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╇ i

Distributed Agency
ii

FOUNDATIONS OF HUMAN INTERACTION

General Editor: N. J. Enfield, The University of Sydney

This series promotes new interdisciplinary research on the elements of human

sociality, in particular as they relate to the activity and experience of commu-
nicative interaction and human relationships. Books in this series explore the
foundations of human interaction from a wide range of perspectives, using mul-
tiple theoretical and methodological tools. A premise of the series is that a proper
understanding of human sociality is only possible if we take a truly interdisci-
plinary approach.

Series Editorial Board:

Michael Tomasello (Max Planck Institute Leipzig)
Dan Sperber (Jean Nicod Institute)
Elizabeth Couper-╉Kuhlen (University of Helsinki)
Paul Kockelman (Yale University)
Sotaro Kita (University of Warwick)
Tanya Stivers (University of California, Los Angeles)
Jack Sidnell (University of Toronto)

Recently published in the series:

Agent, Person, Subject, Self The Instruction of Imagination
Paul Kockelman Daniel Dor
Exploring the Interactional How Traditions Live and Die
Instinct Olivier Morin
Edited by Anna Dina L. Joaquin
The Origins of Fairness
and John H. Schumann
Nicolas Baumard
Relationship Thinking
Requesting Responsibility
N. J. Enfield
Jörg Zinken
Talking About Troubles in
Accountability in Social Interaction
Conversation
Jeffrey Robinson
Gail Jefferson
╇ iii

Distributed Agency

Edited by N. J. Enfield
and
Paul Kockelman

1
iv

1
Oxford University Press is a department of the University of Oxford. It furthers
the University’s objective of excellence in research, scholarship, and education
by publishing worldwide. Oxford is a registered trade mark of Oxford University
Press in the UK and certain other countries.

Published in the United States of America by Oxford University Press

198 Madison Avenue, New York, NY 10016, United States of America.

© Oxford University Press 2017

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in

a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without the
prior permission in writing of Oxford University Press, or as expressly permitted
by law, by license, or under terms agreed with the appropriate reproduction
rights organization. Inquiries concerning reproduction outside the scope of the
above should be sent to the Rights Department, Oxford University Press, at the
address above.

You must not circulate this work in any other form

and you must impose this same condition on any acquirer.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Names: Enfield, N. J., 1966– editor. | Kockelman, Paul.
Title: Distributed Agency / [edited by] N. J. Enfield and Paul Kockelman.
Description: Oxford ; New York : Oxford University Press, [2017] |
Series: Foundations of human interaction | Includes bibliographical references and index.
Identifiers: LCCN 2016022303 (print) | LCCN 2016038875 (ebook) |
ISBN 9780190457211 (paperback) | ISBN 9780190457204 (cloth) |
ISBN 9780190457228 (pdf) | ISBN 9780190457235 (Online Content)
Subjects: LCSH: Semiotics—Psychological aspects. | Communication—Psychological aspects. |
Human behavior. | Cognition. | Psycholinguistics. | BISAC: LANGUAGE
ARTS & DISCIPLINES / Linguistics / General. | SOCIAL SCIENCE / Anthropology / Cultural. |
SOCIAL SCIENCE / General.
Classification: LCC P99.4.P78 D47 2017 (print) | LCC P99.4.P78 (ebook) | DDC 128/.4—dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2016022303

9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
Paperback printed by WebCom, Inc., Canada
Hardback printed by Bridgeport National Bindery, Inc., United States of America
╇ v

CONTENTS

Series Editor Prefaceâ•…â•… ix

Editors’ Prefaceâ•…â•… xi
List of Contributorsâ•…â•… xvii

PART ONE: Agency as Flexible and Accountable Causality

1. Elements of Agencyâ•…â•… 3
N. J. Enfield
2. Distribution of Agencyâ•…â•… 9
N. J. Enfield
3. Gnomic Agencyâ•…â•… 15
Paul Kockelman
4. Semiotic Agencyâ•…â•… 25
Paul Kockelman

PART TWO: Agency of Institutions and Infrastructure

5. Agency in State Agenciesâ•…â•… 41
Anya Bernstein
6. Upending Infrastructure in Times of Revoltâ•…â•… 49
Julia Elyachar

PART THREE: Language and Agency

7. Brain-╉to-╉Brain Interfaces and the Role of Language
in Distributing Agencyâ•…â•… 59
Mark Dingemanse
8. Requesting as a Means for Negotiating Distributed Agencyâ•…â•… 67
Simeon Floyd
9. Social Agency and Grammarâ•…â•… 79
Giovanni Rossi and Jörg Zinken
vi

10. Distributed Agency and Action under the Radar

of Accountability   87
Jack Sidnell

PART FOUR: Economy and Agency

11. Distributed Agency and Debt in the Durational Ethics
of Responsibility   99
Jane I. Guyer
12. Money as Token and Money as Record
in Distributed Accounts   109
Bill Maurer

PART FIVE: Distributing Agency within Selves and Species

13. Distribution of Agency across Body and Self   119
Ruth H. Parry
14. Distributed Agency in Ants   131
Patrizia d’Ettorre

PART SIX: Social Bonding Through Embodied Agency

15. Group Exercise and Social Bonding   141
Emma Cohen
16. Social Bonding Through Dance and ‘Musiking’   151
Bronwyn Tarr

PART SEVEN: Agency and Infancy

17. Timescales for Understanding the Agency of Infants
and Caregivers   161
Joanna Rączaszek-​Leonardi
18. Movement Synchrony, Joint Actions, and Collective Agency
in Infancy   169
Bahar Tunçgenç

PART EIGHT: The Agency of Materiality

19. The Agency of the Dead   181
Zoë Crossland
20. Distributed Agency in Play   191
Benjamin Smith
21. Contingency and the Semiotic Mediation
of Distributed Agency   199
Eitan Wilf

[ vi ] Contents
vii

PART NINE: The Place of Agency

22. Place and Extended Agency   213
Paul C. Adams
23. How Agency Is Distributed Through Installations   221
Saadi Lahlou

PART TEN: From Cooperation to Deception and Disruption

24. Cooperation and Social Obligations   233
David P. Schweikard
25. Deception as Exploitative Social Agency   243
Radu Umbres
26. Disrupting Agents, Distributing Agency   253
Charles H. P. Zuckerman

Author Index   271

Subject Index   275

Contents [ vii ]
ix

S E R I E S E D I T O R P R E FA C E

The human capacity for distributed agency allows us to dissociate social

units from the borders of the individual. Our social units—​the “agents”
who operate in people’s worlds—​can morph and shift in shape and size and
constitution. From fleeting moments of cooperation to historical move-
ments of community, people extend beyond the bounds of individuals. The
case studies presented in this volume provide a wide-​ranging set of entry
points into this captivating area of study. Together they show that when
we look at distributed agency we are looking at the cognitive and cultural
dynamics of human sociality.
N. J. E.
Sydney, September 2016
╇ xi

E D I T O R S ’ P R E FA C E

We never really act alone. Our agency is enhanced when we cooperate with
others, and when we accept their help. We benefit when we take credit
for people’s achievements, or when we free-╉ride on their ideas and their
strengths. And not only is our agency shared through action in these ways,
but we often have agency without having to engage in action at all. Even
when at rest, we are bound up in networks of cause and effect, intention
and accountability. The distribution of agency, for better or worse, is every-
where, and our species has perfected its arts.
This book presents an interdisciplinary inroad into the latest thinking
about the distributed nature of agency: what it’s like, what are its condi-
tions of possibility, and what are its consequences. The book’s 26 chapters
are written by a wide range of scholars, from anthropology, biology, cogni-
tive science, linguistics, philosophy, psychology, geography, law, econom-
ics, and sociology. While each chapter takes up different materials using
different methods, they all chart relations between the key elements of
agency: intentionality, causality, flexibility, and accountability. Each chap-
ter seeks to explain how and why such relations are distributed—╉not just
across individuals, but also across bodies and minds, people and things,
spaces and times. To do this, the authors work through empirical studies
of particular cases, while also offering reviews and syntheses of key ideas
from the authors’ respective research traditions.

