Archaeology Wordsmith

Results for Aker:

Aker: CATEGORY: deity
DEFINITION: An earth god of the Early Dynastic period, most often represented as a form of double-sphinx of two lions back to back. Aker's symbolism was closely associated with the junction of the eastern and western horizons in the underworld.
AOC beaker: CATEGORY: artifact
DEFINITION: All-over-corded beaker
Baker's Hole, Northfleet: CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: A Lower Palaeolithic site in Kent, England. It was a factory producing Levallois flakes.
Basket Maker: SYNONYMS OR RELATED TERMS: Basketmakers
CATEGORY: culture
DEFINITION: Two early chronological periods of the early Puebloans or Anasazi -- 100-500 AD, followed by the Modified Basket Maker period, 500-700; They lived people in the Four Corners area (northwestern New Mexico, southwestern Colorado, southeastern Utah, and northeastern Arizona) of the U.S. The origin of the Basket Maker Indians is not known, but it is evident that when they first settled in the area they were already excellent basket weavers and that they were supplementing hunting and wild-seed gathering with the cultivation of maize and pumpkins. They lived either in caves or out in the open in shelters constructed of a masonry of poles and adobe mud. Both caves and houses contained special pits, often roofed over, that were used for food storage. The Basket Makers were among the first village agricultural societies in the Southwest. Three Basketmaker stages were recognized at the 1927 Pecos Conference of Southwesternists: Basketmaker I (hypothetical), Basketmaker II (1--450 AD) which was a large base camp and widely scattered seasonal camps where the preferred container was the basket, and Basketmaker III (450--700/750) in which there were small villages of pit houses in well-watered valley bottoms. Specialized structures such as wattle-and-daub storage bins and large rooms for communal activity (possibly early kivas) also began to occur more frequently in the latter stage.
beaker: SYNONYMS OR RELATED TERMS: bell beaker (see also funnel beaker, protruding foot beaker)
CATEGORY: ceramics
DEFINITION: A simple pottery drinking vessel without handles, more deep than wide, much used in prehistoric Europe. The pottery was usually red or brown burnished ware, decorated with horizontal panels of comb- or cord-impressed designs. It was distributed in Europe from Spain to Poland, and from Italy to Scotland in the years after 2500 BC and the international bell-beaker is particularly widespread, though uncommon in Britain. In Britain there are local variants, the long-necked (formerly A) beakers of eastern England and the short-necked (formerly C) beakers of Scotland. There are local developments elsewhere, such as the Veluwe beakers in Holland. Beaker vessels are commonly found in graves, which were often single inhumations under round barrows; commonly associated finds include copper or bronze daggers and ornaments, flint arrowheads, stone wristguards, and stone battle-axes. In many northern and western areas its users were the first to start copper metallurgy. The widespread distribution of beaker finds has led to the frequent identification of a Beaker people and speculations about their origins.
Beaker people: SYNONYMS OR RELATED TERMS: Beaker Folk, Beaker culture; Bell Beaker culture
CATEGORY: culture
DEFINITION: A widespread Late Neolithic European people of the third and second millennium BC named after the characteristic bell-shaped beakers found buried with their dead. These people spread a knowledge of metalworking in central and western Europe from c 2500-2000 BC. They first came to Britain between 1900-1800 BC in successive waves, via Holland, from the Rhineland. Their origins are uncertain, with theories of them being the Battle-Ax people from south Russia and Spanish Megalithic people from Almeria or from Portugal and Hungary. They were copper and bronze workers and famous for their great collective tombs. The assemblages of grave goods -- decorated pottery, fighting equipment (arrowheads, wristguards, daggers) -- were characteristic of the people, who lived in small groups mainly by major river routes as they were known traders. Burial was by contracted inhumation in a trench, or under a round barrow, or as a secondary burial in some form of chamber tomb. Each burial was accompanied by a beaker, presumably to hold drink, probably alcoholic, for the dead man's last journey.
Bell Beaker: CATEGORY: ceramics; culture
DEFINITION: A type of pottery vessel found all over western and central Europe from the final Neolithic or Chalcolithic, c 2500-1800 BC. The culture's name derives from the characteristic pottery which looks like an inverted bell with globular body and flaring rim. The beakers were valuable and highly decorated. They are often associated with special artifacts in grave assemblages, including polished stone wristguards, V-perforated buttons, and copper-tanged daggers.
butt beaker: CATEGORY: artifact
DEFINITION: A tall beaker shaped like a butt or barrel and having a small, everted rim. The body is usually decorated with cordons, rouletting, latticing, etc. Mid 1st century BC through to 1st century AD in date. Some were made in Gallo-Belgicia, others were locally made in Britain.
claw beaker: SYNONYMS OR RELATED TERMS: elephant's trunk beaker, Rüsselbecher
CATEGORY: artifact
DEFINITION: Elaborate glass beakers dating from c 500 AD onward in Early Saxon graves and Frankish burials. Also called Rüsselbecher, the beakers have two superimposed rows of hollow, trunklike protrusions curving down to rejoin the wall of the vessel above a small button foot. In form they are similar to free-standing conical beakers, but they are embellished by a series of unusual clawlike protrusions. In many cases the glass is tinted brown, blue, or yellow. The beakers were probably made in Cologne or Trier, Germany.
cone beaker: CATEGORY: artifact
DEFINITION: Type of Anglo-Saxon glass drinking vessel made in the form of an elongated cone. Mainly 5th to 7th century AD.
Corded Beaker culture: CATEGORY: culture
DEFINITION: A Late Neolithic culture in central and northern Europe from c 2800 BC, named after a characteristic cord-marked decoration found on pottery. The Corded beaker culture belongs to the so-called Battle-Ax cultures of Europe. There were two phases of new burial rites, with individual rather than communal burials and an emphasis on burying rich grave goods with adult males. The first phase, characterized by Corded Ware pottery and stone battle-axes, is found particularly in central and northern Europe. The second phase, dated to 2500-2200 BC, is marked by Bell Beaker pottery and the frequent occurrence of copper daggers in the graves; it is found from Hungary to Britain and as far south as Italy, Spain, and North Africa. At the same time, there was an increase in the exchange of prestige goods such as amber, copper, and tools from particular rock sources.
flaker: CATEGORY: lithics
DEFINITION: Any pressure-flaking tool, often made from bone or antler, used to detach flakes in stone material in knapping; an implement for flaking flint.
flaking tool: SYNONYMS OR RELATED TERMS: flaker
CATEGORY: artifact
DEFINITION: A tool, such as an antler billet, or antler drift, which was used in removing flakes during the manufacture of a flaked stone projectile, tool, blade or artifact.
Funnel Beaker: SYNONYMS OR RELATED TERMS: funnel-necked beaker culture; Funnel(neck) Beaker; Trichterbecher or TRB
CATEGORY: ceramics; culture
DEFINITION: A vessel with a globular body and expanded neck, characteristic of the Early and Middle Neolithic culture of northern Europe. The funnel beaker is not directly related to the bell-beaker of central and western Europe. The complex culture represents the first agriculturists in Scandinavia and the north European plain, appearing from 3500 BC onwards. It is named after the characteristic pottery, which is often found in megalithic tombs in northern Germany.
girth beaker: CATEGORY: artifact
DEFINITION: A vertical-sided beaker, with horizontal bands of corrugations, cordons, or latticing. Of mid 1st century AD date. Some were Gallo-Belgic and others locally made in Britain. BUTT BEAKER.
maker's mark: SYNONYMS OR RELATED TERMS: hallmark
CATEGORY: artifact
DEFINITION: Manufacturing marks etched or stamped onto mass-produced ceramics, glassware, and metals.
motto beaker: CATEGORY: artifact
DEFINITION: A beaker made in Gaul or the Rhineland decorated with white-painted scrolls and words forming phrases such as: da mihi vinum (give me wine); valete or vivas (good health); nolite sitire (thirst not); and bibe (drink up).
pedestal beaker: CATEGORY: artifact
DEFINITION: Type of drinking cup with a distinct base section or foot forming an integral part of the lower body; some are Gallo-Belgic, others are locally made in Britain.
PF beaker: SYNONYMS OR RELATED TERMS: protruding foot beaker
CATEGORY: artifact
DEFINITION: Abbreviation of protruding foot beaker.
poppy head beaker: CATEGORY: artifact
DEFINITION: A beaker shaped like the seed-head of a poppy plant in a grey or black fabric with a polished surface. It has an everted rim and the body is often decorated with panels of dots in barbotine, or with rouletting. The largest sizes could be classified as jars.
protruding foot beaker: CATEGORY: artifact; culture
DEFINITION: The typical vessel of the Late Neolithic in the Netherlands with radiocarbon dates from c 3200-2400 BC. The basic form has a splayed neck, S-shaped profile, and flat everted base. It has cord ornament, dentate spatula impressions, or herringbone incisions. The vessel also defines the culture, which had burial in either a single flat grave or a pit under a barrow, and used the battle-ax. The culture represents the Dutch branch of the widespread corded ware-battle-ax complex, or single-grave cultures. In the Netherlands, there is some hybridization between the Protruding Foot Beaker culture and the Bell Beaker.
sandshaker: CATEGORY: artifact
DEFINITION: A container for sand which was used to stop ink from spreading.
TRB culture: SYNONYMS OR RELATED TERMS: Funnel Beaker culture
CATEGORY: culture
DEFINITION: Abbreviated name for the Danish Tragterbecker or German Trichterrandbecher culture, alternatively known in English as the Funnel Beaker Culture. It is the first Neolithic culture of northern Europe, found in southern Scandinavia, the Low Countries, northern Germany, and northern Poland, in the later 4th and early 3rd millennium BC. It is characterized by the use of a funnel-necked beaker with globular body. It is thought to represent the acculturation of local Mesolithic communities by contact with the Linear Pottery culture groups further south. Five regional groups have been determined: western group in the Netherlands, sometimes associated with hunebedden (megalithic burial monuments); southern group in Germany; southeastern group in Czechoslovakia; eastern group in Poland; and northern group in Denmark and Sweden. Settlement sites are not well known, but burials are abundant, especially Dysser in Scandinavia and in Kujavian Graves in Poland; passage graves were eventually used. Other artifacts include ground stone axes and battle-axes, and copper tools appear in later phases. The TRB culture is succeeded by -- and perhaps developed directly into -- the Single Grave culture.
Abercromby, Lord John (1841-1924): CATEGORY: person
DEFINITION: A Scottish antiquary who studied the British Bronze Age and introduced the term 'beaker' for decorated handleless drinking vessels. He created the A-B-C beaker classification.
Alapraia: CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: The site of a group of Copper Age rock-cut tombs near Lisbon, Portugal. It consists of simple chambers entered through smaller vestibles and includes ritual objects such as clay sandals, clay lunulae, so-called pine-cones, and Beaker pottery.
Almizaraque: SYNONYMS OR RELATED TERMS: Almeria
CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: A native site in southeast Spain belonging to the Copper Age Los Millares culture. Oval houses were surrounded by ditches and there is a nearby megalithic tomb, similar to those of Los Millares. Baker pottery appears in later phases.
