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On Depiction and Language

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On Depiction and Language

Harold L. Dibble; R. L. Holloway, Jr.; Alexander Marshack; Andree Rosenfeld; Garry W.

Trompf; William Noble; Iain Davidson

Current Anthropology, Vol. 30, No. 3. (Jun., 1989), pp. 330-342.

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On Depiction and Language
HAROLD L. DIBBLE
Department of Anthropology, University of
Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, Pa. 19104, U.S.A. 24 x 88
I have only three comments to make on Davidson and
Noble's (CA 30:125-37) article. First, the paper written
by Chase and myself (Chase and Dibble 1987)appears in
several places to have been misrepresented. One refer-
ence to it (p. 128) suggests that we concluded that there
was good evidence for symbolic behavior in Neandertals.
In fact, we stated (p. 284) that during this time "there is a
general lack of clear archaeological evidence for the pres-
ence of symbolism." We also argued that many of the
interpretations of symbolism in early scratch marks and
the like are really only assumptions about and not con-
clusive demonstrations of the nature of those marks.
One of the most important criteria, as stressed by us and
by Davidson and Noble, is repeated patterning. Any sin-
gle set of marks on a bone or other material, however
elaborate or intentional, can only be assumed to be indi-
vidual and idiosyncratic until examples are found that
demonstrate the presence of a shared meaning or under-
standing.
Second, I agree that the early lithic industries (i.e.,
Lower and Middle Paleolithic) do not show any arbitrary
patterns that can be linked unequivocally to language or
shared "mental templates" (for a more thorough review,
see Dibble 1988). To be fair, however, others, such as
Sackett (1988)~ point out that some unquestionably lin-
guistically competent groups have made and still do
make lithic industries with perhaps as little arbitrary
patterning. Thus, the negative evidence based on stone
tools does not give positive answers one way or the
other. On the other hand, the complete absence of any
such patterning preceding modern H o m o sapiens does
make one wonder whether Neandertals and their
forebears used symbols even in other domains.
Finally, I would like to emphasize the rather subtle
point made at the end of the paper that there is a differ-
ence between potential behavior and behavior that is an
integral part of a species's adaptation. While we may

accept the notion that chimpanzees can be taught sym-
bolic language, the fact remains that they do not use it in
the wild; it is not part of their natural adaptation. Like-
wise, it is irrelevant whether or not Neandertals could
have been taught language. I would assume that they
could, since there is no compelling reason to doubt their
potential along these lines, but the more important
question is whether they used language as part of their
adaptation. If not, what was the nature of their adapta-
tion?
What is very interesting to me in the research on pri-
mate potentials for symbolic vocalizations or gestural
communications (Seyfarth 1986, Cheney, Seyfarth, and
Smuts 1986) is that while many other primates exhibit
clear and surprising potentials along these lines, they
never seem to realize these to any significant extent.
This suggests that the ability to communicate symboli-
cally does not confer so tremendous an advantage on
these species that it automatically results in increasing
selection for that trait. For this reason, and regardless of
how important it is to modern cultural behavior, I would
tend not to see language as the ultimate "prime mover"
in the origin of hominids. This is exactly what has hap-
pened to other purported prime movers (such as hunting
and tool use) as we have learned more about primate
behavior in the wild. If these behaviors already existed in
other primates, then they cannot be used to explain our
own evolutionary history.
R. L. HOLLOWAY, JR.
Department of Anthropology, Columbia University,
New York, N.Y. 10027, U.S.A. 25 x 88
Although my earlier article (Holloway 1969) is men-
tioned by Davidson and Noble ("as cited by Falk"), I
wonder if it was read. Attempting to weld the psycholog-
ical and the archaeological is hardly new. This piece ap-
pears to be within the new stream of thought that denies
human status to hominids from the Neandertals down
to the australopithecines on the basis of a perceived
stasis in the archaeological record, without careful ex-
ploration of the biologies inherent in the hominid re-
mains or the possibilities of cultural elaboration from its
own internal resources. Stone tool making (e.g., Oldo-
wan, Chellean, Acheulean, Soan, Levalloisian, Mouste-
rian) for Davidson and Noble is apparently homologous
to spider-web and bird-nest building (and, of course, ter-
mite-nest raiding), despite the fact that some of these
tools span three continents and roughly 1.8 million
years and were clearly products of some form of shared
social consensus, quite possibly vocally articulated with
the help of arbitrary symbols. The possibility remains,
despite all the argumentation to the contrary, that lan-
guage had early roots, and an essentially human (albeit
small) brain was available from 1.8 million years ago.
The tools themselves depict invariance (apoint I tried to
make in my 1969 article and my dissertation of 1964 on
human brain evolution).I cannot help but wonder about
all the preliterate (or nonliterate) human beings that an-
Volume 30, Number 3, June 1989 1 331
thropologists have talked to all these years who have
made little in the way of material depictions (such as
carvings) for future archaeologists to study and would
apparently be judged by Davidson and Noble noncul-
tural and therefore nonhuman. The Australian Aborig-
ines come to mind in that if we were to focus only on
their stone tools, we might have to conclude that these
people, whose kinship systems we still have trouble
understanding, had no language or culture. That would
fit nicely with their well-known smaller brains, and we
could just ignore their well-developed and thoroughly
modern Broca's areas. We have not a single reliable vocal
tract to study from the fossil record, yet Lieberman's
views are regarded here as dicta.
Once again, an argument on language origins is pre-
sented that cannot be tested. Since stone tools are ruled
out by Davidson and Noble's analyses, they cannot be
argued to be an example of a particular form of depiction.
For better or worse, stone tools do show invariances of
form (standardized)as well as considerable variation. No
one questions that stone itself may limit the variety of
forms of production by its inherent physical properties
and prior shape (e.g., oval river cobbles) or that not all
stone tool forms are arbitrary. The important point is
that despite these limitations and wide variation in tool
shapes, standardized and arbitrary forms often emerge
from a series of concatenated perceptual, conceptual,
and sensorimotor actions performed by actors within a
social group. The fact that almost any graduate or under-
graduate student in anthropology can make stone tools
ranging from Oldowan pebbles to Aurignacian points
suggests a set of perceptual and cognitive processes very
different from those of spiders and birds. (Indeed, nests
and webs are often used as ethological criteria for distin-
guishing species within these animal groups.)
Perhaps it would be simpler and scientifically more
rigorous to insist that unless one talks to someone else
and gets an answer, no cultural exchange by language
has taken place (ignoring deaf mutes and sign language
for the moment). This would conveniently place true
"culture" at about the time of writing (or the recording
of conversations) and obviate the need to worry about
Neandertal vocal cords, stone tools and the sites where
they are uncovered, markings on antlers, cave paintings,
and the 1.8 million years of paleontological evidence re-
garding the evolution of the hominid brain. Davidson
and Noble simply dismiss the brain, and if we are going
to dismiss thousands of stone tools as suggestive of cog-
nitive and social processes indicative (or not) of language
capacity, one might as well dismiss the brain, too. Both
can simply be regarded as "part of the preadaptation for
more complex sequencing control necessary in produc-
tion of speech, the associate of language" (p. 136). Thus,
until we recover Neandertals frozen in blocks of Siberian
ice, thaw them out, bring them back to life, and even-
tually talk to them, we need never worry about the
paleoneurological evidence of our hominid ancestors,
such as Homo habilis, with its human-like Broca's area,
or the petalial configurations discussed by Holloway and
de La Coste (1982)~ suggesting righthandedness some 1.8
332 1 CURRENT ANTHROPOLOGY

