| The Rise and Fall of Culture History Contributor(s): Lyman, R. Lee (Author), O'Brien, Michael J. (Author), Dunnell, Robert C. (Author) |
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ISBN: 0306455382 ISBN-13: 9780306455384 Publisher: Springer OUR PRICE: $104.49 Product Type: Paperback - Other Formats Published: June 1997 Annotation: This volume presents an insightful critical analysis of the culture history approach to Americanist anthropology. Reasons for the acceptance and incorporation of important concepts, as well as the paradigm's strengths and weaknesses, are discussed in detail. The framework for this analysis is founded on the contrast between two metaphysics used by evolutionary biologists in discussing their own discipline: materialistic/populational thinking and essentialistic/typological thinking. Employing this framework, the authors show not only why the culture history paradigm lost favor in the 1960s, but also which of its aspects need to be retained if archaeology is ever to produce a viable theory of culture change. |
| Additional Information |
| BISAC Categories: - Social Science | Archaeology |
| Dewey: 930.1 |
| LCCN: 97014507 |
| Physical Information: 0.56" H x 5.88" W x 9.22" (0.93 lbs) 271 pages |
| Descriptions, Reviews, Etc. |
| Publisher Description: VJver forty years ago Gordon R. Willey (1953b:361) stated that " t]he objectives of archeology . . . are approached by the study and manipulation of three basic factors: form, space, and time. " A few years later, Albert C. Spaulding (1960b:439) repeated this thought using different words: " AJrchaeology can be defined minimally as the study of the interrelation- ship of form, temporal locus, and spatial locus exhibited by artifacts. In other words, archaeologists are always concerned with these interrelation- ships, whatever broader interests they may have, and these interrelation- ships are the special business of archaeology. " Many of the means Americanist archaeologists use to examine formal variation in artifacts and the distribution of that variation across space and through time were formulated early in the twentieth century. The analytical tenets, or principles, underlying the various methods and techniques were formalized and axiomatized in later years such that by the 1930s they con- stituted the first formal paradigm for Americanist archaeology-a paradigm commonly termed culture history. This paradigm began with a very specific goal-to document the history of the development of prehistoric cultures in the Americas. Although it fell from favor in the 1960s, many of its central tenets were carried over to newer paradigms and thus continue to be fun- damental within Americanist archaeology. With Willey's and Spaulding's conceptions as our guide, we elsewhere reprinted (Lyman et al. |