Cognitive archaeology is a sub-discipline of archaeology which focuses on the ways that ancient societies thought and the symbolic structures that can be perceived in past material culture.
Cognitive archaeologists often study the role that ideology and differing organizational approaches would have had on ancient peoples. The way that these abstract ideas are manifested through the remains that these peoples have left can be investigated and debated often by drawing inferences and using approaches developed in fields such as semiotics, psychology and the wider sciences.
Yes, but having no knowledge of ancient peoples other than through their artifacts, how can the cognitive archaeologist be sure that he is not simply the prey to his own fancies? I had always thought of archaeology as a (literally) down-to-earth discipline. What does your average ditch-grubber think of his cognitive colleague, who presumably can do his archaeology without leaving his armchair? From another website:
Cognitive archaeology has developed in relative isolation of its mother discipline and some in mainstream regard it as almost an heretical science. Because of this, those involved in developing the new sub-field have tended to offer very little dialogue with their straight colleagues. The inevitable split was unpleasant for both camps and as a result of the cognitive archaeologists’ establishing new sets of rules for archaeological interpretation to negate the pressure of academic challenges; they have been cynically renamed the ‘coggies’. The coggies prefer to define themselves as cognitive archaeologists or processualists.
The use of the adjective 'heretical' implies that these people are bold, Galilean radicals. I suspect it would be more accurate to say that those in the mainstream regard the approach as utter twaddle.
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