Journal of Cognitive Historiography
https://journal.equinoxpub.com/JCH
<p><em><span lang="EN-US">The Journal of Cognitive Historiography</span></em> is the first peer-reviewed publication for research concerned with the interactions between history, historiography, and/or archaeology and cognitive theories. <a href="https://journal.equinoxpub.com/JCH/about">Read more about the journal</a>.</p>Equinox Publishing Ltd.enJournal of Cognitive Historiography2051-9672In Gratitude
https://journal.equinoxpub.com/JCH/article/view/27319
EditorialeditorialthanksCognitive HistoriographyHumanitiesIrene Salvo
Copyright (c) 2024 Equinox Publishing Ltd.
2024-01-302024-01-305710.1558/jch.27319Magic and Cognition
https://journal.equinoxpub.com/JCH/article/view/27099
<p>A short introduction to the special issue.</p>
Special Issue ArticlesmagiccognitionmethodologyintroductionMagicCognitionmethodologyAncient HistoryHumanitiesEsther EidinowIrene Salvo
Copyright (c) 2024 Equinox Publishing Ltd.
2024-01-302024-01-3081210.1558/jch.27099Moralizing Supernatural Punishment and Reward
https://journal.equinoxpub.com/JCH/article/view/25994
<p>In this article we respond to three critiques of our 2019 article ‘Complex Societies Precede Moralizing Gods throughout World History.’ We clarify that our research does not, as our critics suppose, support the claim that moralizing gods played a decisive role in the development of complex societies. Indeed our goal was to test this claim and we found it wanting. Our methods ‘reduce’ neither religion or social complexity in the ways claimed, while our tentative conclusions about the relationship between frequent, routinized ritual and social cohesion are supported by much research beyond the paper under discussion. In the Roman Empire, many forms of collective ritual contributed to the propagation of Romanitas. We have never claimed that this depended on absolute uniformity of belief. Other misconceptions about our supposedly ‘inattentive’ qualitative analysis result from misreadings of information in our open-access database, which functions as an evolving set of information relevant to specific research questions rather than a general encyclopedia. Despite these disagreements, we continue to maintain that neither qualitative historical methods nor quantitative analytic approaches alone can produce satisfying answers to causal questions about world history. The best approach, we argue, is to integrate the insights from humanities with ‘Big Data’ analyses from social science, and we welcome continued engagement and collaboration across traditional disciplinary boundaries.</p>
CommentaryBig Godsmoralizing supernatural punishmentevolution of social complexityevolution or religionHistory of ReligionD1-2027 History (General)HistoryHistory of religionJennifer LarsonHarvey WhitehousePieter FrancoisDaniel HoyerPeter Turchin
Copyright (c) 2023 Journal of Cognitive Historiography
2024-01-302024-01-3016818310.1558/jch.25994The Highs and the Lows of Construal Level Theory in the Community Rule from the Dead Sea Scrolls
https://journal.equinoxpub.com/JCH/article/view/18581
<p>This article applies Construal Level Theory (CLT) on the ancient Jewish text the Community Rule (1QS), from the Dead Sea Scrolls. CLT, a theory developed within social and cognitive psychology, operates with the association between mental construals (high- or low-level) and psychological distance (spatial, temporal, social, or hypothetical). CLT proposes that the human mind’s ability to traverse the “here-and-now” is dependent on the interaction between levels of construal and psychological distance. High-level construals are abstract, general, and superordinate representations of things (i.e. the why, the end-state), while low-level construals are concrete, specific, and subordinate representations (i.e. the how, the means). Reading 1QS through the lens of CLT reveals one possible way in which this ancient text strives to persuade its potential recipients to act according to its ultimate goal by combining different modes of expression.</p>
New Perspectives on Ancient TextsConstrual Level TheoryThe Community RuleThe Dead Sea ScrollsPerceptionPersuasionConstrual Level TheoryThe Dead Sea ScrollsCognitive and social PsychologyHistory of religionExegesisMelissa Sayyad Bach
Copyright (c) 2022 Journal of Cognitive Historiography
