The study of the material culture of past peoples.

• A. Archaeology
• B. Artifacts
• C. Material culture
• D. Paleoanthropology

Answer: (A)

The study of material culture of past peoples is archaeology. Material culture refers to the physical objects—tools, pottery, buildings, ornaments, and even waste—that people leave behind. Archaeology is the field that systematically investigates these remains to understand how past societies lived, organized themselves, traded, and interacted with their environment. It uses methods like careful excavation, recording the context of finds, typology, and dating to reconstruct daily life and cultural practices from the artifacts we uncover.

Artifacts are the objects themselves, not the discipline studying them. Material culture is the broad concept of those objects, not the field of study. Paleoanthropology focuses on human evolution and fossil evidence, not the cultural interpretation of material remains.