million years ago and strongly correlated with language mained rare or comparatively crude (as in the Gravettian
and hemispheric lateralization. (If three-year-olds are ca-cultures of central Europe and the Russian plain). Beads,
pable of reflexive thinking and depictions with small in fact, appear in the European record thousands of years
and as yet not fully differentiated cortical structural andbefore any animal or female images. They occur, for in-
fiber connections, why couldn't earlier hominid adults stance, in the pre-Aurignacian Chatelperronian at Arcy-
have been capable of reflexive thought?) sur-Cure, ca. 33,000 B.P., and in the earlier proto-
The problem for most archaeologists-cum-psychol- Aurignacian at Bacho Kiro, Bulgaria, ca. 40,000 B.P.The
ogists seems to be the apparent stasis in the archaeolog- earliest examples appear in a pre-Mousterian, Micoquian
ical record until the advent of the Upper Paleolithic, level of the German site of Bocksteinschmiede, ca.
art, and multiple evidence for behavioral (cultural?) IIO,OOO B.P. (Wetzel and Bosinski 1969; Marshack
diversity. Archaeologically (i.e., on the basis of mate- 1987b; 1988a, e; 1 9 8 9 ~ These
). items of personal decora-
rial culture1 all of the world outside of the Neo- tion are complex forms of visual symboling and com-
lithic centen (e.g., Egypt, Mesopotamia, the Indus, munication and may have marked age, sex, rank, and
China, etc.] shows thousands and thousands of years of status or the role of an individual in a particular cultural
"stasis" associated with biological evidence showing no moment, but thev are not in Davidson and Noble's sense
appreciable change. I wonder how someone living just "depicti;eu or representational. The most primitive of
prior to the Industrial Revolution would react to modern present-day hunter-gatherers, the remnant Pygmies of
attempts at space exploration and how Liuwenoek (or the Ituri Forest of northeastern Za'ire, have no "de~ic-
Mendel) would regard the modern unraveling of DNA tive" art or objects of decoration but do paint patterns on
and tunneling emission microscopy. Has the species face and body (Wilkie and Morelli 1988). They are, of
changed in the last 400 years? There is not a shred of course, fully human and have language. Body painting,
evidence for any biologically based changes accompany- tatooing, and scarification are common among certain
ing the vast acceleration of changes in cultural phenom- human societies, even where "depictive" art is lacking,
ena during the past 7,000 years, although Henneberg has and there is some evidence that it may have occurred in
recently made a convincing case for a reduction of brain the Upper Paleolithic.
size since the Upper Paleolithic. I sincerely doubt that it Items of personal decoration are found as grave goods
is necessary to explain the emergence of the Upper Pa- in European Upper Paleolithic burials from the Aurigna-
leolithic as suddenly depending on language, culture, cian onward, but burials which (despite Chase and Dib-
and thus the brain in some as yet unknown and unde- ble's 1987 caveat and Davidson and Noble's agreement
scribed fashion. Perhaps Stephen Jay Gould's suggestion with them] begin to be widespread in the Mousterian
that language was a spandrel of the human brain de- occur without evidence of such items. Burials them-
serves more attention. selves, however, are symbolic but not "depictive,"
mimetic, or representational in Davidson and Noble's
ALEXANDER MARSHACK sense, unless one wishes to hypothesize a Jungian return
Peabody Museum, Harvard University, Cambridge, of the body to the womb of mother earth. Like beads and
Mass. 02138, U.S.A. 16 XI 88 pendants, they represent a highly variable, arbitrary, cul-
tural usage, usually without "depictive" or mimetic ref-
Lacking firsthand knowledge of the widespread and erence (Marshack 1987b; 1988a, e; 1 9 8 9 ~ ) .
complex Upper Paleolithic materials or traditions, For White (1982, 1985, 1986)) the presence of beads
Davidson and Noble cite a handful of writers who, in the among the anatomically modern early Aurignacians or
main, have dealt ethnocentrically with certain aspects Cro-Magnons is evidence for the beginning of human
of the Franco-Cantabrian symbolic materials and tradi- self-awareness and social complexity and supposedly a
tions. The Franco-Cantabrian cultures, however, repre- crucial impetus to the development of language. David-
sent a purely regional and skewed development (Mar- son and Noble have chosen a different aspect of Upper
shack 1977; 1987a, bj 1988~-e; 1 9 8 9 ~ they ) ~ do not Paleolithic symboling to suggest an "origin" for lan-
represent the beginnings of art or adequately indicate the guage. Simplifying hypotheses such as these, however,
beginnings of image making or language. The gesture- denigrate the extraordinary complexity and variability of
mimesis-depiction model simply does not hold up in language as a neurologically mediated mode of reference,
light of either the available archaeological evidence from the complexity of the Upper Paleolithic symbol record,
the European Paleolithic or the record from other areas and the even earlier origins of nondepictive symboling
of human habitation during the same period. and image making.
Among the earliest symbolic materials from the Euro- The earliest evidence for "decoration" is the late
pean Upper Paleolithic are beads and pendants, items of Acheulian manufacture and use of ochre, ca, zr;o.ooo-
personal decoration that though symbolic are neither de- 300,000 B.P. (Lumley 1966, Wreschner 1480, ~ a r s h a c k
pictive, representational, nor mimetic in Davidson and 1981). Red ochre is nondepictive in Davidson and No-
Noble's sense. These objects are made of fossils, shells, ble's sense, for it can be used to color tools and svmbolic
and animal teeth as well as bone and stone, and they artifacts, dolor the bodies of the living and the dead,
occur in all regions of the Eurasian Upper Paleolithic, color the grave itself and the walls and floors of habita-
even where no early depictive animal art ever really de- tion sites. It can also be used as a material for drawing
veloped (as in Italy) and where depictive animal art re- images and for making notations and non-notational
 Volume 30, Number 3, Tune 1989 1 333

sets of marks in the habitation site and on the walls of

"sanctuary caves." The carefully carved symbolic plaque

from the Mousterian site of Tata, Hungary, ca. ~oo,ooo

B.P., for instance, was covered with red ochre on its main

face but not on the back (Marshack 1976; 1988a, e), a

symbolic but "nondepictive" act in the Davidson and

Noble sense of the term.

