Genesis of Symbolic Thought

Alan Barnard is Professor of the Anthropology of Southern Africa at the University of Edinburgh, where he has taught since 1978. He has undertaken a wide range of ethnographic fieldwork and archaeological research in Botswana, Namibia and South Africa, is a participant in the British Academy Centenary Research project 'From Lucy to Language: The Archaeology of the Social Brain' and serves as Honorary Consul of the Republic of Namibia in Scotland. His numerous publications include History and Theory in Anthropology (2000) and Social Anthropology and Human Origins (2011). In 2010 Professor Barnard was elected a Fellow of the British Academy.

• 1. Introduction; 2. Stones, bones, ochre and beads; 3. Kinship, sociality and the symbolic order; 4. Ritual and religion; 5. The flowering of language; 6. Conquering the globe; 7. After symbolic thought: the Neolithic; 8. Conclusion.

'Barnard attempts to answer the question of when and how human symbolic thought originated … The book is written in a way that should make it easily understood by nonspecialists, but it should be of value and interest to specialists as well … Recommended. All levels/libraries.' C. L. Thompson, Choice