On the Use of the Concept of Area Co-Tradition

In 1947, at a conference on Peruvian archaeology held in Viking Fund headquarters in New York City, Wendell C. Bennett proposed a concept of area co-tradition and used it as a means of expressing certain characteristics of Peruvian culture history. He first defined the concept in abstract terms, the...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:American Antiquity
Main Author: Rouse, Irving
Format: Article in Journal/Newspaper
Language:English
Published: Cambridge University Press (CUP) 1954
Subjects:
Online Access:http://dx.doi.org/10.2307/277127
https://www.cambridge.org/core/services/aop-cambridge-core/content/view/S0002731600590027
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Summary:In 1947, at a conference on Peruvian archaeology held in Viking Fund headquarters in New York City, Wendell C. Bennett proposed a concept of area co-tradition and used it as a means of expressing certain characteristics of Peruvian culture history. He first defined the concept in abstract terms, then described the Peruvian co-tradition, and finally suggested the possibility that other area co-traditions might exist in the Southwestern United States, Middle America, and Northwest Argentina (Bennett, 1948). Acting on Bennett's suggestion, Martin and Rinaldo (1951) subsequently worked out a Southwestern area Co-tradition in some detail. In addition, Willey (1953, p. 374) has suggested the existence of an Arctic or Eskimo cotradition and of three co-traditions in the Eastern United States: Archaic, Woodland, and Mississippi. In the present paper, I shall confine myself to the use of the concept in Peru and the Southwest, since these are the only places where it has yet been applied in any detail.