Archaeology Wordsmith

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Results for Inti:

graphite painting: CATEGORY: ceramics
DEFINITION: A surface treatment for pottery involving the application of powdered graphite before firing. As in hematite coating, the mineral may have been applied by mixing with a slip and applied as 'paint'. The resulting surface is silvery-gray and shiny.
Inti: SYNONYM: Punchau; Apu-Punchau
CATEGORY: deity
DEFINITION: In Inca religion, the sun god, believed to be the ancestor of the Incas. Inti was the head of the cult and his worship was imposed throughout the empire. He was represented in human form with his face being a gold disk from which rays and flames extended. The temple of the Sun was called Inti-huasi (house of the sun) with 7 principal divisions: inti or sanctuary (center of temple), mama-quilla (moon), cayllur (stars), illapa (thunder), ckuichi (rainbow), huilacuma (chief priest), and the dwelling of the priests. Inti's sister and consort was the moon, Mama-Kilya (or Mama-Quilla), who was portrayed as a silver disk with human features.
Intihuasi Cave: CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: An Argentinian site with long occupation and clear chronological continuity and similar to the Desert Tradition. Its lowest level, dated to c 6000 BC, contains willow-leaf points and other hunting tools in association with manos, milling stones, and ground-stone ornaments. Other levels contain medium-sized triangular points, bone projectile points, and a ceramic level (c 750 AD).
negative painting: SYNONYM: resist dyeing; resist-dye
CATEGORY: ceramics
DEFINITION: A technique of pottery decoration used in many parts of the Americas in which a design area is covered with a paint-resistant substance (wax, gum, clay) and then dipped in paint or dye, dried, and fired. The pot might be either smoked or dipped into a black wash. The dark coating is unable to reach those areas of the surface protected by the resistant substance, and when the resistant substance is removed, the pattern stands out in the original color against the black background.
painting: CATEGORY: artifact
DEFINITION: Artwork first found on rocks in Europe and Africa, created with charcoal, lime, and iron oxide of various colors mixed with animal fat or marrow. European paintings are in caves and date back to early Aurignacian times 70,000-80,000 BC; if created purely for art, though, they would not have been done in the depths of the cave. It is thought that they must have been of religious, magical, or ritual significance. There is proof that schools of painting were held in some caves. Polychrome paintings were made at the peak of Palaeolithic Art, mid-Magdalenian times, about 10,000 BC.
pointillé: CATEGORY: artifact
DEFINITION: A type of decoration by marking with dots
positive painting: CATEGORY: artifact
DEFINITION: The direct application of a design by use of pigments, as in painting pottery.
transfer printing: CATEGORY: ceramics
DEFINITION: Colored paper impressions derived from inked templates applied to the surface of unfired or partially fired pottery.
transfer-print: SYNONYM: transfer printing, transferprint
CATEGORY: artifact
DEFINITION: A mass-production method of applying an image to a curved or uneven surface, most commonly used for printing on porcelain and other hard surfaced pottery
Acacus: SYNONYM: Tadrat Acacus
CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: A region of the central Sahara (now southwestern Libya) known for rock shelters with occupation deposits and rock paintings. Pottery was made from about 7000 BC, the earliest of the so-called Aquatic Civilization typified by wavy-line decoration. The skull of a shorthorn ox and traces of sheep/goat supply evidence for animal domestication as early as c 4000 BC. Rock paintings of oxen predate c 2700 BC.
aedicula: SYNONYM: plural aediculae
CATEGORY: structure
DEFINITION: In Roman architecture, a small shrine usually projecting from an inside wall. Two columns supported a miniature architrave and a pediment. Many wall paintings of Pompeii included aediculae.
Ajanta: CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: A site of Buddhist rock-cut cave temples and monasteries in central India. The group of some 30 caves from the 1st century BC to the 5th century AD are celebrated for their wall paintings depicting Buddhist legends and the Buddha's incarnations. There are two types of caves, caityas (sanctuaries) and viharas (monasteries).
Alpera: SYNONYM: Albacete
CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: A collection of well-preserved paintings over the back wall of the shallow rock shelter Cueva Vieja in southeast Spain. They belong to the Spanish Levant cycle, c 8000-5000 BC (Mesolithic), and depict a group of women, hunters or warriors with bows and arrows and feather headdresses; and deer, ox, and possibly dogs.
Altamira: CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: One of the most important painted Palaeolithic caves (as is Lascaux, France) and one of the earliest discovered (1879). The site is in the Cantabrian Mountains of northeast Spain and the 280-meter long cave is famous for its polychrome animals, which include deer, bison, and wild boar painted in red, black, and a range of earth colors. Most of the art in the cave was produced by Solutrean and Magdalenian peoples, with one layer radiocarbon-dated to c 13,000 BC. The most famous panel is of 15 bison, plus deer and horses. There is also a hall with black paintings, and symbols are found in several parts of the cave. The paintings' authenticity was challenged right up to 1902 when Emile Cartailhac finally accepted that they were genuine.
Ampurias: SYNONYM: Emporion
CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: An ancient Greek trading settlement in Spain, 40 km northeast of present-day Gerona. It was originally a colony of Marseilles (Massalia), founded in the early 6th century BC. The town allied with Rome in the 3rd century BC and it became a Roman colony under Augustus (27 BC-14 AD). Ampurias was probably most prosperous between the 5th-3rd centuries BC, when it established extensive trading across the Mediterranean. Its commercial achievements were marked by the minting of coinage. But after Roman presence increased and the harbor began to silt up, the town declined. The end came at the destruction by the Franks in 265 AD.
antimony: SYNONYM: adj. antimonial
CATEGORY: geology
DEFINITION: A brittle metallic substance that has been used in the preparation of yellow pigments for enamel and porcelain painting. It forms a fourth constituent in alloys, along with nitrogen, phosphorus, arsenic, bismuth, and some others in forming triads and pentads.
