Semiosis in the Pleistocene

Marc Kissel amp Agustiacuten Fuentes

A distinctive aspect of human behaviour is the ability to think symbolically However track-ing the origin of this capability is controversial From a Peircean perspective to know ifsomething truly is a symbol we need to know the cultural context in which it was cre-ated Rather than initially asking if materials are symbolssymbolic we offer that it is moresalient to ask how they functioned as signs Specifically we argue that using the Peirceandistinction between qualisigns sinsigns and legisigns provides support for this endeavourThe lsquoflickeringrsquo of early symbolic behaviour (the sporadic occurrences of objects with embed-ded social meanings in the Pleistocene archaeological record) can best be seen as sinsignswhereas sites that show long-term presence of such materials are demonstrating the pres-ence of legisigns the codification of ideas To illustrate this approach we apply these ideas tothree classes of artefacts demonstrating how this system can address issues of relevance topalaeoanthropologists and archaeologists who often fetishize the symbolic as the one abilitythat makes us human

Introduction

Symbolic thought is often argued to be a distinc-tively human trait (Deacon 1997) with the produc-tion of symbols seen as a marker of modern hu-man origins (Chase amp Dibble 1987) As the fossilrecord rarely preserves enough data to infer the cul-tural practices of early humans the archaeologicalrecord is our main source of information for whenand how hominins became fully human In princi-ple we need to find evidence of symbolic behavioursin the archaeological record and extrapolate fromthese data the origins of symbolic behaviour Yet thishas proved far from easy What makes somethinga symbol in an archaeological context is far fromclear

The main difficulty in assessing the use and roleof symbols may be in the way the concept of a sym-bol has been applied to materials in the Pleistocenerecord By its very nature a symbol must be read andinterpreted within a system of meaning Yet the actualcultural system in which an artefact is situated is of-ten unknown and the same object can be interpretedin disparate ways even within similar cultures Ar-chaeologists and palaeoanthropologists have strug-

gled to find ways to identify symbols without know-ing what they stand for (their meaning) This remainsan issue of much relevance to archaeologists workingon complex societies where attempts to understandwhat particular objects mean have been highly influ-ential Yet for the Pleistocene and in particular forthe suite of artefacts suggested to be of symbolic rele-vance in human evolution understanding what theseobjects meant to their creators is a seemingly hopelessobjective

Here we lay out our reasoning for centring ques-tions not on what these objects meant to early humansbut on how they were able to mean something Fol-lowing Joyce (2007) and others (Hendon 2010 Keane2003 Parmentier 1997 Preucel 2006 Preucel amp Bauer2001) we emphasize an approach using Peirceansemiotics that allows us to track the evolution ofmeaning-making as opposed to symbol interpreta-tion In understanding how humans make meaning inthe world the ability to create objects embedded withmeaning is a salient one The ability to create objectsthat not only have meaning but that are created withthe intent to produce a specific meaningresponse inthe mind of another person is a critical part of humanbehaviour

Cambridge Archaeological Journal page 1 of 16 Ccopy 2017 McDonald Institute for Archaeological Researchdoi101017S0959774317000014 Received 8 June 2016 Accepted 5 January 2017 Revised 31 December 2016

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Marc Kissel amp Agustiacuten Fuentes

We argue that a core weakness in the study of theorigins of human symbolic expression is the frequentoften exclusive reliance on the iconindexsymboltrichotomy developed by Charles Peirce A sign issymbolic if the connection between the sign and theobject it stands for is predicated on convention ratherthan by similarity or contiguity (icon and index re-spectively) However discerning that a conventionalground (the abstraction of the quality of the mean-ing the relationship between a sign and object) ex-ists is difficult when the broader cultural system isunknown For this reason we suggest that this tri-chotomy cannot help us to understand when semi-otic thought evolved to include symbolism since itwould require knowing a priori the specifics of the cul-tural system we wish to understand This standardapproach works once we know the cultural systembut it cannot help us to understand how the larger sys-tem came into being In its place we suggest utilizingPeircersquos first trichotomy which is centred on how asign functions Focusing attention on how signs wereable to convey meaning rather than on what spe-cific meaning the signs are conveying allows anthro-pologists a more subtle interpretation of the past Todemonstrate this we first provide some backgroundon the use of semiotics and on Peircersquos pragmatics Wethen apply this theory to three types of archaeologi-cal artefacts and conclude with suggestions for futureresearch

Background

Leslie White was among the first anthropologists todiscuss symbolic thought as the principal differencebetween humans and other animals (White 1940) ForWhite the symbol is the basic unit of civilization anal-ogous to how the cell is the basic unit of life lsquoA crea-ture either uses symbols or he does not there are nointermediate stagesrsquo (White 1940 453) Whitersquos notionof an lsquoall-or-nothingrsquo capacity for symbolic thoughthas been influential and he draws a distinction be-tween a sign and a symbol Under his system a signrsquosmeaning is intrinsic to the object itself it can be per-ceived with the senses For something to be a symbol itcannot be simply perceived by the senses1 Before theorigins of language White argues we were not fullyhuman lsquoOnly by means of speech can the baby enterand take part in the human affairs of mankindrsquo (White1940 462)

For White the transformation from non-humanto human happens at the moment of language aware-ness Likewise modern palaeoanthropologists searchfor when and where hominins were transformed fromnon-symbolic to symbolic thinkers Recently Rossano

(2010) asks when our species crossed the lsquosymbolicthresholdrsquo2

While White has been very influential TerryDeacon (1997) more than anyone else is primar-ily responsible for popularizing the concept of hu-mans evolving as a symbolic species and for bring-ing Peircersquos work to the attention of palaeoanthropol-ogists Deacon argued that symbolic thought and lan-guage co-evolved and the ability to think symbolicallyis what allows for humansrsquo unique linguistic capabil-ities It is through his work that many palaeoanthro-pologists first became aware of Peircean semiotics

Symbolic thought is suggested to be the basisfor language consciousness and shared intentionalitywhich exist in humans at levels beyond that which wesee in non-human primates (Tomasello 2014) Thesecharacteristics in turn allow for cumulative culturallearning which played a key role in the spread of cul-ture and technology Importantly we can recognizethese processes in the archaeological record If the useof bead technology and the presence of engraved ob-jects can be taken to indicate the origins of humansymbolic thought then by sim300ndash200000 bp we cansee the initial appearances (or flickering) of these be-haviours (Kissel amp Fuentes 2016 Marean 2015) Thepresence of shell beads and engraved ochre at Blom-bos Cave in South Africa by sim100000 bp has beensaid to indicate that humans were not just creatingsymbolic artefacts but using language (drsquoErrico et al2009) This is relevant as the fossil and genetic evi-dence is equivocal on the origins of human languageIf symbolic thought is a prerequisite for or co-evolvedwith language then its archaeological indicators canin theory pinpoint the origins of these behaviours

Yet with all of the emphasis that symbolicthought has been given what is meant by the termsymbolic is far from clear Malafouris (2008) suggeststhat archaeologists have been too quick to accept arte-facts such as the Blombos beads as evidence of sym-bolic behaviour

Although an emerging archaeological consensusseems to have accepted these artefacts as indexesof symbolic behaviour I think that simply to provethe artificiality of a perforated shell and maybe alsoits function as a personal ornament does not nec-essarily make it a symbolmdashat least not in the arbi-trary representational sense that is often associatedwith them and which could substantiate a claim forthe presence of fully developed symbolic language(Malafouris 2008 406)

Malafouris argues that the beads represent evi-dence of self-awareness evidence similar to that re-vealed in mirror recognition tests with certain non-human organisms (such as chimpanzees or dolphins)

2

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Semiosis in the Pleistocene

(Gallup 1977) He suggests that beads provided lsquoan ex-tended reorganization in the cognitive system [which]makes possible the bringing forth of a new type of self-knowledgersquo (Malafouris 2008 408) The same problemcan be seen with other markers of symbolic thoughtas cogently argued by Wynn and Coolidge (2009)who suggest that much of what has been assumedto be evidence for symbolic thoughtmodern cogni-tion does not stand up to strict standards derived fromcognitive science

