Related Terms • Diffusion • Kulturekreislehre movement

Definition: German ethnologist who argued that material remains could be used to identify cultural diffusion--the process by which ideas move between human groups. Using Friedrich Ratzel's theory known as Kulturkreis (culture circles), Graebner used data from Oceania to show that the more complicated and non-essential a cultural trait was, the more likely it was to be a product of diffusion, rather than independent invention.

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