Apollo 11 Cave: CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: A cave in southern Namibia near the confluence of the Orange and Great Fish Rivers which has a long sequence of industries dating from the Middle Stone Age. There is a series of detached rock slabs with rock paintings dating between 28,450-26,350 years old, among the oldest dated paintings in the world and the oldest dated rock art of southern Africa. Later horizons in the Apollo 11 Cave show a scraper-based industry in the 13th-8th millennia BC that is related to the Albany industry of southern Cape Province. Microlithic findings begin in the 8th millennium.
Arnhem Land: CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: A region of the Northern Territory of Australia with a complete sequence dating back more than 50,000 years. There is rock art back to the Pleistocene and even earlier paintings of land animals and Mimi figures.
Asuka: CATEGORY: culture; chronology
DEFINITION: A culture and period in Japanese history during which the development of art, the introduction of Buddhism from Korea, and the adoption of a Chinese pattern of government were important. Located in the southwestern part of the Nara Basin (Yamato Plain), the culture flourished from 552-645 AD. In art history, the Asuka culture refers to early Buddhist art and architecture in the Northern Wei style. In chronology, the Asuka period refers more to the reign of Soga family during which Buddhism was promoted and a formal administrative structure with diplomatic relations was introduced. Many old temples and palaces are surviving examples of Asuka architecture, sculpture, and paintings.
Aurignacian: SYNONYM: Aurignac (adj)
CATEGORY: culture; chronology
DEFINITION: A series of Upper Palaeolithic cultures in Europe that existed from about 35,000 to 20,000 years (dates also given as 38,000-22,000 years) ago. They were characterized by their use of stone (flint) and bone tools, refinement of those tools, and the development of sculpture and cave painting. The culture is named for the type site Aurignac, in southern France, where such artifacts were discovered. In France it is stratified between the Châtelperronian and the Gravettian (and before the Solutrean and the Magdalenian), but industries of Aurignacian type are also found eastwards to the Balkans, Palestine, Iran, and Afghanistan. At Abri Pataud there is a radiocarbon date of pre-31,000 BC for the Aurignacian, but there are possibly earlier occurrences in central and southeast Europe (Istállóskö in Hungary, Bacho Kiro in Bulgaria). There is still considerable dispute about the extent to which the Aurignacian is contemporary with the cultures of the Perigordian group in southwest France. The sites are often in deep, sheltered valleys. Split-based bone points, carinates (steep-end scrapers), and Aurignac blades (with heavy marginal retouch) are typical of Aurignacian. Aurignacian is also important as the most distinctive and abundantly represented of the early Upper Palaeolithic groups.
Aztec: SYNONYM: Mexica, Tenochcas
CATEGORY: culture
DEFINITION: The last pre-Columbian civilization to enter the Valley of Mexico after the collapse of the Toltec civilization in c 12 AD, who built a magnificent capital at Tenochtitlán and were later conquered by the Spaniards (1521). They called themselves the Mexica or Tenochca and were the dominant political group of the Late Post-Classic Period. The people spoke Nahuatl. Their origin is obscure, partly because of the deliberate destruction of their own records, but tradition says that in 1193 AD the last of seven Chichimec tribes left Aztlan , a mythical birthplace somewhere north or west of Mexico, and filtered south. For a while they lived around Lake Texococo, but in 1345 they were allowed to found Tenochtitlán (under present-day Mexico City) on some unoccupied islands. By 1428 Tenochtitlán, Texococo, and Tlacopan formed an independent state which controlled most of present-day Mexico from the desert zone in the north to Oaxaca in the south, with extensions as far as the Guatemalan border -- all through military expansion. By inclination and training the Aztecs were militaristic, and a person's status depended on his success as a warrior. The chief god of the Aztecs, Huitzilopochtli, was a war god who required the blood of sacrificial victims, and only constant warfare supplied the altar of the god. Human sacrifice was necessary also to ensure the daily rising of the sun. Other major deities were Huitzilpotchtli (the warrior god and chief deity of Tenochtitlan), Texcatlipoca (god of night, death and destruction), Xipe Totec (god of spring and renewal), and Quetzacoatl, the plumed serpent (god of self-sacrifice and inventor of agriculture and the calendar). Tenochtitlán became a great imperial city, so large that it could not be self-sufficient but had to rely on tributes from its provinces. Luxury goods and necessities were brought to the city, and craftsmen produced jewelry, turquoise mosaics, featherwork, and carved stone. Mold-made clay figurines were common, and the black-on-orange pottery was decorated with geometrical designs and stylized creatures. Little architecture or painting survived the Spanish conquest of 1521. Copies of several books have been preserved (as the Dresden Codex). Aztec society was set in a clearly defined hierarchical class system. At the top was the ruling class (pipil) from whom and by whom the emperors were chosen. The mass of the population were freeman (machuale) and under them were the serfs (mayeques) and then at the bottom the slaves. Most people were of the landholding group called the calpulli, which had its own internal hierarchy. Change of social class was possible through state service in the military and sometimes through merchant activity. The merchants (pochteca) served as early-reconnaissance and espionage groups. The arrival of the Spaniards and the fall of Tenochtitlán after a 90-day siege marked the end of Aztec dominance.
Bahía: CATEGORY: culture
DEFINITION: A phase in Ecuador's culture, dating c 500 BC - 500 AD that was discovered on La Plata Island (Manabi). Large pyramidal platform mounds, helmeted figurines, spouted jars, and incised pottery have been found and evidence of polychrome painting and metallurgy. Houses with saddle roofs (low, downward-curving roof ridges), pottery head/neck rests, figurines with one leg crossed over the other, Pan pipes graduated towards the center and ear plugs shaped like golf tees were unique to the culture -- but they have parallels in southeast Asia. It has been suggested that they were introduced into Ecuador by voyagers from across the Pacific. Particularly elaborate anthropomorphic vessels give information on dress and ornamentation (nose discs and tusk-like pendants). Bahia was a well-developed socio-political and religious unit. The La Plata Island site was probably a ceremonial center as there is little evidence of daily living. Unfortunately, many sites have already been lost to modern development.
