²⁶Jones, Carleton. Temples of Stone: Exploring the Megalithic Tombs of Ireland. Cork: Collins, 2007. 3-7.
Jones describes the "culture-historical paradigm" (current from the turn of the century until the 1970s) in which a particular group of artifacts was considered as the material expression of a distinct group of people. In this paradigm the archaeological record was used to identify various groups of people or cultures. Within this framework, the state-sponsored Megalithic Survey of Ireland was begun in 1949, with the first volume published in 1961.
The invention of photography in 1839, and the invention of Carbon 14 dating in 1949 greatly advanced the state of the science. On photography, the Keeper of the Ashmolean Museum noted in 1870: "It is by comparing small remains in one place with more perfect remains of the same kind and of the same period in other places, that we learn to understand the smaller remains. To carry on this study formerly required the power of traveling far and wide but the art of photography enables us to pursue this study by our own fireside, and sometimes even better than we could do by traveling, because we can place the objects side by side, and not have to trust to memory or to drawings, which are not always to be depended on." (Daniel, Glyn Edmund. The Origins and Growth of Archaeology. New York: Crowell, 1968. 131.)