ABSTRACT
Renfrew gives an example of a constitutive symbol which dates from the Neolithic era—the emergence of the concept of weight. When archaeologists discover a series of stone cubes of regular, ascending sizes in some pre-historical culture, it is reasonable to assume that they were used as units for the measurement of weight and, therefore, that this particular culture had developed the concept of weight. Thus the physical objects through which money is instantiated are constitutive symbols of a reality that only has meaning through the collective intentionality of human beings expressed in the form of social practices involving material objects. The significance of sensory qualities in material signification indicates that there is no clear divide between different levels of symbolic reference as Kuhn and Stiner assume when they distinguish between “increasing an individual’s visual impact” and “conveying standardized social messages” since these sensory messages remain a vital aspect of the symbol.
