Diffusionism

UNIT 3 CULTURE AREA THEORIES*

Contents
3.0 Introduction
3.1 Historical Trajectory of Thought
3.1.1 A Critique of Unilinear Evolution
3.1.2 Influence of Biological Sciences and Museology
3.2 Theoretical Context
3.2.1 British School of thought
3.2.2 German School
3.2.3 American School and Culture Area Theories
3.3 Why did ‘Culture Area Concept’Lose its Steam?
3.4 Summary
3.5 References
3.6 Answers to Check Your Progress
LEARNING OBJECTIVES
In this unit, the learners will be able to:
 explore the historical, theoretical and methodological significance of the
culture area concept;
 understand the contributions of various scholars whose works influenced
the concept, building up to the culture area theories; and
 critically assess why the culture area concept lost its significance.

3.0 INTRODUCTION
It has often been found that neighbouring cultures share common cultural traits
which might include food, dressing pattern, festivals, rituals and ceremonies.
This commonality of traits often results in the definition of geographical areas
based on the cultural inclination (the more obvious or prominent cultural display/
manifestation). For example, one often hears of the term Punjabi culture or that
North India
north of India is represented by Punjabi culture, why is this the case? Is the north Culture
of India or the geographical region of Punjab indeed a homogenous culture? If
not, then why is it that they are termed as such, and how and why is it that they
have shared cultural traits? One of the possible answers to why cultures find
association with geography (at a large scale) is that even a casual sorting of
cultural information like language, social institutions, material culture and even
social behavioural patterns can throw up certain commonalities between specific
areas.

The culture area concept attempted to provide a method to such casual

observations to make it acceptable as an anthropological theory. The culture
area concept was developed in the early 1900s, along with the theories of diffusion
and historicism. It was based in the western context in a time period when the
European powers were still colonising the rest of the world. Anthropology as a
*Contributor: Dr. Indrani Mukherjee, Post-Doctoral Fellow, Department of Anthropology,
University of Delhi. Delhi. 37
Emergence of Anthropology discipline was already establishing itself as the study of the ‘other’ culture (usually
termed as ‘primitive’ at that point of time). However, there was realisation within
the discipline that while western exploration had led to the discovery of a number
of ‘other’ cultures, the very process of colonisation was also leading to the
diminishing and disappearance of a number of these cultures. In this,
anthropologists recognised an urgent need to document information from these
‘disappearing’ cultures. American anthropologists, namely Franz Boas and his
students, did pioneering work in this area by conducting extensive fieldwork to
collect enormous amounts of data about the ‘disappearing’ native cultures of
North America.There was however, no framework for organising this data. It is
in the sorting of the empirical data by spatially tracing (cultural) traits that the
culture area concept was born.

The concept of culture area was first applied by ethnologist Clark Wissler in
order to provide a theoretical framework for the information being generated. A
culture area was defined as a geographical/cultural region whose population and
groups share important common identifiable cultural traits, such as language,
tools and material culture, kinship, social organisation, and cultural history.
Therefore, groups sharing similar traits in a geographical region would be classed
in a single culture area. Culture area highlighted the historical relationships
between different cultures over geographical spaces and recognised the areas
governed by the same or a dominant culture. This cultural relationship was
understood in terms of cultural phases taking into consideration the dimension
of time to understand historical relationships. Russell Gordon Smith (1929) in
his paper ‘The Concept of the Culture-area’ explains that, “the culture-area is an
empirical grouping of cultural data cultures in which the unit of investigation
and the principle of classification have been derived from direct observation of
the facts and of their temporal and spatial distributions” (Smith 1929: 421).

George W. Hill (1941) in his paper ‘The use of Culture Area Concept in Social
Research’ points out that “A technique of classification is a cornerstone of
scientific research. Prior to the development of such a system, a discipline remains
speculative and has little objectivity. Following the evolutionary system, the
culture area provides the much-needed classification in Anthropology” (Hill 1941:
39). This statement brings to light the fact that anthropology was still positioning
itself as a scientific discipline in the ‘positivists’ era, and in that the culture area
concept provided it with the much-needed framework to prove its credibility,
while it disengaged itself from the theory of unilinear evolution of humankind.

