| A | B |
|---|
| kitchen midden | ancient material made up of any garbage or once-discarded objects |
| primary source | a source of information that was produced during the same time as the event it describes |
| artifacts | non-living things that teach archaeologists about customs and beliefs of people in the past |
| prehistory | history that took place before the development of writing |
| archaeology | the study of objects remaining from the past |
| oral tradition | a culture's legends, myths, and beliefs that are passed on by word of mouth |
| fossil | remains or imprints of once living things |
| scientific dating | the process of dating objects by analyzing them in a lab |
| dendrochronology | tree-ring counting |
| relative dating | a type of cultural dating that finds out the age of an object by comparing it to an objects where the age is known |
| absolute dating | finding out the exact age of an object |
| radiocarbon dating | a form of scientific dating which entails measuring the radioactive carbon in an object |
| cultural dating | the process of determining how old an object is by comparing it with information already known |
| cultural diffusion | the exchange of goods, ideas, and technology that occurs when different cultures come into contact |
| independent invention | the development of an idea or technology by a culture on its own, without contact with another culture |