IDEAS AND QUESTIONS GUIDING THIS BOOK

All creatures have some form of agency, but agency in humans is argu-
ably unique. Humans have a special capacity to share agency through joint
commitment and cooperation toward common goals, as well as through
coercive and parasitic practices by which we co-╉opt the capacities, and take
credit for the consequences, of others. We are the most flexible and creative
xii

actors of all species, as shown by our formidable and complex technolo-

gies, from levers, swords, and printing presses, to bridges, drones, and the
internet. Culture is itself the exemplar of relatively unconscious collective
creativity. (Or at least many human agents like to think!)
We can think of agency as having two key components. First, there is
flexibility. This is about who (or what) has a hand or say in the creation of
some effect, object, idea, or action: from theorems and inventions to floods
and revolutions, from commodities and crimes to conversations and crises.
In most cases, many “hands” contribute, at different degrees of remove,
with more or less effort and effect, and with greater or lesser visibility.
These hands are social as much as material; cognitive as much as somatic;
individual as much as collective; natural as much as artificial; flexibly cre-
ative as much as rigidly causal. Indeed, as soon as one starts tracking such
connections, the distinctions often break down. It is hard to see where cog-
nition ends and embodiment begins; where the divide between nature and
artifice is to be drawn; where to cut off an individual from a collectivity.
The second component of agency is accountability. We must ask how
those with agency are held accountable (usually by other kinds of agents)
for their contribution. Who realizes the cost of a product, or garners the
right to use it? Who is blamed for the failure of an action? Who is praised
for the genesis of an idea? Who or what benefits from a new adaptation?
Who berates themselves over an imagined sin? Through what mechanisms?
Accountability is identified in different ways, using judgments with varying
degrees of justness, rationality, and depth of vision. Accountability is both
moral and economic, causal and normative, grounded in natural selection
and cultural evaluation.
Current understandings of human agency suggest that our flexibility
and accountability are often not located in the individual alone, but are
radically distributed. This suggests a number of questions, which guided the
discussions that have shaped the contributions to the book.1 Among these
are the following:

• Why and how do we excerpt agents at certain scales, and how do differ-
ent understandings of agency alter such scales?
• When we cooperate with others, when is our agency weakened, and
when is it enhanced?
• In what ways is material culture an extension of the person?
• While artifacts and technologies increase our flexibility in obvious ways,
how do they affect our accountability?
• What are the causal forces that determine the scope and constraints of
our agency? How are these forces related to norms?

[ xii ] Editors’ Preface

╇ xiii

• Why is it often considered appropriate to punish or reward a person for

something that someone else did?
• How is it that multiple individuals can behave as one?
• What is the role of distributed agency in human evolution, and in
ontogeny?

In short, who or what contributes to some action, idea, object, or outcome?

And who or what is held accountable? In what ways, and to what degrees?
With what conditions, and with what consequences? These are the ques-
tions we ask in this book.

CONTENTS

The ten parts of the book each group together essays that overlap in regard
to their empirical topics and analytic commitments. Part One, “Agency as
Flexible and Accountable Causality,” introduces key themes through four
interrelated chapters. In the first two chapters, Enfield theorizes some ele-
ments of agency, broadly understood as flexible and accountable causality;
and then describes how agency, thus framed, is distributed across actors
and activities. In the second two chapters, Kockelman reviews and synthe-
sizes some classic texts that lead to such an understanding of agency; and
then describes a variety of other possible ways of framing it.
The next nine parts take up interrelated questions from a variety of
stances, partly deriving from the cross-╉ disciplinary commitments of
authors, and partly from the empirical contents they analyze and the theo-
retical questions they answer.
In Part Two, “The Agency of Institutions and Infrastructure,” Bernstein
takes up agency in actual state agencies—╉in particular, legal and political
institutions that promulgate laws and regulations shaping the actions of
citizens—╉and Elyachar takes up agency in the context of political revolu-
tions, when critical energies are used to create, use, and destroy key forms
of infrastructure.
Part Three presents perspectives on “Language and Agency.” While
much previous work on language and agency has focused on the repre-
sentational and meta-╉representational capacities of humans, these four
chapters take us into the trenches of interaction: talk-╉in-╉interaction as it
unfolds in real-╉time practices, in face-╉to-╉face encounters. Dingemanse uses
the science fiction fantasy of brain-╉to-╉brain interfaces to shed light on the
natural distribution of agency in human communication; Floyd focuses
on requests as a key means for instigating and negotiating the sharing of

Editors’ Prefaceâ•… [â•›xiiiâ•›]

xiv

agency; also on this theme, Rossi and Zinken focus in more closely on the
fine-​grained grammatical categories that languages provide as tools for
mobilizing other people; and Sidnell focuses on a particularly important
but overlooked element of the shared construction of action in interaction,
namely the accountability that comes with our impositions on others.
In Part Four, “Economy and Agency,” Guyer examines the ethics of debt
as a way of distributing agency both across people and through time, and
Maurer looks at the infrastructures of monetary accounting, where the act
of “recording” an exchange can in fact be seen as effecting the very exchange
itself. In Part Five, “Distributing Agency within Selves and Species,” Parry
explores the distribution of agency in moving the human body in profes-
sional therapy sessions, and d’Ettorre—​on a very different scale—​shows
how agency is distributed across masses of individual bodies in the case of
eusocial organisms such as ants.
In Part Six, “Social Bonding Through Embodied Agency,” the theme of
agency in human groups is further developed, with an overview by Cohen
of some elements of social bonding through group exercise in humans, and
a focus by Tarr on the same in dance and music. And in Part Seven, “Agency
and Infancy,” Rączaszek-​Leonardi highlights the importance of differ-
ent timescales in an exploration of the understanding of agency between
infants and caregivers, and Tunçgenç stresses the importance of close tem-
poral coordination in the bodily movements of infants and caregivers as a
crucial step on the path from individual to collective agency in the lifespan.
Part Eight, “The Agency of Materiality,” presents three studies of how
agency gets into, and out of, inanimate objects: Crossland discusses the
agency of human remains, as understood through forensic anthropology;
Smith considers the agentive role of marbles in the lives of children; and
Wilf explores how computerized algorithms can be a source of contingen-
cies that are harvested to cultivate artistic creativity. In Part Nine, “The
Place of Agency,” Adams takes up agency through the eyes of a geographer
focused on spatially distributed selves, and Lahlou looks at it through the
lens of installations—​or spatially arranged ensembles of affordances that
shape the activities of those who act and think inside them. And in Part
Ten, “From Cooperation to Deception and Disruption,” Schweikard outlines
the central importance of intentionality and normativity in the coopera-
tive framework of joint action, while Umbres turns our attention to decep-
tion—​a decidedly antisocial form of distributed agency—​and Zuckerman
delves further into the dark side of agency, with a study of attempts to
sabotage others’ courses of action, and the post hoc framings and attribu-
tions of agency that then emerge.

[ xiv ] Editors’ Preface

╇ xv

ENVOI

Human agency concerns the fundamental conditions and constraints

under which we pursue our goals, from the simplest everyday actions to
the greatest uses and abuses of power in society. But a deep understand-
ing of human agency is elusive because the concept of agency has been
understood and examined in such different ways. The meaning of the term
agency is often radically simplified, reduced to or conflated with that of
other terms: compare free will, choice, language, power, generativity, imagi-
nation, self-╉consciousness. There have been important advances in separate
disciplines, but there has been little opportunity to combine and build on
the collective achievements of research on human agency carried out using
sometimes radically different approaches. Our goals with this collection
of essays are to assemble insights from new research on the anatomy of
human agency, to address divergent framings of the issues from different
disciplines, and to suggest directions for new debates and lines of research.
We hope that it will be a resource for researchers working on allied top-
ics, and for students learning about the elements of human-╉specific modes
of shared action, from causality, intentionality, and personhood to ethics,
punishment, and accountability.

