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Transcription: [00:08:38]
{SPEAKER name="Shirley Gorenstein"}
You know, the way that I've been thinking it through with you, is that you are beginning with what you call the assumption of diffusionism,in prehistoric times, that is, and a sense of the necessity for recognizing diffusion even though it doesn't come directly out of the archaeological record. That is, the assumption is, that it must have existed. And the reason for the assumption is that in very early historical periods there is a great deal of contact.

[00:09:13]
{SPEAKER name="Gordon Ekholm"}
Why I think we must assume that diffusion is important, because over wide areas of uh say the New World, cultures are similar. Throughout the whole Southeastern United States for instance, or the whole Eastern United States, there is, all the peoples in that area, are more or less similar. Are more similar than they are different anyhow. So that I think we must agree, in that case, that the trend towards them being similar is due to contact. The same is true in another area like the Southwestern United States. I mean, practically all the cultures, except all the Pueblo cultures, are very similar. They may be different linguistically, or in many different ways of course, but basically they are the same, and all this is due just to contact and diffusion from one to the other. It's very much like the learning of an individual. He is like his contemporaries.

[00:10:28]
{SPEAKER name="Shirley Gorenstein"}
But there's a difference between contact within a rather limited geographical area - what's therefore defined as an archaeological area - and contact between very different areas. Because when you have a kind of interchange as you do within the Southwest, or an interchange as you do within the Southeast, um..
[00:10:49]