Amri: CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: A site in the Indus Valley in Pakistan, probably dating to the early 3rd millennium. It was the first site to be recognized as belonging to the Early Harappan Period when excavated by Majumdar in 1929. Its name has been given to a style of hand- and wheel-made painted pottery found in its Chalcolithic levels and on tells over much of Sind and up into the hills of Baluchistan. These tall globular beakers of fine buff ware are painted with geometric designs in black between red horizontal bands. Chert and some copper were used for tools and the architecture was in mud-brick. Fractional burial was the practice for the dead. Periods I and II represent the pre-Harappan settlement of agricultural farmers, who kept cattle, sheep, goat and donkey, but also hunted (or herded) gazelle. In the later part of Period II Harappan ceramics appear alongside Amri wares; Period III represents a full mature Harappan occupation. The culture was gradually succeeded by that of the Indus civilization. The uppermost levels contained Jhukar and Jhangar material.
Anasazi: CATEGORY: culture
DEFINITION: A major cultural tradition of canyon dwellers found in southwestern United States between 100-1600 AD -- mainly in the four corners area of northeastern Arizona, northwestern New Mexico, southeastern Utah, and southwestern Colorado. These Native Americans began settlements with the cultivation of maize. Pottery was unknown at the beginning, but basketry was well developed, hence the name Basket Maker" is given to these early stages. By the sixth century there were large villages of pit houses with farming and pottery and it evolved into the full Anasazi tradition. The first pueblos and kivas were constructed and fine painted pottery made. The next few centuries (the Pueblo I-III periods) were a time of expansion during which some of the most famous towns were founded (Chaco Canyon) and fine polychrome wares produced. At this time the Mogollon people to the south adopted the Anasazi way of life and their Hohokam neighbors were also influenced perhaps suggesting that the Anasazi actually migrated to these areas. In such an arid environment farming was always vulnerable to fluctuations in climate and rainfall and these factors caused considerable population movement and relocation of settlements during 11th-13th centuries with the virtual abandonment of Chaco Canyon in 1150 and the plateau heartland by 1300. From 1300 until the arrival of the Spanish in the 16th century the Anasazi culture and population dwindled and the homeland in northern Arizona was abandoned. Then with the encroachment of nomadic Apache and Navajo tribes and with the arrival of Europeans from the south and east Anasazi territory decreased further. However some pueblos have continued to be occupied until the present day. The generally accepted chronological framework of three Basketmaker and five Pueblo stages was first proposed at the 1927 Pecos Conference. Although exact links are uncertain it is clear that modern Pueblo Indian people are descended from Anasazi ancestors. The name Anasazi is derived from a Navajo word meaning "enemy ancestors" or "early ancestors" or "old people"."
Anghelu Ruju: CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: A Copper Age necropolis in Alghero, northwest Sardinia. It contained 36 rock-cut tombs, some very elaborate in plan and decorated with carved bulls' heads. The tombs were used for multiple burials and contained material of the Ozieri culture (copper and silver objects) as well as Ozieri and Beaker pottery.
Anlo: CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: A site in Holland with a long sequence of occupation, starting with the Funnel Beaker culture. It was followed by a cattle enclosure during the Late Neolithic (protruding foot beaker) people, then a cemetery of five flat graves with foot beakers and bell beakers with cord ornament. The next phase was a settlement with late varieties of Beaker pottery, followed by a Middle Bronze Age plow soil, and a Late Bronze Age urnfield.
Austro-Asiatic: CATEGORY: language
DEFINITION: A family of about 150 languages which includes Vietnamese, Munda (eastern India), Mon (southwest Burma), Khmer (Kampuchea), and several minor language groups including Nicobarese, and Aslian of peninsular Malaysia. Vietnamese, Khmer, and Mon are culturally the most important of these and have the longest recorded history. Khmer is spoken primarily in Cambodia, Mon in Thailand and Myanmar (Burma). Vietnamese and Khmer, with the largest number of speakers, are the national languages, respectively, of Vietnam and Cambodia. Austro-Asiatic was once the main linguistic family of mainland Southeast Asia and eastern India, but its speakers have become geographically split into the Tibeto-Burman, Thai, and Austronesian languages.
Austronesian: SYNONYMS OR RELATED TERMS: Malayo-Polynesian
CATEGORY: language
DEFINITION: The major language family of the islands of Southeast Asia and the Pacific (including Taiwan, Philippines, Malaysia, Indonesia, parts of southern Vietnam, Madagascar, Melanesia (excluding much of New Guinea), Micronesia, and Polynesia). The family is divided into 1) Western Austronesian, or Indonesian, containing about 200 languages, and 2) Eastern Austronesian, or Oceanic, with about 300 languages. Proto-Austronesian probably started in southern China or Taiwan before 3000 BC. Austronesian speakers were the first humans to settle the Pacific islands beyond western Melanesia. Austronesians were the most widely spread ethno-linguistic group on earth, with the distance from Madagascar to Easter Island being 210 degrees of longitude.
Avebury: CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: A site in Wiltshire, England, at which stands one of Britain's finest megalithic monuments (known as henges) and one of the largest ceremonial structures in Europe. It was built c 2000 BC in the Neolithic, where the ridgeways of southern England meet, a natural site for tribal gatherings. It consists of a large bank with internal ditch (1.2 km long) with four equally spaced entrances. Inside the ditch was set a circle of 98 sarsen stones, weighing as much as 40 tons each. In the center were two smaller stone circles, each c 100 meters in diameter. The northern circle contains a U-shaped setting of three large stones, and the southern inner circle once had a complex arrangement of stones at its center. The Ring Stone, a huge stone perforated by a natural hole, stood within the earthworks and main stone circle at the southern entrance. The southern entrance leads out to two parallel rows of sarsens forming an avenue 15 m wide and 2.5 km long which ends at a ritual building (the so-called Sanctuary) on Overton Hill. Traces of a second avenue remain on the opposite side of the monument. From the bottom of the ditch came sherds of Neolithic Windmill Hill, Peterborough, and Grooved Ware styles, while higher up were fragments of South British (Long Necked) Beaker and Bronze Age pottery. Burials with Beaker and Rinyo-Clacton wares have been excavated at the bases of some of the stones. Near the southern end of the Avenue was an occupation site with Neolithic and Beaker sherds. The complex geometry of the site is studied, especially the possible astronomical alignments built into it. The circles at Avebury and the wooden structure on Overton Hill were all probably built at the same time by Neolithic communities.
Balanovo: CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: A cemetery site in south-central Russia dating to the early 2nd millennium BC near several short-lived settlement sites confined largely to the main river valleys. The regional culture made Corded Ware. The cemeteries mainly used flat inhumation rites, including double burials and some rich graves with copper battle-axes. Corded beakers, stone battle-axes, and fired clay model wheels are characteristic finds.
Bantu: CATEGORY: language
DEFINITION: A Niger-Congo language family, with approximately 60,000,000 speakers of more than 200 distinct languages, who occupy almost the entire southern projection of the African continent (roughly from the bulge downward). The classification is linguistic as the cultures of the Bantu speakers are extremely diverse. The languages are closely interrelated, indicating expansion of the population from a single source, probably the eastern Nigeria/Cameroon area. Throughout the region these first farming settlements are marked by a common pottery tradition, the 'Early Iron age' complex.
battle-ax: SYNONYMS OR RELATED TERMS: battleaxe, battle-axe
CATEGORY: lithics
DEFINITION: A type of prehistoric stone weapon, designed as a weapon of war. It is always of the shaft-hole variety, and frequently has a hammer, knob, or point at the opposite end from the cutting edge. In stone, they are common throughout most of Europe in the Late Neolithic and Copper Age, and often associated with corded ware and beakers. (The term Battle-Ax culture is often used as a synonym for Corded Ware or Single Grave culture.) Further east, more elaborate ones of copper or gold were more ceremonial than functional. The Vikings made iron battle-axes and used them well into the Middle Ages. The pole-ax is distinguished from the battle-ax by a spike on the back of the ax.
Battle-Ax culture: SYNONYMS OR RELATED TERMS: Battle-Axe culture; Single-Grave culture; Single Grave culture; Battle Ax culture, Corded Ware culture
CATEGORY: culture
DEFINITION: A number of Late Neolithic cultural groups in Europe that appeared between 2800-2300 BC. So-named for their characteristic shaft-hole polished stone battle-ax, the people were also known for their use of horses. Their place of origin is not certain, but it was most likely east rather than west of their area of spread. It was a homogeneous culture with central European trade links and it remained in some areas through the Stone and Bronze ages. In central Europe, the Beaker Folk came into contact with the Battle-Ax culture, which was also characterized by beaker-shaped pottery (though different in detail). The two cultures gradually intermixed and later spread from central Europe to eastern England. The Battle-Ax people were also responsible for the dissemination of Indo-European speech.
Blue willow pottery: CATEGORY: artifact
DEFINITION: Blue Willow, first made in England over 200 years ago, is said to be America's favorite patterned ware." Willow Ware is available in a wide range of patterns makers-most identifiable by mark styles and periods-running from 1780 to wares produced today."
button: CATEGORY: artifact
DEFINITION: Small, usually disklike, pieces of bone, metal, stone, or other solid material that have holes or a shank through which they are sewn on to garments. Buttons are used to fasten or close a garment and are sometimes purely decoration. They are known from the Copper Age onwards in Europe, developing in the Mediterranean area and being spread along with beakers. The ancient Greeks and Etruscans fastened their tunics at the shoulders with buttons and loops. The presence of buttons implies a tailored garment as draped ones were better fastened with a pin or fibula.
Carib: CATEGORY: culture; language
DEFINITION: American Indian people who inhabited the Lesser Antilles and parts of the neighboring South American coast at the time of the Spanish conquest. They were warlike immigrants from the mainland who drove the Arawak from the Lesser Antilles. They were notorious for eating captives (the word 'cannibal' is a corruption of the Spanish 'Caribal'). They were skilled pottery-makers and agriculturists but were mostly concerned with warfare. They were a maritime people who carried out long-distance raids with large dugout canoes. The Carib language was spoken only by the men; women spoke Arawak.
Chancay: CATEGORY: ceramics; culture
DEFINITION: In central Peru, a distinctive type of pottery made by the Chancay people between 1000-1500 AD (from Late Intermediate Period). It is black-on-white with parallel or checkered design, sometimes with biomorphic figures or painted in soft colors. The most common forms were tall, two-handled, egg-shaped collared jars; bowls and beakers with slightly bowed sides; and large figurines. The pottery is associated with large effigy figurines, dolls, and lacelike textiles. Chancay weaving was considered excellent.