What are palaeoanthropologists to do We arguethat a way out of this problem is to apply Peirceansemiotics to the palaeoanthropological record Um-berto Eco defined semiosis as lsquothe process by whichempirical subjects communicate communication pro-cesses being made possible by the organization ofsignification systemsrsquo (Eco 1976 316) a system ofmeaning making Archaeologists have applied thisframing of semiotic anthropology to understandmore recent archaeological cultures (Hendon 2010Joyce 2007 Lau 2010 Preucel 2006) While Piercersquosiconindexsymbol trichotomy is well known andhas been applied to the archaeological record (Deacon1997 Hodgson 2014 Rossano 2010) it lacks an effec-tive explanatory impact for reasons articulated belowWe intend to illustrate here the need to refocus thequestion away from whether something is a symbolicon or index and ask how an item functions as a signPrivileging the symbolic over other sign forms maycause evolutionary anthropologists to miss or at leastoverlook much of the semiosis (meaning-making pro-cesses) of the past

The salient question a semiotics approach can as-sist in answering is how artefacts played a role inand thus offer material evidence of meaning-makingprocesses of early humans How signs functioned inthe deep past can inform on not just their role in so-cial evolution and niche construction but also on theevolutionary processes of the more complex semio-sis we see in more recent humanity To move beyondthe symbolic we first must trace Peircean semioticsand its constitutuent parts A semiotic palaeoanthro-pology can provide a clearer less symbol-biased viewof the archaeological record

Semiotics

Much of what archaeologists think about the use ofsymbols is based on the work of Ferdinand de Saus-sure (1857ndash1913) and Charles Peirce (1839ndash1914) Inorder to understand what Peirce brings to the field ofpalaeoanthropology we must first see how his inter-pretation and terminology differ from those of Saus-sure whose framework significantly influenced an-

thropology via Structuralism There has been a resur-gence of the Peircean model in anthropology since the1970s (Parmentier 1997 Singer 1978) and in a limitedsense in archaeology as well (Preucel 2006 Preucel ampBauer 2001)

A key difference in the two approaches is thatSaussurersquos theory was developed to understand lin-guistic signs while Peirce saw linguistic signs as partof a more general system In other words Saussureis primarily interested in meaningful sounds whilePeirce is more interested in representational signs Thesecond major difference is that Saussurersquos system isdyadic while Peircersquos is triadic These two differencesgo a long way in determining how symbolic artefactsare identified After a discussion of how both schol-ars conceived of signs we explain how Piercersquos tri-chotomy of signs can help us to understand betterhow early humans were functioning in their socialniche

Saussure defined a sign as having two parts thesignifier and the signified The signifier is an acous-tic image and the signified is a concept ImportantlySaussure argued that the relationship between thesetwo was arbitrary Problems emerge when scholarsapply Saussurersquos concept meant for linguistic signsto non-linguistic ones (de Waal 2013) Applying Saus-surean semiotics which is at the heart of Structural-ism to the archaeological record is complicated as of-ten the question under analysis is whether a homininpopulation was capable of language

For Saussure all signs are arbitrarily assignedwhile for Peirce two classes of signndashobject relationsare not arbitrary This allows for semiosis to occur innon-human animals One of the benefits of Peircersquoswork is that it is less anthropocentric than Saus-sure (Kohn 2013) not all signs are language-drivenso signs are part of the non-human world In otherwords semiosis is part of the natural world For schol-ars interested in evolution Peircersquos system allows amore nuanced comparison between humans and thenon-human animals rather than assuming a strict di-viding line such as White suggested and Saussure im-plied Thus it may be applied to differences withinthe hominin lineage

One example of how the approaches differ comesfrom Singer (1978) who popularized Peircean semi-otics in anthropology He suggests that anthropologycan turn to Peirce in that lsquoa semiotic anthropology is apragmatic anthropology It contains a theory of how sys-tems of signs are related to their meanings as well asto the objects designated and to the experience and be-haviour of the sign usersrsquo (Singer 1978 224 emphasisoriginal) The benefit of a Peircean semiotic anthro-pology is that it allows researchers to analyse the

3

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Marc Kissel amp Agustiacuten Fuentes

meaning of social context rather than only attempt-ing to reconstruct the abstract meaning of a materialobject (Mertz 2007) The sign process is a triadic re-lationship that includes the understanding of the linkbetween the sign and the symbol Thus Peirce re-quires scholars to analyse social context while tryingto understand the meaning of a sign (Singer 1978)focusing attention on the broader process of meaningFor example in humans the feelings of connectednessengendered by ritual is an aspect that can be studiedsemiotically (Ball 2014) As all thought is mediatedby signs we can use the same toolkit to analyse boththinking and speaking with regard to ritual actions(Ball 2014) Discussing how a sign conveys mean-ing allows for an analysis that focuses on the variousways meanings can be conveyed rather than focusingsolely on language or its material homologues Thisin turn allows for the recognition of semiosis as partof the broader animal world (Kohn 2013) Examining aparticular artefact with a Peircean approach allows usto ask more general questions about the artefact thana Saussurian approach as the Peircean system looksto understand semiosis beyond just the symbol or theword In this vein we can begin to ask how an archae-ological culture functioned within its world of signs

Peirce saw signs as composed of three relatedcomponents

Asign or representamen is something which standsto somebody for something in some respect or ca-pacity It addresses somebody that is creates in themind of that person an equivalent sign or perhapsa more developed sign That sign which it creates Icall the interpretant of the first sign The sign standsfor something its object (Peirce 1958 para228)

To avoid confusion Peirce often talks about thesign-vehicle or the representamen which refers to a spe-cific aspect of the sign itself that is the signifying ele-ment The representamen is what Saussure would callthe signifier while the object is what he would callthe signified What the interpretant is is hard to parsebut for our purposes we can think of it as the un-derstanding between the sign and the object Techni-cally speaking Pierce distinguishes between three in-terpretants the immediate the dynamic and the finallsquoThe [Dynamic] Interpretant is whatever interpreta-tion any mind actually makes of a signrsquo (Peirce 1958)the lsquoFinal Interpretant does not consist in the way inwhich any mind does act but in the way in which ev-ery mind would actrsquo (Peirce 1958 para315) By addingthe lsquoevery mind would actrsquo phrase Pierce seems tosuggest that this is the way everyone would react tothe sign irrespective of their background The imme-diate interpretant is the general impression one getsfrom a sign without fully reflecting on it (Savan 1988)

It is thus immediate since it does not require reflectionon what is happening The process of meaning thenis a system of cascading interpretants the basis ofsemiosis

Examining Piercersquos trichotomy (signndashobjectndashinterpretant) suggests that there are various ways thedifferent aspects can interact with each other We canexamine the sign itself how the sign is related to itsobject and how the sign is related to its interpretant

The most famous of these relationships at leastfor archaeologists is the one between a sign-vehicle(representamen) and its object Peircersquos second tri-chotomy Peirce defines three different relationshipsIconic ones are signs where the concept being signi-fied resembles the signifier Indexical signs are wherethe sign is linked to its object in a causal manner Histhird relationship symbols are only connected to theconcept they signify because this connection is agreedupon by its users Signification can only occur symbol-ically if the sign relies on conventions laws or sharedagreement and understanding to signify its object

In addition to this core trichotomy Pierce alsoadds another trichotomous level of analysis that maybe particularly beneficial in thinking about humanevolution Identifying a signrsquos lsquomodes of beingrsquo (Jappy2013 49) is a key step in semiotic analysis often left outof archaeological interpretation

The sign vehicle (representamen) is the part of thesign that is critical to our interpretation Peirce (1998)defined three types of sign vehicles qualisigns sin-signs and legisigns (see Figure 1)3 Qualisigns likeicons are derived from qualities It is the tone of thesign to use another Peircean term Short (2007 209)describes a qualisign as lsquothe colour embodied in acloth sample in itself that colour is a mere possibil-ity its actually occurring in the sample being an ad-dition to it and what it represents is nothing otherthan itselfrsquo To put it another way a sign-vehicle thatis a qualisign signifies something through the qual-ity it has What makes a qualisign confusing is thatit does not signify anything except as it is embodiedin an object or event It is non-corporeal and cannotexist apart from something tangible The qualisign isthe lsquobluersquo of a blue cloth not the dye or the process ofdyeing but the sensation of blue imbued in the bluecloth

