Intentionality, Symbolic Pragmatics, and Material Culture: Revisiting Binford’s View of the Old Copper Complex

Abstract

I examine how a cognitive archaeology may best be advanced by focusing on Intentionality, the mental property that acts as the causal interface in the human-world interaction. I call this approach symbolic pragmatics. The argument is that, through style as the symbolic medium, material culture is endowed by its users with a form of derived Intentionality that is expressively imposed on it in the moment of usage. The central heuristic is the notion of the legal warrant as a pragmatic symbol that transforms behavioral interventions into the types of social activities (intended) they are. In the same way, material cultural style symbolically endows its users with pragmatic or action-constitutive powers that transform their material interventions into the social activities they (intend) are. I apply the warranting model to interpreting the Old Copper Culture Complex, arguing that its copper/stone duality manifests a structuring of the material activities of this society into two complementary water and land ecological spheres.