Let us, in the next subsection, understand how the critiques to the classical
evolutionary school of thought lead to a shift in anthropological thought towards
culture area concept.

3.1 HISTORICAL TRAJECTORY OF THOUGHT

The concept of culture area developed as an alternate explanation to unilinear
evolution. It also borrowed from other disciplines like natural science and
museology, in developing a theoretical framework to understand cultural data.
This section provides a background on how the critique of evolutionism and a
multidisciplinary influence helped in the development of the concept.

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3.1.1 A Critique of Unilinear Evolution Culture Area Theories

The classical evolutionary theory came into being in the late 1800s and has been
criticised as an ethnocentric theory putting the western civilization at the pinnacle
of development.The evolutionists proposed that humans share a set of
characteristics and modes of thinking that transcend individual cultures (psychic
unity of mankind) and attributed similarity of cultural traits between
geographically separated areas to similar evolutionary pattern. As more and more
anthropological information started getting collected, it led to the ideation of
two alternate possibilities:
a) independent local innovation (local inventions one place after another) and
b) diffusion (innovation are created in a few localities from where they spread
over a wide area)
Evolutionary theory was a grand or nomothetic theory. In contrast we have the
development of Historical Particularism in America focused on the historical
trajectory of unique cultures. Diffusionism was the first approach devised to
accomplish this type of historical approach to cultural investigation. As the term
suggests diffusionism studied the dispersal of culture traits from its place of
origin to other places. Both Historicism and Diffusionism contributed to the
concept of culture area, however before dwelling into these thoughts in details
and how they contributed to the culture area concept let us look at how natural
sciences contributed to the idea of culture area concept.

3.1.2 Influence of Biological Sciences and Museology

Culture area concept finds its influence from the systematised presentation and
classification of biological data in terms of typology and taxonomy which can
be traced back to Swedish botanist Carolus Linnaeus, French biologist Jean-
Baptiste Lamarck and others who used morphology or physical structures of
organisms (like flowers, shells, and bones) to illustrate the relatedness between
groups of living beings.
This idea was furthered in museology by the Danish archaeologist, Christian
Jürgensen Thomsen, curator of the National Museum of Denmark (1816–65)
who in his study of the bracteate, a type of ancient pendant found in
northern Europe, charted a variety of morphological categories, such as insignia
and size. By combining the typologies thus created, he showed that these Nordic
ornaments had developed from earlier Roman coins. This depicted the diffusion
of a cultural item through geographical space, resulting in subsequent changes
in the item through its travel.

Vadstena Bracteate
Courtesy of Kungl. History of Witness and the Academy of Antiquities, Stockholm.Vadstena
bracteate - Wikipedia
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Emergence of Anthropology This supported the idea of diffusion (a theoretical perspective that influenced the
idea of culture area). The political implications of the innovation-diffusion debate
were profound. It resulted in the methodological problem of how one might
scientifically determine the primacy of either process. Otis T. Mason, curator
of ethnology at the Smithsonian Institution (1884–1908), suggested one such
method in a report of his program for organizing the museum exhibits for the
United States National Museum, Mason (1886). He was among the first to use
the term ‘culture area’, however his focus was on presentation of cultural material.
He believed that if a biologist could study variations in the wing form of birds,
ultimately creating a sequence from the wing’s most basal to its most advanced
form, an ethnologist could apply the same methods to see if a cultural trait (such
as basketry) had been independently developed or has spread through. According
to Mason, a series of such studies, analysing a multitude of traits, would eventually
result in a preponderance of evidence supporting either innovation or diffusion,
thus resolving the question of causation in cultural evolution.

