Part II

Materiality, Mind and History

Chapter 4

42
 The Affordances of Things
Chapter 4
The Affordances of Things: a Post-Gibsonian Perspective
on the Relationality of Mind and Matter
Carl Knappett
The aim of this paper is to offer further perspectives
and reflections on the idea of engagement as devel-
oped by Renfrew (2001; this volume). Engagement is
a potentially key concept for archaeologists, not to
mention students of material culture more broadly,
because it takes a relational stance on cognition. That
is to say, the relationship between mind and matter
is understood as one of mutual codependency; nei-
ther one nor the other is privileged, thereby avoid-
ing both materialist and mentalist reductionism.
Approaches stressing the importance of rela-
tionality in archaeological interpretation are not al-
together new. One might cite the early work of
Shanks & Tilley (1987), some of the later work of
each of these authors (e.g. Tilley 1994; Shanks 1998),
as well as Thomas (1998; 2001) and Hodder (2001).
This is just a selection. Yet crucially, none of these
post-processual archaeologists develop their notions
of relationality in connection specifically with mind
or cognition. Their sights are aimed more at the inter-
dependency of subject and object, of body and thing;
their inspiration the philosophical tradition of phe-
nomenology, particularly Heidegger and Merleau-
Ponty.
Part of the reason why this important set of
approaches has continued to focus on body rather
than on mind may be due to academic divisions;
namely the emergence of mind and cognition as is-
sues under the opposing banner of processual ar-
chaeology (Renfrew 2001, 1234). However, the
processual, or cognitive-processual, approach to
mind has not, on the whole, seen mind in fully relat-
ional terms vis vis materiality. Within this approach
mind and matter are separate, with the former pri-
mary and the latter secondary. This kind of hierar-
chical schema continues to be present in recent
theoretical formulations that examine the relation-
ship between mind and matter. The notion of mate-
rialization, for example, holds within it the sense
43
that mind precedes matter, the former finding some
kind of secondary materialization in the latter
(DeMarrais et al. 1996; DeMarrais this volume).
Pursuing this notion of materialization a little
further, it becomes apparent that a deep-seated sepa-
ration of mind and matter is by no means unique to
archaeology. One dominant image of our current
social setting the information society actually
implies a fundamental disengagement of mind from
matter. In her critique of what she dubs post-
humanism, Hayles argues that:
A defining characteristic of the present cultural
moment is the belief that information can circulate
unchanged among different material substrates
(Hayles 1999, 1).
When this logic is applied to humans, the suggestion
is that a persons essence can be uploaded, stored,
and then downloaded in some other dimension basi-
cally unaltered. Human physicality begins to be
viewed as derivative, a mortal presence that is en-
tirely secondary to our virtual existence as informa-
tional patterns. And yet, as Hayles is at pains to
point out, this posthumanist perspective (which is
not so very different to liberal humanism) fails to
accord any significance to the fact that information
must always be instantiated in order to exist. More
significantly still, the information thus instantiated
is not unaffected by the medium in which it finds
itself; information cannot be transferred freely be-
tween physical substrates, easily attached and
disattached, free at any moment to float off some-
where else. The information is itself transformed by
its medium.
This emphasis on the embodiment of informa-
tion holds within it the kind of relational thinking
that is central to the idea of engagement. A human
agent, one might imagine, requires information in
order to decide how to act next. But where does this
 Chapter 4
information reside, what form does it takes, and
how is it specified and processed? Some information
may simply be stored within the agents mind, and
may be accessed regardless of bodily situation or
environmental context. However, a great deal of in-
formation is not immediately accessible and on-line
in this way; rather, it is situated and embodied, emer-
gent in particular contexts of action. Information is,
in this sense, out there in the material world, and is
immediately accessible to a given agent in a certain
situation.
The contribution of psychology
Although one might have imagined that archaeolo-
gists would have embraced this kind of position
long ago, a relational approach to the interface of
mind and matter, such that information is deemed
to be distributed between them, has not been forth-
coming in archaeological theory. There have been
strongly relational approaches, as discussed above,
and explicit cognitive approaches, but they have rarely
overlapped. This is why the notion of engagement
marks an important new development, and a chance
to confound the aging division between processual
and post-processual archaeologies.
In seeking to develop the idea of engagement
further, however, we need to turn immediately to
other disciplines, and in particular to various
branches within psychology (see Cowgill this vol-
ume). There are indeed a few different strands within
psychology exploring the relationality of mind and
matter (in ways compatible with Renfrews theory
of material engagement). The three strands in ques-
tion are ecological psychology, cultural psychology,
and situated cognition.