Bambata Cave: CATEGORY: site; culture
DEFINITION: A large cave of southwestern Zimbabwe, where excavations have revealed a long sequence of occupation over the past 50,000 years. The site gives its name to a stone industry and pottery type, but they are widely separated periods. There are rock paintings on the cave walls and sheep bones, found in the same archaeological levels as pottery, have been dated to 150 BC. The Bambata industry, dated between the 50th-20th millennia BC, used prepared cores to produce (unretouched) flakes for scrapers and slender unifacial or bifacial lances or spear points. Its distribution extended north to Zambia and south to the Orange Free State and perhaps the Cape. Bambata pottery ware is known only from contexts of the 1st millennium ad in Zimbabwe. It is elaborately decorated with stamped designs.
Boian: CATEGORY: culture
DEFINITION: A Neolithic culture (c 7000-3500 BC, some say Middle Neolithic c 4200-3700 BC) in lower Danube valley of southern Romania and characterized by terrace-floodplain settlements, consisting at first of mud huts and later of fortified promontory settlements of small tells. The Boian phase was marked by the introduction of copper axes, the extension of agriculture, and the breeding of domestic animals. The distinctive Boian pottery was decorated by rippling, painting, and excised or incised linear designs with white paste. Intramural burial is most common, but occasional large inhumation cemeteries are known. By spreading northward into Transylvania and northeastward to Moldavia, the Boian culture gradually assimilated earlier cultures of those areas. Flourishing exchange networks are known to involve Prut Valley flint, Spondylus shells from the Black Sea, and copper.
Boscoreale: CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: The site of two villas that were suburbs of Rome, near Pompeii, with important and sumptuous artifacts and painted rooms dating c 40 BC. These include possessions of the great patrician families of Rome, such as paintings illustrating Dionysiac mysteries, jewels, and magnificent gold and silver household furnishings. The cubiculum of one villa at Boscoreale is preserved in the Metropolitan Museum of New York City and other items are kept at the Louvre. Many of the rich hoards were accidentally saved by the volcanic catastrophe of 79 AD.
Brandberg: CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: A mountain massif in central Namibia with Stone Age and Iron Age material, including 43,000 important cave art paintings. The White Lady of the Brandberg" romanticized by Abbé Breuil is the most celebrated."
Breuil, Abbé Henri (1877-1961): SYNONYM: Breuil, Henri-Édouard-Prosper
CATEGORY: person
DEFINITION: A French archaeologist who was regarded as an authority on prehistoric cave paintings of Europe and Africa. He devoted much of his life to studying examples of prehistoric art in southern France, northern Spain, and southern Africa. Breuil was a fine draftsman, and his greatest contributions were in the recording and interpretation of cave art in more than 600 publications. He proposed a series of four successive art styles, based on the superposition of paintings found in many caves, and held the view that the purpose of the paintings was sympathetic magic, to ensure success in hunting. Breuil fit the Aurignacian culture into its right place within the French Palaeolithic sequence and was responsible for working out the chronologies of French Upper and Middle Paleolithic periods.
brush: CATEGORY: artifact
DEFINITION: A handheld device with bristles or hairs used for cleaning or painting.
Byzantine empire: SYNONYM: Byzantium (later Constantinople, now Istanbul)
CATEGORY: site; culture
DEFINITION: The eastern half of the Roman Empire, based in Byzantium (later Constantinople, now Istanbul), an ancient Greek settlement on the European side of the Bosporus. It was inaugurated in AD 330 by the Emperor Constantine I who transferred the capital of the Roman Empire to Byzantium. The empire survived the collapse of the Western empire until overrun by the Ottoman Turks in 1453. Originally a Greek colony at the entrance to the Black Sea, a typical Roman town was then laid out over it. Remains of the imperial palace lie south of the former Greek city nucleus. The land walls, giving the city an area greater than that of Rome, were built by Theodosius II (408-450 AD) and are among the best-preserved ancient fortifications anywhere. In the 7th century BC Dorian Greeks founded the settlement of Byzantium on a trapezoidal promontory on the European side of the Bosporus channel which leads from the Mediterranean to the Black Sea and separates Europe from Asia. Septimus Severus (193-211 AD) was responsible for restoring the city, re-walling it and beginning the construction of the limestone racecourse, the Hippodrome. In 368 AD, Valens raised his still impressive aqueduct. In 413 Theodosius II built the colossal surviving walls of stone and brick-faced concrete, with 96 variously shaped towers, and the principal entrance at the Golden Gate. The Eastern Christian empire preserved much of Greek and Roman culture and introduced eastern ideas to the west. Byzantium was essentially a Christian church state, preserving its religion against the onslaught of Islam, despite the Arab encroachments on Palestine, Syria, and northern Africa during the 6th-7th centuries AD. The Byzantine period is the time, about the 6th-12th centuries AD, when its style of architecture and art developed. Byzantine architecture is noted for its Christian places of worship and introduced the cupola, or dome, an almost square ground plan in place of the long aisles of the Roman church, and piers instead of columns. The apse always formed part of Byzantine buildings, which were richly decorated, and contained much marble. St. Sophia (532-537), St. Mark's (Venice, 977) and the Cathedral of Aix-la-Chapelle (796-804) are of pure Byzantine style. Byzantine painting preceded and foreshadowed the Renaissance of art in Italy. Mosaics are perhaps the supreme achievement of Byzantine art.
