Cattaneo, Cobb and Singer

In 1937, Cattaneo studied 100 ‘miscellaneous’ Argentinean skulls, and stated that suture closure could only provide a suggestive age indicator (Krogman 1962:86). Hrdlicka (1939 cited in Krogman 1962:86) stated that endocranial suture closure was only reliable within ten years on either side of the predicted age. Cobb (1952:840 cited in Krogman 1962:86), using the Todd and Lyon methodology, stated suture closure was only reliable within nine years on either side of the predicted age. In 1953, R. Singer concluded that using cranial sutures as an estimation of age at death was an unreliable assessment methodology (Krogman 1962:86). He found that there is a tendency for the cranial sutures, of both females and males, to either remain open throughout life or to close much earlier than predicted by Todd’s method (Singer 1953:56).

Brooks

In 1948, S. Brooks, at the suggestion of Dr. McCown of the University of California, begun an inquiry into why samples of aboriginal California Indians showed a mean age at death consistently under 30 years (Brooks 1955:568). The method employed attempted to employ Todd’s methods of age determination, using both cranial suture closure and changes to the pubic symphysis, to see if they were applicable to races other than white and negro, and to determine the correlation of these two methods when applied to one individual (Brooks 1955:568). However, Brooks (1955:571) attempted to examine the cranial sutures and pubic symphysis in isolation from the rest of the skeleton, as single variables, which, according to Todd and Lyon (1924) is neither a reliable nor valid methodology.

In 1948, just under 400 individual skeletons from the University of California collection were selected for testing (Brooks 1955:569). In 1950, the some of the skeletons employed by Todd from the Hamann Museum collection were used for review (ibid.). Later, in 1953, a second series of 70 skeletons were analyzed to verify the methodology (ibid.). The sample was chosen based on the following criteria: 1) the individual be over 18 years of age, as judged by long bone epiphysis-diaphysis union and fusion of the three elements of the acetabulum; 2) the crania vault must contain at least the area of the coronal, sagittal and lambdoid sutures; and 3) the symphyseal surface of at least one pubic bone must be preserved (Brooks 1955:569). It should be noted that all of the skeletons were from California, but no consideration was made of area or archaeological horizon (ibid.).

Sex determination was based upon: 1) the ischio-pubic index, wherever possible; 2) breadth of the sciatic notch; 3) subpubic angle; and 4) the general morphology of the skull and mandible (Brooks 1955:570). Following the criteria of expected suture closure set out by Todd (1924; 1925a, 1925b, 1925c), Brooks employed a 5 point scale (0 - open to 4 - complete closure) (Brooks 1955:570). She (Brooks 1955:571) stated that there was “no way of checking the accuracy of either cranial or pubic ages, should they be divergent in one individual, except by indirect approach.”

Brooks (1955:573) found that, for females, there was a “sharp deviation” for the predicted age at death between cranial suture and pubic symphysis methods, of at least 10 years. She states that cranial suture closure tends to lag anywhere from 5 to 25, with a mean of +/- 9 years, behind that of the pubic symphysis (Brooks 1955:573). The male sample showed a deviation from 5 to 8 years, with a mean of +/- 2 years, between cranial suture and pubic symphysis methods (Brooks 1955:574). Brooks found that in cases where all of the sutures were open (predicted age <25),>

McKern and Stewart

In 1957, McKern and Stewart revised the cranial suture closure methodology (Krogman 1962:82). Following the work of Singer (1953), they assigned four parts to the coronal and sagittal sutures and three to the lambdoidal sutures, but followed Todd and Lyon in the five scale rating system (0-4, but 2-3 are combined) (Krogman 1962:82). However, their observations were based solely upon ectocranial suture closure (Krogman 1962:83). McKern and Stewart (1957) noted that closure tends to begin the the 1st and 4th parts of the coronal, 1st part of lambdoid, and 1st and 4th parts of the coronal (ibid.). The final stage of closure tends to be in the 1st and 2nd parts of the sagittal, 1st or 2nd part of lambdoid, and the 1st part of the coronal (ibid.). Although they found that there was an age progression in the uniformity of suture closure, they believed that it was too erratic to be of use in determination of age at death (McKern and Stewart 1957:37). McKern and Stewart (1957:37) concluded that:

So erratic is the onset and progress that an adequate series will provide just about any pattern at any age level. Thus, as a guide for age determination, such a trend is of little use.

Genovese and Messmacher

In 1959, Genovese and Messmacher studied 101 Mexican male skulls of all ages and known identity: 47 ‘indigenas’ and 54 ‘mestizos’ (Krogman 1962:87). They found that the age difference between suture estimation and actual age was 12 years, 11 months (indigenas) and 9 years, 5 months (mesitzos) (ibid.).

Todd and Lyon

The research of Todd and Lyon (1924, 1925a, 1925b, 1925c) provided the groundwork for all North American forensic and physical anthropological studies for the remainder of the 20th century. In 1924, Todd and Lyon proposed to “present the facts concerning suture closure and its relation to the racial form and individual contour of the brain case”(1924:326). The research by Todd and Lyon (1924, 1925a, 1925b, 1925c) was the first new attempt to estimate age using endo and ectocranial suture closure since Pommerol, Ribbé, Frédéric, Parsons and Box, with the specific aim to create a precise numerical rating system for cranial closure (Krogman 1962:78). Todd and Lyon (1924:355) state that:

Until we gathered the accurately dated material in the Hamann Museum, no one possessed a sufficient collection of skulls of known age to justify the interpretation of suture closure upon its age relationship.