Mason was however criticised by Franz Boas that, in ranking cultures as higher
or lower according to their traits, the comparative method Mason adopted was
intrinsically biased and, therefore, not scientific. Boas writes that “there is one
fundamental difference between biological and cultural data which makes it
impossible to transfer the methods of the one science to the other. Animal forms
develop in divergent directions, and an intermingling of species that have once
become distinct is negligible in the whole developmental history...…. Human
thoughts, institutions, activities may spread from one social unit to another.….
Before morphological comparison can be attempted the extraneous elements due
to cultural diffusion must be eliminated.” (Boas 1932: 609)

Boas’s assistant, Clark Wissler, succeeded him as the curator of the American
Museum of Natural History. Culture area concept was developed in earnest by
Clark Wissler, and given a theoretical perspective that could produce scientific
laws while preserving the cross-cultural perspective essential to anthropology.

Before we dwell further into the culture area concept as proposed by Clark Wissler,
let us first look at scholarly discussions that contributed to the culture area concept.
As mentioned earlier, the culture area concept came into being as a methodological
response to the innovation-diffusion debate, it is thus important to understand
the thoughts around diffusion and its influence in the culture area concept.

Check Your Progress 1

1) Why did anthropological thought preference shift from classical socio-
cultural evolution to historicism and diffusionism?
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2) How did biological sciences and museology contribute to the culture area Culture Area Theories
concept?
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3) Who was Christian Jürgensen Thomsen?
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3.2 THEORETICAL CONTEXT

It is important for us to remember that the ideas of innovation and diffusion
developed as a critique to the classical evolutionary theory. However, it was in
continuation with the evolutionary theory itself, where social evolution took a
more regional perspective and the ideas of cultural contact and diffusion were
provided academic recognition. At this conjecture of anthropological history (late
1800s and early 1900s) extensive anthropological data was being collected. This
data showed a commonality of traits among different tribes in a region. Further,
as anthropologist acknowledged the need to study disappearing/vanishing tribes
and there was a realisation that this disappearance is due to the colonising process,
or cultural contact. Regional commonality of cultural traits and the reality of
culture contact brought forth the idea of innovation and diffusion within the
space of understanding social evolution and development of cultures.This shift
in anthropological thought is usually studied under the ambit of Diffusionism.
Diffusionism was represented by three distinct schools of thought: the British
school, the German school and the American school as you have already read in
Unit 2. Here in this section, we are giving a gist of the same for you to recapitulate.

3.2.1 British School of Thought

The British school of diffusionism was led by G. E. Smith and W. J. Perry.
These scholars were known as Egyptologists. According to them all of culture
and civilization was developed only once in ancient Egypt and diffused throughout
the rest of the world through migration, colonisation and diffusion. Therefore,
all cultures were tied together by a common origin (or psychic unity of humankind)
and, as a result, worldwide cultural development could be viewed as a reaction
of native cultures to this diffusion of culture from Egypt.

G. Elliot Smith was a great admirer of Egyptian civilization. According to him

there were many English monuments which were secondary copy of the structure
of pyramid. Smith travelled to Egypt, Japan, Cambodia, Malaysia, Indonesia to
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Emergence of Anthropology study the architecture, where he found similarity among Egypt pyramids and
Japanese pagoda, Cambodians temples, temples of Indonesia. From all of his
studies he concluded that around 400 B.C culture traits of Egyptian monuments
started spreading from Egypt to the other parts of the world. In his book “The
Origin of Civilization” (1928), he emphasised that Egypt was the only centre of
the culture, and that agriculture and subsequently the first civilisation emerged
at the fertile bank of river Nile. Egyptian developed scientific methods like
hydraulic system for controlling water, invented pottery, weaving, wheel, and
script to write and began to live in cities. Government was formed, laws were
formulated and religion prospered. The Egyptians developed systems of
navigation and travelled far and wide to the different corner of the world in
search of precious stone and metal. In this course of travel they spread the benefit
of their civilization to the other part of the world. Thus, according to Smith there
were two kinds of men, the civilized men of Egypt and natural men outside
Egypt. Smith believed that a revolution came in natural men when they came in
contact with civilized traits. Underlying smith idea is “uninventiveness of
humankind” i.e., human is basically uninventive in nature, and invention,
discovery began in Egypt.

