culturehistorical

Culturehistorical, sometimes written as cultural-historical, refers to an approach in archaeology and anthropology that emphasizes identifying and describing past human cultures through their material remains and the geographic and temporal distribution of artifacts. The aim is to delineate archaeological cultures as distinct historical entities and to explain their rise, spread, and interactions through time.

Origins and methods. The culturehistorical paradigm emerged in the early 20th century in Europe and North America as scholars sought systematic ways to classify the past. Core methods include typology and seriation to classify artifacts, stratigraphic analysis, and the mapping of artifact distributions to define “cultures” or cultural areas. Researchers often linked material cultures to social groups, migrations, or diffusion processes, and developed regional chronologies to trace cultural change across landscapes.

Relationship to other paradigms. Culturehistorical archaeology is frequently contrasted with later approaches such as processual archaeology, which emphasized functional explanations and general laws governing human behavior, and post-processual archaeology, which stressed agency, symbolism, and multiple interpretations. While culturehistorical work focused on classifying cultures and reconstructing historical boundaries, later paradigms sought deeper explanations for why cultures changed beyond diffusion or migration alone.

Criticisms and legacy. Critics argue that the culturehistorical approach can oversimplify complex social dynamics, risk ethno- or ethnocentrism, and assume clear cultural boundaries where there may be continuous cultural exchange. Nevertheless, it established foundational practices for recording cultural distributions, built extensive regional chronologies, and influenced subsequent methods for interpreting past human societies. Today, many researchers integrate culturehistorical data with theoretical frameworks from other schools to build more nuanced histories of past peoples.