2022-12-242022-12-24133110.1558/jch.18581Investigating and Contextualizing Dramaturgical Perspectives
https://journal.equinoxpub.com/JCH/article/view/22403
<p>Believing that “all the world’s a stage” exemplifies using theater as a metaphor for life, also known as a dramaturgical perspective (DP). This project examines DPs in two historical contexts—contemporary psychological research, and the work of medieval Indian philosopher and literary theorist Abhinavagupta. Recent psychological research suggests that viewing oneself as “acting out a part” protects against social threats, but can simultaneously be alienating. Abhinavagupta posits that recognizing performativity can aestheticize life in a way that offers freedom from reified notions of self and other. This divergence suggests that DPs are entwined with cultural contexts. To test this, we examined the association of cultural orientations with responses to the DP among US emerging adults (N = 1146). Cultural variables were associated with DP endorsement, and with a key component of associations between DP endorsement and distress: feelings of inauthenticity. The discussion focuses on salient socio-cultural dimensions of DP operation.</p>
ArticlesReligionculturedramaturgical perspectivesocial psychologySaivismReligious StudiesReligious StudiesRoman PalitskyIsaac F YoungBen Williams
Copyright (c) 2022 Journal of Cognitive Historiography
2022-12-242022-12-248911610.1558/jch.22403Seeing Afar
https://journal.equinoxpub.com/JCH/article/view/22648
<p>“Piercing gazes” or “penetrative stares” are common idioms in English. Yet, on reflection, these phrases oddly suggest an extramissive, projective connotation of vision, countering our learned understanding that sight passively receives light. Nevertheless, these projective connotations are highly intuitive. Exploring Indian debates on yogic perception through a cognitive science lens, this paper argues that extramissive theories of sight constitute our most basic intuitive understanding of vision. Yogis are said to have extra powerful extramissive visual rays that allow them not only to apprehend distant objects but penetrate spiritual truths. Buddhists, by contrast, reject that the senses are extramissive. Still, they retain extramissive connotations when they explain yogic perception as a type of mental—rather than sensorial—feat. The explicit Buddhist rejection of extramission alongside their implicit retention of extramissive metaphors corroborates the thesis that extramission was highly intuitive within an ancient Indic milieu. Indeed, it likely constitutes a pan-human intuition.</p>
ArticlesIntellectual HistoryPerceptionBuddhismyogaIndiaReligious StudiesReligious StudiesJed Forman
Copyright (c) 2022 Journal of Cognitive Historiography
2022-12-242022-12-24668810.1558/jch.22648Perhaps an Other Time
https://journal.equinoxpub.com/JCH/article/view/22649
<p>In this article it is argued that conceptions of time have important cognitive and behavioural effects on historical agents, and that in ancient China at least one such conception tied fundamentally with the traditional Chinese calendar, the Stems and Branches system, is significantly different than the worldwide dominant modern conception of time in ways that deserve wider acknowledgement and exploration. The article relies on cognitive science literature, Takayama’s method of uncovering ancient cognition, and Bradd Shore’s Cultural Models Theory, to make its case. By examining the underlying qualitative and calculative structures of the calendar(s) in use by the humans we study, we can begin to see just how potentially different these views of time were and are in ways so fundamental to being in the world as to warrant new (re)considerations of historical actors cognizing about in and about their respective conceptual frameworks of time and the behaviours they engage in as a consequence.</p>
ArticlesCognitive anthropologybehavioral anthropologyreligion and cognitioncalendarstimetemporality cognitive alterabilityReligious StudiesReligious StudiesJulia McClenon
Copyright (c) 2022 Journal of Cognitive Historiography
2022-12-242022-12-24426510.1558/jch.22649“Big Gods” in Ancient Mesopotamia
https://journal.equinoxpub.com/JCH/article/view/22650