Cholula: CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: One of the great cities and religious centers of ancient Mexico, first occupied c 800-300 BC. Cholulu, Nahuatl for place of springs" was a town dedicated to the god Quetzalcoatl and is known for its many domed churches which the Spanish built on top of the natives' temples. Cholula was a major center of the pre-conquest Mesoamerican Indian culture as far back as the Early Classic period (100-600 AD) and reached its maximum growth in the Late Classic period (900-1200). It came within the orbit of the Teotihuacán civilization during which time a major pyramid was built and then enlarged three times to produce the largest pyramid in Mesoamerica (177 ft or 55 m high). Tunneling has revealed the older pyramids nesting inside the final version. Around 1300 AD Cholula became a center of the Mexteca-Puebla culture. Cholula polychrome wares were highly prized by the Aztecs. When the Spaniards reached Cholula they found a splendid city dominated by the ruins of the Great Pyramid. The Cholulans who were makers and traders of textiles and pottery were Nahuatl speakers and at the time of the conquest owed a nominal allegiance to Montezuma. It was one of the independent Post-Classic centers to survive after the fall of Teothihuacan."
chthonic: CATEGORY: term
DEFINITION: Of the underworld; term used to describe phenomena relating to the underworld and the earth, including deities such as Geb, Aker, and Osiris.
Ciempozuelos: CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: A Copper Age cemetery site near Madrid, Spain, which has given its name to a late variety of Spanish beaker of the 2nd millennium BC. Artifacts come mainly from pit tombs or cistburials. The Ciempozuelos beakers and other pottery are of high quality with a red or brown burnished slip and complex incised decoration. Most of the burials were flexed inhumations in cists.
Clarke, David Leonard (1937-1976): CATEGORY: person
DEFINITION: British archaeologist; founder of analytical archaeology, who died tragically young after making notable contributions concerning the use of computers in archaeology, demonstrated by his study of beakers, and to a reassessment of archaeological methodology. His book Analytical Archaeology" published in 1968 emphasized the need for an explicit theory and a more rigorous methodology in archaeology."
Cmielów: CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: A Funnel Beaker culture settlement site in the Holy Cross Mountains of Poland. There were mines of banded flint, which were used to make cores and axes, and evidence of copper metallurgy.
coiled: SYNONYMS OR RELATED TERMS: coiled basketry
CATEGORY: artifact
DEFINITION: Concerning a method of basketry based on a spirally coiled foundation, esp. that made with a vertical stitch or weft. A basket is said to be coiled when a long bundle of fibrous material is laid up, spiral fashion. Each coil is sewn by a slender splint to the coil below it. The basketmaker would pierce the fiber bundle with a bone awl and pass the splint through the hole thus made. In ceramics, coiling is a construction technique where the vessel is formed from the base up with long coils or wedges of clay that were shaped and joined together.
coiling: SYNONYMS OR RELATED TERMS: coiled basketry, coil basket, coiled (adj)
CATEGORY: artifact
DEFINITION: A method of basketry based on a spirally coiled foundation, esp. that made with a vertical stitch or weft. A basket is said to be coiled when a long bundle of fibrous material is laid up, spiral fashion. Each coil is sewn by a slender splint to the coil below it. The basketmaker would pierce the fiber bundle with a bone awl and pass the splint through the hole thus made.
Conca d'Oro: CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: A Copper Age site on the plain around Palermo, northwest Sicily, where a number of rock-cut shaft-and-chamber tombs (a forno or oven-shaped type) have been found dating to the 3rd millennium BC. They were used for collective burial and the associated grave goods include pottery vessels and some metal tools and weapons. There is local incised pottery and a local imitation known as the 'Carni beaker', as well as imported Beaker pottery of west Mediterranean type.
Conchopata: CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: A Middle Horizon site in the Ayacucho Valley near Huari, Peru, which was probably a religious shrine. Two large offering deposits of Huari ceramics have been found, including large beaker-shaped urns and painted face-neck jars, intentionally smashed, which have a distinctive polychrome decoration that is clearly Tiahuanaco-influenced, including iconography similar to that of the Gateway of the Sun.
Copper Age: SYNONYMS OR RELATED TERMS: Chalcolithic, Eneolithic
CATEGORY: chronology
DEFINITION: An intermediate period between the Neolithic and the Bronze Ages, characterized by the use of copper tools. According to the principles of the Three Age System, it should strictly mean the period when copper was the main material for man's basic tools and weapons. It is difficult to apply in this sense as copper at its first appearance was very scarce, and experimentation with alloying seems to have begun early on. The alternative names of Chalcolithic and Eneolithic imply the joint use of copper and stone. In many sequences, notably in Europe and Asia, there is a period between the Neolithic and Bronze Age, separated from each by breaks in the cultural development, within which copper was coming into use and Copper Age is the best term to use. In Asia, the age saw the origins of civilization, and in Europe the great folk movements of the beaker and corded ware cultures, and perhaps the introduction of the Indo-European languages. The period lasted for almost 1000 years in southeast Europe, from 3500 BC.
cord ornament: CATEGORY: ceramics
DEFINITION: Pottery decoration produced by impressing a twisted cord into the surface of the soft clay. Sometimes short individual motifs were produced by wrapping a cord around a stick (Peterborough ware), or part or the whole of a vessel was wrapped closely in cord (Corded Ware and some varieties of Beaker).
corded ware: SYNONYMS OR RELATED TERMS: Corded Ware
CATEGORY: ceramics; culture
DEFINITION: A Late Neolithic pottery ware decorated with twisted cord ornament found over much of north and central Europe in the 2nd half of the 3rd millennium BC. The commonest shapes are the beaker and the globular amphora. The ware is always associated with primitive agriculture, the stone battle ax, and usually with single burial under a small barrow or kurgan. The ware may derive from Denmark, central Germany (Saxo-Thuringia), eastern Poland, or the Ukraine. The culture received its name from the characteristic pottery. Some groups also had metal artifacts. There is some evidence that Corded Ware people had domesticated horses and wheeled vehicles, and they are sometimes interpreted as nomadic groups -- possibly Indo-European speaking -- who spread across northern Europe from the east. Closely related are the Globular Amphora and Funnel Beaker cultures.
core: SYNONYMS OR RELATED TERMS: nucleus
CATEGORY: lithics
DEFINITION: A piece of stone used as a blank from which flakes or blades were removed by prehistoric toolmakers. Usually it was the by-product of toolmaking, but it may also have been shaped and modified to serve as an implement in its own right. An object, such as a hand-ax, chopper, or scraper made in this way is a core tool. Cores were most often produced when hit by a pebble, antler, or bone hammer.
crannog: CATEGORY: geography; feature
DEFINITION: An artificial island in a lake, bog, or march that forms the foundation for a small settlement and upon which a fortified structure is usually built. This structure was typical of prehistoric Ireland, Scotland, and the Isle of Man, especially during the first century AD. The island was constructed from brushwood, stones, peat, and timber, and usually surrounded by a wooden palisade. Most crannogs probably represent single homesteads. The oldest examples in Ireland have yielded early Neolithic material (Bann flakes) and others have Beaker pottery. Most of them, however, are of Late Bronze Age, Iron Age, Early Christian, or medieval. The most interesting is that in Lough Cur in Limerick.
cushion stone: CATEGORY: artifact
DEFINITION: A flat-faced smooth stone used as a small anvil in metalworking. The earliest cushion stones from northern Europe are those from Beaker graves
Dölauer Heide: CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: A Neolithic settlement in southeastern Germany of the Funnel Beaker culture. Excavations revealed fortifications of bank-and-ditch systems, a palisade, and a number of barrows -- all on a hilltop.
dagger: CATEGORY: artifact
DEFINITION: A short stabbing knife which, in ancient and medieval times, was not very different from a short sword. From about 1300 the European dagger was differentiated from the sword. In earliest antiquity, it was made of flint, copper, bronze, iron, or bone. It is difficult to distinguish it from an inoffensive knife blade. Prehistoric daggers were made in flint by the Beaker Folk in the Neolithic-Early Bronze Age, about 1900 BC. Bronze dagger, tanged for wooden hilt, were imported by Beaker Folk from western Europe between 1900-500 BC. The fully developed style of the Iron Age came to be in the 1st century BC. In copper it was ancestral to the rapier, sword, spear, and halberd.
Delphic Oracle: CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: The most famous ancient oracle, located at Delphi on the slopes of Mt. Parnassus above the Corinthian Gulf. Traditionally, the oracle first belonged to Mother Earth (Gaea) but later was either given to or stolen by Apollo. At Delphi the medium was a woman over fifty, known as the Pythia, who lived apart from her husband and dressed in a maiden's clothes. Though the oracle, at first called Pytho, was known to Homer and was the site of a Mycenaean settlement, its fame did not come until the 7th-6th centuries BC, when Apollo's advice or sanction was sought by lawmakers, colonists, and cult founders. The Pythia's counsel was most used to predict the outcome of wars or political actions. Consultations were normally restricted to the seventh day of the Delphic month, Apollo's birthday, and were at first banned during the three winter months when Apollo was believed to be visiting the Hyperboreans in the north, though Dionysus later took Apollo's place at Delphi during that time. The usual procedure required a sponsor and the provision of a pelanos (ritual cake) and a sacrificial beast that conformed to rigid physical standards. The Pythia and her consultants first bathed in the Castalian spring; afterward, she drank from the sacred spring Cassotis and then entered the temple. There she apparently descended into a basement cell, mounted a sacred tripod, and chewed leaves of the laurel, Apollo's sacred tree. While in this drugged state, the Pythia would speak, often unintelligibly. Her words, however, were not directly recorded by the inquirer; instead they were interpreted and written down by the priests in what were often very ambiguous words.
discoidal nucleus technique: CATEGORY: lithics
DEFINITION: A method of core knapping used during the Middle Palaeolithic by which flaking was done until the core was too small to use. The Beaker People, in particular, made circular, oval, or oblong, thin flakes of stone with this technique, which is very similar to the Levallois technique.
Durrington Walls: CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: A Neolithic (late 3rd millennium BC) henge monument in Wiltshire, England, with a large twin-entrance, and first occupied by people who made pottery of the Windmill Hill, Grooved Ware, and Beaker styles. Inside, the excavators found remains of two large circular timber structures, each of which had evidence for several different phases of construction.
eggshell ware: SYNONYMS OR RELATED TERMS: eggshell glaze
CATEGORY: artifact
DEFINITION: Small, delicate beakers, bowls, or jars, usually in white or cream, but occasionally black. The name refers to the sides of the vessels which are typically 2mm or less thick. Imported to Britain in the 1st century AD and imitated locally.
Engaruka: CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: An Iron Age site on the western side of the Eastern Rift Valley in northern Tanzania with the remains of an Iron Age irrigation system of the 14th century AD. It was an important and concentrated agricultural settlement, occupied for over a thousand years. Water from streams flowing into the valley was dispersed through an elaborate network of stone-lined furrows to serve a large number of small stone-terraced fields. Sorghum was one of the crops that was cultivated. However, its pottery does not seem to have been related to those that became widespread in the 1st millennium AD. It is assumed that its inhabitants were Cushitic speakers.
