Stephen Chrisomalis | Wayne State University (original) (raw)

Books by Stephen Chrisomalis

Reckonings: Numerals, Cognition, and History, 2020

https://mitpress.mit.edu/books/reckonings Over the past 5,000 years, more than 100 methods of ... more https://mitpress.mit.edu/books/reckonings

Over the past 5,000 years, more than 100 methods of numerical notation—distinct ways of writing numbers—have been developed and used by specific communities. Most of these are barely known today; where they are known, they are often derided as cognitively cumbersome and outdated. In Reckonings, Stephen Chrisomalis considers how humans past and present have used numerals, reinterpreting historical and archaeological representations of numerical notation and exploring the implications of why we write numbers with figures rather than words.

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Numerical Notation: A Comparative History, 2010

This book is a cross-cultural reference volume of all attested numerical notation systems (graphi... more This book is a cross-cultural reference volume of all attested numerical notation systems (graphic, non-phonetic systems for representing numbers), encompassing more than 100 such systems used over the past 5,500 years. Using a typology that defies progressive, unilinear evolutionary models of change, Stephen Chrisomalis identifies five basic types of numerical notation systems, using a cultural phylogenetic framework to show relationships between systems and to create a general theory of change in numerical systems. Numerical notation systems are primarily representational systems, not computational technologies. Cognitive factors that help explain how numerical systems change relate to general principles, such as conciseness or avoidance of ambiguity, which apply also to writing systems. The transformation and replacement of numerical notation systems relates to specific social, economic, and technological changes, such as the development of the printing press or the expansion of the global world-system.

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Human Expeditions: Inspired by Bruce Trigger, 2013

In its 2007 obituary of Bruce Trigger (1937–2006), the Times of London referred to the Canadian a... more In its 2007 obituary of Bruce Trigger (1937–2006), the Times of London referred to the Canadian anthropologist and archaeologist as “Canada's leading prehistorian” and “one of the most influential archaeologists of his time.” Trained at Yale University and a faculty member at McGill University for more than forty years, he was best known for his History of Archaeological Thought, which the Times called “monumental.” Trigger inspired scholars all over the world through his questioning of assumptions and his engagement with social and political causes.
Human Expeditions pays tribute to Trigger's immense legacy by bringing together cutting edge work from internationally recognized and emerging researchers inspired by his example. Covering the length and breadth of Trigger's wide-ranging interests – from Egyptology to the history of archaeological theory to North American aboriginal cultures – this volume highlights the diversity of his academic work and the magnitude of his impact in many different areas of scholarship.

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Papers by Stephen Chrisomalis

American Antiquity, 2021

Success in academic archaeology is strongly influenced by the publication of peer-reviewed articl... more Success in academic archaeology is strongly influenced by the publication of peer-reviewed articles. Despite the importance of such articles, minimal research has explicitly examined the factors influencing publishing decisions in archaeology. In order to better understand the landscape of archaeological publishing, we distributed a short survey that solicited basic professional and demographic information before asking respondents to (1) identify journals that publish important archaeological research, (2) identify journals that people who read archaeological academic CVs value most highly, and (3) rank the factors that affected their decisions about where to submit an article for publication. Our results from 274 respondents generated a list of 167 individual journal titles. Prestige was viewed as the most important factor that affected publishing decisions, followed by audience and open access considerations. There was no relationship between respondent-generated journal rankings and SCImago Journal Ranks (SJR), but there were significant differences in average SJR by gender and career stage. Responses showed consensus on only a small number of highly ranked archaeology and science-subject journals, with little agreement on the importance of most other journals. We conclude by highlighting the areas of disciplinary consensus and divergence revealed by the survey and by discussing how implicit prestige hierarchies permeate academic archaeology.

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The Hidden Language of Ancient Writing Systems

Chronograms are a cryptographic written practice in which the numerical values of some letters of... more Chronograms are a cryptographic written practice in which the numerical values of some letters of a text encode a date relevant to that text. They constitute a form of ludic numeracy—a specific kind of ludic language or wordplay in which writers not only highlight their skill with words and numbers but also conceal information, forcing readers to expend effort to extract their hidden meanings. Four distinct chronogram traditions are outlined: South and Southeast Asian word-symbols, South Asian alphasyllabic numerals; Greek, Hebrew, and Arabic alphanumeric chronography; and the early modern Western European tradition using Roman numerals. This essay analyzes a corpus of over 10,000 Roman numeral chronograms from the 14th through the 20th centuries, drawn from those previously compiled by the antiquarian James Hilton. Roman numeral chronograms use the letters IVXLCDM, specially marked within texts, to encode dates. While these chronograms began prior to the Hindu-Arabic (Western) numerals’ ubiquitous use, they were most popular in the late 17th and early 18th centuries, by which time the Roman numerals were already archaic. It was thus just at the point when Roman numerals were falling out of everyday use that they were ripe for symbolic repurposing in chronograms.