<p>According to the Big Gods Theory, religions with beliefs in moralizing supernatural agents were culturally selected because they enhanced in-group cooperation during intergroup competition and conflict (e.g. Norenzayan 2013). According to the supernatural punishment hypothesis (SPH), this was possible because such agents were culturally represented as punitive and wrathful (e.g. Shariff and Norenzayan 2011). These gods activated reputational concerns, fears of punishment, and social compliance among believers. I examine evidence for the SPH from ancient Mesopotamia based on the cultural evolution of beliefs in the god Marduk. I argue that, contrary to the SPH, Marduk and other ancient Mesopotamian gods were often imagined to be both punitive and benevolent. I examine potential psychological and ecological factors involved in the cultural transmission of beliefs in these supernatural protectors alternative to those proposed by the SPH. I raise general questions concerning collecting and interpreting big data as evidence for Big Gods.</p>
Articles Big Godscultural evolutionsupernatural punishment hypothesissupernatural protectorsMardukReligious StudiesReligious StudiesKarolina Prochownik
Copyright (c) 2022 Journal of Cognitive Historiography
2022-12-242022-12-2411714610.1558/jch.22650Fear and Terror in Buddhist Meditation
https://journal.equinoxpub.com/JCH/article/view/22807
<p>This article explores the extent to which cognitive historiography can be employed to comment on debates concerning the interpretation of meditative experiences in select Buddhist texts. In particular, this article considers references to meditation-related fear and other associated emotional, perceptual, and cognitive changes. Qualitative data from Western Buddhist meditation practitioners and meditation teachers are employed to further illustrate the range of fear-related experiences and how they are interpreted. To account for why certain references to fear in Buddhist literature could plausibly be read as representative of meditation-related experiences, this article develops cognitive models based on neuroscientific research on meditation as well as from cognitive and affective neuroscience more broadly. However, this process reveals some current limitations in the field of neuroscience of meditation as well as other methodological difficulties faced by cognitive historiography when attempting to account for religious experiences from other cultures and from distant times.</p>
ArticlesMeditationfeararousalsensitizationReligious StudiesReligious StudiesJared R LindahlWilloughby B BrittonDavid J Cooper
Copyright (c) 2022 Journal of Cognitive Historiography
2022-12-242022-12-2414717010.1558/jch.22807Introduction
https://journal.equinoxpub.com/JCH/article/view/23123
<p>.</p>
ArticlesIntroductionReligionReligious StudiesReligious StudiesJed Forman
Copyright (c) 2022 Journal of Cognitive Historiography
2022-12-242022-12-24354110.1558/jch.23123Cognitive Historiography
https://journal.equinoxpub.com/JCH/article/view/23124
<p>The essays in this issue of the Journal of Cognitive Historiography explore a variety of developing methodologies in the field, taking us on a tour through a range of cognitive and cultural contexts in East and South Asia, the Middle East, and modern America. Although there are a number of ways to consider the goals of cognitive historiography, the essays in this issue are all engaged in a scholarly pursuit of historical minds, seeking to uncover the deep and nuanced cognitive processes at play in different historical and cultural contexts. The essays include an exploration of ancient Chinese calendrical models and the experience of time, consideration of yogic perceptions and construals of vision and spatiality, applications of the “world as theatre” metaphor of the Hindu polymath Abhinavagupta, an evaluation of the punitive and benevolent qualities of gods in ancient Mesopotamia, and using neuroscience to study the affective responses of fear and terror in Buddhist meditation.</p>
ArticlestimeextramissionAbhinavaguptaMardukmeditationReligious StudiesReligious StudiesGlen Alexander Hayes
Copyright (c) 2022 Journal of Cognitive Historiography
2022-12-242022-12-2417118910.1558/jch.23124If not Now, When? Reclaiming Academic Journals as a Space of Kindness
https://journal.equinoxpub.com/JCH/article/view/23400
EditorialEditorialReligious StudiesReligious StudiesIrene Salvo
Copyright (c) 2022 Journal of Cognitive Historiography
2022-12-242022-12-2451210.1558/jch.23400Fearing the Gods?