It is significant, in the light of Davidson and Noble's

universalist approach, that no tradition of personal deco-
ration and no important tradition of the making of
animal or human images is documented in other areas of
anatomically modern human occupation around the
world during the period of the European Upper
Paleolithic. Two minor exceptions indicate the capacity
for such production but not its widespread cultural use.
Animal images and personal decorations do occur at the
late Upper Paleolithic site of Mal'ta, Siberia, among a
Mongoloid people which, however, had derived many of
its cultural and productive traditions from the Russian
plain, and a few crude animal paintings are known, as
Davidson and Noble recognize, from the Apollo I I cave.
These rare examples of depiction outside of Europe do
not establish a major depictive mode among the wide-
spread early human populations and cultures. Davidson
and Noble tend to argue that the rare and idiosyncratic
example from before the Upper Paleolithic cannot be
used as evidence either of capacity or of culture, but they
do not apply that rule to the period of the Upper
Paleolithic. Does the rare and idiosyncratic evidence
outside of Europe or even its total absence in major re-
gions mean that there was no capacity for language or
social complexity? There is, for instance, the rare and
idiosyncratic evidence for early mining of iron-oxide col-
oring material (specularite) in the Middle Stone Age of
South Africa, suggesting, once again, the presence of an
early capacity for the cultural use of color among differ-
ent human groups before the evidentiary beginnings of
manufactured mimetic-gestural depiction.
There is a strong suggestion, in fact, that it may have
been not mimetic-gestural depiction but a symbolic use
of animal skins and parts that immediately preceded the
Upper Paleolithic making of animal images in Eurasia
(Marshack 1987~;1988a, e; 1 9 8 9 ~ )At . the early Auri-
gnacian site of Hohlenstein-Stadel in Germany, ca.
32,000 B.P., there is the rare and idiosyncratic but extra-
ordinarily important mammoth-ivory carving of a lion-
headed therianthrope (fig. I ) . This image, which does
not depict or refer to any object or concept in the real
world (such as the "bison" that Davidson and Noble
offer as an example of depiction), may be the most sym- FIG. I . Lion-headed therianthrope of mammoth ivory
bolically complex image to come from the early Upper from Hohlenstein-Stadel, Germany, ca. 32,000 B.P.
Paleolithic. There is, however, no archaeological evi- Height 28.1 cm.
dence for a preparatory or developmental tradition lead-
ing to this carving or form of imaging. There is an indica-
tion at the late Neanderthal site of Hortus (Valflaunes), carved, engraved, and painted animal parts, at times
France, ca. 40,000 B.P., that a leopard skin may have been used as amulets or pendants (fishtails, seal tails, frogs1
worn as a costume (Lumley and Lumley 1972; Marshack legs, bison and horse hooves, animal jaws, cervid eyes,
1987b; 1988a, e; 1989~).Significantly, the later Upper bovid horns, stag antlers, etc.). Parts of animals (tails,
Paleolithic Magdalenian culture in the Franco-Can- ears, legs, muzzles, eyes, bellies) are often added to
tabrian region provides us with numerous examples of animal images in specialized, particularized acts of re-
 334 1 CURRENT ANTHROPOLOGY
newal (Marshack 1987b, 1988d). There are also exam-
ples of the wearing of animal skins and parts by "sorcer-
ers" (Mas dlAzil, Trois Frkres, Abri Mkge, et al.). In this
regard it is significant, as well, that the private and often
secret shamanistic iconography and symbolic materials
found in the medicine bags of historic times in different
parts of the world include decontextualized animal and
vegetable parts. These are symbolic but not necessarily
depictive or representational in Davidson and Noble's
sense.
We are therefore faced, in dealing with the Franco-
Cantabrian phenomenon, with a complex regional, his-
torical development, not with biological or psychologi-
cal universals. The Aurignacian initiated the abundant
use of bone, ivory, and antler for practical and symbolic
purposes, and the manufacture of animal images may
thus have been ultimately derived at this time and in
this region from an earlier symbolic use of animal skins
and animal parts. I stress the word "use" rather than
depiction, since symbol systems always represent as-
pects of cultural usage rather than the mere "freezing"
or encoding of internalized imagery. An analysis of the
early animal carvings from the Aurignacian site of
Vogelherd, Germany, ca. 32,000 B.P., for instance, has
shown that, instead of being merely "depictive" and
therefore "referential," they were used for different
ritual, symbolic purposes over time (Marshack 1972a,
1984a, 1987a, I 988d).The later Magdalenian animal im-
ages in the Franco-Cantabrian caves were also often used
for diverse symbolic purposes (Marshack 1984b, 1988d).
Depictions were not merely referential, representa-
tional, and informational but, along with beads, pen-
dants, ochre, and burials, often represented specialized
aspects of visual "nonlinguistic," enactive, symbolic,
ritual participatory behavior. While such usage suggests
the presence of language and cultural complexity, these
forms of visual symboling did not represent linguistic,
syntactical behavior.
The fact is that both language and symbolic imagery
are ultimately dependent on a number of neurological
visual or "visualizing" capacities, including the evolved
human capacity for categorization and abstraction, the
capacity to provide arbitrary meaning to objects, pro-
cesses, relations, and behaviors (Marshack I 984a, I 98 5,
1988b),and the capacity to model and map processes and
concepts in time and space. It is in this nonlinguistic,
cognitive sense that "depiction functions [ultimately]
. . . as the pivotal practice engendering reflective lan-
guage." Language almost always refers to nonlinguistic
categories, processes, and relations present or observable
in the visual or "envisionable" world, and its ultimate
adaptive value is that it makes these categories manipu-
lable syntactically and referentially. But the capacities
for categorization and depiction are not for that reason
linguistic or syntactical. The evolving hominid capacity
for visual categorization and abstraction was only one of
a number of neurological capacities developing in the
enlarging, networked hominid brain, and it coincided
with a developing capacity for language and speech and
ultimately helped make it relevant and adaptive (Mar-
shack 1984a, 1985, 1988b). These same capacities also
abetted image making and image use. Biologically,
neurologically, evolutionarily, and archaeologically,
however, one must differentiate imaging capacities and
processes from linguistic capacities and processes rather
than equate them. One can, as a result of ne.urologica1
insult to different areas of the brain, maintain the
learned capacity for syntactical, grammatical speech and
at the same time lose all reference to meaning" or the
ability to recognize images, objects, processes, relations,
behaviors, and concepts of space and time. The capacity
for language, as it evolved, would have increasingly been
able to refer to these other cognized and differentiated
visual and envisioned nonlinguistic categories. Gesture
itself makes reference to visually cognized categories.
The extraordinarily complex folk taxonomies found
among hunter-gatherers, for instance, are based on
the integrated use of a suite of diverse and separate
categorizing capacities, unified visually as well as
named.
There are other fallacies in the Davidson and Noble
model. Though it was I who initially indicated the pres-
ence of "time-factored" cumulative notations in the
European Upper Paleolithic ( I970j I 972~-cj I 975 ;
1987a)and the concept of the attachment of a symbolic
value to unit marks and sets of marks (cf.Davis 1986 and
Davidson and Noble here), I have also, for almost two
decades, had to stress that this type of "depictive" nota-
tional marking represents a small fraction of the sym-
bolic marking found in the Upper Paleolithic. Inten-
tional marks and sets of marks were made for a range of
"depictive" and "nondepictive" purposes (Marshack
1g87a). Often participation in a ritual, i.e., the mere act
of participatory marking, resulted in the production of
dots, lines, fingermarks, and even handprints. These
marks were not necessarily depictive, representational,
referential, or even intended to be seen by or to com-
municate with others but often the by-product or end
product of a symbolic process in which the ritual act was
the semantic and relevant behavior. Nevertheless, they
often find their way into anthologies as "art." By con-
trast, the incising of gripping marks on a tool also occa-
sionally provides what seems to be a "decoration," and
these too appear in anthologies as "art." Such behaviors
and products were no more acts of interpersonal com-
munication or intentional depiction than the contempo-
rary "gestural" modes of kneeling to pray, lighting a can-
dle ritually at home or in a temple, fingering rosary
beads, or touching holy water or the remnant evidence of
work with tools. The Upper Paleolithic mobiliary mate-
rials and the Franco-Cantabrian sanctuary caves are full
of examples of simple modes of marking intentionally
hidden from others in difficult-to-reach recesses. Nota-
tions themselves were apparently a rare and specialized
elitist product devised to be used only by the maker. In
fact, their cultural value apparently lay in the fact that
they were an elitist, private, perhaps "shamanistic" skill
and act of ad hoc problem solving rather than an act of
public communication (though events scheduled by
their use may have become "public"). While other mem-

