Cognitive archaeology Seminar Series by Prof. Paul Pettitt

(University of Durham, GRK Mercator Fellow 2022)

A blog post by Yossra Ibrahim

In spring 2022, Prof. Paul Pettitt started his Mercator fellowship and joined our GRK. Prof. Pettitt has been a lecturer at the Department of Archaeology at the University of Durham since 2013. He is a specialist in European Middle and Upper Palaeolithic, with a focus on the origins of Palaeolithic art and behaviour of Neanderthals species.  Prof. Pettitt previously held prestigious positions as an archaeologist and researcher at the University of Oxford and as a lecturer at the University of Sheffield. 

As a Mercator fellow, Prof. Pettitt led a seminar series entitled Imagining the Human World. Psychological Approaches to the Archaeological Record. The seminar consisted of ten sessions discussing several aspects of cognitive archaeology such as human development and evolution, human behaviour, visual culture, and the culture of death and fear. Albeit all selected topics aims to discuss and shed light on psychological approaches to the archaeological record – an attempt to reunite the disciplines of archaeology and psychology as they are two sides of the same coin. 

Prof. Pettitt commenced his lectures by stating that he hopes to promote this cross-cultural and cross-disciplinary research through his teachings and encouraged members of our GRK to build on his ideas and integrate them into our dissertations and examinations of concepts relating to humans and nature. One of the important concepts discussed multiple times throughout this seminar is the concept of repetition. In tradition-based societies a lot of things tend to be repeated, such as rituals and visual art. Accordingly, it is our duty as researchers to find ways to observe these repetitive patterns and to question what notions are being repeated, what they signal, what value they have, and what is the message. Repetition also adds an element of comfort and stability as one knows what to do and to expect, following a familiar plan. Eventually, repeated actions can become ritualised behaviour. Correspondingly, this concept of repetitiveness is fundamental to any archaeological work, as it helps archaeologists understand how a society is organised and what ideas are expressed.  

One of the most interesting topics Prof. Pettitt addressed in his seminar is child behaviour and the extent to which we humans resemble animals, especially chimpanzees. Both children and chimpanzees tend to develop a strong infant-mother bond, they are very socially aware, they are innate social learners, meaning they tend to learn from experience with their environment.  Accordingly, Pettitt suggested that perhaps, these are some cognitive aspects that we inherited from our ancestors, the apes. 

Despite the significance of cognitive-based learning on humans, it seems that our visual sense greatly develops our experience.  Prof. Pettitt made it clear that almost 90% of our experience comes from the visual system; thus, it’s essential to identify visual art and its imaginative capacity.

A prominent case study, covered in several of Pettitt’s presentations, is the cave of Lascaux located near the village of Montignac in France. The cave walls, clustered in passages and chambers, are covered by distinct paintings depicting large-scale animals, dominated by figures of horses and bulls. These interesting drawings give an impression of naturalism and what the landscape looked like 21,000 years ago. The artwork was created by several methods such as engraving and drawing, either with brushes or leather. Cave art contains enchanting examples of early drawings of animals, landscape and the environment that are expressive of what the ancient artists observed and perceived and how they communicated what they saw into art.  These early drawings were excellent cases studies discussed by Prof. Pettitt to demonstrate opinions regarding visual culture. In addition, Prof. Pettitt also demonstrated using these examples how to understand the visual narrative and effectively comprehend underlying ideas within the depicted scene. 

Hall of Bulls, Lascaux cave (Photo by: Universal History Archive/Universal Images Group via Getty Images)

Appropriately, when one is to examine an ancient decoration or an artwork must take into consideration the scale of the images being depicted, symmetry, organisation of the scene, themes, styles, and repetitiveness. All these aspects are fundamental in understanding the subtle message that might be depicted in ancient decorative forms. In fact, this discussion brought into light that an artwork is not about decorative schemes and painting it’s a far more activity. In real life it has a true value as it brings people to interact and collaborate together. Meaning that, one must question how these images came into being and think beyond the drawings. It’s substantial to consider the activities that were involved in the production of an artwork i.e., from where did these people get their paint, what was exchanged in return, how many people were involved in the painting of the walls, etc. Perhaps these exchange activities took place in a marketplace. This brings us to an important point that defines art not as a static form or a piece of entertainment, but as an active agent on its own.

The final lecture discussed human behaviour and responses towards the dead and dying. Death is perceived as bad when it is unpredictable. As a result, humans tend to feel fear and anxiety. Fear is an immediate emotional state that involves anger and sorrow, worrying and fearing what will happen next. Anxiety, on the other hand, is a tonic psychological state that involves prediction and preparation for total annihilation. Finally, humans have developed a strategy against death, or in other words, they have gained knowledge that eventually all living organisms shall die –a way of prediction which makes them feel safe and allows them to live with death. 

The aim of discussing these topics and of the seminar series as a whole is to integrate concepts of cognitive archaeology and an understanding of how the human brain developed into our own research. Conclusively, we are very much grateful to Prof. Paul Pettitt for giving us the time to discuss our individual topics and providing his valuable and mindful concerns and insights. I believe that this seminar series was very fruitful and perhaps several of the GRK members will integrate Prof. Pettitt’s knowledge and expertise considering psychological concepts when approaching the archaeological record. 

I would like to end this blog post with a quote by Professor Pettitt that personally inspired me a lot to pursue this journey of life-long learning: “None of us are made up by our biology and genes, but by our social upbringing. It is the learning that makes a person, not the genetics.”

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