NOTE

1. The forum for most of these discussions was a retreat held at Ringberg Castle,
Tegernsee/╉Kreuth, Germany, April 13–╉17, 2014, attended by most of the book’s
contributors, and several others. The retreat was funded by a European Research
Council grant “Human Sociality and Systems of Language Use” (Grant number
240853, to Enfield). The discussion continued by correspondence and led to the
further invitation and inclusion of several authors whose work was important
to the project. We are grateful to all participants and contributors for their
invaluable input. We thank Angela Terrill at Punctilious Editing (http://www.
punctilious.net/) for first-class indexing. Please note the following conventions
for transcripts in a number of chapters: underline = stress; [ = beginning of
overlap; ] = end of overlap; (4.4) = 4.4 seconds of silence; text in ((double
brackets)) refers to visible bodily behavior; text in (single brackets) = not clearly
audible.

Editors’ Prefaceâ•… [â•›xvâ•›]

xvii

CONTRIBUTORS

Paul C. Adams, Department of Geography and the Environment, University

of Texas at Austin
Anya Bernstein, Law School, SUNY Buffalo
Emma Cohen, Institute of Cognitive and Evolutionary Anthropology,
University of Oxford
Zoë Crossland, Department of Anthropology, Columbia University
Patrizia d’Ettorre, Laboratory of Experimental and Comparative Ethology,
University of Paris 13, Sorbonne Paris Cité
Mark Dingemanse, Max Planck Institute for Psycholinguistics
Julia Elyachar, Department of Anthropology, Princeton University
N. J. Enfield, Department of Linguistics, The University of Sydney
Simeon Floyd, SENESCYT (National Science Ministry), Ecuador; Radboud
University Nijmegen, and Max Planck Institute for Psycholinguistics
Jane I. Guyer, Department of Anthropology, Johns Hopkins University
Paul Kockelman, Department of Anthropology, Yale University
Saadi Lahlou, London School of Economics and Political Science
Bill Maurer, Department of Anthropology, University of California
at Irvine
Ruth H. Parry, Faculty of Medicine and Health Sciences, University of
Nottingham
Joanna Rączaszek-​Leonardi, Faculty of Psychology, University of Warsaw
Giovanni Rossi, University of Helsinki
xviii

David P. Schweikard, Department of Philosophy, Europa-​

Universität
Flensburg
Jack Sidnell, Departments of Anthropology and Linguistics, University of
Toronto
Benjamin Smith, Department of Anthropology, Sonoma State University
Bronwyn Tarr, Social and Evolutionary Neuroscience Research Group,
University of Oxford
Bahar Tunçgenç, Institute of Cognitive and Evolutionary Anthropology,
University of Oxford
Radu Umbres, Faculty of Political Sciences, National School of Political and
Administrative Sciences, Bucharest
Eitan Wilf, Department of Sociology and Anthropology, Hebrew University
Jörg Zinken, Institute for the German Language (IDS), Mannheim
Charles H. P. Zuckerman, Department of Anthropology, University of
Michigan

[ xviii ] Contributors
1

PART ONE

Agency as Flexible
and Accountable Causality
3

CHAPTER 1

Elements of Agency
N. J. ENFIELD

O n October 15, 1965, on Whitehall Street in Lower Manhattan,

David J. Miller burned his draft card in protest at the Vietnam War
(Miller 2001):

The expectant crowd fell hush in front of me. The hecklers across the street
ceased their ranting and watched silently. An eerie stillness settled upon our
canyon as the last rays of the fall sun clung to the tops of the buildings. I said the
first thing that came to my mind. “I am not going to give my prepared speech.
I am going to let this action speak for itself. I know that you people across the
street really know what is happening in Vietnam. I am opposed to the draft and
the war in Vietnam.”
I pulled my draft classification card from my suit coat pocket along with a
book of matches brought especially for the occasion since I did not smoke. I lit a
match, then another. They blew out in the late afternoon breeze. As I struggled
with the matches, a young man with a May 2nd Movement button on his jacket
held up a cigarette lighter. It worked just fine.
The draft card burned as I raised it aloft between the thumb and index finger
of my left hand. A roar of approval from the rally crowd greeted the enflamed
card. This awakened the momentarily mesmerized hecklers and they resumed
their shouts.
As the card burned, I discovered that I had made no preparation for the card
to be completely consumed. I dropped the card as the flame reached my finger-
tips. At my trial in federal court, the unburnt corner of my draft card, with a
4

bit of my signature, was introduced into evidence. The FBI had been Johnny-​
on-​the-​spot in retrieving the charred remains of my card so as to assist in their
prosecution even though I never denied that I burned my card. Future card
burners used tongs or cans in order to complete the job.
… Three days later the FBI swooped in on me in Manchester, New
Hampshire… . I made bail the next day. I remained free till June 1968 when
the draft-​card burning case finally lost in the U.S. Supreme Court. I served
22 months in federal prison in Pennsylvania from 1968 to 1970.

Miller’s story of publicly burning his draft card as a means of protesting

against the US government’s program of conscription during the Vietnam
War illustrates the core elements of agency: he had a degree of flexibility in
carrying out the behavior, and a degree of accountability. What does this
mean? Let us start with the elements of flexibility:1

(1) Agents have flexibility over meaningful behavior, insofar as:

(a) to some degree they control or determine that the behavior is
done at a certain place and time (thus, to some degree Miller
determined that his draft card would be burned at that place
and time; though with minor delays due to his malfunctioning
matches);
(b) to some degree they compose or design the behavior as a means
for a particular end; a thing to be done and a way to do it (thus,
Miller at some level had the plan to destroy this draft card as a pro-
test against the war, and he determined sub-​plans as means to that
greater end);
(c) to some degree they subprehend2 or anticipate how others could
view and react to the behavior; for instance to some extent they
may be prepared for certain interpretants—​in other words, ratio-
nal responses—​by others; they may be surprised or disposed to
sanction non-​anticipated interpretants (thus, Miller was not sur-
prised when hecklers tried to disrupt him, when FBI agents took
his burned card as evidence, or when they arrested him in the fol-
lowing days; nor when he was praised as a hero by members of the
antiwar movement).

These elements of flexibility are understood in terms of the semiotic process

that underlies an agent’s behavior (Kockelman 2007, 2013). Thus, control-
ling (1a) is about the production of perceptible behavior—​potential signs—​
without respect to what that perceptible behavior may be taken to mean, or

[4] Agency as Flexible and Accountable Causality

5

to what interpretants it might so elicit. In Miller’s case, controlling simply

had to do with instigating an event of fire destroying a piece of paper.
Composing (1b) is about the relation between an agent and an over-
all semiotic process that this agent instigates. Composing in this sense
concerns the degree to which an agent selects that behavior for a func-
tion, as a means to an end, and the degree to which her carrying out
of the behavior is responsible for success in achieving her goal. Miller’s
goal was to protest against the war; as an agent, he played a role in
determining which behavior would be produced and what that behavior
may stand for. His selection of tools (draft card, fire) as means toward a
local end (destroying the physical manifestation of a government order)
determined the conditions for success in his venture: without the card
actually catching fire and burning up, the planned action would not have
been consummated. As Miller describes, there were minor obstacles to
the execution of the card-​burning behavior, related to the affordances of
fire and paper: for one thing, the wind blew out his matches on his first
attempts, and for another, the heat of the burning paper caused him to
let go of the card and in the end not succeed in fully destroying it. For the
behavior to succeed as Miller composed it, the effective destruction of a
specific piece of paper was necessary to the consummation of a specific
political act.
Within composing, we can distinguish between execution and planning.
Differences in the manner of execution of a sign, which may be functions
of the skill or conditions of an agent, will have consequences for how effec-
tively a sign will succeed in standing for a particular object. While execu-
tion is the degree to which one’s physical production of the relevant sign is
done in such a way as to determine that the sign should be taken to stand
for a certain object, planning is deciding which sign-​object relations are
to be created in the first place. Miller planned to put fire to paper, but his
execution was lacking. In the end his plan was carried out, executed with
the help of a bystander with a lighter.
Subprehending (1c) is about the relation between the agent and the
overall semiotic process. Subprehension concerns the degree to which an
individual effectively foresees the interpretants—​in other words, the reac-
tions and responses—​that the sign event may evince. One way to measure
this would be in the ways a person might reveal that they have prepared
for a certain interpretant and not others. For example, if I ask What’s his
address? while at the same time pulling out a pen and paper to write the
address down, by pulling out the pen and paper I am showing evidence
of having subprehended that your interpretant (your answer) of my sign