Cacaxtla: SYNONYM: modern Tlaxcala
CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: A group of platforms, palaces, and ceremonial buildings occupied between 400- 1100 AD in the area of modern Tlaxcala, Mexico. Some structures have well-preserved frescoes, painted murals, and plaster reliefs from the 8th and 9th centuries depicting dancers and elaborately dressed warriors, with day glyphs and numbers associated with Mexican gods such as Quetzalcóatl and Tlaloc. The style of painting shows a strong influence from both Maya and Teotihuacán art. In the pottery, Teotihuacán wares predominate, though there are also links with the Gulf Coast and the Puebla-Oaxaca.
Capsian and Capsian Neolithic: SYNONYM: Capsian industry
CATEGORY: culture
DEFINITION: A Mesolithic/Stone Age (8000 BC-2700 BC) cultural complex prominent in inland northern Africa near the present border between Tunisia and Algeria. Its shell midden sites are in the area of the great salt lakes of what is now southern Tunisia, the type site being Jabal al-Maqta'. The tool kit of the Capsian is a classic example of the industries of the late Würm Glacial Period and it is apparently related to the Gravettian stage of Europe's Perigordian industry (which dates from about 17,000 years ago). However, it occurs in Neothermal (postglacial) times and, like its predecessor, the Ibero-Maurusian industry (Oranian industry), the Capsian was a microlithic tool complex. It differed from the Ibero-Maurusian, however, in having a far more varied tool kit with large backed blades, scrapers, backed bladelets, microburins, and burins in its earlier phase and a gradual development of geometric microliths later. These became its leading feature by the 6th millennium BC. Shortly after 5000 BC, pottery and domesticated animals were introduced. Some North African rock paintings are attributed to people of the Capsian industry. The Capsian Neolithic, with pointed-base pottery and a stone industry, lasted from c 6200-5300 BP, in the Atlas Mountains of Algeria and the northern Sahara. The name derives from Capsa, the Latin form of Gafsa, a town in south central Tunisia where such artifacts were first discovered. Hunting and snail-collecting seem to have formed the basis of the economy. Human remains from Capsian sites are mostly of Mechta-Afalou type.
Carnarvon Gorge: CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: An area of Queensland, Australia, known for its stenciled rock art. There are also engravings and paintings. Cathedral Cave has occupation deposits.
Cartailhac, Émile (1845-1921): CATEGORY: person
DEFINITION: A French prehistorian sometimes called one of the founders of archaeology in France. He edited the journal Matéreaux pour l'histoire primitive et naturelle de l'homme" and wrote books on French and Mediterranean prehistory including "La Caverne de Font-de-Gaume..." (1910; "The Cave of Font-de-Gaume...") with Henri Breuil. He is best remembered for his long refusal to accept the authenticity of cave art denouncing such archaeologists as Marcellino de Sautuola. After visiting the Spanish site of Altamira with the Abbé Breuil Cartailhac changed his opinion and in 1902 published an article subtitled "Mea culpa d'un sceptique" in which he admitted the antiquity of the cave paintings. He then helped to convince many scholars that cave paintings were indeed genuine and the earliest manifestations of art in the world."
cave art: CATEGORY: artifact
DEFINITION: Any paintings, engravings, or designs on cave walls, man's oldest surviving art, especially those by Paleolithic and Pleistocene people that are found in southwest France, northeast Spain, and elsewhere in Europe. Other sites have been discovered in Portugal, Italy, Greece, and the Ural mountains; the only known Russian site is Kapovo Cave. The subject matter of cave art is predominantly animals, especially mammoth, horse, ox, deer, and bison; human figures are relatively uncommon. There are also numerous signs and symbols. The artist used a range of reds, blacks, yellows, and browns derived from ochres and other naturally occurring mineral pigments (iron oxide and manganese dioxide). The purpose and meaning of cave art are still obscure. In France, the caves are mainly in the limestone of the Perigord and Pyrennean regions and the most famous are Altamira, Lascaux, Niaux, and Pech Merle. Occupational evidence is rarely found with the art.
Cederberg: CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: A range of the Cape Fold Mountains near Cape Town, South Africa, known for rock paintings from the Later Stone Age onward.
cestrum: SYNONYM: viriculum
CATEGORY: artifact
DEFINITION: A type of ivory graver used in encaustic painting on ivory, with one pointed end.
Chiriquí: CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: An area of Panama known for its fine gold objects and elegant pottery, with dates from 1100 AD to the Spanish conquest though it may have begun centuries earlier in the highlands. The pottery is often decorated with negative painting or modeled animals. Some large stone sculptures from Penonomé, in Chiriquí, suggest the use of stone in large structures but apparently all of these structures were destroyed in the years after the Spanish Conquest.
Chumash: CATEGORY: culture
DEFINITION: A late prehistoric and historic Native American culture originally living along the coast of southern California and speaking a Hokan language. Chumash also occupied the three northern channel islands off Santa Barbara. The major Chumash groups were the Obispeño, Purismeño, Ynezeño, Barbareño, and Ventureño, Emigdiano, and Cuyama. The Chumash were skilled artisans, made wooden-plank canoes and vessels of soapstone, as well as a variety of tools out of wood, whalebone, and other materials. They produced basketry, did rock painting, and started of clamshell-bead currency in the area. The Chumash were among the first native Californians to be encountered by the Spanish explorer Juan Rodríguez Cabrillo, who visited the islands in 1542-1543.
cinnabar: CATEGORY: geology
DEFINITION: A red, crystalline form of mercuric sulphide, a naturally occurring and most important ore of mercury. It was used as a pigment for painting sculptures, pottery, and figurines by the Romans, Olmecs, and others.
columbarium: SYNONYM: pl. columbaria
CATEGORY: structure
DEFINITION: A term from Roman antiquity for a subterranean sepulcher with wall niches or pigeonholes for cinerary urns. The term was also used for the recesses themselves. This type of burial was typically afforded to the large staff of slaves and freedmen. . Originating as variants of traditional Etruscan and republican Roman house tombs, columbaria were usually rectangular brick structures built around an open court, the walls of which contained niches for the urns. Some columbaria were elaborate and held numerous inscriptions, stucco paintings, and mosaics which provide information about the lower classes. Some of the best examples of columbaria are those in the great necropolis beneath the Basilica of San Sebastiano in Rome. In Hadrian's time (117-138 AD) inhumation replaced cremation and columbaria became obsolete.