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Language & Communication

Number systems constitute one of the major domains in which language has been invoked as a source... more Number systems constitute one of the major domains in which language has been invoked as a source of variation in thought or cognition. The notion that the features of a language's numeral system index cognitive complexity in mathematics has been pervasive in anthropological linguistics, from nineteenth century unilinear evolutionists to contemporary neo-Whorfians. In particular, the extreme case of languages with small numerical vocabularies have attracted enormous scholarly interest, but other features for which representational effects on cognition are claimed include systemic irregularity and the presence of multiple parallel numeral systems (numeral classifiers and object-specific counting). Quite independently but relatedly, the comparison of graphic numerical notations has inferred cognitive advantages directly from notation, such as the idea that the Roman numerals limited Western mathematical progress. The question of cognitive effects of language is interwoven with issues of social complexity; in place of a pure relativistic language-thought relationship, the discussion has been, and continues to be framed through a triad of language structure-cognition-social structure. Recognizing the enormous cross-cultural variation in lexical numerals and numerical notations, how can we best evaluate the extent to which, and more importantly, the processes by which, they affect numerical cognition? An activity-based explanatory model in which materiality, discourse, and practice mutually engage to constitute knowledge systems allows us to move past the presumption that language structure has direct cognitive effects, without denying that there are linguistic patterns of real interest for future inquiry into numerical cognition.

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Terrain, 2018

Various, sometimes complex, numerical notations are found in a large number of cultures. They all... more Various, sometimes complex, numerical notations are found in a large number of cultures. They allow the graphical representation of numbers. Although distinct from writing and spoken language, they coexist with these two traditions and borrow much from them. Counting marks (for example, drawing sticks) and calculating tools (such as the abacus) are other ways of handling numbers. Rethinking the writing of numbers makes it possible to better understand their origin and their evolution: this article considers it primarily as a semiotic or representational system among others, rather than as a tool in the service of arithmetic operations.

(Follow link above, or http://journals.openedition.org/terrain/17506, for open access HTML version of this paper)

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Journal of Numerical Cognition, 2018

In their recent paper on “Challenges in mathematical cognition”, Alcock and colleagues (Alcock et... more In their recent paper on “Challenges in mathematical cognition”, Alcock and colleagues (Alcock et al. [2016]. Challenges in mathematical cognition: A collaboratively derived research agenda. Journal of Numerical Cognition, 2, 20–41) defined a research agenda through 26 specific research questions. An important dimension of mathematical cognition almost completely absent from their discussion is the cultural constitution of mathematical cognition. Spanning work from a broad range of disciplines—including anthropology, archaeology, cognitive science, history of science, linguistics, philosophy, and psychology—we argue that for any research agenda on mathematical cognition the cultural dimension is indispensable, and we propose a set of exemplary research questions related to it.

Bookmarks Related papers MentionsView impact

How should we evaluate the merit of written numeral systems? The present ubiquity of the Hindu-Ar... more How should we evaluate the merit of written numeral systems? The
present ubiquity of the Hindu-Arabic (Western) numerals might
suggest that narrow considerations of efficiency have promoted the
convergence of numerical traditions on a single, superior solution.
Comparing the historical evolution of numerical notations to the
history of writing systems suggests, instead, that a host of social
factors influence the adoption, transmission, retention and
replacement of numeral systems. The wide range of contextual uses
and functions of written numerals belie any simple explanation of the
choices underlying their abandonment. Following the criteria
outlined by Coulmas, a sociolinguistic model is proposed in which a
wide variety of technical, graphic and cultural factors must be
considered in order to fully explain the historical record.