https://journal.equinoxpub.com/JCH/article/view/24365
<p style="font-weight: 400;">After some introductory remarks on current approaches to curse tablets, this article focuses on the <em>defixiones </em>from Britannia, analyzing the idiosyncratic features of this corpus to demonstrate how the island’s inhabitants adopted and then adapted this magico-religious technology. In particular, it examines a group of curses in which the name of the practitioner is clearly stated. This specific piece of information has been understood by previous scholarship as a reflection of the fearlessness that these practitioners (who were supposedly asking for something fair) felt towards the gods. Nevertheless, this article interprets the use of names as a reflection of the perception that these practitioners had of the god’s omniscience. Additionally, this research also takes into account the context where these artefacts were deposited and the array of rituals that took place in those spaces. Tellingly, most of the curse tablets from Britannia with this feature (i.e. the name of the practitioner) come from sanctuaries and shrines, a context that could have promoted different ways for practitioners to conceive of the cursing ritual and the types of relationship that it created between the author of the curse and the invoked deity.</p>
Special Issue Articlesdefixionescurse tabletsBrittaniaancient magic-religiondivine omniscienceBF1585-1623 MagicAncient HistoryHistory of religionCelia Sánchez Natalías
Copyright (c) 2024 Equinox Publishing Ltd.
2024-01-302024-01-309411410.1558/jch.24365The Unfulfilled Promise of Cross-Cultural, Interdisciplinary Ancient History
https://journal.equinoxpub.com/JCH/article/view/21150
<p>This commentary focuses on G.E.R. Lloyd’s latest work, Ambivalences of Rationality (2018). The book is summarized chapter by chapter. Criticisms are presented with special attention to Lloyd’s unusual wealth of research from developmental psychology, cross-cultural psychology, anthropology, experimental linguistics and cognitive science. The commentary concludes that Lloyd has done a disservice to cited researchers in the mind sciences who investigate cross-cultural differences.</p>
Discussion / 3Ancient ChinaG.E.R. LloydAncient GreeceInterdisciplinary ResearchPsychologyB108-708 AncientB1-5802 Philosophy (General)DS701-799.9 ChinaD51-90 Ancient historyDF10-289 Ancient GreeceAncient HistoryComparative HistoriographyChinese PhilosophyAncient GreeceGreek PhilosophyRyan Nichols
Copyright (c) 2021 Journal of Cognitive Historiography
2021-11-262021-11-2618019010.1558/jch.39458Homo anxius, or How Fear and Anxiety Conquered the Social World
https://journal.equinoxpub.com/JCH/article/view/19349
<p>The article offers an extended review, counterpointed by a critical commentary, of two recent and outstanding volumes, Turner et al.’s The Emergence and Evolution of Religion (2018) and Sanderson’s Religious Evolution and the Axial Age (2018). Both books are eminently interdisciplinary in their scope: the first displays a distinctive deep-historical and neurosociological attention to the evolution of negative emotions and inter-group competition, while the latter focuses on the contribution of world transcendent religions to help human beings cope with new and challenging biosocial conditions derived from ultrasociality. While the two volumes gain unprecedented multidisciplinary width, they also tend to lose intra-disciplinary depth. However, and for all their differences, they both represent the vanguard of a renewed qualitative, scientific, and interdisciplinary study of the history of religion(s) through cognitive historiography. This contribution presents the main theses of both books, highlights their strengths, and provides a comprehensive discussion of their epistemological and methodological shortcomings.</p>
Discussion / 2Cognitive HistoriographyHistory of ReligionsNeurosociologyReligious Evolution and the Axial AgeThe Emergence and Evolution of ReligionNeurosociologyEvolutionHistory of Evolutionary TheoryReligious StudiesCognitive HistoriographyReligious StudiesLeonardo Ambasciano
Copyright (c) 2021 Journal of Cognitive Historiography
2022-01-062022-01-0613015610.1558/jch.19349Homines Emotionales and Religion as an Evolutionary Exaptation
https://journal.equinoxpub.com/JCH/article/view/19353
<p>This article offers a critical reply to Leonardo Ambasciano’s commentary on our volume (Turner et al. 2018) available in this same issue of the Journal of Cognitive Historiography.</p>