Todd and Lyon (1924, 1925a, 1925b, 1925c) tried to ensure that the skeletal material was large enough to justify it as a sample of the population under study. In addition to sex and race, verifiable age at death had to be known and the crania had to be cut, so that examination of the interior surface was possible. Todd and Lyon (1924:330) initially examined the crania of more than 1,000 individuals, from which those of which were of uncertain known age, and did not have a complete post cranial skeletal for comparative study were rejected. Of the original 1000 specimens, 514 crania of known age were examined (ibid.): 307 crania of white males, 58 white females, 120 negro males, and 29 negro females. From this initial sample, 40 white skulls (13.3%) and 41 (34.2%) were excluded as anomalous (Krogman 1962:79).

Todd and Lyon (1924, 1925a, 1925b, 1925c) provide detailed accounts explaining both which skulls (by catalogue number and age) were rejected, and pertinent cranial features which led to the rejection. Rejections were based upon: 1) whether or not the skull belonged to skeletons belonging to the symphyseal anthropoid strain (Todd and Lyon 1924:339-340):

It is characteristic of the anthropoid strain that the pubic age relationships fall nearer to those of the Giant Anthropoids, and there is a clear difference in age relationship of the skeleton between human beings according, as they exhibit the anthropoid strain or the regressive form of symphysis. In the first place, elimination based on the anthropoid strain in the pubic symphysis affects skeletons of the third decade.2) precocious union; 3) no endocranial closure of vault sutures; 4) evidence of dwarfism; and 5) no endocranial closure of any cranial sutures. As stated by Todd and Lyon (1924:348), they were confident in their rejections because they were able to examine the entire skeleton and they were cross referenced with legal documentation of age at death.

Todd and Lyon (1924:331) state that

from the point of view of age determination, the Western Reserve University collection is dependably so far as is humanly possible and much more dependable than the vital statistics upon which actuarial investigations for insurance companies are based.

The age of the specimens ranged from 18 to 84 years (Todd and Lyon 1924:338). Todd and Lyon state that this relatively small sample size was statistically accurate, since the objective of the study was to determine the progress of cranial suture union (ibid.). They note that in certain instances, they observed that sutures seemed to fail to completely close (Todd and Lyon 1924:337). This condition was defined as ‘lapsed union’ of the suture. They defined it as the incomplete union of the suture, characterized by a build up of bone tissue along the edges of the unclosed part (ibid.). Todd and Lyon (1924:337) classed incidents of lapsed union as closed, since a suture in this condition would be unlikely to close to any great extent.

Following the precedent set by anatomists of the seventeenth century, Todd and Lyon (1924:336) grouped the sutures in the following manner: vault [sagittal (and metopic), coronal and lambdoidal]; accessory [spheno-frontal and spheno-parietal]; and circum-meatal [spheno-occipital]. For later decades, they eliminated skulls which exhibited partial or complete closure of the sagittal and masto-occipital at an early age (ibid.). They adopted Broca’s arrangement of complication of sutures, degrees of closure and subdivision of particular sutures, except for the adoption of Frédéric’s inversion of Broca’s categorization of the amount of suture union (i.e. 0 = no union and 4 = complete closure; 1 to 3 refer to the amount of union - one quarter... three quarters). They did not differentiate between union which had progressed halfway along a suture and closure which involved a total of half the length of a suture, but is exhibited in separate, discrete areas (Todd and Lyon 1924:336).

The following information was recorded, as the joint observation of two individuals (Todd and Lyon 1924:331-332): sample crania number, race, sex, age, greatest length, greatest breadth, cephalic index, cranial capacity and sites of Wormian bones. The observations were only accurate for the external and internal surface of the crania, with no accurate information regarding suture conditions within the skull wall (ibid.). The closure for each suture was then averaged and plotted. Todd and Lyon (1924:333) state that in spite of individual differences, there was a definite trend in the progress of suture closure in relation to age.

Todd and Lyon (1924:333) then repeated the above procedure with the male negro and female crania (of both ‘racial stocks’). This led to the elimination of 'abnormal' progress in each of the series, giving a basis for comparison of closure progress in each sex and stock with those of the male Whites, which were thereafter used as a standard (ibid.). They observed the following traits (Todd and Lyon 1924:333): 1) there was a clear orderly age sequence in the process of suture closure; 2) sex, racial stock, cephalic index and cranial capacity have very little effect on this closure sequence; and 3) the timing of the sequence was more obvious endocranially than ectocranially (ibid.).

In attempting to graph their results, Todd and Lyon (1924:334-335) decided not to arbitrarily subdivide age into units of one year. Instead, reasoning that each year of life includes, at the maximum, 18 months and successive ‘years’ overlap; the states of union for all individuals during three successive years of life was summed up, and the average taken in order to calculate a mean value for the state of union characteristic of the second of the three years.This ‘three year averaged’ age would became the focus of later criticism, since it apparently provided absolute ages at which a specific sutural phase would be exhibited. Their error was not including this averaged age in their tabulated results alongside the ‘arbitrary’ age ranges. For example, Todd and Lyon (1924:361) state that for white males, endocranial vault suture closure commences in the following order sagittal (22-23 years), coronal (24 years) and lambdoid (26 years), while closure is completed at 35, 41 and 47 years, respectively. Based upon these results, Todd and Lyon (1924:362) proposed that the rate of cranial suture closure was linked to the final stages of skeletal growth.