Bookmarks Related papers MentionsView impact

This article discusses the earliest attestations and history of various English indefinite hyperb... more This article discusses the earliest attestations and history of various English indefinite hyperbolic numerals such as zillion, jillion, and umpteen, identifying them as a previously unrecognized category of contemporary English words with a peculiarly American emphasis. Umpteen originated in the late 1870s but became normative in the Midwest in the 1890s, not as World War I British soldiers' cant as frequently claimed. Zillion first flourished in African American English in the 1920s, while jillion originated independently in Texas around the same time. These ought to be regarded as a contemporaneous cluster of locally developed words within specific discourse communities rather than random nonce inventions. Since 1985 a massive expansion has occurred in the lexicon, primarily using the emphatic prefixes ka-, ba-, and ga-. Interviews conducted with African American youth in 2009–10 suggest that zillion may be acquiring a fixed numeral meaning (following trillion) among some speakers. Indefinite hyperbolic numerals represent a lexical category newly, promiscuously, and playfully developed in late nineteenth-and twentieth-century Englishes, in a discursive environment where numerical reference had become normative.

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A handbook outlining frameworks, concepts, and strategies that pre-tenure humanists and social sc... more A handbook outlining frameworks, concepts, and strategies that pre-tenure humanists and social scientists can employ when making the case for the impact of their scholarship. In place of the suite of metrics and approaches used to evaluate research in the natural and physical sciences, engineering and medicine, more suitable ways of producing verifiable, comprehensible material for the preparation of tenure and promotion files are demonstrated.

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IN A Passion for the Past, Papers in Honor of James F. Pendergast (James V. Wright and Jean-Luc Pilon, eds.), pp. 419-433

The identification of prehistoric ethnic groups suffers from troubling epistemological difficulti... more The identification of prehistoric ethnic groups suffers from troubling epistemological difficulties. The assumption that archaeological cultures correspond perfectly with biological populations , languages, and ethnic groups is faulty because the amount of overlap between the elements of the 'race-language-culture' triad must be determined empirically. The use of such overlap to identify prehistoric cultural groups is therefore highly suspect. Moreover, the study of ethnicity in sociocultural anthropology has demonstrated that it is a matter of self-identification at various social scales that does not necessarily correspond with any particular feature of material culture and is manipulated by individuals for social purposes. No cross-cultural regularities have been discovered that would enable the identification of ethnic groups in prehistory. Therefore, the study of ethnicity is impossible for most prehistoric contexts. However, in protohistoric and late prehistoric contexts, such as the Iroquoian Late Woodland period, ethnic attributions based on ethnohistoric and linguistic data may be possible by correlating historically known toponyms and ethnonyms with archaeologically known sites. Résumé The identification of prehistoric ethnic groups suffers from troubling epistemological difficulties. The assumption that archaeological cultures correspond perfectly with biological populations , languages, and ethnic groups is faulty because the amount of overlap between the elements of the 'race-language-culture' triad must be determined empirically. The use of such overlap to identify prehistoric cultural groups is therefore highly suspect. Moreover, the study of ethnicity in sociocultural anthropology has demonstrated that it is a matter of self-identification at various social scales that does not necessarily correspond with any particular feature of material culture and is manipulated by individuals for social purposes. No cross-cultural regularities have been discovered that would enable the identification of ethnic groups in prehistory. Therefore, the study of ethnicity is impossible for most prehistoric contexts. However, in protohistoric and late prehistoric contexts, such as the Iroquoian Late Woodland period, ethnic attributions based on ethnohistoric and linguistic data may be possible by correlating historically known toponyms and ethnonyms with archaeologically known sites.

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Pragmatics and Cognition 21(3): 552-572

The world’s diverse written numeral systems are affected by human cognition; in turn, written num... more The world’s diverse written numeral systems are affected by human cognition; in turn, written numeral systems affect mathematical cognition in social environments. The present study investigates the constraints on graphic numerical notation, treating it neither as a byproduct of lexical numeration, nor a mere adjunct to writing, but as a specific written modality with its own cognitive properties.
Constraints do not refute the notion of infinite cultural variability; rather, they recognize the infinity of variability within defined limits, thus transcending the universalist / particularist dichotomy. In place of strictly innatist perspectives on mathematical cognition, a model is proposed that invokes domain-specific and notationally-specific constraints to explain patterns in numerical notations. The analysis of exceptions to cross-cultural generalizations makes the study of near-universals highly productive theoretically. The cross-cultural study of patterns in written numbers thus provides a rich complement to the cognitive analysis of writing systems.