E l e m e n t s of Ag e n c y [5]
6

(my question) will be to tell me the person’s address, which I will then be
already prepared to write down. Another way to measure subprehension in
this sense is to monitor the accountability involved. Is a person surprised
by or disposed to sanction certain interpretants? If I ask What’s his address?
and you look at me and say nothing, I might repeat the question or say Hey
I asked you something. An agent subprehends interpretants of a sign event
to some degree (especially the potential accountability): being prepared
for some interpretants and not others; being surprised by, or disposed to
sanction, some interpretants and not others. As noted above, Miller was
surely not surprised by the heckling, the arrest, the conviction; nor was
he presumably surprised by the praise, support, and imitation from other
activists. This indicates that his degree of agency on the measure of subpre-
hension was high.
With an agent’s flexibility comes accountability, as Miller anticipated or
at least subprehended:

(2) Agents have accountability for meaningful behavior, insofar as:

(a) they may be subject to public evaluation by others for their behav-
ior, where this evaluation—​in the form of interpretants like praise,
blame, or demand for reasons—​may focus on any of the distinct
components of flexibility given in (1), above (thus, Miller’s actions
were evaluated by many people from onlookers at the scene to fed-
eral judges in the US Supreme Court);
(b) they may be regarded as having some degree of entitlement to carry
out the behavior, and give reasons for it, and they or others may
invoke this entitlement; this may relate to any of the distinct com-
ponents of flexibility given in (1), above (thus, Miller’s behavior
was precisely designed to give him an opportunity to state his rea-
sons for action, with the intention to publicize those reasons for
action);
(c) they may be regarded by others as having some degree of obliga-
tion to carry out the behavior, and give reasons for it, and they or
others may invoke this obligation; this may relate to any of the dis-
tinct components of flexibility laid out in (1), above (thus, Miller’s
behavior could be used as a basis for motivating others, possibly
through a sense of moral obligation, to do the same).

Another way of framing accountability in relation to behavior in the sense

just defined is ownership of the behavior. Thinking in terms of accountabil-
ity foregrounds the possibility of blame or praise, while ownership fore-
grounds rights and obligations.

[6] Agency as Flexible and Accountable Causality

7

So, in sum, agency is the relation between a person and a course of

action and its effects. To summarize it in the leanest terms possible:

(3) With regard to some goal-​directed controlled behavior, agency consists

of the following:
(A) Flexibility
1. Controlling (determining that a perceptible/​physical behavior
occurs)
2. Composing (selecting the behavior, its function, and execution)
3. Subprehending (effectively anticipating interpretants of the
behavior)
(B) Accountability
1. Being evaluated (by others, on any of [A1–​3])
2. Being entitled (a right to do the behavior can be recognized and
invoked)
3. Being obligated (a duty to do the behavior can be recognized
and invoked)

There is a special relation between flexibility and accountability. Flexibility

is regimented both by natural laws and by social norms, and often by these
two in combination. One’s accountability is lower when one’s behavior is
more heavily constrained by natural laws, because less choice is involved.
Supporters of Miller are unlikely to sanction him for having delayed the
burning of the card before he was given the cigarette lighter; they would rec-
ognize that his flexibility was at that moment thwarted by natural causes,
and not by, say, some form of hesitation in anticipation of likely sanctions.
And so we arrive at Kockelman’s definitive equation: Agency equals flex-
ibility plus accountability. How flexible you are depends on how freely you
can determine the elements of a course of behavior and its outcomes, in
multiple senses: the physical carrying out of the behavior, the planning and
design of the behavior, the placing of the behavior in an appropriate context,
the anticipation or subprehension of likely effects of the behavior—​includ-
ing, especially, the reactions of others—​in that context. How accountable
you are depends on how much it can be expected or demanded that other
people will interpret what you do in certain ways, for example, by respond-
ing, asking for reasons, sanctioning, praising, or blaming you. With these
elements distinguished, we begin to understand why the concept of agency
is far from simple or primitive, and why it has resisted easy definition. With
the elements of agency distinguished, we may begin to understand the
many subtleties of the agency problem, something that is especially needed
when we want to take the next step and ask how agency is distributed.

E l e m e n t s of Ag e n c y [7]
8

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

Thanks go to Paul Kockelman for his significant input to this work. Note that
this chapter draws partly on sections of my 2013 book Relationship Thinking
(Oxford University Press). I gratefully acknowledge support from the Max
Planck Society (through MPI Nijmegen), the European Research Council
(through grant 240853, “Human Sociality and Systems of Language Use”),
and the University of Sydney (through Bridging Grant ID 176605).

NOTES

1. This analysis of flexibility in agency is due to Kockelman (2007, 2013), though

I take one liberty with the terminology (Enfield 2013:104–╉117). Kockelman’s
term for (1c) is “commitment,” defined as “the degree to which one may
anticipate an interpretant, where this anticipation is evinced in being surprised
by and/╉or disposed to sanction unanticipated interpretants” (Kockelman
2007:380). I propose “subprehension,” to avoid confusion with other dominant
meanings of the word “commitment” (for example, in Kockelman 2007:153 and
passim, “commitment” has a technical meaning in the domain of accountability,
referring to “deontic obligation,” something one is obliged to do). On agency and
language specifically, see Ahearn (2010), Duranti (2004).
2. Subprehend may be defined as follows. If you subprehend something, it is as if
you anticipate or expect it, but not in any active or conscious way; rather, if you
subprehend something, when it happens you cannot say later that you had not
anticipated or expected it. Subprehension is thus close to the notion of habitus
(Bourdieu 1977).

REFERENCES

Ahearn, Laura M. 2010. “Agency and Language.” Society and Language Use 7: 28.
Bourdieu, Pierre. 1977. Outline of a Theory of Practice. Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press.
Duranti, Alessandro. 2004. “Agency in Language.” In A Companion to Linguistic
Anthropology, edited by D. Alessandro, 451–473. Malden, MA: Blackwell.
Enfield, N. J. 2013. Relationship Thinking: Agency, Enchrony, and Human Sociality.
Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Kockelman, Paul. 2007. “Agency: The Relation Between Meaning, Power, and
Knowledge.” Current Anthropology 48(3): 375–╉401.
Kockelman, Paul. 2013. Agent, Person, Subject, Self: A Theory of Ontology, Interaction,
and Infrastructure. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Miller, David. 2001. “Reclaiming Our History: Memoirs of a Draft-╉Card Burner.”
Reclaiming Quarterly (82). http://╉www.reclaimingquarterly.org/╉82/╉rq-╉82-╉
draftcard.html Retrieved March 12, 2011.

[â•›8â•›]â•… Agency as Flexible and Accountable Causality

9

CHAPTER 2

Distribution of Agency
N. J. ENFIELD

I t is easy to think that “an agent” should coincide exactly with an individ-
ual. But this is seldom, if ever, the case. One reason agents do not equal
individuals is that the elements of agency can be divided up and shared out
among multiple people in relation to a single course of action. When I get
you to pass the salt, it is me who plans the behavior but you who executes
it. Or when I report what a candidate said in yesterday’s speech, it is me
who speaks the words but the candidate who is accountable for what was
expressed. With distributed agency, multiple people act as one, sharing or
sharing out the elements of agency.
One person may provide the flexibility needed for meeting another per-
son’s ends—​as in slavery, factories, and armies—​or for meeting shared
ends—​as in team sports, co-​authorship, and joint enterprise. Similarly,
one person may bear the accountability entailed by another person’s flex-
ibility. It is hardly rare for a person to inherit the blame for someone else’s
punishable actions. Howitt (1904), writing on Aboriginal Australia, “men-
tions the case of an accused man pointing to his elder brother to take the
blame, because an elder brother stands for and should, ideally, protect a
younger” (Berndt and Berndt 1964:299). In law of this kind, “people are
categorized in units the members of which are interdependent … [and]
relations both within and between those units may not be framed only, or
predominantly, in kinship terms” (Berndt and Berndt 1964:303). This non-​
modern approach has difficulty fitting into today’s world. In 2009, there
was a campaign in the Australian Aboriginal community at Lajamanu in
10

the Northern Territory to find a solution to persistent social problems aris-

ing from the incompatibility of indigenous and government law. Here was
the problem. If people who committed crimes were jailed and thus sepa-
rated from their community before they could face traditional punishment
(known as payback) then this payback would be meted out on family mem-
bers of the transgressors, often leading to continuing feuds. The campaign
called for official recognition of traditional punishment, allowing that bail
be granted to indigenous offenders so that they might face punishment
(for example, being speared through the thigh) and thus resolve the matter
to the satisfaction of the community before being taken to jail.
Distributed accountability of the kind that the Lajamanu campaign
sought to avoid is the essence of the feud, a universal phenomenon. Take
for example the gjakmarrja—​or blood feuds—​of rural Albania. Blood feud-
ing was largely dormant during the communist period, but with the fall
of communism in the early 1990s, old feuds were rekindled, and people
found themselves being held accountable for things that were done before
they were born, sometimes by people they had never met. Here is a case
(Mustafa and Young 2008:99–​100):

