity. However, although both arguments make interesting associations between these new forms of hunting technology and cognitive capacities of the emerging human mind, the material product is left as a passive consequence of this change. Here, I want to look at how MET can combine this material evidence with the metaplastic human mind to elucidate a more dynamic and active trajectory of increasingly composite technologies and hunting strategies and, indeed, composite minds. Our primate relatives, as well as other species, have shown cognitive understanding that they can use the material world as an extension of themselves to achieve the effective completion of a task (Hunt, 1996; Inoue-Nakamura and Matsuzawa, 1997; Matsuzawa, 2001; Visalberghi et al., 2009). In human infants the exploration of object properties and their spatial consequences has been associated with a coordination of so-called ‘ventral’ and ‘dorsal’ channels of the visual and parietal cortex in which the ‘ventral’ stream is associated with object identity and properties while the ‘dorsal’ processes spatial and temporal information (Mareschal et al., 2007). It has also been argued that connections between the parietal and frontal lobes of the brain enable sensory-motor coordinates to be developed that allow object recognition and understanding to be developed into more abstract forms of action (Milner and Goodale, 1995; Mareschal et al., 2007). Importantly for us here, it is considered that an infant will only truly come to understand the properties of an object and its potentials in an abstract sense if they ‘engage’ in volitional action in relation to it and its environment (Mareschal et al., 2007). This object interaction has also been argued to occur in parallel with trends of habituation and proactivity that, through interaction between the hippocampus and the brain cortex, involves the eventual conversion of habituated representations into more abstract scenarios of investigation and engagement. I argue that MET offers an essential mechanism in understanding how human interaction with the material world, through the neural structures above, could bring about new neural networks and connections in an understanding of material properties and their potentiality. Shared with extant apes, our hominin ancestors most likely had an abstract appreciation that throwing something at another object would have a certain effect. Indeed, the development of stone working demonstrates that hominins knew that by using the material world as an extension of themselves they could bring about certain changes. Through this material engagement it is clear that the hominin mind developed a basic appreciation of objects and their properties, as well as their potential for action beyond their biological Please cite this article in press as: Roberts, P., ‘We have never been behaviourally modern’: The implications of Material Engagement Theory and Metaplasticity for understanding the Late Pleistocene record of human behaviour, Quaternary International (2015), http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/ j.quaint.2015.03.011 P. Roberts / Quaternary International xxx (2015) 1e13 body. Continued interaction with materials of differing properties, for example the length of reach of a branch as opposed to just a stone, likely led to connections being made between the favourable properties of different materials and the potential that such properties could be combined at a more abstract level to achieve certain goals. As a result, material engagement with stone, wood, and bitumen could lead to a relatively simple concept of a composite spear that would enable close-quarter exploitation of mobile prey, while keeping the target at a distance, as has been argued for Neanderthal communities (Berger and Trinkhaus, 1995; Trinkhaus, 2012). The creation, use and manipulation of these initial composite forms could have facilitated increasing linkages between the areas of object processing and engagement, and working memory and ideas of abstract causality associated with the prefrontal cortex within the meta-plastic human brain. As a result, the human mind could begin to combine material elements and their properties in more scientific processes, where the properties of the finished product were investigated through the addition of different materials and maintenance of different chemical or physical conditions. Therefore, where Wadley (2010) envisages the development of compound adhesives as the result of certain capacities of working memory and multilevel abstraction, I would argue that the process of producing such composite materials actively fostered the construction of neural connections between working memory modules and neural representation of abstract and concrete concepts. As such, it is easier to see how the less plastic minds of Neanderthals could produce composite forms as the logical result of their constituent parts, but only the meta-plastic human mind could engage with materials on a level of abstraction that would lead to its own reconfiguring of material properties and their potentials for combination and use. Whereas classical cognitive archaeology would struggle to explain why the appearance of enhanced working memory led to a discontinuous and geographically variable record of composite expression, MET argues that it is only through a dynamic process of material engagement with certain materials and properties that certain neural configurations would become materially evident. The same process can also be seen in the potential uses of the hafted technologies themselves. Whereas Neanderthals are generally seen as solely exploiting spear hunting in close-quarters, only H. sapiens have been linked with the development of bow and arrow technologies (McBrearty and Brooks, 2000; Shea and Sisk, 2010). While the plasticity of Neanderthal minds could integrate hafted technologies as a simple extension of themselves either in close quarter thrusting or direct throwing, they were not able to engage with the idea of developing a composite mechanism that could propel these tools. By