How can the process of cognitive archaeology refine a physical understanding of subconscious imagery predicated on past, future, and present emotional constructs? 

Accurately transcribing literal history predicated on a personal (subconscious) representation of social and cultural development is crucial to redefining intimate relations of past experience, along with answering why they have maintained long-term cognitive resonance. Linking the past with the present is always a critical step forward in the conceptualized advent of situation analysis and resolution, which is ultimately necessary for ensuring the future longevity of an interactive populous. Uncovering physical relics of past experience can be a momentous process, in some instances rediscovering memories that have made a transparent leap from mental to physical manifestation in the exercise of emotionally articulated attachment can be seen as a very profound representation. What promotes the divine and almost inherently human desire to retain and preserve historical evaluation? How does the historic value of individually acquiring personal possession and attachment differ from the collective value of obtaining and reaffirming social history itself, or can this value be differentiated at all? The human construction of written language has been a valid tool in recording a detailed, however still very fragmented preservation of cultural and social history. Textual representations of events, evolutionary upbringings, and the linear exposition of human cognition can be rendered as incomplete reiterations which are part of a greater visual understanding or delineation of circumstance; “in general, the rather sophisticated activities for which writing was presumably devised do themselves depend upon the existence of a series of concepts such as these: they are indeed cognitive concepts. But in many cases they are not only material or cognitive constructs: they are based upon interaction with the real world, and in general upon interaction with symbolic artifacts which operate within the prevailing social world” (Renfrew, 3). Colin Renfrew in his text, “Mind and Matter” establishes the connection of language development with external symbolic storage and how early human development progressed through the means of constructing monuments and other physical vessels capable of implementing sentimental recovery relevant to cognitive recognition. This historically theorized example presented by Renfrew corresponds effectively with the general interpretation of my own research in terms of comparing the ideology that historical relevance and comprehension can be implanted into a material, physical entity for the future purpose of preservation and recovery, “In reality many indicators take the form of visual symbols, that is to say artifacts. And some of the most important institutional facts are embodied in artifacts could not exist without them” (Renfrew, 3). Analyzing this concept through my research platform of subconscious recovery a relevant question to consider is: What emotional construct or past physical interaction justifies the remembrance of a material item visualized within a dreamscape? Directly referring to the “plumbing knife”, a completely unintentional material projection of my subconscious, I am inferred to believe that particular past experience and emotional value has been instilled with this particular vessel due to its shamanistic visual extortion and vivid display of detail within my dream. Promoting a grasp on personal satisfaction and linear organization being processed through a troubled subconscious has become greatly import to the cognitive archaeology of my own personal dream exploration. Realms of exploration for this research has become personally attributive. The physical interaction between my body and this representational knife in the context of the dream was curiously disturbing and brought forth an indescribable amount of anxiety which only became apparent upon awakening. This anxiety and confusion however, was not present during the unfolding of physical harm that was dealt during the imagined scenario. Were there past recollections being represented through the intensity of the dream? “If the planes of social life reflect the processes of the determination of the base-superstructure, then the daily life, where all those determining factors are generated, is the product of a complex network of social antagonisms whereby the structure and consciousness move closer together, become interlinked and finally inter-determine one another” (Politis, 64). The dreamscape offers a disoriented visualization through a fogged viewfinder of past, present, and possibly future reconciliation or confrontation. Attaining the ability to break down and manipulate the conscious outcomes of a non-linear conglomeration of past and present thoughts is something worth achieving. The ultimate goal of this particular dream excavation is to uncover the fragmented pieces of important as well as non-important memories that my subconscious has involuntarily upheld and then reassemble them into solidified connections between emotional and historical thoughts. What were the systemic roots of these thoughts which were used to comprise a fictional sequence of story telling? How is the process of what seems to be linear story telling accomplished in a state of unconsciousness? The plumbing knife is constructed as a vessel for revisitation of thought and self exploration, however it works in fluid cognition with the linear structure of the dream itself, attributing no greater or lesser purpose than the characters or environmental settings involved. Each projection is dependent on the other in the process of uncovering emotional and historical preferences within the dream. The solidified visual representation of the knife itself is what has allowed me to retain and vividly re-engage the greater aspects and nostalgias implemented into my unconscious self, it is again, but a vessel; “it is easy to infer that the object, which lends weight or veracity to the tale, is secondary to the stories themselves, which come to encompass the object and generate an entire narrative around it”(Colby, 44) both the story and the object itself are established as separated entities however a unique transparency or dependable reaction between the two becomes apparent during the compositional break down of the dreamscape, how is it possible to ultimately define a link to an archaeological redevelopment of past experience and emotional value? “it is precisely through those subtle, mundane, often unconscious affective channels that material culture manifests its dynamic character and its semiotic force” (Malafouris, 93). Physical representation and conclusive production of the plumbing knife will offer a new and greater understanding of the metaphysical discomfort and agitation experienced within the dreamscape, attributed to the sensory obligation of touch and texture definition. The current visual imagery of the vessel, although still evoking much thought and consideration, remains static in a two dimensional sequence of repetition.

Works Cited

Malafouris, Lambrose. “introduction”. How Things Shape The Mind. Cambridge, Massachusetts: The MIT Press, 2013. Print.

Politis, Gustavo. “Archaeology as a Social Science: Its Expression in Latin America.”Archaeology in Latin America. London: Routledge, 1999. Print.

Colby, Sasha. “Reverie and Revelation: The Textual Archaeologies of Theofile Gautier.”Stratified Modernism: The Poetics of Excavation from Gautier to Olson. New York: Peter Lang, 2009. Print.

Renfrew, Colin. Cognition and Material Culture: The Archaeology of Symbolic Storage. Cambridge, England: McDonald Institute for Archaeological Research, 1998. Print.