Mission

The mission of the Center for Cognitive Archaeology (CCA) is to provide graduate and undergraduate students at the University of Colorado, Colorado Springs (UCCS) and throughout the world the opportunity to study the evolutionary development of cognition in Homo sapiens and other primates through the lenses of psychology, anthropology, and philosophy. 

Cognitive archaeology is a truly interdisciplinary field that applies and integrates the concepts, theories, and methods of cognitive psychology, cognitive neuroscience, neuropsychology, anthropology, linguistics, the philosophy of mind, and the philosophy of consciousness, etc. to the tangible evidence for human evolution—non-human primate anatomy and behavior, human neuroanatomy, hominin paleontology, and archaeology. Cognitive archaeology considers the origins and adaptive evolutionary purposes of cognitive processes and capabilities such as aesthetic cognition, causal cognition, cognitive control, cognitive fluidity, episodic memory, executive functions, expert retrieval structures, literacy, numerical cognition, praxis, prospective memory, skill, spatial cognition, Theory of Mind, visual attention, and working memory. 

The Center for Cognitive Archaeology is uniquely positioned to provide cutting-edge research and the opportunity for students to enroll in unique courses online and on the UCCS campus that are unavailable at any other institution in the world—like paleoneurology, rock art, embodied cognition, Neandertal cognition, neuroanthropology, the archaeology of numbers, and many others. 

Executive Directors: Karenleigh A. Overmann and Frederick L. Coolidge 

Emeritus Director: Thomas Wynn 

Board of Directors: Karenleigh A. Overmann, Frederick L. Coolidge, Thomas Wynn, Klint Janulis, and Alexander Aston