bers of a group may have known the meaning of the
notational tradition, any single notation could be read
only by its maker.
I have shown, as well, that the so-called serpentine
and zigzag macaroni motif, ubiquitous throughout the
European Upper Paleolithic in both habitation sites and
caves, was apparently water-related and used in ritual. In
the case of this motif, "depiction," "mimesis," and ab-
straction of the image of water and the concept of flow
are clearly involved (Marshack 1975a, b; 1987a; 1988d).
Significantly, however, these acts of ritual marking were
often private, occurring on discarded fragments of bone
and stone or upon walls hidden in deep recesses of a
cave. They were not intended for communication with
others but were acts of individual, nonlinguistic com-
munication with an internalized cultural semantic. I as-
sume, of course, that language was involved in the nam-
ing of the motifs and in construction of the myths or
expianations surrounding their use, but the artifact it-
self, though "depictive" and "mimetic," was clearly
nonlinguistic. The beginning of art, symbol, and depic-
tion cannot be ascribed to any single mode or process.
It cannot be derived by reference to any one class of
Paleolithic image or to the development of skill in de-
piction in children. It cannot be explained in terms
of Davidson and Noble's gestural-mimetic-depictive
model. More important, it cannot be explained by selec-
tive and subjective reference to aspects of the skewed
and inadequate Franco-Cantabrian Paleolithic record.
The human visual, neurologically mediated capacities
for categorization, abstraction, marking, imaging, mod-
eling, and mapping are extraordinarily complex, cross-
modal, and networked and have a range of potentially
variable referential modes and uses. Language as a ref-
erential mode is ultimately dependent upon these other,
nonlinguistic capacities and modes. The nonlinguistic
capacity to map and model events and processes in the
real world, for instance, extends to the nonlinguistic ca-
pacity to "visualize" or "envision" events, processes,
and relations in imagined worlds. These capacities are
not dependent on language but are, of course, abetted by
it. Language, as a referential mode, can refer as easily to
these nonlinguistic categories and processes as to purely
linguistic, syntactical, grammatical modes, rules, and
structures. But language is not, for this reason, necessar-
ily depictive, and depiction is not, for this reason, neces-
sarily linguistic or syntactic.
The origins of art and language require an understand-
ing of the neurology of the suite of separate, specialized
but hierarchically integrated capacities of the human
brain. These are currently under intense investigation
within more disciplines than are noted by Davidson and
Noble. A knowledge of language and imaging origins
will require, in addition, an understanding of the cul-
tural, historical, and adaptive contexts within which
these capacities functioned and developed (Marshack
1 9 8 8 ~ )Logical
. modeling of universalist "psychologi-
cal" theories and selective, subjective citation of the ar-
chaeological literature to support a preconceived model
will not produce a theory capable of answering the many
Volume 30, Number 3, lune 1989 1 335
questions and problems involved in the origins of hu-
man language and image making and use.
In a number of major papers (Marshack 1987b, 1988e,
1989a) I have indicated that the Neanderthals had a ca-
pacity for symboling and could speak, though they left
us no record of depiction. The recent excavation of a
Neanderthal skeleton at Kebara (Bar-Yosef et al. 1985)
with the hyoid bone in an anatomically modern position
lends clear morphological support to the idea of a capac-
ity for speech.
ANDREE ROSENFELD
Prehistory and Anthropology, Australian National
University, GPO Box 4, Canberra, A. C.T. 2601,
Australia. I XI 88
Probably few would disagree with Davidson and Noble
that there are significant analogies between linguistic
and other symbolic communication systems, including
the visual arts, but the developmental relationship be-
tween language and art is more contentious. They argue
that depiction became meaningful as the transformation
of physical reality into an image and conclude (p. 132)
that it is the persistence of the image beyond the gesture
that created it that "provokes the reflectivity that in
turn permits referential utterance" (i.e., language). In
this way they develop a theoretical proposition about
the primacy of visual communication and especially of
overtly iconic visual systems. The latter in particular
appears to contradict the available archaeological evi-
dence.
In support of their argument Davidson and Noble
point out that a similar sequence of referential use of
image and language is observed in the development of
infants. Though they rightly reject observations on the
acquisition of language in children as a model for the
origins of language, they proceed to suggest parallels for
the development of iconic pictures in children's draw-
ings with the origins of the referential use of images. Just
as children grow up in language-rich cultures, so also
they grow up in a world awash with images. Contempo-
rary child studies cannot illuminate the origins of art-
or, indeed, of any sphere of cultural activity-any more
than those of language, for precisely the reasons they
state.
It is the archaeological evidence that must give us our
primary clues. Davidson's rejection of any symbolic be-
haviour in pre-Upper Palaeolithic times (in Europe) is
unconvincing, resting as it does primarily on negative
evidence and reference to an unpublished paper. Sym-
bolic action is demonstrated in the Mousterian by burial
(and perhaps by the collection of pigments and fossils
[though not, I agree, by the bear cult!]).Further, if the
recurrence of standard forms among stond artefacts im-
plies the concept of categories of flaked stone objects,
categorisation was most probably also applied to other
facets of the human environment. The conceptual order-
ing of the environment-bringing nature into culture-
is a uniquely human trait which requires symbolic ex-
 336 1 CURRENT ANTHROPOLOGY
pression and a measure of what Davidson and Noble
refer to as a reflective language. I remain unconvinced by
their denial of the possibility of some form of language
as a component of "Mousterian" cultures.
They list the few examples of pre-Upper Palaeolithic
artefacts which appear to have a visual rather than a
technological purpose (including some very doubtful
ones) but conclude that in the absence of repetition of
the visual forms the existence of a communication sys-
tem cannot be demonstrated. True. However, if not for
communication, then what was the rationale for inten-
tionally marking or shaping objects with no technologi-
cal intent? Or are the few marked objects of non-
perishable materials the remnant traces of symbolic
gestures only part of which impinged on the artefacts we
recover?
The visible traces of gestures abound among the later
arts, such as the macaroni and analogous painted marks
of the European Palaeolithic and the finger markings of
the Australian caves. They occur very widely in more
standard form as hand and other stencils. The trace of
the gesture persists right up to the present and operates
alongside more complex visual means of expression. The
crucial question, then, is when and how the trace of the
gesture became recognised as expressive of that gesture
and hence sharing in its meaning. The putative recogni-
tion of footsteps that Davidson and Noble cite amounts
to recognition of a mark left by an individual which has
only a partial iconic relationship with that person and
herlhis activity. This formal relationship is not sig-
nificantly different from the relationship between per-
sons and their activities when creating finger tracings or
macaroni in later contexts. The difference lies in the
presumed (but undemonstrated) intentionality of the
finger tracings, etc., as visible marks which outlast
the gesture.
I agree that it is "the achievement of meaningful . . .
tracing [that] is the essential first step" (p. 131) in the
development of a visual system of communication, viz.,
art. A fundamental flaw in Davidson and Noble's argu-
ment, however, is the assumption that in order to be
meaningful such a trace must be iconic-must have a
formal resemblance to its referent. In making this as-
sumption they sidestep the entire question of the per-
ception of iconicity in marks and the degree to which
such perception is culturally determined by style-the
shared conventions which give meaning to marks. There
is no fundamental difference in the symbolic operation
of iconically perceived and apparently non-iconic im-
ages.
Thus if we follow the logic of Davidson and Noble's
own argument about the development of reflective com-
munication through posture and gesture, one might ex-
pect essentially structured but non-iconic images that
arise from only that part of the symbolic gesture which
leaves a visible trace. Such marks need not be highly
standardised in form or in degree of completeness. By
extension, the concept of a trace as a controllable feature
that can be subjected to intentional modification of form
may then open the way to more controlled and more
formally restricted traces which acquire identities in
their own right, not merely as visible traces of gestures.
The development of such manual skills may well be
archaeologically instantaneous. We need not expect to
be able to discern the sequential process from techni-
cally simple to technically more controlled forms in vi-
sual systems which, because of repetition, can be
identified as art, that is, visual systems of communica-
tion.
GARRY W . T R O M P F
Department of Religious Studies, University of Sydney,
Sydney, N.S.W. 2006, Australia. 12 XI 88
If a strong and clearly argued case has ever been made
connecting the emergence of language with the human
capacity to depict signs manually, then Davidson and
Noble have made it. There is an alluring application of
Occam's razor in their reasoning: since no objects before
(select)engraved bones, figurines, and cave paintings of
the Upper Palaeolithic appear to communicate accord-
ing to some "system of recognizable meanings," there is
no necessity to posit language before depiction. Clarity
and attractions aside, however, not a few problems re-
main with their inferences, and I will confine myself to
the major ones.
First, Davidson and Noble "cover their tracks" by sug-
gesting that we can expect to find older examples of
communicative depiction than we already possess. We
are not told how much older (naturally),and their insis-
tence that early Palaeolithic tool-making repertoires are
in no sense depictions (i.e., mimicry of useful sharp ob-
jects in the natural environment),let alone evidence of a
"communicated tradition" (cf. Narr 1964:6-7), simply
tantalizes. We are apparently not supposed to believe
that hosts of depictions could have been made on per-
ishable materials or on the ground thousands of years be-
fore people dared to enter the eerie hideaways of Niaux
and Trois-Frhes, and so any claim for an earlier than
Upper Palaeolithic dating of language can be made only
on the basis of extant remains. This position is method-
ologically safe and keeps arguments ex silentio to a
minimum; yet I still keep asking myself whether it is
methodologically sound.
Second, Davidson and Noble have not given a com-
plete account of the biological debate over the origins of
language and depiction. They do not discuss the limits of
ape "art" (Morris 1962)~ studies of vocalization frequen-
cies among primates (Hockett 1960),or the evolution of
a two-tubed vocal tract crucial for speech located lower
down the throat than in primates (Lieberman 1988:24).
Presumably, if there is no biological evidence against
pushing the power of speech back well before good evi-
dence for depiction, there is no reason to discount other
conceivable reasons "talkers" might have wanted to
communicate-to survive in the face of hostile compo-
nents of an environment, work out a hunting strategy,
move from one spot to another-and thus might have
spoken (albeit probably simple) languages.