In order to test their findings, Todd and Lyon (1924:379) examined 30 randomly selected crania of known age. While, on average, their method provided close approximations of age at death, with a standard deviation of 6 years, it varied across individual crania (ibid.). Although, in comparison with later, revised methods of cranial suture estimation, Todd and Lyon did manage to produce estimated age ranges within 20 years of the actual age at death. However, Todd and Lyon (1924:380) state

our results are of distinct value however, when taken in conjunction with indications given by other parts of the skeleton.

In 1925, Todd and Lyon published three follow papers to the above study (Parts II-IV). Part II (Todd and Lyon 1925a) was an examination of ectocranial suture closure in adult males of white stock, since they acknowledged that in some instances, researchers would not be able to observe endocranial sutures. The sample consisted of the 267 crania employed in the first study, however, new samples were added for comparison as they became available during the course of these three studies (Todd and Lyon 1925a:24). This investigation concluded that (Todd and Lyon 1925a:36): 1) in general, there is no tendency on the part of sutures to begin to close earlier endocranially, rather than ectocranially; 2) the only exceptions to this finding were the pattern exhibited by the inferior masto-occipital, the spheno-frontal and the coronal; 3) ectocranial closure was slower and more variable, with no evidence of periodic activity; 4) ectocranial suture union was never as complete as endocranial closure; and 5) ectocranially, lapsed union is evident in all sutures.

In Part III (Todd and Lyon 1925b) of their research, Todd and Lyon focused upon endocranial suture closure in the ‘American negro’. They believed that this was an important area of study since they were attempting to ascertain whether or not their first study, of white males, could be employed as a standard for identifying age at death for different ‘racial stocks’ (Todd and Lyon 1925b:48). The initial sample consisted of 120 crania of known age from the Hamann collection. However, 41 crania were discarded for exhibiting abnormal traits, just as had been done in the two previous studies (Todd and Lyon 1925b:48). Todd and Lyon concluded that, allowing for individual variation amongst the negro crania, the endocranial closure pattern was generally the same as for the white sample (ibid.). However, they also conclude that Many negro skulls have been rejected as abnormal because of delay in closure of the lambdoid suture. It appears that some change is even now taking place in this region of the negro cranium which would indicate that they believe there is something different occurring within the ‘negro stock’, or, in more current terminology, there seems to be a population specific genetic variation in the endocranial closure of the lambdoid suture (Todd and Lyon 1925b:48).

In Part IV, Todd and Lyon (1925c) examined the occurrence of ectocranial suture closure in the male negro cranium. The sample consisted of the 79 crania selected for Part III of their study (Todd and Lyon 1925c:150). Their findings are as follows (Todd and Lyon 1925c:167-168): 1) endo and ectocranial suture closure patterns are essentially the same for white and negro males; 2) ectocranial closure is more erratic, slower and less complete than endocranial closure; and 3) lapsed union is characteristic of all ectocranial sutures, although it does not appear in all individuals.

In summary, Todd and Lyon (1924, 1925a, 1925b, 1925c) found the following age sequence for cranial suture morphology:

Suture	Endocranial			Ectocranial
	Open	Partial	Closed	Open	Partial	Closed
Sagittal	<23	20-37	>34	<24	23-30	>29
Coronal	<25	23-38	>36	<26	23-84	>26
Lambdoidal	<26	24-43	>41	<26	25-84	>30

These age ranges were applicable for both white and negro males (no racial differences in suture closure), and were a few years younger for females of both racial groups. When this methodology was tested on a random sample of 30 crania of known age, the standard deviation from the ‘real’ age at death was +/- 6 years.

Twentieth Century Research

Parsons and Box

In 1905, F. G. Parsons and C. R. Box examined the significance of internal suture closures using 82 male and female skulls of known age (Todd and Lyon 1924:329). They (Krogman 1962:78) concluded that: 1) closure rarely occurred in a healthy skull before the age of 30; 2) between 30 and 50 years of age there is a fair amount of endocranial closure in coronal and sagittal sutures; and 3) over 60, all endocranial sutures were obliterated. Parsons and Box also suggested that less serrated (simple) sutures closed before all other sutures, and that there were no differences in closure periods for the left or right side of the skull (ibid.). They proposed that the lambdoid was the last of the vault sutures to reach complete closure (Todd and Lyon 1924:355). Overall, they concluded that Dwight was justified in his assessment that cranial sutures closed later in females and that cranial sutures were not a good indicator of age (Todd and Lyon 1924:329; Krogman 1962:78).