Corinthian pottery: CATEGORY: ceramics
DEFINITION: A widely distributed pottery made at Corinth and found throughout the Mediterranean, from the late 7th century BC until the mid-6th century BC. This important stage of vase painting included naturalistic" designs of animals maenads and satyrs and the invention of black-figure technique and some new shapes such as the aryballos and alabastron. Proto-Corinthian pottery most of which is miniature in size was the first to be decorated in the black-figure painting technique: figure silhouettes drawn in black and filled in with incised details."
Cougnac: CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: A Palaeolithic cave site in Quercy, France, known for its paintings of megaloceros and ibex. The radiocarbon dates are 13,050-12,350 bc.
Crete: CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: The fifth largest island in the Mediterranean, lying south of Greece, where the first flowering of the Greek Bronze Age culture took place (c 2600-2000 BC). There is no evidence that humans arrived on Crete before 6000-5000 BC. By 3000 BC, however, a Bronze Age culture -- the Minoan civilization, named after the legendary ruler Minos -- had developed. Strongly influenced by Eastern ideas, in its first centuries this culture produced circular vaulted (tholos-type) tombs and some fine stone-carved vases, but about 2000 BC it began to build palaces on the sites of Knossos, Phaestus, and Mallia. This was called the first palace period (Middle Minoan 2000-1700 BC) and second palace period (1700-1400 BC) during which the population greatly increased and large settlements were built. The Minoan civilization was centered at Knossos and reached its peak in the 16th century BC, trading widely in the eastern Mediterranean. It produced striking sculpture, fresco painting, pottery, and metalwork. By about 1500 BC Greek mainlanders from Mycenae began to influence Minoan affairs, but then Crete suffered a major earthquake (c 1450) that destroyed Knossos and other places. The Mycenaeans took power until the Iron Age (1200 BC). Eventually the Dorians moved in and gained power. Crete is the source of many myths, legends, and laws. The Romans came and by 67 BC had completed their conquest of the island.
dabber: CATEGORY: artifact
DEFINITION: A tool used in etching to distribute the etching ground over a plate of metal in the first process of engraving and, in printing from copper plate engraving and woodcuts, to spread the ink.
diptych: CATEGORY: artifact
DEFINITION: Double-leafed tablets of metal, ivory, or wood, attached by strings or hinges. Diptychs are common in Christian archaeology, often as alter-pieces or paintings composed of two leaves which close like a book.
Dos Aguas: CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: A rock shelter with paintings of the Spanish Levantine (Mesolithic) type situated in Valencia, Spain. Hunters of food and marine shellfish can be seen in cave art at Dos Aguas. More than 7,500 figures painted by these hunters and gatherers are known from all over the eastern and southern peninsula, dating from 7000-3500 BC. Located in the open air, usually beneath rock overhangs or in protecting hollows, are animated representations of people dancing, including two women in voluminous skirts at Dos Aguas.
Drakensberg: CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: A South African mountain range forming the southern and eastern boundary of Lesotho where there is an abundance of Stone Age rock paintings.
Dunhuang: SYNONYM: Tun-huang
CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: A site in northwestern China with many Buddhist sculptures, frescoes, and Mogao grottoes. It was a Chinese frontier outpost at a place where the Silk Route branched before crossing Central Asia. It was established as a Han military commandery in 111 BC and many documents and manuscripts dating from the Han dynasty have been found there. There is a complex of nearly 500 Buddhist cave temples with well-preserved paintings and sculptures. A Buddhist library walled up in a cave around 1035 and rediscovered in 1900 contained thousands of manuscripts written in Chinese and various Central Asian scripts, some with dates ranging from 406-996. Among the material in the British Museum is the oldest extant printed book in the world, a Chinese translation of the Diamond Sutra, a Buddhist text, dated 868 AD. Many other manuscripts and paintings obtained by Aurel Stein are kept at the British Museum.
Dura-Europus: SYNONYM: Dura Europos, Doura-Europus
CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: A ruined Syrian city in the Syrian desert, on the middle Euphrates River, that was originally a Babylonian town (Dura), but rebuilt as a military colony about 300 BC by the Seleucids and given the second name of Europus. About 100 BC, it fell to the Parthians and became a prosperous caravan city. It was annexed by the Romans in AD 165 and was a frontier fortress. Shortly after 256 AD, it was overrun and destroyed by the Sasanians. The remains at Dura-Europus give an unusually detailed picture of the everyday life there; and the inscriptions, reliefs, and architecture give much information about the mixing of Greek and Semitic culture. Two structures dating to the 3rd century AD contain extensive wall paintings. There also is an irregular enceinte (enclosure), a city grid system, and many sanctuaries and temples dedicated to the many deities of the mixed population.
Early Man Shelter: CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: An Australian rock shelter at Cape York, with patinated Panaramitee-style paintings and engravings of humans, animals, tracks, and abstract motifs. Charcoal from occupation deposits covering wall engravings yielded radiocarbon dates between 10,000-13,000 bp. The shelter also contained the oldest known remains of Sarcophilus harrisii (Tasmanian devil) in tropical Australia: it is now found only in Tasmania. Bone tools are present that are 3000-6000 years old.
