Archaeology Wordsmith

Results for Cham:

Cham: CATEGORY: language
DEFINITION: A linguistic and ethnic group of the Austronesian family which once controlled the central coast of modern Vietnam as the state of Champa.
chamber pot: CATEGORY: artifact
DEFINITION: A bowl kept in a bedroom and used as a toilet
chamber tomb: SYNONYMS OR RELATED TERMS: chambered tomb
CATEGORY: structure
DEFINITION: A prehistoric tomb, often megalithic in construction, that contained a large burial chamber. Such a vault was usually used for successive burials over a long period of time. The term is also used for a rock-cut tomb, especially the shaft-and-chamber tomb, with a similar burial rite. Chamber tombs were built in many parts of the world and at many different times. The European varieties were called court cairn, dolmen, entrance grave, gallery grave, giants' grave, hunebed, passage grave, portal dolmen, tholos, transepted gallery grave, and wedge-shaped gallery grave. Many were rectangular chambers cut into the side of a hill and approached by a long entrance passage (dromos), especially in the Aegean.
chamberstick: CATEGORY: artifact
DEFINITION: A single candle holder with a curved handle coming from the base
Champ Durand: CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: A Neolithic fortification in Vendée, France and associated material of the Late Neolithic, including Peu-Richardien decorated pottery of c 3300-3000 BC.
Champa: CATEGORY: culture
DEFINITION: An ancient kingdom formed in 192 AD, during the breakup of the Han dynasty of China, corresponding roughly to present central Vietnam. Although the territory was at first inhabited mainly by wild tribes which struggled with the Chinese colonies in Tonkin, it gradually came under Indian cultural influence. Champa artifacts include well-developed sculpture and reliefs from the 7th century and impressive architecture from the 9th century. The kingdom was slowly absorbed into Vietnam and by the end of the 17th century had ceased to exist.
champlevé: SYNONYMS OR RELATED TERMS: champ-levé
CATEGORY: artifact; ceramics
DEFINITION: An enameling technique or an object made by the process, a form of inlay in which the pattern is cut out of the metal to be ornamented. The pattern was then filled with enamel frit and fused in an oven, or with polished stones or shells. Champlevé can be distinguished from the similar technique of cloisonné by a greater irregularity in the width of the metal lines. It developed as a Celtic art in western Europe in the Roman period and was copied by the Anglo-Saxons. In the Rhine River valley and in Belgium's Meuse River valley, champlevé production flourished especially during the late 11th and 12th centuries. It was often used in the decoration of the escutcheons on hanging bowls.
Champollion, Jean-François (1778-1867): CATEGORY: person
DEFINITION: French historian and linguist who founded scientific Egyptology and played a major role in the deciphering of Egyptian hieroglyphics by deciphering the Rosetta Stone. A masterful linguist, Champollion started publishing papers on the hieroglyphic and hieratic elements of the Rosetta Stone in 1821-1822, and he went on to establish an entire list of hieroglyphic signs and their Greek equivalents. He was first to recognize that some of the signs were alphabetic, some syllabic, and some determinative (standing for a whole idea or object previously expressed). His brilliant discoveries met with great opposition, however. He became curator of the Egyptian collection at the Louvre, conducted an archaeological expedition to Egypt, and received the chair of Egyptian antiquities, created specially for him, at the Collège de France. He also published an Egyptian grammar and dictionary, as well as other works about Egypt.
cruciform chamber: CATEGORY: structure
DEFINITION: A megalithic tomb, characteristic of the passage-tomb tradition in Ireland, in which a passage, a chamber, and three apses form a cross-shaped structure.
Linyi: SYNONYMS OR RELATED TERMS: Lin-i; Lin-yi; Champa
CATEGORY: culture
DEFINITION: An ancient Indochinese kingdom founded in 192 AD in the southern Shandong province, China, and lasting to the 17th century AD. In the past decade, at least ten important Western Han tombs have been excavated in this district, some richly furnished with paintings on silk and lacquers comparable to those from Mawangdui. One tomb contained nearly 5000 inscribed bamboo slips that preserve the texts of a number of late Eastern Chou philosophical works and military treatises, including the Sun Zi bing fa ('Master Sun on the Art of War'). The kingdom later became known as the Indianized kingdom of Champa, which was eventually absorbed by Vietnam.
Moi fort: SYNONYMS OR RELATED TERMS: Cham fort
CATEGORY: structure
DEFINITION: Small circular earthen-walled enclosures set in series along the foothills of the middle Mekong valley in Cambodia. They are considered late Neolithic, c 2500-2000 BC, with polished stone adzes and no metal.
Pachamachay: CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: Preceramic cave site in the central highlands of Peru, a base camp with a date of 11,800 bp. Occupation was highest between 9000-2000 bp.
shaft-and-chamber tomb: CATEGORY: structure
DEFINITION: A tomb in which the burials are laid in a side chamber opening from the bottom of a pit.
Thatcham: CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: Mesolithic sites in peat deposits of the Kennet Valley in England with dates from c 8000-6000 BC; all seem to contain Maglemosean artifacts.
wooden-chamber: CATEGORY: artifact
DEFINITION: Large wooden coffins which is an important form of burial chamber from late Neolithic times in China. A log or board enclosure contained nested wooden coffins and grave goods placed on display ledges within them. Wooden-chambers diffused to Korea and Japan in the early centuries AD.
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.
alcove: CATEGORY: feature
DEFINITION: A small auxiliary chamber in a wall, usu. Found in mit structures and often adjoining the east wall of the main chamber. They are much larger than apertures and niches.
alleé couverte: SYNONYMS OR RELATED TERMS: gallery grave
CATEGORY: structure
DEFINITION: One of the two types of French megalithic tomb, the other being the passage grave. These are long rectangular monuments, sometimes with a covering mound. There is no division between passage and chamber, though some have a small antechamber. They date from the 3rd millennium BC and are found mainly in Brittany and the Paris basin.
Andronovo culture: CATEGORY: culture
DEFINITION: A culture of southern Siberia, between the Don and Yenisei Rivers, dating to the 2nd millennium BC. The culture was relatively uniform in this large area and agriculture played a large role. Wheat and millet were cultivated and cattle, horses, and sheep bred. The metal-using culture (ores from the Altai), which succeeded the Afansievo, lived in settlements of up to ten large log cabin-like semisubterranean houses. Bowl- and flowerpot-shaped vessels were flat-bottomed, smoothed, and decorated with geometric patterns, triangles, rhombs, and meanders. Burial was in contracted position either in stone cists or enclosures with underground timber chambers. The wooden constructions in rich graves may have designated social differentiation. The Andronovo complex is related to the Timber-Grave (Russian Srubna) group in southern Russia and both are branches of the Indo-Iranian cultural block. The Andronovo were the ancestors of Karasuk nomads who later inhabited the Central Asiatic and Siberian steppes.
anta: CATEGORY: structure
DEFINITION: A short wall at a right angle to the long walls of a classical temple's cella. This term is also that for a Portuguese chambered tomb (5th millennium BC).
Antequera: SYNONYMS OR RELATED TERMS: Roman Anticaria, Moorish Madinah Antakira
CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: The site of a town in Málaga province, in the autonomous community (region) of Andalusia, southern Spain, northwest of Málaga, at the foot of the Sierra del Torcal which is famous for its three Neolithic (Copper Age) chambered tombs (dolmens): the Cuevas de Menga, de Viera, and El Romeral. They are partially cut into the hillside, but each is constructed differently. The Cueva de Menga has a huge orthostat chamber c 5 m wide, 3 m high, and 1.45 m long, roofed by five large capstones supported by three central pillars and drystone walls. Human figures in scenes are carved on its walls. The Cueva de Romeral has a magnificent corbel vault nearly 5 m high, dry-stone tholos, and a passage over 30 m long. The Cuevas de Viera has a long orthostat-lined passage with porthole slabs and a small square chamber. A cemetery of rock-cut tombs of the Bronze Age imitating the tholos form is nearby.
Argos: SYNONYMS OR RELATED TERMS: Argos (meaning agricultural plain)"
CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: City in the northeastern Peloponnese of Greece, just north of the head of the Gulf of Argolis. The name was applied to several districts of ancient Greece but it is most often used to describe the easternmost part of the Peloponnesian peninsula and the city of Argos was its capital. Homer described it as the fertile plain inhabited by Agamemnon, Diomedes, and other heroes in the Iliad". The site was probably occupied since the Neolithic / Early Bronze Age and was very prominent in Mycenaean times (c 1300-1200 BC). Argos was probably the base of Dorian operations in the Peloponnese c 1100-1000 BC and from then on the dominant city-state of Argolis until it allied itself with Sparta after the Peloponnesian War in 420 BC. In 392 it broke with Sparta to unite with Corinth in the Corinthian War. Argos later joined the Achaean League (229) and Argos became its center after the Roman conquest and destruction of Corinth (146). The city flourished in Byzantine times and did not decline until around 1204 AD. One tyrant Pheidon is thought to have introduced primitive coinage and a weights and measures system. Archaeological excavations began in 1854 on the Argive Heraeum and Argos was famed for its connection with the goddess Hera. There was a natural sanctuary there long before the Dorians came c 1100-1000 BC. The shrine is reported to be of extreme antiquity. The statue of Hera for a new 5th-century temple was done by the celebrated sculptor Polycleitus whose work was said to rival that of Pheidias the sculptor of the Parthenon. There is material evidence of Neolithic Early and Middle Bronze Age a Mycenaean cemetery with chamber tombs Geometric and Archaic features and ruins of the classical and Roman city. The Larisa hill was evidently the Mycenaean acropolis and citadel holding a classical temple. There was also a Roman theater and small odeum. The site is mostly covered by the modern city."
Arpachiyah: SYNONYMS OR RELATED TERMS: Arpachiyah, Tell
CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: A tell site in Iraq near Mosul on the Tigris inhabited in the Halaf and Ubaid periods (mid-6th to early 4th millennium BC). The Halaf settlements yielded a long pottery sequence and circular buildings with some rectangular antechambers on cobbled streets. The function of these buildings is unknown. The site appears to have been a specialized artisan village making the fine polychrome pottery. In addition to the painted polychrome wares, other finds include steatite pendants and small stone discs with incised designs, probably early stamp seals. There was pottery of northern Ubaid style and fine Halaf pottery, and stone amulets and figurines.
auger: SYNONYMS OR RELATED TERMS: augering (n)
CATEGORY: tool
DEFINITION: A tool used to probe into the ground and extract a small sample of a deposit without performing actual excavation. Its applications in archaeology are as a means of sampling and understanding the geological environment of a site and also for extracting peat for pollen analysis. There are various types of augers and they can be manual- or power-driven. Simple augers bring up samples on the thread of a drill bit. More elaborate ones open a chamber to collect a core after the drill has bored to an appropriate depth. Augering is generally restricted to the earliest stages of archaeological reconnaissance to determine the depth and characteristics of deposits.
Barnenez: CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: A Neolithic site in Brittany with radiocarbon dates in the 5th millennium BC. It consists of two long cairns, one with 11 passage graves placed side by side. They display a range of architectural techniques, using both large megalithic slabs and drystone walling; some chambers had corbelled vaults. Its dates may make it one of the earliest megalithic tombs in Europe.
barrow: SYNONYMS OR RELATED TERMS: burial mound; tumulus; burial cairn
CATEGORY: feature
DEFINITION: A round or elongated mound of earth or stones used in early times to cover one or more burials; a grave mound. The mound is often surrounded by a ditch, and the burials may be contained within a cist, mortuary enclosure, mortuary house, or chamber tomb. There are two types, the long (elongated) and the round barrow (also known as tumuli). The former were built in the Late Stone Age, the latter in the Bronze Age, though burial under a round mound was occasionally practiced during the Roman, Anglo-Saxon, and Viking periods.. The long barrow was a tribal or family burial vault built of stone slabs, some weighing many tons, and covered with earth or stones. The large, round barrows were often communal. They are often found in prehistoric sites in Britain -- earthen (or unchambered) long barrows from the Early and Middle Neolithic (Windmill Hill Culture). Other long barrows were constructed over megalithic tombs of gallery grave types. Most of the British round barrows incorporate circles of stakes. Bowl barrows --- simple round mounds, often surrounded by a ditch --- were the most common form, used throughout the Bronze Age and sporadically also in the Iron Age. The Wessex Culture of the southern English Early Bronze Age was characterized by special types of barrows: bell, disk, saucer, and pond barrows. Bell barrows have relatively small mounds and a berm or gap between the mound and the ditch; disk barrows are very small mounds in the center of a circular open space, surrounded by a ditch; saucer barrows are low disk-like mounds occupying the entire space up to the ditch; while the oddly named pond barrows are not mounds at all, but circular dish-shaped enclosures surrounded by an external bank. The related term 'cairn' is used to describe a mound constructed exclusively of stone. Barrow burials occur also in Roman and post-Roman times: one of the most famous of all barrows in Britain is that covering the Anglo-Saxon boat burial at Sutton Hoo.
Bayon: CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: An enormous sandstone monument in northwest Angkor, Cambodia, built c 1200 by the Buddhist king Jayavarman VII (1181-c 1220), the last great ruler of the Khmer empire. It was his temple-mountain and the center of his restored capital Angkor Thom. Bayon had a central circular sanctuary, situated within two bas-relief covered galleries, which vividly depicted the king's battles with Cham forces. Bayon was a distinctively Mahayana Buddhist central pyramid temple designed to serve as the primary locus of the king's royal cult and also as his own personal mausoleum.
