ABSTRACT
Wilhelm Wundt, generally accepted as the father of academic psychology, developed not only the experimental approach for which he is famous, but also a second psychology – a Völkerpsychologie. This chapter briefly reviews Wundt’s second psychology as a way of asking what would our discipline’s founder make of the interplay between psychology, in this case evolutionary psychology, and cognitive archaeology. Following a discussion of evolutionary psychology we suggest that Wundt’s ultimate aim for our discipline would likely have embraced the sort of data and perspective that cognitive archaeology provides. The remainder of the chapter previews the book’s four sections: Prehistory from the perspective of physiological and developmental psychology; Prehistory from the perspective of cognitive psychology; Prehistory from the perspective of social psychology; and Prehistory from the perspective of personality and clinical psychology.