Fontbrégoua: CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: Cave site in southern France with Epipalaeolithic and Neolithic occupations, dating to c 8000 BC. Hunting and gathering remains are hazelnuts and plants; there was domestic livestock and pottery of the Cardial and Epicardial phases. Neolithic remains include pits of human bones with cutmarks and pits of butchered animals bones, possibly evidence for cannibalism. There are also Middle Neolithic Chasséen, Late Neolithic, and Bell Beaker artifacts.
food vessel: SYNONYMS OR RELATED TERMS: food vessel culture
CATEGORY: culture; artifact
DEFINITION: One of the two main cultures of the Bronze Age; the name given to a series of pottery vessels in northern Britain, Scotland, and Ireland. It was a prototype derived from that of the Beaker Folk and other Neolithic cultures. The food vessel culture people were hunters and farmers, raising sheep and growing corn. They also sold bronze and other metal goods made in Ireland. They buried food vessels with their dead (inhumation, in crouched positions, buried in cists under cairns or barrows). In the graves, too, are found the crescent-shaped necklaces of jet and shale beads, and gold necklaces of the same shape (lunula) from Ireland. Then there are bronze, halbards, axes, daggers, earrings of gold and bronze, bone hairpins, and plano-convex flint knives. The culture is dated to 2000-1600 BC.
gallery grave: SYNONYMS OR RELATED TERMS: allée couverte
CATEGORY: structure
DEFINITION: A tunnel-shaped megalithic tomb of Europe, characterized by a rectangular chamber with no separate entrance passage. The structure therefore resembles a megalithic corridor under an elongated mound, though sometimes they are cut in the rock. Gallery graves are frequently but not always found under long barrows; they may be subdivided (segmented) or have additional side chambers (transepted). They are sometimes associated with elaborate facades and forecourts. Local variants are distributed in Catalonia, France, the British Isles, northwards as far as Sweden, as well as in Sardinia and south Italy. Most of the tombs were built during the Neolithic period from the early 4th millennium BC on and were still in use during the Copper Age when Beaker pottery was introduced; the Sardinian examples belong to the full Bronze Age. Many contain multiple burials.
globular amphora: SYNONYMS OR RELATED TERMS: Globular Amphora culture
CATEGORY: ceramics; culture
DEFINITION: A type of pottery vessel which has given its name to a Late Neolithic or Copper Age culture of the 3rd millennium BC through much of Germany, Poland, and western Russia. The amphora itself is bulbous in shape with a narrow neck and small handles (for hanging) and appeared with the eastern wing of the European funnel-necked beaker culture differentiated from the western part. Some examples are undecorated, while others have incised, stamped or cord-impressed ornament on the upper part of the vessel. There are individual burials in stone cists under barrows, accompanies by the globular amphora. The culture is closely linked both TRB Culture and may be a parallel development to the Single Grave/Corded Ware group in Scandinavia of 2600-2200 bc.
Gródek Nadbuzny: CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: A Neolithic settlement of the Funnel Beaker culture of southeast Poland with evidence of copper metallurgy.
graffiti: CATEGORY: language
DEFINITION: Writing placed on walls or other objects; any figures or inscriptions scratched into a surface, often indicating the maker or owner. It is any casual writing, rude drawing, or marking on the walls of buildings, as distinguished from a deliberate writing known as an inscription. Graffiti is found in great abundance, as on the monuments of ancient Egypt. Graffiti are important to the paleographer as illustrating the forms and corruptions of the various alphabets used by the people, and may guide the archaeologist to the date of the building. Graffiti is important to the linguist because the language of graffiti is closer to the spoken language of the period and place than usual written language. Graffiti is also invaluable to the historian for the light thrown on everyday life of the period and on intimate details of customs and institutions.
Great Zimbabwe: CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: A Late Iron Age site in southeastern Zimbabwe, by far the largest and most elaborate of the dry-stone constructions to which the term dzimbahwe is applied. After an Early Iron Age phase of 500-900 AD, the main sequence of occupation began around 1000 when Shona speakers occupied Zimbabwe Hill and began building stone walls around 1300. Great Zimbabwe was the capital of the Shona empire from 1270-1450 AD, which stretched from the Zambezi River to the northern Transvaal of South Africa and eastern Botswana. There was a class system and the kings accumulated wealth through trade, attested by items such as glass vessels and beads, pottery, and porcelain. Gold was the principal export; Great Zimbabwe appears to have been at the center of a network of related sites through which control was exercised over the gold-producing areas. Archaeologically, the culture is called the Zimbabwe Tradition and is divided into Mapungubwe, Zimbabwe, and Khami phases. In the 15th century the site declined with trade and political power shifting to the north near the Zambezi Valley.
Gwithian: CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: A Middle Bronze Age farming site in Cornwall, England, with prehistoric and medieval remains. There are houses of the Beaker Period, field systems of the Middle Bronze Age, and small square fields of Celtic type. The sites of the post-Roman period include a small settlement of circular drystone huts, a shell midden, and a late Saxon chapel. There are also sub-Roman (400-950), early Christian (550-850), and the Late Saxon (850-1050) levels which have been determined by the pottery. Gwithian ware and Mediterranean imports mark the first phase, and Grass-Marked pottery, the second. The chapel of St. Gocanius is one of the few pre-Conquest buildings in Cornwall (c 9th-10th century).
Haua Fteah: CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: A large cave site in Cyrenaica, Libya, with the most complete sequence, back to c 78,000 BC, of Upper Pleistocene and Holocene industries known from a single site in North Africa. The oldest flint industry is a Libyan variant of the pre-Aurignacian (Libyan Amudian), and is followed successively by Levalloiso-Mousterian (60,000 years ago), Dabban (40,000 years ago), Oranian (18-16,000 years ago), Libyco-Capsian, and finally (from c 6800-6400) by Neolithic with pottery and domesticated animals. Based upon the striking of parallel-sided blades from prismatic cores, the earliest stage has clear affinities with broadly contemporary industries in Syria, Lebanon, and Israel. Its makers exploited both large game animals and seafood resources. There was a return to blade technology with the Dabban industry and the beginning of the Dabban occupation of Crenaica seems to have coincided with the onset of very arid conditions in the Saharan regions to the south. The Oranian had small backed bladelets.
henge: SYNONYMS OR RELATED TERMS: henge monument
CATEGORY: structure
DEFINITION: A circular, prehistoric religious enclosure constructed of wood or stones and enclosed by ditches, banks, and walls -- and found only in the British Isles. Henge monuments are characteristic of the megalithic period in southern and eastern England in particular. To the west and north, henges often enclose a stone circle. There are 13 such examples, including Avebury and Stonehenge. The circular area is delimited by a ditch with the bank normally outside it. Class I henges have a single entrance marked by a gap in the earthworks, while those of Class II have two such entrances placed opposite each other. Avebury had four entrances. Many henges have extra features such as burials, pits, circles of upright stones (Avebury, Stonehenge) or of timber posts (Durrington Walls, Woodhenge). Henges are often associated with Late Neolithic pottery of grooved ware, Peterborough and Beaker types, dating from the centuries after 2500 BC. Occasional examples were still in use in the Bronze Age, e.g. Stonehenge. Henges are believed to have been focal points for 'ritual' activity, but there is much controversy over their design. They range in size from c 30 meters to more than 400 meters in diameter (Avebury, Durrington Walls).
Homo habilis: CATEGORY: culture
DEFINITION: Handy man, the oldest species of the genus Homo. It was small-built but had a larger brain than the Australopithecines and was a toolmaker. Its fossils have been found in East and South African dating to 2.2-1.6 million years ago at the famous sites of Koobi Fora and Olduvai Gorge. Dr. Louis Leakey, who found fossils at Olduvai Gorge, said that the habilis skeletons showed certain features (e.g. greater brain size, opposable thumb, shape of skull) which distinguished them from those of other Australopithecus forms, and which placed them closer to the line of descent leading to Homo erectus and the advanced forms of man. Homo habilis is regarded as a possible ancestor of Homo erectus or Homo sapiens; others believe it should be included in the species Australopithecus africanus or Homo erectus, or be regarded as transitional from one to the other.
hunt cup: CATEGORY: artifact
DEFINITION: A popular style of Roman color-coated beaker with a decorative scene, usually depicting dogs hunting stags or hares, executed in barbotine.
Inariyama: CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: A keyhole-shaped kofun (tumulus) in Saitama Prefecture, Japan. There are at least three other kofun by the same name in different parts of Japan. The one in Saitama has two moats around a mound. An X-ray examination revealed an inscription with 115 characters on an iron sword. It referred to a person called Wakatakeru, who is likely to be Emperatro Yuraku of the Yamato court, and a date of 471/531.
Indo-European: CATEGORY: language
DEFINITION: A group of languages from which most modern European languages are derived, as well as Indian Sanskrit and the Farsi language of Iran. It is assumed that the dispersal of these languages must have occurred through large-scale migrations of people. Attempts have been made to identify the carriers of Indo-European languages with groups recognizable in the archaeological record. When the groups were literate or are recorded in other people's documents, as with the Hittites and the Luwians in Asia Minor, it is possible to establish that the groups were indeed Indo-European speakers. One school maintains that the original homeland was in the south Russian steppes in the 5th millennium BC and spread into Europe with the Single Grave, Corded Ware, and Globular Amphorae groups. Indo-European was first recognized by Sir William Jones in 1786. It includes most of the modern European languages (Romance, Germanic, Slavic, Baltic, Greek, Albanian) and modern Indo-Iranian (Persian, Hindi).
isochrestic style: CATEGORY: term
DEFINITION: A style of tool-making representing the maker's particular choices among alternatives in a particular cultural context.
Jevisovice: CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: Late Neolithic site in Moravia of the Funnel Beaker and Baden cultures used as a guide to the Late Neolithic and Eneolithic of the Carpathian Basin.
Kansyore ware: CATEGORY: ceramics
DEFINITION: A comb-stamped pottery found at several pre-Iron Age sites around Lake Victoria in East Africa in the first millennium BC. The makers of Kansyore ware appear to have been hunter-gatherers, makers of a backed microlith industry.
kero: CATEGORY: artifact
DEFINITION: A large wooden flared beaker, painted with black, white, and light red designs of pumas, condors, and other creatures on a dark red ground color. Keros decorated with incised geometric patterns were used in Inca times, but examples with scenes painted in lacquer are of post-Conquest date. In pottery the shape started earlier and was especially popular in the Tiahuanaco culture.
Khoikhoin: SYNONYMS OR RELATED TERMS: Khoi, Khoikhoi, Khoekhoe; Hottentots
CATEGORY: culture
DEFINITION: A Stone Age pastoral people of southwestern Africa during the last 2000 years. The first European explorers found them in the hinterland and they now live either in European settlements or on official reserves in South Africa or Namibia. Khoikhoin (meaning men of men") is their own name for themselves; Hottentot is the term fashioned by the Dutch (later Afrikaner) settlers probably in imitation of the clicks in their language. They may be descended from Bantu speakers of northern Botswana. They have cattle sheep and goats and make pottery."
kiva: CATEGORY: structure
DEFINITION: A specialized room or chamber, often semi- or completely underground, of the ancient southwestern US pueblo villages, used for ceremonies or other community activities. They often contain benches and fire pits and are generally circular, sometimes rectangular. They were used primarily by men and were entered by a projecting ladder through an opening in the flat roof. The word means old house" in Hopi and the structure may have derived from circular pithouses of Basketmaker cultures 100 BC-700 AD."
