187:
295:
415:. A keen linguist, Childe was able to master a number of European languages, including German, and was well acquainted with the works on archaeological cultures written by Kossina. Following a period as Private Secretary to the Premier of New South Wales (NSW), Childe moved to London in 1921 for a position with the NSW Agent General, then spent a few years travelling Europe. In 1927, Childe took up a position as the Abercrombie Professor of Archaeology at the
379:). Much of Kossinna's work was criticised by other German archaeologists, but nevertheless his basic culture-historical manner of interpreting the past still came to dominance in the country's archaeological community; Trigger noted that his work "marked the final replacement of an evolutionary approach to prehistory by a culture-historical one" and that for that, he must be viewed as an "innovator" whose work was "of very great importance".
286:
31:
553:
for example, an approach based on cultures provides little to go on. Culture historians could catalogue items but in order to look beyond the material record, towards anthropology and the scientific method, they would have had to abandon their reliance on material, 'inhuman,' cultures. Such approaches were the intent of
397:"We find certain types of remains – pots, implements, ornaments, burial rites, house forms – constantly recurring together. Such a complex of regularly associated traits we shall term a 'cultural group' or just a 'culture'. We assume that such a complex is the material expression of what today would be called a people."
207:
such a nationalist worldview, people across Europe came to see different nationalities – such as the French, Germans and
English – as being biologically different from one another, and it was argued that their behaviour was determined by these racial differences as opposed to social or economic factors.
129:, threatening the established political orders of many European states. Whilst some intellectuals had championed the Industrial Revolution as a progressive step forward, there were many who had seen it as a negative turn of events, disrupting the established fabric of society. This latter view was taken up by the
154:
archaeological teaching positions at universities. As a result of this, archaeologists had come to increasingly realise that there was a great deal of variability in the artifacts uncovered across the continent. Many felt that this variability was not comfortably explained by preexisting evolutionary paradigms.
210:
Having been inspired and influenced by
European nationalism, in turn, culture-historical archaeology would be utilised in support of nationalist political causes. In many cases, nationalists used culture-historical archaeological interpretations to highlight and celebrate the prehistoric and ancient
206:
as the main factor shaping history. Such nationalistic sentiment began to be adopted within academic disciplines by intellectuals who wished to emphasise solidarity within their own nations – in the face of social unrest caused by industrialization – by blaming neighbouring states. Under
153:
was declining in western and central Europe. Throughout the 19th century, an increasing amount of archaeological material had been collected in Europe, in part as a result of land reclamation projects, increased agricultural production and construction, the foundation of museums and establishment of
552:
Manufacturing techniques and economic behaviour can be easily explained through cultures and culture history approaches but more complex events and explanations, involving less concrete examples in the material record are harder for it to explain. In order to interpret prehistoric religious beliefs
165:
were promoting the idea that cultures represented geographically distinct entities, each with their own characteristics that had developed largely through the chance accumulation of different traits. Similar ideas were also coming from
Germany's neighbour, Austria, at around this time, namely from
352:
Believing that an individual's ethnicity determined their behaviour, the core of
Kossinna's approach was to divide Temperate Europe into three large cultural groupings: Germans, Celts and Slavs, based upon the modern linguistic groups. He then divided each of these cultural groupings into smaller
250:
regime that emphasised the alleged racial supremacy of the German race and sought to unify all German speakers under a single political state. The Nazis were influenced by the culture-historical ideas of
Kossinna, and used archaeology to support their claims regarding the behaviour of prehistoric
101:
Webster remarked that the defining feature of culture-historical archaeology was its "statements which reveal common notions about the nature of ancient cultures; about their qualities; about how they related to the material record; and thus about how archaeologists might effectively study them."
492:
Within culture-historical archaeology, changes in the culture of a historical society were typically explained by the diffusion of ideas from one culture into another, or by the migration of members of one society into a new area, sometimes by invasion. This was at odds with the theories held by
276:
and ethnology into a singular prehistoric anthropology which would identify prehistoric cultures from the material record and try to connect them to later ethnic groups who were recorded in the written, historical record. Although the archaeological work undertaken by
Virchow and his fellows was
548:
it naturally came to rely on and mirror the information provided by ancient historians who could already explain many of the events and motivations which would not necessarily survive in the archaeological record. The need to explain prehistoric societies, without this historical record, could
136:
There was also a trend that was developing among the
European intelligentsia that began to oppose the concept of cultural evolutionism (that culture and society gradually evolved and progressed through stages), instead taking the viewpoint that human beings were inherently resistant to change.