Frédéric

In 1906, J. Frédéric examined 255 European and 119 non-European crania of known age (Todd and Lyon 1924:329). However, only 91 European and 13 non-European crania of both sexes were opened so that the internal surface could be examined (ibid.). Following Broca, Frédéric introduced his own rating scale of 0 to 4 (open, less than one half closed, half closed, more than one half closed, and totally closed) (Krogman 1962:77-78). Examining endocranial sutures, he found that the lambdoid closed after the sagittal and coronal (Todd and Lyon 1924:355). Frédéric concluded that it was not possible to determine the age of a skull by the condition of suture union closure with any accuracy greater than +/- one decade (ibid.). However, he stated that suture closure occurred later in females, thus concurring with Dwight, Parsons and Box (Krogman 1962:78).

Bolk

In 1915, Louis Bolk calculated the absolute frequency of premature obliteration in 1820 European juvenile skulls, from which he (Bolk 1915:496) proposed the following terminology for suture closure: precocious (closure before the age of seven) and premature (closure after the age of seven but before the ‘normal’ age of closure).

Conclusion

Cognitive anthropology has helped to provide a bridge between culture and the functioning of the mind (D'Andrade 1995:251-252). It has helped reveal some of the inner workings of the human mind, and given us a greater understanding of how people order and perceive the world around them. Cognitive anthropology has something to offer each of anthropology’s four fields: archaeology, biological anthropology, linguistics, and cultural anthropology.

Cognitive anthropology deals with abstract theories regarding the nature of the mind. While there have been countless methods for accessing culture contained in the mind, questions remain about whether results in fact reflect how individuals organize and perceive society, or whether they are merely manufactured by investigators, having no foundation in their subjects’ reality (Romney 1999:105).

Moreover, it has significantly changed the face of cultural anthropology, particularly with respect to its methodological development. Cognitive methods are used in a variety of anthropological contexts and applied to a variety of subjects. While cognitive anthropology has relied on a strong tradition of linguistic and cultural approaches, perhaps its greatest challenge lay in demonstrating its applicability to the biological and archaeological subfields. In short, cognitive anthropology holds much promise for the future of cultural analysis.

References

Applebaum, Herbert 1987 Perspectives in Cultural Anthropology. State University of New York Press, Albany.

Boyd, Robert and Joan B. Silk 1997 How Humans Evolved. W. W. Norton and Company, New York.

Cerroni-Long, E. L. (ed.) 1999 Anthropological Theory in North America. Bergin and Garvey, London.

Colby, Benjamin 1996 Cognitive Anthropology. Encyclopedia of Cultural Anthropology 1:209-214. David Levison and Melvin Ember (eds.), Henry Holt and Company, New York.

D’Andrade, Roy G. 1995 The Development of Cognitive Anthropology. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge.

Garbarino, Merwyn S. 1983 Sociocultural Theory in Anthropology: A Short History. Waveland Press, Illinois.

Hodder, Ian 1999 The Archaeological Process. Blackwell Publishers, Oxford.

Moore, Henrietta L. (ed.) 1999 Anthropological Theory Today. Polity Press, Cambridge.

Renfrew, Colin and Ezra B. W. Zubrow (eds.) 1994 Ancient Mind: Elements of Cognitive Archaeology. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge.

Romney, A. Kimball 1999 Cultural consensus as a statistical model. Current Anthropology 40:103-115.

Romney, A. Kimball and Moore, Carmella C. 1998 Toward a theory of culture as shared cognitive structures. Ethos 36:314-337.

Shore, Bradd 1996 Culture in Mind: Cognition, Culture and the Problems of Meaning. Oxford University Press, Oxford.

Sperber, Dan 1985 On Anthropological Knowledge. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge.

Tarnas, Richard 1991 The Passion of the Western Mind: Understanding Ideas that have Shaped Our World View. Ballantine Books, New York.

Tattersal, Ian and Jeffrey Schwartz 2000 Extinct Humans. Westview Press, New York.

Tyler, Stephen A. (ed.) 1969 Cognitive Anthropology. Holt, Rinehart and Winston, New York.

Weller, Susan C. and A. Kimball Romney 1988 Systematic Data Collection. Sage University Press, Newbury Park.

The Middle Period

In the 1960s and through much of the 1970s, a great deal of work was done to “evoke native domains structured as taxonomies and paradigms” (Cerroni-Long 1999:90). These methodologies attempted to formulate models which explained how different peoples organized their mental and social worlds. To this end, the following methodologies were employed: taxonomies, paradigms, feature models,prototypes, domains, and the mazeway.

Within cognitive anthropology, taxonomies were defined as beginning with a general concept, which was then divided into more precise categories and terms. This process was then repeated until no further subdivisions were possible (ibid.). Paradigms were thought of in terms of a matrix structure. The fundamental difference between a paradigm and taxonomy was the way in which distinctions were structured (Moore 1999:118).

Folk taxonomies are classes of phenomena arranged by criteria which show the relationship between kinds of things (D’Andrade 1995:99). The first level is the all-inclusive general category. Succeeding distinctions are then made by the classification of similarity and dissimilarity of items. With each separation the levels become more explicit, and the differences between groups of items more miniscule (ibid.).

Several early methodologies used by cognitive anthropologists were embedded in the theory of the feature model (Moore 1999:110). Feature models refer to a broad analytic concept that developed in the 1950’s and 1960’s, primarily within kinship studies. Its general methodological approach assumed that sets of terms can be contrasted to discover the fundamental attributes of each set (ibid.). Feature models were not only concerned with how people organize information, but what that organization meant in terms of mental information processing.