Krzemionki: CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: Middle and Late Neolithic flint mine of the Holy Cross Mountains of central Poland. It was used by the Funnel Beaker and Globular Amphora cultures.
Kuyavian long barrow: CATEGORY: structure
DEFINITION: Earthen long barrows of the Funnel Beaker culture in northern Poland from c 3000 BC. The are usually surrounded by a kerb of large boulders and sometimes megalithic. They have a trapezoidal plan, normally have single primary burials, and are related to the Hunebeds of northern Germany and Holland.
Lapita: CATEGORY: artifact; culture
DEFINITION: A major Oceanic culture complex, named after the type site of Lapita, New Caledonia. It is defined by a distinctive type of pottery with dentate-stamped banded decoration in geometric patterns, appearing c 3500 bp and which appeared throughout much of the western Pacific, including Fiji and Samoa. Most Lapita sites are on offshore islands and assemblages include elaborate shell tools and ornaments, the use of obsidian, and stone adzes. The obsidian and pottery style suggest long-distance trade. The culture is almost certainly associated with ancestral Polynesians moving eastwards from island Southeast Asia (perhaps from the Philippines), through previously inhabited Melanesia, to the hitherto empty islands of Tonga and Samoa in Western Polynesia. The culture therefore represents the origin of the Polynesians prior to their settlement of geographical Polynesia. It is thought to be associated with the spread of Austronesian speakers into the Western Pacific.
Leakey, Mary Douglas (1913-1996): CATEGORY: person
DEFINITION: English-born archaeologist and paleoanthropologist who made several of the most important fossil finds subsequently interpreted and publicized by her husband, the noted anthropologist Louis Leakey. She discovered the skull of Proconsul africanus, an apelike ancestor of both apes and early humans that lived about 25,000,000 years ago. At Olduvai Gorge she found the skull of an early hominid Australopithecus boisei (Zinjanthropus). At Laetoli, she discovered several sets of footprints made in volcanic ash by early hominids who lived about 3.5 million years ago. The footprints indicated that their makers walked upright; this discovery pushed back the advent of human bipedalism to a date earlier than had previously been suspected by the scientific community. Among Mary Leakey's books were Olduvai Gorge: My Search for Early Man" (1979) and the autobiographical "Disclosing the Past" (1984)."
Levallois technique: SYNONYMS OR RELATED TERMS: Levallois facies, Levallois
CATEGORY: lithics
DEFINITION: A distinctive method of stone tool-making in which flakes are removed by percussion from a preshaped core, with little other modification. This prepared-core knapping technique allows the removal of large flakes of predetermined size and shape. The face of the core is trimmed to shape in order to control the form and size of the intended flake. Characteristically the preparatory flaking is directed from the periphery of the core towards the center. The residual core is shaped rather like a tortoise, with one face plane and the other domed, while the flake shows the scars of the preparatory work on one face and is plane on the other. It is named for Levallois-Perret, a suburb of Paris, where such artifacts were first discovered. The Levallois technique was known from the Acheulian period and employed by certain late Lower Palaeolithic handax makers, and throughout the Middle Palaeolithic by some Mousterian communities. It lasted into the Upper Palaeolithic of the Levant, and in the Epi-Levalloisian industries of Egypt.
Lough Gur: CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: A series of 16 Neolithic and Early Bronze Age settlement sites around the shores of a lake in Limerick, Ireland, one of the greatest concentrations of sites in Ireland. There were rectangular Neolithic houses, some associated with Beaker pottery. Some are enclosed by a double ring of stones, dated to c 2600 bc. There are also megalithic chambered tombs and stone circles nearby. Ritual or funerary monuments include menhirs, a wedge-shaped gallery grave, a flat-topped cairn with urn burials, and a circle of contiguous stones which yielded Late Neolithic and Early Bronze Age pottery. There are also several cashels and a crannog.
lunula: SYNONYMS OR RELATED TERMS: pl. lunulae
CATEGORY: artifact
DEFINITION: A crescent-shaped sheet of gold, probably worn as a collar or chest ornament in the Early Bronze Age, possibly for rituals. Their incised geometric decoration suggests is similar to that on bell beakers. They originated with the food vessel people of Ireland, Scotland, and perhaps Wales in the Early Bronze Age, and traded not only to southern England but also across to northern Europe. The decoration has led to the suggestion that it imitates the multiple-strand necklaces of jet and amber that are also found during the Early Bronze Age.
Lyon ware: CATEGORY: artifact
DEFINITION: Fine color-coated cups and beakers with rough-cast appliqué or rusticated decoration. Made at Lyon in France, and imported to other parts of the Roman empire (mainly for military markets) from c. AD 43 through to c. AD 70.
Melanesia: CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: The region comprising New Guinea, the Bismarck Archipelago, the Solomons, Vanuatu, New Caledonia, Fiji, and minor intermediate groups. Early Australoid settlers reached New Guinea when it was joined to Australia, by at least 30,000-40,000 years ago, and the New Guinea Highlands have a long, stable archaeological sequence extending into the Holocene (Kospie, Kiowa, Kafianvana). The Highlands may also have seen an independent development of early Holocene horticulture (Kuk). The Bismarcks and Solomons (Kilu) seem to have been occupied by c 30,000 bp. Settlement of the rest of Melanesia may have occurred as part of the expansion of Austronesian speakers in the Pacific. Major archaeological entities include the Lapita culture and the Manaasi pottery tradition.
Michelsberg: CATEGORY: culture
DEFINITION: A Middle Neolithic culture of Belgium, northeastern France, the Rhineland and parts of Switzerland from c 4500-4000 BC. It occupies a frontier zone on the borders of the Danubian culture, TRB culture, and western Neolithic complex, and shares traits with all three. The type site is a hilltop enclosure in Baden-Württemberg, Germany. There are many regional subgroups. The Belgian one has leaf-shaped arrowheads, antler combs, flint mines, and enclosures similar in construction to causewayed camps, and may have had links with the Windmill Hill culture of Britain. In the Rhineland and Low Countries, the culture was closely related to Funnel-Necked Beaker Culture and a succession to the Röessen Culture. Pottery forms include pointed- and round-based vessels with flaring rims and flat pottery disks (plats à pain) which were probably lids. One of innovations was use of deep mines for flint (Spiennes in Belgium, Rijckholt in Netherlands) where axes were made. Contacts by the Michelsberg with late Mesolithic hunter-gatherers north of the loess zone gave rise to semiagricultural communities, as evidenced by relics from about 4000 BC found in the Netherlands delta at Swifterbant in Flevoland and Hazendonkborn and Bergschenhoekborn in Zuid-Holland.
microburin: SYNONYMS OR RELATED TERMS: microburin technique
CATEGORY: lithics
DEFINITION: A microlith produced by notching and snapping a blade; a small piece of stone snapped off of a microlith that is a byproduct of the manufacture of microliths. A blade is notched and then snapped off where the chipping has narrowed and weakened it. One piece becomes a microlithic tool, while the residue (the microburin) still shows traces of the original notch and fracture. Certain trapeze-shaped microliths were made from the central part of a double-notched blade, in which case both ends have the appearance of microburins. This procedure allowed the maker to obtain a strong head with a sharp point by breaking up flint blades after making a notch in them -- a practice widespread in Mesolithic as means of manufacturing arrowheads. The name originates from the erroneous belief that these pieces were the same as burins.
Millares, Los: CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: A walled township, with projecting bastions and four outlying forts, near the coast in Almeria, southeast Spain. The cemetery includes 100 megalithic bombs. The pottery, of the Millaran culture, consisted of plain ware, including troncoconic vessels and carinated forms, and also much decorated ware. Symbolism appears on the decorated ware and on other pottery, stone, and bone. Arrowheads were bifacially worked, leaf-shaped, rhomboid, and barbed-and-tanged and copper was in common use. The settlement was townlike, with rows of stone houses, alleys, and a central communal place within the walls. An artificial watercourse may have led to the settlement. There was specialization of production between households. Their culture was succeeded by that represented by Beakers.
Minyan Ware: CATEGORY: ceramics
DEFINITION: A distinctive Middle Helladic pottery -- a gray or yellow wheelmade ware of high quality first appearing at Troy VI and in Greece c 19th century BC. It was the first wheelmade pottery to be produced in Middle Bronze Age Greece. It was ancestral to Mycenaean pottery, and may represent a movement of new peoples into the Aegean area, the first Greek speakers. Traditionally it has been associated with an apparently violent end to the Early Helladic culture, c 2000-1900 BC, and the arrival of Greek-speaking peoples in the Aegean. The term was coined by Heinrich Schliemann. The ware had a soaplike feeling and its forms were modeled after metal objects.
mortarium: CATEGORY: artifact
DEFINITION: A Roman grinding bowl, or mortar; a culinary pottery form. Examples are often stamped with maker's name, and some sophisticated versions have been found.
Nagyrév: CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: The type site for a regional group of the Hungarian Early Bronze Age; the initial culture in the tripartite sequence distributed in the lowlands of northern Hungary, dated to c 2300-1500 BC. This first phase shows connections with the Beaker and Vucedol cultures, while the later phase is contemporary with early Unetice. The Nagyrév precedes the Hatvan and Füzesabony. Most known settlement sites are tells surrounded by enclosing banks and ditches. Timber-framed houses are common, though some clay houses are found at Tószeg. Rich grave goods are rare, occurring predominantly in the Budapest area. A universal pottery form is the one- or two-handled cup with tall funnel neck in black burnished ware.
Nana Mode: CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: An Iron Age village site in the Central African Republic, dated to about the 7th century AD. Excavations have revealed pottery decorated by a carved wooden toothed wheel or disk. It has been suggested that this type of pottery may have been made by speakers of an Ubangian language.
natural type: CATEGORY: typology
DEFINITION: An archaeological type coinciding with an actual category recognized by the original toolmaker.
New Britain: CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: The largest island of the Bismarck Archipelago, southwestern Pacific, in Papua New Guinea. Archaeological discoveries include stone pestles and mortars like those from the New Guinea Highlands, an undated industry of waisted flaked tools from Kandrian, and the first discovered Lapita site (Watom Island. The Talasea obsidian source, the most important in the southwestern Pacific and quarried since at least 9000 BC, is on New Britain. The island was probably settled by Papuan-speakers from New Guinea before 9000 BC.
New Guinea: CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: The largest island of Oceania, in the eastern Malay Archipelago, north of Australia. New Guinea was joined to Australia in low sea-level periods of Pleistocene and was probably first settled by early Australoids at the same time as its larger neighbor. New Guinea archaeology examines the Highlands, which is totally Papuan-speaking, and also the coasts, which is mixed Papuan and Austronesian. The Highland prehistoric sequence in totally aceramic. Stone mortars and pestles, many elaborate shape, are also found in the Highlands. The New Guinea coasts only have sequences back to 3000-2000 years ago as earlier sites were probably drowned by rising sea levels. The best-reported are Collingwood Bay and south coastal Papua, both with pottery. Some coastal groups had developed elaborate trading networks by the time of European contact. Almost the whole of New Guinea is occupied by speakers of Papuan languages, the original settlers of the island, who live mainly in the interior and southern sections. Ethnic composition is complex among the Papuans, who speak some 700 different languages.