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.
beehive tomb: SYNONYMS OR RELATED TERMS: tholos
CATEGORY: structure
DEFINITION: An architectural structure of the Mycenaean civilization, a pointed dome built up of overhanging (corbeled) blocks of conglomerate masonry cut and polished, often with an alley or approach and a great door. The rich or noble of the Bronze Age were buried in these sometimes enormous, perfectly proportioned vaults though they were built in the Shaft Grave Period as well, perhaps first in Messenia in the 16th century and then in Greece by the middle of the 15th century. The tholos tomb has three parts: a narrow entranceway, or dromos, often lined with fieldstones and later with cut stones; a deep doorway, or stomion, covered over with one to three lintel blocks; and a circular chamber with a high vaulted or corbeled roof, the thalamos. Most tholos tombs have collapsed, often when the lintel cracked and gave way, and their contents have largely been looted
Beersheba: CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: A site in southern Israel which was a frontier post in ancient Palestine. The earliest occupations were in 12th and 11th centuries BC, but the first town belonged to the period of the United Monarchy (10th century). The 8th century BC town wall with a great gateway flanked by double guard chambers and external towers has been excavated. There was also a 15-meter ring road inside the wall which divided the inner and outer towns. Beersheba may have been the administrative center of the region and there are indications of storerooms which may have contained the royal stores for the collection of taxes in kind (grain, wine, oil, etc.). The town was destroyed in the mid-7th century BC. Beersheba is first mentioned as the site where Abraham, founder of the Jewish people, made a covenant with the Philistine king Abimelech of Gerar (Genesis 21). Isaac and Jacob, the other patriarchs, also lived there (Genesis 26, 28, 46).
Beycesultan: CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: A tell on the upper Meander River of southwestern Anatolia (western Turkey) which has yielded evidence from the Chalcolithic to Late Bronze Age and of a culture contemporary with the Hittite empire. It is thought to have been the capital of the 2nd-millennium BC state of Arzawa. From the Chalcolithic, there was a cache of sophisticated copper tools and a silver ring, the earliest known use of that metal. Buildings that were religious shrines have been uncovered, almost unknown in Anatolia at those times. Rectangular shrine chambers were arranged in pairs, with ritual installations recalling the Horns of Consecration and Tree, or Pillar, cults of Minoan Crete. A palace building at the same site, dating from the Middle Bronze Age (c 1750 BC), Beycesultan's most prosperous period, had reception rooms at first-floor level, also in the Minoan manner. In common with most other Bronze Age buildings in Anatolia, its walls were composed of a brick-filled timber framework on stone foundations. The private houses of this period at Beycesultan were all built on the megaron plan. The whole settlement and a lower terrace on the river was enclosed by a perimeter wall. The town was violently destroyed and though it was rebuilt, it remained relatively poor into the Late Bronze Age.
Bougon: CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: A cemetery site of megalithic tombs at Deux-Sèvres, France with radiocarbon dates to the mid-5th millennium BC, making them among the oldest chambered tombs in Europe. There is pottery from the Early Neolithic and Late Neolithic/Early Bronze Age.
bowsing: SYNONYMS OR RELATED TERMS: bosing
CATEGORY: technique
DEFINITION: A technique used to locate features beneath the surface, such a buried chambers or ditches, by thumping the ground and sensing the differences between compacted and undisturbed earth. A resulting resonant sound may indicate a buried chamber or pit. It is an unsophisticated but effective method of searching for earthworks at archaeological sites, especially in chalk subsoil. Wooden mallets or lead-filled tools are examples of implements used. The verb 'bose' or 'bowse' means to test the ground for the presence of buried structures by noting the sound of percussion from a weighted striker.
broch: CATEGORY: structure
DEFINITION: A prehistoric circular towerlike building of dry stone which was peculiar to the north and west of Scotland. The hollow walls, which contained chambers and stairways, were built of dry masonry and the tower was usually 13-20 m in diameter and tapered inwards in the upper courses. The walls may be up to 20 feet (4 m) thick. Over 400 are known in Scotland and the structures served as fortified homesteads. They originated in the mid-1st millennium BC, but most dated from the beginning of the Christian era. The Broch of Mousa on Shetland is the best preserved and most famous example. They are always in a strong defensive position, close to the sea.
burial: CATEGORY: term
DEFINITION: Inhumation or cremation -- the laying of a body in the ground, in a natural or artificial chamber, or in an urn after burning. In collective burial, a single chamber is used for more than one corpse. A primary burial is one for which a burial monument such as a barrow was erected. The term secondary burial is used for the practice of collecting the bones of a skeleton after the flesh has decayed, and placing them in some form of ossuary. In fractional burial, only some of the bones are so collected and interred. Archaeologists can learn a great deal about prehistoric societies by studying skeletons and the way they were buried. In some cultures, bodies were buried stretched out; in others they were placed in the ground in a fetal, or flexed position. In still other societies, the dead were exposed on platforms or in charnel houses, then when the flesh had decayed or been scavenged, the disarticulated bones were made into a bundle and buried. Sometimes bodies were cremated and the remains buried. Goods interred with a burial give many clues to the social position of the person and their culture and the study of bones can reveal sex, age, and information about nutrition and disease. The earliest deliberate burial of their dead was that of Neanderthal man of Palaeolithic times 100,000 years ago. They were buried in the cave in which the family continued to live. Food and tools were buried with them, proof of the belief in an afterlife. Neolithic man buried his dead in the long barrow, a communal tomb. Inhumation was followed by cremation in the Late Bronze Age.
capstone: CATEGORY: structure
DEFINITION: A stone slab placed horizontally over a series of other stones, at the top of an arch, often as a roof. Some are large blocks used to span the walls of dolmens, cists, passage graves, and other megalithic chamber tombs.
Carnac: CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: A village in western France near the Atlantic coast that is the site of more than 3,000 prehistoric stone monuments of the alignment type. These menhirs are arranged in three groups of 10-13 parallel rows, which ended at semicircles or rectangles of standing stones. The single stone menhirs and multistone dolmens were made from local granite and are worn by time and weather and covered in white lichen. The area also has a series of long cairns of mid-Neolithic to Early Bronze Age which covers funerary chambers and secondary cists. The grave goods included polished axes of rare stones such as jadeite and fibrolite, stone boxes containing charcoal, cattle bones, and pottery. The area was clearly an important ritual center, venerated by the Bretons until fairly recent times, and adopted by the Romans for religious purposes. Christians added crosses and other symbols to the stones. In 1874, James Miln uncovered the remains of a Gallo-Roman villa one mile east of the village. The Musée Miln-Le Rouzic in Carnac has an important collection of artifacts.
Carrowmore: CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: A cemetery site in Sligo, Ireland, with megalithic tombs consisting of circular boulder kerbs and boulder-built chambers. The radiocarbon date is c 4500 BC, which would make these the earliest chambered tombs of Ireland.
casemate wall: CATEGORY: feature; structure
DEFINITION: A defensive wall consisting of parallel walls with a space or internal chambers in the thickness of the wall. Sometimes the chambers were rooms; sometimes they were filled with debris or left empty.
Cassibile: CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: A Late Bronze Age settlement and cemetery containing 2,000 rock-cut chamber tombs near Syracuse in southeast Sicily. It is the type site of a Late Bronze Age phase -- Pantalica II -- of the early 1st millennium BC. The Pantalica culture was characterized by large urban settlements. Artifacts include a distinctive buff painted ware with plume or 'feather' motifs, c 1250-1000 BC, and a number of typical bronze types, including stilted and thick-arc fibulae and shaft-hole axes.
catacomb: CATEGORY: feature; structure
DEFINITION: A subterranean cemetery of galleries or passages with side niches (loculi) for tombs. Catacombs consisted of galleries, burial niches, and chambers cut into the rock and the walls and ceilings decorated with pagan and Christian motifs. The term was first applied to the subterranean cemetery under the Basilica of San Sebastiano (on the Appian Way near Rome), which was reputed to have been the temporary resting place of the bodies of Saints Peter and Paul in the last half of the 3rd century. By extension, the word came to refer to all the subterranean cemeteries around Rome, though they are widely known elsewhere, especially around the Mediterranean. Their subterranean nature is explained by the need for security and secrecy on the part of the Christian religion that was banned in many places.
Cerveteri: SYNONYMS OR RELATED TERMS: ancient Caere; Roman Caere vetus, Etruscan Xaire, Greek Agylla
CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: One of the most important cities in Italy, north of Roman, whose earliest occupation was the Iron Age Villanovan of the 9th-8th centuries BC. It flourished from the 7th-5th centuries as one of the 12 major cities of the Etruscan federation. Two necropoleis from this period have been identified, with evidence for pit, trench, and chamber tombs. Accumulating wealth is reflected in the grandeur of many surviving tombs. There were two ports, Pyrgi and Alsium, the former with evidence of temples, which have provided scholars of the Etruscan language an important pieces of evidence -- a text on gold laminae. The city lost importance during the Roman period, and by the early Empire was reported to be no more than a village.
chaltoon: SYNONYMS OR RELATED TERMS: choltun, chultun
CATEGORY: feature
DEFINITION: A series of underground chambers found in areas of Mesoamerica that were used principally for storage. Shaped like bottles, they may also have been used as seat baths or burial chambers.
Chassey: SYNONYMS OR RELATED TERMS: Chasséen culture
CATEGORY: culture
DEFINITION: A Middle Neolithic culture found over most of France, named for the Camp de Chassey, which appeared c 4300 BC. By this time, Chassey pottery had superseded impressed ware in the south and the new style is found in caves, village sites, cists, pit graves, and megalithic chamber tombs. The earliest Chassey pottery is often decorated with scratched geometric patterns, whereas the later wares are more plain and have pan-pipe (flûte de pan) lugs. In north and central France, the culture appeared c 3800. In many areas the Chassey people were the first Neolithic farmers. The pottery and flintwork of the Paris basin differ in many ways from those of the Midi. One distinctive form of vessel, the vase support with scratched decoration, is confined to the Paris basin and western France. Both cave and open settlements were occupied.
Chavín de Huántar: SYNONYMS OR RELATED TERMS: Chavín
CATEGORY: site; culture
DEFINITION: The area of the great ruin of the earliest highly developed culture in pre-Columbian Peru, which flourished between about 900 and 200 BC and may have originated c 1200 BC. During this time Chavín art spread over the north and central parts of what is now Peru. It is not known whether this was the actual center of origin of the culture and art style. The central building at Chavín de Huántar is a massive temple complex constructed of dressed rectangular stone blocks, with interior galleries and bas-relief carvings on pillars and lintels. The principal motifs of the Chavín style are human, feline, and crocodilian or serpentine figures. Carved stone objects, fantastic pottery that demonstrates the most advanced skill, stone construction, and remarkably sophisticated goldwork have been found. Chavín pottery is known from the decorated types found in the temple and in graves on the northern coast, where it is called Cupisnique. Until the end of the period, the ware was monochrome -- dull red, brown, or gray -- and stonelike. Vessels were massive and heavy and the main forms are open bowls with vertical or slightly expanding sides and flat or gently rounded bases, flasks, and stirrup-spouted bottles. The surface may be modeled in relief or decorated by incision, stamping, brushing, rouletting, or dentate rocker-stamping. Some bowls have deeply incised designs on both the inside and outside faces. Its art style was never surpassed in the complexity of its iconography. The buildings, which show several periods of reconstruction, consist of various temple platforms containing a series of interlinked galleries and chambers on different levels. In the oldest part of the complex is a granite block, the Lanzón, on which is carved a human figure with feline fangs and with snakes in place of hair. Relief carvings in a similar style decorate the lintels, gateways, and cornices at the site, and human and jaguar heads of stone were on the outside wall of one of the platforms. On the coast, where stone is scarce, the highland architecture is replaced by work in adobe. Further south, the Paracas culture shows strong continuing Chavín influence.
chinampa: SYNONYMS OR RELATED TERMS: chinampas; floating garden
CATEGORY: geography; term
DEFINITION: A system of cultivation on small, stationary, artificial islands made of vegetation and mud in shallow freshwater lakes, created in the Valley of Mexico (Xochimilco). These very fertile fields were created by massive Aztec reclamation projects and consisted of little islands, each averaging 6 to 10 m (19.7 to 32.8 feet) wide and 100 to 200 m (30.5 to 656.2 feet) long, with fertilization from the organic wastes in mud and aquatic life. Periodic renewal of this mud layer created a permanent supply of fertile soil so that as one crop was harvested it could be immediately replaced with another. Much of Aztecs' Tenochtitlan utilized such intensively farmed, reclaimed land. The champas were normally separated by a system of canals which allowed both access and water circulation.
cloisonné: CATEGORY: ceramics
DEFINITION: A technique of decorative enameling in which different colors of a pattern are separated by thin strips of metal. It consists of soldering to a metal surface, thin metal strips bent to the outline of a design and filling the resulting spaces, called cloisons" (French for "partitions or cells") with vitreous enamel paste. The object is fired ground smooth and polished. Sometimes metal wire is used in place of gold brass silver or copper strips. It was used in Anglo-Saxon England and by Germanic metalsmiths to decorate polychrome jewelry and metalwork. The technique is somewhat similar to champlevé but it allows more intricacy of design. Among the earliest examples of cloisonné are six Mycenaean rings of the 13th century BC. The great Western period of cloisonné enameling was from the 10th-12th century especially in the Byzantine Empire. In China cloisonné was widely made during the Ming (1368-1644) and Ch'ing (1644-1911/12) dynasties. In Japan it was especially popular during the Tokugawa or Edo (1603-1868) and Meiji (1868-1912) periods."
closed site: CATEGORY: term
DEFINITION: An archaeological site located within a pyramid, chambered tomb, barrow (burial mound), sealed cave, or rock shelter.
closestool: CATEGORY: artifact
DEFINITION: A stool or chair containing a chamber pot
Clyde-Carlingford tombs: CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: A series of megalithic chamber tombs in southwestern Scotland and northern Ireland with some radiocarbon dates before 3000 BC, an early stage of the Neolithic. They are sometimes described as segmented gallery graves, since they have subdivided rectangular chambers. Another important characteristic was a concave or semicircular forecourt. In some of the Irish examples, this was oval or circular and they are described as court cairns. The overlying cairns are long and either oval, rectangular, or trapezoidal in shape. Collective inhumation was the normal practice, although cremation sometimes occurred in Ireland.
collective tomb: CATEGORY: structure
DEFINITION: A chamber tomb of Neolithic times, either rock-cut or megalithic, built to contain many burials, often successive depositions spread over a long time. By 4000 BC the first big collective tombs were built from boulders in Spain.