Bookmarks Related papers MentionsView impact

Bookmarks Related papers MentionsView impact

Signs of Writing: The Cultural, Social, and Linguistic Contexts of the World’s First Writing Systems, Nov 8, 2014

Across multiple disciplines, written numerical notation is a topic of keen interest, yet several ... more Across multiple disciplines, written numerical notation is a topic of keen interest, yet several unresolved issues in its analysis are either elided or taken as settled. Numerical notation is a complex phenomenon with multiple independent histories—more than 100 distinct systems used over the past 5,500 years, interweaving with, rather than strictly paralleling, the histories of writing systems. Social, semiotic, and cognitive approaches are brought to bear on six incompletely answered questions about numeration in relation to the earliest writing. Is numerical notation a necessary precursor to writing? Does the earliest numerical notation initially serve a bookkeeping function for early states? What is the relationship between tallying and numerical notation? Does the use of numerical notation change human cognition about the domain of number? How does the emergence of numerical notation relate to linguistic representations of number? Finally, among all domains of knowledge, why is number so widely represented using graphic notations? Recognizing that these issues are not resolved, and identifying different possible resolutions, must be preliminary to fully integrating numerical notation within the broader history of writing.

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Language in Society 44(1): 63-85, Jan 2015

Mathematical prescriptivism is a language ideology found in school mathematics that uses a discou... more Mathematical prescriptivism is a language ideology found in school mathematics that uses a discourse of rationality to prescribe language forms perceived as illogical or inefficient. The present study is based on a three-year ethnographic investigation of the Math Corps, a community of practice in Detroit, Michigan, in which prescriptive language in the classroom is used both to highlight beneficial algorithms and to build social solidarity. Although motivated by the analogy with English orthographic reform, prescriptivism at Math Corps avoids potentially harmful criticism of community members of the sort often experienced by African American students. A playful linguistic frame, the prescriptive melodrama, highlights valued prescriptions, thereby enculturating students into the locally preferred register, the ‘Math Corps way’, which encompasses social, moral, linguistic, and mathematical practices and norms. A sociolinguistic and anthropological perspective on prescriptivism within communities of practice highlights positive alternatives to the universalizing prescriptions found in other English contexts.

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Lexiculture Papers, vol. 1, Introduction, 2014

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IN The Shape of Script: How and Why Writing Systems Change , Stephen Houston, ed., pp. 229-254. Santa Fe: School of American Research Press . , 2012

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IN The Cambridge Handbook of Literacy , David R. Olson and Nancy Torrance, eds, pp. 59-74. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press

Bookmarks Related papers MentionsView impact

IN The Oxford Handbook of History of Mathematics, Eleanor Robson and Jacqueline Stedall, eds., pp. 495-517. Oxford: Oxford University Press., 2009

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Reckonings: Numerals, Cognition, and History, 2020

https://mitpress.mit.edu/books/reckonings Over the past 5,000 years, more than 100 methods of ... more https://mitpress.mit.edu/books/reckonings

Over the past 5,000 years, more than 100 methods of numerical notation—distinct ways of writing numbers—have been developed and used by specific communities. Most of these are barely known today; where they are known, they are often derided as cognitively cumbersome and outdated. In Reckonings, Stephen Chrisomalis considers how humans past and present have used numerals, reinterpreting historical and archaeological representations of numerical notation and exploring the implications of why we write numbers with figures rather than words.

Bookmarks Related papers MentionsView impact

Numerical Notation: A Comparative History, 2010

This book is a cross-cultural reference volume of all attested numerical notation systems (graphi... more This book is a cross-cultural reference volume of all attested numerical notation systems (graphic, non-phonetic systems for representing numbers), encompassing more than 100 such systems used over the past 5,500 years. Using a typology that defies progressive, unilinear evolutionary models of change, Stephen Chrisomalis identifies five basic types of numerical notation systems, using a cultural phylogenetic framework to show relationships between systems and to create a general theory of change in numerical systems. Numerical notation systems are primarily representational systems, not computational technologies. Cognitive factors that help explain how numerical systems change relate to general principles, such as conciseness or avoidance of ambiguity, which apply also to writing systems. The transformation and replacement of numerical notation systems relates to specific social, economic, and technological changes, such as the development of the printing press or the expansion of the global world-system.

