Paper short abstract:

Red ochre use figures prominently in current debates on the origin of symbolic culture, it also appears to be centrally implicated in the behavioural adaptations that resulted in our speciation. To understand the phenomenon, archaeologists need both evolutionary and social anthropology.

Paper long abstract:

We evolved in Africa approximately 200,000 yeas ago. There was no significant migration beyond Africa until 60-80 thousand years ago, by which time we were indisputably a symbolic species. This should be manner from heaven for social anthropology - concerned with the fundamental unity of humankind.

The only redundant evidence for a species-unique behavioural trait prior to migration out of Africa is the regular use of red ochre, with preferential use of the reddest and most eye-catching materials. The build-up of this behaviour in Africa immediately before 200,000 strongly suggests it was causally implicated in both our speciation and the emergence of symbolic culture. Why? And how might this inform our understanding of 'the marvellous'? Frazer, Durkheim, and Testart all posited various forms of 'blood' symbolism at the origin of symbolic culture. The 'female cosmetic coalitions' model - premised in behavioural ecology - is the first such model to be explicitly Darwinian. It predicts both the main features of the archaeological record of early pigment use and an underlying syntax to the mobilization of ritual power testable against the ethnographic record. I explore some of these predictions against the records of Middle Stone Age archaeology and hunter-gatherer ethnography. I also consider alternative accounts of the same phenomena: individual display, functional uses of ochre, and cognitivism - in the form of the 'basic colour term' hypothesis. I conclude that archaeologists addressing early forms of symbolism desperately need a social anthropology engaged with 'big questions', and that both need to understand the premises and methods of human behavioural ecology.