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.
constructed feature: CATEGORY: feature
DEFINITION: A feature deliberately built to provide a setting for one or more activities, such as a house, storeroom, or burial chamber.
corbelling, corbeling: SYNONYMS OR RELATED TERMS: corbeled roof
CATEGORY: structure
DEFINITION: A technique of roofing in stone-built chambers whereby successive courses of bricks or slabs are allowed to project a little further inwards than the course below until a curved or domed ceiling is achieved. The Maya used this method to create a corbelled 'false' arch, or vault with the earliest expressions in Late Chicanel tombs at Tikal and Altar de Sacrificios. The technique was also used within the megalithic tradition in Europe in some of the passage graves, such as New Grange and Maes Howe, and in the tholos tombs of the Mycenaean world. Babylonian architecture made wide use of corbel arches.
court cairn: SYNONYMS OR RELATED TERMS: Clyde-Carlingford tomb
CATEGORY: structure
DEFINITION: A type of Neolithic (c 3500 BC) chamber tomb common in southwest Scotland and northern Ireland. Its features include an elongated rectangular or trapeze-shaped cairn with an unroofed semicircular forecourt at one end. The courtyard gives access to the burial chamber proper, which is normally a gallery with two or more chambers separated by jambs, or by a combination of jambs and sills. This basic form sometimes called a 'horned cairn' has many variants. In the 'lobster-claw' or 'full court', cairns the wings of the facade curve around until they almost meet at the front of the tomb to enclose a circular or oval forecourt. Sometimes a cairn contains more than one tomb or there are subsidiary chambers. Court cairns continued to be used until the end of the Neolithic period around 2200 BC. The later court cairns share many features with the Severn-Cotswold tombs of southwest Britain and with the transepted gallery graves near the river Loire.
Crvena Stijena: CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: A prehistoric cave site near the Adriatic coast in Montenegro. Artifacts and faunal remains date back to the last glaciation and deposits include the Palaeolithic, Mousterian, Upper Palaeolithic (Aurignacian), Early and Late Mesolithic (with microlithic flint industries and a large faunal sample of red deer and chamois), Early Neolithic (with Impressed Ware and Danilo-Kakanj pottery, also macrolithic flint industry), Late Neolithic (Danilo culture), and a Late Bronze Age level (with Hallstatt A-B metalwork).
crypt: SYNONYMS OR RELATED TERMS: crypta
CATEGORY: structure
DEFINITION: A vault or subterranean chamber, especially one beneath the main floor of a church or other building and used as a burial place. In the catacombs, it was a tomb in which a number of bodies were interred together. Early Christians called their catacombs crypts; and, when churches came to be erected over the tombs of saints and martyrs, subterranean chapels, known as crypts or confessiones, were built around the actual tomb. The most famous of these was St. Peter's, built over the circus of Nero, the site of St. Peter's martyrdom. By the time of Roman emperor Constantine the Great (306-337), the crypt was considered a normal part of a church building.
cubiculum: CATEGORY: structure
DEFINITION: In Roman architecture, the bedchamber of a house. The term also refers to a chamber in a catacomb used for rites of the dead.
Deir el-Bahri: SYNONYMS OR RELATED TERMS: Deir el-Bahari, Deir el Bahari
CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: A Theban religious and funerary site on the west bank of the Nile in Upper Egypt, opposite Luxor. In a bay of the cliffs, two great funerary temples were erected. That of Mentuhotep I of the 11th dynasty (Middle Kingdom, c 2033-1982 BC) consisted of a chamber tomb and a pyramid set in elaborately planned colonnades and terraces. That of Queen Hatshepsut, on a similar plan but without the pyramid, belongs to the 18th dynasty (New Kingdom, c 1480 BC). It is famous for a series of reliefs including one portraying a trading expedition to the Land of Punt and the transport of an obelisk.
Dendra: SYNONYMS OR RELATED TERMS: Dhendra
CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: A Bronze Age cemetery in Greece with a Middle Helladic tumulus, Mycenaean tholos tomb (15th-14th centuries BC), and rich chamber tombs. The associated settlement may be the Mycenaean citadel of Midea.
dolmen: CATEGORY: structure
DEFINITION: In antiquity (especially in France), a word for a megalithic tomb consisting of orthostats and capstone or for megalithic chamber tombs in general. This was usually a stone structure consisting of upright columns supporting a slab roof and known from Neolithic times. In English archaeological literature 'dolmen' should be used only for tombs whose original plan cannot be determined or for tombs of simple unspecialized types which do not fit into the passage grave or gallery grave categories; it is also used for relatively small, closed megalithic chambers, such as the dysser of Scandinavia. The name was probably derived from Cornish 'tolmen' (stone table). The word has a second meaning for the enclosure for burial in a jar of the Yayoi period in Japan consisting of a single large stone slab supported on a ring of stones. A third meaning is for a megalithic stone burial feature in western China and coast Yellow Sea area, dating to the 1st millennium BC, of which there are three forms -- raised table, low table, and unsupported capstone.
domus de janas: CATEGORY: structure
DEFINITION: The Sardinian name for a kind of rock-cut chamber tomb, often with many interconnecting rooms, found on the island from the Copper Age and Early Bronze Age. The term means 'house of the fairies' and describes often complex, multi-chambered tombs.
downdraft kiln: CATEGORY: ceramics
DEFINITION: An installation for firing pottery with a firebox, in which the fuel burns beside the chamber in which the pots are fired and separated from it by a bagwall" so that hot gas from the fire must rise over the bagwall and then pass down through the chamber before exiting through a chimney flue on the other side. It achieves high temperatures and better control over atmosphere."
dromos: CATEGORY: structure
DEFINITION: The corridor-like entrance passage leading into Minoan-Mycenaean tholos and chamber tombs. It is from the Greek word meaning 'course' or 'avenue'. Also, the term refers to an avenue leading to the entrances of Egyptian temples; that leading to the great temple of Karnac contained 660 colossal sphinxes, all of which were monoliths.
dyss: SYNONYMS OR RELATED TERMS: pl. dysser
CATEGORY: structure
DEFINITION: The Danish name for the earliest type of megalithic chamber tomb found in Scandinavia in the Early Neolithic. The oldest dysser are rectangular slab cysts roofed with capstones and containing 1-6 skeletons. The burial chamber is covered with a mound which rises to the height of the capstone and has a retaining kerb of stones. Drysser are associated with an early phase (C) of the TRB culture. Similar but less massive cysts were built by other TRB groups elsewhere in northern Europe.
Easter Island: SYNONYMS OR RELATED TERMS: Rapa Nui
CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: The easternmost inhabited island of Polynesia, a small volcanic one, about 2500 miles from South America and 1250 miles from Pitcairn Island, its nearest inhabited Polynesian neighbors. It was settled by the Polynesians early in 1st millennium AD and developed a horticultural economy. By 700 AD, the inhabitants built large stone platforms (ahu), some of cut stone, and between 1000-1700 AD these platforms supported rows of huge stone statues (moai), some with separate top knots. Shaped by stone tools, as there is no metal on the island, from quarries in volcanic craters, there are about 300 platforms and about 600 statues. By about 1700, the warrior chiefdoms were fighting and all the statues were toppled from their pedestals. The platforms were used for human burial in stone chambers inserted into the stonework. There is a village of stone houses and many petroglyphs. The Europeans discovered Easter Island in 1722, after which the culture and population. The islanders also carved on wooden boards in an undeciphered script, Rongorongo. Easter Island culture represents the cultural development an isolated human community.
Egyptology: CATEGORY: branch
DEFINITION: A branch of archaeology specializing in the investigation of ancient Egyptian civilization, especially the study of pharaonic Egypt (c 4500 BC-641 AD) and its relics. Some scholars date the beginning of the discipline September 1822, when Jean-François Champollion wrote his Lettre a Dacier relative a l'alphabet des hierglyphes phonetiques" in which he demonstrated that he had deciphered the hieroglyphic script. Others say Egyptology began when the scholars accompanying Napoleon Bonaparte's invasion of Egypt (1798-1801) published the "Description de l'Égypte" (1809-28) which made large quantities of source material about ancient Egypt available to scholars."
El Tajín: SYNONYMS OR RELATED TERMS: Tajín
CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: The major ceremonial site of the classic Veracruz civilization on the Gulf Coast of Mexico. The first construction goes back to 100 BC and building was continuous until c AD 1200 when the site was burned and abandoned. The principal structure is The Pyramid of Niches with 365 square niches built into the sides, corresponding to the 365 heads on the Temple of Quetzalcoatl at Teotihuacan. There are several ball-courts and a series of carved reliefs depicting mythological and ritual themes in which ball-players have an important role. Another part of the site is Tahin Chico, containing chambered buildings on low substructures. The people of El Tajín maintained trade contacts with Teotihuacan and the Maya states. The art style of the site was subject to many influences including Mayan, Izapan, and Olmec, but Teotihuacan influence dominates the early period. The artifact most commonly associated with Classic Veracruz culture is the hollow, clay 'smiling face' figurine. El Tajin's final destruction was probably at the hands of the Chichimecs.
el-Lahun: SYNONYMS OR RELATED TERMS: el-Kahun; al-Lahun; Kahun; Illahun
CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: An Egyptian site at the entrance to the Faiyum, important in the Middle Kingdom (c 1938-1600 BC). There is the pyramid of Senwosret (Sesostris) II and the burial of Princess Sat-Hathor-Iunet with rich grave goods. The pyramid was unusual in that the entrance to the burial chamber was not on the north side of the pyramid but on the south. The pyramid was robbed in antiquity but a treasure of jewelry was discovered in the tombs of the princesses, located within the pyramid-enclosure wall. Technically and artistically, the collection rivals all other Middle Kingdom objects of its type. Hieratic papyri dealing with a variety of subjects have been recovered at the site.
Els Tudons: SYNONYMS OR RELATED TERMS: Es Tudons
CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: A stone-built tomb of Naveta ('little boat') type on the island of Minorca (Menorca), Spain. It contains a two-storied chamber originally housing the remains of many individuals and is built in Cyclopean masonry. Like the other navetas on the island, Els Tudons belongs to the Talayotic culture of the Bronze Age, c 1500-800 BC.
enamel: CATEGORY: artifact
DEFINITION: A comparatively soft glass, a compound of flint or sand, red lead, and soda or potash. The materials are melted together, producing an almost clear glass, with a slightly bluish or greenish tinge (flux or frit). The degree of hardness of the flux depends on the proportions of the components in the mix. Enamels are called hard when the temperature required to fuse them is very high and it will not decompose as soft enamel would. Soft enamels require less heat to fire them and consequently are more convenient to use, but they do not wear as well. Enamel was first used in the Bronze and Iron Ages. It was often melted and united with gold, silver, copper, bronze, and other metals in a furnace. Enamel is colored white by oxide of tin, blue by oxide of cobalt, red by gold, green by copper. Different kinds of enamel are: 1) inlaid or incrusted, 2) transparent, showing designs on the metal under it, 3) painted as a complete picture. The various techniques practiced by craftsmen in the past differ mainly in the methods employed in preparing the metal to receive the powdered enamel. Some of those methods are cloisonné, champlevé, encrusted enameling, and painted enamels.
entrance grave: SYNONYMS OR RELATED TERMS: undifferentiated passage grave
CATEGORY: structure
DEFINITION: A type of megalithic chamber tomb characterized by a chamber without separate passage, under a round barrow. It shares features of both passage grave and gallery grave. The round mound is in the passage grave tradition, but there is no clear distinction between the entrance passage and the funerary chamber, hence the alternative term, undifferentiated passage grave. The chamber form is similar to that of the galley grave. Entrance graves are found in southern Spain, Brittany, southwest Ireland, and the Channel Isles.
Episkopi-Phaneromeni: CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: A Middle or Late settlement site of Cyprus, occupied c 1600-1500 BC, with a Middle Cypriot chamber tomb cemetery.
false entrance: SYNONYMS OR RELATED TERMS: false door
CATEGORY: structure
DEFINITION: An elaborate architectural element of Egyptian tombs and mortuary temples which was a dummy entrance where the true entrance would normal be. The false entrance was for show and it served as the focal point of a tomb and had a door carved or painted, presumably through which the ka could enter and leave at will when partaking of funerary offerings. These first appeared in tombs of the Old Kingdom (2686-2181 BC). The term also refers to a phenomenon found in megalithic tombs in the British Isles, where an apparent entrance to a chamber, often leading from a forecourt, is in fact a dummy and the real chambers open not from the end but the side of the mound.
Fatimid: CATEGORY: culture
DEFINITION: An Islamic dynasty that seized power from the earlier Abbasid dynasty in Tunisia in 909. The Fatimids subsequently conquered Egypt in 969, which they then dominated for some two centuries. Much Fatimid architecture survives, including great mosques, palaces, and elaborately decorated chamber tombs.
firebox: CATEGORY: artifact
DEFINITION: The combustion chamber of a kiln, typically beneath the ware chamber
Fontbouïsse: CATEGORY: site; artifact
DEFINITION: A Chalcolithic (Copper Age) settlement site in Gard, France, which has given its name to a style of pottery decorated with channeled decoration arranged usually in metopic or concentric semicircle patterns. Fontbouïsse ware is widespread in southern France, occurring in chamber bombs, village sites, burial caves, natural rock clefts, and small cremation cysts. It is also the name of a cultural group known for its dry-stone houses, megalithic tombs and caves used for burials, and is associated with extensive flint mining and the first evidence of copper working in the area.
foraminifera: CATEGORY: fauna
DEFINITION: An extensive order of rhizopods which generally have a chambered calcareous shell formed by several united zooids. These one-celled organisms secrete chambered or unchambered shells and are laid down on the ocean floor through the slow continuous progress of sedimentation. Variations in the ratio of two oxygen isotopes in the calcium carbonate of these shells gives an indication of the sea temperature at the time the organisms were alive.
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.
Gandhara: SYNONYMS OR RELATED TERMS: Gandhara grave culture complex
CATEGORY: site; culture
DEFINITION: A culture of the 2nd and 1st millennia BC in the valleys of northwestern Pakistan -- and the Achaemenid (Persian) satrapy of this name. This culture was important in passing Persian ideas on to the civilizations of the Ganges valley. It also introduced Hellenistic art styles to India. Western influence is also apparent in the grid town planning found at the Gandharan cities of Charsada and Taxila. Characteristic burials are in tombs consisting of two small chambers, one on top of the other; the lower chamber contained both the burial (inhumed or cremated) and the grave goods, while the upper chamber was empty. The population, which bred livestock and carried out agriculture, were accomplished metalworkers, producing tools, weapons, and ornaments of copper, bronze, gold, silver, and iron. The pottery within the grave goods was mostly a red or gray plain burnished type.
