"These cultural artefacts are the remnants of people’s past psychologies and can function as cognitive fossils of extinct mentalities and social preferences." My 5 cents on the @nature article: Is a cultural artefact a remnant of people's past psychology? https://twitter.com/baumard_nicolas/status/1308715606196342784

We could go full-Hegel on this. But I will save you the trouble (if you are interested you should follow my class @UniUtrecht ). I will adress another angel in this thread. Because when these psychologists looked at these "cultural artefacts" they forgot something important.

A portrait is not a photograph, in the sense that its main function is not to make a life like depiction of the sitter. We have seen this assumption earlier in the 'Habsburg-disaster', where scientists too chose portraits to investigate the Hasburg-jaw. https://twitter.com/a_tomb_a_day/status/1283838088381370369

So, you can design every shiny algorithm you like to analyse your data-set. But if you are not capable of thinking about what a portrait is, about the changes in portraiture in the three centuries (!) you are investigating, your reseach is - to say it mildly - not very sound.

What could have helped here, is a simple call to the art history department of the university. Because, we, arthistorians are actually trained to work with these sources. I get the feeling that working with 'artefacts' is getting quite trendy within bèta and gamma departments

Which is obviously a good thing. But, PLEASE, try to make these papers a joined effort. I would not dream of publishing an article on - for example - virology without consulting a virologist. And if you are a non-arthistorian writing about art(efacts) you should do so too.

There are all kinds of cool collaborations going on, that really, really, really do deserve more attention than this paper.