New Guinea Highlands: CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: An area of Oceania which was unknown until the 1930s and whose population is Melanesian speakers of Papuan languages. Its prehistory goes back at least 26,000 years and supported agricultural systems dating back at least 6000 years.
Newgrange: SYNONYMS OR RELATED TERMS: New Grange
CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: The most famous and splendidly decorated of the Irish passage graves, part of the Boyne Valley cemetery, in Meath County. The kidney-shaped mound, dated to c 3100 BC, is over 100 meters in diameter and 13 meters high. The cairn itself was carefully made of alternate layers of stones and turf. A kerb of large stones carved with wavy lines, lozenges, triangles, etc. encloses the base of the mound. On either side of the entrance the green kerbstones were topped by a retaining wall of white quartz. Some distance from the original base of the mound is a surrounding circle of free-standing stones. The burial chamber, cruciform in plan, is roofed by corbelling and has three subsidiary cells; the tomb has a very long passage, 19 meters in length, and built of orthostats. Midwinter sunrise shines through an opening above the door to illuminate the central chamber, the clearest example of an astronomical orientation recorded from a European prehistoric monument. Many stones of both chamber and passage carry pecked designs including an unusual triple spiral. Excavation has shown that the upper surfaces of the capstones had drainage channels, as well as art which would have been invisible once the overlying cairn had been built. Traces of cremation burials were found in the cells of the chamber, and soil from a habitation site, possibly close to the tomb, had been used to pack the interstices of the passage roof. There are two radiocarbon dates around 3200 BC and the site was reoccupied after the tomb-builders had left it and the cairn had begun to slump by a group which used Late Neolithic and Beaker pottery.
Noin Ula: SYNONYMS OR RELATED TERMS: Noin-ula
CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: A range of hills in northern Mongolia near Lake Baikal where a rich burial site, possibly of the Xiongnu nobility of the 1st century AD, has been excavated. To the north of Ulaanbaatar on the Selenge River, Noin Ula had horse burials and the furnishings of one tomb were especially lavish. The prince for whom it was made must have been in contact with China, for his coffin was apparently made for him there, as were some of his possessions buried with him -- a lacquer cup inscribed with the name of its Chinese maker and dated September 5, 13 AD. His horse trappings are elaborately decorated and the saddle covered with leather threaded with black and red wool clipped to resemble velvet. The magnificent textiles in the tomb included a woven wool rug lined with thin leather with purple, brown, and white felt appliqué work. Other textiles are of Greco-Bactrian and Parthian origin. Some objects are similar to ones from Pazyryk in the Altai. The tombs, which were plundered in antiquity, take the form of wooden burial chambers in deep shafts over which earthen barrows were raised.
Nydam: CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: A bog in Schleswig, southern Jutland, which yielded a rich votive deposit of the Roman Iron Age. The main finds were more than 100 iron swords (some with damascened blades, others stamped with the maker's name), and a wooden boat some 21 m long. The boat was clinker-built, had no mast or sail and was provided with 15 rowlocks on each side. The bow and sternpost were upturned, and the vessel was steered by an oar. It is now a famous exhibit, the Nydamboot (Nydam boat). This 4th-century Viking ship was discovered in 1863 in the Nydam marsh. It was one of the most important archaeological finds of the Migration Period. The boat is believed to have been typical of the vessels used by the Anglo-Saxon migrants coming to England in the 5th century. Its construction, however, would have made this a dangerous journey and it is likely that its use was confined to the tideless sea of the Baltic.
Oshara tradition: CATEGORY: culture
DEFINITION: A Southwestern Archaic tradition of the Four Corners region of southwestern U.S. It was an Archaic hunting and gathering culture from c 5500 BC to c 400 AD. There are five phases based on projectile point form, artifact assemblages, and socioeconomic organization. These phases are: Jay, c 5000-4800 BC, and Bajada, c 4800-3300 BC of the Early Archaic with nomadic bands of foragers and hunters; the San Jose Phase, c 3300-1800 BC; the Armijo Phase, c 1800-800 BC, with maize horticulture introduced; and the En Medio Phase, c 800 BC-400 AD, which encompassed the Basketmaker II Phase of the Anasazi culture.
Ozieri Culture: CATEGORY: culture
DEFINITION: Late Neolithic culture of Sardinia, known from caves and open villages, and dated to the late 4th and 3rd millennia BC. It produced elaborately decorated, high-quality pottery. Classic Ozieri decorated ware has been dated to c 4100-3500 BC at the Grotta di Filiestru (Bonu Ighinu). There are rock-cut tombs with Beaker pottery and occasionally copper and silver objects and marble figurines.
Palmela: CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: A cemetery of four Copper Age (Chalcolithic) rock-cut tombs in Setúbal, Portugal, near Lisbon. Each has a kidney-shaped chamber, originally used for collective inhumation, entered by a long passage or through a hole in the roof. The cemetery forms the type site of a culture flourishing in central Portugal c 3800-3200 BC. A variety of amuletic objects in stone includes decorated plano-convex or cylindrical stylized human figurines, crescents, model hoes or adzes, and a pair of sandals from Alapraia. Stonework follows Neolithic traditions, but adds deeply concave-based arrowheads. The tombs were rich in Beaker material, including 50 beakers with copper knives and fragments of gold foil. Pottery, too, follows on from the Almeria culture, though foreign elements have been connected with the dark-slipped Urfirnis ware of Greece. There is also a distinctive type of arrowhead with near-circular copper blade and long tang, the Palmela point. The settlements are likely a variant of the Vila Nova de Sao Pedro culture.
Pecos classification: CATEGORY: technique
DEFINITION: A.V. Kidder's classification of Southwestern prehistory based on his Pecos excavation; a culture stage sequence devised at the first Pecos Conference of 1927 in an attempt to organize prehistoric material of the American Southwest. It is now restricted to the Anasazi tradition, including Basketmaker I-III and Pueblo I-V. Architecture and ceramics define the stages.
Peterborough Ware: CATEGORY: ceramics
DEFINITION: A poorly made, elaborately decorated pottery of the British Late Neolithic, found in southern England. The ornament consists of pits, bone, and wooden stick impressions and 'maggot' patterns made by impressing a bit of whipped cord into the soft clay. The earliest (Ebbsfleet) substyle developed from Grimston-Lyles Hill ware c 3500 BC and consisted of round-based vessels with fairly restrained ornament. The later variants have more complicated decoration and show the influence of Beaker pottery: the second (Mortlake) substyle still occurs on round-based vessels, but in the final (Fengate) substyle the pots are flat-bottomed and have many features which lead on to the collared urns of the Bronze Age. These vessels were probably intended for everyday domestic use.
phoneme: CATEGORY: language
DEFINITION: In linguistics, a term for a unit of speech which is recognized as significant in a particular language. It is the smallest unit of speech distinguishing one word (or word element) from another, as the sound p in cap which separates that word from cab" and "can." In Chinese speakers hear and use aspirated and unaspirated 'p' as separate sounds but English speakers do not."
Pit-Comb Ware: SYNONYMS OR RELATED TERMS: Pit-Comb ware
CATEGORY: ceramics
DEFINITION: A coarse pottery with deep round-based bowls decorated with pits and comb impressions and used in the circumpolar cultures of the forest zone of northeast Europe. The area includes that around the southern Baltic and glacial outwash of central and eastern Poland. Its makers were probably hunters and fishers, making little use of the techniques of food production, although adopting such Neolithic traits as pot-making an ax-grinding. There are few sites and little data.
Pnyx or pnyx: CATEGORY: structure
DEFINITION: An ancient Greek open-air auditorium for public (popular) assemblies; the site in Athens (a hill to the west of the Acropolis) where the Ecclesiae were held. It was a semicircular rising ground, with an area of 12,000 square yards, leveled with a pavement of large stones, and surrounded by a wall, behind which was the bema or platform from which speakers addressed the people. It was used from the 6th century BC and remodeled in the 4th century BC.
podium: SYNONYMS OR RELATED TERMS: plural podiums, podia
CATEGORY: structure
DEFINITION: In architecture, any of various elements that form the foot or base, of a structure, such as a raised pedestal or base, a low wall supporting columns, or the structurally or decoratively emphasized lowest portion of a wall. The podium formed a sort of shelf or seat around a wall. The term podium is also used for raised platforms in general, as for speakers, and for a low basement. The architectural podium is usually designed with a modeled base and plinth at the bottom; a central surface known as a die, or dado; and a projecting cornice, or cap. Major Roman examples can be seen in the Maison Carrée (c 12 BC) in Nîmes, France, and the Temple of Fortuna Virilis (c 40 BC) in the Forum Boarium at Rome.
Polada: CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: An Early Bronze Age lake dwelling site near the southern end of Lake Garda in Lombardy, Italy, the type site of the Polada culture, c 2200-1600 BC. The culture was characterized by a coarse undecorated ware forming deep carinated cups and various simple jars. The strap handles were often surmounted by knobs. Tlat and slightly flanged axes were made of bronze. Antler was much used, and objects and vessels of wood survive on waterlogged sites. A variety of settlement types occur, including hill sites and lake villages like Polada itself. The Polada people were accomplished metalworkers, producing a range of tools and weapons showing strong connections with Unetice and other Early Bronze Age groups north of the Alps. The Polada culture has features derived from Beaker assemblages, such as wristguards and v-perforated buttons, also.
Polynesia: CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: A vast region of scattered islands in the central Pacific occupied by closely related ethnic groups, falling mostly within a triangle made up of the Hawaiian Islands, New Zealand, and Easter Island. Western Polynesia was settled by Austronesian speakers from Southeast Asia (Lapita culture) around 1500 BC, and migrations progressed throughout the triangle until New Zealand was reached c 900 AD. The Polynesians are a homogeneous population in terms of language and social organization, which developed into powerful chiefdoms in the larger islands. The Polynesian economy was based on tuber and fruit horticulture. Pottery production ceased in Western Polynesia c 300 AD and was never present in most eastern islands nor in New Zealand. Western Polynesia consists of Tonga, Samoa, and Tuvalu; Eastern Polynesia includes the Society, Cook, Austral, Marquesas, Tuamotu, and Hawaiian Islands, Easter Island, and New Zealand.
Polynesian Outliers: SYNONYMS OR RELATED TERMS: Polynesian outliers
CATEGORY: culture
DEFINITION: Communities occupying the 19 small islands to windward (east) of the large Melanesian islands of the Solomons, New Hebrides, Vanuatu, New Caledonia, and on the southern fringes of Micronesia. Archaeology and linguistics suggest settlement by a back-movement from western Polynesia (Samoa, Futuna, Ellice) perhaps starting in the 1st millennium AD. Archaeological evidence indicates that by 1300 BC islands in northern Vanuatu were settled by the makers of the distinctive Lapita pottery from Melanesian islands to the west.
polypod bowl: CATEGORY: artifact
DEFINITION: A bowl that stands on two, three, or four small legs -- found especially in Middle American archaeology. The form was also popular among the southwestern groups of the Beaker folk and in related central European wares.
postprocessual archaeology: SYNONYMS OR RELATED TERMS: post-processual explanation, postprocessual approach
CATEGORY: technique
DEFINITION: A relatively new school of archaeological thinking that uses the ideational strategy and cautions against the shortcomings of scientific methods and the new (or processual) archaeology. It was formulated in reaction to the perceived limitations of functional-processual archaeology and pushes for an individualizing" or "idiosyncratic" approach that is influenced by structuralism critical theory and neo-Marxist thought. It emphasizes social factors in human societies both the active role of individuals as decision makers and the meaning-laden contexts in which decisions are made. It is based on the notions that culture must be understood as sets of symbols that evoke meanings and that these vary depending on particular contexts of use and the histories of artifacts and the people who use them."