Bookmarks Related papers MentionsView impact

Human Expeditions: Inspired by Bruce Trigger, 2013

In its 2007 obituary of Bruce Trigger (1937–2006), the Times of London referred to the Canadian a... more In its 2007 obituary of Bruce Trigger (1937–2006), the Times of London referred to the Canadian anthropologist and archaeologist as “Canada's leading prehistorian” and “one of the most influential archaeologists of his time.” Trained at Yale University and a faculty member at McGill University for more than forty years, he was best known for his History of Archaeological Thought, which the Times called “monumental.” Trigger inspired scholars all over the world through his questioning of assumptions and his engagement with social and political causes.
Human Expeditions pays tribute to Trigger's immense legacy by bringing together cutting edge work from internationally recognized and emerging researchers inspired by his example. Covering the length and breadth of Trigger's wide-ranging interests – from Egyptology to the history of archaeological theory to North American aboriginal cultures – this volume highlights the diversity of his academic work and the magnitude of his impact in many different areas of scholarship.

Bookmarks Related papers MentionsView impact

American Antiquity, 2021

Success in academic archaeology is strongly influenced by the publication of peer-reviewed articl... more Success in academic archaeology is strongly influenced by the publication of peer-reviewed articles. Despite the importance of such articles, minimal research has explicitly examined the factors influencing publishing decisions in archaeology. In order to better understand the landscape of archaeological publishing, we distributed a short survey that solicited basic professional and demographic information before asking respondents to (1) identify journals that publish important archaeological research, (2) identify journals that people who read archaeological academic CVs value most highly, and (3) rank the factors that affected their decisions about where to submit an article for publication. Our results from 274 respondents generated a list of 167 individual journal titles. Prestige was viewed as the most important factor that affected publishing decisions, followed by audience and open access considerations. There was no relationship between respondent-generated journal rankings and SCImago Journal Ranks (SJR), but there were significant differences in average SJR by gender and career stage. Responses showed consensus on only a small number of highly ranked archaeology and science-subject journals, with little agreement on the importance of most other journals. We conclude by highlighting the areas of disciplinary consensus and divergence revealed by the survey and by discussing how implicit prestige hierarchies permeate academic archaeology.

Bookmarks Related papers MentionsView impact

The Hidden Language of Ancient Writing Systems

Chronograms are a cryptographic written practice in which the numerical values of some letters of... more Chronograms are a cryptographic written practice in which the numerical values of some letters of a text encode a date relevant to that text. They constitute a form of ludic numeracy—a specific kind of ludic language or wordplay in which writers not only highlight their skill with words and numbers but also conceal information, forcing readers to expend effort to extract their hidden meanings. Four distinct chronogram traditions are outlined: South and Southeast Asian word-symbols, South Asian alphasyllabic numerals; Greek, Hebrew, and Arabic alphanumeric chronography; and the early modern Western European tradition using Roman numerals. This essay analyzes a corpus of over 10,000 Roman numeral chronograms from the 14th through the 20th centuries, drawn from those previously compiled by the antiquarian James Hilton. Roman numeral chronograms use the letters IVXLCDM, specially marked within texts, to encode dates. While these chronograms began prior to the Hindu-Arabic (Western) numerals’ ubiquitous use, they were most popular in the late 17th and early 18th centuries, by which time the Roman numerals were already archaic. It was thus just at the point when Roman numerals were falling out of everyday use that they were ripe for symbolic repurposing in chronograms.

Bookmarks Related papers MentionsView impact

Language & Communication

Number systems constitute one of the major domains in which language has been invoked as a source... more Number systems constitute one of the major domains in which language has been invoked as a source of variation in thought or cognition. The notion that the features of a language's numeral system index cognitive complexity in mathematics has been pervasive in anthropological linguistics, from nineteenth century unilinear evolutionists to contemporary neo-Whorfians. In particular, the extreme case of languages with small numerical vocabularies have attracted enormous scholarly interest, but other features for which representational effects on cognition are claimed include systemic irregularity and the presence of multiple parallel numeral systems (numeral classifiers and object-specific counting). Quite independently but relatedly, the comparison of graphic numerical notations has inferred cognitive advantages directly from notation, such as the idea that the Roman numerals limited Western mathematical progress. The question of cognitive effects of language is interwoven with issues of social complexity; in place of a pure relativistic language-thought relationship, the discussion has been, and continues to be framed through a triad of language structure-cognition-social structure. Recognizing the enormous cross-cultural variation in lexical numerals and numerical notations, how can we best evaluate the extent to which, and more importantly, the processes by which, they affect numerical cognition? An activity-based explanatory model in which materiality, discourse, and practice mutually engage to constitute knowledge systems allows us to move past the presumption that language structure has direct cognitive effects, without denying that there are linguistic patterns of real interest for future inquiry into numerical cognition.