The second type of sign-vehicle is the sinsignwhich can contain several qualisigns (Peirce 1998)When a sign-vehicle uses what Peirce refers to as es-sential facts this is a sinsign For example the weathervane that shows the direction the wind is blowing isusing a sinsign The meaning of a sinsign is restrictedto the here-and-now (Jappy 2013) and reflects a criticalcomponent in the process of meaning in a sign

4

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Semiosis in the Pleistocene

Figure 1 (Colour online) Steps in Peircean analysis

Finally a legisign is when the sign vehicle signi-fies based on convention Legisigns define the char-acteristics the shape or the sound of their repli-cas Replicas are an individual instance of a legisignwhich makes them a special category of sinsignswhere their significance is based on both being areplica of a legisign and on the features of its occur-rence (Short 1982) Individual instances of a word arereplicas of a legisign We can think of the symbolicobjects in the archaeological record such as beadsstrung on a cord handprints on a cave wall or mul-tiple pieces of etched ostrich eggshell as replicas of alegisign

How can looking at signs in relation to them-selves (in Peircean terms the triadic relations of com-parison) be applied to archaeological reasoning Aqualisign is the initial thought process for a sign justas the idea of lsquoredrsquo may be the initial impetus to paintsomething or seeing phosphenes gives an idea in themind to depict something on a cave wall (Bednariket al 1990 Hodgson 2014) A sinsign would be thewhole of the object created like red markings on awall A legisign is the general practice of doing these

things which exists within the culturemdashthe processor habit of making red markings on walls across sitesand possibly across time We cannot actually lsquoseersquo thelegisigns as those are not tangible (each of the redmarks on cave walls is a sinsign) But we can infertheir existence just as we can infer the existence of En-glish by hearing people talk yet never actually lsquoseersquoEnglish

It is difficult at first to understand the differencebetween a sinsign and a replica (evidence of legisign)A sinsign is a type of phenomenon that in specific cir-cumstances can be used as a sign However a replicahas to be interpreted Parmentier (1994b) gives theexample of a footprint and the utterance of a wordThe footprint is possibly a replica and certainly a sin-sign but the word is necessarily a replica Archaeolog-ically if we can distinguish between replicas and sin-signs we can begin to ascertain the semiotic level andgain insight into the process of meaning making forexample the idea of ornamentation is passed downthrough cultural learning We cannot excavate the re-sulting legisigns associated with ornamentation butwe can find their replicas amongst the archaeological

5

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Marc Kissel amp Agustiacuten Fuentes

evidence as we find beads at Blombos and engravedeggshell at Klipdrift If someone has the idea of lsquoredrsquoand expresses it by using ochre they are creating asinsign When we study that artefact in the lab arewe then looking at it as a sinsign in the same way see-ing it as an expression of red By finding repeated ex-amples of the same artefact type within and possiblybetween culture groupsarchaeological assemblageswe can distinguish between sinsigns and replicas andthen interpret the presence or at least capacity forlegisigns

While complex Peircersquos system of thought isuniquely suited to the archaeological record as it canbe applied to any type of visual medium The ma-jority of archaeological theory has centred on apply-ing his second and by far most famous trichotomyof iconindexsymbol Yet this is problematic for rea-sons specified above Recently Iliopoulos (2016 114)has also noted similar problems arguing for the com-bination of pragmatic semiotic theory with materialengagement theory the better to trace the evolution ofsign use lsquoThis preoccupation with arbitrariness is un-productive because the arbitrary connection betweena symbolic artefact and what it stands for is virtuallyundetectable in the prehistoric archaeological recordrsquoHe notes that the emphasis on symbols had led manyto ignore icons and indexes We would agree and sug-gest further that work by Kohn (2013) and Ball (2014)indicates the importance of these sign types for bothhuman and non-human semiosis

We propose that the first step in a palaeoanthro-pological semiotic analysis is examining how the signvehicle itself functions as a sign before examiningits potential symbolic connection In the next sectionwe apply the qualisignsinsignlegisign model to ar-chaeological datasets to demonstrate how an engage-ment with Peircean semiosis allows for an enhanceddiscussion of palaeoanthropological data

Applied to archaeology

In archaeology both Saussurian and Peircean ap-proaches have been taken with mixed results (Preucel2006) In terms of palaeoanthropological research useof semiotics has been associated with Terry Deaconrsquoswork (specifically Deacon 1997) Other scholars suchas Rossano (2010) and Hodgson (2014) have usedPeircersquos iconndashindexndashsymbol trichotomy to assess theorigins of symbolic thought as a distinct behaviour Asfar as we know however the question of which sub-class of sign these artefacts represent and how sub-class usage might inform our understanding of signcreationuse has not been explored fully (for excep-tions see Hendon 2010 Lau 2010 Parmentier 1997)

Qualisigns need to be embedded One benefit ofthinking about artefacts as embedded qualisigns isthat it allows archaeologists to discuss how artefactscan be similar in their qualities while still having a dif-ferent materiality For instance we can think of the en-gravings on objects Engravings have been found onochre bone shell and teeth The medium differs butthe qualisign in this case the engraving could be thesame Likewise the common use of Nassarius shellsto make beads could qualify as well (Bar-Yosef Mayer2015)

As Keane notes when a qualisign is embeddedit is also bound up with other qualities of the sameobject a process Keane refers to as lsquobundlingrsquo lsquoRed-ness cannot be manifest without some embodimentthat inescapably binds it to some other qualities aswell which can become contingent but real factors inits social lifersquo (Keane 2003 414) This bundling may re-flect the sinsign In the shell bead example colour isbundled with other characters such as the shape of theshell

The famous Cueva de las Manos rock art fromArgentina dates to around 9000 years ago and has nu-merous depictions of hand prints At the iconndashindexndashsign trichotomy we can note how the handprints mayhave functioned in the relation of the sign vehicle to anobject Iconically there is the connection between thehandprint and the hand itself The sign and its objectresemble each other enough that we can see the con-nection without noticing the difference Indexicallythe handprint stands for a single person perhaps aknown individual Finally there may be a symbolicaspect as these prints could have a meaning knownto the culture that produced it

While perhaps a useful way to view the hand-prints we need to be careful in applying these termsAs Richard Parmentier notes

Attempts to place certain objects in the baskets oflsquoiconrsquo lsquoindexrsquo and lsquosymbolrsquo similarly miss the crit-ical point that these Peircean terms are not types ofsigns but stages or moment in the hierarchical com-plexity of semiotic functioning a symbol necessarilyembodies an index to specify the object being signi-fied and an index necessarily embodies an icon toindicate what information is being signified aboutthat object (Parmentier 1994a 389)

The relationship between a sign and object theground is how we determine what the sign itselfmeans For a symbol the ground is conventional butfor an icon and index the ground does not require cul-tural knowledge4 Importantly we do not know whatthe symbolic ground was in the past so it is difficultto know how a symbol was interpreted It is also im-portant to remember that the terms icon index and

6

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Semiosis in the Pleistocene

symbol refer to relationships between things rather thanto the thing itself When applying these terms we areactively making connections and inferring relation-ships

This proves problematic For example it is notenough to demonstrate that a particular suite of arte-facts such as engraved objects have indexical mean-ings We cannot disprove that a particular artefact issymbolic by showing that it is an index as symbols bytheir very nature embed iconic and indexical mean-ing nested within them This leaves us with the sig-nificant problem of figuring out how to demonstratesomething is indeed a symbol