Giant's Grave: SYNONYMS OR RELATED TERMS: Italian Tomba di Giganti
CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: Local name for the megalithic chamber tombs of the island of Sardinia during the mid-2nd millennium BC. The burial chamber is of gallery grave type, and is set in an elongated cairn with a retaining wall. The cairn covers a long burial chamber of Cyclopean construction with a corbelled roof. Some giants' tombs have curved or horned facades enclosing a forecourt. They belong to the Nuraghic Bronze Age culture.
Gokstad Ship: CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: A Viking ship unearthed in Sandefjord in 1880 under a large tumulus on the Oslo Fjord, Norway. Much of its original timber was preserved by the clay in which it was set. In the middle of the ship, a special platform had been constructed to hold the funerary chamber, which contained the skeleton of a man (possibly King Olaf of Vestfold who died in 890) surrounded by weapons, slaughtered animals, and other objects. The ship is the ultimate Viking war machine -- a slender oak-built vessel made for strength and speed, propelled by a large square sail and 16 pairs of oars. It would have been equally navigable in open seas or in shallow inland waters; in 1893 a replica successfully crossed the Atlantic.
Great Tombs period: SYNONYMS OR RELATED TERMS: Kofun
CATEGORY: chronology
DEFINITION: A period in Japanese history, 4th-7th century AD, known for round tombs covered by a mound with a square platform off to the side, making a keyhole shape. Towards end of period, tombs were very large and surrounded by a moat, and earthenware figures and models (Haniwa) were placed in a series of concentric rings around the tomb. Inside was a chamber of stone slabs, probably adopted from cist tomb of northeast Asia. Burial goods included bronze mirrors, Chinese-type swords, magatama (fine polished stone ornaments), and Sue Ware pottery.
Grooved Ware: SYNONYMS OR RELATED TERMS: Rinyo-Clacton
CATEGORY: ceramics
DEFINITION: A pottery style of the British Late Neolithic, widely distributed c 2750-1850 BC. The characteristic vessel is flat-based with straight vertical or outward sloping walls. It was formerly known as Rinyo-Clacton after two widely separated findspots (Clacton in Essex and Rinyo in the Orkney Islands). Throughout eastern and southern England, where it is particularly frequent on henge sites (Stonehenge and Durrington Walls), it is decorated with shallow grooving or sometimes with applied cordons. A Scottish group, where appliqué cordons were much used in addition, is represented in Orkney at sites like Rinyo and Skara Brae. It is also found in settlement sites and in chambered tombs.
Hal Saflieni: CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: A large rock-cut hypogeum on Malta, which was constructed by the same population that built the Maltese temples, and is a complex of many small rock-cut chambers, on three different levels, linked by a series of halls, passages, and stairways. Many of the chambers are elaborately decorated, often with carved features imitating wooden structures such as beams and lintels; other chambers have painted decoration, usually on the ceilings. Most of the chambers had been used for burial and it has been calculated that some 7000 individuals were buried in the whole hypogeum, over a period of some centuries. The hypogeum may also have been used as a temple as some places without burials were set aside for ritual. Artifacts include highly decorated pottery and a series of female figurines. The earliest chambers date to the 5th millennium BC.
Hazleton: CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: A Neolithic chambered long Severn-Cotswold barrow in Gloucestershire, England, with two megalithic chambers. The radiocarbon dates were c 4700 BC.
Heavenly Horse, Tomb of the: CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: A 5th century AD mounded tomb of the Silla Kingdom in Kyongju City, Korea. There was an internal wooden chamber with a lacquered wooden coffin of a male dressed in gold crown and with very rich grave goods.
hieroglyphics: SYNONYMS OR RELATED TERMS: hieroglyphic; hieroglyph
CATEGORY: language
DEFINITION: A pictorial script used by ancient Egyptians from the beginning of the 3rd millennium BC until the end of the 4th century AD. A hieroglyph was a single character or pictorial element used in hieroglyphics. Literally, in Greek, it means 'sacred carved letters'. The script consisted of three basic types of sign: phonograms, logograms, and 'determinatives' arranged in horizontal and vertical lines. The script was used for funerary and monumental inscriptions as well as more strictly religious ones. The script's development seems to have been so rapid that it may have been in some sense an imitation of the earliest writing of Mesopotamia in its Uruk phase. In both scripts three classes of symbol were used, each a single picture or geometric figure. Pictograms or ideograms represented whole words in pictorial form. Phonograms represented the sounds of words, the picture of an object pronounced in the same way as the desired word being used in its place (this was made easier by the fact that the vowels were disregarded). Determinatives told the reader the class of word spelt by the phonograms, necessary where these were ambiguous. Often all three classes of symbol were used in conjunction. No attempt was made in its long history to simplify the system, even when the more cursive forms of it, hieratic and demotic, were introduced. More loosely the term has been applied to other pictographic writing systems, particularly those of Minoan Crete, the Hittites and the Maya. Many of the symbols consist of a conventionalized picture of the idea or object they represent. Egyptian hieroglyphs were deciphered by Jean-François Champollion in 1822, through his study of the bilingual inscriptions on the Rosetta Stone and an obelisk from Philae. Some 700 signs were employed.
Hochdorf: CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: An Iron Age tumulus in Baden-Würtetemberg, Germany, from the 6th century BC (late Hallstatt). One burial chamber had very rich grave goods, including Mediterranean materials, a Greek bronze cauldron, gold-covered shoes, and bronze couch.
Hohmichele, the: CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: A rich Hallstatt grave near the Heuneburg hillfort on the Danube in southern Germany. The barrow was one of the satellite graves around the hillfort and covered a central grave and 12 secondary burials of the 6th century BC Iron Age. The central grave was robbed in antiquity, but it had been an inhumation grave within a wood-lined chamber, which acted as the display area for the wealth of the deceased. The walls seem to have been draped in textiles with thin gold bands, and the deceased, dressed in finery including silk, was placed on a bed next to a four-wheeled wagon. It is the earliest documented occurrence of silk in Europe. The objects implied wine-drinking ceremonies and there is furniture directly imported from the south (central Europe).
Huaricoto: CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: A ceremonial site in the northern highlands of Peru of the Late Preceramic, Initial Period, and Early Horizon. It includes a small artificial mound of 13 superimposed constructions. Its ritual chambers with hearths are similar to the Kotosh Religious Tradition.
hunebed: CATEGORY: structure
DEFINITION: The Dutch name (literally 'Hun's grave') for a local variety of megalithic chamber tombs in the northern Netherlands and northern Germany. The tombs are built of large stones and consist of a round or oval mound surrounded by a kerb and covering a rectangular burial chamber with its entrance on one of the long sides. A few examples have an entrance passage, giving them a T plan which suggests an association with the passage graves of Denmark. The Danish tombs are slightly later than the oldest Dutch ones, but in both places they were built by the TRB culture during the Neolithic in the 4th and 3rd millennia BC.
hypogeum: SYNONYMS OR RELATED TERMS: pl. hypogea
CATEGORY: structure
DEFINITION: A rock-cut underground chamber or vault, often used for a series of inhumations. They are a principal part of Egyptian architecture of every period.
Igbo Ikwu: SYNONYMS OR RELATED TERMS: Igbo Ukwu
CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: A site in southeast Nigeria dating to the 9th century AD with rich Iron Age deposits and bronze objects. It has yielded remarkable evidence for artistic and technological development and accumulation of wealth in that part of West Africa during the closing centuries of the 1st millennium AD. A corpse was interred in a deep pit, sitting on a stool surrounded by extensive regalia; the burial chamber was then roofed over and the bodies of attendants were placed above it. Further offerings were deposited nearby, most notably the delicate and intricate cire perdue bronze castings of vases, bowls, and items of personal adornment. Domestic pottery and enormous numbers of glass beads were also in the deposits.
Ile Carn: CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: Early Neolithic passage grave in Brittany, of dry-stone walling with a corbelled vault to the chamber and dated to c 3270 bc. Inside were only a few sherds and flint flakes.
Indrapura: CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: A city and dynasty in Cambodia that was the first capital of king Indravarman II (the sixth in Champan history) before he founded the kingdom of Angkor. It served in that capacity from 875-986; when the capital was then transferred to Vijaya, further south.
inhumation: SYNONYMS OR RELATED TERMS: burial; grave burial
CATEGORY: term
DEFINITION: The practice of burying the dead, contrasting with cremation and exposure. Burial may be in a dug grave, or in a natural or built chamber -- and may be simple or elaborate. Terms commonly used to describe it are: extended (with spine and leg bones more or less in a straight line), flexed (with the leg bones bent, but by less than 90 degrees) or crouched (with the hip and knee joints bent through more than 90 degrees). Extended burials may be supine (on the back), prone (on the face), or on the side. Primary inhumation is the initial burial of a deceased individual. Secondary inhumation is the practice of removing the remains of the deceased individual from the pyre to the grave.
Isbister: CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: A Neolithic chambered tomb on the island of South Ronaldsay, Orkney, Scotland, dating to c 3150 BC. Remains of 342 people were found within the chambers, mostly as disarticulated bones that were sorted.
Kauthara: CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: One of the four small states, named after regions of India -- Amaravati (Quang Nam); Vijaya (Binh Dinh); Kauthara (Nha Trang); and Panduranga (Phan Rang) -- of Champa (now southern Vietnam). Champa was formed in 192 AD during the breakup of the Han dynasty in China. The states' populations remained concentrated in small coastal enclaves. To this period belong several brick sanctuaries in the Nha-trang area, notably that of Po Nagar. Nha-trang dates to the 3rd century AD, when, as part of the independent land of Kauthara, it acknowledged the suzerainty of Funan.
Kernonen: CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: A burial mound of the Armorican Early Bronze Age Tumulus Culture c 2000-2500 BC in Finistère, France. The circular stone cairn covered a rectangular dry-stone chamber. Grave goods include fine flaked flint arrowheads, amber beads, bronze axes and daggers, and wooden hilts decorated with gold nails.
kher: CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: The term for a quarter of tombs -- the whole number of burial places of a hypogea, an underground chamber or vault.
kiln: CATEGORY: structure
DEFINITION: A chamber built for the firing (baking) of pottery, used from prehistoric times. These, usually dome-shaped, structures are designed to produce the high temperatures needed for the industry. In a pottery kiln, the pots were often stacked upside-down on a shelf. An opening for draft was left at the top, and a flue provided at the side. Fuel was piled within and around the kiln, and when the heat was at its greatest, the openings were shut to preserve the temperatures and fire the pots inside with temperatures of 800-1000 C achieved. Other versions were used glassmaking or the parching of corn. The kiln, like the potter's wheel, implies craft specialization, and appears only at advanced stages of economic development.
kiln site: CATEGORY: term
DEFINITION: Centers for the production of glazed stonewares during the early 2nd millennium AD on mainland Asia. The best-known were at Phnom Kulen and Buriram (Angkor), Go Sanh (Champa), and Kalong and Sukhothai (Thailand). There were also sites in north Vietnam and Burma.
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."
Knowth: CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: One of the largest Neolithic burial grounds on the River Boyne in County Meath, Ireland. It is a circular burial mound containing two passage graves entered from opposite sides. The first is a large but simple passage grave, with several decorated stones but no evidence of corbelling. The second tomb, also a passage grave, has a corbel-vaulted burial chamber with three niches. One of these contained a stone basin ornamented with grooves and circular designs, and there is further carving on the walls of the tomb itself. The central mound was surrounded by at least 15 smaller tombs, each under its own cairn, and these 'satellite' tombs included both entrance graves and passage graves of cruciform plan. Knowth is one of the three principal elements of the Boyne Valley megalithic cemetery, dating from the 4th millennium BC. Knowth was later reoccupied in the early historic period when Souterrains were constructed within the mound. Excavations have also revealed the remains of the Early Christian royal center here, belonging to the Northern Brega known from the Irish annals.
Kofun: SYNONYMS OR RELATED TERMS: Great Burial Period, Tumulus Period
CATEGORY: chronology; culture
DEFINITION: The name of the protohistoric tomb period of Japan, 300-710 AD, and the type of tumulus used for the burials. . Large tombs were built which were covered with artificial hillocks about 8 meters high, with burial chambers about 2 meters underneath the top surface. The burial chamber, enclosed with stones, contained coffins and various funerary offerings. The period when tombs of this kind were built in abundance was characterized by Haji ware and Sue ware. It is divided into Early, 4th century; Middle, 5th century; and Late, late 5th-7th centuries. The Kofun period falls between the Yayoi period and the fully historic Nara period and partially overlaps the Asuka and Hakuho periods of art historians. In their writings, the Kojiki and Nihon Shoki texts, the culture was explained. Early kofun were built by modifying natural hills, as were Late Yayoi burial mounds. Haji pottery, used throughout the Kofun period, is very similar to Yayoi pottery and farmers lived in the same kinds of houses, using very similar tools. Technical advances over the yayoi period include irrigation canals and dams. There were also silversmiths who made the ornaments deposited in kofun and professional potters began making Sue pottery in the 5th century. Those in the fertile and well-protected Yamato Basin actively sought new technical and administrative skills on the continent and thus artisans came to make new kinds of pottery, ornaments, and weapons. Yamato leaders gained control over much of Japan in the 7th century and moved the capital to Heijo in 710. The magnificent kofun tombs indicate that the Yamato court based in the Yamato area (the present Nara prefecture) succeeded in bringing almost the whole of Japan under its control.
Kujavish grave: SYNONYMS OR RELATED TERMS: Kujavian grave
CATEGORY: feature
DEFINITION: A distinctive type of grave of central Poland during the middle part of the local Neolithic / TRB culture. Each tomb consists of a triangular or trapeze-shaped mound which covers a single flat grave containing an extended inhumation burial. The chamber or a trench was usually stone-built, covered by long trapezoidal barrows, and sometimes surrounded by a stone kerb. Very few of these tombs had more than one burial.
labyrinth: SYNONYMS OR RELATED TERMS: maze
CATEGORY: structure
DEFINITION: A building of considerable size, usually underground, containing streets and crossroads, like the catacombs, etc. It was the name given by the ancient Greeks and Romans to buildings, entirely or partly subterranean, containing a number of chambers and passages that rendered egress difficult. Later, especially from the European Renaissance onward, the labyrinth or maze occurred in formal gardens, consisting of intricate paths separated by high hedges.
