Materiality of Numbers - Emergence and Elaboration From Prehistory to Present

"This book addresses the material devices used to represent and manipulate numerical concepts. Fingers, tallies, tokens, and written notations, invented in both ancestral and contemporary societies, explain what numbers are, why they are the way they are, and how we get them"--

List of contents

1. Numbers in a nutshell; 2. Converging perspectives on numbers; 3. The brain in numbers; 4. Bodies and behaviors; 5. Language in numbers; 6. Global and regional patterns; 7. Materiality in numbers; 8. Materiality in cognition; 9. Making quantity tangible and manipulable; 10. Tallies and other devices that accumulate; 11. Interpreting prehistoric artifacts; 12. Devices that accumulate and group; 13. Handwritten notations; 14. The materiality of numbers.

About the author

Karenleigh A. Overmann earned her doctorate in archaeology from the University of Oxford as a Clarendon scholar after retiring from twenty-five years of active service in the US Navy. She currently directs the Center for Cognitive Archaeology at the University of Colorado, Colorado Springs.

Summary

This book addresses the material devices used to represent and manipulate numerical concepts. Fingers, tallies, tokens, and written notations, invented in both ancestral and contemporary societies, explain what numbers are, why they are the way they are, and how we get them.

Product details

• Authors: Karenleigh A Overmann, Karenleigh A. Overmann, Karenleigh A. (University of Colorado Overmann
• Assisted by: Tom Wynn (Foreword)
• Publisher: Cambridge University Press ELT
• Languages: English
• Product format: Hardback
• Released: 01.07.2023
• EAN: 9781009361248
• ISBN: 978-1-0-0936124-8
• No. of pages: 350
• Subjects: Humanities, art, music > History > Pre and early history; World, History of Ideas, PHILOSOPHY / Mind & Body, prehistory, Philosophy of Mind, HISTORY / Social History, MATHEMATICS / History & Philosophy, SOCIAL SCIENCE / Archaeology, SOCIAL SCIENCE / Anthropology / Cultural & Social, Social & cultural anthropology, ethnography, CE period up to c 1500, Philosophy of Mathematics, Social and cultural anthropology, Archaeology by period / region, History of mathematics, Prehistoric archaeology, BCE to c 500 CE, C 500 CE To C 1000 CE, BCE period – Protohistory, For graduate / post-graduate and equivalents