If we assume a priori that humans are makingsymbols then it may be possible to identify them inthe archaeological record However for the earliest ex-amples lsquoare they symbolsrsquo is often the question un-der consideration The second trichotomy of Peirceansemiotics can help us understand what is going onin the process of meaning making without having toassume the artefacts we are examining are necessar-ily symbols or that our goal is to expose their sym-bolic content Modern cognition and the ability to cre-ate and read symbolic signs may have occurred inthe distant past but that is very difficult to demon-strate Semiosis does not require a modern mindSymbolic thought might be lsquomodernrsquo but discerningthis in the archaeological record is difficult since wesimply do not know the grounds Using the qual-isignsinsignlegisign approach allows for the iden-tification of a purposefully created system of signswithout the assumptions of a symbolic referent Yetit still suggests complex thought and an underlyingprocess of meaning making As a qualisign there areembedded qualities such as shape size and colour Asa sinsign a singular handprint is a marker that some-one was there but no further meaning is assumedIt is an lsquoon-offrsquo example 5 As a replica (evidence oflegisign) it is a sign that is part of a system of mean-ing in which people leave handprints to signal some-thing Finally the legisign itself is the overarching sys-tem in which the replicas are used and assumed toexist based on the number of replica instances Wecannot without other cultural materials reconstructwhat these meanings are but we can demonstrate thathabitual and shared meaning-making was occurringThe presence of a conventional legisign indicates thatthe signs are made on purpose it demonstrates activemeaning-making

Symbolic thought requires the capacity to useiconic and indexical signs as a template One exampleof this complexity can be seen by the handprints refer-ence above We can view them as iconic and indexicalwithout much of a ground but we cannot know the

symbolic link without direct knowledge of the sharedperspective of the handprint creators It is whollypossible that different makers in different locales sawthem as different symbols Similarly did Venus fig-urines have the same meaning throughout the Aurig-nacian and Magdalenian We can infer the particularsof a specific lsquogroundrsquo if we see extreme consistency inthe image making and placement As an example wecannot lsquoseersquo the legisigns that make up a languagebut can infer its existence through observation ofauditory and visual replicas of that language

In order to clarify these suggestions and pro-cesses of interpretation we offer three examples ofhow the classification of signs can be applied to thearchaeological record of the Pleistocene

Ochre

Ochre refers to a class of mineral objects that con-tain iron oxide including goethite (usually brown)limonite (yellow) and red haematite and is a multi-functional material that served a variety of utilitarianand symbolic purposes across human history Wadleyand colleagues (2004) hypothesize it may have func-tioned to facilitate hafting while Rifkin (2011) arguesfor its use as a tanning agent Others suggest it hadmedicinal properties (Velo 1984) or was perhaps usedfor odour prevention (Tributsch 2016) Many havesuggested it is used as a symbolic tool perhaps sug-gesting a role in collective ritual (Hovers et al 2003Watts 2014) However if it can be shown to have afunctional use some argue it is not symbolic (Trib-utsch 2016 Velo 1984) More than likely ochre hadnumerous functions and at different sites it seemsto have been utilized for different purposes possiblymultiple purposes simultaneously

One attempt to demonstrate this has been via thecolour of ochre and its potential link with a form ofsignalling Power et al (2013) suggest ochre use wascosmetic supporting the earlier hypothesis of Powerand Aiello (1997) that red ochre had ritual power andwould have been used to signal fertility If true wouldthis lsquosham menstruationrsquo be symbolic in the Peirceansense6 Under the female cosmetic coalition hypoth-esis redness is an index of blood but would even-tually lsquoevolversquo into a ritualized display It is difficultto demonstrate that ochre use was only iconic or in-dexical as it would be hard to disprove the assertionthat it has symbolic qualities As symbolic objects bytheir very nature have iconic and indexical groundsshowing that there are iconic aspects to ochre doesnot disprove its symbolic significance As we can-not disprove symbolic significance by demonstratingan objectrsquos indexical meaning archaeologists are hard

7

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Marc Kissel amp Agustiacuten Fuentes

Figure 2 Sites that have recorded use of ochre (Data from Kissel amp Fuentes in review)

pressed to disprove the null hypothesis that an objecthas symbolic grounds Because of this we are scep-tical of ever proving or disproving symbolic thoughtin a Peircean sense without detailed knowledge of thecultural practices

Rather by using a semiotic approach we seeknot necessarily to identify its function but rather totrace if ochre gained meaning By utilizing Peircersquosfirst trichotomy we can ask if and how the ochrefunctioned as a sign For Peirce a sign is somethingthat stands for something Does the ochre stand foranything And if it does can we trace this meaningthrough semiotics

The Worldwide Instances of Symbolic Data Out-lining Modernity (Kissel amp Fuentes in review) allowus to ask when ochre first appears in the archaeo-logical record (Fig 2) The earliest site by far is BizatRuhama where Ronan et al (1998) report two piecesof yellow ochre from a site that dates to a minimumof 780000 bp Ochre then appears sporadically at sitesfrom between 300ndash100000 bp though there is no ge-ographic patterning to where these sites are located

Watts suggests that after 200000 bp lsquohabitual collec-tive ritual may have been causally implicated in ourspeciationrsquo (Watts 2014 226)

The first step in a semiotic study is to ask aboutthe sign itself rather than the signndashobject relationshipWe can imagine a human living at a site in south-ern Africa who has the idea for whatever reason ofcolour The feeling she gets the qualisign cannot beembodied by itself (we can have the feeling of bluewhich is a qualisign but this cannot be expressedphysically) If she had the lsquoidearsquo of yellow red or blueand wanted to express it physically she might find away to embody it via a singular instance a sinsignperhaps by choosing a piece of red ochre found on theground7 The qualisign could then be embodied in dif-ferent ways rubbing the ochre on a wall on her bodyon a tool rock or other material item

Another possible way of embodying the qual-isign of red may be seen in the heating the ochre tomake it red Hovers et al (2003) show that goethite ayellow-brownish ochre may have been intentionallyheated at Qafzeh (100ndash90000 bp) in order to turn it

8

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Semiosis in the Pleistocene

red They further note that red hues are common in thearchaeological assemblage though yellow goethite isubiquitous throughout the exposures The ochre nod-ules that were heated were subjected to controlledheating had they been overheated they would haveturned black (Godfrey-Smith amp Ilani 2004) Its pres-ence suggests that red was a desired quality for thehumans at the site

If this person wanted to mark something as redand used red ochre for this reason she was usingthat ochre as an iconic sinsign As soon as the persontook the idea (the qualisign) and marked an artefactshe was making a sinsign Later when archaeologistsstudy the artefact semiotic properties lead them tothink of red In this way we do not yet have to knowif there is any other connotation such as blood to theredness (if the red was supposed to connote bloodrather than simply the colour red this is an indexi-cal sinsign as the link to blood is due to the causallink between the two) Ochre then could have beenan iconic sinsign or an indexical sinsign

If the creation of this sinsign is reproduced bythat person and then by others it has the potential tobecome a legisign As legisigns are made to be usedif we can show that ochre legisigns existed it wouldsupport the assertion of complex semiotics in the Mid-dle Pleistocene In support of this we note that ochrerecovered from palaeoanthropological contexts tendsto be red (Hovers et al 2003) The ubiquity of red ochreat human sites may indicate that humans were ei-ther deliberately selecting red ochre or intriguinglyheating the nodules to produce a red colour Rednessseems to have been a desired trait and its ubiquitysuggests that there was meaning behind its use Thisdoes not suggest that there was an inherent fitnessvalue attached to the use of red ochre or even a spe-cific function just that it had meaning as a sign tothose people using it

The earliest examples of ochre in the archaeolog-ical record are at the basic semiotic level sinsignsWe cannot excavate a legisign since they are too lsquogen-eralrsquo and live in the mind (or more properly withinthe shared cultural system) rather than in the naturalworld However we may be able to find replicas Areplicarsquos shape is determined by the legisign whichalso determines how it is interpreted (but not neces-sarily what the interpretation is) When we interpretsomething as a being a replica of that legisign we as-sume that it was made for that very reason lsquoOthersigns may be used to signify as a piece of cloth maybe used as a sample of its colour but normally theydo not exist in order to be so used and their signif-icance does not depend upon the fact that they areso usedrsquo (Short 1982 292) In other words the cre-

ation of legisigns is goal-directed To be clear the in-terpretation of signs is always teleological but the cre-ation of them is not except in the case of conven-tional legisigns (Short 1982) In archaeological termsif we were to find a situation in which ochre was be-ing used to create a similar motif on a cave wall thatcould suggest the presence of replicas which impliesthat a legisign exists For example if in creating thered mark via ochre on a piece of clothing or on herown skin the individual was conveying a messageit may be a replica of a legisign The main reason forproducing this artefact is to cause in another individ-ualrsquos mind a particular type of thought or emotionCreating a replica of a legisign happens on purposeHowever it is difficult to know this when all we haveare isolated instances As sites with ochre tend to havemany pieces this suggests that their use is not a one-time occurrence

