Editing Direct historical approach (section)

==Background==
In the nineteenth century, the archaeological record of [[the Americas]] was viewed as an extension into the past of the [[ethnographical]]ly documented record. Human behaviors of the archaeological past were seen as nearly identical to those described ethnographically and thus, they could be studied with minimal training in archaeology. The result of this particular view was the development and regular use of what came to be known as the direct historical approach.

Roland B. Dixon was seen as an early proponent of this approach. In his presidential address to the [[American Anthropological Association]] he stated: “one would logically proceed to investigate a [number of sites of known ethnic affiliation], and work back from these,” because it “is only through the known that we can comprehend the unknown, only from a study of the present that we can understand the past.” Strong, who later became attributed to this particular methodology, argued that Dixon set forth the procedure of the direct historical approach. Strong would later go on to say that “once the archeological criteria of [a historically documented] culture had been determined, it [is] then possible to advance from the known and historic into the unknown and prehistoric.”<ref>{{Cite web |url=http://cladistics.coas.missouri.edu/pdf_articles/JAMT8.pdf |title=Archived copy |access-date=2013-11-10 |archive-date=2013-07-20 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20130720060714/http://cladistics.coas.missouri.edu/pdf_articles/JAMT8.pdf |url-status=dead }}</ref>

Oddly, the direct historical approach rarely appears in histories of American anthropology. Similarly, very few texts point out that the direct historical approach was used for three distinct purposes. In American archaeology these were: (1) to identify the cultural association of an archaeological manifestation; (2) to construct relative chronologies of archaeological materials; and (3) to understand the human behaviors that were thought to have produced particular portions of the archaeological record.