contrast, the metaplastic human mind was able to turn an understanding of material properties into a more dynamic abstraction whereby composite mechanisms could enact propulsion, accuracy, and balance in a way and at a distance that is not possible by simply throwing a composite shaft. While, as with classical cognitive archaeology, MET may envisage these differences as a result of the increasing metaplasticity of the substrate of the human mind as opposed to those of our nearest relatives, the material results are not innate, unilinear consequences. Rather, it is through a process of intensive material engagement with composite construction, and proactive thinking about both static and dynamic properties, that the levels of abstraction possible for humans to produce everemore complex technological strategies became possible. Indeed, MET presents us with a window through which we can begin to understand how the human mind became increasingly intertwined with the material world to expand, dominate, and invent in a variety of global ecologies from the Late Pleistocene onward (Taylor, 2011). 9 6. Discussion and conclusion While I have focused here on two particular material case studies, I also hope to have demonstrated that the tenets of MET and Metaplasticity also make the Late Pleistocene record easier to interpret on a broader spatial and temporal scale. Firstly, MET and Neuroplasticity can comfortably incorporate evidence for the material engagement of H. neanderthalensis, Homo erectus, and other members of our hominin lineage with materials that have previously been considered only possible through the workings of a ‘modern’ mind. For example, it is unsurprising under MET and Metaplasticity that H. erectus at Trinil in Java were engraving shells (Joordens et al., 2014) or that Neanderthals in Europe and the Near East could engage with ornaments and a use of space (Henry et al., 2004). However, it remains undeniable that it is only with the emergence of our own species, with enhanced levels of neural plasticity, or metaplasticity, that engagement with the material world could bring about a widespread and hitherto unparalleled engagement with artistic abstraction, ornamentation, long-distance exchange, and technological sophistication and composition, and the same extent of resulting neural restructuring. Furthermore, whereas the slightly less plastic brains of our close hominin relatives were limited to more sporadic material engagements with such behaviours and materials, H. sapiens demonstrate consistent patterns of neural reorganisation and development through active coexistence with the material world in its earliest prehistory, throughout history, and into the present day (Malafouris, 2013). MET and Metaplasticity can also explain instances of discontinuity in elements of so-called ‘behavioural modernity’ in the Late Pleistocene record of H. sapiens. For example, in Southeast Asia, upon arrival H. sapiens were producing a limited number of bone tools from the West Mouth area of Niah Cave, Borneo (Rabett et al., 2006). Dated by association to 44,941 ± 329 cal. BP (OxA-15630) these materials are found at the same site as the oldest fossil of H. sapiens from Southeast Asia in the form of the ‘Deep Skull’, and other human fragments, dated by stratigraphic association to c. 40e41 ka. Evidence from the caves also demonstrates human usage of the Bornean tropical environment in the form of wild boar and monkey hunting (Cucchi et al., 2009), arguably through trapping, and plants that would have required toxin removal before consumption (Rabett, 2012). However, following this early presence, the widespread occurrence of bone tools and shell beads across Southeast Asia only occurs around the Terminal Pleistocene-Early Holocene transition (Rabett, 2012). Similarly, although Australia is considered to have been occupied by H. sapiens from at least 40 ka, and some evidence is suggestive of the arrival of personal ornamentation at this time (Morse, 1993; Balme, 2000), major technological change and symbolic florescence is not seen until the Terminal Pleistocene/Early Holocene (Hiscock, 2002; Brumm and Moore, 2005). Under MET and Metaplasticity, the human mind is a continually constituted, fluid entity with no single trajectory or hard-wired programme. Instead of seeing variability and discontinuity as problems, MET and Metaplasticity can focus on how and why different material and environmental potentialities may lead to different mindematerial interactions and expressions. In presenting MET and Metaplasticity in the context of the Late Pleistocene archaeological record I hope to have demonstrated a viable theoretical alternative to the concept of ‘behavioural modernity’. Although this model has faced much criticism over the last decade or so (Wadley, 2001; Shea, 2011), there has been uncertainty as to where archaeology and cognitive archaeology should look for a new methodological or theoretical framework with which to investigate the development of the early human mind (Shea, 2011; see comments). There has also been a reluctance Please cite this article in press as: Roberts, P., ‘We have never been behaviourally modern’: The implications of Material Engagement Theory and Metaplasticity for understanding the Late Pleistocene record of human behaviour, Quaternary International (2015), http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/ j.quaint.2015.03.011 10 P. Roberts / Quaternary International xxx (2015) 1e13 to drop what has become convenient shorthand for many interesting material features within the Late Pleistocene record of human behaviour. MET and Metaplasticity do not necessitate methodological overhaul (Malafouris, 2013). They remain dependent on detailed scientific material studies and experimental research into the technical requirements and processes behind early human material culture as well as on systematic research in neuroscience to elucidate the operation and structural state of the human brain during learning, actions, and material engagement. Furthermore, MET and Metaplasticity still face the same basic issues of sample