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| University of Cambridge > Department of Archaeology |
Organisers: Lambros Malafouris and Colin Renfrew
The McDonald Institute for Archaeological Research, Cambridge 7th–9th April 2006
Funded by the Balzan Foundation
In recent decades an interdisciplinary consensus has gradually arisen about the important role that the 'external' material world plays in the structuring of human cognitive operations. The understanding of the relationship between cognition and material culture becomes one of the most challenging research topics not simply for the archaeology and anthropology of human cognition but for the general field of the cognitive and social sciences. The purpose of this cross-disciplinary symposium is to start to develop such an understanding by placing its focus explicitly upon the cognitive efficacy and the dynamics of past and present material culture. How do materiality and the body shape the mind in different contexts and timescales of human activity? How is human thought built into and executed through things? Can things really be parts of the machinery of thought? What is the role of the brain in our embodied engagements with things? The aim is to readdress the balance of the cognitive equation as presently conceived by bringing materiality into the cognitive fold.
3.00 p.m. Arrival and registration at McDonald Institute 5.30 p.m. Welcome talk by Colin Renfrew 6.00 p.m. Wine reception in McDonald Institute 7.00 p.m. Pre-dinner gathering at St. Catharine's College, 7.30 p.m. Dinner, St. Catharine's College
9.30: Lambros Malafouris (Cambridge University) Engaging the `missing mass'. 10.00: Andy Clark (University of Edinburgh) Thinking Through Objects: Some Reflections on the Role of Artifacts in 'Off-line' Cognition. 10.30: Edwin Hutchins (University of California San Diego) Imagining the Cognitive Life of Things. 11.00: Tea Break 11.30: Chris Gosden (Oxford University) The Death of the Mind. 12.00: Mike Wheeler (University of Stirling) Minds, Things, and Materiality. 12.30: DISCUSSION 1.00 p.m.: Lunch 2.00: Charles Goodwin (UCLA) Things and Their Embodied Environments. 2.30: Carl Knappett (University of Exeter) The Physical and Cognitive Space of Artefact Communities. 3.00: Clive Gamble and Fiona Coward (Royal Holloway, University of London) Metaphor and Materiality in earliest Prehistory. 3.30: Tea Break 4.00: Amiria Henare (University of Cambridge), Martin Holbraad (UCL) and Sari Wastell (Goldsmiths) Thinking Through Things. 4.30: DISCUSSION 6.00: Close 7.00-7.30 p.m. Convene in St. Catharine's College 7.30 p.m. Dinner, St. Catharine's College
9.30: Merlin W. Donald (Case Western Reserve University) The Exographic Revolution. 10.00: Niels Johannsen (University of Aarhus) Cognition on the shoulders of history. 10.30: David Kirsh (University of California San Diego) Explaining Artifact Evolution. 11.00: Tea Break 11.30: Tom Ziemke (University of Skovde, Sweden) Embodied Cognition in the Material World: From humans to robots (and back?) 12.00: Donald Norman (Northwestern University) The Future of Things. 12.30: DISCUSSION 1.00 p.m.: Lunch 2.00: Discussant 1: Nicholas Humphrey (LSE) 2.30: Discussant 2: Alastair Compston (University of Cambridge) 3.00: DISCUSSION 3.30: Tea Break 4.00: Final Discussion 6.00: Close 7.30 p.m. Convene in St. John's College 8.00 p.m. Symposium Dinner, St. John's College
![[Conference participants]](cognitive-life-of-things.jpg)
The Cognitive Life of Things conference participants (left to right). Front row: Don Norman, David Kirsch, Charles Goodwin, Niels Johannsen; On stairs: Colin Renfrew, Carl Knappett, Amiria Henare, Mike Wheeler, Fiona Coward, Lambros Malafouris; Back row: Iain Morley, Andy Clark, Merlin Donald, Edwin Hutchins, Tom Ziemke, Matt Grove, Alastair Compston, Richard Harper, Martin Holbraad, Nicholas Humphrey.
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