Another important concept during this period was the domain. A domain was defined as being comprised of a set of related ideas or items which form a larger category (Weller and Romney 1988: 9). The individual items within a domain partially achieve their meaning from their relationship to other items in a "mutually interdependent system, reflecting the way in which a given language or culture classified the relevant conceptual sphere" (ibid.).

Some cognitive anthropologists attempted to formulate methodologies which expanded beyond merely classifying terminology employed by different societies. To that end, the concepts of the mazeway and mental scripts were employed. The mazeway was defined as "the mental image of society and culture" (D’Andrade, 1995:17). The maze is comprised of perceptions of material objects. The methodology studies how people manipulate the maze to reduce stress, both individually and within their society. Similarly, mental scripts are a set of certain actions one performs in a given situation (Shore 1996:43). Existing scripts do not guide every daily action, rather, they are set schemes or recipes for action in a given social situation.

Schema theory

Schemata has been one of the most important and powerful concepts for cognitive anthropology in the past twenty years (Schater 1989:692). A schema is defined as "an active organization of past reactions, or of past experiences, which must always be supposed to be operational in any well adapted organic response” (ibid.). Cognitive anthropologists look for commonalities that can provide keys to the mental structures behind cultural ideologies. These notions are not necessarily culturally universal. Therefore, schemas are culturally specific, and the need for “an emic view is still a primary force in any ethnographic research” (Cerroni-Long 1999:112).

Semantic theory is a recent development. It was built upon an approach that developed with kin terminologies and then extended to other domains (Colby 1996:211). It assumes that there are core meanings and extensional meanings. Core meanings vary less among informants than the extensional meanings (Kronenfeld 1996:6-7). Connectionist theory, on the other hand, allows for multiple flows of information processed “along axes learned and defined probabilistically” (Colby 1996:212). These theoretical approaches draw heavily from the fields of artificial intelligence and computer science. Hence they are attempt to look for simple, rigid, defined rules for cognitive functions within a society.

However, there are psychobiological constraints placed upon the human mind’s capacity for organizing materials and phenomena. To be able to function, the mind must manufacture discriminations of attributes so it can process information without responding to information as if it were new each time it occurs (Cerroni-Long 1999:115). For example, in a cross-cultural study of kinship terminologies Wallace (1964 cited in D’Andrade 1995:225) noted that despite the social and technological complexity of societies, the size of kinship terminologies generally remain constant. These finding helped to create a cognitive model of the mind that combine both cultural and biological aspects of human life.

In contemporary cognitive anthropology methods themselves no longer continue to be the overriding focus, but instead are used to produce ethnographic data in aid of advancing theoretical knowledge of how the mind operates (Weller and Romney 1988:5). This transformation has substantially altered the variety of work produced by cognitive anthropologists. Cognitive anthropologists stress systematic data collection and analysis to address issues of reliability and validity. Consequently, they rely heavily on structured interviewing and statistical analyses (ibid.).

These techniques can be divided into three groups that produce different sorts of data: similarity techniques, ordering techniques, and test performance techniques (Weller and Romney 1988:11). Similarity methods call for respondents to judge the likeness of particular items. Ordered methods require the ranking of items along a conceptual scale. Test performance methods regard respondents as "correct" or "incorrect" depending on how they execute a specified task.

Specific methods used by cognitive anthropologists include “free listing, frame elicitation, triad tests, pile sorts, paired comparisons, rank order, true and false tests, and cultural consensus tasks” (ibid.). The triad method involves either similarity or ordered data. Items are arranged into sets of three. Unlike a pile sort, the triad method is not dependent on the literacy of informants. Triad sorts have been used in studies of kinship terminologies, animal terms, occupations and disease terms (Weller and Romney, 1988:12).

Consensus theory directly addresses issues of reliability in data collection not of the information collected but rather of the people interviewed (Romney 1999:105). Data is determined to be correct or incorrect by the respondents. Consensus theory requires response data rather than performance data, in which respondents themselves are coded as being correct or incorrect. This measures how much a respondent knows, and seeks to aggregate the answers of several respondents to achieve a synthesized representation of their knowledge (ibid.). The goal of consensus theory is to use the pattern of agreement among respondents to make inferences about their knowledge (Weller and Romney, 1988:74).

While the cognitive anthropologists of the last two decades have attempted to address the methodological limitations of the past, there are still some areas of concern. One of the most glaring problems is that almost all investigators do the majority of their research in English (ibid.). In addition, when studying something as fluid as human societies, it is difficult to account for variation by using standard methodologies. Cognitive anthropologists are now attempting to explore the emotional characteristics of culture, identified half a century ago by Benedict and Mead (Cerroni-Long 1999:120; Moore 1999:200). However, as always, there is much more research to be completed before any consensus will be reached.

Methodologies

Cognitive anthropology is driven by methodology. Emphasis is given to systematic data collection in an effort to attain reliable and valid results (Colby 1996:210). The ultimate aim is the discovery and representation of mental processes. However, many anthropologists are using cognitive techniques for the purpose of “eliciting information to facilitate ethnographic description” (ibid.). In general, the focus is upon the intellectual and rational aspects of culture, particularly through studies of language use (Cerroni-Long 1999:86). This is reflected in its origins as an attempt to fit formal linguistic methods into linguistic and social anthropology.

