Archaeological culture

Culture in archaeology refers to two separate but allied concepts:

• Material culture refers to physical objects from the past, the study of which is the basis of the discipline. Material culture is the counterpart of verbal culture and learned behaviour and together they constitute human activity. Archaeologists seek to study and explain past human activity and the changes that affected it.

Material culture consists of:

artefacts

features

ecofacts (also known as biofacts)

manuports

• It also refers to the labels given to recurring finds of similar assemblages. If the assemblages are found in the same geographical and chronological area, they can be said to constitute a culture and in some way be indicative of the wider behaviour of a particular society (though see processual archaeology). Cultures are the basic units of Prehistoric archaeology. As archaeological knowledge has increased, the definitions of what cultures mean have become less clear. For example, cultures are assigned names by archaeologists; the names are arbitrary and normally connected with the modern names for past societies' occupation sites or defining items they used. Such names can be misleading as in many cases it has transpired that the supposed monolithic culture is in fact a number of different ones, following further study. The original name therefore, which was retroactively applied, has little significance.

Examples of archaeological cultures include:

Windmill Hill culture

Beaker people

Wessex culture