ecological psychology
cultural situated
psychology cognition
Ecological psychology
As this diagram indicates, it is ecological psychol-
ogy that lies at the root of this process. In particular,
44
it is James Gibsons work (1979) on visual perception
that is fundamental. Gibson, in contemplating the
ways in which humans perceive objects in their en-
vironment, was not happy with the orthodox view
that humans are only able to understand the func-
tion or meaning of an object indirectly, through in-
ternal representations. That is to say, once the
physical structure of an object (e.g. four legs, flat
surface, etc.) is perceived, the object is subsequently
fitted into a pre-existing category within the human
mind (chair). Only then, once the category chair
has been accessed, is the human agent able to re-
trieve the potential function of the object (for sitting
on). Thus the human perception of function was,
according to scientific orthodoxy, believed to be in-
direct, and mediated by cultural representations (a
two-stage process of perception and conceptu-
alization). In seeking an alternative to this received
wisdom, the psychologist James Gibson developed
the notion of direct perception. For Gibson, the
potential of an object for sitting on, to continue the
chair example, could be directly observed without
first categorizing the object as a chair. This sug-
gested that information might reside in the environ-
ment itself rather than merely as internal mental
representations. His idea was that an agent might
acquire information directly from the environment
as a means of assessing what a situation might afford.
The potentialities held by an object for a particular
set of actions were termed by Gibson its affordances.
The concepts of direct perception and affordance are
closely intertwined in Gibsons ecological psychology.
There is certainly much to be said for Gibsons
approach. It is fundamentally dynamic in nature,
working on the plausible assumption that human
perception is geared towards tracking possibilities
for action in the world. In addition to this ecologi-
cal slant, it does serve as an important counterpoise
to the dominant Cartesian-derived view that human
action inevitably involves reflection and conscious
evaluation. What Gibson succeeds in demonstrating
is the reactive/executive nature of human percep-
tion and cognition in certain material circumstances.
There surely are a number of artefacts in given situa-
tions that serve to prompt sequences of actions al-
most unthinkingly. And yet to say this is the be-all
and the end-all of human perception is rather ex-
treme, and Gibson has been much criticized for this.
One example used by Gibson himself that illustrates
the limitations of his perspective is the post-box.
Gibson argued that the physical characteristics of
the post-box announce its function in a direct and
unmediated way. But what of other similar-sized
 The Affordances of Things
receptacles with letter-sized slots, such as litterbins?
Do not these also afford the posting of letters, in
purely physical terms? The reason why a human
agent posts mail in a post-box and not in a litterbin is
that the agent possesses cultural information rel-
evant to the situation and object in question (Noble
1991, 2078; Palmer 1999, 409). This knowledge of
the post-boxs function is not accessible from its
physical form alone, but derives from numerous as-
sociations and internal categorizations. That is to
say, its function is, in part, and contra Gibson, indi-
rectly perceived.
This does not mean that Gibsons theory is
invalid, but that it is too radical and one-sided (and,
one might argue, at the time it needed to be, to have
any chance of being heard in the face of the domi-
nant representationalist approach). What is required,
then, is a modification of Gibsons perspective, and
such a move is well underway in psychology the
potential of Gibsons theory continued to be explored
through the 1980s and early 1990s, with scholars
such as Reed (1988a,b; 1991), Michaels & Carello
(1981), Noble (1991; 1993), Heft (1989) and Costall
(1981; 1995). It was only during the late 1990s, how-
ever, that Gibsons admittedly rather radical pro-
posal came to be more seriously considered within
the mainstream psychology of visual perception (e.g.
Bruce et al. 1996; Gordon 1997; Palmer 1999). Some
scholars in related fields have also identified the
need for a compromise solution uniting indirect and
direct perception notably within situated cogni-
tion, to which we now briefly turn.
Situated cognition
Situated cognition refers to a movement within cog-
nitive psychology that seeks to counter the Cartesian
representationalist view of cognition (that lies at the
heart of AI), arguing instead that cognition is an
embodied, situated and distributed process (Clark
1998). Although cognition, perception and action are
frequently separated, even hierarchically, this school
tends to treat the relations between them much more
fluidly. Hence situated cognition also implies situ-
ated perception and situated action. Gibsonian eco-
logical psychology has certainly fed into this branch
of cognitive science (see diagram above), as explic-
itly recognized by Kirsh (1995). Some of the more
radical proponents of this perspective come close to
Gibsons views on direct perception (e.g. Brooks 1991;
van Gelder & Port 1995), while others have devel-
oped a more balanced approach incorporating ele-
ments of both direct and indirect perception (Clark
45
1996; 1997; Kirsh 1995; Norman 1998; Hutchins 1995;
Suchman 1987). A fundamental idea throughout,
however, is that the connections between mind and
matter must be viewed in relational terms. For more
on situated cognition, see the contribution of Mala-
fouris in this volume.
Cultural psychology
A similarly relational perspective is also apparent
within cultural psychology, notably in the work of
such scholars as Michael Cole (1996), James Wertsch
(1998a,b), Dorothy Holland (Holland et al. 1998) and
Michael Tomasello (1999). An element common to
all of these is the profound influence exerted by the
Soviet psychologist Lev Vygotsky (1978). One key
point, as far as materiality is concerned, is that hu-
mans use cultural artefacts when engaging in action,
and that these artefacts serve as mediational means.