A family living in a village outside Bajram Curri … came under a new threat,
even though the man from their family who had committed a blood feud killing
had himself died seventeen years ago. The perpetrator’s death did not satisfy
the indebted family who sent a warning that they expected “blood payment” in
the form of the life of a male member of the remaining family. The family under
threat consisted of a widow living with her two sons, their wives, and several
children. The family had already adjusted to the threatening situation: the eldest
son had gone into hiding elsewhere, and the younger remained indoors, unable
to leave the house. Obviously this situation had a drastic effect on the earning
capacity of the family.

Cases like this take us to the heart of distributed agency. One man commits
a misdeed against another, and yet revenge is taken years later between
the two men’s grandchildren, neither of whom was involved in the original
transgression. Here, someone is held to account for something that some-
one else chose to do. Here, agency, with its components of flexibility and
accountability, is divided and shared out among multiple individuals while
still being anchored in a single, sometimes decades-​long course of action.
Cases like this highlight one of the key reasons why agents do not equal
individuals: the locus of agency is the social unit, and social units are not
confined to individual bodies.

[ 10 ] Agency as Flexible and Accountable Causality

Another random document with
no related content on Scribd:
fourth and last glaciation, the Würm period, as the implements
discovered prove. Gradually, although irregularly and with three
minor advances and recessions, always diminishing in rigor,
however, this last predominance of the ice died away; until, by the
time its effects had wholly disappeared, and the geologically
“Recent” era was inaugurated, human civilization had evolved to a
point where it began to enter the New Stone Age.
The animals whose fossils are found in the same deposits with
human skeletons and artifacts have been of the greatest assistance
in the determination of the periods of such remains. The fossils are
partly of extinct species until toward the very end of the Pleistocene,
when exclusively living types of animals begin wholly to supersede
the earlier ones. While the identification of the various species, and
the fixation of the age of each, is the work of the specialist in
palæontology, the results of such studies are all-important to the
historian of man’s beginnings, because they help to determine
chronology. If artifacts are found in association with fossil remains of
an extinct animal such as the mammoth or the woolly rhinoceros,
they are obviously older than artifacts that are accompanied only by
the bones of the reindeer, the dog, or other living species. For this
reason, although the history of mammalian life in the past is a
science in itself, it also has close relations with human prehistory.
Some of the most characteristic animals of the later Pleistocene, and
the successive stages of human cultural development with which
they were associated, are listed on the following page.

70. Subdivisions of the Palæolithic

The places at which the men of the Stone Age lived and where
their debris accumulated are known as “stations.” The word was first
employed in this sense in French, but has been taken over into other
languages. A “station” then is simply a spot at which prehistoric
remains of human occupation are found. At least a thousand of these
have been discovered in western Europe. In general they divide into
two classes. One kind is in the open, mostly in the gravels laid down
by streams. These are therefore known as “River Drift” or simply
“Drift” stations. The other kind is found in caves or under sheltering
rocks. The majority of Drift stations have proved to be from the
earlier or Lower Palæolithic, whereas the Cave stations date mostly
from the later or Upper Palæolithic. The Drift and the Cave periods
are therefore often distinguished within the Old Stone Age,
especially by English archæologists. French, German, and American
students generally use the terms “Lower Palæolithic” and “Upper
Palæolithic,” whose reference is to periods of cultural development
rather than type of locality inhabited, and which carry more
significance. French archæologists also speak of the Upper
Palæolithic as the Reindeer Age.
The Later Glacial Fauna of Western Europe
(Read upward)

Postglacial and Recent:

Bison, Bison priscus.
Wild cattle, Bos primigenius.
Red deer or stag, Cervus elaphus.
Roe-deer, Capreolus.
Reindeer, Rangifer tarandus.
Wild boar, Sus scrofa.

Fourth Glacial and Postglacial fauna: typically Mousterian to

Magdalenian:
Woolly mammoth, Elephas primigenius.
Woolly or Siberian rhinoceros, Rhinoceros antiquitatis.
Cave lion, Felis leo spelaea.
Cave hyaena, Hyaena crocuta spelaea.
Cave bear, Ursus spelaeus.
Horse, Equus caballus.
Ibex.
Banded lemming, Myodes torquatus.

Third Interglacial fauna: typically Chellean and Acheulean:

 Straight-tusked elephant, Elephas antiquus.
Broad-nosed rhinoceros, Rhinoceros Merckii.
Lion, Felis leo antiqua.
Spotted hyaena, Hyaena crocuta.
Brown bear, Ursus arctos.
Horses, probably several varieties.

Second Interglacial Fauna: typically Pre-Palæolithic, but in part

surviving into the Chellean in favored localities:
Southern mammoth, Elephas meridionalis.
Etruscan rhinoceros, Rhinoceros etruscus.
Hippopotamus major.
Saber-tooth tigers, Machaerodus.
Striped hyaena, Hyaena striata.
Steno’s horse, Equus stenonis.
Bison antiquus.
Mastodon, tapir, anthropoids, and all primates but man and
the macaque monkey already extinct in Western
Europe.

The student who perhaps contributed most to the foundation of

knowledge of the Palæolithic period was Gabriel de Mortillet. He first
recognized four distinct sub-periods of the Palæolithic, each
possessing its distinctive kinds of implements. These four periods,
each named after one particular “station,” are the Chellean or
earliest; the Mousterian; the Solutrean; and the Magdalenian or
latest. These derived their designations from the four stations of
Chelles in northern France, and of Le Moustier, Solutré, and La
Madeleine in southern France (Fig. 16). De Mortillet did not
endeavor to relate the culture of each of these four periods wholly to
the particular locality for which he named it. He chose the stations as
typical and included others as belonging to the same eras.
Fig. 16. Type stations of the Palæolithic periods. (After Osborn.)

As more implements were found and studied, it was recognized, in

part by de Mortillet himself, that while his original classification was
sound, it was also incomplete. Two other periods had to be admitted.
One of these, the Acheulean, falls before the Mousterian, and the
second, the Aurignacian, after it. This makes six periods within the
Old Stone Age; and these have been adopted by all students of the
prehistory of man in Europe. The first three, the Chellean,
Acheulean, and Mousterian, make up the Lower Palæolithic; the last
three, the Aurignacian, Solutrean, and Magdalenian, constitute the
Upper Palæolithic or Reindeer Age. These six divisions of the Old
Stone Age are so essential to an understanding of the prehistory of
man, that the serious student finds it necessary to know their names
and sequence automatically.
 71. Human Racial Types in the Palæolithic
When it comes to defining the types of fossil man in the
Palæolithic, a curious situation develops. Long before there was
even a true Stone Age, in the early and middle Pleistocene, there
lived the half-human Pithecanthropus and the primitively human
Heidelberg race (§ 11, 12). But for the whole first part of the
Palæolithic, throughout the Chellean and Acheulean, no undisputed
find of any skeletal remains has yet been made, although thousands
of implements have been discovered which are undoubtedly human
products.[9]
In the present state of knowledge the strongest case is that for the
skull found at Piltdown in southern England. This is said to have
been associated with “Pre-Chellean” tools, which would seem to
establish the Piltdown type as the race that lived about the beginning
of the Palæolithic (§ 13). But the deposit at Piltdown had been more
or less rolled or shifted by natural agencies before its discovery, so
that its age is not so certain as it might be; and there is no unanimity
of opinion as to whether the highly developed skull and the
excessively ape-like jaw that were found in the deposit really belong
together. With this doubt about the fossil itself, it seems most
reasonable not to press too strongly its identification as the type of
man that lived in Europe at the commencement of the Old Stone
Age.
For the end of the Lower Palæolithic, in the Mousterian, conditions
change, and skeletal remains become authentic and comparatively
numerous. From this period date the skeletons of the Neandertal
species of man: a short, thickset race, powerful in bones and
musculature, slightly stooping at the knee and at the shoulder, with a
thick neck and a large head (§ 14). The brain was about as large as
that of modern man, but the retreating aspect of the forehead was
accentuated by heavy brow ridges.
In the Upper Palæolithic the Neandertal species has disappeared.
The first precursors of Homo sapiens, or modern man, have come
on the scene. A sort of transition from Neandertal man may be
presented by the Brünn type, but the prevailing race in western
Europe during the Upper Palæolithic period is that of Cro-Magnon, a
tall, lithe, well-formed people, as agile and swift as Neandertal man
was stocky and strong. The head and features were well
proportioned, the skull and brain remarkably large, the general type
not inferior to modern man, and probably already proto-Caucasian (§
16).
Grimaldi man, so far known only from one spot on the
Mediterranean shore of Europe, was proto-Negroid, Aurignacian in
period, and therefore partly contemporaneous with the Cro-Magnon
race (§ 18).
In summary, the types of man in Europe during the Old Stone Age
have been as follows:

