A new generation of material
culture studies
n Since
ca. 2000 a new type of material culture studies has begun to surface in a variety of
journals, often statistics
driven and very much related to the quantitative methods used in genetics.
nThe
value of this material can be debated, but a crucial assumption of the methods is the
availability of historical
documentation. To study, say, the evolution of European brass instruments over time
with any sort of
quantitative strategy requires
both that historical records
exist and that a pre-existing scholarly industry has undertaken to describe them
n These conditions are not met and never
will be met for
most of the material under discussion here. Indeed the Kulturkreislehre school was premised on working in
areas where historical documents are absent