El Castillo: CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: Cave site in northern Spain, spanning the entire Palaeolithic. Its earliest Aurignacian material has been dated to c 38,700 bp. There are engravings and paintings of the Upper Palaeolithic, c 20,000-10,000 BC, in the caves.
elephant: CATEGORY: fauna
DEFINITION: Either of two species of the family Elephantidae, characterized by their large size, huge head, columnar legs, and large ears. The Indian elephant was regularly employed for show and war as early as the Bronze Age in China. Wild herds survived in the Near East into the 1st millennium BC, when they were hunted to extinction for their ivory, and in North Africa, where they supplied Hannibal with his war elephants. Forms now extinct, especially the mammoth, were an important source of food in the Palaeolithic period, and are portrayed in cave art. Living elephants are now confined to Africa. The African elephant formerly occupied a far larger area, as is attested by skeletal evidence and cave paintings in North Africa. The reduction in its range is probably due to the combined effects of climatic change, human hunting, and cattle-grazing. The straight-tusked elephant, Elephas antiquus, apparently adapted to the open deciduous woodlands of interglacials in Europe, but became extinct at the end of the Ipswichian interglacial. Dwarf forms of the straight-tusked elephant evolved on islands of the Mediterranean.
encaustic: SYNONYM: (from Greek burnt in")"
CATEGORY: artifact
DEFINITION: An ancient method of painting, recorded by Pliny, of fixing pigments with heated wax. It was probably first practiced in Egypt about 3000 BC and is thought to have reached its peak in Classical Greece, although no examples from that period survive. Pigments, mixed with melted beeswax, were brushed onto stone or plaster, smoothed with a metal spatula, and then blended and driven into the wall with a heated iron. The surface was later polished with a cloth. It was particularly used for the Fayum mummy-portraits of Roman Egypt. Leonardo da Vinci and others attempted unsuccessfully to revive the technique. North American Indians used an encaustic method whereby pigments mixed with hot animal fat were pressed into a design engraved on smoothed buffalo hide.
etching: CATEGORY: artifact
DEFINITION: The art of engraving with acid on metal; also the print taken from the metal plate so engraved. In hard-ground etching the plate, usually of copper or zinc, is given a thin coating or ground of acid-resistant resin; making engraved or etched plates and printing designs from them
false relief: CATEGORY: ceramics
DEFINITION: A form of excised or impressed decoration on pottery in which two rows of inward pointing triangles are cut from, or impressed on, the pot surface. The zigzag running between them then appears to be in relief, though it is actually no higher than the surface of the pot.
Flemish black ware: CATEGORY: ceramics
DEFINITION: A type of later medieval pottery known from paintings of the Renaissance period. Some of the wares were well-decorated but most Flemish wares were coarse black wares with pinched bases. They emerged a Roman tradition of potterymaking in Flanders.
fluxgate magnetometer: CATEGORY: tool
DEFINITION: A magnetometer with sensors giving a continuous reading for subsurface detection. All measurements must be made with the sensor pointing in the same precise direction.
Font de Gaume: SYNONYM: Font-de-Gaume
CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: A painted cave close to Les Eyzies in the Dordogne region, southwest France. Excavations have revealed archaeological levels deep in the interior spanning several earlier Upper Palaeolithic phases, but the polychrome paintings of bison and other animals date from the late Magdalenian at the end of the Palaeolithic (c 14,000-10,000 BC).
fresco: CATEGORY: artifact
DEFINITION: A method of painting on the plastered surface of a wall or ceiling before the plaster has dried so that the colors become incorporated in it. The term refers to any painting done on freshly laid wet plaster and left to dry with the plaster; the painting is part of the wall. It was usually executed with mineral and earthly pigments upon a freshly laid ground of stucco. Lime was found in nearly all the colors of Pompeii, which is part of fresco.
Gargas: CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: A cave in southern France (Hautes-Pyrénées) containing important examples of Late Paleolithic mural art, paintings, and engravings dating from the Aurignacian Period, the oldest phase of European Stone Age art. The site was first known for its Ice Age fauna. There are approximately 150 engravings of animals and 250 red or black hand prints. A curious feature of these silhouettes is that many are representations of mutilated hands with one or more finger joints missing, most frequently the last two joints of the last four fingers. The significance of the hand prints and the missing fingers is unknown. The cave was occupied from at least the Middle Palaeolithic and the animal engravings are attributed to the Gravettian.
geometric: SYNONYM: Geometric
CATEGORY: artifact
DEFINITION: A style of decoration with repeated geometric motifs -- circles, squares, triangles, lozenges, and running linear patterns -- flourishing in Greece c 900-700 BC. The term is also applied to such design on wall painting, for textiles. The style derived from the triangular, circular, meander, zigzags, rhomboids, and other linear decoration on Greek pottery of this period. In classical Greek art history, the term is used specifically of the early phases of vase-painting as, for example, Protogeometric (c 1050-900 BC), Geometric (c 900-750 BC), and Late Geometric (c 750-700 BC). When the term is applied to the period of Greek history in which the decoration flourished, it is often extended to 1100-700 BC, after the fall of Mycenaean civilization and marking transition from Bronze to Iron Age. The first phase, called Protogeometric (1100-900) corresponds to the dark ages" when Greek culture was inward looking and very poor. Its final phase Late Geometric (770-700) coincided with resumption of relations with Asian cultures and beginning of colonization of the northern southern and western shores of Mediterranean."
gesso: SYNONYM: gypsum, chalk
CATEGORY: artifact
DEFINITION: Material consisting of a layer of fine plaster to which gilding was often attached using an adhesive. It was a fluid, white coating composed of plaster of Paris, chalk, gypsum, or other whiting mixed with glue, applied to smooth surfaces such as wood panels, plaster, stone, or canvas to provide the ground for tempera and oil painting or for gilding and painting carved furniture and picture frames. In Medieval and Renaissance tempera painting, the surface was covered first with a layer of gesso grosso (rough gesso) made with coarse, unslaked plaster, then with a series of layers of gesso sottile (finishing gesso) made with fine plaster slaked in water, which produced an opaque, white, reflective surface.