Magdalenian Cro-Magnon
Solutrean Cro-Magnon; Brünn
Aurignacian Cro-Magnon (Caucasian); also, locally Grimaldi
(Negroid)
Mousterian Neandertal (possibly without living descendants)
Acheulean Unknown
Chellean Unknown; Piltdown perhaps Pre-Chellean

The interrelations of geology, glaciation, human types, periods of

the Stone Age, and estimated time in years are brought together in
the tables “Antiquity of Man” and “Prehistory” (Figs. 5 and 17.)[10]
Fig. 17. Earliest Prehistory of Europe. This table is an elaboration of the upper
portion of Figure 5. Equal lapses of time are indicated by equal vertical
distances. The general acceleration of development is evident.

72. Palæolithic Flint Implements

 The most important line of evidence as to the gradual
development of civilization through the six periods of the Old Stone
Age is the series of flint tools. Hundreds of thousands of these tools
have been discovered in western, central, and southern Europe—
perhaps millions. At St. Acheul were found 20,000 Chellean coups-
de-poing; at Solutré, below the Solutrean layer, 35,000 Mousterian-
Aurignacian worked flints besides the remains of 100,000 horses; at
Grimaldi in Italy, in the Grotte du Prince, 20,000 Mousterian pieces;
at Schweizersbild in Switzerland, 14,000 late Magdalenian
implements, and at Kesslerloch, near by, 30,000 from the late
Solutrean and Magdalenian; at Hundsteig in Austria, 20,000
Aurignacian flints; at Predmost in Czecho-Slovakia, 25,000 probably
of Solutrean age. Stations of such richness are not particularly rare,
and the stations are numerous. In France alone 500 Magdalenian
stations have been determined.
Clear stratigraphic relations have also been observed again and
again. A few examples are:

Castillo Cave, Santander, Spain, implement bearing layers separated by

strata of sterile natural debris: 1, Acheulean; 2, 3, 4, early, middle, and late
Mousterian; 5, early Aurignacian; 6, 7, 8, late Aurignacian; 9, Solutrean;
10, 11, early and late Magdalenian; 12, Azilian; 13, Copper.
At St. Acheul: 1, limestone; 2, gravel, early Chellean; 3, sand, late
Chellean; 4, loam, early Acheulean; 5, flood sand; 6, loess; 7, late
Acheulean; 8, pebbles, Mousterian; 9, loess; 10, Upper Palæolithic.
At Mas d’Azil, at the foot of the Pyrenees: 1, gravelly soil; 2, middle
Magdalenian; 3, flood loam; 4, upper Magdalenian; 5, flood loam; 6,
Azilian; 7, early Neolithic; 8, full Neolithic and Bronze; 9, Iron.
At Ofnet cave, Bavaria: 1, rocks; 2, sand, 65 cm. deep; 3, 4,
Aurignacian, 20 cm.; 5, Solutrean, 20 cm.; 6, Magdalenian, 15-20 cm.; 7,
Azilian, with two nests of skulls, 5 cm.; 8, Neolithic, 53 cm.; 9, Bronze and
Iron, 32 cm.
At La Ferrassie cave: 1, rocks and sand, 40 cm. deep; 2, Acheulean, 50
cm.; 3, Mousterian, with skeleton, 50 cm.; 4, early Aurignacian, 20 cm.; 5,
middle Aurignacian, 50 cm.; 6, rock fragments, 35 cm.; 7, late
Aurignacian, 35 cm.; rock and soil, 120 cm.
 At first inspection Palæolithic relics seem scarcely distinguishable.
They are all of flint, chert, or similar stone; are all chipped and
therefore more or less rough, and consist of forms meant for cutting,
scraping, and piercing. But a closer examination reveals differences
in their shapes and fundamental differences in the method of their
manufacture. The technique employed in the fashioning of artifacts is
more significant than their appearance, and it is by directing attention
to the process that one can classify these “fossils of civilization” with
accuracy.
Chellean.—In the Chellean period there was made substantially
one type of implement, a sort of rude pick, almond or wedge shaped.
It is often somewhat pointed, although rarely very sharp. The butt
end may be rounded, some of the original surface of the cobble or
nodule of flint being left for convenience of the hand in grasping the
implement (Fig. 18, a). This tool is known as the “Chellean pick.” The
Germans often call it faust-keil or “fist wedge” and the French have
coined the expressive epithet coup-de-poing or “blow of the fist.” The
Chellean pick averages from four to six inches in length, somewhat
less in breadth, and weighs perhaps from a quarter to a full pound. It
would have made an effective rude weapon. When firmly grasped
and well directed, it could easily crush a skull. It might serve to split
wood, hack limbs from trees, butcher large game, and perhaps
roughly dress hides. It would not do any one of these things with
neatness and accuracy, but neatness and accuracy were qualities to
which early Palæolithic men paid little attention. This universal
Chellean tool may be described as a combined knife, saw, ax,
scraper, and pick, performing the various functions of these
implements with notable crudities but efficiently enough when
wielded with muscular strength.
The Chellean pick was made by striking a round or oval nodule of
flint with another stone and knocking off pieces. Most of the
detached flakes were large, as shown by the surfaces from which
they came off; perhaps most of the chips averaged a square inch.
Anything like fine work or evenness of outline was therefore out of
question. One can imagine that many tools were spoiled, or broken
in two, by the knocks to which they were subjected in their
manufacture. The flakes struck off fell to the ground and were
discarded. If the workman was sufficiently skilful, and luck stayed
with him, he would before long be holding the sort of implement that
has been described. Not more than a few dozen strokes of the
hammer stone would be required to produce it.

Fig. 18. Stone implements illustrating the principal types of Palæolithic chipping. a,
Chellean pick, a roughly flaked core; b, Mousterian scraper, a flake with
retouched edge; c, Solutrean blade, evened by retouching over its entire
surface; d, Magdalenian knife, a flake detached at one blow. For comparison,
e, an obsidian knife or razor from Mexico, made by the same process as d.

