 2014 - 2015 | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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| 0671-2181-01 | Children Always Know: Learning Processes and Knowledge Trans | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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| FACULTY OF HUMANITIES | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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University credit hours: 2.0
Course description
In recent years, growing numbers of researchers have chosen to explore the world of children in prehistoric societies. As it is today, learning processes and knowledge acquisition were probably very significant in children’s lives in the past. But was the nature of these processes in the Palaeolithic period similar to those practiced in our time? How do knowledge transmission mechanisms reflect in the archaeological findings? How did knowledge transmission mechanisms practiced in hunter-gatherers’ societies change after the transition to agricultural way of life? The course is meant to focus on some of the main issues related to these questions. We will learn about prehistoric children’s world, following archaeological and anthropological evidences; examine some of the prominent theories concerning the nature of learning processes in the earliest human societies; review ethnographic evidences of knowledge transmission related to hunting, gathering and stone knapping; and focus on identifying learning processes in the archaeological record with an emphasis on flint and ceramic assemblages.