Bookmarks Related papers MentionsView impact

Terrain, 2018

Various, sometimes complex, numerical notations are found in a large number of cultures. They all... more Various, sometimes complex, numerical notations are found in a large number of cultures. They allow the graphical representation of numbers. Although distinct from writing and spoken language, they coexist with these two traditions and borrow much from them. Counting marks (for example, drawing sticks) and calculating tools (such as the abacus) are other ways of handling numbers. Rethinking the writing of numbers makes it possible to better understand their origin and their evolution: this article considers it primarily as a semiotic or representational system among others, rather than as a tool in the service of arithmetic operations.

(Follow link above, or http://journals.openedition.org/terrain/17506, for open access HTML version of this paper)

Bookmarks Related papers MentionsView impact

Journal of Numerical Cognition, 2018

In their recent paper on “Challenges in mathematical cognition”, Alcock and colleagues (Alcock et... more In their recent paper on “Challenges in mathematical cognition”, Alcock and colleagues (Alcock et al. [2016]. Challenges in mathematical cognition: A collaboratively derived research agenda. Journal of Numerical Cognition, 2, 20–41) defined a research agenda through 26 specific research questions. An important dimension of mathematical cognition almost completely absent from their discussion is the cultural constitution of mathematical cognition. Spanning work from a broad range of disciplines—including anthropology, archaeology, cognitive science, history of science, linguistics, philosophy, and psychology—we argue that for any research agenda on mathematical cognition the cultural dimension is indispensable, and we propose a set of exemplary research questions related to it.

Bookmarks Related papers MentionsView impact

How should we evaluate the merit of written numeral systems? The present ubiquity of the Hindu-Ar... more How should we evaluate the merit of written numeral systems? The
present ubiquity of the Hindu-Arabic (Western) numerals might
suggest that narrow considerations of efficiency have promoted the
convergence of numerical traditions on a single, superior solution.
Comparing the historical evolution of numerical notations to the
history of writing systems suggests, instead, that a host of social
factors influence the adoption, transmission, retention and
replacement of numeral systems. The wide range of contextual uses
and functions of written numerals belie any simple explanation of the
choices underlying their abandonment. Following the criteria
outlined by Coulmas, a sociolinguistic model is proposed in which a
wide variety of technical, graphic and cultural factors must be
considered in order to fully explain the historical record.

Bookmarks Related papers MentionsView impact

This article discusses the earliest attestations and history of various English indefinite hyperb... more This article discusses the earliest attestations and history of various English indefinite hyperbolic numerals such as zillion, jillion, and umpteen, identifying them as a previously unrecognized category of contemporary English words with a peculiarly American emphasis. Umpteen originated in the late 1870s but became normative in the Midwest in the 1890s, not as World War I British soldiers' cant as frequently claimed. Zillion first flourished in African American English in the 1920s, while jillion originated independently in Texas around the same time. These ought to be regarded as a contemporaneous cluster of locally developed words within specific discourse communities rather than random nonce inventions. Since 1985 a massive expansion has occurred in the lexicon, primarily using the emphatic prefixes ka-, ba-, and ga-. Interviews conducted with African American youth in 2009–10 suggest that zillion may be acquiring a fixed numeral meaning (following trillion) among some speakers. Indefinite hyperbolic numerals represent a lexical category newly, promiscuously, and playfully developed in late nineteenth-and twentieth-century Englishes, in a discursive environment where numerical reference had become normative.

Bookmarks Related papers MentionsView impact

A handbook outlining frameworks, concepts, and strategies that pre-tenure humanists and social sc... more A handbook outlining frameworks, concepts, and strategies that pre-tenure humanists and social scientists can employ when making the case for the impact of their scholarship. In place of the suite of metrics and approaches used to evaluate research in the natural and physical sciences, engineering and medicine, more suitable ways of producing verifiable, comprehensible material for the preparation of tenure and promotion files are demonstrated.