Artefacts not only mediate between a human and
his/her environment, but between humans. An arte-
fact may act as a common source of what Tomasello
calls joint attention (1999, 62), a kind of pivot
around which activities may form. In a similar vein,
Wertsch describes such processes in terms of medi-
ated action. It is also interesting to note that Wertsch
expressly links his perspective to the situated cogni-
tion approach described above (particularly D. Nor-
man). Moreover, both Wertsch and Norman owe a
considerable debt to ecological psychology (see dia-
gram above), not least in their use of the Gibsonian
idea of affordances. It is not only Wertsch among the
cultural psychologists who adopts the affordances
concept the same also holds true for Tomasello
(1999) and Holland et al. (1998). Cole hardly men-
tions the affordances in his 1996 book, but he did
collaborate with Holland in writing a paper in which
much more attention is devoted to the concept (Hol-
land & Cole 1995).
All three of the strands outlined above eco-
logical psychology, situated cognition and cultural
psychology have in common the idea that cogni-
tion and materiality are far more intimately con-
nected than is often acknowledged. The compatibility
between these three strands is further underlined in
that the idea of affordances is used in each of them.
Now we shall give fuller consideration to this potent
concept.
Affordances
The concept of affordances forms a central plank of
this paper because it can help us understand the
 Chapter 4
codependency of mind and matter. Taken directly
from Gibson, the idea has some limitations; fortu-
nately, though, the concept has been attracting in-
creased attention in a range of disciplines, and as a
result has been subjected to some important modifi-
cations and revisions. What such work allows us to
do is home in on three key aspects of affordances:
their relationality, transparency and sociality. An
important step to be taken subsequently is an assess-
ment of the relationship between affordances and
meanings. Much of the discussion will be aimed at
material culture generally, albeit with an eye on ap-
plicability to archaeological contexts.
Relationality
The affordance of an object is neither solely an inde-
pendent property of the object itself, nor is it exclu-
sively an intentional state within the mind of the
person engaging with it, but a relational property
shared between object and agent. The situation in
which object and agent engage is a dynamic one
and the information specifying where the situation
can lead is not entirely within the agents head, but
is in some way also held within the object (itself
within an environment). This idea that it is a situa-
tion that has affordances, as far as an agent possess-
ing a given action repertoire is concerned, has been
usefully developed in cognitive science by Kirsh
(1995). Rather than being constant, an artefacts
affordances may change according to the situation
in which they are found. The notion of relationality
is absolutely key to understanding the affordances
concept, and has been highlighted by others (e.g.
Ingold, Noble, Heft, Palmer). Let us for a moment
return to the chair example used earlier. It may ap-
pear as if the chairs affordance for sitting inheres
within it, independently of the actions of human
agents. Yet the chair does not afford sitting to all
humans the very young or the very old, for exam-
ple, may be excluded, as they may not be capable of
sitting on objects of certain heights (perhaps too low
for the very old, too high for the very young). Thus
the chair only affords sitting to those capable of cer-
tain actions. Moreover, while a human agent may
have the capacity for sitting, the nature of the situa-
tion may not allow it; indeed, other affordances of
the chair may emerge in some circumstances, such
as its capacity for propping open a door. While ac-
knowledging the importance of the mutual relation-
ship between object, agent and context in establishing
an affordance, one must also admit that the chairs
affordances are not boundless its intrinsic physi-
46
cal properties do set some limits. There is a difficult
tension between the independent and relational prop-
erties of objects (Heft 1989).
Transparency
Coming back to the principle of situated action es-
poused by Kirsh, a second key aspect, besides
relationality, is the transparency of affordances. For
Gibsons theory of direct perception to hold true, the
affordance of an artefact should be transparent in its
physical form alone. This is perhaps valid for certain
objects in certain situations the affordances of
water bubbling from a spring in the desert to a thirsty
human are transparent. The affordance of a chair for
sitting may also be transparent (to certain agents in
given situations). But what an object affords may be
more or less transparent in different situations in-
volving different agents. An object designed for use
in a specific situation, assuming a certain amount of
knowledge on behalf of the prospective user, may
announce quite clearly what it affords. But with a
change in circumstances, its function may be far from
transparent. Alternatively, some artefacts may be
designed such that their affordances are almost al-
ways transparent, regardless of circumstance (hand-
axe, paper cup?). To use the post-box example cited
above, its use is only transparent to those with the
requisite cultural knowledge the post-boxs
affordances are not knowable from its shape and
size alone.
