In this book, cognitive archaeologist Karenleigh A. Overmann addresses a topic that previous scholarship on numbers has considered only in passing, if at all: the material devices used to represent and manipulate numerical concepts. Fingers, tallies, tokens, and written notations, invented in both ancestral and contemporary societies, explain what numbers are, why they are the way they are, and how we get them. Overmann is the first to explore how material devices contribute to numerical thinking, initially by helping us to visualize and manipulate the perceptual experience of quantity that we share with other species. She explores how and why numbers are conceptualized and then elaborated, as well as the central role that material objects play in both processes. Overmann's volume thus offers a new perspective on numerical cognition that is based on an alternative set of assumptions about numbers, their material component, and the nature of the human mind and thinking.