Lahun, el-/al-: SYNONYMS OR RELATED TERMS: Illahun; Kahun
CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: An Egyptian site at the entrance to the Faiyum (Fayyum), important in the Middle Kingdom (c 1938-1600 BC). There is the pyramid of Senwosret (Senusret/Sesostris) II (1880-1874 BC) and the burial of Princess Sat-Hathor-Iunet with rich grave goods. The pyramid was unusual in that the entrance to the burial chamber was not on the north side of the pyramid but on the south. The pyramid was robbed in antiquity but a treasure of jewelry was discovered in the tombs of the princesses, located within the pyramid-enclosure wall. Technically and artistically, the collection rivals all other Middle Kingdom objects of its type. Hieratic papyri dealing with a variety of subjects have been recovered at the site. Excavation of the village and necropolis, which was also inhabited during the Second Intermediate Period (c 1630-1540 BC), revealed a remarkable degree of town planning.
langi tombs: CATEGORY: structure
DEFINITION: Large square or rectangular earthen burial mounds on the island of Tonga of the Tui Tonga dynasty. They have terraced sides faced with slabs of cut coral limestone. Some contain burial chambers, also built of coral slabs. According to tradition, langi were the burial places of the Tongan ruling aristocracy. Most are associated with the ceremonial center at Mu'a on Tongatapu.
Lepsius, Karl Richard (1810-1884): CATEGORY: person
DEFINITION: German Egyptologist who led the Prussian expedition and survey of Egyptian monuments in 1842-1845. He also worked in Sudan and Palestine, sending some 15,000 antiquities and plaster casts back to Prussia. He published the results of the expedition in a 12-volume work, Denkmaeler aus Aegypten und Aethiopien" (1859) which still provides useful information for archaeologists. He is credited with virtually recreating Egyptology as a subject after the premature death of Jean François Champollion doing further work on the decipherment of Egyptian hieroglyphic writing."
Lerici periscope: SYNONYMS OR RELATED TERMS: Nistri periscope
CATEGORY: tool
DEFINITION: A subsurface detection probe fitted with a periscope or camera and light source, used to examine subterranean chambers -- most often Etruscan tombs. The Lerici Foundation of Milan and Rome has had great success with this method since the development of the periscope, first used in 1957 in an Etruscan tomb in the cemetery of Monte Abbatone. The periscope is inserted into the burial chamber and can photograph the walls and contents of the whole tomb.
Leubingen: CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: An early Bronze Age chieftain's burial of the Unetice culture of Saxony, Germany. It consisted of a lean-to wooden mortuary chamber under a stone cairn, itself covered by a barrow. Inside was the burial of an extended elderly male and, placed at right angles across him, a second body, of an adolescent, perhaps female. Grave goods included a series of gold ornaments (pins, spirals, hair-rings, beads, earrings, and an arm-ring), bronze daggers, axes, halberds, and chisels; stone tools, and pottery.
Liao Dynasty: CATEGORY: culture
DEFINITION: A dynasty formed by the nomadic Khitan tribes (907-1125) in much of present-day Manchuria (Northeast Provinces) and Mongolia and the northeastern corner of China proper. There were elaborate chambered tombs.
loculus: CATEGORY: artifact
DEFINITION: In Roman antiquity, a small chamber or cell in an ancient tomb for the reception of a body or urn. It was generally made of stone.
long-barrow / long barrow: SYNONYMS OR RELATED TERMS: portal tomb, court tomb
CATEGORY: feature
DEFINITION: An elongated mound covering a burial chamber, typical of the Early and Mid-Neolithic periods in Europe. Barrows of the Neolithic Period were long and contained the various members of a family or clan. In southern England, the burial chamber consists of a megalithic tomb.
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.
Maes Howe: CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: A magnificent passage grave in Orkney, Scotland, roofed by corbeling and covered by a circular cairn surrounded by a ring ditch. Its unusual plan is a squared burial chamber with three rectangular cells opening from it through doorways placed about a meter above the level of the chamber floor. Nothing was found inside the tomb, but scratched on the wall is a 12th-century AD inscription in runes stating that the grave was looted by Vikings who carried off a great treasure. However, radiocarbon dates average c 2700 BC.
Malta: CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: A Mediterranean island south of Sicily with a settlement of the impressed ware culture at Skorba dated to c 4900 BC. Further immigrants arrived from Sicily c 3500. These people from c 4000-2400 BC erected a startling and unique series of megalithic temples, some 30 still surviving, of sophisticated plan and construction. They are among the oldest human monuments in the Mediterranean basin. The major temple complexes, most of which contained two or three separate temples, were built in several phases over a long period of time. The temples are built of local limestone in Cyclopean masonry and are characterized by a series of apsidal courts or chambers arranged on either side of a central corridor opening from a monumental facade. The whole structure is enclosed by a solid outer wall and the space between this and the building itself filled with stone and earth rubble. They have a number of installations which are presumably ritual, including altar-like constructions, niches, and porthole openings. The temples are unique in form and construction and are in any case too early to be derived from any east Mediterranean stone architecture. They are now seen as a local development. The people of this time were succeeded by warlike immigrants, possibly from western Greece or Carthage (8th-7th c BC), who dug an urnfield into the ruins of the temples and built villages on naturally defended hilltops; it is to this period that the mysterious 'cart-ruts' belong. The island was finally brought under the control of the Phoenicians in the 9th century BC and conquered by Rome in 218 BC.
mammisi: SYNONYMS OR RELATED TERMS: birth-house
CATEGORY: structure
DEFINITION: An independent religious building usually associated with the larger cult temples of the Late Period (Graeco-Roman) of Egypt, 747 BC-395 AD. This term, invented by Egyptologist Jean-François Champollion, described the buildings attached to temples at Edfu, Dendera, and Philae. The buildings were often placed at right angles to the main temple axis. The Ptolemaic mammisi usually consisted of a small temple, surrounded by a colonnade with intercolumnar screen walls, in which the rituals of the marriage of the goddess (Isis or Hathor) and the birth of the child-god were celebrated.
Man-ch'eng: SYNONYMS OR RELATED TERMS: Mancheng
CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: Site in Hebei province, China, where two Early Han-dynasty tombs are cut into a rock cliff -- the tombs of Liu Sheng (c 113 BC), Prince of Chung-shan, and his wife Tou Wan. Numerous grave goods, 2800 items, including jade, gold, silver, iron, glass articles; inlaid and gilded vessels, earthenware, lacquer ware, silk fabrics, and fine weapons are in the chambered tombs behind sealed doors. Both tombs were provided with large stores of food and wine and escorts of chariots and horses. The bodies of Liu Sheng and Dou Wan were dressed in shrouds made of jade plaques sewn together with gold thread, the first of some dozen jade shrouds thus recovered from Han tombs.
mastaba: CATEGORY: structure
DEFINITION: The Arabic word for 'bench', a mudbrick superstructure of Egyptian tombs, mainly of the Archaic Period and Old Kingdom, including the royal tombs of the 1st and 2nd Dynasty. It was a low, rectangular building with a flat roof and vertical or slightly inclined walls that enclosed the shaft to the underground burial chamber. Later versions were reinforced with stone and more elaborate. It often contained a chapel, a statue of the deceased, and sometimes large numbers of rooms. The pyramids were a direct development from them. At first, kings as well as their nobles and officials were buried in mastabas, but from the 3rd Dynasty, pharaohs had pyramids and the mastabas of their eminent subjects were built around the pyramids.
Matarrubilla: CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: A large passage grave near Seville, southern Spain, built during the Copper Age. The tomb was built mainly of dry stone walling and the chamber was roofed with a corbelled vault. A number of crouched inhumations were discovered, with rich grave goods including an ivory necklace and a clay sandal.
megalith: SYNONYMS OR RELATED TERMS: megalithic; megalithic tomb; megalithic monument
CATEGORY: feature; structure
DEFINITION: From the Greek megas 'large' and lithos 'stone', the term for a large stone and also for structures or arrangements of large stones (menhirs, stone circles, and alignments). The term is especially used for the monuments of northern and western Europe from the Mesolithic period, such as Stonehenge and Carnac in France of the late Neolithic culture of western Europe. Such a stone was sometimes free-standing, sometimes part of a structure. The term could also refer to a large tomb which used megaliths to create passages and chambers in which burials of one or more people could be placed, such as the passage graves of Brittany. Some authorities have used the term in a still wider sense to cover monuments built of Cyclopean masonry such as the Maltese Temples, the Nuraghi of Sardinia and the Navetas of Minorca. Various types of megalithic monuments have also been found in parts of Asia, Oceania, and Africa. The migration theories based on megalithic monuments are now discounted. It is now accepted that the practice of erecting these monuments arose independently in different times and places and for different reasons.
megalithic art: SYNONYMS OR RELATED TERMS: stone art
CATEGORY: artifact
DEFINITION: Neolithic engravings found on megalithic stones of chambered tombs and menhirs. Motifs include the concrete and the abstract. The art is associated with passage graves. Examples are Gavrinis, Knowth, and Newgrange. Megalithic art objects often suggest a highly developed cult of a spirit world connected with the remains of the dead.
Messene: SYNONYMS OR RELATED TERMS: Messini
CATEGORY: geography
DEFINITION: Ancient Greek city in southwest Peloponnese, Greece, founded in 369 BC after the defeat of Sparta by Athens. The site includes with Megalopolis, Mantineia, and Argos; the summit of Mt. Ithómi served as the acropolis. The classical city withstood several Macedonian and Spartan sieges. After the Battle of Chaeronea in 338 BC, it was absorbed into the domain of Philip II of Macedonia, and it remained important under the Romans. The Hellenistic agora, theater, stadium, Temple of Artemis, city walls, and council chamber have been excavated.
Mi-so'n: SYNONYMS OR RELATED TERMS: Mison
CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: A site in the northern part of Champa, in the present province of Quang-nam, central Vietnam, which has given its name to the earliest style in Cham art, dating from the 7th century. It is also important for inscriptions of the 5th century, attesting to the oldest known royal linga in Southeast Asia. Goldwork and silverwork of the Cham culture are preserved from the 10th century. It is exemplified by a crown and heavy jewelry made for a lifesize statue found in the ruin of a temple at Mison.
Moche: SYNONYMS OR RELATED TERMS: Mochica
CATEGORY: culture
DEFINITION: The major culture of the northern coast of Peru during the Early Intermediate Period. It originated in the Moche and Chicama Valleys and later spread by conquest as far south as the Santa and Nepeña Rivers. The culture developed around the start of the Christian era and lasted until c 700 AD. Dominant during the Early Intermediate Period (c 400 BC-600 AD), it is best known for its irrigation works, its massive adobe temple-platforms, and for its pottery. Especially famous are the modeled vessels and portrait head vases, and the jars, often with stirrup spouts, painted in reddish brown with scenes of religion, war, and everyday life. The pottery sequence has five phases which are identified by the details of the spout formation on the stirrup-necked bottles and it is used for relative dating of the sites (c 300-700 AD). The Moche culture was the major contributor to the subsequent Chimú culture of the north coast. Huge structures at the ceremonial center include a large, terraced, truncated pyramid, Huaca del Sol, and the smaller Huaca de la Luna, on top of which is a series of courtyards and rooms, some with wall paintings. Huaca del Sol was perhaps the largest single construction of the prehistoric Andean region. Grave goods in gold, silver and copper display a fairly advanced metalworking technology. Archaeologists excavated a site called Huaca Rajada and found the elaborate, jewelry-filled tomb of a Moche warrior-priest. Several more burial chambers containing the remains of Moche royalty have been excavated, all dating from about 300 AD, whose finds greatly aided the understanding of Moche society, religion, and culture. Incised lines on lima beans have recently been interpreted as a form of nonverbal communication similar in concept to the quipu. Developing out of Cupisnique, Gallinazo and Salinar, Moche survived into the Middle Horizon but appears ultimately to have been overtaken by the Huari culture. In the last phase (Moche V), the southern part of the Moche territory was abandoned and a new capital established in the north, at Pampa Grande.
mounded tomb: CATEGORY: feature
DEFINITION: A type of elite burial used in East Asia built with monumental earthen or stone-piled mounds which contained burial facilities. The burials ranged from wooden chambers, clay enclosures, to brick or stone megalithic chambers. There were round and square mounds and Japan's were keyhole-shaped. The tombs provide the source of data for the Three Kingdoms period of Korea and the Kofun of Japan. One of the earliest mounded tombs of China was that of the First Emperor of Qin, and the Ming tombs are some of the latest. Prestige grave goods are found in all. Haniwa (circle of clay") unglazed terra-cotta cylinders and hollow sculptures were arranged on and around the mounded tombs (kofun) of the Japanese elite dating from the Tumulus period (c 250-552 AD). The first and most common haniwa were barrel-shaped cylinders used to mark the borders of a burial ground. Later in the early 4th century the cylinders were surmounted by sculptural forms such as figures of warriors female attendants dancers birds animals boats military equipment and houses. It is believed that the figures symbolized continued service to the deceased in the other world."
mural tomb: CATEGORY: structure
DEFINITION: Mounded tombs of East Asia which have painted frescoes on the walls of the interior stone chamber. These tombs are associated with Koguryo, but also occur in China and Japan. The murals are genre paintings, portraits, and directional deities of the Chinese tradition.
Muryong: CATEGORY: culture
DEFINITION: Early 6th century AD king of Paekche (reigned 501-523) with a mounded tomb in Kongju, Korea. Bricks with molded decoration were used to build the chamber. Burial goods found include a bronze chopstick, spoon set; toiletry items, glass sculptures, and plaque identifying the king.