Praia das Macas: CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: Two Chalcolithic chambered tombs near Lisbon, Portugal. In its first phase it was a simple rock-cut tomb and subsequently a passage grave with partially corbelled chamber was added. The rock-cut tomb contained decorated slate plaques and other material of Late Neolithic or early Chalcolithic type with a date of c 2300 BC. The later tomb, which blocked the entrance to the earlier tomb, contained about 150 burials, Beaker pottery, Palmela points, and a tanged dagger. Its date is 1690 BC.
Ptah: SYNONYMS OR RELATED TERMS: Phthah
CATEGORY: deity
DEFINITION: In Egyptian religion, the creator god and maker of things, the patron of crafts and craftsmen, and represented as a mummy. His chief cult center was at Memphis, capital of Egypt from the 1st Dynasty, worshipped from earliest times and throughout Dynastic Period. The Greeks identified Ptah with Hephaestus (Vulcan), the divine blacksmith. With his companion Sekhmet and Nefertem, he was one of the Memphite Triad of deities. As a mortuary god, Ptah was often fused with Seker (or Soker) and Osiris to form Ptah-Seker-Osiris.
Pueblo or pueblo: CATEGORY: chronology; culture; structure
DEFINITION: In its capitalized form, a term for a stage in various chronologies of the American Southwest, typically spanning the time period from 700 AD to the 1700s and to a specific Native American group, culture, or site of this time. These Native Americans are believed to be the successors of the prehistoric Anasazi, Hohokam, and Mogollon. The lowercased form is a term for village, applied to the sites in the American Southwest where Pueblo lived. Often these were apartment-like complexes of rectangular living rooms, built close together and often arranged in several stories or terraces, made of wattle and daub. This building style is especially associated with the Anasazi tradition. The chronological period followed the Basketmaker and was divided into five stages at the 1927 Pecos Conference: Pueblo I (700-850/900), Pueblo II (900-1100/1150), Pueblo III (1100/1150-1300), Pueblo IV (1300-1600), and Pueblo V (1600-1700s).
Remedello Sotto: SYNONYMS OR RELATED TERMS: Remedellian
CATEGORY: site; culture
DEFINITION: A village and cemetery in Lombardy, Italy of the Chalcolithic Remedello culture of the Po valley and Veneto in the 3rd millennium BC. Its famous cemetery of 117 tombs is the type site of a Copper Age culture. Skeletons were crouched in trench graves, accompanied by bifacially flaked fling daggers, triangular copper daggers; halberds, axes, and awls in copper, and barbed-and-tanged flint arrowheads. Pottery was scarce and variable. Sherds of beakers have been found associated with this material with a date c 2500 BC.
Rhenish ware: CATEGORY: artifact
DEFINITION: Pottery from Gaul and the Rhineland imported into Britain during the late 2nd century AD and later. It has a thin red paste and a black metallic color coat; some of the vessels are decorated with scrolls or sometimes words in fine white paint. The commonest form is an indented rouletted beaker. Close imitations appear to have been made in Britain in the Nene Valley.
S-twist: CATEGORY: artifact
DEFINITION: Cordage ply twisted to the maker's right.
Samian ware: SYNONYMS OR RELATED TERMS: Terra Sigillata, terra sigillata ware
CATEGORY: ceramics
DEFINITION: A distinctive Roman pottery produced mainly in south and central Gaul and the Moselle valley in the first century BC and first three centuries AD; later it was made in Britain (Colchester). It was copied from Italian Arretine ware and was itself widely imitated. It is a red ware with a bright glossy surface, plain or elaborately decorated by means of molds. Its second name derives from the stamp with which the pottery frequently added his name to his products. The maker's name was stamped on the pottery, but the decorations, the shape, the fabric, all help in dating and tracing its origin. The shapes come from metal prototypes. The forms, decorations, and stamps have allowed a detailed chronology to be established. The wares provide a valuable means of dating the other archaeological material found with them.
San Pedro: CATEGORY: culture
DEFINITION: The final chronological period of the Cochise culture in the Atacama region of northern Chile, contemporaneous with Tiahuanaco in Bolivia, c 500-1000 AD. Polychrome kero or beaker-shaped vessels are found in graves and typically, tool assemblages contain seed-grinding tools such as manos and metates, mortars and pestles, and a variety of projectile points, including the narrow stemmed, side-notched type which first appeared during Chiricahua. Pit houses (houses of poles and earth built over pits) are also characteristic. During the San Pedro stage, pottery appeared in the area of the Mogollon Indians. The Cochise tradition may be taken as the base for subsequent cultural developments among various Indians in the Southwest.
Sarnowo: CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: Site of Kuyavian long barrows in north-central Poland, dated c 3100-2900 BC. Traces of ard-marks have been preserved under one of the nine trapezoidal-plan barrows. They belong to the Funnel Beaker culture.
Savernake ware: CATEGORY: artifact
DEFINITION: Output from a substantial Roman pottery industry focused in northwest Wiltshire, especially the area now known as Savernake Forest. A number of kilns have been excavated and together suggest a nucleated industry comprising many separate workshops. The pottery itself is typically light grey in color, flint-tempered, with clay pellets and grog visible in the fabric. Typical products include jars, bowls, flagons, butt beakers, and platters. Output starts at about the time of the Roman conquest or a little before and continues through into the later 2nd century AD.
Schönfeld group: CATEGORY: culture
DEFINITION: Late Neolithic group in southeast Germany which may be a regional variation of Corded Ware or related to the Tiefstichkeramik of the late Funnel Beaker culture. The ceramics have distinctive shallow parabolic bowls with incised zigzag line patterns.
Semite: CATEGORY: culture; language
DEFINITION: A name applied to the speakers of a set of related languages who inhabited portions of southwestern Asia since the time of the first cities. Semitic languages are characterized by the importance of the consonants, usually three forming the root of each word. The vowels are omitted altogether in a number of the scripts. The Semites are first recorded on the steppe margins of the Arabian desert, encroaching upon the Sumerians to form the kingdom of Akkad c 2400 BC. The Amorites appear c 2000 in the same area and in Syria-Palestine, where they settled to become the Canaanites. The Khabiru (Hebrews) appear in the same context. In the 12th century BC, the Amorites were followed by the Aramaeans, particularly in inland Syria. The Phoenicians from the 9th century BC carried their Semitic language over much of the Mediterranean. Arabic and Hebrew are the most important surviving Semitic languages. Most, probably all, alphabetic scripts derive from the Semitic alphabet, created sometime in the 2nd millennium BC. The Semitic script was invented by speakers of some Semitic language, possibly Phoenician, who lived in the northern part of the Fertile Crescent.
shaft-hole: CATEGORY: artifact
DEFINITION: A hole in an implement or weapon to hold the haft. A shaft-hole ax is an ax-head of metal or stone with a hole through it for hafting. Bronze axes and adzes from Mesopotamia of at least 2700 BC are shaft-hole types, the hole for the handle being formed in a mold. This method eliminated lashing the blades and permitted a heavier head than the thin-bladed Egyptian models. Shaft-hole axes and adzes were also being cast in Crete in about 2000 BC. The Beaker folk, Late Neolithic-Early Bronze Age people living about 6,000 years ago in Europe, also used the shaft-hole battle-ax.
Shamarkian: CATEGORY: culture
DEFINITION: A Nubian microlithic industry of 8000-6000 years ago in the Sudanese Nile Valley. The typology of the industry shows certain Saharan affinities. By the 6th millennium BC, some of the tool makers had adopted a specialized fishing economy using harpoons with barbed bone heads, as seen at Catfish Cave near the Second Nile Cataract.
sieving: CATEGORY: technique
DEFINITION: A technique of particle size analysis used to determine the size grades of pebble gravel, sand, and coarse silt in sediment and soils of archaeological deposits. The archaeologist processes all the earth from the site through a fine mesh, then does dry screening in a shaker frame or wet sieving with flowing water. It improves the recovery rate of artifacts. For lighter soils, dry sieving may be effective. Wet sieving is used for more claylike material and for recovering bones, shells, seeds, and other biological remains. The sieved residues are then dried and sorted by hand. The sample is placed on the top sieve of a series of nested sieves. Sieve mesh sizes are standardized. Wet sieving as part of a flotation technique is used to recover small remains from sites.
Single Grave culture: SYNONYMS OR RELATED TERMS: Single-Grave Culture
CATEGORY: culture
DEFINITION: Late Neolithic cultures of Scandinavia, northern Germany, and the Low Countries, dated to c 2800-2400 BC. The burial rite was inhumation of a single corpse under or within a round barrow, and sometimes laid in a pit grave or a mortuary house. The burials include the stone battle-ax and corded ware beakers. The Single Grave culture has traditionally been regarded as intrusive in northern Europe because of the contrast with the collective burial in megalithic tombs practiced by the earlier Neolithic TRB people in the same area. It is possible that it developed out of the TRB culture and that the changes in the archaeological record at this time can be explained in terms of changing social systems -- more complex social structures and the emergence of elites. The burial mounds are sometimes multi-phase with the sequence of under-grave, bottom-grave, and over-grave.
sponge finger: CATEGORY: artifact
DEFINITION: A type of stone object found in later Neolithic and early Bronze Age graves in northern and western Europe, often associated with Beaker pots. Sponge fingers, shaped rather like the modern-day biscuits of the same name, are elongated stones with a D-shaped cross section and rounded ends that typically show signs of wear. They were perhaps used in pottery production or leatherworking as burnishers or spatulae.
stone circle: CATEGORY: feature; structure
DEFINITION: A ring of standing stones, either circular or near-circular, found in the British Isles from the Neolithic and Early Bronze Age. There are almost 1000 stone circles, some surrounded by a ditch, with the most famous examples being Stonehenge, Avebury, and Callanish. Two atypical examples are in Brittany. The standing stones which make up these circles are widely spaced; in many examples they are incorporated into a ring-bank of smaller piled stones which has one opening as the entrance. A local variant is the recumbent stone circle of Aberdeenshire in which the entrance is marked by a large horizontal stone flanked by tall portal stones. A recumbent stone is also a feature of circles in southwest Ireland, but here the two tallest stones are placed diametrically opposite the horizontal stone. Two of the Scottish recumbent stone circles have yielded Beaker pottery, while urn burials in various 'standard' circles were of Bronze Age type. Circles are often associated with cairns, menhirs, and alignments. Many have tried to interpret the complex geometric layouts and placement of the stones within an astronomical base. There has been much discussion about the validity of various theories and there is no agreement on the subject.
stylistic analysis: CATEGORY: technique
DEFINITION: Artifact analysis focused on form and function as well as the decorative styles used by the makers, used very often for ceramics.