Discussion / 2NeurosociologyEmotionsEvolutionReligionHistoryNeurosociologyCognitive HistoriographyNeurosociologyCognitive HistoriographyAnders Klostergaard PetersenJonathan H. TurnerArmin W. GeertzAlexandra Maryanski
Copyright (c) 2021 Journal of Cognitive Historiography
2022-01-062022-01-0615717110.1558/jch.19353Book Reviewers and Their Victims
https://journal.equinoxpub.com/JCH/article/view/19354
<p>The article offers a rebuttal to Ambasciano’s commentary on my book Religious Evolution and the Axial Age (Sanderson 2018) included in this same issue of the Journal of Cognitive Historiography. Ambasciano gets much of my overall argument right, but on many specifics misunderstands or misrepresents me and others. One of his most consequential misrepresentations is his charge that I offer a kind of panadaptationism. I am an adaptationist, but certainly not a panadaptationist. I freely concede that there are elements of religion that cannot be regarded as adaptations. Connected to this point, Ambasciano contends that adaptationism is not the default starting point for evolutionary analysis and recommends instead the evolutionism of Stephen Jay Gould – the “gold standard” of evolutionary theory, Ambasciano believes—which holds that most evolutionary change consists of constrained by-products. But Ambasciano fails to recognize that Gould is an odd-man-out among evolutionists, most of whom emphasize natural selection and adaptation.</p>
Discussion / 2AdaptationBy-productsAnxietyLife History StrategiesBig GodsCultural EvolutionCultural EvolutionStephen K. Sanderson
Copyright (c) 2021 Journal of Cognitive Historiography
2022-01-062022-01-0617217910.1558/jch.19354A Reply to Nichols’ “The Unfulfilled Promise of Cross-Cultural, Interdisciplinary Ancient History”
https://journal.equinoxpub.com/JCH/article/view/19549
<p>A critical reply to Ryan Nichols’ commentary on my book The Ambivalences of Rationality: Ancient and Modern Cross-Cultural Explorations (2018) published in this issue of the Journal of Cognitive Historiography.</p>
Discussion / 3Ancient ChinaAncient GreeceHistoryInterdisciplinary ResearchPsychologyCognitive HistoriographyCognitive HistoriographyAncient HistoryGreek HistoryPsychologyG. E. R. Lloyd
Copyright (c) 2021 Journal of Cognitive Historiography
2022-01-062022-01-0619119310.1558/jch.19549The Year the World Became a Cognitive Historiographical Lab En Plein Air
https://journal.equinoxpub.com/JCH/article/view/20685
EditorialCognitive HistoriographyCognitive and Evolutionary Sciences of ReligionHistoryReligious StudiesBig DataCognitive HistoriographyCognitive HistoriographyCognitive Science of ReligionEvolutionary Science of ReligionReligious StudiesHistoriographyLeonardo AmbascianoNickolas P. Roubekas
Copyright (c) 2021 Journal of Cognitive Historiography
2022-01-062022-01-0652110.1558/jch.20685Shamanism Yesterday, Today, and Tomorrow
https://journal.equinoxpub.com/JCH/article/view/21151
<p>The present contribution offers a descriptive account of two recent books concerning shamanism, Homayun Sidky’s The Origins of Shamanism, Spirit Beliefs, and Religiosity: A Cognitive Anthropological Perspective (2017) and Sergio Botta’s Dagli sciamani allo sciamanesimo. Discorsi, credenze, pratiche (2018). The commentary starts by supplying a brief historical contextualization of the subfield of shamanic studies in both Anthropology and the History of Religions, highlighting the main trends and widespread approaches. Sidky’s neurocognitive account and Botta’s poststructural historiographical walk-through are then taken into consideration and reviewed. The conclusions under-score the need for an integration between these two perspectives and urge cognitive historians to collaborate with like-minded anthropologists in order to further the study of shamanism and prevent the subfield from becoming de novo monopolized by paranormal and postmodern anthropology.</p>
Discussion / 4AnthropologyCognitive HistoriographyshamanismBottaSidkyQH359-425 EvolutionGN301-674 Ethnology. Social and cultural anthropologyGN451-477.7 Intellectual lifeBL430 Origins of religionBF309-499 Consciousness. CognitionHistory of ReligionsCognitive ScienceAnthropologyLeonardo Ambasciano
Copyright (c) 2021 Journal of Cognitive Historiography
2022-01-062022-01-0619421610.1558/jch.21151The Study of Religion in Anthropology
https://journal.equinoxpub.com/JCH/article/view/21152
