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29-588: The Ulaanzuukh culture , also Ulaanzuukh-Tevsh culture (Ch:乌兰朱和文化, c.  1450-1000 BCE ), is an archaeological culture of the Late Bronze Age eastern Mongolia . It likely preceded and was the origin of the Slab-grave culture . The genetic profile of individuals belonging to this culture is virtually identical to the profile the Slab Grave culture individuals, which is consistent with

58-409: A "culture". We assume that such a complex is the material expression of what today we would call "a people". The concept of an archaeological culture was crucial to linking the typological analysis of archaeological evidence to mechanisms that attempted to explain why they change through time. The key explanations favoured by culture-historians were the diffusion of forms from one group to another or

87-465: A culture, rather a combination of traits are required. This view culture gives life to the artifacts themselves. "Once 'cultures' are regarded as things, it is possible to attribute behavior to them, and to talk about them as if they were living organisms." Archaeological cultures were equated separate 'peoples' (ethnic groups or races ) leading in some cases to distinct nationalist archaeologies. Most archaeological cultures are named after either

116-470: A distinction between material cultures that actually belonged to a single cultural group. It has been highlighted, for example, that village-dwelling and nomadic Bedouin Arabs have radically different material cultures even if in other respects, they are very similar. In the past, such synchronous findings were often interpreted as representing intrusion by other groups. The concept of archaeological cultures

145-619: A growing interest in ethnicity in 19th-century Europe. The first use of "culture" in an archaeological context was in Christian Thomsen 's 1836 work Ledetraad til Nordisk Oldkyndighed ( Norwegian : Guide to Northern Antiquity ). In the later half of the 19th century archaeologists in Scandinavia and central Europe increasingly made use of the German concept of culture to describe the different groups they distinguished in

174-456: A new group migrating in with this new style. This idea of culture is known as normative culture . It relies on the assumption found in the view of archaeological culture that artifacts found are "an expression of cultural norms," and that these norms define culture. This view is also required to be polythetic , multiple artifacts must be found for a site to be classified under a specific archaeological culture. One trait alone does not result in

203-494: A rag-tag assemblage of ideas." Archaeological culture is presently useful for sorting and assembling artifacts, especially in European archaeology that often falls towards culture-historical archaeology. Normative model of culture The normative model of culture is the central model in culture history , a theoretical approach to cultures in archaeology , anthropology and history . In essence it defines culture as

232-408: A set of shared ideas, or norms. The normative model was the dominant model in archaeological theory up to the rise of processual archaeology . Some argue that current views of culture history are simplified and attack a straw man . The normative model of culture assumes that a culture consists of a set of norms. These norms are ideas on all aspects of a society. It then goes on to assume that

261-511: A specific designation for prehistoric cultures. Critics argue that cultural taxonomies lack a strong consensus on the epistemological aims of cultural taxonomy, The use of the term " culture " entered archaeology through 19th-century German ethnography , where the Kultur of tribal groups and rural peasants was distinguished from the Zivilisation of urbanised peoples. In contrast to

290-403: Is a classifying device to order archaeological data, focused on artifacts as an expression of culture rather than people. The classic definition of this idea comes from Gordon Childe : We find certain types of remains – pots, implements, ornaments, burial rites and house forms – constantly recurring together. Such a complex of associated traits we shall call a "cultural group" or just

319-423: Is itself a divisive subject within the archaeological field. When first developed, archaeologic culture was viewed as a reflection of actual human culture. ...in the traditional view we translate present into past by collecting artifacts into groups, and naming those groups as archaeological cultures. We then make the equation between an archaeological and a human culture by making the assumption that artifacts are

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348-462: Is observably true on the broadest scales. For example, the equipment associated with the brewing of tea varies greatly across the world. Social relations to material culture often include notions of identity and status . Advocates of culture-historical archaeology use the notion to argue that sets of material culture can be used to trace ancient groups of people that were either self-identifying societies or ethnic groups . Archaeological culture

377-469: The Deer stone culture, located in western and northern Mongolia. The Ulaanzuukh and Slab Grave culture individuals cluster closely together and are collectively referred to as the "Ulaanzuukh_SlabGrave genetic cluster". The later Xiongnu are inferred to have formed via the merger of Eastern Saka ( Chandman culture ) and the local Ancient Northeast Asian, Ulaanzuukh-Slab Grave culture, which corresponds with

406-424: The migration of the peoples themselves. A simplistic example of the process might be that if one pottery-type had handles very similar to those of a neighbouring type but decoration similar to a different neighbour, the idea for the two features might have diffused from the neighbours. Conversely, if one pottery-type suddenly replaces a great diversity of pottery types in an entire region, that might be interpreted as

435-708: The Mongolian plateau. Daggers found in Ulaanzuukh graves have broadly similar designs to those of the Deer stones culture, with curved blades and pommels decorated with the heads of animals or with "jingles", which are key design elements adopted by the Shang dynasty for their weaponery. Archaeological culture Different cultural groups have material culture items that differ both functionally and aesthetically due to varying cultural and social practices. This notion

