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( Archaeological culture)
In addition to its usual meaning in social science, in archaeology, the term culture is also used in reference to several related concepts unique to the discipline. The term archaeological culture refers to similar artifacts and features from a specific time frame and within a consistent geographical area. The term has largely fallen out of favour as it has been increasingly realized that similar material goods do not necessarily correspond to a single society nor do dissimilar material goods necessarily indicate separate societies. Many archaeologists now prefer the term Techno-Complex (Technology-Complexes) to differentiate material from sociological culture. By using the term culture, archaeologists indicate that these patterns of assemblages are thought to be indicative of the wider behaviour of a particular society (though see the theories of processual archaeology and post-processual archaeology). Where the assemblages consist of only a single artefact type the term is more correctly an industry, although the ideas behind the culture and the industry are the same. Cultures are the basic units of prehistoric archaeology and were first fully explored in the late 1920s by Vere Gordon Childe who wrote the following. We find certain types of remains - pots, implements, ornaments, burial rites and house forms - constantly recurring together. such a complex of associated traits we shall call a "cultural group" or just a "culture". We assume that such a complex is the material expression of what today we would call "a people".
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