Archaeology is the study of artifacts that have been left behind by people in the past. An artifact is anything that was made or used by people. We study artifacts left by people in history and prehistory. Prehistory means more than 450 years ago, before explorers came from Europe, when Native Americans were the only people in America. We call it prehistory because "pre" means before, and "history" means to write things down. The Native Americans did not have a written language, they had an oral or spoken history.
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