It’s another debate tutorial, hurrah!
In this week’s lecture and associated readings we have been looking at human evolution, with the aim of understanding the ecology that shaped the evolution of our species, but also in the hope that we might be able to glean some clues about when language evolved. Unfortunately, writing is a very recent invention, and spoken languages don’t leave direct traces in the archaeological record. However, it might be possible to make inferences about when language evolved, or whether some hominid population had language, if we can infer the presence of language from something that does show up in the archaeological record – tools, beads, ochre etc.
The question for this week’s debate is therefore: can we infer the presence (or absence) of language from the presence (or absence) of certain types of material culture in the archeological record? Once again, you’ll split into teams and (initially) argue for opposite positions. Team A will read a paper by Henshilwood & Dubreuil arguing that these kind of inferences can be made, team B will read a very sceptical response paper by Botha. The Blombos cave in South Africa features quite prominently in both papers, so you might want to check out the wikipedia page on that (everything apart from the section titled “Controversy”, which seems to be almost complete drivel). As usual, spend some time staking out the positions, arguing against the other team, then come together and figure out how to weigh up the various considerations you have discussed.
The readings are:
Team A: Henshilwood, C.S. & Dubreuil, B. (2009). Reading the artefacts: Gleaning language skills from the Middle Stone Age in southern Africa. In R. Botha & C. Knight (Eds.), The Cradle of Language (pp. 41-60). Oxford: Oxford University Press. Available online from ResearchGate – note that you can download the full chapter so you don’t have to read it online, give me a shout if you have problems accessing it.
Team B: Botha, R. (2010). On the soundness of inferring modern language from symbolic behaviour. Cambridge Archaeological Journal, 20, 345-356. Available online from the University network.