Some attempt has been made to distinguish variant forms of

Chellean tools, such as scrapers, planers, and knives. But some of
these identifications of particular types are uncertain, and at best, the
differences between the types are slight. It may be said with
approximate accuracy that the long Chellean period possessed only
the one tool; that this is the first definitely shaped tool known to have
been made by human hands; and that it is therefore the concrete
evidence of the first stage of that long development which we call
civilization.[11]
 Acheulean.—The Acheulean period brings to light a growing
specialization of forms and some new types. Rude scrapers, knives,
borers, can be distinguished. The flakes struck off are finer than in
the Chellean and the general workmanship averages higher; but
through the whole of the Acheulean there is no new process. The
Chellean methods of manufacture are improved without an invention
being added to them.
Mousterian.—In the Mousterian period a retrogression would at
first sight seem to have occurred. Tools become smaller, less regular
in outline, and are worked on one side only. The whole Mousterian
period scarcely presents a single new type of implement of such all-
around serviceability as the Chellean pick. Nevertheless the
degeneration is only in the appearance of the implements. Actually
they are made by a new process, which is more advanced than that
followed in the Chellean and Acheulean. In these earlier periods
flakes were struck off until the kernel of stone that remained was of
the shape desired for the tool. The Mousterian technique is
distinguished by using the flake instead of the core. This is the cause
of Mousterian tools being generally smaller and lighter.
Secondly, when the flake dulled by use, its edge was renewed by
fine chipping. The pieces detached in this secondary chipping are so
small that it would have been difficult to knock them off and maintain
any regularity of edge, for to detach a chip by a blow means violent
contact. If the blow is a bit feeble, the chip that comes off is too
small. If the artifact is struck too hard, too large a chip flies off and
the implement is ruined. Fine chips are better worked off by pressure
than by impact. A point is laid upon the surface near the edge. When
this point is pressed down at the proper angle and with proper
firmness, a scale flies off. With some practice the scales can be
detached almost equal in size. The point may be of softer material
than the stone. It is in the nature of flint, and of all stones that
approach glass in their structure, that they break easily under
pressure in definite planes or surfaces. Modern tribes that still work
flint generally employ as a pressing tool a piece of bone or horn
which comes to a somewhat rounded point. This is usually attached
to the end of a stick, to enable a better grip of the working tool, the
butt end being clamped under the elbow. A tool of the same sort may
have been employed in the Palæolithic. The process of detaching
the scales or secondary flakes by pressure is known as “retouching.”
Retouching allows finer control than strokes delivered with a stone.
The result is that Mousterian implements, when at their best,
possess truer edges, and also greater variety of forms adapted to
particular uses, than those of preceding ages (Fig. 18, b).
In spite of their insignificant appearance, Mousterian tools
accordingly show advance in two points. First, the flake is used.
Secondly, two processes instead of one are followed; the knocking
off of the flake followed by its retouching.
Aurignacian.—With the Mousterian the Lower Palæolithic has
ended. In several activities of life, such as art and religion, the Upper
Palæolithic represents a great advance over the Lower Palæolithic.
Yet it seems that the mental energies of the Aurignacian people must
have been pretty well absorbed by their new occupations and
inventions, for their tools are largely the same retouched flakes as
those the Mousterian had already employed. The Aurignacian
carried on the stone technique of the Mousterian much as the
Acheulean previously had carried on that of the Chellean.
Solutrean.—The Solutrean seems to have been a relatively brief
period, and to have remained localized, for implements dating from it
are the scarcest of any from the six divisions of the Old Stone Age.
There was a distinct advance of interest in stone work during the
Solutrean. The process of retouching, without being fundamentally
altered, was evidently much better controlled than before. The best
Solutrean workers were retouching both sides of their tools instead
of one side only, as in the past, and working over not only the edge
or point but the entire surface of their artifacts. One of the
characteristic implements of their time was a laurel-leaf-shaped
blade which has often been considered a spear point, but would also
have been an effective knife and may often have been used as such.
This has the surface of both sides, from tip to butt, finished in even
retouching, and is equaled in excellence of workmanship only by the
best of the spear points chipped by modern savages (Fig. 18, c).
 Of course this was not the only stone implement which the
Solutrean people knew. They made points with a single shoulder at
the butt, as if for mounting, and had crude forms which represented
the types of earlier periods. This partial conservatism is in accord
with the general observation already stated, that lower types tend to
persist even after higher ones have been invented; and that because
a period is determined by its best products it by no means follows
that simpler ones are lacking.
Magdalenian.—The sixth period of the Old Stone Age, the
Magdalenian, resembles the Mousterian in seeming at first glance to
show a retrograde development. The retouching process was carried
out with less skill, perhaps because the Magdalenians were devoting
themselves with more interest to bone than to stone. Magdalenian
retouched implements are less completely worked out and less
beautifully regular than those of Solutrean times. One reason for this
decline was that another technique was coming to prevail. This
technique had begun to come into use earlier, but its typical
development was Magdalenian. It was a process which, on account
of its simplicity, once it was mastered, was tending to make the art of
retouching unnecessary. This new method was the trick of detaching,
from a suitable block of flint, long straight-edged flakes, by a single
blow, somewhat on the principle by which a cake of ice can be split
evenly by a well guided stroke of the pick. The typical Magdalenian
implement of stone is a thin flake several inches long, triangular or
polygonal in cross section; in other words, a long narrow prism (Fig.
18, d).
To detach such a flake, flint of rather even grain is necessary, and
the blow that does the work must be delivered on a precise spot, at a
precise angle, and within rather narrow limits of force. This means
that the hammer or striking tool cannot well come in direct contact
with the flint. A short pointed piece, something like a nail or a
carpenter’s punch, and probably made in the prehistoric days of horn
or bone, is set on a suitable spot near the edge of the block of flint,
and is then tapped smartly with the hammer stone. A single stroke
slices off the desired flake. The sharp edges left on the block where
the flake has flown off can be used to start adjacent flakes, and thus
all the way round the block, the workman progressing farther and
farther in, until nearly the whole of his core has been split off into
strips.

Fig. 19. Flakes struck from a core and reassembled. Modern

workmanship in Magdalenian technique.

This Magdalenian process, which was in use ten, fifteen, and

perhaps twenty thousand years ago, survived, or was reinvented, in
modern times. It is only a few years ago that flints were being struck
off by English workmen for use on flintlock muskets exported to
Africa. The modern Englishman worked with a steel hammer instead
of a bone rod and cobblestone, but his technique was the same.
Figure 19 shows the complete lot of flakes into which a block has
been split, and which were subsequently laid together so as to
reform the stone in its original shape. Similar flakes made of
obsidian, a volcanic glass similar to flint in its properties, are still
being produced in the Indian districts of interior Mexico for use as
razors (Fig. 18, e).
The Magdalenian method of flint working gives the smoothest and
sharpest edge. It is not adapted for making heavy instruments, but it
yields an admirable knife. The process is also expeditious.
Summary.—The successive steps in the art of stone working in the
Palæolithic may be summarized thus:
 Chellean: Coarse flakes detached by blows from the core, which becomes
the implement.
Acheulean: Same process applied to more varied forms.
Mousterian: Flake detached by a blow is sharpened into a tool by
retouching by pressure on one side only.
Aurignacian: Same with improved retouching applied.
Solutrean: Both surfaces of implement wholly retouched.
Magdalenian: Prismatic flake, detached by a blow transmitted through a
point.

73. Other Materials: Bone and Horn

Stone implements must perhaps always remain in the foreground
of our understanding of the Old Stone Age because they were made
so much more numerously than other objects, or at any rate have
been preserved so much more abundantly, that they will supply us
with the bulk of our evidence. At the same time it would be an error
to believe that the life of these men of long ago was filled with the
making and using of stone tools to the exclusion of everything else.
Gradually during the last fifty years, through unremittingly patient
explorations and the piecing of one small discovery to another, there
has accumulated a fair body of knowledge of other sides of the life of
Palæolithic men. There is every reason to believe that as time goes
on we shall learn more and more about them, and thus be able to
reconstruct a reasonably complete and vivid picture of their behavior.
Implements of bone and horn are next most abundant after those
of stone, but it is significant that the Lower Palæolithic still dispensed
with these materials. In the Chellean and Acheulean stations,
although broken bones of devoured animals occur, bone was not
shaped. In the Mousterian this material first came into use, but as yet
only as so-called “anvils” on which to chip flint or cut, and not as true
tools.
One of the changes that most prominently mark the passage from
the Lower to the Upper Palæolithic is the sudden development in the
use of bone at the beginning of the Aurignacian, and then of reindeer
horn. These materials came more and more into favor as time went
on. The Aurignacians had bone awls or pins, polishers, paint tubes
of hollowed reindeer leg bone, and points with a grooved base for
hafting, generally construed as javelin heads. In the Solutrean, eyed
needles were added. The greatest development was attained in the
Magdalenian. Bone javelin and spear heads were now made in a
variety of forms, with bases pointed, beveled, or grooved. Hammers,
chisels or wedges, and perforators were added to the list of bone
tools. Whistles and perhaps flutes were blown. Reindeer antler was
employed for carved and perforated lengths of horn, “rods of
command” or magic, they are usually called; as well as for harpoons
and throwers, to be discussed below.
By the close of the Palæolithic, objects of organic substances
began to approach in frequency those of flint. This may well have
been a sort of preparation for the grinding and polishing of stone
which is the distinctive technique of the New Stone Age. Bone
cannot well be chipped or retouched. It must be cut, ground, or
rubbed into shape. The Neolithic people therefore may be said to
have extended to stone a process which their predecessors of the
Upper Palæolithic were familiar with but had failed to apply to the
harder substance.