Bookmarks Related papers MentionsView impact

IN A Passion for the Past, Papers in Honor of James F. Pendergast (James V. Wright and Jean-Luc Pilon, eds.), pp. 419-433

The identification of prehistoric ethnic groups suffers from troubling epistemological difficulti... more The identification of prehistoric ethnic groups suffers from troubling epistemological difficulties. The assumption that archaeological cultures correspond perfectly with biological populations , languages, and ethnic groups is faulty because the amount of overlap between the elements of the 'race-language-culture' triad must be determined empirically. The use of such overlap to identify prehistoric cultural groups is therefore highly suspect. Moreover, the study of ethnicity in sociocultural anthropology has demonstrated that it is a matter of self-identification at various social scales that does not necessarily correspond with any particular feature of material culture and is manipulated by individuals for social purposes. No cross-cultural regularities have been discovered that would enable the identification of ethnic groups in prehistory. Therefore, the study of ethnicity is impossible for most prehistoric contexts. However, in protohistoric and late prehistoric contexts, such as the Iroquoian Late Woodland period, ethnic attributions based on ethnohistoric and linguistic data may be possible by correlating historically known toponyms and ethnonyms with archaeologically known sites. Résumé The identification of prehistoric ethnic groups suffers from troubling epistemological difficulties. The assumption that archaeological cultures correspond perfectly with biological populations , languages, and ethnic groups is faulty because the amount of overlap between the elements of the 'race-language-culture' triad must be determined empirically. The use of such overlap to identify prehistoric cultural groups is therefore highly suspect. Moreover, the study of ethnicity in sociocultural anthropology has demonstrated that it is a matter of self-identification at various social scales that does not necessarily correspond with any particular feature of material culture and is manipulated by individuals for social purposes. No cross-cultural regularities have been discovered that would enable the identification of ethnic groups in prehistory. Therefore, the study of ethnicity is impossible for most prehistoric contexts. However, in protohistoric and late prehistoric contexts, such as the Iroquoian Late Woodland period, ethnic attributions based on ethnohistoric and linguistic data may be possible by correlating historically known toponyms and ethnonyms with archaeologically known sites.

Bookmarks Related papers MentionsView impact

Pragmatics and Cognition 21(3): 552-572

The world’s diverse written numeral systems are affected by human cognition; in turn, written num... more The world’s diverse written numeral systems are affected by human cognition; in turn, written numeral systems affect mathematical cognition in social environments. The present study investigates the constraints on graphic numerical notation, treating it neither as a byproduct of lexical numeration, nor a mere adjunct to writing, but as a specific written modality with its own cognitive properties.
Constraints do not refute the notion of infinite cultural variability; rather, they recognize the infinity of variability within defined limits, thus transcending the universalist / particularist dichotomy. In place of strictly innatist perspectives on mathematical cognition, a model is proposed that invokes domain-specific and notationally-specific constraints to explain patterns in numerical notations. The analysis of exceptions to cross-cultural generalizations makes the study of near-universals highly productive theoretically. The cross-cultural study of patterns in written numbers thus provides a rich complement to the cognitive analysis of writing systems.

Bookmarks Related papers MentionsView impact

Bookmarks Related papers MentionsView impact

Signs of Writing: The Cultural, Social, and Linguistic Contexts of the World’s First Writing Systems, Nov 8, 2014

Across multiple disciplines, written numerical notation is a topic of keen interest, yet several ... more Across multiple disciplines, written numerical notation is a topic of keen interest, yet several unresolved issues in its analysis are either elided or taken as settled. Numerical notation is a complex phenomenon with multiple independent histories—more than 100 distinct systems used over the past 5,500 years, interweaving with, rather than strictly paralleling, the histories of writing systems. Social, semiotic, and cognitive approaches are brought to bear on six incompletely answered questions about numeration in relation to the earliest writing. Is numerical notation a necessary precursor to writing? Does the earliest numerical notation initially serve a bookkeeping function for early states? What is the relationship between tallying and numerical notation? Does the use of numerical notation change human cognition about the domain of number? How does the emergence of numerical notation relate to linguistic representations of number? Finally, among all domains of knowledge, why is number so widely represented using graphic notations? Recognizing that these issues are not resolved, and identifying different possible resolutions, must be preliminary to fully integrating numerical notation within the broader history of writing.