Gothic: CATEGORY: term
DEFINITION: A style of painting, sculpture, architecture, and music characteristic of the second of western and central Europe during the Middle Ages. Gothic art evolved from Romanesque art and lasted from the mid-12th century to as late as the end of the 16th century in some areas. The term Gothic was alluded to the barbarian Gothic tribes that had destroyed the Roman Empire and its classical culture in the 5th century AD. It was a slightly derogatory term until the 19th century.
graffiti: CATEGORY: language
DEFINITION: Writing placed on walls or other objects; any figures or inscriptions scratched into a surface, often indicating the maker or owner. It is any casual writing, rude drawing, or marking on the walls of buildings, as distinguished from a deliberate writing known as an inscription. Graffiti is found in great abundance, as on the monuments of ancient Egypt. Graffiti are important to the paleographer as illustrating the forms and corruptions of the various alphabets used by the people, and may guide the archaeologist to the date of the building. Graffiti is important to the linguist because the language of graffiti is closer to the spoken language of the period and place than usual written language. Graffiti is also invaluable to the historian for the light thrown on everyday life of the period and on intimate details of customs and institutions.
Gravettian: CATEGORY: culture
DEFINITION: An Upper Palaeolithic industry named after the site La Gravette in the Dordogne of southwest France and characterized by well-developed blade tools of flint and female figurines of ivory. This advanced industry succeeded the Aurignacian and preceded the Solutrean, c 28,000-20,000BP. In France it is known as the Upper Périgordian (Périgordian IV) and the Gravettian appears to have developed in central Europe, expanding to the east and west. The small, pointed blades with straight blunted backs are called Gravette points. Most of the French sites are caves, but possibly related industries, known as Eastern Gravettian, are distributed through the loess lands of central Europe and Russia at the camp sites of mammoth-hunters; other sites are in Spain, Belgium, Czechoslovakia, and Italy. The Gravettians invented the bow and arrow, blunted-back knives of flint, and the tanged arrowheads. They are famous, too, for their cave paintings. Other artifacts include bone or ivory spears and, in eastern Europe, numerous other bone tools incised with an elaborate geometric pattern.
grid layout: SYNONYM: grid system, grid method, box system, grid planning
CATEGORY: technique
DEFINITION: The practice of dividing an archaeological site into squares for ease of recording features and objects during excavation. The term also refers to the two-dimensional intersecting network defining the squares in which archaeologists dig; usually set out with strings, stakes, and a transit. Often a square trench will be cut within each grid square, separated by a balk from each neighboring trench. Each square is suitable for excavation by two or three people. Advantages of the method are in the creation of a number of readily available sections on the site, the ease of spoil removal (along the balk), and the control which can be exercised over excavators. On open sites with little stratigraphy above the rock surface, the method is often unnecessary. The balks in the grid method may also obscure many of the important stratigraphical relationships, or make impossible the recognition of structures. This technique allows the fast recording of very large areas, but is not as accurate as triangulation for the pinpointing of small objects and features. The use of grid planning and triangulation together often satisfies most of the combined needs of speed and accuracy.
Han Dynasty: CATEGORY: culture
DEFINITION: A historical dynasty and period in China, after the collapse of the brief rule of the Ch'in (Qin) Dynasty, from 206 BC to 220 AD. This dynasty took over the control of a unified China and had two main periods: Western (Early) Han (206 BC-8 AD) and Eastern (Late) Han (25-220 AD), separated by the Wang Meng (Wangman) of 9-25 AD. The Western Han capital was Chang'an and the Eastern (Late) Han (25-220 AD) at Lo-Yang (Luoyang). Next to the rich tombs at Mawangdui and Mancheng, perhaps the most revealing Han archaeological finds are a number of tombs whose wall paintings, decorated tiles, and stone reliefs form the earliest substantial corpus of Chinese pictorial art. The Han dynasty started iron and salt monopolies, extended itself through the commandery system, opened trade to the West via the silk route, and began the tradition of court histories.
harpoon: CATEGORY: artifact
DEFINITION: A spearlike missile with a detachable head, often consisting of a pointed shaft with backward-pointing barbs. It was often loosely hafted so that it would separate from its shaft after the point had struck its target. The appearance of this weapon is associated in particular with the Magdalenian culture, was particularly popular during the Upper Palaeolithic and Mesolithic, and was used for hunting or fishing. An attached line was used to retrieve the catch. Some anthropologists refer to all barbed bone or antler points as harpoons.
Hou-ma: SYNONYM: Houma; modern Ch'u-wu
CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: An ancient city of China with extensive remains of an Eastern Chou city, possibly the site of Xintian, capital of the Chin state from 584-453 BC. Pollen analyses from western and southern Shansi reveal that several cereal plants were grown there as early as the 5th-3rd millennium BC. During the Hsi (Western) Chou period (1111-771 BC) the fief of Chin (now a colloquial and literary name for Shansi) was established in the area of Hou-ma along the Fen River. Several thousand stone and jade tablets were found at the site, inscribed with the texts of alliances between various Eastern Chou states, and date chiefly from the early 5th century BC. A very large foundry complex has been uncovered with over 30,000 fragments of clay molds and models for casting ritual vessels. Chariot fittings, weapons, belt hooks, coins, and other bronzes were distributed over the site in such a way as to suggest that separate specialized workshops. The mold fragments show that Hou-ma used the section-mold method perfected in Shang foundries a thousand years earlier, as opposed to the cire perdue method.
Huashan: CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: A site in southwest China with the world's largest rock art panel. It is a limestone cliff along the Zuojiang River with over 1800 red paintings of anthropomorphs and zoomorphs. The art was done between 2370-2115 years ago in between the Early Warring States period and the Eastern Han Dynasty.
