What is it about?
Art is an important aspect of human behavior but its role has not been well defined. This paper examines the way art(s) served as a costly signal that helped populations in settled communities at the end of the Mesolithic and beginning of the Neolithic to cohere in large semi-anonymous communities.
Featured Image
Why is it important?
Rather than being a non-functional product of human behavior, art is shown to be crucial in facilitating trust in populations as they gravitated from hunter-gatherers living in small groups during the Upper Paleolithic toward living in larger settled communities during the early Neolithic.
Perspectives
Hopeful this paper will show how the art(s) has been critical to human endeavor as well as provide new perspectives on its role in human societies.
Derek Hodgson
University of York
Read the Original
This page is a summary of: Costly signalling, the arts, archaeology and human behaviour, World Archaeology, February 2017, Taylor & Francis,
DOI: 10.1080/00438243.2017.1281757.
You can read the full text:
Resources
Contributors
The following have contributed to this page