Bookmarks Related papers MentionsView impact

Language in Society 44(1): 63-85, Jan 2015

Mathematical prescriptivism is a language ideology found in school mathematics that uses a discou... more Mathematical prescriptivism is a language ideology found in school mathematics that uses a discourse of rationality to prescribe language forms perceived as illogical or inefficient. The present study is based on a three-year ethnographic investigation of the Math Corps, a community of practice in Detroit, Michigan, in which prescriptive language in the classroom is used both to highlight beneficial algorithms and to build social solidarity. Although motivated by the analogy with English orthographic reform, prescriptivism at Math Corps avoids potentially harmful criticism of community members of the sort often experienced by African American students. A playful linguistic frame, the prescriptive melodrama, highlights valued prescriptions, thereby enculturating students into the locally preferred register, the ‘Math Corps way’, which encompasses social, moral, linguistic, and mathematical practices and norms. A sociolinguistic and anthropological perspective on prescriptivism within communities of practice highlights positive alternatives to the universalizing prescriptions found in other English contexts.

Bookmarks Related papers MentionsView impact

Lexiculture Papers, vol. 1, Introduction, 2014

Bookmarks Related papers MentionsView impact

IN The Shape of Script: How and Why Writing Systems Change , Stephen Houston, ed., pp. 229-254. Santa Fe: School of American Research Press . , 2012

Bookmarks Related papers MentionsView impact

IN The Cambridge Handbook of Literacy , David R. Olson and Nancy Torrance, eds, pp. 59-74. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press

Bookmarks Related papers MentionsView impact

IN The Oxford Handbook of History of Mathematics, Eleanor Robson and Jacqueline Stedall, eds., pp. 495-517. Oxford: Oxford University Press., 2009

Bookmarks Related papers MentionsView impact

Greatness in the Math Corps family: Integrating ethnographic, corpus, and cognitive approaches to a cultural model, 2013

This study analyzes a cultural model for greatness at the Math Corps, an enrichment mathematics p... more This study analyzes a cultural model for greatness at the Math Corps, an enrichment mathematics program of primarily African American students from public schools in Detroit, Michigan. Corpus analysis of staff addresses reveals eight interrelated conceptual relationships about greatness, conceptualized as a resource inside individuals motivating success. Compared to contemporary and historical American English corpora, this cultural model differs systematically from general understandings of greatness. Aspects of these conceptual relationships are then elaborated through gestural and graphic modalities. This cultural model produces a framework for decision and action, motivating student success in a challenging educational environment. This study integrates ethnography, corpus linguistics, and discourse analysis in understanding conceptual metaphor and cultural models, both in educational settings and other discourse communities.

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The Egyptian origin of the Greek alphabetic numerals, 2003

Traditionally, it has been assumed that the Greek alphabetic numerals were independently invented... more Traditionally, it has been assumed that the Greek alphabetic numerals were independently invented in the sixth century BC. However, the author finds a remarkable structural similarity between this system and the Egyptian demotic numerals. He proposes that trade between Asia Minor and Egypt provided the context in which the Greek numerals were adopted from Egyptian models.

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Cambridge Archaeological Journal, 2004

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Review of Cardinal Numerals: Old English from a Cross-Linguistic Perspective, by Ferdinand von Mengden (Mouton: de Gruyter, 2010). , 2010

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Beyond teleology: ancient mathematics and social history, 2009

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Proceedings of the 36th annual meeting of the Cognitive Science Society, 23–26 July 2014, Quebec City, Canada, 2014

Numeric Cognition from the Perspective of Material Engagement Theory: Accounts of numeric cogniti... more Numeric Cognition from the Perspective of Material Engagement Theory: Accounts of numeric cognition must explain both within-species similarity and cross-cultural variation. Numeric system similarities and differences are examined through the components of numeric cognition: brains, bodies, and material artifacts. Malafouris’ (2013) Material Engagement Theory is applied to material counting technologies (bodies and artifacts) through three main ideas: extended mind, material agency, and the enactive sign. The extended mind hypothesis suggests that numeric cognition includes material devices for counting in a way that goes beyond mere causal linkage. Counting technologies have different affordances, which alters their material agency and varies numeric system outcomes. The enactive significance of material signs is compared to the communicative significance of lexical numbers to suggest that the potential for numeric system elaboration depends, at least in part, on the way in which they differ.

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