Narce: CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: A settlement site on the Treia gorge near Calcata in Lazio, Italy, surrounded by an extensive necropolis, and probably inhabited from the 12th century BC. Occupation was mainly by Faliscans, an Indo-European Italic group, and it is therefore associated with their centers at Falerii and Capena. The town prospered under Etruscan domination in the 7th and 6th centuries BC. Material evidence seems in general to follow a local (Faliscan) cultural sequence. Evidence survives for fortification walls, pit and trench burials, and chamber tombs with monumental doorways. Occupation continued to the 4th-3rd centuries BC.
Nasik: CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: A town in western India, an important religious center attracting thousands of pilgrims annually because of the sanctity of the Godavari River and because of the legend that Rama, the hero of the Ramayana epic, lived there for a time with his wife Sita and his brother Laksmana. Nasik is the site of the Pandu (Buddhist) and Chamar (Jaina) cave temples dating to the 1st century AD.
naveta: CATEGORY: structure
DEFINITION: A type of megalithic chamber tomb shaped like an upturned boat with rounded prow and squared stern, peculiar to the island of Minorca and dating to the earlier part of the Bronze Age c 2200-1500 BC. Navetas found on the Balearic Islands date from c 1500-800 BC. Each had an elongated U-shaped plan, a vault roofed by corbelling and a flat or slightly concave façade. The gallery-shaped burial chamber is approached by a corridor through the thickness of the wall, and there is occasionally a porthole slab partially blocking it. The best preserved example is Els Tudons.
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.
Nhunguza: CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: Later Iron Age site in northern Mashonaland, Zimbabwe, where a large clay structure has been interpreted as a court house, with open yard and audience chamber.
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.
Nové Kosariská: CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: Early Iron Age complex of tumuli near Bratislava, Slovakia, dated to the Hallstatt C and D periods. The tumuli have elaborate central timber-lined chambers with cremation burials in different vessels -- 20-80 per tumulus.
nuraghe: SYNONYMS OR RELATED TERMS: plural nuraghi; nurhag; Nuraghic culture
CATEGORY: structure
DEFINITION: A type of tower built of cyclopean masonry and peculiar to Sardinia from c 1500 BC until the Roman conquest of the island c 800 BC. They are circular stone defensive towers with corbel-vaulted internal chambers of the Middle and Late Bronze Ages. The walls of the tower slope inwards towards the top, and there are commonly two or more stories. Each floor consists of a single round room roofed by corbelling and sometimes provided with lateral cells. The turrets were as high as 30-60 feet, and some nuraghi contain stones of 100 cubic feet each in their structure. The more complex examples consist of several towers, courtyards, and curtain walls, and many nuraghi (e.g. Barumini) are surrounded by substantial outer fortifications with further stone towers. Nuraghi continued to be built during the Phoenician and Carthaginian occupation of the island, right down to the Roman conquest. There are thousands of nuraghi in Sardinia and they remain a prominent feature of the island's landscape today. The Nuraghic culture is associated with a flourishing bronze industry which in its later stages produced a series of attractive figurines and votive models. The megalithic tombs known as 'tombe di giganti' belong to the monuments including sacred wells. The Corsican torre (torri) and Balearic Island talayots share many architectural features with the nuraghi of Sardinia.
nymphaeum or nymphaion: SYNONYMS OR RELATED TERMS: nympheum
CATEGORY: structure
DEFINITION: An ancient Greek and Roman sanctuary consecrated to water nymphs. It was an elaborately decorated public drinking fountain -- a semicircular monumental Classical fountain house. It often had niches filled with sculpture. The nymphs were associated with a range of natural features such as water, mountains, and trees. Nymphaea were often erected near the head of a spring. The nymphaeum served as a sanctuary, a reservoir, and an assembly chamber where weddings were held. The rotunda nymphaeum, common in the Roman period, was borrowed from such Hellenistic structures as the Great Nymphaeum of Ephesus. Nymphaea existed at Corinth, Antioch, and Constantinople; the remains of about 20 have been found in Rome; and others exist as ruins in Asia Minor, Syria, and North Africa. The word 'nymphaeum' was also used in ancient Rome to refer to a bordello and also to the fountain in the atrium of the Christian basilica.
Ojin (fl. 4th-5th c AD): CATEGORY: person
DEFINITION: The 15th emperor of Japan, given in the traditional list for the 3rd-4th century AD. It is also the name of the keyhole mounded tomb, the second largest in Japan, used as his mausoleum at Habikino near Osaka. Ojin is believed to have consolidated imperial power, championed land reform, and promoted cultural exchanges with Korea and China. It is said that highly skilled weaving techniques were brought from Korea during his reign. Chinese scholars introduced Confucianism and the Chinese writing system into the country, thus marking the beginning of Japanese cultural growth.
orthostat: SYNONYMS OR RELATED TERMS: adj. orthostatic
CATEGORY: structure
DEFINITION: A large vertical stone slab supporting the capstone or roof of a chamber or passage in a megalithic tomb.
Oseberg ship: CATEGORY: artifact
DEFINITION: Important Viking ship burial, discovered in 1903 in south Norway in a peat mound. It was found with most of its timbers intact and its main burial chamber still filled with most of its contents. Among the objects in the chamber were the skeletons of a man (c 850-900 AD), dogs and horses, a chest containing oil lamps and personal items, a wooden bed and a sledge. Now reconstructed in the Oslo Ship Museum, the Oseberg ship is a fine example of a large sophisticated Viking warship. The ship itself was plank-built and had a pronounced keel, a large mast and a beautifully carved stern. It shed much light on everyday life of Vikings.
ossuary: SYNONYMS OR RELATED TERMS: ossarium, ossuarium; osteotheke
CATEGORY: structure
DEFINITION: A charnel house used for multiple, mainly secondary, inhumations. It was also the name for a sarcophagus of earthenware, stone, or marble, in which the vessel containing the cremated ashes of the dead was placed. It may be either a small portable article for a single interment (larnax, pithos, urn) or a cave or built structure to take a number of burials (chamber tomb, tholos).
oven: CATEGORY: structure; feature
DEFINITION: A closed structure, in contrast to a hearth, resembling a kiln but designed for cooking food. Sometimes the fire was lit within the chamber and removed before the food could be put in. More elaborate versions have the firebox and cooking chamber separate.
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.
Panduranga: SYNONYMS OR RELATED TERMS: Phan Rang
CATEGORY: culture
DEFINITION: A state of the kingdom of Champa on the coast of southern Vietnam. It became the center of Champan activity from the mid-8th century onward.
Pantelleria: CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: Small island in the central Mediterranean between Sicily and Tunisia. A fortified Neolithic village c 3000 BC has been excavated, with remains of huts, pottery, and obsidian tools. Of volcanic origin, it has a source of obsidian which was exploited in prehistory. There are tombs, known as sesi, similar to the nuraghi of Sardinia, comprising rough lava towers with sepulchral chambers in them. After a considerable interval of no habitation, the Phoenicians established a trading station there in the 7th century BC. Later controlled by the Carthaginians, it was occupied by the Romans in 217 BC. Under the Roman Empire it served as a place of banishment.
Paracas: CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: Large ceremonial area and major Early Horizon culture on the south coast of Peru, showing direct influence from Chavín -- especially in the pottery (called Ocucaje in the Ica Valley). The pottery is a highly individual polychrome ware with designs executed in resinous paint applied after the pot was fired, including paint-filled incisions of Chavinoid deities. This early period pottery was not well-fired. Desert conditions have preserved all kinds of organic materials, including fine textiles, in rich burials. The best known graves belong to the closing stages of the culture and are of two types: deep shafts leading into underground chambers with several mummy bundles (Paracas Cavernas), and pits or abandoned houses filled with sand and containing more than 400 mummy bundles (the type site, Paracas Necropolis). These people also engaged in artificial deformation of the skull by binding the skull in infancy. Much of the material from the necropolis belongs to the earliest stage of the Nasca culture, which developed out of Paracas in about the 2nd century BC. The Paracas culture's earlier phase, called Paracas Cavernas, is dated 900 BC-1 AD; the Paracas cultures of the middle Early Intermediate Period (c 1-400 AD) are referred to as the Paracas Pinilla and the Paracas Necrópolis phases. There are no large temple structures at the type site.
Pasargadae: CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: The first dynastic capital of the Achaemenian Empire, situated northeast of Persepolis in modern southwestern Iran. Traditionally, Cyrus II the Great (reigned c 559- 529 BC) chose the site because it lay near the scene of his victory over Astyages the Mede (550 BC). The buildings are scattered over a wide area; they include two palaces, a gatehouse and a square stone tower, as well as a religious area with a large fire altar. Trilingual inscriptions in Elamite, Babylonian (Akkadian), and Old Persian, all in the cuneiform script, occur on the palaces and gatehouse. Southwest of the palaces is the tomb of Cyrus, almost intact: an impressive rectangular stone chamber with a gabled roof, set on a high stepped plinth. At the extreme southern edge of the site, an impressive rock-cut road or canal indicates the course of the ancient highway that once linked Pasargadae with Persepolis. After the accession of Darius I the Great (522 BC), Persepolis replaced Pasargadae as the dynastic home.
passage grave: SYNONYMS OR RELATED TERMS: passage tomb
CATEGORY: structure
DEFINITION: A category of megalithic or chambered tomb in which there is a burial chamber and a separate passage into the tomb; the chamber is reached from the edge of the covering mound via a long passage. It includes the earliest known megalithic graves of Europe, dating from about 5000 BC (in Brittany). The diagnostic features are a round mound covering a burial chamber (often roofed by corbelling) approached by a narrower entrance passage. The distinction between passage and funerary chamber proper is very marked. The origin of the passage grave is unclear. Passage graves occur throughout the area where megalithic tombs occur in Europe, but have a predominantly western distribution. In some areas, passage graves were still being constructed in the Bronze Age.
Pazyryk: SYNONYMS OR RELATED TERMS: Pazirik
CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: A group of some 40 barrows in the Altai Mountains of central Asia in Kazakhstan, dating to the 5th-3rd centuries BC. They consist of pits some 6 meters square covered with low cairns. The construction and altitude have combined to keep their contents frozen, and are thus remarkably well preserved. There is a rich collection of clothing and felt hangings decorated with animal art, dismantled four-wheeled wagons, and artifacts of wood, leather, skin, and wool. There are mummified remains of several tombs; the men were covered with tattoos. Many horses, with bridles, saddles, and saddlecloths had been buried in neighboring chambers. The burials clearly belonged to the rulers of a nomadic people of the eastern steppes related to the Scythians. The site is perhaps the richest source of information about the customs and artifacts of the Scythians before their westward migrations into western Asia and Europe.
Petit-Chasseur, Sion: CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: Late Neolithic and Chalcolithic burial complex in Valais, Switzerland, with one large megalithic chamber and other smaller tombs. Many stelae have been found within tombs which have triangular daggers on them paralleling those in northern Italy in the 3rd millennium BC.
Philae: CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: An island in the Nile at Elephantine near Aswan, the site of one of the finest surviving temples of the Ptolemaic period. The most important of the complex of temples is that of Isis to whom the island was considered sacred. The earliest standing monument dates from the reign of Nectanebo I (380-362 BC). Other buildings were erected by the Ptolemaic kings and early Roman emperors. During the Nubian Rescue Campaign, the temples of Philae were dismantled and re-erected on the island of Agilkia. Inscriptions in Greek and hieroglyphs on a commemorative obelisk at Philae supplemented the evidence of the Rosetta Stone to give Champollion the key to the ancient Egyptian writings.
Po Nagar: SYNONYMS OR RELATED TERMS: Nha Trang
CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: Literally, Lady of the City), a well-preserved cluster of four Cham shrines dedicated to Shiva and erected or rebuilt between the 7th-12th centuries. It was a site during the kingdom of Champa, on the coast of southern Vietnam. It is also known for its Sanskrit inscriptions recording the late 8th-century raids by seamen from Java who destroyed several temples.
port-hole slab: CATEGORY: structure
DEFINITION: A stone slab with a (usually) circular hole, often forming the entrance to a megalithic chamber tomb. Sometimes the hole is square, or the entrance is made from two slabs set side by side with notches cut from their adjoining edges. These are found from western Europe to India. The holes are usually large enough to allow the passage of a human and generally served to provide restricted entrance to a tomb of part of a tomb.
portal dolmen: SYNONYMS OR RELATED TERMS: portal tomb
CATEGORY: structure
DEFINITION: A form of megalithic chamber tomb found mainly in Ireland, but with outliers in Wales and Cornwall. It had an above-ground chamber consisting of a heavy capstone supported by three or more uprights in a way that made the capstone slope down from front to back -- becoming narrower and lower towards the rear. It was approached through two tall portal slabs which formed a miniature porch or forecourt. The entrance to the chamber is often blocked by a slab which may reach right up to the capstone. The scarce grave goods are similar to those from the court cairns, and both types of tomb are early within the Neolithic period, with dates close to 3800 BC.
Postoloprty: CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: Neolithic site of the Lengyel culture in Bohemia, Czechoslovakia, where sites of several other periods are known. The Neolithic settlement dates from the 4th millennium BC and has a timber-framed trapezoidal longhouse with an antechamber and four domed ovens and bedding trenches.
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.
pylon: SYNONYMS OR RELATED TERMS: bekhenet
CATEGORY: structure
DEFINITION: A monumental gateway to Egyptian temples or palaces built in stone and usually decorated with relief figures and hieroglyphs. It was the usual entrance from the Middle Kingdom to the Roman period (c 2055 BC-395 AD). The Egyptians made frequent use of them, usually in the form of foreshortened pyramids to mark the entrances of tombs. A pylon consisted of a pair of massifs (massive towers) flanked by a smaller gateway. All the wall faces were inclined; the corners completed with a torus molding and the top with torus and cavetto cornice. The interior of a pylon contained staircases and chambers. Pairs of colossal statues and obelisks were often erected in front of the pylon. Pylons are the largest and least essential parts of a temple; some temples have series of them (e.g. 10 at Karnak). Rituals relating to the sun god were evidently carried out on top of the gateway.
