ORIGINAL ARTICLE How to dig up minds: The intentional analysis program in cognitive archaeology Corijn van Mazijk Faculty of Philosophy, University of Groningen, The Netherlands Correspondence Corijn van Mazijk, University of Groningen, Faculty of Philosophy, Oude Boteringestraat 52, 9712GL Groningen, The Netherlands. Email: c.van.mazijk@rug.nl Abstract This paper introduces a new approach to the study of Paleolithic minds. It is developed on the basis of the phe- nomenological concept of intentionality: the mind's cen- tral characteristic of being about or directed at something. In phenomenology, the world is considered not qua fact, but qua appearance, as a correlate of the mind's intentional activity. Both world-appearance and the mind's directedness are further considered from a first-person viewpoint, and in a scaffolding fashion, with more complex acts disclosing new types of objects or aspects of them. This paper develops a framework for applying intentional analysis to minds of the past. This way, the subjective “world-having” of past subjects can be systematically reconstructed in a manner consistent with the empirical data available. This discloses a new field of inquiry that thus far has not been clearly grasped, even though the questions belonging to it are every- where recognized as being of the greatest importance to the discipline. The intentional analysis of the scaffolding of acts and what they disclose can help to clarify essen- tial concepts in cognitive archaeological debates, and to better understand the evolution of the hominin mind. Received: 24 March 2022 Revised: 14 September 2022 Accepted: 11 October 2022 DOI: 10.1111/ejop.12831 This is an open access article under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs License, which permits use and distribution in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited, the use is non-commercial and no modifications or adaptations are made. © 2022 The Authors. European Journal of Philosophy published by John Wiley & Sons Ltd. Eur J Philos. 2022;1–15. wileyonlinelibrary.com/journal/ejop 1 14680378, 0, Downloaded from https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/ejop.12831 by Cochrane Netherlands, Wiley Online Library on [14/11/2022]. See the Terms and Conditions (https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/terms-and-conditions) on Wiley Online Library for rules of use; OA articles are governed by the applicable Creative Commons License