Cognitive anthropology has experienced two major and linked shifts over its first half century (Colby 1996:211). The first shift was theoretical. This was a move from a focus on rules, to a focus on schemas as means of characterizing cognition. The second was empirical. This was a change in the focus solely on language as the denotative meaning of terms, to a much broader definition of language, as well as “nonlinguistically coded understandings as the sources of data for characterizing cognition” (D’Andrade 1995:14).

The field can be divided into three phases: 1) ethnoscience, an early formative period in the 1950’s; 2) the middle period during the 1960’s and 1970’s, commonly identified with the study of folk models; and 3) the growth of schema theory and the development of consensus theory in the 1980’s and 1990’s. There are seven principle concepts within cognitive anthropology: the cultural or folk model, domain, the mazeway, mental scripts, prototype theory, schemata and semantic theory.

Ethnoscience

Cognitive anthropology has ties to linguistic and psychological anthropology, linguistics, cognitive linguistics, psycholinguistics, cognitive psychology and other cognitive sciences. One important linguistic methodology employed during this period was componential analysis. Initially inspired by the work of Saussure, componential analysis, sought to analyze domains of meaning with structural linguistics as a model (Moore 1999:111). Componential analysis sought to reveal the simple rules which underlie the “overtly complex distinctions made by members of a cultural group” (D’Andrade 1995:220).

The other important methodology of this period was the cultural or folk model. The cultural model "served as a catchall phrase for many different kinds of cultural knowledge" (Shore 1996:45). In other words, the unconscious set of assumptions and understandings members of a society or group share. These were believed to greatly affect people’s understanding of the world and of human behavior. Cultural models are assumed to be malleable structures which are effected by experience (ibid.). As an experience is ascribed meaning, it can reinforce models. However, specific experiences can also challenge and change models, if the experiences are considered distinct. In general, cultural models are believed to be connected to the emotional responses of particular experiences, so that “people regard their assumptions about the world as natural" (ibid.).

Ethnoscientists tended to study such things as color categories and folk taxonomies, without being able to clarify their relevance to understanding culture as a whole. They attempted to discern how people construe their world from the way they label and talk about it. However, this study of elements rather than relational systems “failed to reveal a generative cultural grammar for any culture, and while generating elaborate taxonomies, failed to discover any internal cultural workings that could be compared internally or externally” (Cerroni-Long 1999:119).

History

Cognitive anthropology is a recent subfield of anthropology (D’Andrade 1995:1). In 1950’s, cognitive anthropology came to be regarded as a distinct theoretical and methodological approach within anthropology. However, its intellectual roots can be traced back much further in time. Tarnas (1991:333) and Sperber (1985:2) identify Enlightenment thinkers, such as Rousseau, Hobbes and Locke, with the contention that this interaction was of utmost importance for the understanding of society.

Rousseau postulated that humans were essentially good, but were detrimentally influenced by civilization and society (ibid.). Hobbes maintained that humans’ are by nature brutish and selfish, therefore it was the role of society and government to control and curb basic human nature (ibid.). Locke rejected the Cartesian theory of innate ideas and presumed that humans are at birth ‘blank slates’ (Garbarino 1983:12-13). Locke believed that knowledge of the world had its roots in sensory experience. While Kantian rationalism holds that human cognitive capacities already have categories and principles that structure human knowledge and limit variability (Sperber (1985:2).

However, while Rationalist thinkers contended that the mind alone could achieve knowledge, the Enlightenment thinkers maintained that reason depended on sensory experience to know anything about the world, “excluding the minds own concoctions” (Tarnas 1991:334). Science was regarded as a mechanism for discovering the truths of human existence, not as a device for attaining absolute knowledge of general, universal truths (D’Andrade 1995:4).

Although operating form various theoretical assumptions, early intellectuals concentrated on the relationship between the mind and society but emphasized the impact of society on the mind (Tarnas 1991:335). In 1750, Turgot wrote The Historical Progress of the Human Mind, which suggested that humanity passed through three stages of increasingly complexity: hunting, pastoralism and farming (Garbarino 1983:15).

Condorcet’s, The Outline of Progress of the Human Mind (1795), divided history into ten stages, cumulating with the French Revolution (ibid.). In the early nineteenth century, Auguste Comte developed a philosophy which became known as positivism (Garbarino 1983:20). He proposed that earlier modes of thought were imperfect and that knowledge should be gained by empirical observation. He reasoned that intellectual complexity evolved, just as societies become more complex over time (ibid.).

One concept which is central to cultural and cognitive anthropology, is the psychic unity of mankind. This concept was developed by Adolf Bastian around the end of the nineteenth century (Garbarino 1983:32). After observing similarities in customs throughout the world, Bastian concluded that all humans must have the same basic psychic or mental processes, and thus this unity produced similar responses to similar stimuli (ibid.).

Cognitive studies in modern anthropology can be traced back to Franz Boas (Colby 1996:210). Boasian anthropology incorporated interests in mental and cognitive concerns, while promoting the study of ideas, beliefs, values and cosmologies. Anthropologists involved in culture and personality studies, specifically Ruth Benedict and Margaret Mead , have been claimed as forerunners of cognitive anthropology (Moore 1999:15). Boas realized that different peoples had different conceptions of the world around them. He devoted much of his work on understanding the relation between the human mind and the environment (Shore 1996:19). Boas encouraged investigations of tribal categories of sense and perception, such as colour. These topics would be critical to the later development of cognitive anthropology (Shore 1996:20-21).