Third, they make much of the modern-child/primal-
human analogy to supplement their argument but pay
next to no attention to modern ethnographic materials
which run against it. This analogy is methodologically
risky in any case if we are apparently left with no choice
but to imagine a long "pre-lingual" phase of human de-
velopment in which verbal communication is compara-
ble to that of modern three- or four-year-olds and homi-
nids are producing "Acheulian" and "Mousterian"
artifacts. As for modern ethnography, it is surely of
significance that some known cultures are very rich lin-
guistically but engage in depiction or design hardly at
all. I think immediately of the Papuan Highland Fu-
yughe, whose language is the subject of a 500-page dictio-
n a b (Guivarc'h n.d. [1930])but who are known only for
rough wood carvings, fairly crudely painted pole decora-
tions, and poker-worked bamboo pipes (seealso Hallpike
1977:I, 27, 63; Beier 1978).The northern regions of Tas-
mania present a comparable Australian Aboriginal situ-
ation (John Clegg, personal communication, 1988). It
should be added here that much art work in traditional
society as we know it from ethnography was meant to be
destroyed after ritual action (see, e.g., Marrie 1987:3 and
the literature referred to there and Strathern 1971), yet
we cannot rule out such (or other relevant) principles'
having radically affected the archaeological record.
Fourth, these writers, both from an Australian univer-
sity, leave one wondering about the prehistoric peopling
of Australia, clearly a rather special case. One implica-
tion of their paper is that those who first crossed "an
unknown stretch of water" to discover a "habitable con-
tinent" (ca. ~o,oooB.P.)might not have possessed a lan-
guage. Our earliest dates for artistic activity in Australia
are ca. 30,000 B.P.(tobe safe, and to anticipate a paper on
the Panaramittee rock engraving "tradition" by Nobbs
and Dorn [1988]), and yet, even with the absence of
available data between this dating estimate and the
probable time of first arrival, the onus is on Davidson
and Noble to explain the peopling of Australia without
language, that is, in the absence of the evidence they
deem necessary to establish its presence. The Australian
case confirms the dictum (Clegg, personal communica-
tion, 1988) that "the closer we approach the most inter-
esting questions, the harder it is to find the relevant
data, and even methods."
WILLIAM NOBLE AND IAIN DAVIDSON
Department of PsychologylDepartment of
Archaeology and Palaeoanthropology,
University of N e w England, Armidale, N.S. W. 23 5 I ,
Australia. 6 I 89
This set of comments concentrates on archaeological as-
pects of our argument about the process of emergence of
language. This gives us the opportunity to enlarge upon
our interpretation of the data relating to claims for sym-
bolic behaviour before the emergence of fully modern
Volume 30, Number 3 , Tune 1989 1 337
humans. We also examine aspects of the theoretical and
empirical bases for some beliefs about early symbolism.
Dibble seems to have misunderstood our reading of his
and Chase's work (Chase and Dibble 1987). Davidson
(1987) covered almost the same ground and drew the
same conclusions about the quality of the evidence for
Middle Palaeolithic symbolism. It was precisely the im-
possibility of attributing intention to single sets of
marks or of attributing meaning to things when there is
no possibility of sharing that meaning that set us off on
the line of reasoning we have produced. We therefore
seem to agree almost completely with his published
work.
Dibble's interpretation of primate potentials is differ-
ent from ours. We are concerned not with hominid ori-
gins but with human ones. He correctly recognises the
importance of the American experiments with chimpan-
zees and gorillas in indicating that there is a potential
which can be stimulated by symbol-using experiment-
ers. In the origin of such symbol use in the evolutionary
record, there can have been no equivalent tutors. The
question, then, becomes how creatures with potential
but no comparative experience could have stumbled
upon the production of symbols. We have sought to
speculate about this in the context of the same ar-
chaeological record and interpretation of it as Dibble and
a theory of the nature of perception. As is foreshadowed
at the end of the paper, we are currently working on
understanding the ways in which the differing ecological
and social conditions of humans as linguistic beings are
the source of human diversity.
Dibble's support on the matter of stone tools shows
that we are not alone in opposing Holloway about them.
Of course, the fact that some fully modern humans
make stone tools without apparent patterning is irrele-
vant to our evolutionary argument, since linguistic com-
petence has already given these groups a measure of
choice and innovation unknowable before.
Holloway's position is curiously contradictory. His
contention that biology has not contributed to the mas-
sive cultural changes in the past 7,000 years can only be
construed as an argument for the existence of some non-
biological source of variability on which natural selec-
tion can operate. We are suggesting that this is lan-
guage-late in evolving, not early as Holloway would
have it. And what are we to make of his comparing con-
temporary undergraduates with Aurignacians? One of
our undergraduates prefaced his thesis with a photo-
graph of his three-year-old son imitating the actions
needed to make stone tools. Does this child have the
same perceptual and cognitive capacities as Holloway's
students? Surely this argument is the wrong way around:
it is the difficulty which students have in reproducing
the products of prehistory that might be used in the ar-
gument. And the difficulty arises because there are gen-
erally no other stone flakers to imitate. Spiders and birds
cannot make stone tools either, because they do not
have hands. Does Holloway think that the problem is
how hominids could have figured out that they needed
to make stone tools? The fact is that for almost half of
 the period in which hominids have been able to walk
upright (Laetoli 3.6 million years ago) they did not make
stone tools.
Marshack's work in describing and analysing both por-
table and cave "art" is without equal in its care and
attention to detail, but this does not automatically give
him authority in the theoretical aspects of the interpre-
tation of its significance in human evolution. Thus, we
do not deny that objects as old as those from Bock-
steinschmiede could be beads, although we note that
holes can be pierced in objects in a variety of ways, with
and without human intervention and for a variety of
discoverable reasons. The rapid experimental replica-
tion of such holes that Marshack reports elsewhere
( 1 9 8 9 ~reinforces
) the view that these need represent no
more than idle manipulation, with no meaning attached.
The scarcity of such objects suggests just that. To go on
to state that they involve "complex . . . . symboling and
communication" is unwarranted in itself, but to attach
to them fully modern behaviours such as the marking of
"age, sex, rank, and status or the role of an individual in
a particular cultural moment" is to beg the question
with a romantic allusion (Davidson 1 9 8 8 ~ ) .
Part of the problem with Marshack's critique is that he
concentrates on materials from the Upper Palaeolithic
with which he is most familiar as if they could credibly
be regarded as part of a single tradition. By our argument,
they are not relevant to the question of language origins,
and that is why we hardly referred to them. If, as we
believe, they post-date the emergence of language, then spec-
ulations about "time-factored notations," "participa-
tory marking," "intention," "elitism," "shamanism," and
"water rituals" are at least in order, whether or not they
are supported empirically (see e.g., Rosenfeld 1971).
Butzer (1980)has argued that all of the early pieces of
ochre seem to be modified. Marshack's list of things that
might be done with ochre is interesting but relevant
only if it has been demonstrated that those things were
done and that meaning was "attached" to such actions.
It is, after all, the search for meaning that we are em-
barked upon. Reference to the Tata tooth brings us back
to where we started this search. Marshack's (1977)de-
tailed description of this object was one of the begin-
nings of our project. The tooth is remarkable in being
flaked, polished, and coloured, but the puzzle, given its
uniqueness, is how it could have been symbolic. Our
paper was repeatedly explicit that meaning must be
shared to be meaning and that a sign of such sharing is
the repetition of production. How can a unique object
have meaning at all?
It is impossible to explain a unique event, but some
understanding may be reached by considering the con-
text in which the uniqueness is recognised. In one sense,
all objects and events are unique, but our habitual, post-
lingual, systems of categorisation associate them with
others which are recognised as sufficiently similar by
some criterion or other. The unique object or event can
be recognised as such only by its difference from other
objects or events which are not unique in that sense.
Which universe of events or objects to compare it with is
problematical. Thus, the Tata tooth is unique in the con-
text of modified objects because of its extreme antiquity.
In the Upper Palaeolithic it would be unique but not
unusual, because we know that pieces of bone were mod-
ified in various similar ways at that time.
Marshack mentions another unique case, the pla-
quettes from the Apollo 1 1 cave (Wendt 1976). For him,
such rare occurrences "do not establish a major depic-
tive mode among the widespread early human popula-
tions and cultures." We do not believe anyone has said
that they do, but any such argument would exactly par-
allel his equally unestablished suggestion of such a
mode based on the early objects in Europe. The images at
Apollo 11 are recognisably iconic paintings and bear
comparison with the plaquettes from ~ a r ~ a l lin o , east-
ern Spain (Pericot 1942, Davidson 1989),many of which
are much "cruder" although the dates are rather later
(Bofinger and Davidson 1977). The Apollo 11 finds are
separated from the next dated occurrence of depiction in
southern Africa by less than 15,ooo years; the tens of
scattered instances of non-iconic objects in Europe are
spread over more than I 50,ooo years.
The lion-headed ivory piece of Marshack's figure I is
in the same category of finds as the Vogelherd figurines,
which we consider to be later than the origins of lan-
guage. We do not deny that complex symbolism may
exist once language does. To appeal to the suggestion of
leopard-skin costumes at Grotte de I'Hortus, based on
finds of parts of these animals, seems to us misleading.
Many fragments of carnivore bone at the site are said
by de Lumley and his collaborators (1972:608-9) to
have been collected for their attached skins. These in-
cluded several leopard metacarpals and phalanges (Pil-
lard 1972:174) that were found scattered in Level I I C
(Lumley at al. 1972:596), assembled by the palaeontol-
ogist as a fragment of a single paw, and then shown
schematically (p. 597)as complete. (Marshack elsewhere
[1989a, b] refers to this reconstruction as though it had
survived in that form.) The discovery of these fragments
in the region of the "Grand Fosse" at that site, which we
regard as unlikely to represent primary contexts of depo-
sition, might explain the incompleteness and the scat-
tering: it also suggests that less importance was attached
to such a skin than Marshack attributes to it. No doubt
the argument by association is supposed to show a tradi-
tion from the leopard bones of the Mousterian of Hortus
(undated but older than 40,000 years ago) through
the sculpture of Hohlenstein-Stadel (~o,oooyears later
[Hahn 1983]),and the (probably)Magdalenian paintings
(a further 20,000 years later) of so-called sorcerers to the
historic medicine bags (another ~o,oooyears and a conti-
nent awav). This is the onlv evidence which could be
used to claim such a traditioh, and it does not strengthen
any part of Marshack's argument to juxtapose curiosities
from different periods and different places. As Conkey
(e.g., 1986) has argued, there can be no continuity on a
scale of analysis as gross as this. In the end, such a pre-
sentation may be preferred to ours as a story, but as
an argument about the origins of particular human be-
haviours we prefer some theory about how a capacity for

