Page 111 - Berkshire Encyclopedia Of World History Vol Two

460 berkshire encyclopedia of world history

Riley-Smith, J. (Ed.). (1981). The atlas of the Crusades. New York: Facts Even relatively nonambiguous cultural groups may be
on File. difficult to geographically bound. Cultural patterns usu-
Riley-Smith, J. (Ed.). (1995). The Oxford illustrated history of the Cru-
sades. Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press. ally morph gradually over distance, and even if the
Rossabi, M. (1992). Voyager from Xanadu: Rabban Sauma and the first change is abrupt, border zones typically have their own
journey from China to the west. Tokyo and New York: Kodansha
International. personalities. Both the constitution and the distribution
Setton, K. M. (Series Ed.). (1969–1989). A history of the Crusades (2d of cultural groups, moreover, transform over time, owing
ed.). Madison: University of Wisconsin Press. to such processes as migration, diffusion of ideas and
Urban, W. (1994). The Baltic Crusade (2d ed.). Chicago: Lithuanian
Research & Studies Center. practices, and intermarriage. Disjunct cultural assem-
blages, in which a single group occupies a number of sep-
arate territories, may result. Conversely, in cosmopolitan
environments, a single city may contain a welter of dis-
tinctive cultural communities, which may or may not
Cultural and occupy identifiable neighborhoods.

As a result of such complexities, the delineation of geo-
Geographic Areas graphically bounded cultural areas is always a matter of
approximation. Different authors can construct divergent
uman cultural groups, however defined, can always but equally valid regionalization schemes, and even a
Hbe historically traced to particular places and gen- given author might map dissimilar cultural areas in the
erally remain associated with specific geographical areas. same place depending on the issues being considered.
Such cultural areas can be defined at a broad range of Further complications result from the fact that the peo-
spatial scales. In tribal social formations, a distinctive cul- ples under investigation may employ their own systems
tural group might encompass no more than a single vil- of cultural classification and geographical division.
lage, whereas in complex societies an identifiable cultural
group can extend across millions of square miles. Far- Cultural and
reaching cultural areas, however, can always be divided Natural Regions
into smaller (sub)cultural regions. By the same token, In earlier decades, scholars often linked cultural groups
small cultural groups can usually be agglomerated to tightly to their physical environments, delineating dis-
yield larger, if less coherent, cultural areas.As a result, no tinctive regions that were purportedly definable by both
unambiguous criteria for fixing the scale of cultural and human and natural criteria.The underlying postulate was
geographical areas have ever been established. How such that different climates demanded different ways of life,
areas are defined and bounded depends on the context. giving rise to distinctive cultural assemblages.This form
Historically, the most important criteria for differenti- of analysis was carried out most fully in regard to pre-
ating cultural areas have been affinities deriving from lan- Columbian North America, where ethnographers
guage, religion, kinship, and subsistence practices. Often, mapped a series of extensive, environmentally deter-
these different attributes of social life reinforce each mined cultural regions.The mild, humid area extending
other, giving rise to more or less holistic cultural assem- from northwestern California to southeastern Alaska, for
blages. In other circumstances, however, they may run example, was identified as the province of the Northwest
counter to each other. A linguistic community, for exam- Coastal Indians. Here, an abundance of wood and
ple, may be split by differences of faith, whereas a region salmon, coupled with a paucity of most other resources,
united by religion may be divided by language.The mul- led to a distinctive maritime way of life. The constituent
tifaceted nature of human culture thus confounds the tribes of this region spoke languages belonging to a num-
delineation of discrete cultural and geographic areas. ber of unrelated families, indicating origins in distant