Sociality
A third important element of affordances is that in a
given situation they will invariably entail a social
component. This is an aspect that Gibson barely
elaborated, and his formulation of affordances can
certainly be criticized for being asocial. This is not to
say that a social dimension is intrinsically incompat-
ible with his theory, and some scholars have at-
tempted to socialize affordances (Reed 1988a; Costall
1995; 1997; Williams & Costall 2000). Yet the social
dimension of affordances has barely registered as an
area of interest in those disciplines more inclined to
engage with issues of sociality, such as sociology or
anthropology. One notable exception to this is the
work of anthropologist Tim Ingold (2000). In trying
to weave together the habitually-separated traditions
of biology, anthropology and psychology, Ingold sees
Gibsons vein of ecological thinking within psy-
chology as absolutely key (2000, 34). But while
Ingold draws directly on Gibson, there is another
 The Affordances of Things
strand of anthropology in which ecological psychol-
ogy has recently had an effect, albeit via a rather
circuitous route. This strand forms part of the French
socio-anthropology tradition that concerns itself with
material culture, and has done so for many years
since the pioneering work of Marcel Mauss (1950/
1936) and subsequently Leroi-Gourhan. One could
hardly call this tradition a stranger to psychology,
but in recent years it has been receiving its psycho-
logical input from an unexpected source. The revival
of the connections between anthropology and psy-
chology is represented in the work of scholars such
as Warnier (1999a,b), Kaufmann (1997), Julien (1999),
Semprini (1995), Lfgren (1996), Conein & Jacopin
(1993), and de Fornel (1993). What is noteworthy
here is the evident influence of the situated cogni-
tion perspective (described earlier), especially the
work of Norman. It is perhaps no accident that within
situated cognition there is a definite anthropological
orientation, not least in the work of Suchman and
Hutchins (and that of Norman, for example, is
broadly sociological). Yet of the French scholars men-
tioned above, it is only de Fornel who goes back
directly to the work of Gibson. Moreover, none seems
to reference Ingold, despite the obvious and poten-
tially fruitful parallels between their work and his.
So what is meant, exactly, by the sociality of
affordances? Quite simply, that any given situation
will very often involve more than one human agent;
two or more agents may be engaged in a joint activ-
ity and so may each see the shared affordances that
an object offers each of them. Alternatively, two or
more agents may find themselves in the same con-
text but in different situations, seeking different out-
comes. In this case a single object may be perceived
to have different affordances according to the per-
spective of each agent. The objects affordances may
thus be negotiated and contested. An excellent ex-
ample is provided by de Fornel (1993), showing how
affordances come to be shared in a social situation.
De Fornels case study involves an analysis of
the interaction sequences in routine police investiga-
tions. Objects are frequently submitted for examina-
tion and offered as evidence. An important part of
the process is to place the object in question (e.g. a
knife) before the accused for identification or recog-
nition. Before doing so, however, the investigating
police officers evaluate the objects that have been
seized from the persons accused, categorize them,
and decide what they imply for their (ex-) owners.
This occurs within an interaction context of multiple
agents, such that the affordances of the objects are
explored and shared. One particular case discussed
47
by de Fornel concerns a group of punks who have
been taken in for questioning. The members of the
group are asked to empty their pockets and bags
onto a table in the middle of the room. Amongst
their possessions are a considerable number of knives.
Once on the table, the groups possessions are
recategorized and out of their reach. An inspector
enters the room and the police officers present the
situation to him. While some of the officers intro-
duce the punks, one officer is stood at the table and
picks up one of the confiscated knives, showing quite
clearly its blade in such a way that it is brought,
almost implicitly, to the inspectors attention. It is
through such a sequence of interactions that the po-
lice officers and the inspector come to share the same
understandings of both the object and the whole
situation. Consequently the police officers go through
an extensive shared manipulation of the knives; han-
dling them, understanding their particular afford-
ances. They discover that one of the knives is burnt
at the blade, prompting them to accuse its owner of
using it for hashish. Another blade is broken the
owner claims to have done it opening a tin the
officers suggest he broke it trying to force open a car
door. The police officers arrive at a shared under-
standing of the affordances of the artefacts through
joint practical activity. The punks watch this per-
formance but are excluded from participation. The
knives are far from being passive objects, but play a
very active role in establishing the situation and the
roles of the different protagonists therein.
Direct and indirect: execution and evaluation
Apart from demonstrating the means by which
affordances come to be shared in social interactions,
de Fornel succeeds in showing the mediated and
indirect aspects of perception, albeit within a
Gibsonian framework. Although in some circum-
stances human agents merely execute tasks by react-
ing to objects, de Fornel underlines that often the
affordances of artefacts are actively evaluated within
social situations. This dual status of the human agent,
as both active and reactive, is commented upon by
Conein & Jacopin (1993). They argue that in Gibsons
theory of direct perception humans are effectively
reduced to the role of reactive agents, merely react-
ing to those affordances that enable the execution of
an action. What the theory of direct perception lacks
is the ability to cast human agents as active, with the
capacity to evaluate as well as react. In this regard,
Conein & Jacopin are keen on the concept of situated
action (they cite Donald Norman as their prime ex-
 Chapter 4
ample) it allows for both an active agent at the
level of evaluation and a reactive one at the level of
execution.
This differentiation noted by Conein & Jacopin
between active evaluation and reactive execution is
akin to that made by Kirsh & Maglio (1994) between
epistemic action and pragmatic action respectively.
