Abstract

This chapter discusses the cultural identity of past societies, an issue that has traditionally been addressed through the concept of archaeological cultures - discrete evolutionary units defined by the spatiotemporal distribution of sets of characteristic material remains. Although the paradigm of archaeological cultures creates easily understandable historical narratives, after over a century of research it still fails to convincingly demonstrate how, if at all, such material cultures correlate with any social entities. The failure of even ethnoarchaeological studies of contemporary societies to clearly demonstrate such a link casts further doubt on the usefulness of applying this idea to past societies. The concept of archaeological culture has therefore been gradually deconstructed and rejected, especially in the British and Scandinavian archaeological communities. Nevertheless, the last decade has witnessed its return in connection with the progress of archaeogenetics. While groundbreaking methods of ancient DNA analysis enable us to trace the genetic ancestry of past populations and uncover biological kinship between individuals, they do not in themselves provide any new theories and tend to fall back on the outdated concept of archaeological cultures. This chapter concludes with an assessment of present efforts to remedy this shortcoming by formulating a unifying theory that might link the interpretation of biological, social, and material data.