Pylos: CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: A palace and town of the Mycenaeans, traditionally ruled by Nestor, and overlooking Navarino Bay on the west coast of the Peloponnese in Greece. It is perhaps the best preserved of all mainland palaces, built in the 14th century BC. A megaron with frescoed walls and painted floor opened on to a courtyard, around which were the domestic quarters, storerooms, guard chamber, and the archives room. The 1200 tablets in the archive were baked by the fire which destroyed the palace in the 13th century BC and have been of enormous value in deciphering the Linear B script. The tablets indicate that the ruler of Pylos exercised control over much of Messenia.
pyramid: CATEGORY: structure
DEFINITION: A monumental tomb in the shape of a pentahedron, a square base and four straight sides converging to an apex, built by the ancient Egyptians in stone or brick to cover or contain the burial chamber of a pharaoh. Its origin lay in the mudbrick mastaba of the Archaic Period, which in the Old Kingdom became more elaborate with the use of stone, regularity of shape, and larger size. It evolved from the step pyramid as seen at Sakkara, Dahshur, and Meidum. The pyramid is the central monument in a pyramid complex and was the preferred tomb in the Old and Middle Kingdoms (3rd-12th Dynasties). The largest and most famous is the Giza group and Khufu's is the biggest with a 230 meter long base and original height of 146 meters. The elaborateness of the funerary ritual, witnessed by the mortuary temples attached to all pyramids, had the same purpose, of guaranteeing the eternal well-being of the deceased. This sepulchral chamber having been connected with the upper world by a passage sloping downwards from the north, the graduated structure was regularly built over it, the proportions of the base to the sides being constantly preserved. The building was continued during the lifetime of its destined tenant, and covered and closed immediately upon his death. The construction of the pyramids as early as the 26th century BC was an extraordinary achievement of engineering and architecture. The tradition of the pyramid as a royal tomb was revived by the kings of Napata and Meroe. In Mesopotamia, Mesoamerica, and South America, pyramids were used as temple-platforms. There are over 80 pyramids in Egypt and ancient Nubia (Sudan).
Pyramid Texts: CATEGORY: language
DEFINITION: In Egypt, 800 spells or 'utterances' carved on the walls of burial chambers of pyramids of the Fifth-Eighth Dynasties, the earliest Egyptian funerary texts. They were later used by private individuals for most of Egyptian history. Some texts may relate to the king's burial ceremonies, but others are concerned with temple ritual and many other matters. They have been found in nine pyramids of the late Old Kingdom (2375-2181 BC) and First Intermediate Period (2181-2055 BC).
Quanterness: CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: A passage grave on Orkney, north Scotland, of the Maes Howe or Quanterness/Quoyness type and dated to c 3000 BC. Like other such tombs, it had been used for collective burial, but the number of bodies found here was unusually high: remains of 157 individuals were found and the tomb may originally have housed 400. Radiocarbon dates indicated it may have represented an extended family over a period of nearly one thousand years. The long, low passage led to the principal rectangular-plan chamber, which had a corbel-vaulted roof. It is dry stone and covered by a large circular cairn.
rock-cut tomb: CATEGORY: structure
DEFINITION: A chamber tomb cut into solid rock. In Egypt, this method was used during Middle Kingdom (c 1938-1600 BC); examples are found in cliffs along the Nile, burials in the Valley of the Kings, and tombs of the nobles at Luxor. In the New Kingdom (1539-1075 BC) the kings were buried in rock-cut tombs, but separate mortuary temples continued to be built nearby. Rock-cut tombs are either made directly from a cliff face, by cutting a vertical shaft from the surface, or by a sloping or stepped passage (dromos). Rock-cut tombs are particularly common in the Mediterranean region, where they occur from the Neolithic to the Iron Age. They may be used either for single or collective burial.
Rosellini, (Niccolo Francesco) Ippolito (1800-1843): CATEGORY: person
DEFINITION: Italian Egyptologist who accompanied Jean-François Champollion on a Franco-Tuscan expedition to Egypt in 1828-1829. They published Monuments de l'Égypte et Nubie". This ten-volume description of the major monuments of Egypt (1832-1844) was one of the most influential Egyptological publications of the mid-19th century."
Rosetta Stone: CATEGORY: language; artifact
DEFINITION: A basalt stela discovered at Rosetta, at the western mouth of the Nile, during Napoleon's occupation of Egypt, in 1799. This trilingual inscription on stone, a decree of King Ptolemy V (196 BC), was carved in Greek, Egyptian Demotic, and Egyptian hieroglyphic. It provided Jean-François Champollion with the key to the decipherment of the ancient Egyptian hieroglyphs, thus paving the way to modern Egyptology. The Rosetta Stone is now in the British Museum.
Sa-huynh: SYNONYMS OR RELATED TERMS: Sa Huynh
CATEGORY: culture; site
DEFINITION: Iron Age culture and site on the central coast of southern Vietnam, dating mainly from the 1st millennium BC and associated with pottery urn burials and rich artifact assemblages paralleled most closely in the Philippines, north Borneo, and Sulawesi. The culture may be associated with early Chamic (Austronesian) settlement in Vietnam or proto-Cham, and appears to be contemporary with, but separate from, the Dong-son culture of north Vietnam. Most assemblages known are from jar burials. Characteristic artifacts include lingling-o earrings and double-headed animal pendants of jadeite. It was active c 600 BC-c 100 AD.
Salamis (Cyprus): CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: A principal city of prehistoric and classic Cyprus, located on the east coast of the island, north of modern Famagusta. According to the Homeric epics, Salamis was founded after the Trojan War by the archer Teucer, who came from the island of Salamis, off Attica. This literary tradition probably reflects the Sea Peoples' occupation of Cyprus (c 1193 BC). Later, the city grew because of its harbor; it became the chief Cypriot outlet for trade with Phoenicia, Egypt, and Cilicia. Salamis came under Persian control in 525 BC. In 306 BC, Demetrius I Poliorcetes of Macedonia won a great naval victory there over Ptolemy I of Egypt. Salamis was sacked in the Jewish revolt of 115-117 AD and suffered repeatedly from earthquakes. It was completely rebuilt by the Christian emperor Constantius II (reigned 337-361 AD) and given the name Constantia. Under Christian rule, Salamis was the metropolitan see of Cyprus. Destroyed again by the Arabs under Mu'awiyah (c 648), the city was then abandoned. There is a large area of surviving ruins, and an extensive necropolis to the west. The Mycenaean settlement was probably at Enkomi. Most remarkable are the so-called 'Royal Tombs', perhaps dating from the Late Geometric period, featuring large dromoi. The burial chambers are constructed of large rectangular blocks and have gable roofs, but were robbed in antiquity. There is an association with horse-and-chariot funerary rites, and horse skeletons still complete with bit in mouth have been discovered. There are also bronze horse accouterments, and cauldron and tripod, and ivory furniture. One tomb shows evidence for an original upper beehive structure or tholos; other tombs are rock-cut and show evidence for rites involving pyres and clay figurines.
Salamis (Greece): CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: An island and town of Attikí, Greece, the site of the straits in which the Greeks won a decisive naval victory over the Persians in 480 BC. The invading forces of Xerxes and the Persians were beaten off. The city was occupied form the Bronze Age and chamber tombs of the Early Iron Age had remains of the social elite.
San Agustín: CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: A locality in the south Colombian Andes highland, with a number of cemeteries, house platforms, ancient fields, stone-built chambers underneath mounds, and also a series of more than 300 stone statues representing mythological personages, some of them with jaguar fangs. The mounds commonly have internal stone-lined passageways and chambers, some of which contain sculpture, suggesting their use as places of worship as well as burial. Sculptures are rendered in a variety of techniques but are usually freestanding stelae and can be up to four meters high. Though stylistic comparisons are often made with Chavin, these themes have strong parallels in Olmec iconography. Occupation extends from about 700 BC almost to the Spanish conquest. The spectacular stonework falls somewhere between 500 BC and 1500 AD. There is also incised and modeled pottery and gold ornaments from the underground burial chambers.
Saqqara: SYNONYMS OR RELATED TERMS: Sakkara, Saqqarah
CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: The site of the principal necropolis of the ancient city of Memphis, near Cairo, Egypt, used from the 2nd Dynasty to the Christian period. There are 15 royal pyramids, mainly of the Old Kingdom (c 2575-2130 BC), the most being the Step Pyramid erected by Imhotep for Djoser, pharaoh of the 3rd dynasty, c 2630 BC. The royal mastaba tombs of the nobility making up most of the cemetery have yielded much evidence on the Archaic Period. Also buried here, at the Serapeum, were the sacred Apis bulls. With the passage of time burial chambers were more massively constructed of stone, and eventually hewn from solid rock. There are a large number of important private tombs of the Archaic through the Graeco-Roman period.
sarsens / sarsen: SYNONYMS OR RELATED TERMS: sarsen-stones
CATEGORY: geology
DEFINITION: A type of sandstone of the Marlborough Downs in Wiltshire, England. The sarsens are the remnants of a cap of Tertiary period sandstone which once covered the area. They were used by the builders of Stonehenge, Avebury, and several megalithic chamber tombs. Stonehenge is almost 30 km from the quarry site.
segmented cist: SYNONYMS OR RELATED TERMS: segmented gallery grave
CATEGORY: structure
DEFINITION: A type of megalithic tomb -- cist or burial chamber -- divided into compartments by jambs projecting from the walls, or by sill stones (septal slabs) set transversely on edge across the floor. These tombs are sometimes labeled segmented gallery graves. Good examples are in the British Isles among the Clyde Carlingford tombs.
septal slab: CATEGORY: structure; artifact
DEFINITION: An upright stone slab set across the floor of a megalithic chambered tomb to divide it into separate compartments (e.g. in a court cairn). They vary in height from low kerbs to the full height of the chamber; in the latter case they are sometimes provided with port-holes.
serapeum: SYNONYMS OR RELATED TERMS: Serapeum, Sarapeum, Sarapieion
CATEGORY: structure
DEFINITION: Two temples of ancient Egypt dedicated to the worship of the Greco-Egyptian god Sarapis (Serapis). The original elaborate temple of that name was located on the west bank of the Nile near Saqqara and was a monument to the deceased Apis bulls. Though the area was used as a cemetery for the bulls as early as 1400 BC, it was Ramesses II (1279-13 BC) who designed a main gallery and subsidiary chambers. Under the Ptolemaic dynasty, the temple was called the Sarapeum. The vast underground galleries at Saqqara housed the 64 embalmed bodies of the Apis bulls. French Egyptologist Auguste Mariette discovered the ruins, first finding a limestone sphinx almost hidden in the sand in an area northwest of the Step Pyramid of Djoser and uncovering an avenue leading into the Western Desert, at the end of which lay a small temple built by a 30th-Dynasty pharaoh. He also found a large blocked doorway and 24 vaulted burial chambers within. Another important serapeum was built at Alexandria, the new Ptolemaic capital. Ptolemy I Soter (reigned 305-284 BC) selected Sarapis as the official god for Egypt and built largest and best known of the god's temples. There Sarapis was worshipped until 391 AD, when the serapeum was destroyed. In Roman times other serapeums were constructed throughout the empire.
serdab: CATEGORY: structure
DEFINITION: In Egyptian architecture, a chamber found in some mastabas of the Old Kingdom (2686-2181 BC), appearing during the reign of Djoser and widespread in the Giza and Saqqara cemeteries after Menkaure's reign. It consists of a walled-up chamber provided in a mortuary chapel or burial shaft to contain an image or statue of the deceased. Statues of the ka of the deceased were usually placed here. It derives from the Arabic word for 'cellar'.
sese: SYNONYMS OR RELATED TERMS: pl. sesi
CATEGORY: structure
DEFINITION: The name given to the Bronze Age tombs on the Mediterranean island of Pantelleria, between Sicily and Tunisia. The sesi are stone cairns containing 1-11 burial chambers, each consisting of a cell roofed by corbelling and approached by an entrance passage.
Severn-Cotswold tomb: SYNONYMS OR RELATED TERMS: Severn-Cotswold
CATEGORY: structure
DEFINITION: A group of Neolithic burial monuments in southwest Britain around the Bristol Channel -- megalithic tombs consisting of a long mound, tapering on one end, with one or more passage graves. In the finest tombs, the funerary area is a long gallery with up to three pairs of side chambers opening from it. In others, the courtyard leads only to a false entrance while the burial chambers open laterally onto the side of the mound. The Severn-Cotswold tombs were built early in the Neolithic period, and there is a radiocarbon date of 3600 +/- 130 BC from Waylands Smithy, Berkshire. The West Kennet tomb (3330 +/- 150) was constructed at much the same time as the nearby causewayed camp at Windmill Hill. In plan, these graves show a general similarity to the French transepted gallery graves around the mouth of the River Loire. There are two main varieties: axial-chambered tombs, with the passage entrance opening from the center of the broader end of the mound, and lateral-chambered tombs, where two megalithic chambers are entered from opposite sides of the mound.
shaft grave: SYNONYMS OR RELATED TERMS: shaft tomb
CATEGORY: structure
DEFINITION: A grave in which the burial chamber was reached by a vertical shaft, the burials themselves placed at the bottom of a deep narrow pit, used in the early Bronze Age. The tomb was usually rectangular and the burial chamber was at its base. After the burial was done, the chamber was roofed and the shaft above it filled in. Shaft graves occur in various parts of the world and are not all of the same date. The most famous examples are the richly furnished tombs at Mycenae. At Mycenae there Circles A and B, which may have stone markers. The vertical shaft tomb was also characteristic of Bronze Age China and it was used by the Shang elite of northern China.
Shahr-i Qumis: CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: Parthian city in northeast Iran with occupation of some kind from the Iron Age to the Seljuq period; ended by the Mongol invasion in the 13th century. The size of the Parthian city and its location on a major highway linking Mesopotamia with Central Asia suggests that it might be the Parthian capital known to the Greeks as Hecatompylos ('The City of a Hundred Gates'). Parthian structures that have been excavated include vaulted mud-brick chambers used for burials; and a fortified mansion with six towers, a large courtyard, and a number of long rooms on the ground floor.