Take the example of a jigsaw puzzle. A pragmatic
action is one of execution, such as fitting a piece into
its correct position. An epistemic action is an act of
evaluation preceding or following execution: this
might be the grouping together of all pieces with a
straight edge and a patch of blue sky. In traditional
cognitive science, it would be argued that the proc-
ess of execution is external and physical, while the
process of evaluation is internal and mental. What
Kirsh & Maglio argue, as do Clark, Hutchins, and
others behind the situated/distributed cognition per-
spective, is that both processes (execution and evalu-
ation) involve the external manipulation of physical
objects. Cognition is both an internal and an external
process. Perception in the course of situated action is
both direct and indirect, unmediated and mediated.
And we essentially find ourselves at a point that can
be described as post-Gibsonian, in which the
affordances of objects are understood simultaneously
directly and indirectly, through both execution and
evaluation, and in terms of embodiment as well as
representations.
I mentioned the jigsaw puzzle as one example
of the complexity of the perceptual/cognitive proc-
ess. And yet understanding the affordance of a jig-
saw piece is relatively straightforward, in that it is
only likely to be encountered in a very limited set of
contexts, and the actions pursuant in such contexts
demarcate the jigsaw pieces affordance relatively
clearly. The same can also be said of other examples
studied by Kirsh and his collaborators, notably the
games of Scrabble and Tetris (Maglio et al. 1999;
Kirsh & Maglio 1994). In more real situations, the
possibilities for action are usually much more fluid,
and the interactions between human agents less rule-
bound. As a corollary, the affordances of objects are
more prone to ambivalent interpretation. Not only
Kirsh (1995) but also Conein & Jacopin (1993) tackle
the question of the use of kitchen space and the ways
in which the affordances of a situation are impli-
cated by the arrangement of artefacts in space. Spa-
tial layout can help generate a plan of action it can
prompt evaluation as well as execution. Donald Nor-
man (1998) has focused on doors and how their
materiality succeeds or fails in announcing whether
they should be pushed or pulled (amongst other
48
possible actions). One might also cite the work of
Edwin Hutchins (1995) on navigation systems, and
that of Latour on door-stoppers, speed-bumps and
keys (e.g. Latour 2000). In all of the above examples
a logical distinction can be drawn between physical
and cognitive affordances, although the two may
very well co-occur in practice (Kirsh 1995). With the
former, the environment is physically shaped in such
a way that action is directly affected; in the case of
the latter, information is available in the environ-
ment but free of actual physical constraints. A speed-
bump physically forces a driver to slow down in a
way that a signpost does not. Leaving the car-keys
on a table next to the front door of the house is a
means of planting information in the environment
(do not forget car-keys), but it does not provide any
direct physical constraints (its still possible to walk
out of the front door and forget them).
Affordances and meanings
The affordances of objects cannot always be ascer-
tained directly through information available in the
immediate environment. Often an object will have
associations that may not be physically apparent but
which the agent recalls a similarity with other
objects previously encountered, or a recollection that
this object had on earlier occasion been juxtaposed
with other kinds of artefacts in a different setting.
Such knowledge is not available in the environment,
but comes to the agent upon reflection, and may
very well affect the perceived affordances of the ob-
ject at hand. In other words, the object has a mean-
ingfulness that can only be indirectly perceived,
mediated through the agents existing social repre-
sentations about the world.
A simple example may underline this point.
Let us take an everyday artefact, a coffee cup. It has
certain physical characteristics which afford drink-
ing (to agents with the appropriate action reper-
toires). For example, it is readily manipulable in the
hand, given its size, shape, weight and texture. It has
a suitably wide and regular lip. Although it is easily
held, when the vessel is full of hot coffee its walls
conduct heat and become too hot to touch for any
length of time. For this reason the coffee cup is fur-
nished with a handle. The vertical form of the han-
dle and its placement close to the rim are features
that afford tipping; moreover, the handle is often
shaped in such a way that more than one finger can
fit through its hole, thereby increasing graspability.
Other artefacts may also exist which seem, physi-
cally at least, to afford very similar actions. A tea-
 The Affordances of Things
cup, a beer mug and a polystyrene cup can all fulfil
the same functions as a coffee cup, even though in
actuality they are rarely used in the same way. This
is in part because the cultural associations of these
different objects are not the same. And these associa-
tions cannot be directly apprehended from the situa-
tion at hand. They may be a matter of physical
similarity with other artefact types which render them
more or less suitable for certain kinds of activity
(perhaps different materials and shapes used by
groups of differing social status). Or it may be that
the coffee cup tends to find itself contiguous with
certain kinds of object in particular spatial configu-
rations, and that such associations affect its mean-
ingfulness (even in those instances when the coffee
cup does not find itself in such circumstances). There
may also be symbolic commentaries and narratives
connected to a certain artefact that affect the way in
which it is perceived (perception mediated through
representations).
Artworks and artefacts
But can this same perspective be applied to all kinds
of objects? Does the same hold true for artworks, or
are these subject to different dynamics? Artefacts
and artworks have certainly often been cast as two
very distinct ontological categories. It is assumed
that these two categories are perceived in quite dif-
ferent ways. On the one hand, the everyday artefact
is engaged with sensorily, as the human protagonist
embodies it in the course of action. A functional,
practical understanding of the object is developed,
obviating any need for conscious thought on the
part of the agent. The artwork, on the other hand,
signifies rather than acts. The agent engages with
this kind of object visually rather than sensorily.
