Prehistoric Indians of Maine Bruce J. Bourque The study of
prehistoric peoples--those whose culture predates the written
record--is the domain of archaeology, a discipline with methods
much different from those of history. While historians work
mostly with written documentation, archaeologists interpret
clues found in the material remains of vanished cultures. Such
clues, although often fragmentary and enigmatic, can tell us
much about the lives of prehistoric peoples. Moreover, these
physical remains are intellectually "inert"; they reflect none
of the biases that are sometimes written into historic
documents, and thus they leave archaeologists free to draw
conclusions of their own. Despite their differences, historians
and archaeologists both strive to define patterns or
regularities in the cultures they study. Prehistoric societies,
like historic ones, behaved in patterned ways. They reproduced
their houses and tools time and again with little change; they
left remains of their preferred foods in location