Culture-historical archaeology
Culture-historical archaeology is an archaeological theory that emphasises defining historical societies into distinct ethnic and cultural groupings according to their material culture.
Items from the Neolithic "Beaker culture"; the idea of defining distinct "cultures" according to their material culture was at the core of culture-historical archaeology.
The rise of European nationalism in the 19th century would play a key role in the development of culture-historical archaeology.
Image: Rudolf Virchow NLM3
Image: Gustaf Kossinna by Bruno Dietrich Sassnick
Archaeological theory refers to the various intellectual frameworks through which archaeologists interpret archaeological data. Archaeological theory functions as the application of philosophy of science to archaeology, and is occasionally referred to as philosophy of archaeology. There is no one singular theory of archaeology, but many, with different archaeologists believing that information should be interpreted in different ways. Throughout the history of the discipline, various trends of support for certain archaeological theories have emerged, peaked, and in some cases died out. Different archaeological theories differ on what the goals of the discipline are and how they can be achieved.
Archaeologists such as Matthew Johnson have argued that most, if not all, aspects of archaeology are informed by theoretical considerations.
