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Theory and Methods

Overview of Four Eras of Evolution
of Art, Religion, Mind and Psyche

,,,,,Oldowan

• Sites, Tools, Hominids
• Art, Religion, Mind
• Gallery

,,,,,Early Paleolithic

• Sites, Tools, Hominids
• Art, Religion, Mind
• Gallery

,,,,,Middle Paleolithic

• Sites, Tools, Hominids
• Art, Religion, Mind
• Gallery

.....Upper Paleolithic

• Sites, Tools, Hominids
• Art, Religion, Mind
• Gallery

Publications and Studies (PDF files)

OriginsNet BLOG - New Discoveries, New Theories

"Archaeological materials are not mute. They speak their own language. And they need to be used for the greast source they are to help unravel the spirituality of our [prehistoric] ancestors."

Gimbutas, M. (1989). The language of the goddess: Unearthing the hidden symbols of western civilization. San Francisco: Harper and Row. pp. xviii-xix.

"An interdisciplinary approach . . . a cross-pollination of disciplines [which] has the potential to further illuminate and expand our understanding of the past. This integrated approach, which is the way I choose to work, is a new discipline of knowledge which I call Archeomythology."

Gimbutas, M. (1991). The civilization of the goddess: The world of Old Europe. SanFrancisco: HarperCollins. p. 342.

Cognitive Archaeology - A discipline of archaeology conceptualized by Colin Renfrew. It "studies past ways of thought (cognitive and symbolic) as inferred from material remains." "The focus is on developing ways of forming structures of inference, in an explicit (and in some sense scientific) manner which will allow us to understand better how people used their minds, and formulated and utilized useful concepts, in early societies."

"The term 'ancient mind' is shorthand, perhaps rather misleading shorthand, for the subject matter of cognitive archaeology." "We are not asserting any specific and fundamental distinctions between ancient and modern minds, nor are we denying that there might be useful distinctions to be drawn."

"An important component of the cognitive-processual approach is to set out to examine the ways in which symbols were used. This may be contrasted with the attempt to seek rather to ascertain their 'meaning', which would generally be the object of the anti-processual or interpretive approach."

Renfrew, C. (1994). Towards a cognitive archaeology. In C. Renfrew and E. Zubrow (ed.), The ancient mind: Elements of cognitive archaeology, pp. 3-12. Cambridge: University Press.