Resumen
As the more traditional approaches to the study of human beings over time seem to be exhausted, new ways of exploring human behaviour are being developed, based on methodologies and techniques from disciplines such as neuroscience and psychology. For instance, eye tracking is applied in archaeology to investigate how material culture influences the way humans perceive the surrounded world. This method detects and measures eye positions, identifying the underlying patterns of visual behaviour based on the eye movement events, namely fixation and saccade system. Other applied techniques can be electroencephalography, which measures brain activity, and biometric sensing such as heartbeat or electrodermal activity. Therefore, the engagement of people to participate in experimental studies is needed in order to make inferences into the past. These experiments can reveal how humans construct inferences based on materiality that shape, and are shaped by, human cognition and action. In this sense, the behavioural response can be quantified and it can show changes that need to be contextualized according to the archaeological record. The XSCAPE project and the Material Minds Lab, funded by the European Research Council, constitute an example of this perspective. Through this combination of archaeological material and neuroscience, this project will provide the first fully integrated framework for understanding the cycles by which humans create and transform the landscapes, practices and artefacts that create and transform the human minds.
Palabras clave
Perception. Eye-tracking. Materiality. Human behaviour. Experimental methods.