W. J. Perry (1877-1949):W. J. Perry was a strong supporter of Smith, and agreed

that cultural similarities were due to diffusion and not invention, and that Egypt
was the citadel of civilization.

The Egyptologists were criticized for their narrow vision and the fact that they
thought that man was uninventive, and though their thought of diffusion held
certain interest, there was weakness in the evidence on the basis of which they
formulated their theory.

3.2.2 German School

The German School of Diffusionism proposed the culture circle or Kulterkreis
concept that conceptualised widening circles of culture trait complexes diffusing
outwards from their point of origin. F. Ratzel (1884-1904) in his book “Anthropo-
geography” (1892) carried forward the idea of culture circles. He argued that
there is a strong relationship between territory and culture. He said that
environment and climate played a major role in determining the culture circle.
People living on mountains, near rivers and in deserts have different culture
complex. Individuals continuously create innovations within these cultures circle
and innovations migrate or diffuse to the neighbouring areas. “Anthropo-
geography” conveyed that different culture circles could come up in different
geographical terrains making it amenablefor migration and diffusion.Frobenius,
a student of Ratzel,tried to utilise statistics to map the distribution of cultural
traits thereby suggesting the idea ofgeographical statistics.

The German concept of culture circles was criticised for a number of reasons.
Anthropologists realised that cultural phenomena is much too complex to be
explained by the interaction of a small number of Kulturkreise. It spoke of contacts
over unlikely distances and did not make allowances for independent invention.
The proponents of the theory often mistook analogous features (those that appear
similar but have differing origins) for homologous ones (those that appear similar
because they share an origin) and thus compared phenomena that were not really
comparable.
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3.2.3 American School and Culture Area Theories Culture Area Theories

American school of thought saw the development of the concept of culture area
into theory and practice under two key thinkers Clark Wissler and A L Kroeber,
who had both enjoyed the mentorship of Franz Boas.

In the United States, Franz Boas was the first to formally propound the
understanding of culture areas (Buckley 1989). He said that these areas were
historical as well as geographical units: the spatial coefficients of processes of
cultural growth through time. He identified the physical environment of culture
areas, the “psychology” of the peoples inhabiting them, and the spread of
technologies and other ideas as three independent variables governing cultural
growth, or development, within culture areas over time (Boas 1896). He reflected
on diffusion as a viable mechanism for culture exchanges among geographically
adjacent areas. Boas argued that, one had to carry out detailed regional studies of
individual cultures to discover the distribution of culture traits and to understand
the individual processes of culture change at work. He stressed on the need for
meticulous collection and organisation of ethnographic data on all aspects of
(different) human societies. He maintained that only after information on the
particulars of many different cultures had been gathered could generalisations
about cultural development be made with any expectation of accuracy.Thus, while
Boas recognised the relevance of culture area, he also felt that the need of the
time was for anthropologists to study specific cultures in-depth. To this end, he
sought to reconstruct the histories of specific cultures and focused on particularism
of a society in terms of both its history and culture. He argued that many cultures
developed independently, each based on its own unique set of circumstances
such as geography, climate, resources and particular cultural borrowing. Based
on this argument, reconstructing the history of individual cultures requires an in-
depth investigation that compares groups of culture traits in specific geographical
areas. Then the distribution of these culture traits must be plotted. Once the
distribution of many sets of culture traits is plotted for a general geographic area,
patterns of cultural borrowing may be determined. This allows the reconstruction
of individual histories of specific cultures by investigating which of the cultural
elements were borrowed and which were developed individually (Bock
1996:299).

The concept of culture area was however carried forward by Clark Wissler (1870-
1947). He developed a view of culture that focused on its continuity over wide
geographical areas. Since cross-cultural nomothetic studies require that the items
to be compared be defined as rigorously as possible, Wissler became the first
anthropologist after Tylor and the first American anthropologist to offer a
definition of culture. He developed the concept of culture-area and age-area in
his books The American Indian (1917), Man and Culture (1923) and The Relation
of Nature to Man (1926).