74. Dress
The slender bone needle provided with an eye which the
Solutrean and Magdalenian added to the primitive awl implies thread
and sewing. It may be concluded therefore that, at least from the
middle of the Upper Palæolithic on, the people of Europe went
clothed in some sort of fitted garments. It would be going too far to
assert that the Neandertal men ran about naked as the lower
animals. Several inventions which they had made compel us to
attribute to them enough intelligence to lead them to cover
themselves with skins when they felt cold. But they may have been
too improvident, or habituated to discomfort, to trouble even to dress
hides. At any rate there is no positive indication that they regularly
clothed themselves. By contrast, the sewing of the Upper Palæolithic
Cro-Magnons marked a considerable advance.
Ornament may have been earlier than clothing. The paint of the
Aurignacians decorated their own bodies and those of their dead.
About their necks and waists they hung rows of perforated shells and
teeth. More of these have been found on the skeletons of males than
of females. By the Magdalenian, there was sophistication enough to
lead to the carving of artificial shells and teeth out of ivory; and
amber was beginning to be transported from the German coast to
Southern France.

75. Harpoons and Weapons

Towards the end of the Upper Palæolithic, in the Magdalenian, the
harpoon came into extensive use. The shafts have of course long
since decayed, but many of the reindeer antler heads have remained
intact. At first these were notched with barbs along one edge only. In
the later Magdalenian the barbs were cut on both sides. The
harpoon differs from the simple spear or javelin in having its head
detachable from the shaft. The two are fitted together by a socket. If
the prey, be it fish or mammal, is not killed by the first throw, its
struggles to escape shake the shaft loose, while the barbs hold the
head firmly imbedded in its body. A line is attached to the head and
tied to the shaft or held in the hand of the hunter. The animal is thus
kept from escaping. During the Magdalenian the line was kept from
slipping off the head by one or two knobs near the butt. In the
subsequent Azilian period the head was perforated, as is the modern
Eskimo practice. The harpoon is really a rather complicated
instrument: it consists of at least three pieces—head, shaft, and line.
Another device which the Magdalenians shared with the Aztecs,
the Eskimo, and some other modern peoples, is the spear thrower or
atlatl. This is a sort of rod or handle, one end of which is grasped by
the fingers while the other engages the butt end of the harpoon or
dart. The hand only steers the shaft at the beginning of its flight: the
propulsion comes from the thrower. The instrument may therefore be
described as a device for artificially lengthening the human arm and
thus imparting greater velocity and length of flight to the weapon.
There is without doubt considerable ingenuity involved in this
apparatus, both in its invention and in its successful use. A person
unskilled in bodily movements would never hit upon the invention;
nor could a race of high native dexterity acquire proficiency in the art
of hunting with the thrower until each individual was willing to
practise for a considerable period. It may once more be concluded,
accordingly, that by the end of the Palæolithic, civilization had
developed to a point where men were much readier to undergo
protracted training and forbearance than they had been at the
beginning of the period.
One instrument that we are wont to associate with the beginnings
of civilization, because of its almost universal employment by
savages of to-day, is the bow and arrow. So strong has the
preconception been that the Palæolithic peoples must have been like
modern savages, that time and time again it has been assumed that
they possessed the bow. There is no convincing evidence to show
that this was so, and a good deal of negative evidence to establish
that they were unacquainted with the weapon. All the Palæolithic
remains of flint, bone, or horn, which at times have been interpreted
as arrow points, are more conservatively explained as knives or
heads of darts. The prevailing opinion is that the bow was not
invented until the Neolithic. This would make the weapon only about
ten thousand years old—a hoary antiquity, indeed, but recent as
compared with the knife, the spear, and even the harpoon. The
reason for this lateness in the invention of the bow and arrow is
probably to be sought in the delicacy of the instrument. It is not
essentially more complex than the harpoon, certainly not more
complex than the harpoon impelled by the spear thrower. But it
involves much finer adjustments. A poorly made harpoon is of
course inferior to a well-made one, but may be measurably effective.
It may retrieve game half the time. But a bow which falls below a
certain standard will not shoot at all, or will shoot so feebly as to
have a zero efficiency. In fact, one of the things that students of the
beginnings of culture have long been puzzled about is how the bow
and arrow could have been invented. Most other inventions can be
traced through a series of steps, each of which, although incomplete,
achieved a certain utility of its own. But, other than toys or musical
instruments, no implement has yet been found, or even satisfactorily
imagined, which was not yet a bow, which would still serve a
purpose, and which, by addition or improvement, could give rise to
the bow.

76. Wooden Implements

Wood is likely to have been used by primitive men for one purpose
or another from the very earliest times. Even “half men” of the
“missing link” type, it may be believed, would in case of need pick up
a stick or wrench a limb from a tree to serve them as a club. But we
do not know when human beings first began to fashion wood into
definite implements by working it with their stone tools. Wood is too
perishable a substance to have stood any chance of being preserved
from so long distant a past.
Our knowledge of the first employment of wood is indirect. Many of
the Mousterian chipped flakes are of such size and shape that they
could have been operated much more effectively had they been
mounted on a handle. Possibly therefore the process of hafting or
handling had come to be practised in the Mousterian, although there
is no specific evidence to this effect. In the Upper Palæolithic, wood
was certainly used to a considerable extent. The harpoon and dart
heads, for instance, must have had wooden shafts.
A true ax is not known from the Old Stone Age and seems to have
been invented in the Neolithic. The distinctive factor of the
instrument, upon which its utility largely depends, is the straightness
and smoothness of the edge; and such an edge is best attained by
the grinding process. Even the unground axes of the earliest
Neolithic depended on a single stroke to provide them with the
required straight cutting edge. We may believe, therefore, that the
Palæolithic peoples worked wood in the manner familiar to us from
the practices of many modern savage races. They split it, rubbed it,
and burned it into shape, rather than trying to chop it.
 77. Fire
One of the most fundamental of human arts is the use of fire. It is
also one of the most ancient. Its occurrence is easily traced, at any
rate in deposits that have not been disturbed by nature, through the
presence of charred bones, lumps of charcoal, and layers of ash.
Charcoal crumbles easily, but its fragments are practically
imperishable. Its presence in considerable quantities in any station,
particularly if the coal is accumulated in pockets, is therefore sure
proof that the people who occupied the site burned fires for warmth,
or cooking, or both purposes. The use of fire has been established
throughout the part of the Palæolithic when men lived in caves and
under rock shelters; that is, during the Mousterian and Upper
Palæolithic.
The Chellean and Acheulean deposits are so much older and
more open, and in many cases have been washed over so much by
rainfall and by streams, that, if the men of these periods did use fire,
as they may well have done, its evidences might have been pretty
generally obliterated.
Whether early Palæolithic men knew how to make fire, or whether
they only found it and kept it alive, is more difficult to say. They could
easily have acquired it in the first place from trees struck by lightning
or from other occasional natural agencies. Then, recognizing its
value, they may well have nursed it along, lighting one hearth from
another. Yet at some time in the Palæolithic the art of producing fire
at will, by friction between two pieces of wood, is almost certain to
have been invented. One may infer this from the general similarity of
level of Magdalenian civilization to that of modern savages, all of
whom practise the art of ignition. But in the nature of things it would
be difficult to find evidence bearing on this point from more than ten
thousand years ago. It can be assumed that man is likely to have
lived first for a long period in a condition in which he knew and used
and preserved fire, yet was not able to produce it.

78. Houses