symbolism became possible in a creature which had
none.
As does Davis (1986:201), Marshack has a theory
about the visual system as being able to "abstract,"
"categorise," "discover," or "recognise" features of the
environment. The problem with this has been identified
by Coulter (1979)in connection with writings about the
brain, in which characteristics only ascribable to per-
sons, such as "thinking," "deciding," etc., are attributed
to this part of their bodies. It is evident that the mamma-
lian visual system is sensitive to contrasts and fluctua-
tions of the sort that specify the boundaries and facets of
surfaces and the various ways in which they are trans-
formed geometrically and morphologically (Gibson
1966, 1979).That ascription does not warrant the further
assertion that the visual system "categorises" or "recog-
nises" or "sees resemblance." These are achievements of
persons, able to see and also able to make claims about
recognising, seeing resemblance, or assigning to catego-
ries. Such claims can only be made, it need hardly be
stressed, by members of linguistic communities, i.e.,
modern human beings. The capacity to make such
claims is delivered not simply by the capacity to vocalise
but by the discovery that meaning is conveyable in
vocalising or other bodily sign. As with Broca's area, so
with the Kebara hyoid bone, structure must evolve be-
fore function.
Marshack mentions pre-Upper Palaeolithic burial, an
issue taken up by Rosenfeld, who specifically challenges
our archaeolom on this ~ o i n t Rosenfeld
. is correct in
saying that ~ G i d s o n ' s( 1 6 8 ~paper
) is unpublished; this
is because it has been superseded by the one under dis-
cussion. As did Chase and Dibble's (1987)paper but in-
dependently of it, it concluded that there is no evidence
for symbolism or other culturally defined values in the
burials of the Middle Palaeolithic. The case about burial
has been well made also by Harrold (1980),and it is clear
at least that none of the Middle Palaeolithic skeletal
finds is associated with grave goods other than tools,
animal bones, or manuports (a point conceded here by
Marshack); all such finds could have become associated
with the skeletal remains by means other than deliber-
ate burial of them or even of the bodv. The same is true
for finds associated with ochre (see Bouyssonie, Bouys-
sonie, and Bardon 1908:5 17, quoted by Chase and Dibble
1987274).There seems to be no find associated with any
object which could be called symbolic, yet many such
objects are found in Upper Palaeolithic burials. One ex-
ception seems to be the flowers from Shanidar 4 (Solecki
1971, Leroi-Gourhan 1975). Whilst we were initially
sceptical of Solecki's report, especially in view of his
mentioning that the workers at the site decorated them-
selves and their wheelbarrows with brightly coloured
flowers (Solecki I 97 I :68),Leroi-Gourhan's ( 1975 ) careful
account makes a much stronger case that flowers were
introduced into the cave close to the time of the death of
this creature. The issues are whether this was a burial
and whether the flowers were part of the burial process
and therefore in any way to be related to the uses of
flowers at present-day funerals.
Volume 30, Number 3, lune 1989 1 339
The first issue is the fundamental one. In the case of
Shanidar 4 it is at least likely that the same taphonomic
processes as led to the belief in a bear cult (Kurten
I 976:85 ) have operated to preserve an individual who
died naturally. The body was found surrounded by
rocks-in Leroi-Gourhan's words, "placed in an enclo-
sure of stones." We have no evidence that it was placed
by any creature other than itself, sleeping normally on a
nest (other primates make nests [Groves and Sabater Pi
19851) of branches and flowers. The argument is en-
hanced (or confused) by reference to the flowers as an
"offering" (e.g., Trinkaus 1983:I 5 ) and as having been
"carefully placed" (Leakey 198I : I 5 3). It was, of course,
the pollen samples, and not the pollens or their flowers,
that were carefully taken from select places around the
skeleton (Leroi-Gourhan I 975 : 5 62).
What is it about a burial which marks it off from the
preserved remains of other dead creatures, and what
about it enables us to recognise it? Modern mortuary
practices (e.g.,Haglund 1976)involve the disposal of the
dead in a wide variety of ways. Some result in the im-
mediate destruction of the skeleton (e.g., cremation),
some in delayed destruction (e.g., exposure in a tree);
some are more conducive to preservation of the skeleton
(e.g., burial in a crypt). The point is that we cannot be
sure that the disposal of dead bodies is a symbolic act in
a simple way. In an argument about the evolution of
distinctive human practices involving symbolism we
would have to determine that the body was deliberately
separated from the living and self-consciously (e.g.,cere-
monially) disposed of. We should not accept as evidence
of this any claim which can be accounted for in another,
non-cultural way, hence the importance of signs of de-
liberate emplacement and of grave goods.
The Shanidar case illustrates the nature of the prob-
lem. Solecki (1961)argued that Shanidar I died in a rock-
fall, and Philip Smith's notes (Solecki 1961:72) at the
time of discovery stated explicitly, "No signs of burial
except for thin dark streak on west side of skull." Sol-
ecki suggested (p. 74). that the brown streak might have
been caused by a rodent burrow. Solecki further argued
that Shanidar z and 3 were also victims of rockfall, and
Trinkaus (198327) commented, "As with the other
Shanidar adults, Shanidar 5 was wedged between rocks
and appears to have been killed by rockfall." Yet Trin-
kaus elsewhere (pp. 16-17~ Trinkaus 1985:211, 213) re-
fers to all of these as "burials" (as does Harrold (19801, de-
spite his careful assessment of the burial status of Nean-
dertals). They were undoubtedly "buried" under the sed-
iments from which they were excavated, but whether
anything other than natural sedimentation (including
rockfall) was involved in such burial is another question.
The imprecision in Trinkaus's account is symptomatic
of much of the belief in early burials. We do not deny
that there are some cases in which care has been taken
to establish that the recognition of burial involved more
than "association of skeletal elements in a partial skele-
ton" (Trinkaus I 985 :ZIZ). Burial pits were described at