<p>The present article examines the pervasiveness of non-scientific/anti-scientific hermeneutical perspectives in the study of religion in anthropology, tracing their foundations to the works of Mircea Eliade and Clifford Geertz. Pseudo- and anti-scientific approaches have also been bolstered by a long-standing paranormalism in anthropology championed by Margaret Mead and others. Hermeneutical/interpretive approaches, which emphasize the insider’s perspective and treat religion as an independent variable, have not only hampered scientific studies of religious phenomena, but they have also enabled the development of approaches advocating paranormal beliefs and religious supernaturalism as scholarship. The article concludes by highlighting the problematic nature of these non-scientific and pro-paranormal and religious perspectives as scholarly enterprises.</p>
Discussion / 4anthropology of religionscienceshamanismsupernaturalismBD143-237 Epistemology. Theory of knowledgeBD240-260 MethodologyBD300-450 OntologyGN1-890 AnthropologyBL1-2790 Religions. Mythology. RationalismAnthropologyHistory of ReligionsPhilosophy of ScienceH. Sidky
Copyright (c) 2021 Journal of Cognitive Historiography
2022-01-062022-01-0621722810.1558/jch.41062Towards a Renewed Definition of Shamanism
https://journal.equinoxpub.com/JCH/article/view/21153
<p>The present reply offers some reflections on Leonardo Ambasciano’s commentary entitled Shamanism Yesterday, Today, and Tomorrow and included in this same issue of Journal of Cognitive Historiography. A particular point of contention is represented by the potential contribution that a post-structural approach could offer to a scientific re-description of shamanism as an analytical category in the contemporary academic field of Religious Studies.</p>
Discussion / 4shamanismpoststructuralismcognitive sciencesHistory of ReligionsReligious StudiesBL51-65 Philosophy of religion. Psychology of religion. Religion in relation to other subjectsBL685 Ural-AltaicE51-73 Pre-Columbian America. The IndiansBL2670 Arctic regionsHistory of ReligionsAnthropologyReligious StudiesSergio Botta
Copyright (c) 2021 Journal of Cognitive Historiography
2022-01-062022-01-0622923510.1558/jch.21153Mythohistory in Light of How Memory Works
https://journal.equinoxpub.com/JCH/article/view/21154
<p>“Myths” did not start as quaint stories but as compellingly memorable devices to record events and observations in nonliterate societies. By understanding how people encoded information so as to maximize their brains’ abilities to remember, we can begin to extract at least some historical information from these inherited tales. But not all oral tradition is directly useful to historians because not all the information thus recorded is of events, and the clarity of the events diminishes radically as the lifestyle and especially the location of the storytellers change.</p>
CommentaryMythOral traditionmemory techniquesobservation vs. explanationanalogical reasoningBL1-2790 Religions. Mythology. RationalismBL70 Pacific Ocean islands. Oceania0-820 Classical (Etruscan, Greek, Roman)BL830-875 Germanic and NorseBL2600-2630BL1000-2370 Asian. OrientalBL300-325 The myth. Comparative mythologyAncient HistoryMythologyArchaeologyLinguisticsComparative ReligionElizabeth Wayland BarberPaul T. Barber
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2022-01-062022-01-0623625410.1558/jch.21154Thinking Outside the Altruistic Box
https://journal.equinoxpub.com/JCH/article/view/21155
<p>Two theories currently share prominence as explanations for the near universality of organized religion. Theory 1, the costly signalling hypothesis and its extensions have not to date generated predictions about the central question of why religion is religious; that is, why does religion invoke the gods? Theory 2, supernatural punishment, predicts that religion would be religious, but it requires group selection to stabilize its proposed evolutionary dynamics. We should not immediately dismiss group selection hypotheses, but given its rarity in the rest of nature, asserting group selection in humans requires extraordinary evidentiary support that at present is not enjoyed by the supernatural punishment hypothesis. Researchers studying the evolution of religion should consider more fully alternatives to these two currently popular hypotheses. Alternatives include the hypothesis that standardization of religious rituals and beliefs for signalling social group membership but potentially without group selection, that religion might function primarily for emergence of mutualism rather than prosocial altruism, and that group selection might apply to religious systems only during punctuated bursts of denominational diversification and death.</p>
