Cultural-historical archeology

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Cultural-historical archeology is a diffusionistic movement within archeology that was dominant in the late 19th and first half of the 20th century, but is still practiced today. It is based on an essentialist understanding of culture and migration represents the main lines of interpretation.

The term cultural-historical archeology describes the claim to write the history of archaeological cultures without writing by tracing the movements of these cultures. In the past, these cultures were equated with peoples and were closely linked to nationalist ideologies. Today it is one of many possible explanations.

Premises

The cultural-historical archeology is based on two basic assumptions that build on one another. On the one hand on a diffusionistic innovation concept and on the other hand on the archaeological culture to which diffusionism is applied.

Diffusionism first describes a monocausal model for the distribution of certain characteristics of cultures. According to this model, the distribution of features can only be explained by a diffusion of these features. Diffusionism sees the innovation of certain features as so specifically dependent on the environment that the innovation can only ever take place once in one place. This characteristic then spreads from this place. This explanatory model rules out the possibility that the same innovation can be made in two different places.

Archaeological culture describes a group of features in material culture that occur together. Initially, this is only an analytical category. In cultural-historical archeology, however, it was postulated that archaeological cultures can be equated with peoples.

Research history

The basis of cultural-historical archeology is the concept of anthropogeography developed by the ethnologist Friedrich Ratzel in the 1880s . Anthropogeography rejects independent innovations and instead postulates a strict diffusionism. In this respect it differs clearly from the cultural evolutionist paradigms of the early 19th century.

At the turn of the 19th and 20th centuries, Oscar Montelius examined some evolutionist patterns in the material culture of the Neolithic and the Bronze Age using the typological method . He found that material culture in south-east Europe always seemed to be further ahead than in northern Europe. To explain this phenomenon, he resorted to diffusionism and became a representative of the ex oriente lux school . This new diffusionist school of thought was adopted by the vast majority of archaeologists. The evolutionist school became less and less important.

The German archaeologist Gustav Kossinna criticized Montelius above all for his assessment of Northern Europe as peripheral and uninnovative; For Kossinna, the origin of civilization was not in the east, but in the north of Europe. This assumption is based on his deeply racist and nationalist thinking. Methodically, he linked his concept of race with certain cultural characteristics. So he postulated that the Teutons, Slavs, etc. could be traced far back into the past using the ceramic vessels typical of them. He then wrote a reply to the ex-oriente-lux school in which civilization came from the north with the Teutons.

The Australian archaeologist Vere Gordon Childe , who teaches in London, explicitly developed his own cultural concept based on Kossinna's method. Childe tried to bypass the racist foundations and conceived archaeological culture as an analytical tool. A phase followed in which archaeological interpretations were based almost exclusively on the diffusion of archaeological cultures.

Different research traditions dealt differently with cultural-historical archeology. With Lewis Binford, Anglophone archeology experienced a paradigm shift towards New Archeology . Here diffusion was no longer used as an explanation for certain distribution patterns of material culture. In Germany, various archaeologists, such as Eggers, tried to shake off the nationalist legacy of Kossinna and, above all, began to check the significance of his methods. The experiences with the instrumentalisation under National Socialism led to a turning away from explicit ideology and so a "hostility to theory" established itself in Germany for a long time. Today migration is only regarded as a possible interpretation and no longer as a universal pattern of interpretation. In many countries, however, cultural-historical archeology is still the predominant form of archaeological theory. Here it is mostly a nationalistic archeology that uses material legacies to present one's own nation as a superior culture.

criticism

Lewis Binford criticizes cultural-historical archeology for its undifferentiated view of the artifacts when it reconstructs migrations of archaeological cultures. He proposes a system-theoretical approach by dividing the artifacts into different subsystems and initially analyzing them separately. That would give you a much more complex picture of cultures.

Bruce Trigger criticizes the rigid understanding of innovation in cultural-historical archeology. Since migration was understood as the only explanatory model, change always came from outside of societies. Internal change was not perceived as a possible explanation.

literature

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Trigger: A History of Archaeological Thought. 1999, pp. 148-205.
  2. ^ A b Trigger: A History of Archaeological Thought. 1999, pp. 150-155.
  3. ^ Trigger: A History of Archaeological Thought. 1999, pp. 161-174.
  4. ^ Montelius: The older cultural periods in the Orient and in Europe. Volume 1: the method. 1903.
  5. ^ Trigger: A History of Archaeological Thought. 1999, pp. 157-158.
  6. ↑ Renfrew: Before civilization: the radiocarbon revolution and prehistoric Europe 1973, pp. 36-37.
  7. ^ Trigger: A History of Archaeological Thought. 1999, pp. 163-167.
  8. ^ Kossinna: The German prehistory. An excellent national science. 1941.
  9. ^ Veit: Gustaf Kossinna and V. Gordon Childe. Approaches to a theoretical foundation of the prehistory. 1984, 326-364
  10. ↑ Binford: Archeology as Anthropology. 1962.
  11. ^ Trigger: A History of Archaeological Thought. 1999, pp. 294-296.
  12. ↑ Bernbeck: Theories in Archeology. 1997, pp. 34-36.
  13. ^ Eggers: Introduction to Prehistory. 2010, pp. 199-254.
  14. ^ Veit: On the benefits and disadvantages of theory for archeology: Comments on the recent German-language discussion 2002, p. 49.
  15. ↑ Müller-Scheeßel: Man and space: today's theories and their application. 2013, pp. 105-109 and 132-125
  16. ^ Trigger: A History of Archaeological Thought. 1999, p. 174.
  17. ↑ Binford: Archeology as Anthropology. 1962, pp. 217-220.
  18. ^ Trigger: A History of Archaeological Thought. 1999, p. 206.