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 ==