Sites such as Hollow Rock Shelter that reportlarge quantities of ochre may allow us to iden-tify replicas of legisigns A single example of ochreuse such as the concentration of ochre found asMaastricht-Belveacutedegravere (Roebroeks et al 2012) wouldin this system be a sinsign At Hollow Rock Shel-ter however there are over 1000 pieces of ochre with8 per cent of them modified and two reported ashaving engravings (Dayet et al 2013 Evans 1994)These individual instances are likely the result of ashared system of practice and thus reflect the exis-tence of a legisign with each singular occurrence be-ing a replica

Shell use

The interpretation of shell beads in the Pleistocene iscontentious Henshilwood and Dubreuil (2009 2011)argue that the Blombos beads are proper symbols lsquoInthe archaeological literature beads are indisputablyregarded as symbolic artefacts and indicative ofldquomodernrdquo behaviourrsquo(Henshilwood amp Dubreuil 200950) They argue that beads can be proxies for lsquomodernsyntactical language which would have been essen-tial for the sharing and transmission of the symbolicmeaning of personal ornaments within and betweengroups and also over generationsrsquo (Henshilwood ampDubreuil 2011 374ndash5) Discussing the Later Stone Agesite of Enkapune Ya Muto Ambrose (1998 388ndash9) sug-gests that by 39000 years ago ostrich eggshell beadswere used in a type of hxaro gift exchange and theyfunctioned as a symbolic marker for a lsquosocial securitysystem that permitted behaviourally modern humansto survive in more risky environmentsrsquo There maybe something in the fact that the beads of the MiddleStone Age are mostly made of marine shell Ostrich

9

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Marc Kissel amp Agustiacuten Fuentes

eggshell beads only show up in the Later Stone AgeCould we be seeing different types of embedded qual-isigns

Others agree with the symbolism distinctionlsquoBeyond signalling and possibly complementary to itthey might also represent a type of charm The sumof their properties makes these shells important sym-bolic itemsrsquo (Bar-Yosef Mayer 2015 83) lsquoBeads rep-resent a behaviour specific to humans whereby stan-dardized items are displayed on the physical bodyto project symbolic meaning that can be interpretedby members of the same or other groups that share acommon culturersquo (Vanhaeren et al 2013 500) lsquoInfer-ring symbolic meanings of non-utilitarian items suchas beads is less ambiguousrsquo (Ambrose 1998 388)

Sceptics however have questioned the sym-bolic nature of beads Wynn and Coolidge (2011) sug-gest beads functioned as tally devices Malafouris(2008) argues that beads show the recognition ofselfother distinction but not suggestive of morecomplex thought Coolidge and Wynn (2011) like-wise suggest that while beads show evidence of self-reflection they do not demonstrate that there was ashared meaning behind the beads which would indi-cate symbolic thought To put this in Peircean termsthese scholars would see beads as indexical but lack-ing a necessary ground between sign and object tomake them symbolic

The use of marine shells has been well doc-umented (Bar-Yosef Mayer 2015) Bar-Yosef Mayershows that the majority of beads from Middle Palae-olithic and Middle Stone Age sites come from thegenus Nassarius Many of the perforations are naturalwith humans choosing shells that were already per-forated though some appear to have been artificiallydrilled One reason for doubting the symbolic signifi-cance of beads has been the lack of continuity as theseand other objects tend to show up sporadically at sitesacross a wide geographic range (glimmering) ratherthan persisting before 50000 bp (Kissel amp Fuentes2016)This lack of persistence could suggest that sym-bolic thought was not yet possible as it is often as-sumed that once gained humans would not have lostthis capability (though see drsquoErrico amp Backwell 2016for recent evidence of continuity) While we cannotyet make a direct connection between the three mainregions (Fig 3) where beads first appear it is possi-ble due to similarities in the production and choice ofshell that they shared a common system of meaningmaking and are thus suggestive of legisigns

This does not mean that each population thoughtabout shell beads in the same way Indeed we couldclaim that only the originator of the beads had asymbolic-mediated expression embedded in the or-

naments and the other examples were copies madewithout being fully enmeshed in the culture Morelikely in our minds is transmission of the ideas per-haps in the form of stimulus diffusion as argued byKroeber (1940) By using the first level of sign termi-nology we can better articulate the processes of beadsign-making at 100000 years ago

We can first ask what qualisigns are embeddedin these beads Bar-Yosef Mayer (2015) notes that 166Nassarius beads have been recorded from sites alongboth the South African and Mediterranean coastsSpecifically she suggests that two species of Nassar-ius used resemble each other more than others andthat they were used in similar ways N gibbosulusis found in Mediterranean and North African coastswhile N kraussianus is found in South Africa Besideshaving similar morphologies they have similar per-forations to them However both regions are rich inpossible shells making many ask why Nassarius werefavoured Stiner et al (2013) argue that their small sizeround surface and ability to be perforated withoutbreaking made them prime choices There may also besome colour preferences but this is hard to prove asthe majority of shells in assemblages found on beachesare similar in colour to those found in archaeologicalcontexts (Bar-Yosef Mayer 2015)

So are there embedded qualisigns that we cantrack A favoured species of shell may indicate thathumans at these sites chose that species for logis-tical reasons However it is also possible that theyfavoured them for other aesthetic reasons (Bar-YosefMayer et al 2009 drsquoErrico et al 2005 Vanhaeren et al2006)

Are shell beads used to send signals Modern ex-amples would suggest this is the case (Wilkie 2014)but it is of course difficult to assess this in the pastThese meant something(s) to the people making themthough the exact nature of the premise is currently un-known By wearing a bead you are sending some sig-nal to others you are purposely creating a sign Theact of creating this sign indicates awareness and thussuggests it is a replica Yet as Malafouris (2008) andothers suggest we can propose scenarios in whichthere does not have to be a conventional link betweenthe object and sign If we can show that these beads arereplicas then they demonstrate that a legisign existswhich would imply that they were being created toproduce a specific reaction (whether or not the actualreaction is the intended one is another story) Whilewe cannot say for certain that it is symbolic it wouldsuggest that legisigns abound in the Pleistocene

Evidence of this comes from the Still Bay layers atBlombos Cave where archaeologists have identified achange in the way beads were strung together

10

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Semiosis in the Pleistocene

Figure 3 Sites that have recorded use of shell beads (Data from Kissel amp Fuentes in review)

The results of our research demonstrate that Nk[Nassarius kraussianus] shells were used as beadsat Blombos Cave for a time period encompassingat least one environmental shift During this pe-riod we have identified a change in the way beadswere strung together and this represents the earli-est known change of a customised style or normgoverning symbolically mediated behaviour In thisrespect the observed changes made by the BlombosCave inhabitants parallel the many similar changesin symbolic norms observed among more recentand historically known human societies (Vanhaerenet al 2013 515ndash16)

Based on their analysis of shell beads from Blom-bos Vanhaeren et al suggest that shell use was nota short-lived tradition but may have lasted hundredsor even thousands of years leading to a lsquolong-lastingsymbolic use of Nk shell beads by H sapiens in south-ern Africa at this timersquo (Vanhaeren et al 2013 514)Vanhaeren and colleagues argue that we are seeingdifferent social norms shared by members of a com-munity a change between an lsquoold typersquo and a lsquonewtypersquo of stringing beads Can we understand the rela-

tionship between a sign and object what these beadsmeant symbolically Not without a deep context forestablishing the ground We cannot ascertain theirsymbolic meaning But they are replicas signs madeand shared across time in this culture group Mean-ing was made material and shared However the pat-terning that exists indicates the presence of a legisignIt is a reflective product of the engagement with thebehaviour of making shell beads that suggests a com-munity of practice and ritual

Engravings

Finally we turn to engravings which have beenfound on a number of different media includingbone eggshell ochre shell and stone The questionof whether engravings are symbolic may be the mostrelevant one as they seem the most similar to the tra-ditional symbols we expect to see in the contemporaryworld Many of the engraved lines are not randomlyplaced on an object though this hypothesis still needsto be tested across a broader range of samples There

