Lambros Malafouris

Lambros Malafouris is a Greek-British cognitive archaeologist who has pioneered the application of concepts from the philosophy of mind to the material record. He is Professor of Cognitive and Anthropological Archaeology at the University of Oxford. He is known for Material Engagement Theory, the idea that material objects in the archaeological record are part of the ancient human mind.

Education Malafouris completed his doctorate in archaeology in 2005 at the University of Cambridge under the supervision of Colin Renfrew.

Research Working with Renfrew, Malafouris developed an approach to the study of the human mind, past and present, known as Material Engagement Theory (MET). MET has three central tenets:

Important concepts developed by Malafouris include: metaplasticity, the idea that the plastic human mind “is embedded and inextricably enfolded within a plastic” material culture thinging, the idea that humans think with and through material things neuroarchaeology, an archaeology informed by neuroscience. Renfrew and Malafouris first suggested and thus coined the term.

In 2007, Malafouris, Renfrew, and Chris Frith co-hosted the first symposium on the origins and nature of human thought at the McDonald Institute for Archaeological Research, University of Cambridge. Between 2018 and 2020, Malafouris and Thomas G. Wynn co-hosted a collaboration between the University of Oxford and the University of Colorado, Colorado Springs to examine the archaeology of the Lower Paleolithic through MET; the results were published in the journal Adaptive Behavior in 2021.

Honors Malafouris was a Balzan Research Fellow in cognitive archaeology at the McDonald Institute for Archaeological Research, University of Cambridge, from 2005 to 2008.

Selected works Authored books

Edited volumes

Special journal issues

Articles

Book chapters