Creativity in Human Evolution and Prehistory

We live in a world surrounded by remarkable cultural achievements of human kind. Almost every day we hear of new innovations in technology, in medicine and in the arts which remind us that humans are capable of remarkable creativity. But what is human creativity? The modern world provides a tiny fraction of cultural diversity and the evidence for human creativity, far more can be seen by looking back into prehistory. The book examines how our understanding of human creativity can be extended by exploring this phenomenon during human evolution and prehistory.
The book offers unique perspectives on the nature of human creativity from archaeologists who are concerned with long term patterns of cultural change and have access to quite different types of human behaviour than that which exists today. It asks whether humans are the only creative species, or whether our extinct relatives such as Homo habilis and the Neanderthals also displayed creative thinking. It explores what we can learn about the nature of human creativity from cultural developments during prehistory, such as changes in the manner in which the dead were buried, monuments constructed, and the natural world exploited. In doing so, new light is thrown on these cultural developments and the behaviour of our prehistoric ancestors.
By examining the nature of creativity during human evolution and prehistory these archaeologists, supported by contributions from psychology, computer science and social anthropology, show that human creativity is a far more diverse and complex phenomena than simply flashes of genius by isolated individuals. Indeed they show that unless perspectives from prehistory are taken into account, our understanding of human creativity will be limited and incomplete.

Contents Introduction: The Archaeological Study of Human Creativity Steven Mithen Perspectives on Creativity Editorial Introduction What is Creativity: a view from the cognitive sciences Margaret Boden Creative thought: a long term perspective Ian Hodder Creative thought in traditional aboriginal society Robert Layton The Evolution of Human Creativity Editorial Introduction The early evolution of creative thinking: evidence from monkeys and apes Richard Byrne Homo: The creative genus? Mark Lake Middle Palaeolithic `creativity': Reflections on an oxymoron? Steven L. Kuhn & Mary C. Stiner A creative explosion? Theory of mind, language and the disembodied mind of the upper Palaeolithic Steven Mithen Creativity in Later Prehistoric Europe Editorial Introduction Creativity's coffin: Innovation in the burial record of Mesolithic Europe Rick J. Schulting Architecture, imagination and the Neolithic world Richard Bradley The conditions of creativity for prehistoric Maltese art Caroline Malone & Simon Stoddart All the King's horses: Assessing cognitive maps in later prehistoric Europe Colin Renfrew