FLAKES AND LADDERS - WHAT THE ARCHAEOLOGICAL RECORD CANNOT TELL US ABOUT THE ORIGINS OF LANGUAGE

The archaeological record does not furnish direct evidence for the ori gin of language, because it cannot be understood in terms of grammar, syntax, and semantic meanings. However, this should not lead to accept ance of a simple, Hawkesian, 'Ladder of Inference', where the social a nd symbolic are more remote from the archaeological base than function and technology. Practical tasks are organized as clusters of actions centred around artefacts rather than sequentially arranged in 'grammar s'. Here the different natures of media configure the 'message' in fun damentally different ways. Moreover, the 'meaning' of an artefact resi des in its guidance of the user, rather than any semantic communicatio n or message. Thus the design of artefacts is fundamentally social, em bodying shared understandings and conventions of action, without being semantic. In the light of this analysis, claims that the origin of la nguage can be detected in the archaeological record are disputed. The equation of 'symbolic' artefacts with language fails to treat material culture as part of a dynamic of action.