In Wissler’s hands culture area became a significant theory of culture change. It

created a shift in the analytical focus from the culture and history of the specific
social unit (as prescribed by Boas) to a concern with the trait-complex viewed in
cross-cultural perspective (Freed. S. A and R. S. Freed, 1883). Unlike Boas,
Wissler was looking to understand world history. He followed agriculture, the
textile arts, architecture, and so on to create his picture of the western hemispheric
history.
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Emergence of Anthropology Culture area was chiefly determined by material traits and the economic base,
but ceremonial and social trait-complexes were also used to distinguish them.
Each culture area was perceived to have a culture center “from which culture
influences seem to radiate” (Wissler 1917: 242). Thus, diffusion was seen as the
basic process in the formation of a culture area. Wissler perceived the significance
of focal points of growth, resulting in culminations definable in spatial (culture
centres) and presumably temporal (cultural climaxes) terms. The traits radiated
outwards from the focal points and the traits that reached the furthers were
understood to be the oldest. Culture areas thus contained both:
a) a group of typical tribes that share most of the defining trait-complexes, and
b) marginal tribes that have fewer of the typical traits (Freed. S. A and R. S.
Freed 1883).
Wissler tried to explain the relation of culture areas to environment. He said that
environment does not produce a culture, but stabilises it. As (at many points) the
culture must be adapted to the environment, the latter tends to hold it fast. Cultures
therefore incline to change slowly once they have fitted themselves to a setting,
and to enter a new environment with more difficulty than to spread over the
whole of the natural area in which their form was worked out. If they do enter a
new type of territory, they are subject to change. Once fitted to an environment,
they are likely to alter radically only through some factor profoundly affecting
subsistence. Wissler divided North America into ten culture areas where
(according to Kroeber) subsistence areas seem to refer primarily to the basis of
culture, and environment and ecological aspects also played a critical role. A. L.
Kroeber recognised the significance of culture area theory, developed on it, as
well as put the theory into practice by defining various culture areas among the
North American tribes.

Alfred Louis Kroeber (1876-1960)- Kroeber referred to ‘culture area’ as an

unfortunate designation in that it puts emphasis on the area, whereas it is usually
the cultural content that is being primarily considered. Being from the Boasian
school of thought, Kroeber believed in cultural relativism. He said that cultures
occur in nature as wholes; and these wholes can never be entirely formulated
through consideration of their elements, in this he critiqued Clark Wissler. He
justified this with the example of the Navaho and Pueblos (or North Pacific
Coast Indians) tribes. He pointed out that Navaho altar paintings may be the
most developed in the Southwest, but Navaho culture is still close to that of the
Pueblos and in many ways obviously dependent on it. So, he showed that at
times a single trait can be very distinct in a culture and thus misleading if cultural
Critique of Wissler traits are being followed, while holistic comparisons can provide a stronger
association between cultures. The culture-area concept he thus believed should
attempt to deal with such culture wholes.

Kroeber looked at geographic-ethnic culture-whole in its historical course, with

the ultimate aim of searching for culture-historical laws. Kroeber applied the
culture area approach to the ever-growing body of ethnographic and
archaeological data worldwide. One of Kroeber’s greatest works was the
‘Handbook of the Indians of California’ published in 1925. It brings forth culture
areas and subareas, and their historic implications. Kroeber’s enlarged interests
in cultural areas and cultural continuities led to another of his major works,
‘Cultural and Natural Areas in Native North America’ (1939). Cultural and Natural
44 Areas not only delineated cultural areas, but also related them to natural areas
and, more important, introduced the concept of cultural climax. Earlier element Culture Area Theories
distribution studies had employed the concept of culture centers within areas,
which were more complex and therefore presumed to be more inventive, and of
margins, which were the simple, uninventive peripheral recipients of cultural
achievements. Kroeber’s concept of cultural climax avoided the implication that
greatest complexity meant the locus of inventiveness, and called attention instead
to cultural intensification or accumulation. He described this as ‘hearth’ or‘climax
area’. He wrote that “when part of a cultural substratum fluoresces into a level of
achievement higher than the surrounding groups, mainly on the strength of its
own initiative, it can be called a climax area. These areas almost inevitably serve
as important centers of dispersal” (Kroeber 1939: 222-9). He went on to develop
this context in sociological terms looking at golden and dark ages of great
civilisations, including the Egyptian civilisation by referring to these periods as
peaks and troughs of civilizational growth.