92:
in the late 1920s. In the United
Kingdom and United States, culture-history came to be supplanted as the dominant theoretical paradigm in archaeology during the 1960s, with the rise of processual archaeology. Nevertheless, elsewhere in the world, culture-historical ideas continue to dominate.
493:
cultural evolutionary archaeologists, who whilst accepting diffusion and migration as reasons for cultural change, also accepted the concept that independent cultural development could occur within a society, which was something culture-historical archaeologists typically refused to accept.
369:. He believed that each of these groups had its own distinctive traditions which were present in their material culture, and that by mapping out the material culture in the archaeological record, he could trace the movement and migration of different ethnic groups, a process he called
345:), which was published between 1926 and 1927. A staunch nationalist and racist, Kossinna lambasted fellow German archaeologists for taking an interest in non-German societies, such as those of Egypt and the Classical World, and used his publications to support his views on
436:(which up until then had been largely restrained purely to German academics), to his British counterparts. This concept would revolutionise the way in which archaeologists understood the past, and would come to be widely accepted in future decades.
211:
past of their ancestors, and prove an ethnic and cultural link to them. As such, many members of various
European nations placed an emphasis on archaeologically proving a connection with a particular historical ethnicity, for instance the
72:
political agenda, being utilised to prove a direct cultural and/or ethnic link from prehistoric and ancient peoples to modern nation-states, something that has in many respects been disproved by later research and archaeological evidence.
560:
Culture history is by no means useless or surpassed by more effective methods of thinking. Indeed, diffusionist explanations are still valid in many cases and the importance of describing and classifying finds has not gone away.
349:. Glorifying the German peoples of prehistory, he used an explicitly culture-historical approach in understanding them, and proclaimed that these German peoples were racially superior to their Slavic neighbours to the east.
386:
was one of the most notable, as he studied the entirety of the
European archaeological prehistoric record, and divided it into a number of distinct temporal groups based upon grouping together various forms of artifacts.
565:
stress the importance of recurring patterns in material culture, echoing culture history's approach. In many cases it can be argued that any explanation is only one factor within a whole network of influences.
277:
cultural-historical in basis, it did not initially gain a significant following in the country's archaeological community, the majority of whom remained devoted to the dominant cultural evolutionary trend.
427:
river, recognising it as the natural boundary dividing the Near East from Europe, and subsequently he believed that it was via the Danube that various new technologies travelled westward in antiquity. In
157:
Culture-historical archaeology adopted the concept of "culture" from anthropology, where cultural evolutionary ideas had also begun to be criticised. In the late 19th century, anthropologists like
149:
considered the development of culture-historical archaeology to be "a response to growing awareness of geographical variability in the archaeological record" at a time when the belief in cultural
549:
initially be dealt with using the paradigms established for later periods but as more and more material was excavated and studied, it became clear that culture history could not explain it all.
382:
As it became the dominant archaeological theory within the discipline, a number of prominent cultural-historical archaeologists rose to levels of influence. The Swedish archaeologist
264:
Culture-historical archaeology first developed in Germany in the late 19th century. In 1869, the German Society for Anthropology, Ethnology, and Prehistoric Archaeology (
516:, where the conditions were perfect for the development of such things, and that these ideas were then diffused into other cultures. A similar theory was proposed by
1012:
496:
A number of culture-historical archaeologists put forward the idea that all knowledge and technology in the ancient world had diffused from a single source in the
464:
A number of culture-historical archaeologists subdivided and named separate cultures within their field of expertise: for instance, archaeologists working in the
303:
The German anthropologist Rudolf Virchow (left) and historian Gustaf Kossinna (right) were the founding fathers of culture-historical archaeology.
971:
1095:
1005:
517:
186:
1047:
933:
411:
Culture-historical archaeology was first introduced into British scholarship from continental Europe by an Australian prehistorian,
38:"; the idea of defining distinct "cultures" according to their material culture was at the core of culture-historical archaeology.
981:
Webster, Gary S. (2008). R.A. Bentley; H.D.G. maschner; C. Chippindale (eds.). "Culture history: a culture-historical approach".
190:
The rise of European nationalism in the 19th century would play a key role in the development of culture-historical archaeology.
105:
Webster noted that the second defining feature of culture-historical thought was its emphasis on classification and typologies.
1090:
998:
591:
574:
Another criticism of this particular archaeological theory was that it often placed an emphasis on studying peoples from the
313:(1858–1931), presented a lecture in which he tried to connect the tribes who had been recorded as living between the
239:, and archaeologists in these countries were encouraged to interpret the archaeological evidence to fit these conclusions.