La Ferrassie (see, e.g., Heim 1982:7, fig. 4), but this is
relatively rare amongst Neandertals. We suspect that ap-
340 1 CURRENT ANTHROPOLOGY
plication of the same taphonomic rigour to other
claimed burials as can be applied to Shanidar might re-
duce the numbers further.'
We regard the absence of evidence for symbolism in
Middle Palaeolithic burials as positive, not negative, evi-
dence in the context of our theory. We concede that we
cannot offer other positive evidence that burial was not a
"symbolic action," but we think that the onus is on
Rosenfeld to demonstrate that it was. The remains at
Krapina might be taken as evidence for her argument
because of Russell's (1987) demonstration that some of
the skeletal elements appear to have been cleaned of
flesh before disposal. Russell argues that this was done
in a manner comparable with at least one example of
modern secondary burial and that the cut marks on the
bones are distributed differently from those produced by
caribou butchery. It does not, however, seem necessary
to argue for anything beyond the removal of flesh from
the bone. The removal of flesh for whatever reason
would still have permitted its consumption, and such
activity becomes "cannibalism" only in a cultural set-
ting. The fact that a particular form of defleshing takes
places now in a cultural context of secondary burial
without consumption does not require that a similar
behavioural context inevitably was associated with the
defleshing at Krapina, given the absence of any cultural
sign.
Rosenfeld considers it a flaw in our argument that the
earliest traces must be iconic and also argues that "icon-
icity" must itself be perceived in order to be effective as
an information source. Her precise point here may be
akin to Davis's (CA 3o:141--42),to which we have al-
ready responded (CA 30:148-49). If it is not, then our
response must be as follows: our argument is that only
iconic imagery can deliver the perception of resem-
blance that is necessary for the whole enterprise of sym-
bol production to get a foothold, whatever happens
thereafter. We do not argue that perceivers of resem-
blance must go to the metaconceptual level of perceiv-
ing that it is the iconic quality of the image that does the
trick. Does Rosenfeld have a theory about how meaning
could come to be attached directly to non-iconic traces?
Iconicity in historic times exhibits varieties of style that
are culturally determined, but how did any of this activ-
ity come about? We have sought to account for this in a
context of theorising about perception and conscious-
ness.
Rosenfeld suggests that our argument allows for non-
iconic traces from "only that part of the . . . gesture
which leaves a visible trace." In our reply to commen-
tators (which she had not seen when she wrote) we lay
out in more detail a possible path from gesture to trace
that emphasises their morphological relatedness as es-
sential to the trace's initiating function of "reflectively
of reference." We see nothing in Rosenfeld's point that
precludes our scenario; at the same time, we agree with
I . See, for example, the paper by Gargett (CA 30:157-90),which
came to our attention after the composition of this reply.
her about the rapidity of the effect of depicting and about
the ways in which systems of depiction may develop.
Trompf mistakenly equates vocalising with language
and, with Marshack, advances a teleological argument
about creatures' "wanting" to improve their commu-
nicative capacity (Marshack conceals his "drive to-
ward language" in the "developing" brain). If, instead,
one adopts an evolutionary approach to the problem, it
is necessary to restrain the urge to picture any aspect of
the system as "heading" anywhere. Biological characters
that pre-date modern human (cultural)capacity to plan
ahead and hence attempt to control future contingencies
have to be explained in terms of capacities already se-
lected for.'
Trompf does not confront our argument about why it
is unlikely that the earliest depiction was exclusively in
perishable media, and he distorts our position on the
abilities of modern human children. We are verv careful
to limit what we say might intelligibly be learnkd about
hominid evolution from the development of children's
skills. It is fanciful to suggest that a case for comparabil-
ity between adult and hominids and modern children
can be derived from our argument.
The modern ethnographic issues regarding depictive
practices that Trompf mentions are not germane to an
argument about origins. Depiction's prehistoric power is
its instantiation of context-free reference, the basis of
symbol and language. Once depicting has had this trans-
forming effect upon communication, cultural selection
will determine the nature of its histories.
Trompf considers that our argument "leaves one won-
dering" about the linguistic capacity of those who first
settled in Australia. We assume that the initial colon-
ists, more than 40,000 years ago, did have language (p.
137).We would argue (see, e.g., Davidson 1988b)that the
first colonists of Australia made one of the earliest docu-
mented sea voyages, and we cannot imagine how that
happened unless these were language-using people capa-
ble of planning and constructing a raft. The early sea
voyages in Melanesia suggest that they were (Allen et al.
1988, Wickler and Spriggs 1988). The earliest-known
tracing in Australia is not iconic (White with O'Connell
1982:61-63), and on our model this must follow from
the emergence of language, whereas a hypothesis of a
non-lingual colonisation of Australia would presumably
have language evolve within Australia as well as else-
where. The burials at Lake Mungo (White with O'Con-
nell 1982:34-39) can hardly be construed as other than
deliberate interments, with one dated at 26,000 years
ago being a partial cremation, smashed and reburied, and
the other, really undated but probably older on strati-
graphic grounds, an extended burial with red ochre. It is
simpler to interpret all of this as following a colonisation
by language-using humans.
2. We note, for example, Clark and Lindly's (CA 30:179) observa-
tion that "evidence for symbolic behavior cannot be correlated
with hominid taxa." This is to be expected-otherwise we might
need to invoke a gene for language. everth he less, it is undoubtealy
the case that subseauent emergence of modem-i.e., svmbolic-
behaviour favoured ;he selection of the modern morphology.