Moreover, a different kind of knowledge is in play,
one that requires a grasp of the relevant symbolic
codes allowing for the interpretation of the mean-
ings encoded in the artwork. The reading of the
artwork demands a linguistic form of knowledge
that has little relationship to the embodied, practical
knowledge associated with the everyday artefact.
Whereas the agents conscious evaluation of the art-
work is mediated through an internalized set of cul-
tural representations, the agents engagement with
the artefact emerges in practice through a kind of
direct, unmediated process.
This kind of polarization of artworks and arte-
facts is exacerbated by the simplistic distinction fre-
quently drawn between linguistic knowledge and
practical knowledge (Hodder 1993), or the thinking
49
mind and the doing mind (see Schlanger 1994 for
critique). It is as if humans interact with objects us-
ing two enormously different logics simultaneously,
the one linguistic, codified and symbolic, the other
embodied, uncodified and pragmatic. Yet such a deep
cognitive division seems highly improbable, given
the often-seamless interactions between the human
mind and the material world. To return to the theme
of information, it would certainly appear that there
are different sources of knowledge informing agents
as to how they might proceed in any given situation.
Some information is indeed present in the material
environment in such a form that humans can re-
spond to it directly and unreflectively; but at the
same time information is also internally derived from
cultural representations or schemata within the hu-
man mind (Strauss & Quinn 1997). Yet even though
the sources of information may vary, is it necessarily
the case that external and internal information
obey different logics, practical and linguistic re-
spectively? How exactly do internal and external
knowledge, and direct and indirect processes (e.g.
execution and evaluation), articulate with one an-
other? Is this where the phenomenon of tuning (see
Norman 1998), or what Gell calls structural iso-
morphy (1998) comes into the picture? Gell uses this
term to describe the links between the cognitive
processes we know (from inside) as consciousness
and the spatio-temporal structures of distributed ob-
jects in the artefactual realm (1998, 222). If this kind
of rapprochement between internal and external
domains proves ultimately to be sustainable, then it
promises to remove not only the deep division be-
tween linguistic and practical knowledge, but also
the profoundly unhelpful polarization of artworks
and artefacts.
Answers to this and other similar questions need
to be found if we are to make any progress in under-
standing the engagement of mind with the material
world. And fortunately steps have recently been
taken in this direction, showing the feasibility of
combining phenomenology and semiotics, and eco-
logical psychology and representationalism, in the
various domains of art history (Sonesson 1989; Bryson
1990) sociology (Gottdiener 1995), anthropology
(Csordas 1994; Parmentier 1997), cognitive anthro-
pology (Strauss & Quinn 1997) and cognitive science
(Clark 1997; Petitot et al. 2000). This baton has also
been taken up within archaeology, albeit only to a
limited degree as yet (e.g. Preucel & Bauer 2001).
To conclude, one might well ask why the con-
cept of affordances has by and large failed to attract
much attention within archaeology. Traditional aca-
 Chapter 4
demic boundaries are partly to blame. The idea was
first put forward in psychology, a discipline with
which archaeology and anthropology have hardly
enjoyed strong contacts. Moreover, for many years it
occupied a rather radical position within that disci-
pline. To compound matters further, its principal
protagonist, J.J. Gibson, died quite soon after the
publication of his most substantial work (1979). Nev-
ertheless, with the important modification that it has
since undergone, and with the increasing permeabil-
ity of the boundaries between certain academic tra-
ditions, the affordances concept has an important
role to play in encouraging us to adopt the kind of
relational stance that is central to the idea of engage-
ment. If as archaeologists we can accept that humans
think through material culture, and that mind and
matter achieve a significant degree of codependency,
then perhaps we give ourselves the chance of escap-
ing the paradox of being frustrated mentalists con-
demned to materialism.
Acknowledgements
I am most grateful to the organizers, Colin Renfrew, Chris
Gosden and Elizabeth De Marrais, for inviting me to con-
tribute to the symposium. My thanks also go to Lambros
Malafouris for frequent stimulating discussion of
materiality and cognition. The research for this paper was
completed while holding a Junior Research Fellowship at
Christs College, Cambridge. Christs also funded a two
month stint at the Maison dArchologie et Ethnologie
(Universit de Paris I et X and CNRS), at the invitation of
Sander van der Leeuw; this was extremely useful to me in
helping to develop some of the ideas expressed in this
paper. Any errors or oversights remain of course my own.
References
Bechtel, W. & G. Graham (eds.), 1998. A Companion to
Cognitive Science. Oxford: Blackwell.
Brooks, R., 1991. Intelligence without representation. Arti-
ficial Intelligence 47, 13959.
Bruce, V., P.R. Green & M.A. Georgeson, 1996. Visual
Perception: Physiology, Psychology and Ecology. Hove:
Psychology Press.
