Richard Davies (University of Liverpool)

Objects constituting evidence for behaviours that have been referred to variously as ‘proto-artistic’ ‘proto-symbolic’ or ‘non utilitarian’ are now generally accepted to exist as a genuine facet of the behavioural repertoire of archaic homo, albeit in very small numbers. However, further research into what these behaviours actually constitute, in terms of their role as social technologies, has not been forthcoming. This has partly been due to the restrictions of such a small data set, for example there are only three or four figurative objects extant before the Upper Palaeolithic and this has hampered our understanding of just what behaviours they represent. It has also arguably been due the current obsession with extending the antiquity of behavioural modernity. This paper will put forward one possible methodology; based upon the material relational approach to technology, which will attempt to get beyond this state of affairs. Since the material relational view of material culture sees all technologies as social agents within hybrid biological and material networks, it is the view of this paper that such an approach can help our understanding of the manner in which such objects operate to mediate social relationships. This can be achieved through a comparative approach, modelling the level to which the individual may ‘enchain themselves’ through material means invested in the ‘proto-art’ object and relating this to similar enchainment activities in terms of their ‘quotidian’ subsistence behaviours. This approach also allows us to be relatively free from concerns as to origins of modern cognition since the focus is placed squarely on how the objects would have acted within the social systems of their authors in their own right.