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On Issues in Treponemal
Epidemiology
HENRY F . D O B Y N S
Department of Anthropology, University of Oklahoma,
Norman, Okla. 73019, U.S.A. 30 XI 88
Baker and Armelagos (CA 29:703-37) have clarified
many issues "for the continuing debate" on treponemal
epidemiology. Focusing on the origin and antiquity of
syphilis, they understandably do not identify all of the
significant issues concerning Treponema predation dur-
ing the Columbian exchange (Crosby 1972). One major
additional issue is the chronology of treponemal preda-
tion on Native Americans. Baker and Armelagos accept
at face value the dates published with skeletal remains,
but such dates are not necessarily accurate. The signifi-
cance of accurately dating Native American skeletal re-
mains judged to exhibit sequelae of Treponema infection
appears dramatically in the same CA issue as the Baker-
Armelagos review. Lewis (1988) argues that 23 Upper
Mississippi River Valley archaeological sites, including
both Upper and Middle Nodena, date to the 16th cen-
tury. Baker and Armelagos (p. 714) date Nodena culture
at A.D. 1400-1700; they do not, however, differentiate
the issue of the antiquity of New World syphilis from
the issue of its historic epidemiology. Ramenofsky
(1987:177-99) has redated 49 Mississippi River and
tributary-stream ruins north of the Yazoo-Mississippi
confluence to the 16th century and concluded (p. 71)
that in the lower valley "catastrophic population loss
began in the sixteenth century." Smith (1987:2, 54-85)
has dated interior montane Southeastern population col-
lapse to the same 16th -century. As methodologically
innovative archaeologists date artifacts and site occupa-
tions with increasing precision, scores of places thought
to have been populous in pre-Columbian times are being
identified as having been populous until the widespread
16th-century Native American collapse. Thus post-1492
Treponema epidemiology among Native Americans is a
topic ripe for analysis.
Williams (CA 29:72) stresses that analysis of hundreds
of Plains skeletons "has yet to turn up a single case of
treponemal infection (Gregg and Gregg I 987)." This
finding points to a second important issue-the extent
of regional variation in pre-1492 Treponema distribution
and its post-1492 predation. The need for regional analy-
sis is apparent from Baker and Armelagos's (pp. 7 I 5 -I 6)