Last date for submission of paper: unknown; Contact person: gloknos; Abstract: In my talk I wish to make a case for strengthening empirical studies of knowledge available across cultures without anchoring it in any specific theoretical approach. Over the years, I have come across an increasing number of theory-guided studies of knowledge transfer across the Old World or between the Old and New World that produced results contradicting empirically derived knowledge about such processes. As one step to regain a better empirical grounding of our theoretical debates and to overcome dichotomic evaluations of cross-cultural movements of knowledge, we are currently undertaking an interdisciplinary long-dur