453:" that were in many cases distinct from one another. Usually, each of these cultures was seen as representing a different
449:
The core point to culture-historical archaeology was its belief that the human species could be subdivided into various "
457:. From an archaeological perspective, it was believed that each of these cultures could be distinguished because of its
194:
Bruce Trigger also argued that the development of culture-historical archaeology was in part due to the rising tide of
1069:
596:
562:
541:
133:, which was largely made up of artists and writers, who popularised the idea of an idyllic ancient agrarian society.
242:
One of the most notable examples of a nationalist movement utilising culture-historical archaeology was that of the
171:
294:
544:
method. To work best it requires a historical record to support it. As much of early archaeology focused on the
272:(1821–1902), a pathologist and leftist politician. He advocated the union of prehistoric archaeology with
321:
in 100 BCE with cultures living in that region during the Neolithic. Appointed Professor of Archaeology at the
150:
113:
Culture-historical archaeology arose during a somewhat tumultuous time in European intellectual thought. The
49:
that emphasises defining historical societies into distinct ethnic and cultural groupings according to their
1064:
1054:
416:
1059:
554:
537:
512:(1924), put forward the idea that agriculture, architecture, religion and government had all developed in
433:
375:
65:
1021:
273:
114:
88:. Culture-historical thought would be introduced to British archaeology by the Australian archaeologist
57:
46:
501:
465:
322:
1042:
582:, where distinct cultural groups and differences are less noticeable in the archaeological record.
533:
473:
329:). He would proceed to further publicise his culture-historical approach in his subsequent books,
346:
967:
929:
481:
458:
412:
162:
89:
50:
1032:
901:
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477:
461:, such as the style of pottery that it produced or the forms of burial that it practiced.
383:
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85:
957:
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269:
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81:
61:
35:
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943:
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workers. This new urban working class had begun to develop a political voice through
579:
500:, which had then been spread across much of the world by merchants. The Australian
285:
232:
228:
224:
215:
often maintained that they were the ethnic and cultural descendants of the ancient
521:
497:
366:
195:
130:
122:
69:
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and archaeologists. It was gradually superseded in the mid-twentieth century by
17:
469:
243:
158:
575:
454:
203:
126:
30:
450:
362:
68:. Cultural-historical archaeology had in many cases been influenced by a
990:
268:) had been founded, an organisation that was dominated by the figure of
358:
318:
220:
77:
424:
354:
199:
314:
236:
216:
185:
29:
353:"cultures", or tribes, for instance dividing the Germans up into
117:
had spread across many nations, leading to the creation of large
118:
994:
908:. National Centre of Biography, Australian National University.
578:
and later ages, somewhat ignoring the earliest human era, the
309:
In 1895, a librarian who was fascinated by German prehistory,
423:(1929), in which Childe examined the archaeology along the
246:, who obtained power in Germany in 1933 and established a
121:
centres, most of which were filled with poverty stricken
84:, culture-historical ideas would later be popularised by
325:, in 1909 he founded the German Society for Prehistory (
674:
672:
784:
782:
769:
767:
742:
740:
738:
337:), which was published in 1911, and the two-volume
141:
Geographic variability and the concept of "culture"
956:
689:
687:
647:
645:
643:
928:. Bradford-on-Avon, Wiltshire: Moonraker Press.
251:Germans, in turn supporting their own policies.
56:It originated in the late nineteenth century as
472:period, divided it up between such cultures as
395:
1006:
926:Prehistorian: A Biography of V. Gordon Childe
8:
618:
616:
166:two anthropologist Roman Catholic priests,
1013:
999:
991:
948:Gordon Childe: Revolutions in Archaeology
966:. New York: Cambridge University Press.
612:
80:among those archaeologists surrounding
432:, Childe introduced the concept of an
540:which stresses the importance of the
339:Ursprung und Verbreitung der Germanen
60:began to fall out of favor with many
7:
959:A History of Archaeological Thought
524:to be the source rather than Egypt.
983:Handbook of Archaeological Theories
343:Origin and Expansion of the Germans
27:Theoretical paradigm in archaeology
906:Australian Dictionary of Biography
174:, as well as by the archaeologist
25:
985:. AltaMira Press. pp. 11–27.
902:"Childe, Vere Gordon (1892–1957)"
293:
284:
950:. London: Thames & Hudson.
592:List of archaeological periods
563:Post-processual archaeologists
43:Culture-historical archaeology
1:
445:Distinct historical cultures
260:Early development: 1869–1925
202:in Europe, which emphasised
1096:Nationalism and archaeology
597:Nationalism and archaeology
504:for instance, in his works
1112:
955:Trigger, Bruce G. (2007).
