Abstract
This is a paper about mark making and human becoming. I will be asking what do marks do? How do they signify? What role do marks play in human becoming and the evolution of human intelligence? These questions cannot be pursued effectively from the perspective of any single discipline or ontology. Nonetheless, they are questions that archaeology has a great deal to contribute. They are also important questions, if not the least because evidence of early mark making constitutes the favoured archaeological mark of the ‘cognitive’ (in the ‘modern’ representational sense of the word). In this paper I want to argue that the archaeological predilection to see mark making as a potential index of symbolic representation often blind us to other, more basic dimensions of the cognitive life and agency of those marks as material signs. Drawing on enactive cognitive science and Material Engagement Theory I will show that early markings, such as the famous engravings from Blombos cave, are above all the products of kinesthetic dynamics of a non-representational sort that allow humans to engage and discover the semiotic affordances of mark making opening up new possibilities of enactive material signification. I will also indicate some common pitfalls in the way archaeology thinks about the ‘cognitive’ that needs overcome.
Highlights
A good way to begin an exploration into the cognitive life of any sentient organism is to examine the material scent of the marks left or made in the course of its becoming
Focusing on selected examples of markings from the African Middle Stone Age, the primary objective of this paper is to explore how this intermingling happens, and what it tells us about the links between mark making and human becoming
As pointed out in the previous section, two neglected questions immediately confront us which I believe are crucial to a proper appreciation of mark making on the basis of the archaeological data available to us: (1) The first question is about making: For instance, what does it mean to ‘make’ a cross-hatched design; what is the mark made of? (2) The second is about sensing and seeing: What do we sense and what do we see when we look at the Blombos engravings?
Summary
A good way to begin an exploration into the cognitive life of any sentient organism is to examine the material scent of the marks left or made in the course of its becoming. This strategy can be especially productive in the case of human becoming. Mark making has been the principle mode of our species’ capacity for material signification and creative material engagement. Material or enactive signification denotes the semiotic co-emergence of the signifier and the signified that brings forth meaningful affective experiences and novel conceptualisations of the world Mark making is the skill that allow these two processes (material enactive signification and creative thinging) to mingle together
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