Cognitive anthropology arose as much of the interest in “classical” culture and personality was waning. As such, it can be seen as a reaction against the traditional methods of ethnology practiced prior to the late 1950’s (Moore 1999:16). These ethnographies were strongly influenced by the works of Malinowski and Boas. Traditional ethnography stressed the “technology and techniques for providing material needs, village or local group composition, family and extended group composition and the roles of various members, political organization and the nature of magic, religion, witchcraft and other forms of native beliefs” (D’Andrade 1995:5).

As more scholars entered the field, it was found that the ethnographies of places revisited did not always match the ethnographies of the previous generation (ibid.). Ethnographic validity became a critical issue in cultural anthropology with the Redfield-Lewis controversy in the early 1950’s (Colby 1996:211). Redfield had worked in the Mexican village of Tepoztlan in the late 1920’s. In the late 1940’s, Oscar Lewis and a team of ethnographers revisited the site. Although some of the differences in Lewis’ findings could be attributed to culture change, the degree of differences caused the anthropological community to generally question the accuracy and reliability of ethnographic research methods (ibid.).

Early practitioners of cognitive anthropology attempted to increase the validity of ethnography by using “interview techniques and analytical processes to bring out native categories of thought instead of imposing the analyst’s own cultural system on the data” (Colby 1996:211). One of its early goals was the construction of frameworks for cross-cultural comparisons of human behaviour. Additionally, linguistic anthropologists such as Kroeber, Whorf and Sapir, and the works of Saussure, Chomsky and Bloomfield, all exerted direct influence on the earliest cognitive anthropologists (D’Andrade 1995:1).

Ethnographic studies were often equated with laboratory experiments of the natural sciences and other social sciences, and thus crucial to anthropology’s claims to scientific authority (Colby 1996:211). The discovery of the phoneme, the smallest unit of meaningful sound, gave anthropologists the opportunity to understand and record cultures in the native language (ibid.). This method was thought to be a way of getting around the analyst’s imposition of his own cultural bias on a society. These frameworks were rooted in an analogy which “linked the linguistic distinction between phonetics and phonemics to the anthropological distinction between etics and emics” (ibid.). It became a recognizable field of study within anthropology in the mid-1950’s with ethnoscience studies at Yale University (ibid.).

Much of the development of cognitive anthropology has been credited to Floyd Lounsbury and Ward Goodenough (Applebaum 1987:409). Goodenough laid out the basic premises for the "new ethnography," as ethnoscience was sometimes known (1957 cited in Moore 1999:102). A simple description of what was observed by the ethnographer was no longer sufficient. The new aim was to find the underlying structure behind a peoples’ conception of the world around them.

The primary theoretical underpinning of the ethnoscientific approach was that culture exists only in people’s minds (Applebaum, 1987:409). The methodology of ethnoscience attempted to remove the ethnographer’s categories from the research process. The principal research goal identified by cognitive anthropologists was to determine the content and organization of culture as knowledge. From the late 1950s to the 1970s, research was strongly oriented towards method, formalization, and quantification (D'Andrade 1995:246).

The attraction for many was that the field was using methods developed in the study of semantics, and served as an access to the mind (D'Andrade 1995:246). Much of this early work centered on taxonomies and domains such as kinship, plants, animals, and colors. While the methodology was productive in reducing the anthropologist’s bias, ethnoscience was subject to several criticisms, most focused on the limited nature and number of domains. Some critics charged that it appeared that some cognitive anthropologists valued the “eliciting technique more than the actual data produced from the procedures” (ibid.). Moreover, the data often did not lead to explanations of the respondents’ world view (Applebaum, 1987:407).

Other critics noted that “the ethnoscientific approach to culture implied extreme cultural relativism” (ibid.). Since ethnoscience stressed the individuality of each culture, it made cross-cultural and comparisons very difficult. Practitioners claimed they were trying to capture the indigenous, not the anthropologist’s, view of culture. However, these native views of culture depended on who the anthropologist chose to interview (e.g. male or female, young or old, high or low status) (Applebaum, 1987:407-408).

During the 1960s and 1970s, a theoretical and methodological shift occurred within cognitive anthropology. While linguistic analyses continued to provide methods for understanding and accessing the cognitive categories of indigenous people, the focus was no longer restricted to items and relationships within indigenous categories (Colby 1996:212). Instead, the focus was upon analyzing categories in terms of mental processes. It was assumed that there were mental processes based on the structure of the mind which was common to all humans. This approach extended its scope to study “not only components of abstract systems of thought but also to examine how mental processes relate to symbols and ideas” (Colby 1996:213).

For example, Bruner, Goodnow, and Austin (1956 cited in D’Andrade 1995:93) proposed that there are two primary mechanisms for reducing the strain on short-term memory: attribute reduction and configurational recoding. Attribute reduction was defined as the tendency to contract the number of criterial features of an object down to a very small number (ibid.). Configurational recoding was based upon the grouping or ‘chunking’ together of several features to form a single characteristic. Chunking was defined as a mental process where the short-term memory segments information by grouping items together (D’Andrade 1995:94). The reliance upon meaning, along with the broader goal of attempting to establish cross-cultural frameworks for comparison, soon came under fire from symbolic anthropologists who called for the (re)injection of “richer”, “more true-to-life” meaning into ethnographic accounts (ibid.).

