Migrationism and diffusionism

The term migrationism, in the history of archaeological theory, was opposed to the term diffusionism (or "immobilism") as a means of distinguishing two approaches to explaining the spread of prehistoric archaeological cultures and innovations in artefact. Migrationism explains cultural change in terms of human migration, while diffusionism relies on explanations based on trans-cultural diffusion of ideas rather than populations (pots, not people).

Quotes

• Anthony (1997), supporting the return of migrational modes of interpretation back into "semi-respectability" in the late 1980s, acknowledges that "the rise, fall and recovery of migration models is partly embedded in paradigm shifts in archaeological theory, with all the socio-political factors of academic competition that are entailed." "The insistent clamour of the homeless, the migrant and the refugee is rarely still and we cannot but face its consequences on an academic as well as a human level" (21).
  • Anthony (1997) in Bryant, E. F. (2001). The Quest for the Origins of Vedic Culture : the Indo-Aryan migration debate. Oxford University Press. chapter 10

• There are several generations of archaeologists living in Europe whose life experiences bore the often devastating effects of invasions and migrations in two World Wars and their aftermaths. It is hard to resist the notion that these personal experiences did have an effect on the models of explanation which they proposed. . . . It is not a coincidence, I believe, that the "Retreat from Migrationism" arose precisely in countries not invaded in either world war—in Britain, America and parts of Scandinavia. . . . I suggest . . . that the personal impact of migrations and invasions on archaeologists has been a factor much underestimated in past "explanation" of the changing modes of archaeological explanation. I would like to suggest that there is a yet largely untapped reservoir of information and insight about the writing of archaeological texts relating to the subjective experiences of scholars." (18)
  • (Chapman and Hamerow 1997).in Bryant, E. F. (2001). The Quest for the Origins of Vedic Culture : the Indo-Aryan migration debate. Oxford University Press. chapter 10

• Migrationists consider that movement of people is responsible for the movement of pottery assemblages, and they think that it suffices to demonstrate that potteries have moved to demonstrate the migrations.
  • (Cleziou 1986, 244). in Bryant, E. F. (2001). The Quest for the Origins of Vedic Culture : the Indo-Aryan migration debate. Oxford University Press. chapter 10
  • Cleuziou, Serge. 1986. "Tureng Tepe and Burnished Grey Ware: A Question of 'Frontier'?" Oriens Antiquus 25:221 -256.

• Since it is the necessity of such a migration which is the ultimate argument of its advocates, this can no more be regarded as conclusive.
  • (Cleziou 1986, 236).in Bryant, E. F. (2001). The Quest for the Origins of Vedic Culture : the Indo-Aryan migration debate. Oxford University Press. chapter 10
  • Cleuziou, Serge. 1986. "Tureng Tepe and Burnished Grey Ware: A Question of 'Frontier'?" Oriens Antiquus 25:221 -256.

• B. Singh (1995) uses a modern example to better contextualize the potential interpretative excesses resulting from this method: If we count the gradual increase of china in Indian houses during the recent decades, and sit down to judge as future archaeologists with as mechanical an approach as is evident among those who equate pottery with people, we would find the entire country suffused by a new people. The same inference would be drawn from the sudden popularity of stainless steel followed by aluminum alloy and the like, (137)
  • Bryant, E. F. (2001). The Quest for the Origins of Vedic Culture : the Indo-Aryan migration debate. Oxford University Press.

• The critical point is that language and ethnic shift can take place without radical change in the material particulars of life and with an amount of change in the gene pool so small as to be for all practical purposes undetectable. We should not replace the fallacy of assigning all significant culture change to migration with the fallacy of thinking that language shift and the spread of new ethnic self-identification occur only with major or radical cultural transformations.
  • (Ehret 1988, 565) in Bryant, E. F. (2001). The Quest for the Origins of Vedic Culture : the Indo-Aryan migration debate. Oxford University Press.