Swieciechów flint: CATEGORY: geology
DEFINITION: Variety of flint found in the Holy Cross Mountains of central Poland, used by the Funnel Beaker culture and distributed over a broad area. It was commonly made into very large blades and axes.
Swieciechow flint: CATEGORY: artifact
DEFINITION: A variety of flint from the Holy Cross Mountains of central Poland. It is dark gray to black with flecks of white or light gray. Exploited primarily by communities of the Funnel Beaker culture and distributed over a broad area in the Bug, Vistula, and Oder drainings. Commonly found in the form of very large blades up to one foot long, and axes.
technology: CATEGORY: term
DEFINITION: One of the three basic components of culture; the systematic study of techniques for making and doing things. It is the means by which humans have developed things to help them adapt to and exploit their environment. By virtue of his nature as a toolmaker, man has been a technologist from the beginning, and the history of technology encompasses the whole evolution of man.
Tiahuanaco: SYNONYMS OR RELATED TERMS: Tiwanaku
CATEGORY: site; culture
DEFINITION: Large urban and ceremonial site which dominated the Titicaca Basin and the high Andes of Bolivia from c 100-1250 AD, a major Middle Horizon site and probably the capital of an empire. The central area has principal religious structures on a large rectangular plaza, a large U-shaped mound around a spring, and a monumental Gate of the Sun cut from a single block of stone. The Tiahuanaco people had trade links with the Amazon jungle and the Pacific coast, exporting potatoes, root crops, and llama products. In the 10th century, Tiahuanaco colonies were established on the coasts of southern Peru and northern Chile. Tiahuanaco's distinctive art and architectural styles influenced the central highlands and southern Peru, northern Chile, Bolivia, and Argentina. Tiahuanacan influence spread over a wide area of the Central Andes and is especially evident because of its unique ceramics. Typically, pottery was pointed black-on-white on a red polished surface, although later styles employed as many as six colors. Geometric designs were common as well as stylized pumas, condors, and serpents. The kero (a flared-rim beaker) is a characteristic form. Articles of bronze, copper and gold suggest that the city may also have been an important metallurgical center. Iconographic links with Huari to the north are such that a strong economic and cultural bond between the two is assumed. Tiahuanaco and Huari together constitute the Middle Horizon style of the Andes.
Tiefstichkeramik: CATEGORY: ceramics
DEFINITION: A style of pottery decoration used by the Funnel Beaker culture of Germany and Holland c 3000-2700 BC. The decoration is short, deeply incised bands and zigzags. The style is associated with the hunebed tombs.
Totonac: CATEGORY: culture
DEFINITION: A member of a Middle American Indian people of east-central Mexico. The Totonacs occupied the central part of Veracruz in Postclassic Period and possibly in Classic Period. Artifacts from ballgame, scrolls, and figurines are common. The Totonac lived in two environments -- high mesa, cool and rainy (highland Totonac), and coastal lowland, hot and humid (lowland Totonac). In ancient times, both grew corn (maize) and squash as staple crops. Lowland Totonac also kept bees, poultry, and hogs. Highland Totonac kept poultry and raised some livestock. At the time of the Spanish Conquest, Cempoala was the great city of the Totonacs with a population of around 30,000. The Totonacs paid tribute to Aztecs. Today, this region is dominated by speakers of Totonac, a distant relative of Mayan, and the Totonac themselves claim that they built El Tajín.
Upchurch ware: CATEGORY: artifact
DEFINITION: Romano-British pottery industry making polished and burnished black and grey wares (e.g. poppy head beakers) in the Upchurch Marshes of Kent in southeastern England.
Urewe ware: CATEGORY: ceramics; culture
DEFINITION: Characteristic Early Iron Age pottery type of the interlacustrine region of East Africa: southwest Kenya, northwest Tanzania, Rwanda, east Zaire, and south Uganda. It dates from the last centuries BC to the first centuries AD and is the name of a tradition of the Chifumbaze complex. Urewe ware was ancestral to the varied wares of the Early Iron age complex further south. Named after a site in southwest Kenya, Urewe ware's makers were clearly skilled workers of iron.
V-perforation: CATEGORY: artifact
DEFINITION: A method of making buttons in which two converging holes are drilled to meet at an angle below the surface. The technique was common in Europe in the Copper and Early Bronze Age, and used especially among the Beaker folk.
varnished ware: CATEGORY: artifact
DEFINITION: Pottery, usually small bowls, decorated with rough-cast scales or roundels, or rough-cast beakers in white fabric with greenish-brown shiny slip. Generally 1st century BC/AD in date and produced in central Gaul and on the Rhine.
Veselinovo: CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: Middle and Late Neolithic tell site of the Karanovo III culture in southern Bulgaria. Dated to the late 5th millennium BC, the culture marks a sharp break from the preceding Starcevo. It is contemporaneous with the early Vinca culture. The pottery is undecorated except for some cordons and is pear-shaped or cylindrical with flat bases. The beakers often have a curving handle with an upper knob.
Vila Nova de Sao Pedro: CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: Important Chalcolithic site near Santarém, Portugal with an unenclosed settlement c 3800 BC, succeeded by one surrounded by at least two bastioned stone walls, c 3200 BC. The first belonged to the Palmella culture and the final phase belonged to Beaker culture, c 2500 BC. Artifacts include copper axes, chisels, and daggers; pottery included Beaker material and local wares of the 3rd millennium BC. Strongly fortified settlements, such as this, accompanied by cemeteries containing rich collections of prestige goods suggest the appearance of a hierarchically organized society.
wedge-shaped gallery grave: SYNONYMS OR RELATED TERMS: wedge tomb
CATEGORY: structure
DEFINITION: A megalithic chamber tomb particular to Ireland in the Late Neolithic and some from the Middle-Late Bronze Age. There is a long narrow chamber of orthostats supporting capstones, which decrease in height toward the back; it would not have a separate entrance passage. The division between antechamber and burial area is marked by a sill slab or by stone jambs. The cairn may be round, oval, or D-shaped, and often has a retaining wall. The earliest grave goods are bucket-shaped pots of the Late Neolithic period, but Beaker pottery is predominant.
Wessex culture: SYNONYMS OR RELATED TERMS: Wessex Culture
CATEGORY: culture
DEFINITION: Early Bronze Age culture of southern England with cemeteries of found barrows of special types (bell, disc and saucer barrows and enclosures strangely labeled 'pond barrows') c 2650-1400 BC. It developed from the Beaker tradition and was closely related to the Armorican Tumulus Culture. The Wessex I period, c 2650-2000 BC, is associated with the major rebuilding of Stonehenge (III). There are rich grave goods, including bronze daggers and axes, amber and shale beads and buttons, copper and gold. The pottery is mainly incense cups and the first collared urns. In the Wessex II period, c 1650-1400 BC, cremation replaced inhumation and there are faience beads. Bronze was normal in Wessex II, and contained up to 17 percent tin. They had contacts with Egypt, Mycenae, and Crete. Unfortunately no settlements of the Wessex culture are known.
West Kennet: CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: A Neolithic long barrow, the largest of the Severn-Cotswold group of megalithic tombs, in Wiltshire, England, of c 3500 BC. The tomb has two pairs of transepts and a terminal chamber; the entrance opens from a crescent-shaped forecourt blocked by a straight facade of sarsen slabs. The burial was of 46 disarticulated inhumations and the chambers were filled with a mixture of soil, charcoal, sherds of Peterborough ware, and grooved ware and beaker fragments. That material has a date of 2500/2000 BC.
Wietrzychowice: CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: Neolithic Kuyavian long barrows of the Funnel Beaker culture in north-central Poland.
Windmill Hill: SYNONYMS OR RELATED TERMS: Windmill Hill culture
CATEGORY: site; culture
DEFINITION: Neolithic causewayed camp north of Avebury, Wiltshire, England, the type site of the culture of the same name. The camp of c 3350 BC has three ditch circuits which are part of the Avebury complex of Neolithic ritual monuments. Windmill Hill ware sensu stricto (decorated with grooves and pits), was closely followed by the oldest (Ebbsfleet) variant of Peterborough ware -- 3330 +/- 150. More recent levels have Peterborough styles, grooved ware, and beaker sherds. An earthen long barrow has a radiocarbon date of 4030 +/- 150 and there is a cemetery of Bronze Age round barrows. This culture and that of Peterborough were the two first main food-growing and cattle-raising peoples. Stone axes, coarse scrapers, and pressure-flaked leaf-shaped arrowheads were used. They raised pigs, cattle, goats, and had dogs for herding; cereals were grown. The pottery is now divided into separate traditions (Grimston-Lyles Hill, Hembury, Abingdon), and the rest of the cultural content, causewayed camps, long barrows, leaf-shaped arrowheads and polished flint or other stone axes, is now regarded as simply 'British Neolithic'. The culture existed until c 2500 BC.
Woodhenge: CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: Large wood circle, a sacred monument just northeast of Stonehenge in Wiltshire, England, and adjacent to Durrington Walls. It consists of a henge-type earthwork with a wooden structure inside. A central grave was surrounded in turn by six egg-shaped concentric rings of postholes, a ditch, and a bank with a single entrance. The long axis of the oval pointed to the midsummer sunrise; on this axis in the center of the shrine was found buried the skeleton of a three-year-old child, a ritual sacrifice. The pottery was a variant of the grooved ware style and Beaker sherds were also found. The monument has a radiocarbon date of c 2230-1800 BC.
wristguard: SYNONYMS OR RELATED TERMS: bracer
CATEGORY: artifact
DEFINITION: A rectangular plate of bone or stone, perforated on the ends and strapped to the forearm of an archer to prevent injury when the bowstring recoils. It is sometimes difficult to distinguish a wristguard from a whetstone. They occur commonly in Beaker contexts in Europe.
Zürich-Utoquai: CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: Neolithic lakeside settlement in Switzerland with a Horgen culture occupation c 3500-2800 BC. It had flat-based flower-pot pottery. A 3rd millennium BC Corded Ware occupation had beakers, polished stone axes, bone and flint tools, and wooden bowls and utensils.
Zambujal: CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: Village site with megalithic tombs and a Chalcolithic fortress near Lisbon, Portugal. It was a heavily fortified settlement of the Vila Nove De Sao Pedro culture; the walls are up to 10 m in thickness and have circular towers and a circular citadel. The pottery contains much Beaker material and local wares, c 2700-2200 BC.
Zimbabwe: SYNONYMS OR RELATED TERMS: Dzimbahwe
CATEGORY: structure
DEFINITION: Term applied by Shona speakers in Zimbabwe (country) to many stone-built enclosures located in the plateau between the Zambezi and Limpopo rivers of southern Africa. It would be the court or house of a chief (mambo) and built on a hill. More than 150 are known, including the major site near Fort Victoria, Great Zimbabwe.

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