919:. Oxford: Clarendon Press.
913:Childe, V. Gordon (1929).
883:
871:
859:
847:
836:
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788:
773:
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729:
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651:
634:
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510:The Growth of Civilisation
34:Items from the Neolithic "
1028:
520:in 1939, but he believed
335:The Origin of the Germans
331:Die Herkunft der Germanen
182:Nationalism and racialism
145:Historian of archaeology
916:The Danube in Prehistory
430:The Danube in Prehistory
421:The Danube in Prehistory
404:The Danube in Prehistory
151:evolutionary archaeology
536:unlike its main rival,
506:The Children of the Sun
488:Diffusion and migration
419:. This was followed by
417:University of Edinburgh
555:processual archaeology
538:processual archaeology
434:archaeological culture
399:
376:settlement archaeology
223:did the same with the
191:
66:processual archaeology
39:
1091:Archaeological theory
1022:Archaeological theory
924:Green, Sally (1981).
542:hypothetico-deduction
532:Culture history uses
274:cultural anthropology
189:
115:Industrial Revolution
58:cultural evolutionism
47:archaeological theory
33:
803:. pp. 239–240.
761:. pp. 235–236.
732:. pp. 240–241.
720:. pp. 212–215.
708:. pp. 218–219.
502:Grafton Elliot Smith
391:Britain and the U.S.
371:siedlungsarchäologie
323:University of Berlin
131:Romanticist movement
76:First developing in
900:Allen, Jim (1979).
534:inductive reasoning
528:Inductive reasoning
468:, in examining the
1060:Processual ("New")
1038:Culture-historical
850:. pp. 56–60.
347:German nationalism
192:
40:
1078:
1077:
973:978-0-521-60049-1
827:. pp. v–vi.
402:— Gordon Childe,
16:(Redirected from
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1033:Neo-evolutionary
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163:Friedrich Ratzel
90:V. Gordon Childe
51:material culture
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384:Oscar Montelius
311:Gustaf Kossinna
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172:Wilhelm Schmidt
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815:. pp. 224–230.
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176:Oswald Menghin
168:Fritz Graebner
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82:Rudolf Virchow
36:Beaker culture
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893:Bibliography
884:Trigger 2007
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872:Trigger 2007
867:
862:. pp. 90–91.
855:
848:Trigger 1980
843:
832:
820:
813:Trigger 2007
808:
801:Trigger 2007
796:
789:Trigger 2007
774:Trigger 2007
759:Trigger 2007
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747:Trigger 2007
730:Trigger 2007
725:
718:Trigger 2007
713:
706:Trigger 2007
701:
694:Trigger 2007
679:Trigger 2007
664:Trigger 2007
659:
652:Trigger 2007
635:Webster 2008
630:
623:Webster 2008
580:Palaeolithic
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266:Urgeschichte
265:
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248:totalitarian
241:
225:Anglo-Saxons
209:
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135:
112:
104:
100:
75:
62:antiquarians
55:
42:
41:
1065:Behavioural
1055:Conjunctive
825:Childe 1929
522:Mesopotamia
518:Lord Raglan
508:(1923) and
498:Middle East
367:Burgundians
196:nationalism
123:proletarian
70:nationalist
1085:Categories
860:Green 1981
837:Allen 1979
603:References
470:Bronze Age
244:Nazi Party
159:Franz Boas
97:Background
886:. p. 220.
874:. p. 234.
791:. p. 237.
776:. p. 236.
749:. p. 235.
696:. p. 215.
681:. p. 211.
666:. p. 218.
654:. p. 217.
608:Footnotes
576:Neolithic
570:Criticism
455:ethnicity
235:with the
204:ethnicity
127:socialism
946:(1980).
637:. p. 13.
625:. p. 12.
586:See also
482:Cycladic
478:Helladic
451:cultures
440:Concepts
363:Lombards
227:and the
1043:Marxist
406:, 1929.
359:Vandals
319:Vistula
255:History
221:English
78:Germany
1048:Social
970:
932:
474:Minoan
466:Aegean
425:Danube
355:Saxons
213:French
200:racism
109:Causes
45:is an
315:Rhine
237:Celts
233:Irish
229:Welsh
217:Gauls
119:urban
968:ISBN
930:ISBN
480:and
365:and
317:and
231:and
198:and
170:and
161:and
1087::
904:.
781:^
766:^
737:^
686:^
671:^
642:^
615:^
557:.
484:.
476:,
361:,
357:,
178:.
53:.
1014:e
1007:t
1000:v
976:.
938:.
373:(
341:(
333:(
20:)
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