CommentaryMutualismaltruismcostly signalsupernatural punishmentaposematic signallingGN357-367AnthropologyReligious StudiesLuke J. Matthews
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2022-01-062022-01-0625527610.1558/jch.39066The Promise and Peril of the Data Deluge for Historians
https://journal.equinoxpub.com/JCH/article/view/21156
<p>Historical analyses are inevitably based on data – documents, fossils, drawings, oral traditions, artifacts, and more. Recently, historians have been urged to embrace the data deluge (Guldi and Armitage 2014) and teams are now systematically assembling large digital collections of historical data that can be used for rigorous statistical analysis (Slingerland and Sullivan 2017; Turchin et al. 2015; Whitehouse et al. 2019; Slingerland et al. 2018–2019). The promise of large, widely accessible databases is the opportunity for rigorous statistical testing of plausible historical models. The peril is the temptation to ransack these databases for heretofore unknown statistical patterns. Statisticians bearing algorithms are a poor substitute for expertise.</p>
CommentaryBig Datadata miningHARKingdimension reductionQA1-939 MathematicsQA76.75-76.765 Computer softwareHB71-74 Economics as a science. Relation to other subjectsD1-24.5 GeneralCognitive ScienceBig DataDigital HumanitiesGary N. Smith
Copyright (c) 2021 Journal of Cognitive Historiography
2022-01-062022-01-0627728710.1558/jch.21156How Complex were Ancient Societies and Religions?
https://journal.equinoxpub.com/JCH/article/view/21157
<p>Whitehouse et al. (2019) recently concluded their groundbreaking big-data historical research by stating that “moralizing gods” followed in the wake of early increases in social complexity, rather than preceding and paving the way for such increases. According to these results, it was doctrinal (group) rituals that helped facilitate an increase in social complexity and (religious) identity. The idea of a “supernatural punishment” came later, helping to maintain the existing cooperation in societies once those societies reached a certain size. However, the focus on big data in the pursuit of these questions runs the risks of leading to oversimplifications and presuppositions. I will draw on examples from Roman religion that appear in the Seshat dataset to illustrate some critical points, and will point out some problems concerning cooperation and social complexity that follow from the way in which the historical evidence is handled and, thus, merged into the databank.</p>
Discussion / 1Big DataCognitive Science of ReligionCultural Evolutionsocial complexityRoman historyancient religionDE1-100 History of the Greco-Roman worldAncient HistoryBig DataCultural EvolutionNetwork TheoryMaik Patzelt
Copyright (c) 2021 Journal of Cognitive Historiography
2022-01-062022-01-069811210.1558/jch.39573Some Remarks on Whitehouse et al. (2019), “Complex Societies Precede Moralizing Gods throughout World History”
https://journal.equinoxpub.com/JCH/article/view/21159
<p>This contribution reviews the methods behind historical data-gathering and data-coding in the Seshat Databank and the results illustrated in Whitehouse et al.’s (2019) “Complex Societies Precede Moralizing Gods throughout World History.” Particular emphasis is placed on data from Ancient Egypt and Roman periods. Critical reflections on the moralizing gods debate are also presented. The conclusions call for more integration between already existing projects within the Digital Humanities and warn researchers of the pitfalls of inattentive historical and qualitative analysis in Big Data scholarship.</p>
Discussion / 1SeshatDigital HumanitiesBig Data of the Ancient WorldDigital HistoryEgyptologyDT43-154 EgyptDT56.8-69.5 AntiquitiesDE1-100 History of the Greco-Roman worldCultural EvolutionAncient HistoryEgyptologyRoman HistoryFranziska Naether
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2022-01-062022-01-0611312110.1558/jch.39578Big Gods and Big Rituals
https://journal.equinoxpub.com/JCH/article/view/21160