11

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Marc Kissel amp Agustiacuten Fuentes

are also significant archaeological issues involvedsuch as how many of these objects stand up to stricttaphonomic scrutiny (Davidson 1990) Henshilwoodand Dubreuil (2011) are interested less in the designsand rather focus on the underlying cause of symbolicexpression Importantly they argue that the markingsare true symbols Yet as we have suggested here theissue may not be whether a Saussurean or Peirceandefinition of symbol is most applicable but ratherat which level of Peircersquos trichotomies can we ap-ply his ideas to the archaeological record Are theseengravings signs at all

Does the creation of these lines indicate symbolicthought At a cursory level there is similar patterningseen throughout different sites which may suggestshared legisigns similar to if we found similar pot-tery styles within a region Hodgson (2006 2014) hasargued for what he calls a lsquoneurovisual resonance the-oryrsquo which argues that the similarities seen in engrav-ing motifs on eggshell from Diepkloof (the oldest ex-ample dates to 119ndash99000 bp with most in HowiesonsPoort layers) and ochre from Blombos (75ndash69000 bpStill Bay assemblages) are not indicators of symbolicthought For Hodsgon these engravings are not partof a larger cultural tradition nor are they symbolicHe argues that early humans using ochre accidentallycreated patterns on the ochre nodules they were us-ing These patterns arose curiosity in them due toneural resonance with phosphenes (visual tracks cre-ated when closing the eyes tightly) Hodgson arguesthat the way these accidentally created lines resonatedwith the existing visual system in turn engendered thecreation of intentionally engraved objects This feel-ingarousal is thus a qualisign It then becomes em-bodied in an iconic sinsign on the ochre or stone onwhich it is engraved Individual instances of engravedobjects such as the Palmenhorst pebble from the Mid-dle Stone Age of Namibia (Wendt 1975) are sinsignsAt sites with a large number of examples such asthe numerous engraved ostrich eggshells at Diepkloof(Texier et al 2013) the artefacts can be seen as replicasof a shared legisign

At a site such as Klipdrift where over 95engraved ostrich eggshell pieces are reported (Hen-shilwood et al 2014) we can perhaps reconstructthe semiosis at the site The engravings have notall been published so at this time we cannot in-fer much However they appear to have verysimilar patterns (sinsigns or replicas) and theubiquity of them at the site indicates that theyare replicas thus we can infer legisigns Clearlythese markings had meaning Whether they connotedownership such as potterrsquos marks used to indicate towhom a vessel belonged when placed in a communal

kiln or meant something entirely different is hard ifnot impossible to say Yet from a Peircean perspectivewe can reasonably conclude from their patterns andtheir presence a shared system of meaning making

Engraved lines are found on multiple objects (os-trich eggshell ochre bone and stone) The homininsdoing the engraving were embedding qualisigns inthese materials With more fine-grained data we cantrace qualisigns through different media Perhapsthese are examples of humans copying phosphenesin the world around them Under this system mostof the early examples of engraving those that showup sporadically across time and space are sinsignsThey show earlier humans interacting with the nat-ural world and creating artefacts but not necessar-ily for the consumption of others This may have hadmeaning for the individual but we cannot tell if it waspart of a larger overarching system of meaning mak-ing However at sites with many engravings (suchas those with the eggshells) we can infer if enoughinformation is present that a legisign existed Thusin these cases the individuals making these artefactswere involved in a larger system in which they hopedto produce some effect on their and their communitymembersrsquo minds Table 1 provides a summary and ex-ample of our theoretical framework

Discussion

A problem with this entire endeavour is that manyif not most of the meaning-making behaviours thatwere being performed before sim100000 years ago wereephemeral and that our ability to recover archaeolog-ical data is always biased in both space and time Thismakes it absolutely clear that much of the potentialsemiotic process during the critical time periods of300ndash100000 bp will be archaeologically invisible Thesporadic occurrences and glimmerings of these earlysigns may be imbued with exaggerated influence dueto these biases We acknowledge this but argue thatour proposal retains merit even if the actual evidenceof legisign is scanty until the last 100000 years It isprecisely the evolution of such capacities of meaningmaking that we seek to understand so moving awayfrom the determination of symbol versus non-symboleven in disparate and depauperate data sets can fa-cilitate enhanced analyses

We have attempted to show the benefits of em-bracing a sort of semiotic palaeoanthropology onewhich utilizes a Peircean system to track the appear-ance of meaning making in the Pleistocene While pre-vious scholars have commented on the applicationof his iconndashindexndashsymbol distinction applying thatlevel of semiotic function is complicated by the lack of

12

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Semiosis in the Pleistocene

Table 1 Summary of theoretical framework utilized in this paper

Class Qualisign Sinsign Legisign

Ochre lsquocolournessrsquo Maastricht-Belveacutedegravere (Roebroeks et al2012)

Ochre nodules at Hollow RockShelter (Evans 1994)

Bead Nassarius use lsquocolournessrsquo Instances at various cave sites in NorthAfrica (Bouzouggar et al 2007)

Changing shell bead motifs atBlombos (Vanhaeren et al 2013)

Engraving lsquophosphenesrsquo lsquopatternsrsquo

Engraved bone pieces such as at SainteAnne (Raynal amp Seguy 1986) orengraved shell at Trinil (Joordenset al 2014)

Engraved ostrich eggshells atDiepkloof (Texier et al 2013)

distinct cultural knowledge for early human culturesA semiotic palaeoanthropology however aims to un-derstand not what signs stood for but how they stoodfor things We wish to know how signs and their ob-jects are related to the behaviour of their users Fur-thermore this is a step towards a more integrativeanthropology (Fuentes 2015 2016) as searching forembodied behaviours expressed in the archaeologicalrecord requires understanding the semiotic capacityof early humans

Asking if early humans embedded qualisignsinto artefacts is a first step in bridging the gap Werethey doing this intentionally Why does ochre at ar-chaeological sites tend to be red Why are Nassariusshells the preferred species for making beads (Bar-Yosef Mayer 2015)

Recently archaeologists have used a semiotic ap-proach to try to understand meaning making in thepast (Hendon 2010 Lau 2010 Preucel 2006) These ap-proaches tend to be for societies in which we knowa lot more about the culture history Hendon (2010)attempts an archaeological study of memory usingsemiotics to understand the role that temples andother objects played in Mayan life Under this sys-tem Temple 22 at Copan is seen as a set of symbols alsquomimetic image of a specific mountain that recalls im-portant formative events and relations without whichlife as the Maya knew it would not existrsquo (Hendon2010 76) Yet for the Mayan world this can be doneby using contemporaneous texts colonial-era sourcesand ethnographic work among modern descendantsof the Maya

This method is not without its limits and prob-lems One difficulty of semiotics and the Peircean ap-proach in general is that the terminology is notori-ously opaque As one critic notes Peircersquos lsquoscatteredwritings employ a peculiarly personal and tortuoustechnical vocabulary which was not stable over timersquo(Leach 1985 154) Because of this scholars are forcedto employ numerous complex phrasings that requirenon-experts to grapple with terms such as lsquoRhematicIndexical Sinsignrsquo Fans and scholars of Peirce often

quibble over the exact meaning of his terms and thefact that his classification system changed over hisyears of writing makes it difficult to pinpoint what hemeans

Also simply arguing for new terminology doesnot form an explanation What we strive for here is tosuggest rethinking the level of analysis forcing schol-ars to de-emphasize the symbolic aspects of semiosis

Can we trace replicas of legisigns Sites withhigh preservation such as Blombos Cave can showembedded qualisigns within different artefact classesThe work on the Blombos shell beads discussed abovesuggests a changing system of how they were strungtogether This could indicate a change in the overalllegisign What we argue is that this terminology doesnot require direct knowledge of the object of the signvehicle Sinsigns abound Replicas appear when wecan see the formation of a conventional approach totheir creation Notions such as colour and patterningare qualities that are of interest to most humans andprobably to other species as well Early humans be-gan to embody these concepts into individual objectscreating complex sinsigns of engraved bone colouredshell beads and patterns on various media In someplaces the production of these artefacts became partof the larger cultural system the legisign

