The normative model of culture is the central model in culture history

Cultural-history archaeology

Culture-historical archaeology is an archaeological theory that emphasises defining historical societies into distinct ethnic and cultural groupings according to their material culture...

, a theoretical approach to cultures in archaeology

Archaeology

Archaeology, or archeology , is the study of human society, primarily through the recovery and analysis of the material culture and environmental data that they have left behind, which includes artifacts, architecture, biofacts and cultural landscapes...

, anthropology

Anthropology

Anthropology is the study of humanity. It has origins in the humanities, the natural sciences, and the social sciences. The term "anthropology" is from the Greek anthrōpos , "man", understood to mean mankind or humanity, and -logia , "discourse" or "study", and was first used in 1501 by German...

 and history

History

History is the discovery, collection, organization, and presentation of information about past events. History can also mean the period of time after writing was invented. Scholars who write about history are called historians...

. In essence it defines culture as a set of shared ideas, or norms.

The normative model was the dominant model in archaeological theory

Archaeological theory

Archaeological theory refers to the various intellectual frameworks through which archaeologists interpret archaeological data. There is no one singular theory of archaeology, but many, with different archaeologists believing that information should be interpreted in different ways...

 up to the rise of processual archaeology

Processual archaeology

Processual archaeology is a form of archaeological theory that had its genesis in 1958 with Willey and Phillips' work Method and Theory in American Archeology, in which the pair stated that "American archaeology is anthropology or it is nothing" , a rephrasing of Frederic William Maitland's...

. Some argue that current views of culture history are simplified and attack a straw man

Straw man

A straw man is a component of an argument and is an informal fallacy based on misrepresentation of an opponent's position, twisting his words or by means of [false] assumptions...

.

Basic assumptions

The normative model of culture assumes that a culture consists of a set of norms. These norms are ideas on all aspects of a society. It then goes on to assume that the norms are expressed in material remains of a society. A simple example of this is the norm that human remains should be buried on a cemetery outside the settlement. This norm is expressed in the material record, and can be discovered by archaeologists who excavate a field of burials outside a settlement of the same period.

As a consequence of the assumption that cultural norms were expressed in material remains, the normative model equates an archaeological culture with a human culture. By no means all traits are required to be similar for a site to be considered part of a certain culture. A site can lack a typical form of architecture, yet present numerous other characteristic traits (for example: typical pottery, burials, orientation).

Criticism

The normative model is often criticized as being mainly descriptive. It does not explain why a certain cultural norm exists, but rather describes that it exists. The normative model fitted well with an archaeology which was largely concerned with simply collecting data.

Criticism focussed mainly on the model's lacking abilities to explain rather than describe, to generalize rather than particularize and to understand change in societies.