Metaplasticity, Not “Modernity”

Abstract

Abstract Cognitive archaeology has traditionally focused on thresholds of development, scouring the material record for hallmarks of modernity and exploring reconstructed or living hominin brains to identify clearly bounded step changes in cognitive abilities. However, in the last decade or so, the concepts of metaplasticity and material engagement have been used to question not only the linearity of such changes, but also, in some cases, whether the human mind can realistically be considered as an entity separate from the material environments in which it operates. This chapter reviews the latest discussions in neuroscience, archaeology, and paleoecology, focusing in particular on Middle-to-Late Pleistocene human origins to promote the idea that environments, objects, and minds are inseparably intertwined. Building on elements of recent “4E” (embodied, embedded, enacted, and extended) approaches to cognition, it argues that the flexibility and fluidity with which our species forms connections between these realms, rather than any single material marker or behavioral horizon, point us toward what it means to be human.