Shifting to how things meant rather than whatthey meant is useful but it needs further elaborationto get around the objection that it still assumes thatthey meant something As one reviewer of an earlierdraft of this paper notes would an Oldowan choppercount as a replica once we find dozens of them at onesite In some sense it would suggest that there wasan overarching system that governed the creation ofthese artefacts But the salient point is that it does notrequire the use of symbolic thought However repli-cas that embody qualisigns beyond efficiency mayallow for the discovery of a more complex set oflegisigns (and even stone tools may be important heresee Sterelny amp Hiscock 2014)

While it has been the subject of much researchfrom a Peircean perspective the symbol is not the

13

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Marc Kissel amp Agustiacuten Fuentes

most important nor the highest order of semioticrepresentation (Ball 2016) Instead it is the legisignwhich provides a way to discuss signs without notingtheir symbolicity (or for that matter their iconicity orindexicality) lsquoIt is the fact there is pattern and the pat-tern is a reflexive product of engagement with somekind of habit and this is accomplished in communi-ties of people together this is really what the point isthat Peirce was trying to makersquo (Ball 2016 234)

The formation of legisigns allows for groupideasconceptsideals to be passed on to the next gen-eration but does not carry with it the overt attemptat ascribing specific meaning Tracing legisigns in thePleistocene allows not only for a more inclusive formof anthropology but is the critical first step in semi-otic analysis Once we are able to discern their pres-ence perhaps further theorizing will allow scientistsaccurately to track symbols themselves We see thisevidence of shared intentionality as one of the aspectsof human distinctiveness that emerged as our ances-tors expanded their niche and increased their socialnetworks (eg Tomasello 2014)

Notes

1 This is similar to Saussurersquos description of a sign2 There is something to be said for the prevalence of

the working assumption that there will be a discreteboundary between hominin species and between earlyhominins and non-human primates

3 The interpretant can also be divided into three differ-ent types the third trichotomy where the emphasis isnot what is being signified but rather how the sign af-fects the interpretant The lowest category the rhemecalls attention to something A spontaneous cry for ex-ample calls our attention to the utterer The second cat-egory the dicisign forces us to make an interpretationor opinion Peirce provides the example of a weathervane as a dicisign or dicent since we need to interpretit A dicisign makes us note the features the sign uses tosignify its object The final category the delome is wherethe interpretant is assumed to be aware of a specific lawor convention and that she will apply that to come tothe correct object (Short 1982)

4 It can require some knowledge though Interpreting aweathervane as showing the direction of the wind re-quires learning how to interpret it

5 Jappyrsquos example of the footprint in the sand that Robin-son Crusoe found being a sinsign helps to make thispoint it is not part of a large system of legisigns thoughof course as a sinsign it was quite important to Crusoehimself

6 Female birds interpret colourful plumage on a malebird as a signal of fitness However the male bird is notproducing colourful feathers through its own will (asfar as we know hellip)

7 Technically this would be an iconic sinsign as thereis a direct connection between the colour chip and thecolour itself

Acknowledgements

The authors thanks Celia Deane-Drummond BeckyArtinian-Kaiser Julia Feder Adam Willows Chris BallJeffery Peterson and the Evolution of Human WisdomWorking Group for useful input and advice We also thanktwo anonymous reviewers and John Robb for incisive andinsightful critiques This projectpublication was madepossible through the support of a grant from the JohnTempleton Foundation The opinions expressed in this pub-lication are those of the author(s) and do not necessarilyreflect the views of the John Templeton Foundation

Marc KisselAgustiacuten Fuentes

References

Ambrose S 1998 Chronology of the Later Stone Age andfood production in East Africa Journal of Archaeologi-cal Science 25 377ndash92

Ball C 2014 On dicentization Journal of Linguistic Anthro-pology 24(2) 151ndash73

Ball C 2016 Comment on lsquoFrom hominid to human therole of human wisdom and distinctiveness in the evo-lution of modern humansrsquo Philosophy Theology and theSciences 3(2) 233ndash4

Bar-Yosef Mayer DE 2015 Nassarius shells preferredbeads of the Palaeolithic Quaternary International 39079ndash84

Bar-Yosef Mayer DE B Vandermeersch amp O Bar-Yosef2009 Shells and ochre in Middle Paleolithic QafzehCave Israel indications for modern behavior Journalof Human Evolution 56 307ndash14

Bednarik RG JD Lewis-Williams amp T Dowson 1990 Onneuropsychology and shamanism in rock art CurrentAnthropology 31 77

Bouzouggar A N Barton M Vanhaeren et al 200782000-year-old shell beads from North Africa and im-plications for the origins of modern human behaviorProceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 104(24)9964ndash9

Chase PG amp HL Dibble 1987 Middle paleolithic symbol-ism a review of current evidence and interpretationsJournal of Anthropological Archaeology 6 263ndash96

Coolidge FL amp T Wynn 2011 Comment on HenshilwoodC and Dubreuil B lsquoThe Still Bay and HowiesonsPoort 77ndash59 ka symbolic material culture and theevolution of the mind during the African MiddleStone Agersquo Current Anthropology 52 380ndash82

drsquoErrico F amp L Backwell 2016 Earliest evidence of per-sonal ornaments associated with burial the Conusshells from Border Cave Journal of Human Evolution93 91ndash108

14

httpsdoiorg101017S0959774317000014Downloaded from httpswwwcambridgeorgcore University of Notre Dame on 01 Apr 2017 at 111415 subject to the Cambridge Core terms of use available at httpswwwcambridgeorgcoreterms

Semiosis in the Pleistocene

drsquoErrico F C Henshilwood M Vanhaeren amp K vanNiekerk 2005 Nassarius kraussianus shell beads fromBlombos Cave evidence for symbolic behaviour inthe Middle Stone Age Journal of Human Evolution 483ndash24

drsquoErrico F M Vanhaeren CS Henshilwood et al 2009From the origin of language to the diversification oflanguages what can archaeology and palaeoanthro-pology say in Becoming Eloquent Advances in theemergence of language eds F drsquoErrico amp J-M HombertAmsterdam John Benjamins 13ndash68

Davidson I 1990 Bilzingsleben and early marking RockArt Research 7 52ndash6

Dayet L P-J Texier F Daniel amp G Porraz 2013 Ochre re-sources from the Middle Stone Age sequence of Diep-kloof Rock Shelter Western Cape South Africa Jour-nal of Archaeological Science 40 3492ndash505

de Waal C 2013 Peirce A guide for the perplexed LondonBloomsbury

Deacon TW 1997 The Symbolic Species The co-evolution oflanguage and the brain New York (NY) WW Norton

Deacon TW 2010 On the human rethinking the naturalselection of human language On the Human httpnationalhumanitiescenterorgon-the-human201002on-the-human-rethinking-the-natural-selection-of-human-language (accessed 9 January2017)

Eco U 1976 A Theory of Semiotics Bloomington (IN) Indi-ana University Press

Evans U 1994 Hollow Rock Shelter a Middle Stone Agesite in the Cederberg Southern African Field Archaeol-ogy 3 63ndash73

Fuentes A 2015 Integrative anthropology and the humanniche toward a contemporary approach to humanevolution American Anthropologist 117 302ndash15

Fuentes A 2016 The extended evolutionary synthesisethnography and the human niche toward an inte-grated anthropology Current Anthropology 57 S13ndashS26

Gallup GG Jr 1977 Self-recognition in primates a com-parative approach to the bidirectional properties ofconsciousness American Psychologist 32(5) 329ndash38

Godfrey-Smith DI amp S Ilani 2004 Past thermal history ofgoethite and hematite fragments from Qafzeh Cavededuced from thermal activation characteristics ofthe 110degC TL peak of enclosed quartz grains Revuedrsquoarcheacuteomeacutetrie 28 185ndash90

Hendon J 2010 Houses in a Landscape Memory and every-day life in Mesoamerica Durham (NC) Duke Univer-sity Press

Henshilwood CS amp B Dubreuil 2009 Reading the arti-facts gleaning language skills from the Middle StoneAge in southern Africa in The Cradle of Languageeds R Botha amp C Knight Oxford Oxford UniversityPress 41ndash61

