Marks and Meanings: New Perspectives on the Evolution of Human Visual Culture

Symbolic behavior is a unique and defining capability of our species. The emergence and subsequent evolution of this behavior-particularly with regard to visual culture-has been a topic that has historically attracted a breadth of different disciplinary perspectives, from archaeology and anthropology to linguistics, cognitive science, and psychology. Each discipline provides unique insights into the early evidence, mechanisms, processes, social role, and evolutionary trajectory of symbolic behavior. Yet, there are rare occurrences where these disciplines directly interact. The question of how our species began engaging in symbolic behavior, and the role it played within our evolutionary story, is one that cannot be answered by any one discipline alone. This thematic topic brings together new methodological and theoretical research on the evolution of human visual culture and symbolic behavior. The contributions within this topic span from archaeological investigations of early symbolic behavior, empirical interdisciplinary approaches that integrate multiple strands of evidence, to cutting-edge insights about the cognitive processes and mechanisms that may have given rise to meaning-making in relation to visual media. In drawing together these diverse, yet complementary, approaches to understanding marks and meaning, this topic intends to broaden the interdisciplinary horizons of research into the evolution of symbolic behavior.