Shub-Ad (fl 3rd millennium BC): SYNONYMS OR RELATED TERMS: Puabi
CATEGORY: person
DEFINITION: A queen or Ur c 2600 BC (Early Dynastic Period in Mesopotamia, c 2900-2334 BC), whose tomb was discovered in the Royal Cemetery. The tomb contained the bodies of more than 60 attendants. The queen herself lay on a wooden bier within a stone-built chamber beside that of Abargi, probably her husband. She was wearing a cloak of beads of gold, silver, and precious stones, an elaborate headdress of gold ribbons with gold and lapis lazuli pendants, and large lunate gold earrings. There were also bowls and other vessels of gold, silver, and copper, as well as pottery. In the shaft of the tomb were a wooden sledge with mosaic decoration and two oxen to draw it, an inlaid gaming board, and a magnificent harp inlaid with shell, red and blue stone.
Sipán: CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: A site on the northern coast of Peru, in the Lambayeque region, with a complex of tombs of the Moche culture (Early Intermediate Period). There are royal or very lavish tombs, including that of the Lord of Sipán, a warrior-priest, with spectacular artifacts. Several more burial chambers containing the remains of Moche royalty have been excavated, all dating from c 300 AD. These finds have greatly aided the understanding of Moche society, religion, and culture.
stalled cairn: CATEGORY: structure
DEFINITION: A type of cairn found in the Orkney Islands which cover elongated burial chambers in which stone slabs project from the walls. The corpses were laid on the slabs.
step pyramid: CATEGORY: structure
DEFINITION: A form of Egyptian royal tomb, transitional between the mastaba of the early Archaic Period and the true pyramid of the Old Kingdom. Djoser's at Saqqarah is the only completed step pyramid known. The pyramid itself evolved through numerous stages from a flat mastaba (an oblong tomb with a burial chamber dug beneath it, common at earlier nonroyal sites) into a six-stepped, almost square pyramid (a terraced structure rising in six unequal stages to a height of 60 m, its base measuring 120 m by 108 m). The substructure has an intricate system of underground corridors and rooms, its main feature being a central shaft 25 m deep and 8 m wide, at the bottom of which is the sepulchral chamber built of granite from Aswan. The Step Pyramid rises within a vast walled court 544 m long and 277 m wide, in which there are remnants of other stone edifices.
susi temple: CATEGORY: structure
DEFINITION: A kind of temple found in Urartu, which are square, single-chambered towerlike buildings.
Ta-wen-k'ou: CATEGORY: culture
DEFINITION: Neolithic culture of China, a painted pottery group found mainly in Shantung province. Dated to c 3500 BC, it precedes Lung-Shan culture. There were graveside ritual offerings of liquids, pig skulls, and pig jaws. There were tomb ramps and coffin chambers at Ta-wen-k'ou.
Takamatsuzuka: CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: Mounded tomb (tumulus) of the Kofun period which is about 18 m in diameter and 5 m high, dating to the 7th century AD in Nara Prefecture, Japan. Excavation revealed paintings of human and mythological figures and celestial bodies, and murals of Chinese directional symbols, on the walls and the ceiling of the burial chamber. Close similarities to the Tang are seen and a Tang mirror and some gold- and silver-plated ornaments have been found.
talayot: SYNONYMS OR RELATED TERMS: Talayotic culture
CATEGORY: structure; culture
DEFINITION: Massive dry-stone towers of the Bronze and Iron Age of the Balearic Islands, mainly Majorca and Minorca, c 1000-300 BC. In its oldest and most simple form, a talayot is a round tower built of large stone blocks. It may be solid, or enclose a single cell or chamber roofed by corbelling; there may niches in the wall. In other examples the roof is of flat slabs supported by a central pillar. From c 850 BC, square talayots were also built and some of these have a second chamber above the one on the ground floor. Many later became the center of a small village of dry-stone houses and enclosed by walls of Cyclopean masonry. The architecture shows resemblances to contemporary structures in Sardinia (the nuraghe) and in Corsica. The precise function of talayots is unknown, but they could have been used as lookout towers or as refuges in times of trouble. The tower has also given its name to the local Bronze age culture.
Tanagra: CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: Site in Boeotia, Greece, where a large cache of finely worked, cast terra-cotta figurines were found in Hellenistic period cemeteries spanning the period from c 340-150 BC. There are also Mycenaean chamber tombs in the area. The nearly circular hill of the ancient ruined city was first occupied by the Gephyreans, an Athenian clan. It became the chief town of the eastern Boeotians, with lands extending to the Gulf of Euboea. Tanagra probably assumed leadership of the Boeotian confederacy following the Greco-Persian Wars when it took over the clay-working industry of devastated Thebes.
temple: SYNONYMS OR RELATED TERMS: templum
CATEGORY: structure
DEFINITION: A building with a religious function, of various shapes and sizes. For the ancient Egyptians, it was the 'house' of a deity or deities and the most important component was the innermost cult-chamber or shrine, where the image of the deity was kept. Temples were not originally intended for worshippers, but as shrines for the gods. They consisted of the following elements: the pylon, an open courtyard with colonnades, the hypostyle hall, and the sanctuary. The sacred precinct of a town, including the temple and associated buildings, was often surrounded by a massive mud-brick wall. In the Classical world, many great temples were built. Because of the importance of temples in a society, temple architecture often represents the best of a culture's design and craftsmanship.
tepidarium: CATEGORY: structure
DEFINITION: In Roman baths, the warm room or chamber, used as a lounge where bathers rested, talked, and gambled and as preparation for the sudatorium. Often a plunge-bath was attached to it, adding humidity to the room.
tholos: SYNONYMS OR RELATED TERMS: pl. tholoi; tholos tomb; beehive tombs
CATEGORY: structure
DEFINITION: A beehive-shaped tomb built of stone and roofed by corbelling, sometimes royal, characteristic of the Mycenaean civilization. In Greek architecture, the term is generally used for the burial chambers of certain passage graves of similar plan and construction. The round chamber had an attached rectilinear entrance passage, the most famous examples being the Treasury of Atreus and Tomb of Clytemnestra at Mycenae. The corbelling is trimmed to form a smooth surface, and the ornamental doorway is approached by a masonry-lined, horizontal passage or dromos. Such a tomb is set partly underground or sometimes built into the side of a hill. In classical archaeology the term can be applied to either temples or tombs.
tomb: CATEGORY: structure
DEFINITION: A burial structure or chamber; the term is applied loosely to all kinds of graves, funerary monuments, and memorials. In many cultures and civilizations the tomb was superseded by, or coexisted with, monuments or memorials to the dead. The style of tombs has undergone different phases of development in various cultures.
torre: SYNONYMS OR RELATED TERMS: pl. torri
CATEGORY: structure
DEFINITION: The name for circular dry-stone towerlike structures built in Corsica (mainly in the south) during the Middle and Late Bronze Ages. They are typically of Cyclopean masonry and measure 10-15 meters in diameter and 3-7 meters in height; normally a narrow entrance opens into a central corbelled chamber, sometimes with subsidiary niches. The basic plan was often changed to incorporate natural rock formations or extra corridors. The oldest examples are of the early 2nd millennium BC. Although the torri are superficially similar to the Naragi of Sardinia and the Talayots of the Balearic Islands, they are considerably smaller and not effective as defenses or refuges.
transepted gallery grave: CATEGORY: structure
DEFINITION: A type of gallery grave having side chambers resembling transepts; a variant of the megalithic gallery grave in which side chambers (transepts) open from the main burial chamber. These tombs are found only in three areas: near the mouth of the River Loire in France, in the Bristol Channel region (e.g. Severn-Cotswold), and in northwest Ireland. The three are in some way interrelated and all lie on western seaways linking Atlantic France with the British Isles. Some scholars regard those in France as variant passage graves, unrelated to the British Isles tombs.
Tressé: CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: Late Neolithic allée couverte in Ille-et-Vilaine, France. There is a paved chamber roofed by seven capstones and artifacts including coarse ware pottery and blades of Grand Pressigny flint.
tumulus: SYNONYMS OR RELATED TERMS: pl. tumuli
CATEGORY: feature
DEFINITION: A mound of earth or stones built over a burial -- most often a large, circular tomb. Tumuli were used for the burial chambers of Etruscan aristocrats in the Archaic period (6th-5th centuries BC), also in the Bronze Age, and later revived by the Roman emperors Augustus and Hadrian.
Tutankhamun (reigning c1336-1327 BC): SYNONYMS OR RELATED TERMS: Tutankhamen
CATEGORY: person
DEFINITION: A minor Egyptian pharaoh of the late 18th Dynasty who came into great prominence when his tomb in the Valley of Kings at Thebes was found with minimal disturbance by Howard Carter and Lord Carnarvon in 1922. A son of Amenhotep III, he succeeded the heretic pharaoh Akhenaten. During an undistinguished reign of nine years he began the restoration of the worship of Amen (Amun) and returned the capital to Thebes. His more orthodox successors attempted to obliterate him from memory because of the taint of Aten worship which he apparently never entirely threw off. The tomb, though probably far poorer than those of the greater pharaohs, yielded a remarkable treasure and great detail of the ritual of Egyptian royal burials. The mummy, with a magnificent inlaid gold mask, lay inside three cases -- the innermost of pure gold weighing over a ton, the outer two of gilded wood. These were enclosed in a stone sarcophagus within successive shrines also of gilded wood, nearly filling the burial chamber. Three other rooms held chariots, furniture, statues, and other possessions of the king. It took three years to clear and preserve the contents of the wealthy tomb. The discovery stirred the public imagination and opened up a great interest in archaeology.
Umm an-Nar: SYNONYMS OR RELATED TERMS: Umm an-nar
CATEGORY: site; culture
DEFINITION: Bronze Age settlement and chamber tomb cemetery on a small island of Abu Dhabi on the Oman peninsula. The site has given its name to an early 3rd-millennium BC culture, also found through southeastern Arabia. Characteristic Umm an-Nar pottery, funerary architecture, and other artifacts are dated c 2500-2000 BC. Evidence suggests that the Umm an-Nar culture might be identified with the land of Magan, mentioned in cuneiform Sumerian documents.
Unstan ware: CATEGORY: artifact
DEFINITION: Style of Neolithic pottery found in the northern part of the British Isles, especially the Hebrides, Western Isles, and Orkney, defined by Stuart Piggott in 1954 on the basis of an assemblage from the chambered tomb of Unstan on Orkney. Including both decorated and undecorated vessels, Unstan ware is diverse in the range of shapes and sizes represented. However, it can be typified by round-bottomed forms either as deep bowls and jars or as shallow bowls with a carinated profile produced by the application of a fillet or cordon of clay. The decoration is generally incised with oblique or horizontal lines, triangles, or a zone of hatched triangles. Dated examples of this ware fall within the period 3500-2800 BC, Unstan ware being slightly earlier than GROOVED WARE in the region.
updraft kiln: CATEGORY: ceramics
DEFINITION: An installation for firing pottery or burning lime with a firebox in which the fuel burns that is below the chimney-like chamber in which pots are fired.
Veii: SYNONYMS OR RELATED TERMS: modern Veio
CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: Etruscan city just north of Rome, of south Etruria, destroyed by Rome in 396 BC. After some intermittent Bronze Age occupation, it was settled in the Villanovan period (9th century BC), occupying a large plateau. The 7th century BC saw early Etruscan chamber tombs, including some painted examples. It was enclosed by a wall and rampart in the 5th century BC and had a temple containing large terra-cotta statues of deities. Veii was the greatest center for the fabrication of terra-cotta sculptures in Etruria in the 6th century BC. Evidence suggests an irregular street-plan, with cisterns and cuniculi indicating the Etruscan hydraulic engineering. The town is surrounded by a number of Villanovan and Etruscan cemeteries. One of the chambered tombs, the Grotta Campana, contains the oldest known Etruscan frescoes. The ashes of the dead were stored in burial urns surmounted by archaic terra-cotta portrait heads. Nearby are the remains of the Temple of Apollo, home of the terra-cotta statue of the Apollo of Veii" and also a temple shrine dedicated to the neighboring Cremera River. Veii's destruction in 396 BC was not total however and the Romans later reconstructed the city. Under Augustus it was made a municipium and up to the 3rd century AD it continued as a religious center."
ventilator shaft: CATEGORY: feature
DEFINITION: The vertical portion of a ventilation system, which is a specialized construction for allowing fresh-air intake into a structure. Ventilation systems are normally found in pithouses and kivas, rarely in rooms. The ventilator shaft is outside the main chamber of the structure and is connected to the structure by a horizontal tunnel.
Vietnam: CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: A distinct Vietnamese ethnolinguistic group began to emerge about 200 BC in the independent kingdom of Nam Viet, which was later annexed to China. In the 1st century AD the kingdom of Funan occupied much of the Mekong delta area, but it disappeared in the 6th century. Most Vietnamese archaeological sites are in the northern part of the country: Lower Palaeolithic tools, a lithic sequence from the end of the Pleistocene (c 10,000-4000 BC) with pottery, full Neolithic cultures appearing after 3000 BC and the Bronze Age, terminating in the classic Dong-Son culture (early second millennium BC- 200 AD). The Bronze Age-Iron Age in southern Vietnam is associated with the Sa-Huynh culture and Chamic (Austronesian) settlement.
Vounous: CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: Early Cypriot cemetery in northern Cyprus of the late 3rd millennium BC. the tombs are oval rock-cut chambers entered through a short dromos. Grave goods include terra-cotta models.
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.
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.
wing wall: CATEGORY: structure; feature
DEFINITION: A low, east-west partition that divides the main chamber of a pit structure. A wing wall often consists of east and west segments with a deflector in between. Construction is variable and may be vertical slab and adobe, jacal, coursed stone and plaster, etc.
Xibeigang: SYNONYMS OR RELATED TERMS: [Hsi-pei-kang]
CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: Site in Hebei Province, China, of the Royal Cemetery of the Late Shang, with seven shaft tombs with wooden-chamber burials and human sacrifices. There are also over 2000 small pit-graves with human sacrifices. The hierarchy of burials at this and other cemeteries in the area reflected the social organization of the living. The large pit tombs, some nearly 42 feet deep, were furnished with four ramps and massive grave chambers for the kings. Only a few undisturbed elite burials have been unearthed, the most notable being that of Fu Hao, a consort of Wu-ting. Her relatively small grave contained 468 bronze objects of the Anyang style, 775 jades, carved bone objects, and more than 6,880 cowries -- suggesting how great the wealth placed in the far larger royal tombs must have been.

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