By the early 1980s, schema theory had become the primary means of understanding the psychological aspect of culture. Schemas are entirely abstract entities which are unconsciously enacted by individuals (D'Andrade 1995:246). They are models of the world that organize the experiences and understandings shared by members of a group or society. Schemata, in conjunction with connectionist networks, provided even more abstract psychological theory about the nature of mental representations (ibid.).

Schema theory created a new class of mental entities. Prior to schema theory, the major pieces of culture were thought be either material or symbolic in nature. Culture, as conceptualized by cognitive anthropologists, was now thought of in terms of parts instead of as a whole (D'Andrade 1995:247). Contemporary questions within cognitive anthropology include the following (ibid.): (1) are cultural ideologies shared; (2) if they are shared, to what extent; (3) how are these units distributed across persons; and (5) which distribution of units are internalized. These issues have in fact taken cognitive studies away from the mainstream of anthropology and moved it closer to psychology.

Cognitive structure is being related to the physical structure of artifacts and the behavioral structure of groups (D'Andrade 1995:248). The future path of cognitive anthropology seems to be heading toward the study of how cultural schemas are related to action. Issues of emotion, motivation, and how individuals during socialization internalize culture have now become defined areas of research (ibid.).

A Brief History of Cognitive Anthropology

Sharon N. Solomon xerexes@yahoo.com

Dept. of Anthropology University of Toronto Dec. 2000

Abstract

Cognitive anthropology assumes that each culture orders events, material life and ideas, to its own particular criteria. The fundamental aim is to reliably represent the logical systems of thought of other people according to criteria which can be discovered and replicated through analysis. Its methodology and theoretical basis stem from the fields of both psychology and anthropology. The field can be divided into three phases: 1) ethnoscience, an early formative period in the 1950’s; 2) the middle period during the 1960’s and 1970’s, commonly identified with the study of folk models; and 3) the growth of schema theory and the development of consensus theory in the 1980’s and 1990’s.

Many advances have been made in a relatively short period of time in understanding the human mind and in understanding people’s world views through cognitive anthropology. It has something to offer each of anthropology’s four fields: archaeology, biological anthropology, linguistics, and cultural anthropology. Moreover, it has significantly changed the face of cultural anthropology, particularly with respect to its methodological development.

Introduction

Cognitive anthropology is an extremely broad field of study. It is closely aligned with psychology, and has adopted theoretical elements and methodological techniques from structuralism and linguistics. In researching this paper, the divisions amongst the various subfields of anthropology became glaringly obvious. Theoretical approaches are well documented in the fields of linguistics and social/cultural anthropology, however, even though similar methods are employed in the fields of physical anthropology, primatology and archaeology, the theories employed are not treated as being equivalent. Thus, while it should be noted that Ian Hodder (1999), Colin Renfrew and Ezra Zubrow (1994) have employed cognitive methods in archaeological interpretation, and most theories of human evolution and primate behaviour rely heavily upon cognitive theories (Tattersal and Schwartz 2000; Boyd and Silk 1997), this paper will concentrate upon the specific field of cognitive anthropology.

Cognitive anthropologists view anthropology as a formal science. They maintain that culture is composed of logical rules that are based on ideas that can be accessed in the mind (Moore 1999:5). There are four basic categories in cognitive anthropology: semantics, knowledge structures, models and systems, and discourse analysis (D’Andrade 1995:1). Semantic studies of terminology systems formed the basis of early cognitive anthropology. The analytical and ethnographic methods developed in these studies provided the foundation for ethnoscience (also called the new ethnography) (ibid.). In contrast with some earlier anthropological approaches to culture, cultures were not regarded as material phenomena, but rather as cognitive organizations of material phenomena (Tyler 1969:3).

Cognitive anthropology not only focuses on discovering how different peoples organize culture but also how they utilize culture. It does not claim to predict human behaviour but attempts to describe what is socially and culturally expected or appropriate in given situations, circumstances and contexts (Moore 1999:16). However, it is not concerned with describing events in order to explain or discover processes of change. Furthermore, this approach declares that every every culture embodies its own unique organizational system for understanding things, events and behaviour. Thus, cognitive anthropology has produced both descriptive accounts of cultural categories and generative models.

To the core of ethnographic semantics and ethnoscience practiced in the 1950’s and 1960’s, decision models and narrative grammars were added to the agenda of cognitive anthropology in the 1970’s (Colby 1996:209). D’Andrade (1995:245-248) states that the linguistic preoccupation in cognitive anthropology has given away to more psychological approaches. This shift began in the late 1970’s and became more prominent in the 1980’s with interest in ‘connectionist networks’ (ibid.).

Connectionist networks “ put together schematic cluster of features into complex objects without any necessary linguistic base” (D’Andrade 1995:246-247). Discourse semantics, consensus mapping and applications of artificial intelligence were incorporated in the 1980’s. Throughout the 1990’s, cognitive theories of emotions, interests in health and well being, religious symbolism and computer aided discourse analysis were all explored (ibid.)