<p>This short article reviews recent claims made about large-scale rituals and moralizing gods for the formation of large-scale societies. It starts from a reconstruction of the actual contents of the claims made in very different forms and wording and points to the very vague suggestions about causal relationships or chronological coincidence. Against these claims, three main arguments are advanced. First, it is difficult to formulate a model of trans-locally standardized rituals that would be able to keep together trans-local societies without the existence of secondary media, above all writing, which would be an even more important factor in processes of homogenization. Secondly, historically religion can be shown to serve as frequently for stabilizing distinction and dissent as for producing unity. Thirdly and finally, the very possibility of an exhaustive and stable classificatory grid across cultures and epochs is questioned. In a brief final case study, the lack of adequate descriptors in the database under review is demonstrated for ancient Rome.</p>
Discussion / 1comparisonritualsocial complexitypriestsDE1-100 History of the Greco-Roman worldAncient HistoryRoman HistoryBig DataJörg Rüpke
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2022-01-062022-01-0612212910.1558/jch.39885Aelius Aristides’ Sacred Tales
https://journal.equinoxpub.com/JCH/article/view/21161
<p>Aelius Aristides’ Sacred Tales, composed in the 2nd century CE, is considered a unique literary work, in which the author claimed to have recorded the dreams he had received from Asclepius over a long period of time. Modern historians explore the value of the Sacred Tales both as a literary work and as a personal oneiric record of actual dreaming experiences. In this article, I take into account the modern insights offered by the embodied human cognition paradigm in order explore the possible long-term influence and repercussions of the Sacred Tales on the readers’ imagination and dreaming experiences. In particular, I suggest that Aristides’ oneiric descriptions would have been meta-represented in the readers’ minds upon reading the text, priming specific images, representations, mental, and emotional states as well as expectations about potential divine revelations during the ritual of incubation. Later, those readers who would find themselves in similar bodily, mental, and emotional conditions like the ones experienced and described by Aristides, could have implicitly used the primed representations for meta-representing a personal epiphany of Asclepius. Thereby, the Sacred Tales would have provided the raw material to feed the readers’ imaginative simulations and to elicit a personally meaningful divine revelation.</p>
ArticlesAelius AristidesSacred Talesembodied cognitionnarrativeprimingdreamingBL1-50Religion (General)DE80-100HistoryBL51-65Religion in relation to other subjectsHistoryLiteratureOlympia Panagiotidou
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2022-01-062022-01-06224010.1558/jch.33225Writing as Thinking in Paul’s Letters
https://journal.equinoxpub.com/JCH/article/view/21162
<p>This article uses findings from cognitive sciences and neuroscience to detail the unique brain processes that stem from writing texts by hand. Such findings are described and then applied to the case of the Christian apostle Paul, whose letters – penned by Paul himself and/or via a scribe – are often used as evidence in reconstructions of early Christian social contexts. An attention to the findings from cognitive sciences and neuroscience around what I term “handwriting-thinking”, however, demonstrates a significant difference between the cognitive processes of Paul as author and the cognitive processes of his audience, who would have typically been exposed to Paul’s letters aurally. This difference in cognitive processes between Paul and his audience significantly problematizes the usage of Paul’s letters as evidence for his audience’s understanding of his letters and the concepts therein. More broadly, an attention to the embodied cognition of handwriting-thinking demonstrates differences in conceptual understandings between historical text-producers and their audiences, suggesting that we should focus more on individual text producers and their contexts instead of audiences.</p>
ArticlesPaul’s lettersNew TestamentReading and writing embodied cognitionDE1-100 History of the Greco-Roman worldBR60-67 Early Christian literature. Fathers of the Church, etc.BR1-1725 ChristianityBS2640-2765.6 Epistles of PaulBF309-499 Consciousness. CognitionCognitive Science of ReligionNeuroscienceEarly Christian LiteraturePaul Robertson
Copyright (c) 2021 Journal of Cognitive Historiography
2022-01-062022-01-06416410.1558/jch.38213