Cognitive archaeology is a theoretical perspective in archaeology that focuses on the ancient mind. It is divided into two main groups: evolutionary cognitive archaeology (ECA), which seeks to understand human cognitive evolution from the material record, and ideational cognitive archaeology (ICA), which focuses on the symbolic structures discernable in or inferable from past material culture. Evolutionary cognitive archaeology ECA infers change in ancestral human cognition from the archaeological record, often drawing on the theories, methods, and data of other disciplines: cognitive science, comparative cognition, paleoneurology, experimental replication, and hands-on participation in the manufacture and use of traditional technologies. For example, the 3.3-million-year history of stone tool use is broadly informative of change in cognitive capacities like intelligence, spatial reasoning, working memory, and executive functioning, as defined by and understood through cognitive psychology and as operationalized to permit their detection in the archaeological record. Other ECA investigations have focused on the development of domain-specific abilities, including theory of mind, visual perception and visuospatial abilities, technological reasoning, language, numeracy, and literacy. Within ECA, there are two main schools of thought. The North American ECA school began in the mid-1970s with the pioneering work of archaeologist Thomas G. Wynn and biological anthropologist Sue Taylor Parker working with evolutionary neurobiologist Kathleen Gibson. It focuses on understanding human cognitive evolution, either from the artifactual record of forms like stone tools, comparisons of ancestral tool use with that of contemporary species (typically but not exclusively, non-human primates), or both. It often involves descriptive pattern analysis: analyzing change in a form like stone tools over millions of years and interpreting that change in terms of its cognitive significance using theories, constructs, and paradigms from cognitive psychology and neuroscience. East of the Atlantic, the British ECA school also began in the mid-1970s with the work of archaeologists Colin Renfrew and John Gowlett and evolutionary primatologist William McGrew. Renfrew's work in particular, as well as that of his student, Lambros Malafouris, has taken a philosophical approach to the study of the ancient mind, drawing on concepts from the philosophy of mind and ecological psychology to examine the role of material structures in human cognition more fundamentally. Renfrew and Malafouris coined the term neuroarchaeology to describe their approach. ECA is concerned with how humans think through material structures, with the ability to leverage and exploit material structures for cognitive purposes perhaps being what truly sets human cognition apart from that