In his specific anthropological quest of visualising culture area, he plotted a real

maps of California and North America on the basis of their culture area. Kroeber
explained that the weakest feature of any mapping of culture wholes is also the
most conspicuous: the boundaries. Where the influences from two culture
climaxes or foci meet in equal strength is where a line must be drawn, if boundaries
are to be indicated at all. Yet it is just there those differences often are slight. Two
people classed as in separate areas yet adjoining each other along the inter-area
boundary almost inevitably have much in common. It is probable that they
normally have more traits in common with each other than with the people at the
focal points of their respective areas. This is almost certain to be so where the
distance from the foci is great and the boundary is not accentuated by any strong
physical barrier or abrupt natural change. Kroeber provided an arial distribution
of culture area, dividingNorth America into 84 areas and sub areas and all of
these areas were clubbed under 7 grand areas. These 7 grand areas are Desert,
Artic, Great Plains, Mountains, River Valleys, Coastal Plains and Terrains of
rugged topography which do not constitute part of the remaining 6 other areas.

The concept of culture area held great significance in the trajectory of

Anthropology. Julian Steward, another student of Boas developed six culture
areas in South America, he connected to the prevalent environmental conditions.
Steward traced different patterns of culture growth and diffusion within these
cultural areas eventually leading to the ‘School of Culture Ecology’, within
anthropology.

The culture area concept can be located in a time period when the western
anthropologists were coming in touch with geographical areas consisting of native/
tribal/indigenous communities that had relatively less exposure with the colonising
world. These communities had a social relation among each other and the
anthropologists found that they often shared similarities in cultural practices,
especially among contiguous tribes. It was believed that this similarity or
continuity of cultural practices was due to diffusion among neighbouring tribes
over a period of time. However, there was no documented record of this diffusion.
Anthropologists, tried to construct this cultural history of where the cultural
practices had originated as well as tribal commonality and continuity by mapping
cultural spaces within geographical areas. Different anthropologist used the culture
area concept for different purposes. The main proponents of the concept were
from the American school of thought and looked at the concept from different
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Emergence of Anthropology positions. Franz Boas utilised the concept to propagate an insight into creating a
historical and cultural particularistic focus of studying a tribe holistically.Clark
Wissler and A. L. Kroeber however, theorised culture area in a cross-cultural
perspective cross-sectioned with time. Clark Wisslerused culture area to trace
world history (especially of the western hemisphere), while Kroeber sought to
uncover regionally individualised type or specific growth of culture while looking
at cultures in more holistic terms.

The contemporary relevance of this concept can be seen in the persistence of the
notion of area specialisation in anthropology whereschools as well as scholars
are divided into specialists in China studies, or South Asian studies or Middle
Eastern studies. Somewhere down the line the association of culture with
geography remains and defines sub-disciplines within anthropology.

Check Your Progress 2

4) Name two Egyptologists.
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5) Who suggested the idea of geographical statistics?
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6) Which were the key books in which Clark Wissler developed the concept of
culture-area and age-area?
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7) How did Franz Boas understand ‘culture area’?
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8) Name some salient works of A. L. Kroeber? Culture Area Theories

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9) Why did A. L. Kroeber refer to ‘culture area’ as an unfortunate designation?
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3.3 WHY DID ‘CULTURE AREA CONCEPT’ LOSE

ITS STEAM?
Culture area theories were criticised for the tendency to portray people in a static
and environmentally deterministic way. It was also pointed out that the theorists
were selective about which and how many traits were focused on. In case of
Kroeber (and through his own admission) the criteria for cultural comparison
are found to be descriptive and subjective in nature.

