"At one time social anthropologists used to complain that their archeologist colleagues had no sense of the overall coherence of human societies. Now [prehistorians] have become committed to a functionalism of a wholly naive sort. They seem to assume that cultural systems and language systems are bonded together and intrinsically stable over long periods of time. If societies are left alone, they stay put; otherwise, they roll across the landscape like impermeable billiard balls. If the archeological record shows that in fact changes have occurred, their occurrence is always explained as the conseÂquence of a movement of population that carries with it the products (both material and immaterial) of a preexisting, alien, self-contained culture. As a rule, the alleged movement of people takes the form of a military conquest."
Quote Details
Added by wikiquote-import-bot
Unverified quote
0 likes
Original Language: English
Available Languages (1)
Sources
Sir Edmund Leach. Aryan invasions over four millennia. In Culture through Time, Anthropological Approaches, edited by E. Ohnuki-Tierney, Stanford University Press, Stanford, 1990, pp. 227-245. p.241
https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Migrationism_and_diffusionism
Revision History
No revisions have been submitted for this quote.
Categories
Migrationism and diffusionism
8 quotes on TrueQuotesView all quotes by Migrationism and diffusionism →
Related Quotes
"[T]he rise, fall and recovery of migration models is partly embedded in paradigm shifts in archaeological theory, wit…"
"Migrationists consider that movement of people is responsible for the movement of pottery assemblages, and they think…"
"There are several generations of archaeologists living in Europe whose life experiences bore the often devastating ef…"
"These interpretations suggest the simple equation that 'material culture = people = language‘... Processual and post-…"
"The critical point is that language and ethnic shift can take place without radical change in the material particular…"
"The linguistic attributes are mapped onto archaeological correlates: artifacts are selected, like the chariot, as wel…"
"If we count the gradual increase of china in Indian houses during the recent decades, and sit down to judge as future…"
"Much prime settlement land from 20,000 BC to 5,600 BC is now underwater. Archaeological concentration on land gives a…"
"The national museum in Kabul which was inaugurated in 1924 and the most important repository of the excavated materia…"
"Dupree’s analysis clearly suggests that ‘the museum was not plundered by rampaging gangs of illiterate Mujahideen’. T…"