Archaeological culture

When archeologists always find certain types of artefacts together, and they can associate them with a specific region and time period, they speak about an archeological culture. They also say that the society has this material culture. This is an empirical observation, a good guess, though. It is based on how archeologicsts think, ethnic groups were distributed at the time. Often, there are long  discusions about such findings. 

Advocates of culture-historical archaeology say  that sets of material culture can be used to trace ancient groups of people that were either self-identifying societies or ethnic groups. Archaeological culture is a way to order archaeological data. It is focused on artifacts as an expression of culture rather than people.McNairn (1980). p. 48. The classic definition of this idea comes from Gordon Childe:

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Category:Archaeology