The culture area concept lost its steam because it did not necessarily account for
sudden culture contact and influence such as the colonial forces. The so-called
vanishing cultures either perished or acculturated and changed due to exposure
with the western world. The cultures had too many stimuli and influence tobe
understood in their so called pristine or original form. This is not to say that
cultures changed overnight, or that the cultural association (with neighbouring
cultures) and practices suddenly changed, but the heterogeneity among them
became prominent and pronounced. Further, over time the tribes being considered
within cultural area gained a voice of their own, and spoke up about their Relate with
representation/mis-representation. As culture area often created a geo-political displacement ->
identity of the tribe as well. In today’s times culture still finds geographical (as displacement from
was given in the introduction with the reference of Punjabi culture) references. their culture area
However, one realised that cultural identity itself has many social forces at play.
In that a geographic-historical perspective and association with neighbouring Culture area focuses on
communities might play a significant role in understanding a culture, however a geographical &
superimposed categorisation of researcher’s perspective (of cultural distribution),
historical perspective
devoid of communities’ inputs, cannot remain free of critique.

Check Your Progress 3

10) What was the main critique against the culture area concept?
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Emergence of Anthropology
3.4 SUMMARY
In the present unit we trace the journey of Culture Area Concept through its
development. We looked at how its foundation was based in museology, and
how it came to be conceived in the need for logical arrangement of ethnographic
material. We looked at how the concept took from the idea of socio-cultural
evolution; however, it was more concerned with the idea of innovation and
diffusion in understanding cultural history. The unit also looked at how different
schools of thought namely the British and the German school contributed towards
the concept which was effusivelydeveloped by the American school of thought.

3.5 REFERENCES
Boas, F. (1896). The limitations of the comparative methodScience,4 (103), 901-
908
(1887). The occurrence of similar inventions in areas widely apartScience,
9(224), 485-86.
(1932). The Aims of Anthropological Research.Science,76 (1983),605-613.
Bock, P. K. (1996). Culture Change. in Levinson, David &Ember, Melvin (ed.)
Encyclopedia of Cultural Anthropology.Vol.1.New York: Henry Holt & Co.
Buckley, T. (1989). Kroeber’s Theory of Culture Areas and the Ethnology of
North-western California Anthropological Quarterly, 62(1), 15-26.
Freed, S. A and Freed, R. S. (1883). Clark Wissler and the Development of
Anthropology in the United States American Anthropologist, 85(4), 800-825
Hill, G. W. (1941). “The Use of the Culture-Area Concept in Social Research”.
American Journal of Sociology, 47 (1), 39-47.
Janusc, J.B. (1957). “Boas and Mason: Particularism versus Generalization”.
American Anthropologist, 59, 318-325
Kroeber, A. L. (1925). “Handbook of the Indians of California.” Bureau of
American Ethnology Bulletin, 78,1–995.
(1939). Cultural and Natural Areas of Native North America. Berkley,
California: University of California Press.
Smith, R. G. (1929). “The Concept of the Culture-Area”. Social Forces, 7(3),
421-432.
Willey, M. W. (1931). “Some Limitations of the Culture Area Concept”.Social
Forces, 10 (1), 28-31.
Wissler, C. (1917). The American Indian. New York: Douglas C. McMurtrie.
(1927). “The Culture-Area Concept in Social Anthropology”.American
Journal of Sociology, 32 (6), 881-891.

3.6 ANSWERS TO CHECK YOUR PROGRESS

1) Refer to section 3.1.1
2) Refer to section 3.1.2
3) Refer to section 3.1
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4) Refer to section 3.2 Culture Area Theories

5) Frobenius
6) The American Indian (1917), Man and Culture (1923) and The Relation of
Nature to Man (1926).
7) Refer to section 3.2.
8) Refer to section 3.2
9) Refer to section 3.2
10) Refer to section 3.3

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