Bryson, N., 1990. Looking at the Overlooked: Four Essays on
Still Life Painting. London: Reaktion Books.
Clark, A., 1996. Philosophical foundations, in Artificial
Intelligence, ed. M.A. Boden. London: Academic
Press, 122.
Clark, A., 1997. Being There: Putting Brain, Body and World
Together Again. Cambridge (MA): MIT Press.
Clark, A., 1998. Embodied, situated, and distributed cog-
nition, in Bechtel & Graham (eds.), 50617.
Cole, M., 1996. Cultural Psychology: a Once and Future Dis-
cipline. Cambridge (MA): Harvard University Press.
50
Conein, B. & E. Jacopin, 1993. Les objets dans lespace; la
planification dans laction, in Conein et al. (eds.),
5984.
Conein, B., N. Dodier & L. Thvenot (eds.), 1993. Les objets
dans laction: de la maison au laboratoire. (Raisons
Pratiques 4.) Paris: Ed. des EHESS.
Costall, A., 1981. On how so much information controls so
much behaviour: James Gibsons theory of direct
perception, in Infancy and Epistemology, ed. G.
Butterworth. Brighton: Harvester Press, 3051.
Costall, A., 1995. Socialising affordances. Theory and Psy-
chology 5, 46782.
Costall, A., 1997. The meaning of things. Social Analysis 41,
7685.
Csordas, T.J. (ed.), 1994. Embodiment and Experience: the
Existential Ground of Culture and Self. Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press.
de Fornel, M., 1993. Faire parler les objets. Perception,
manipulation et qualification des objets dans
lenqute policire, in Conein et al. (eds.), 24165.
DeMarrais, E., L.J. Castillo & T. Earle, 1996. Ideology,
materialization and power ideologies. Current An-
thropology 37, 1531.
Gell, A., 1998. Art and Agency: Towards a New Anthropologi-
cal Theory. Oxford: Clarendon Press.
Gibson, J.J., 1979. The Ecological Approach to Visual Percep-
tion. Boston (MA): Houghton Mifflin.
Gordon, I.E., 1997. Theories of Visual Perception. 2nd edi-
tion. Chichester: J. Wiley & Sons.
Gottdiener, M., 1995. Postmodern Semiotics: Material Cul-
ture and the Forms of Postmodern Life. Oxford:
Blackwell.
Graves-Brown, P.M. (ed.), 2000. Matter, Materiality and
Modern Culture. London: Routledge.
Hayles, N.K., 1999. How We Became Posthuman: Virtual
Bodies in Cybernetics, Literature, and Informatics. Chi-
cago (IL): University of Chicago Press.
Heft, H., 1989. Affordances and the body: an intentional
analysis of Gibsons ecological approach to visual
perception. Journal for the Theory of Social Behaviour
19(1), 130.
Hodder, I., 1993. Social cognition, in Viewpoint: What is
cognitive archaeology?, by C. Renfrew et al. Cam-
bridge Archaeological Journal 3(2), 24770.
Hodder, I. (ed.), 2001. Archaeological Theory Today. Cam-
bridge: Polity Press.
Holland, D. & M. Cole, 1995. Between discourse and
schema: reformulating a cultural-historical approach
to culture and mind. Anthropology and Education
Quarterly 26(4), 47889.
Holland, D., W. Lachicotte, D. Skinner & C. Cain, 1998.
Identity and Agency in Cultural Worlds. Cambridge
(MA): Harvard University Press.
Hutchins, E., 1995. Cognition in the Wild. Cambridge (MA):
MIT Press.
Ingold, T., 2000. The Perception of the Environment: Essays in
Livelihood, Dwelling and Skill. London: Routledge.
Julien, M.-P., 1999. Des techniques du corps la synthse
corporelle: mises en objets, in Julien & Warnier (eds.),
 The Affordances of Things
1527.
Julien, M.-P. & J.-P. Warnier (eds.), 1999. Approches de la
culture matrielle: corps corps avec lobjet. Paris:
LHarmattan.
Kaufmann, J.-C., 1997. Le coeur louvrage: thorie de laction
mnagre. Paris: Nathan.
Kirsh, D., 1995. The intelligent use of space. Artificial Intel-
ligence 73, 3168.
Kirsh, D. & P. Maglio, 1994. On distinguishing epistemic
from pragmatic action. Cognitive Science 18, 51349.
Latour, B., 2000. The Berlin key or how to do words with
things, in Graves-Brown (ed.), 1021.
Lfgren, O., 1996. Le retour des objets? Ltude de la
culture matrielle dans lethnologie sudoise. Cul-
ture matrielle et modernit - Ethnologie franaise 26(1),
14050.
Maglio, P.P., T. Matlock, D. Raphaely, B. Chernicky & D.
Kirsh, 1999. Interactive skill in Scrabble, in Proceed-
ings of the 21st Annual Conference of the Cognitive
Science Society, eds. M. Hahn & S.C. Stoness. Mahwah
(NJ): Lawrence Erlbaum.
