Material Symbols and the Archaeological Record

In the decades after McBreatry and Brook’s refutation of revolutionary, saltationist models of behavioral modernity, that framework for interpreting the hominin (and especially the sapiens) archaeological record of the Late Pleistocene did not disappear from the human evolutionary sciences. It was retained to explain a remarkable Late Pleistocene pattern of accelerated innovation, geographic and ecological expansion, and, in some versions, the replacement by sapiens of sister taxa; these changes resulting at least in part from enhanced cognitive capacities. In this revised version of the behavioral modernity framework, the origin and/or expansion of the use of material symbols was seen as especially significant. Material symbol use is a marker of both social and cognitive change; in some versions, a marker of sapiens’ acquisition of full language. This article is critical of the view that material symbol use is an index of sophisticated cognitive capacity, and develops an alternative conception of behavioral modernity and the Late Pleistocene pattern. The alternative conception emphasizes the efficient and effective forager organization of the education of their young, the role of an expanded social network, and the importance of threshold effects on technology and skill: the more a community has, the more it can get.