KULTURKREISELEHRE. Kulturkreiselehre (doctrine of culture "circles"), also called the cultural-historical method, refers to a model developed at the beginning of the twentieth century by German-speaking ethnologists to provide ethnology with a cultural-historical perspective. The intention of these scholars was to change the study of preliterate peoples into a historical science, freeing it from the naturalistic approaches that, influenced by positivism, had been dominant since the beginning of the nineteenth century and that still form a theoretical model of reference.

In anthropological works in English and the main Romance languages, the German word Kreis is often translated as "circle" or "cycle," but this translation is inaccurate because the use of Kulturkreis as a concept is intended to indicate the context—the complex of conditions in which a particular culture is developed and spread and, at the same time, the entire extent of its important characteristics. These aspects are not...