Ben Jeffares

The evolution of cognition literature is dominated by views that presume the evolution of underlying neural structures. However, recent models of cognition reemphasize the role of physiological structures, development, and external resources as important components of cognition. This article argues that these alternative models of cognition challen...

The investigative strategy that Vaesen uses presumes that cognitive skills are to some extent hardwired; developmentally plastic traits would not provide the relevant comparative information. But recent views of cognition that stress external resources, and evolutionary accounts such as cultural niche construction, urge us to think carefully about...

The article presents several models of evolutionary psychology. Nativist evolutionary psychology is built around a most important insight that ordinary human decision-making has a high cognitive load. Evolutionary nativists defend a modular solution to the problem of information load on human decision-making. Human minds comprises of special purpos...

The structuring of our environment to provide cues and reminders for ourselves is common: We leave notes on the fridge, we have a particular place for our keys where we deposit them, making them easy to find. We alter our world to streamline our cognitive tasks. But how did hominins gain this capacity? What pushed our ancestors to structure their p...

IntroductionRational Agents and the Conceptual Background Beyond Homo economicusInformational ResourcesA Poisoned Chalice?What Is to Be Done?References

I review the book “Making Prehistory: Historical Science and the Scientific Realism Debate” by Derek Turner. Turner suggests that philsophers should take seriously the historical sciences such as geology when considering philosophy of science issues. To that end, he explores the scientific realism debate with the historical sciences in mind. His co...

The Interpretive DilemmaArchaeology and PhilosophyMiddle Range TheoryThe Science of ArchaeologyWhere Do Hypotheses Come From?Cognitive Archaeology and the Archaeology of CognitionDarwinian and Biological ArchaeologyEnvironmental ArchaeologyArchaeology as Social ScienceReferencesFurther Reading

This paper will outline a series of changes in the archaeological record related to Hominins. 1 I argue that these changes underlie the emergence of the capacity for strategic thinking. The paper will start by examining the foundation of technical skills found in primates, and then work through various phases of the archaeological and paleontologic...

The historical sciences, such as geology, evolutionary biology, and archaeology, appear to have no means to test hypotheses. However, on closer examination, reasoning in the historical sciences relies upon regularities, regularities that can be tested. I outline the role of regularities in the historical sciences, and in the process, blur the disti...

I show how archaeologists have two problems. The construction of scenarios accounting for the raw data of Archaeology, the material remains of the past, and the explanation of pre-history. Within Archaeology, there has been an ongoing debate about how to constrain speculation within both of these archaeological projects, and archaeologists have con...

“Human Paleobiology” is about the use of fossils to determine the adaptations and evolutionary trajectories of human ancestors. At least part of this book’s purpose may be summed up in its title; this is Paleobiology, the study of long dead organisms via their fossils, as opposed to Paleoanthropology, the physical anthropology of dead people. Conse...

I make two claims about cognitive archaeology. I question its role, seeing psychology as yet another contributor to the archaeological tool-kit rather than as something unique. I then suggest that cognitive archaeology is not in a position to provide evolutionary contexts without other disciplines. As a consequence it cannot deliver on the provisio...