Henshilwood CS amp B Dubreuil 2011 The Still Bayand Howiesons Poort 77ndash59 ka symbolic materialculture and the evolution of the mind during the

African Middle Stone Age Current Anthropology 52(3)361ndash400

Henshilwood CS KL van Niekerk S Wurz et al 2014Klipdrift Shelter Southern Cape South Africa Pre-liminary report on the Howiesons Poort Layers Jour-nal of Archaeological Science 45 284ndash303

Hodgson D 2006 Understanding the origins of paleoartthe neurovisual resonance theory and brain function-ing PaleoAnthropology 2006 54ndash67

Hodgson D 2014 Decoding the Blombos engravings shellbeads and Diepkloof ostrich eggshell patterns Cam-bridge Archaeological Journal 24 57ndash69

Hovers E S Ilani O Bar-Yosef amp B Vandermeersch 2003An early case of color symbolism Current Anthropol-ogy 44 491ndash522

Iliopoulos A 2016 The material dimensions of significa-tion rethinking the nature and emergence of semiosisin the debate on human origins Quaternary Interna-tional 405 111ndash24

Jappy T 2013 Introduction to Peircean Visual Semiotics Lon-don Bloomsbury

Joordens JCA F drsquoErrico FP Wesselingh et al 2014Homo erectus at Trinil on Java used shells for tool pro-duction and engraving Nature 518 228ndash31

Joyce R 2007 Figurines meaning and meaning-making inearly Mesoamerica in Image and Imagination A globalprehistory of figurative representation eds C Renfrew ampI Morley Cambridge McDonald Institute for Archae-ological Research 107ndash16

Keane W 2003 Semiotics and the social analysis ofmaterial things Language and Communication 23409ndash25

Kissel M amp A Fuentes 2016 From hominid to human therole of human wisdom and distinctiveness in the evo-lution of modern humans Philosophy Theology and theSciences 3(2) 217ndash44

Kissel M amp A Fuentes in review Symbolic behavior andmodern human origins a database of lsquosymbolicrsquo ac-tivity from the early and middle Pleistocene

Kohn E 2013 How Forests Think Toward an anthropology be-yond the human Berkeley (CA) University of Califor-nia Press

Kroeber AL 1940 Stimulus diffusion American Anthropol-ogist 42 1ndash20

Lau GF 2010 The work of surfaces object worlds andtechniques of enhancement in the ancient Andes Jour-nal of Material Culture 15 259ndash86

Leach E 1985 Review of lsquoManrsquos Glassy Essencersquo AmericanEthnologist 12 154ndash6

Malafouris L 2008 Beads for a plastic mind the lsquoBlindManrsquos Stickrsquo (BMS) hypothesis and the active natureof material culture Cambridge Archaeological Journal18 401ndash14

Marean CW 2015 An evolutionary anthropological per-spective on modern human origins Annual Review ofAnthropology 44 533ndash56

Mertz E 2007 Semiotic anthropology Annual Review of An-thropology 36 337ndash53

15

httpsdoiorg101017S0959774317000014Downloaded from httpswwwcambridgeorgcore University of Notre Dame on 01 Apr 2017 at 111415 subject to the Cambridge Core terms of use available at httpswwwcambridgeorgcoreterms

Marc Kissel amp Agustiacuten Fuentes

Parmentier R 1994a Comment on lsquoSymboling and theMiddle-Upper Paleolithic transition a theoretical andmethodological critiquersquo Current Anthropology 35388ndash9

Parmentier R 1994b Signs in Society Studies in semioticanthropology Bloomington (IN) Indiana UniversityPress

Parmentier R 1997 The pragmatic semiotics of culturesSemiotica 116 1ndash115

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Peirce C 1998 The Essential Peirce ndash Volume 2 Bloomington(IN) Indiana University Press

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Power C V Sommer amp I Watts 2013 The seasonality ther-mostat female reproductive synchrony and male be-haviour in monkeys Neanderthals and modern hu-mans PaleoAnthropology 2013 33ndash60

Preucel RW 2006 Archaeological Semiotics Oxford Black-well

Preucel R amp A Bauer 2001 Archaeological pragmaticsNorwegian Archaeological Review 34 85ndash96

Raynal JP amp R Seguy 1986 Os inciseacute Acheuleacuteen de Sainte-Anne 1 (Polignac Haute-Loire)[Acheulean incisedbone of Sainte-Anne I (Polignac Haute-Loire)] Revuearcheacuteologique du Centre de la France 25 79ndash81

Rifkin RF 2011 Assessing the efficacy of red ochre as aprehistoric hide tanning ingredient Journal of AfricanArchaeology 9 131ndash58

Roebroeks W MJ Sier TK Nielsen D De LoedkerJM Pareacutes CES Arps amp HJ Muumlcher 2012 Use ofred ochre by early Neandertals Proceedings of the Na-tional Academy of Sciences 109 1889ndash94

Ronen A J-M Burdukiewicz SA Laukhin et al 1998The Lower Palaeolithic site Bitzat Ruhama in theNorthern Negev Israel Archaumlologisches Korrespon-denzblatt 28 163ndash73

Rossano MJ 2010 Making friends making tools and mak-ing symbols Current Anthropology 51 S89ndash98

Savan D 1988 An Introduction to CS Peircersquos Full System ofSemeiotic Toronto Toronto Semiotic Circle

Short TL 1982 Life among the legisigns Transactions of theCharles S Peirce Society 18 285ndash310

Short TL 2007 Peircersquos Theory of Signs Cambridge Cam-bridge University Press

Singer M 1978 For a semiotic anthropology in Sight Soundand Sense ed TA Sebeok Bloomington (IN) IndianaUniversity Press 202ndash31

Sterelny K amp P Hiscock 2014 Symbols signals and thearchaeological record Biological Theory 9 1ndash3

Stiner MC SL Kuhn amp E Guumlleccedil 2013 Early Upper Pale-olithic shell beads at Uumlccedilagızlı Cave I (Turkey) technol-ogy and the socioeconomic context of ornament life-histories Journal of Human Evolution 64 380ndash98

Texier P G Porraz J Parkington J-P Rigaud C Poggen-poel amp C Tribolo 2013 The context form and signifi-

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Tomasello M 2014 A Natural History of Human ThinkingCambridge (MA) Harvard University Press

Tributsch H 2016 Ochre bathing of the bearded vulturea bio-mimetic model for early humans towards smellprevention and health Animals 6 1ndash17

Vanhaeren M F drsquoErrico CB Stringer S James J Toddamp H Mienis 2006 Middle Paleolithic shell beads inIsrael and Algeria Science 312 1785ndash8

Vanhaeren M F DrsquoErrico KL van Niekerk CS Hen-shilwood amp RM Erasmus 2013 Thinking strings ad-ditional evidence for personal ornament use in theMiddle Stone Age at Blombos Cave South AfricaJournal of Human Evolution 64 500ndash517

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Wynn T amp FL Coolidge 2009 Implications of a strict stan-dard for recognizing modern cognition in prehistoryin Cognitive Archaeology and Human Evolution edsS de Beaune FL Coolidge amp T Wynn CambridgeCambridge University Press 117ndash28

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Author biographies

Marc Kissel completed his PhD at the University ofWisconsin-Madison and is currently a postdoctoral re-searcher in the department of anthropology at the Univer-sity of Notre Dame where he works on a project on the evo-lution of human symbolic thought His research includes thestudy of modern human origins and the evolutionary arc ofhuman warfare

Agustiacuten Fuentes completed a BA in Zoology and Anthro-pology and an MA and PhD in Anthropology at the Uni-versity of California Berkeley and is currently a Professorof Anthropology at the University of Notre Dame His cur-rent foci include cooperation and bonding in human evo-lution ethnoprimatology and multispecies anthropologyevolutionary theory and public perceptions of and inter-disciplinary approaches to human nature(s)

16

httpsdoiorg101017S0959774317000014Downloaded from httpswwwcambridgeorgcore University of Notre Dame on 01 Apr 2017 at 111415 subject to the Cambridge Core terms of use available at httpswwwcambridgeorgcoreterms