size, preservation bias, well-developed palaeoenvironmental and palaeoclimatic contextual data, and the necessity of reliable and extensive dating that any Late Pleistocene archaeological theoretical framework must acknowledge. However, what MET and Metaplasticity do is refocus our theoretical questions and ontological perceptions so as to place the materials of the Late Pleistocene record on an equal footing with emerging human brains. Acknowledgments I would like to thank one anonymous reviewer, Antonis Iliopoulos, Peter Mitchell, Lyn Wadley and Klint Janulis for their stimulating and constructive comments on earlier drafts of this manuscript. I would also like to acknowledge the Natural Environmental Research Council and the Institute of Archaeology, University of Oxford for their funding and support, without which this contribution would not have been possible. References Amati, D., Shallice, T., 2007. On the emergence of modern humans. Cognition 103 (3), 358e385. Ambrose, S.H., 2001. Palaeolithic technology and human evolution. Science 291, 1748e1753. Backwell, L., d'Errico, F., Wadley, L., 2008. Middle Stone Age bone tools from the howiesons poort layers, Sibudu Cave, South Africa. Journal of Archaeological Science 35, 1566e1580. Balme, J., 2000. Excavations revealing 40,000 years of occupation at Mimbi Caves in South Central Kimberley. Australian Archaeology 51, 1e5. Barham, L.S., 2010. A technological fix for ‘Dunbar's dilemma’? In: Dunbar, R., Gamble, C., Gowlett, J.A.J. (Eds.), Social Brain, Distributed Mind. Proceedings of the British Academy, vol. 158. Oxford University Press, Oxford, pp. 367e389. Barham, L.S., 2013. From Hand to Handle: the First Industrial Revolution. Oxford University Press, Oxford. Barham, L.S., Mitchell, P., 2008. The First Africans: African Archaeology from the Earliest Toolmakers to Most Recent Foragers. In: Cambridge World Archaeology. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge. Barnea, A., Nottebohm, F., 1994. Seasonal recruitment of hippocampal neurons in adult free-ranging black-capped chickadees. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America 91 (23), 11217e11221. Bar-Yosef, O., 1998. The chronology of the Middle Paleolithic of the Levant. In: Akazawa, T., Aoki, K., Bar-Yosef, O. (Eds.), Neandertals and Modern Humans in Western Asia. Plenum Press, New York, pp. 39e56. Bar-Yosef, O., 2002. The upper Paleolithic revolution. Annual Review of Anthropology 31, 363e393. Bar-Yosef Mayer, D., Vandermeersch, B., Bar-Yosef, O., 2009. Shells and ochre in Middle Paleolithic Qafzeh Cave, Israel: indications for modern behavior. Journal of Human Evolution 56 (3), 307e314. Bateson, G., 1973. Steps to an Ecology of Mind (Granada). Berger, T.D., Trinkhaus, E., 1995. Patterns of trauma among the Neanderthals. Journal of Archaeological Science 22 (6), 841e852. Bickerton, D., 2007. Did syntax trigger the human revolution? In: Mellars, P., Boyle, K., Bar-Yosef, O., Stringer, C. (Eds.), Rethinking the Human Revolution: New Behavioural and Biological Perspectives on the Origin and Dispersal of Modern Humans. McDonald Institute for Archaeological Research, Cambridge, pp. 99e105. Blades, B.S., 1999. Aurignacian lithic economy and early modern human mobility: zee re valley of France. Journal of new persperctives from classic sites in the Ve Human Evolution 37, 91e120. Boivin, N., 2008. Material Cultures, Material Minds: the Impact of Things on Human Thought, Society and Evolution. Cambridge University Press. Boivin, N., Fuller, D.Q., Dennell, R., Allaby, R., Petraglia, M.D., 2013. Human dispersal across diverse environments of Asia during the Upper Pleistocene. Quaternary International 300, 32e47. Bouzouggar, A., Barton, N., Vanhaeren, M., d'Errico, F., Collcutt, S., Higham, T., Hodge, E., Parfitt, S., Rhodes, E., Schwenninger, J.-L., Stringer, C., Turner, E., Ward, S., Moutmir, A., Stambouli, A., 2007. 82,000-year-old shell beads from North Africa and implications for the origins of modern human behavior. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the USA 104 (24), 9964e9969. Braun, D.R., Plummer, T., Ditchfield, P., Ferraro, J.V., Maina, D., Bishop, L.C., Potts, R., 2008. Oldowan behavior and raw material transport: perspectives from the Kanjera Formation. Journal of Archaeological Science 35, 2329e2345. Braun, D.R., Plummer, T., Ferraro, J.V., Ditchfield, P., Bishop, L.C., 2009. Raw material quality and Oldowan hominin toolstone preferences: evidence from Kanjera South, Kenya. Journal of Archaeological Science 36 (7), 1605e1614. Brooks, A.S., Helgren, D.M., Cramer, J.S., Franklin, A., Jornyak, W., Keating, J.M., Klein, R.G., Rink, W.J., Schwarcz, H., Smith, J.N., et al., 1995. Dating and context of three middle stone age sites with bone points in the Upper Semliki Valley, Zaire. Science 28, 548e553. Brooks, A.S., Nevell, L., Yellen, J.E., Hartman, G., 2006. Projectile technologies of the African MSA: implications for modern human origins. In: Howevers, E., Kuhn, S.L. (Eds.), Transitions before the Transition: Evolution and Stability in the Middle Palaeolithic and Middle Stone Age. Springer, New York, pp. 233e255. Brown, K.S., Marean, C.W., Herries, A.I.R., Jacobs, Z., Tribolo, C., Braun, D., Roberts, D.L., Meyer, M.C., Bernatchez, J., 2009. Fire as an engineering tool of early modern humans. Science 325, 859e862. Brumm, A.R., Moore, M.W., 2005. Symbolic revolutions and the Australian archaeological record. Cambridge Archaeological Journal 15 (2), 157e175. Clark, G., 1969. World Prehistory: a New Outline, Second ed. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge. Clark, J.D., Beyenne, Y., WoldeGabrie, G., Hart, W.K., Renne, P.R., Gilbert, H., Defleur, A., Suwa, G., Katoh, S., Ludwig, K.R., Boisserie, J.-R., Asfaw, B., White, T.D., 2003. Stratigraphic, chronological and behavioural contexts of Pleistocene Homo sapiens from Middle Awash, Ethiopia. Nature 423, 747e752. Cochran, G., Harpending, H., 2010. The 10,000 Year Explosion: How Civilization Accelerated Human Evolution. Basic Books. Conard, N.J., 2010. Cultural modernity: consensus or conundrum. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America 117, 7621e7622. Conard, N.J., Bolus, M., 2003. Radiocarbon dating the appearance of modern humans and timing of cultural innovations in Europe: new results and new challenges. Journal of Human Evolution 44, 333e373. Coolidge, F., Wynn, T., 2009. The Rise of Homo sapiens: the Evolution of Modern Thinking. Wiley-Blackwell. Cucchi, T., Dobney, K., Fujita, M., 2009. New insights into pig taxonomy, domestication and human dispersal in Island Southeast Asia through molar shape analysis: the Sus remains from Niah and Lobang Kudih caves in Sarawak. International Journal of Osteoarchaeology 19, 508e530. Cutler, S.M., Hoffman, S.W., Pettus, E.H., Stein, D.G., 2005. Tapered progesterone withdrawal enhances behavioral and molecular recovery after traumatic brain injury. Experimental Neurology 195 (2), 423e429 (Elsevier). Deacon, H.J., 2001. Modern human emergence: an African archaeological perspective. In: Tobias, P.V., Raath, M.A., Moggi-Cecchi, J., Doyle, G.A. (Eds.), Humanity from African Naissance to Coming Millennia: Colloquia in Human Biology and Palaeoanthropology. Florence University Press, Florence, pp. 217e226. d'Errico, F., 2003. The invisible frontier: a multiple species model for the origin of behavioral modernity. Evolutionary Anthropology 12, 188e202. d'Errico, F., Stringer, C.B., 2011. Evolution, revolution or saltation scenario for the emergence of modern cultures? Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society Biological Sciences 366 (1567), 1060e1069. d'Errico, F., Henshilwood, C., Lawson, G., Vanhaeren, M., Tillier, A.-M., Soressi, M., Bresson, F., Maureille, B., Nowell, A., Lakrra, J., Backwell, L., Julien, M., 2003. Archaeological evidence for the emergence of language, symbolism, and music: an alternative multidisciplinary approach. Journal of World Prehistory 17, 1e70. d'Errico, F., Henshilwood, C., Vanhaeren, M., van Niekerk, K., 2005. Nassarius kraussianus shell beads from Blombos Cave: evidence for symbolic behaviour in the Middle Stone Age. Journal of Human Evolution 48 (1), 3e24. d'Errico, F., Vanhaeren, M., Wadley, L., 2008. Possible shell beads from the middle stone age layers of Sibudu Cave, South Africa. Journal of Archaeological Science 35 (10), 2675e2685. d'Errico, F., Vanhaeren, M., Barton, N., Bouzouggar, A., Mienis, H., Richter, D., Hublin, J.-J., McPherron, S.P., Lozouet, P., 2009. Additional evidence on the use of personal ornaments in the Middle Paleolithic of North Africa. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America 106 (38), 16051e16056. Dunbar, R., 2003. Evolution of the social brain. Science 302, 1160e1161. Dunbar, R., 2010a. How Many Friends Does One Person Need? Dunbar's Number and Other Evolutionary Quirks. Faber, London. €rmer, C., Dunbar, R., 2010b. The social brain and its implications. In: Frey, U., Sto Willführ, K. (Eds.), Homo novus: a Human without Illusions. Springer, pp. 65e77. Dunbar, R., 2012. On the evolutionary function of song and dance. In: Bannan, N., Mithen, S. (Eds.), Music, Language and Human Evolution. Oxford University Press, Oxford. Elbert, T., Pantev, C., Wienburch, C., Rockstorh, B., Taub, E., 1995. Increased cortical representation of the fingers of the left hand in string players. Science 270, 305e307. Evans, P.D., Gilbert, S.L., Mekel-Bobrov, N., Vallender, E.J., Anderson, J.R., VaezAzizi, L.M., Tishkoff, S.A., Hudson, R.R., Lahn, B.T., 2005. Microephalin, a gene Please cite this article in press as: Roberts, P., ‘We have never been behaviourally modern’: The implications of Material Engagement Theory and Metaplasticity for understanding the Late Pleistocene record of human behaviour, Quaternary International (2015), http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/ j.quaint.2015.03.011 P. Roberts / Quaternary International xxx (2015) 1e13 regulating brain size, continues to evolve adaptively in humans. Science 309, 1717e1720. Feathers, J.K., Migliorini, E., 2001. Luminescence dating at Katanda e a reassessment. Quaternary Science Reviews 20, 961e966. blot-Augustins, J., 1990. Exploitation des matie res premie res dans l'Acheule en Fe o 2, 27e42. d'Afrique: perspectives comportementales. Pale blot-Augustins, J., 1997. La circulation des matie res premie res au Pale olithique. Fe se des donne es, perspectives comportementales. (ERAUL 75.). Universite  Synthe ge, Lie ge. de Lie Fedele, F.G., Giaccio, B., Hajdas, I., 2008. Timescales and cultural process at 40,000 BP in the light of the Campanian Ignimbrite eruption, Western Eurasia. Journal of Human Evolution 55, 834e857. Fleagle, J.G., Assefa, Z., Brown, F.H., Shea, J.J., 2008. Paleoanthropology of the Kibish Formation, southern Ethiopia: introduction. In: Fleagle, J.G. (Ed.), Palaeoanthropology of the Kibish Formation, Southern Ethiopia, pp. 360e365. Special Issue, Journal of Human Evolution 55. Flor, H., 2003. Cortical reorganization and chronic Pain: implications for rehabilitation. Journal of Rehabilitative Medicine-Supplement 41, 66e72. Flor, H., Elbert, T., Knecht, S., Wienbruch, C., Pantev, C., Birbaumer, N., Larbig, W., Taub, E., 1995. Phantom-limb pain as a perceptual correlate of cortical reorganization following arm amputation. Nature 375 (6531), 482e484. Foley, R., Lahr, M., 1997. Mode 3 technologies and the evolution of modern humans. Cambridge Archaeological Journal 7, 3e36. Gamble, C., 1999. The Palaeolithic Societies of Europe. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge. Gamble, C., 2007. Origins and Revolutions: Human Identity in Earliest Prehistory. Cambridge University Press, New York. Gamble, C., Gowlett, J., Dunbar, R., 2011. The social brain and the shape of the Palaeolithic. Cambridge Archaeological Journal 21, 115e135. Gaser, C., Schlaug, G., 2003. Brain structures differ between musicians and nonmusicians. Journal of Neuroscience 23, 9240e9245. Gell, A., 1998. Art and Agency: an Anthropological Theory. Oxford University Press. Gosden, C., 2008. Social ontologies. Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society of London Series B 363, 2003e2010. Gottlieb, G., 2002. Probabilistic epigenesist of development. In: Valsiner, J., Connolly, K.J. (Eds.), Handbook of Developmental Psychology. Sage. Gottlieb, G., 2003. On making behavioral genetics truly developmental. Human Development 46, 337e355. Gottlieb, G., 2007. Probabilistic epigenesist. Developmental Science 10 (1), 1e11. Green, R.E.J., Krause, J., Briggs, A.W., Maricic, T., Stenzel, U., Kircher, M., Patterson, N., Li, H., Zhai, W., Fritz, M.H.-Y., Hansen, N.F., Durand, E.Y., Malaspinas, A.-S., Jensen, J.D., Marques-Bonet, T., Alkan, C., Prüfer, K., Meyer, M., Burbano, H.A., €ber, B., Ho € ffner, B., Good, J.M., Schultz, R., Aximu-Petri, A., Butthof, A., Ho Siegemund, M., Weihmann, A., Nusbaum, C., Lander, E.S., Russ, C., Novod, N., Affourtit, J., Egholm, M., Verna, C., Rudan, P., Brajkovic, D., Kucan, Z., Gusic, I., Doronichev, V.B., Golovanova, L.V., Lalueza-Fox, C., de la Rasilla, M., Fortea, J., Rosas, A., Schmiz, R.W., Johnson, P.L.F., Eichler, E.E., Falush, D., Birney, E., €a €bo, S., Mullikin, J.C., Slatkin, M., Nielsen, R., Kelso, J., Lachmann, M., Reich, D., Pa 2010. A draft sequence and preliminary analysis of the Neandertal genome. Science 328, 710e722. Griffiths, P.E., Stotz, K., 2000. How the mind grows: a developmental perspective on the biology of cognition. Synthese 122, 29e51. Grine, F.E., Bailey, R.M., Harvati, K., Nathan, R.P., Morris, A.G., Henderson, G.M., Ribot, I., Pike, A.W.G., 2007. Late Pleistocene human skull from Hofmeyr, South Africa, and modern human origins. Science 315, 226e229. Groucutt, H.S., Petraglia, M.D., 2012. The prehistory of the Arabian Peninsula: deserts, dispersals, and demography. Evolutionary Anthropology 21, 113e125. Habgood, P.J., Franklin, N.R., 2008. The revolution that didn't arrive: a review of Pleistocene Sahul. Journal of Human Evolution 55 (22), 187e222. Hawkes, C., 1954. Archaeological theory and method: some suggestions from the Old World. American Anthropologist 56, 155e168. Henry, D.O., Hietala, H.J., Rosen, A.M., Demidenko, Y.E., Usik, V.I., Armagan, T.L., 2004. Human behavioral organization in the middle Paleolithic: were Neanderthals different? American Anthropologist 106 (1), 17e31. Henshilwood, C.S., 2007. Fully symbolic sapiens behaviour: innovation in the Middle Stone Age at Blombos Cave, South Africa. In: Mellars, P., Boyle, K., BarYosef, O., Stringer, C. (Eds.), Rethinking the Human Revolution: New Behavioural and Biological Perspectives on the Origins and Dispersal of Modern Humans, MacDonald Institute Research Monograph Series. University of Cambridge Press, Cambridge, pp. 123e132. Henshilwood, C.S., Dubreuil, B., 2011. The Still Bay and Howiesons Poort, 77e59 ka: symbolic material culture and the evolution of the mind during the African Middle Stone Age. Current Anthropology 52, 361e400. Henshilwood, C.S., d'Errico, F., Yates, R., Jacobs, Z., Tribolo, C., Duller, G.A.T., Mercier, N., Sealy, J.C., Valladas, H., Watts, I., Wintle, A.G., 2002. Emergence of modern human behaviour: Middle Stone Age engravings from South Africa. Science 295, 1278e1280. Henshilwood, C.S., d'Errico, F., Vanhaeren, M., van Niekerk, K., Jacobs, Z., 2004. Middle Stone Age shell beads from South Africa. Science 304 (5669), 404. Henshilwood, C.S., d'Errico, F., Watts, I., 2009. Engraved ochres from the Middle Stone Age levels at Blombos Cave, South Africa. Journal of Human Evolution 57 (1), 27e47. Henshilwood, C.S., d'Errico, F., van Nierkerk, K.L., Coquinot, Y., Jacobs, Z., Lauritzen, S.-E., Menu, M., Garcia-Moreno, R., 2011. A 100,000-Year-Old ochreprocessing workshop at Blombos Cave, South Africa. Science 334, 219e222. 11 Henshilwood, C.S., van Niekerk, K.L., Wurz, S., Delagnes, A., Armitage, S.J., Rifkin, R.F., Douze, K., Keene, P., Haaland, M.M., Reynard, J., Discamps, E., Mienies, S.S., 2014. Klipdrift shelter, southern Cape, South Africa: preliminary report on the howiesons poort layers. Journal of Archaeological Science. http:// dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.jas.2014.01.033. Hiscock, P., 2002. Pattern and context in the Holocene proliferation of backed artifacts in Australia. In: Elston, R.G., Kuhn, S.L. (Eds.), Thinking Small: Global Perspectives on Microlihitzation, Archaeological Papers, vol. 12. American Anthropological Association, Washington (DC), pp. 163e177. Hodder, I., 1999. The Archaeological Process. Blackwell. Hunt, G.R., 1996. Manufacture and use of hook-tools by New Caledonian crows. Nature 379, 249e251. Inoue-Nakamura, N., Matsuzawa, T., 1997. Development of stone tool use by wild chimpanzees (Pan troglodytes). Journal of Comparative Psychology 111 (2), 159e173. Jacobs, Z., Roberts, R.G., 2009. Catalysts for Stone Age innovations: what might have triggered two short-lived bursts of technological and behavioral innovation in southern Africa during the Middle Stone Age? Communicative and Integrative Biology 2, 191e193. Jacobs, Z., Roberts, R.G., Galbraith, R.F., Deacon, H.J., Grün, R., Mackay, A., Mitchell, P., Vogelsang, R., Wadley, L., 2008. Ages for the Middle Stone Age of southern Africa: implications for human behavior and dispersal. Science 322, 733e735. Jacobs, Z., Hayes, E.H., Roberts, R.G., Galbraith, R.F., Henshilwood, C.S., 2013. An improved OSL chronology for the Still Bay layers at Blombos Cave, South Africa: further tests of single-grain dating procedures and a re-evaluation of the timing of the Still Bay industry across southern Africa. Journal of Archaeological Science 40 (1), 579e594. James, H.V.A., Petraglia, M.D., 2005. Modern human origins and the evolution of behavior in the later Pleistocene record of South Asia. Current Anthropology 46, S3eS27. Jones, R., 1996. Late Ice-Age hunters in Tasmania. In: Fagan, B.M. (Ed.), Eyewitness to Discovery: First Person Accounts of More Than Fifty of the World's Greatest Archaeological Discoveries. Oxford University Press, Oxford, pp. 288e293. Joordens, J.C.A., d'Errico, F., Wesselingh, F.P., Munro, S., de Vos, J., Wallinga, J., Ankjærgaard, C., Reimann, T., Wijbrans, J.R., Kulper, K.F., Mücher, H.J., , V., Joosten, I., van Os, B., Schulp, A.S., Panuel, M., van der Coqueugniot, H., Prie Haas, V., Lustenhouwer, W., Reijmer, J.J.G., Roebroeks, W., 2014. Homo erectus at