464-446: The archaeological culture found. Accusations came that archaeological culture was "idealist" as it assumes that norms and ideas are seen as being "important in the definition of cultural identity." It stresses the particularity of cultures: "Why and how they are different from the adjacent group." Processualists , and other subsequently critics of cultural-historical archaeology argued that archaeological culture treated culture as "just

493-462: The archaeological record of particular sites and regions, often alongside and as a synonym of "civilisation". It was not until the 20th century and the works of German prehistorian and fervent nationalist Gustaf Kossinna that the idea of archaeological cultures became central to the discipline. Kossinna saw the archaeological record as a mosaic of clearly defined cultures (or Kultur-Gruppen , culture groups) that were strongly associated with race . He

522-484: The broader use of the word that was introduced to English-language anthropology by Edward Burnett Tylor , Kultur was used by German ethnologists to describe the distinctive ways of life of a particular people or Volk , in this sense equivalent to the French civilisation . Works of Kulturgeschichte (culture history) were produced by a number of German scholars, particularly Gustav Klemm , from 1780 onwards, reflecting

551-405: The expressions of cultural ideas or norms. (...) This approach (...) was termed "culture history" by many (...). This view of culture would be "entirely satisfactory if the aim of archaeology was solely the definition and description of these entities." However, as the 1960s rolled around and archaeology sought to be more scientific, archaeologists wanted to do more than just describe artifacts, and

580-487: The hypothesis that the Slab Grave culture emerged from the Ulaanzuukh. Genetically, the populations of the Ulaanzuukh culture were rather homogeneous, and part of the Ancient Northeast Asians (ANA). In a recent study, they have been shown to have a purely Northeast Asian profile (nearly 100% ANA ), with one outlier having a western Altai_MLBA profile. The Ulaanzuukh culture was genetically distinct from

609-468: The more general " culture history " approach to archaeology that he began did replace social evolutionism as the dominant paradigm for much of the 20th century. Kossinna's basic concept of the archaeological culture, stripped of its racial aspects, was adopted by Vere Gordon Childe and Franz Boas , at the time the most influential archaeologists in Britain and America respectively. Childe, in particular,

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638-419: The normative model equates an archaeological culture with a human culture. By no means all traits are required to be similar for a site to be considered part of a certain larger culture. A site can lack a typical form of architecture, yet present numerous other characteristic traits (such as a particular style of pottery) that identify it as a society that was part of a larger cultural sphere. The normative model

667-429: The norms are expressed in material remains of a society. A simple example of this is the norm that human remains should be buried in a cemetery outside the settlement. This norm is expressed in the material record, and can be discovered by archaeologists who excavate a field of burials outside a settlement of the same period. As a consequence of the assumption that cultural norms were expressed in material remains,

696-513: The presence of both Iranian and Turkic languages among them. The ruling clan of the Turkic peoples , the Ashina tribe , was found to display close genetic affinities with the Slab Grave and Ulaanzuukh culture remains. The Ulaanzuukh culture may have contributed to transfer to Shang dynasty China of the chariot and weapon technologies and designs which originated with the Deer stones culture of

725-487: The type artifact or type site that defines the culture. For example, cultures may be named after pottery types such as Linear Pottery culture or Funnelbeaker culture . More frequently, they are named after the site at which the culture was first defined such as the Hallstatt culture or Clovis culture . Since the term "culture" has many different meanings, scholars have also coined a more specific term paleoculture, as

754-641: Was believed to be a monolithic culture is shown by further study to be discrete societies. For example, the Windmill Hill culture now serves as a general label for several different groups that occupied southern Great Britain during the Neolithic . Conversely, some archaeologists have argued that some supposedly distinctive cultures are manifestations of a wider culture, but they show local differences based on environmental factors such as those related to Clactonian man. Conversely, archaeologists may make

783-576: Was particularly interested in reconstructing the movements of what he saw as the direct prehistoric ancestors of Germans, Slavs, Celts and other major Indo-European ethnic groups in order to trace the Aryan race to its homeland or Urheimat . The strongly racist character of Kossinna's work meant it had little direct influence outside of Germany at the time (the Nazi Party enthusiastically embraced his theories), or at all after World War II. However,

812-435: Was responsible for formulating the definition of archaeological culture that is still largely applies today. He defined archaeological culture as artifacts and remains that consistently occur together. This introduced a "new and discrete usage of the term which was significantly different from current anthropological usage." His definition in particular was purely a classifying device to order the archaeological data. Though he

841-551: Was sceptical about identifying particular ethnicities in the archaeological record and inclined much more to diffusionism than migrationism to explain culture change, Childe and later culture-historical archaeologists, like Kossinna, still equated separate archaeological cultures with separate "peoples". Later archaeologists have questioned the straightforward relationship between material culture and human societies. The definition of archaeological cultures and their relationship to past people has become less clear; in some cases, what

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