Explore how to read time into culture, not just events. This study explains a historical method for understanding Aboriginal American culture.
This work outlines how cultural anthropology can treat the past as a sequence of happenings rather than a fixed snapshot. It discusses limits on dating and the need to balance individual detail with generalized patterns. The author shows how to use culture areas, culture strata, and linguistic evidence to build an orderly, historical view of cultural development without overreaching the available data. The result is a careful approach that aims for depth and perspective, rather than quick or vague conclusions.
- Learn how to frame culture using time rather than space
- See how culture areas and strata help organize descriptive facts
- Understand how language links to culture for dating and context
- Discover methods for evaluating diffusion, diffusion limits, and regional relationships
Ideal for readers of anthropology, cultural history, and ethnology who want a historically grounded method for analyzing primitive culture and its long arc of change.
Edward Sapir (1884-1930) taught at the University of Chicago and Yale University.