Building houses, framing concepts, constructing worlds

Abstract

The thesis proposed here is that architecture exploded in the early Neolithic of southwest Asia as a novel and powerful system of symbolic representation, the scaffolding of a pre-literate mode of external symbolic storage. The ability to construct settlements, houses and public buildings that represented constructs of the world that they inhabited allowed new kinds of human society to evolve. By comparing the long Epipalaeolithic period and the trend towards sedentary village life with the rich architectural symbolism of the early Neolithic, we establish the archaeological grounds on which the interpretations are to be founded. Contemporary architects, anthropologists and respected modern social thinkers agree that architecture is indeed a very powerful form of symbolic representation. However, we need to establish why the capacity of human societies to produce such concrete symbolic forms should arise at the end of the Pleistocene and the beginning of the Holocene period. The answer, it is argued, is to be found in theories of the evolution of the human mind, and particularly in the co-evolution of human cognitive faculties and culture. The work of the psychologist Merlin Donald is of fundamental importance in this regard, especially his ideas concerning external symbolic storage systems. Architecture as a mode of external symbolic storage allowed Neolithic communities to become the first humans to inhabit a "built environment " rich in symbolic meaning, making possible the emergence of new, larger and more complex forms of social organization.