Mauss, M., 1950/1936. Les techniques du corps, in Sociologie
et anthropologie. Paris: Presses Universitaires de
France, 36386. [1st edition 1936. Journal de
Psychologie 32.]
Michaels, C.F. & C. Carello, 1981. Direct Perception. Lon-
don: Prentice-Hall.
Noble, W., 1991. Ecological realism and the fallacy of
objectification, in Against Cognitivism: Alternative
Foundations for Cognitive Psychology, eds. A. Still &
A. Costall. London: Harvester Wheatsheaf, 199223.
Noble, W., 1993. Meaning and the discursive ecology:
further to the debate on ecological perceptual theory.
Journal for the Theory of Social Behaviour 23(4), 37598.
Norman, D., 1993. Les artefacts cognitifs, in Conein et al.
(eds.), 1534.
Norman, D., 1998. The Design of Everyday Things. London:
MIT Press.
Palmer, S.E., 1999. Vision Science: From Photons to Phenom-
enology. Cambridge (MA): MIT Press.
Parmentier, R.J., 1997. The pragmatic semiotics of cul-
tures. Semiotica 116, 1115.
Petitot, J., F.J. Varela, B. Pacoud & J.-M. Roy (eds.), 2000.
Naturalising Phenomenology: Issues in Contemporary
Phenomenology and Cognitive Science. Stanford (CA):
Stanford University Press.
Preucel, R.W. & A.A. Bauer, 2001. Archaeological prag-
matics. Norwegian Archaeological Review 34(2), 8596.
Reed, E.S., 1988a. The affordances of the animate environ-
ment: social science from the ecological point of
view, in What Is An Animal?, ed. T. Ingold. London:
Unwin Hyman, 11026.
Reed, E.S., 1988b. James J. Gibson and the Psychology of
Perception. New Haven (CT): Yale University Press.
Reed, E.S., 1991. James Gibsons ecological approach to
cognition, in Against Cognitivism: Alternative Foun-
dations for Cognitive Psychology, eds. A. Still & A.
51
Costall. London: Harvester Wheatsheaf, 17197.
Renfrew, C., 2001. Symbol before concept: material en-
gagement and the early development of society, in
Hodder (ed.), 12240.
Schlanger, N., 1994. Mindful technology: unleashing the
chane opratoire for an archaeology of mind, in The
Ancient Mind: Elements of Cognitive Archaeology, eds.
C. Renfrew & E. Zubrow. Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 14351.
Semprini, A., 1995. Lobjet comme procs et comme action de
la nature et de lusage des objets dans la vie quotidienne.
Paris: LHarmattan.
Shanks, M., 1998. The life of an artefact in an interpretive
archaeology. Fennoscandia Archaeologica 15, 1530.
Shanks, M. & C. Tilley, 1987. Social Theory and Archaeology.
Cambridge: Polity Press.
Sonesson, G., 1989. Pictorial Concepts: Inquiries into the Semi-
otic Heritage and Its Relevance for the Analysis of the
Visual World. Lund: Lund University Press.
Strauss, C. & N. Quinn 1997. A Cognitive Theory of Cultural
Meaning. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Suchman, L.A., 1987. Plans and Situated Actions: the Prob-
lem of HumanMachine Communication. Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press.
Thomas, J., 1998. Some problems with the notion of exter-
nal symbolic storage, and the case of Neolithic ma-
terial culture in Britain, in Cognition and Material
Culture: the Archaeology of Symbolic Storage, eds. C.
Renfrew & C. Scarre. (McDonald Institute Mono-
graphs.) Cambridge: McDonald Institute for Ar-
chaeological Research, 14956.
Thomas, J., 2001. Archaeologies of place and landscape, in
Hodder (ed.), 16586.
Tilley, C., 1994. A Phenomenology of Landscape: Places, Paths
and Monuments. Oxford: Berg.
Tomasello, M., 1999. The Cultural Origins of Human Cogni-
tion. Cambridge (MA): Harvard University Press.
van Gelder, T. & R.F. Port, 1995. Its about time: an over-
view of the dynamical approach to cognition, in
Mind as Motion: Explorations in the Dynamics of Cog-
nition, eds. R.F. Port & T. van Gelder. Cambridge
(MA): MIT Press, 143.
Vygotsky, L., 1978. Mind in Society: the Development of
Higher Psychological Processes, ed. M. Cole. Cambridge
(MA): Harvard University Press.
Warnier, J.-P., 1999a. Construire la culture matrielle: lhomme
qui pensait avec ses doigts. Paris: Presses Universitaires
de France.
Warnier, J.-P., 1999b. Conclusion: le sujet comme roue
dengrenage, in Julien & Warnier (eds.), 13542.
Wertsch, J.V., 1998a. Mind as Action. Oxford: Oxford Uni-
versity Press.
Wertsch, J.V., 1998b. Mediated action, in Bechtel & Graham
(eds.), 51825.
Williams, E. & A. Costall 2000. Taking things more seri-
ously: psychological theories of autism and the ma-
terial-social divide, in Graves-Brown (ed.), 97111.