Events

KLI Colloquia are invited research talks of about an hour followed by 30 min discussion. The talks are held in English, open to the public, and offered in hybrid format. 

 

Fall-Winter 2025-2026 KLI Colloquium Series

Join Zoom Meeting
https://us02web.zoom.us/j/5881861923?omn=85945744831
Meeting ID: 588 186 1923

 

25 Sept 2025 (Thurs) 3-4:30 PM CET

A Dynamic Canvas Model of Butterfly and Moth Color Patterns

Richard Gawne (Nevada State Museum)

 

14 Oct 2025 (Tues) 3-4:30 PM CET

Vienna, the Laboratory of Modernity

Richard Cockett (The Economist)

 

23 Oct 2025 (Thurs) 3-4:30 PM CET

How Darwinian is Darwinian Enough? The Case of Evolution and the Origins of Life

Ludo Schoenmakers (KLI)

 

6 Nov (Thurs) 3-4:30 PM CET

Common Knowledge Considered as Cause and Effect of Behavioral Modernity

Ronald Planer (University of Wollongong)

 

20 Nov (Thurs) 3-4:30 PM CET

Rates of Evolution, Time Scaling, and the Decoupling of Micro- and Macroevolution

Thomas Hansen (University of Oslo)

 

4 Dec (Thurs) 3-4:30 PM CET

Chance, Necessity, and the Evolution of Evolvability

Cristina Villegas (KLI)

 

8 Jan 2026 (Thurs) 3-4:30 PM CET

Embodied Rationality: Normative and Evolutionary Foundations

Enrico Petracca (KLI)

 

15 Jan 2026 (Thurs) 3-4:30 PM CET

On Experimental Models of Developmental Plasticity and Evolutionary Novelty

Patricia Beldade (Lisbon University)

 

29 Jan 2026 (Thurs) 3-4:30 PM CET

O Theory Where Art Thou? The Changing Role of Theory in Theoretical Biology in the 20th Century and Beyond

Jan Baedke (Ruhr University Bochum)

Event Details

Chiara Elettra Ferrario
KLI Colloquia
Can We Hear from Stones and Sticks? Forays into the Deep past Through Material Culture in Hominin and Animals
Chiara Elettra FERRARIO (KLI & Victoria University of Wellington, NZ)
2016-03-31 16:30 - 2016-03-31 16:30
KLI
Organized by KLI

Topic description:
Assessing mental activity from the material residues of behavior is a crucial and thorny problem for both archeologists and animal cognition scholars. Assessing the behavioral performance that is supposedly guided by such mental activity, and produces the material residue more directly (at least in theory), is however an earlier step that is not easy either. This goes frequently overlooked, for we tend to focus on cognition and its species-typical requirements. In this talk, I offer an overview of the inferential processes that we use to deduce behavioral performance from artifacts. My interest lies specifically in accounting for behavioral performance that exceeds the innovation capacity of a single individual, which has recently been proposed as an evidential criterion for cumulative culture phenomena.

Biographical note:
Chiara holds a Master´s degree from the University of Milan and has been working on her PhD thesis "The Evolutionary Role of Imitation in the Hominid Lineage: Time for a Reappraisal" at the Victoria University of Wellington, New Zealand as well as at the Australian National University, Canberra. Having received a Writing-Up Fellowship from the KLI she is currently completing her PhD thesis.