Archaeology is culture history, or it is nothing: Reframing culture history as an essential epi-paradigm for archaeological practice

For nearly seventy years, archaeologists have argued that culture history is a paradigm which does not have a place in contemporary archaeology. Critiques initiated by processualists and expanded by promoters of post-processual, behavioral, historical-processual, and relational paradigms have been reinvigorated by advocates of large-scale radiometric dating and Bayesian modeling. These new criticisms, however, have scarcely evolved, focusing on four points: 1) culture history's normative and homogeneous concept of culture; 2) its reliance on migration and diffusion as mechanisms of change; 3) its assumption of cultural-biological correspondence; and 4) its susceptibility to political misuse. Yet culture history endures, providing the structural framework for archaeological practice worldwide. We argue that culture history has been mischaracterized by conflating it with the normative-diffusionist paradigm. By divorcing it from specific theories of cultural change, it becomes “epi-paradigmatic”, an overarching framework operating prior to and independent of explanatory theory. Its core tenets—description, systematics, classification, and periodization—are logically indispensable prior to theoretical interpretation. A renewed commitment to this form of culture history is essential for description and archiving, interpretation and comparison, cultural resource management, community collaboration, and climate crisis archaeology.