Trinil on Java used shells for tool production and engraving. Nature. http:// dx.doi.org/10.1038/nature13962. Kaufmann, L., Vogel, S., Staarke, M., Kremser, C., Schocke, M., 2009. Numerical and non-numerical ordinality processing in children with and without developmental dyscalculla: evdience from fMRI. Cognitive Development 24, 486e494. Klein, R.G., 1992. The archaeology of modern human origins. Evolutionary Anthropology 1, 5e14. Klein, R.G., 1995. Anatomy, behaviour and modern human origins. Journal of World Prehistory 9, 167e198. Klein, R.G., 2008. Out of Africa and the evolution of human behavior. Evolutionary Anthropology 17, 267e281. Kral, A., Sharma, A., 2012. Developmental neuroplasticity after Cochlear implantation. Trends in Neuroscience 35 (2), 111e122. Langley, M., Clarkson, C., Ulm, S., 2008. Behavioural complexity in Eurasian Neanderthal populations: a chronological examination of the archaeological evidence. Cambridge Archaeological Journal 18 (3), 289e307. Latour, B., 1993. We Have Never Been Modern. Harvard University Press. Lazar, S., Kerr, C., Wasserman, R., Gray, J., Greve, D., Treadway, M.T., McGarvey, M., Quinn, B.T., Dusek, J.A., Benson, H., Rauch, S.L., Moore, C.I., Fisch, B., 2005. Meditation experience is associated with increased cortical thickness. NeuroReport 16 (17), 1893e1897. Lombard, M., 2005. The Howiesons Poort of South Africa: what we know, what we think we know, what we need to know. South African Humanities 17, 33e55. Lombard, M., Parsons, I., 2011. What happened to the human mind after the Howiesons Poort? Antiquity 85 (330), 1433e1443. Lourandos, H., 1997. Continent of Hunter-gatherers. Cambridge University press, Cambridge. Maguire, E.A., Gadian, D.G., Johnsrude, I.S., Goods, C.D., Ashburner, J., Frackowiak, R.S.J., Frith, C.D., 2000. Navigation-related structural change in the hippocampi of taxi drivers. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America 97 (8), 4398e4403. Malafouris, L., 2007. The sacred engagement: outline of a hypothesis about the origin of human ‘religious intelligence’. In: Barrowclough, D.A., Malone, C. (Eds.), Cult in Context, Reconsidering Ritual in Archaeology. Oxbow Books, Oxford, pp. 198e205. Malafouris, L., 2008. Beads for a plastic mind: the “blind man's stick” (BMS) hypothesis and the active nature of material culture. Cambridge Archaeological Journal 18 (3), 401e414. Malafouris, L., 2009. “Neuroarchaeology” exploring the links between neural and cultural plasticity. Progress in Brain Research 178, 253e261. Malafouris, L., 2010. Metaplasticity and the human becoming: principles of neuroarchaeology. Journal of Anthropological Sciences 88, 49e72. Malafouris, L., 2013. How Things Shape the Mind: a Theory of Material Engagement. MIT Press, Cambridge, Massachusetts. Malafouris, L., Renfrew, C., 2008. Steps to a “neuroarchaeology” of mind: an introduction. Cambridge Archaeological Journal 18 (3), 381e385. Malafouris, L., Renfrew, C., 2010. The Cognitive Life of Things: Recasting the Boundaries of the Mind. McDonald Institute for Archaeological Research. Please cite this article in press as: Roberts, P., ‘We have never been behaviourally modern’: The implications of Material Engagement Theory and Metaplasticity for understanding the Late Pleistocene record of human behaviour, Quaternary International (2015), http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/ j.quaint.2015.03.011 12 P. Roberts / Quaternary International xxx (2015) 1e13 Marean, C., Bar-Matthews, M., Bernatchez, J., Fisher, E., Goldberg, P., Herries, A.I.R., Jacobs, Z., Jerardino, A., Karkanas, P., Minichillo, T., Nilssen, P.J., Thompson, E., Watts, I., Williams, H.M., 2007. Early human use of marine resources and pigment in South Africa during the Middle Pleistocene. Nature 449, 905e908. Mareschal, D., Johnson, M.H., Sirois, S., Spratling, M., Thomas, M.S.C., Westermann, G.C., 2007. Neuroconstructivism: How the Brain Constructs Cognition. Oxford Press. Marwick, B., 2003. Pleistocene exchange networks as evidence for the evolution of language. Cambridge Archaeological Journal 13 (1), 67e81. Matsuzawa, T., 2001. Primate foundations of human intelligence: a view of tool use in Nonhuman primates and Fossil Hominids. In: Matsuzawa, T. (Ed.), Primate Origins of Human Cognition and Behavior. Springer, Japan, pp. 3e25. Mazza, P.P.A., Martini, F., Sala, B., Magi, M., Colombini, M.P., Giachi, G., Landucci, F., Lemorini, C., Modugno, F., Ribechini, E., 2006. A new Palaeolithic discovery: tarhafted stone tools in a European Mid-Pleistocene bone-bearing bed. Journal of Archaeological Science 33, 1310e1318. McCall, G.S., 2007. Behavioral ecological models of lithic technological change during the later Middle Stone Age of South Africa. Journal of Archaeological Science 34, 1738e1751. McBrearty, S., Brooks, A.S., 2000. The revolution that wasn't: a new interpretation of the origin of modern human behavior. Journal of Human Evolution 39, 453e563. Mellars, P.A., 1973. The character of the Middle-Upper Palaeolithic transition in southwest France. In: Renfrew, C. (Ed.), The Explanation of Culture Change. Duckworth, London, pp. 255e276. Mellars, P.A., 1996. The Neanderthal Legacy: an Archaeological Perspective from Western Europe. Princeton University Press, Princeton, NJ. Mellars, P., 2005. The impossible coincidence: a single-species model for the origins of modern human behavior in Europe. Evolutionary Anthropology 14, 12e17. Mellars, P., 2006. Why did modern human populations disperse from Africa ca. 60,000 years ago? A new model. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the USA 103 (25), 9381e9386. Mellars, P., 2007. Rethinking the human revolution: Eurasian and African perspectives. In: Mellars, P., Boyle, K., Bar-Yosef, O., Stringer, C. (Eds.), Rethinking the Human Revolution, McDonald Institute Monographs. McDonald Institute for Archaeological Research, Cambridge, pp. 1e14. Mellars, P., Boyle, K., Bar-Yosef, O., Stringer, C., 2007. Rethinking the Human Revolution” New Behavioural and Biological Perspectives on the Origin and Dispersal of Modern Humans. In: McDonald Institute Monographs. McDonald Institute for Archaeological Research, Cambridge. Mellars, P.A., Goric, K.C., Carr, M., Soares, P.A., Richards, M.B., 2013. Genetic and archaeological perspectives on the initial Modern human colonization of Southern Asia. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America 110 (26), 10699e10704. Merleau-Ponty, M., 1962. Phenomenology of Perception. Routledge. Miller, D., 2010. Stuff. Polity Press. Milner, A.D., Goodale, M.A., 1995. The Visual Brain in Action. Oxford University Press, Oxford. Mithen, S., Parsons, L., 2008. The brain as a cultural artifact. Cambridge Archaeological Journal 18, 415e422. Morse, K., 1993. Shell beads from Mandu Mandu Creek rock shelter, Cape range Peninsula, western Australia, dated before 30,000 bp. Antiquity 67, 877e883. Moseley, G.L., Brugger, P., 2009. Interdependence of movement and anatomy persists when amputees learn a physiologically impossible movement of their phantom limb. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America. http://dx.doi.org/10.1073/pnas.0907151106. Mulvaney, J., Kamminga, J., 1999. Prehistory of Australia. Smithsonian Institution Press, Washington, DC. O'Connell, J.F., Allen, J., 2007. Pre-LGM Sahul (Pleistocene Australia-New Guinea) and the archaeology of early modern humans. In: Mellars, P., Boyle, K., BarYosef, O., Stringer, C. (Eds.), Rethinking the Human Revolution, McDonald Institute Monographs. McDonald Institute fro Archaeological Research, Cambridge, pp. 395e410. Pascual-Leone, A., Amedi, A., Fregni, F., Merabet, L.B., 2005. The plastic human brain cortex. Annual Review of Neuroscience 28, 377e401. Perera, H.N., 2010. Prehistoric Sri Lanka: Late Pleistocene Rockshelters and an Open Air Site. In: BAR International Series. Archaeopress, Oxford. Perera, N., Kourampas, N., Simpson, I.A., Deraniyagala, S.U., Bulbeck, D., Kamminga, J., Perera, J., Fuller, D.Q., Szabo, K., Oliveira, N.V., 2011. People of the ancient rainforest: late Pleistocene foragers at the Batadomba-lena rockshelter, Sri Lanka. Journal of Human Evolution 61, 254e269. Petraglia, M., Haslam, M., Fuller, D., Boivin, N., Clarkson, C., 2010. Out of Africa: new hypotheses and evidence for the dispersal of Homo sapiens along the Indian Ocean rim. Annals of Human Biology 37 (3), 288e311. Petraglia, M.D., Ditchfield, P., Jones, S., Korisettar, R., Pal, J.N., 2012. The Toba volcanic super-eruption, environmental change, and hominin occupation history in India over the last 140,000 years. Quaternary International 258, 119e134. Popper, K.R., 1979. Objective Knowledge: an Evolutionary Approach, Revised ed. Clarendon Press, Oxford. Rabett, R.J., 2012. Human Adaptation in the Asian Palaeolithic: Hominin Dispersal and Behaviour during the Late Quaternary. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge. Rabett, R.J., Piper, P.J., Barker, G., 2006. Bones from Hell: preliminary results of new work on the Harrisson faunal assemblage from the deepest part of Niah Cave, Sarawak. In: Bacus, E.A., Glover, I.C., Pigott, V.C. (Eds.), Uncovering Southeast Asia's Past: Selected Papers from the 10th International Conference of European Association of Southeast Asian Archaeologists. National University of Singapore Press, Singapore, pp. 46e59. Reich, D., Patterson, N., Kircher, M., Delfin, F., Nandineni, M.R., Pugach, I., Min-Shan Ko, A., Ko, Y.-C., Jinam, T.A., Phipps, M.E., Saitou, N., Wollstein, A., Kayser, M., Paabo, S., Stoneking, M., 2011. Denisova Admixture and the first modern human dispersals into Southeast Asia and Oceania. American Journal of Human Genetics 89 (4), 516e528. Renfrew, C., Frith, C., Malafouris, L., 2008. Introduction. The sapient mind: Archaeology meets neuroscience. Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society of London Series B 363, 1935e1938. Rilling, J.K., Insel, T.R., 1999. The primate neocortex in comparative perspective using magnetic resonance imaging. Journal of Human Evolution 37 (2), 191e223. Rose, J.I., Usik, V.I., Marks, A.E., Hilbert, Y.H., Galletti, C.S., Parton, A., Geiling, J.M.,  Cerný, V., Morley, M.W., Roberts, R.G., 2011. The Nubian complex of Dhofar, Oman: an African Middle Stone Age Industry in Southern Arabia. PLOS One. http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0028239. Rosenkranz, K., Williamon, A., Rothwell, J.C., 2007. Motocrotical excitability and synaptic plasticity is enhanced in professional musicians. Journal of Neuroscience 27 (19), 5200e5206. Schoenemann, T.P., Sheehan, M.J., Glotzer, L.D., 2005. Prefrontal white matter volume is disproportionately larger in humans than other primates. Nature Neuroscience 8 (20), 242e252. Shea, J.J., 2006. The Middle Paleolithic of the Levant: recursion and convergence. In: Hovers, E., Kuhn, S.L. (Eds.), Transitions before the Transition: Evolution and Stability in the Middle Paleolithic and Middle Stone Age. Plenum/Kluwer, New York, pp. 189e212. Shea, J.J., 2008. The Middle Stone Age archaeology the lower Omo Valley Kibish Formation: excavations, lithic assemblages, and inferred patterns of early Homo sapiens behavior. In: Fleagle, J.G. (Ed.), In Paleoanthropology of trhe Kibish Formation, southern Ethiopia, pp. 448e485. Special Issue, Journal of Human Evolution 55. Shea, J.J., 2011. Homo sapiens is as Homo sapiens was. Current Anthropology 52 (1), 1e35. Shea, J.J., Sisk, M.L., 2010. Complex projectile technology and Homo sapiens dispersal into western Eurasia. PaleoAnthropology 2010, 100e122. Shultz, S., Nelson, E., Dunbar, R., 2012. Hominin cognitive evolution: identifying patterns and processes in the fossil and archaeological record. Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society of London Series B 367, 2130e2140. Smith, M., 2013. The Archaeology of Australia's Deserts. Cambridge World Archaeology, Cambridge. Stern, N., 2009. The archaeological signature of behavioral modernity: a perspective from the southern periphery of the modern human range. In: Shea, J.J., Lieberman, D.E. (Eds.), Transitions in Prehistory: Essays in Honor of Ofer BarYosef. Oxbow, Oxford, pp. 255e287. Stiner, M.C., Munro, N.D., Surovell, T.A., Tchernov, E., Bar-Yosef, O., 1999. Paleolithic population growth pulses evidenced by small mammal exploitation. Science 283, 190e194. Stout, D., Quade, J., Semaw, S., Rogers, M.J., Levin, N.E., 2005. Raw material selectivity of the earliest stone toolmakers at Gona, Afar, Ethiopia. Journal of Human Evolution 48 (4), 365e380. Stout, D., Toth, N., Schick, K., Chaminade, T., 2008. Neural correlates of Early Stone Age toolmaking: Technologym language and cognition in human evolution. Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society of London Series B 363, 1939e1949. ments  Taborin, Y., 1993. La parure en coquillage au Paleolithique. In: Supple a Gallia histoire, vol. 24. CNRS, Paris. Pre Takami, S., Urano, A., 1984. The volume of the toad medial amygdala-anterior preoptic complex is sexually dimorphic and seasonally variable. Neuroscience Letters 44, 253e258. Taylor, T., 2011. The Artificial Ape: How Technology Changed the Course of Human Evolution. Palgrave Macmillan, New York. Texier, J.P., Porraz, G., Parkington, J., Rigaud, J.P., Poggenpoel, C., Miller, C., Tribolo, C., Cartwright, C., Coudenneau, A., Klein, R., Steele, T., Verna, C., 2010. A Howiesons Poort tradition of engraving ostrich eggshell containers dated to 60,000 years ago at Diepkloof Rock Shelter, South Africa. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America 107 (14), 6180e6185. €ningen Thieme, H., 2005. The Lower Palaeolithic art of hunting: the case of Scho 13 II-14, Lower Saxony, Germany. In: Gamble, C., Poor, M. (Eds.), The Individual Hominid in Context: Archaeological Investigations of Lower and Middle Palaeolithic Landscapes, Locales and Artefacts. Routledge, London, pp. 115e132. Tribolo, C., Mercier, N., Valladas, H., Joron, J.L., Guibert, P., Lefrais, Y., Selo, M., Texier, P.-J., Rigaud, J.-Ph., Porraz, G., Poggenpoel, C., Parkington, J., Texier, J.-P., Lenoble, A., 2009. Thermoluminescence dating of a Stillbay-Howiesons poort sequence at Diepkloof rock shelter (Western Cape, South Africa). Journal of Archaeological Science 36 (3), 730e739. Trinkaus, E., 2005. Early modern humans. Annual Review of Anthropology 34, 207e230. Trinkhaus, E., 2012. Neandertals, early modern humans, and rodeo riders. Journal of Archaeological Science 39 (12), 3691e3693. Please cite this article in press as: Roberts, P., ‘We have never been behaviourally modern’: The implications of Material Engagement Theory and Metaplasticity for understanding the Late Pleistocene record of human behaviour, Quaternary International (2015), http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/ j.quaint.2015.03.011 P. Roberts / Quaternary International xxx (2015) 1e13 Valladas, H., Clottes, J., Geneste, J.-M., Garcia, M.A., Arnold, M., Cachier, H., TisneratLaborde, N., 2001. Palaeolithic paintings: evolution of prehistoric cave art. Nature 413, 479. Vanhaeren, M., d'Errico, F., Billy, I., Grousset, F., 2004. Tracing the source of Upper Palaeolithic shell beads by strontium isotope dating. Journal of Archaeological Science 31 (10), 1481e1488. Vanhaeren, M., d'Errico, F., Stringer, C., James, S.L., Todd, J.A., Mienis, H.K., 2006. Middle Paleolithic shell beads in Israel and Algeria. Science 312 (5781), 1785e1788. Visalberghi, E., Spagnoletti, N., Ramos da Silva, E.D., Andrade, F.R.D., Ottoni, E., Izar, P., Fragaszy, D., 2009. Distribution of potential suitable hammers and transport of hammer tools and nuts by wild capuchin monkeys. Primates 50, 95e104. Wadley, L., 2001. What is cultural modernity? A general view and a South African perspective from Rose Cottage Cave. Cambridge Archaeological Journal 11, 201e221. Wadley, L., 2006. The use of space in the Late Middle Stone Age of Rose Cottage Cave, South Africa. In: Hovers, E., Kuhn, S.L. (Eds.), Transitions before the Transitions: Evolution and Stability in the Middle Paleolithic and Middle Stone Age. Springer, New York, pp. 279e294. Wadley, L., 2007. Announcing a still Bay Industry at Sibudu Cave. Journal of Human Evolution 52, 681e689. Wadley, L., 2010. Were snares and traps used in the Middle Stone Age and does it matter? A review and a case study from Sibudu, South Africa. Journal of Human Evolution 58, 179e192. 13 Wadley, L., Hodgkiss, T., Grant, M., 2009. Implications for complex cognition from the hafting of tools with compound adhesives in the Middle Stone Age, South Africa. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America 106, 9590e9594. Watanabe, D., Savion-Lemieux, T., Penhune, V.B., 2007. The effect of early musical training on adult motor performance: evidence for a sensitive period in motor learning. Experimental Brain Research 176, 332e340. White, T.D., Asfaw, B., DeGusta, D., Gilbert, H., Richards, G.D., Suwa, G., Howell, C., 2003. Pleistocene Homo sapiens from middle Awash, Ethiopia. Nature 423, 742e747. Wynn, T., Overmann, K., Coolidge, F., Janulis, K., 2015. Bootstrapping components of a modern mind. In: Wynn, T., Coolidge, K. (Eds.), Formal Models in Cognitive Archaeology. Oxford University Press, Oxford (in press). Xiong, J.J., Karsch, F.J., Lehman, M.N., 1997. Evidence for seasonal plasticity in the gonadotropin-releasing hormone (GnRH) system of the ewe: changes in synaptic inputs onto GnRH neurons. Endocrinology 138, 1240e1250. Zhang, W., Linden, D., 2003. The other side of the engram: experience driven changes in neuronal intrinsic excitability. Nature Reviews Neuroscience 4, 885e900. ~o, J., 2007. The emergence of ornaments and art: an archaeological perspective Zilha on the origins of “behavioural modernity”. Journal of Archaeological Research 15, 1e54. ~o, J., Jo~ Zilha ao, D., Angelucci, E., Badal-García, E., d'Errico, F., Daniel, F., Dayet, L., Douka, K., et al., 2010. Symbolic use of marine shells and mineral pigments by Iberian Neandertals. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America 107 (3), 1023e1028. Please cite this article in press as: Roberts, P., ‘We have never been behaviourally modern’: The implications of Material Engagement Theory and Metaplasticity for understanding the Late Pleistocene record of human behaviour, Quaternary International (2015), http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/ j.quaint.2015.03.011