Ignateva Cave: SYNONYM: Yamazy-Tash
CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: A cave site in the southern Urals of Russia with microliths and faunal remains from the late Upper Palaeolithic. There are also numerous schematic cave paintings. The upper layer has Iron Age remains.
Illapa: CATEGORY: structure
DEFINITION: One of the divisions of the temple of the Sun (the sun god was Inti) among the ancient Inca, literally meaning 'thunder'.
illuminated manuscript: CATEGORY: language
DEFINITION: Handwritten books that were decorated with gold or silver, brilliant colors, or elaborate designs or miniature pictures. Though various Islamic societies practiced this art, Europe had the longest and probably the most highly developed tradition of illuminating manuscripts. These medieval handwritten books were usually done on parchment or vellum. The illustrations themselves fall into several categories: miniatures (small paintings incorporated into the text of border, or occupying a whole page), decorated monograms or initial letters, and decorative borders. Before the year 1000, the books most commonly illustrated in this way were gospels or psalters. The origins of manuscript illumination are thought to lie in 5th century Coptic Egypt. It is now thought that illuminated manuscripts were relatively few in number even at the time they were produced. Very few religious or classical texts survive. After the development of printing in Europe in the second half of the 15th century, illumination was superseded by printed illustrations.
Ingaladdi: CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: A sandstone rock shelter in the Australian Northern Territory known for two well-separated stone industries and for art. The upper levels date 3000 bp and contained a Australian Core Tool assemblage with points and tula adze flakes. The unifacial points included some with denticulated margins and others classed as Pirri points. Rock paintings include Wandjina style mythical beings, animals, men on horseback, and revolvers. Fragments of Panaramitee-style engravings were found in layers dated 5000-3000 BC. Following a sterile layer, the lower layers contained large flake scrapers, horsehoof cores, and engraved sandstone fragments of 7000-5000 bp.
jewelry: CATEGORY: artifact
DEFINITION: Decorative objects made mainly for the adornment of the body. The art of jewelry-making originated in prehistoric times when primitive people used objects from the animal world -- such as horn, shell, and feathers -- to adorn themselves. Cave paintings and carvings show figures decorated with bracelets, necklaces, and headdresses. Brooches, or fibulae, were used to fasten clothes and were made of bronze or silver and some were enameled. There were also finger rings and earrings.
Juxtlahuaca Caves: CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: A cave site in Guerrero, Mexico, containing the earliest polychrome painting in the New World. Done in the Olmec style, they are dated to c 3000 years ago and are found nearly a mile inside a mountain. Similar cave paintings have been found in nearby Oxtotilan.
Kachemak stage: SYNONYM: Kachemak culture
CATEGORY: culture
DEFINITION: A marine mammal-hunting culture found around the Kachemak Bay of the southern Kenai Peninsula in central southern Alaska. It is divided into three phases, the oldest of which may date back as far as the 8th century BC and the most recent lasting until historic times. The first phase was the most distinctly Eskimo in character. Stone (including slate) implements in the early period were usually retouched; later they were ground. Round or oval stone lamps and realistic human figures of carved stone have been found. Copper tools and pottery appeared in the third stage. Rock paintings were mainly representations of men and animals. Burials have the body in a crouched position, with associated grave goods. During the final stage, artificial bone or ivory eyes were placed over those of the deceased. There may have been cultural connections with eastern Asia, with adjacent land areas, and with Kodiak Island.
Kalambo: SYNONYM: Kalemba
CATEGORY: culture
DEFINITION: An Early Iron Age group in northern Zambia, taking its name from the 4th century AD village at Kalambo Falls. It is of the Chifumbaze complex. A prepared-core industry existed by c 36,000 BC and a true backed microlith assemblage appeared by 20,000 BC. The shift to a microlithic industry was accompanied by a change in faunal remains indicating a new preference for hunting small solitary creatures. The site also contains a large series of rock paintings, probably of later Iron Age date.
Khepri: CATEGORY: deity
DEFINITION: The ancient sun god, conceived as a great scarab beetle rolling the sun across the heavens, whose cult was centered at Heliopolis. This deity is sometimes depicted in tomb painting and funerary papyri as a man with a scarab as a head or as a scarab in a boat held aloft by Nun. This was just one of the sun god's manifestations: Khepri was the morning form, then Re-Harakhty, and Atum, the evening form.
Khirbet al-Mafjar: CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: A palatial complex just outside Jericho in the Jordan Valley, attributed via epigraphy to the Umayyad caliph Hisham (724-743). There was a South Building, two-story mansion, a mosque, and a bathhouse (with elaborate domes and vaults) supplied by an aqueduct; and a North Building, a khan or guesthouse. The buildings are particularly important because they are closely datable within a period when the Hellenistic traditions of art and architecture were being transformed for Muslim patrons, and also because they yielded rich collections of stucco, wall paintings, and mosaics.
Kisese: CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: A number of site with rock paintings in the Kondoa region of central Tanzania. There is a long sequence of Later Stone Age microlithic stone assemblages dating from 19,000 BP. The paintings are of animals and anthropomorphs.
Kotosh: CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: Major pre-Columbian ceremonial site in the north-central highlands of Peru, near Huánuco, coming into use during the Late Preceramic Period and continuing until after the end of the Chavín culture during the Early Horizon, c 1 AD. It is known for its temple structures, the earliest of which have interior wall niches and mud-relief decorative friezes, and date to the end of the Late Preceramic Period (c 2000-1800 BC). In the earliest levels (Mito) are remains of a platform on which stood the Temple of the Crossed Hands. Stone tools, some similar to Laurichocha II and III, and other artifacts appropriate to an Archaic subsistence pattern also occur in this phase. The next (Wairajirca) period has a radiocarbon date of 2305 +/- 110 BC and saw the introduction of the first pottery, a gray ware with incised designs and post-fired painting in red, white, or yellow. In the following (Kotosh) stage, there is evidence of maize cultivation, and the pottery, with grooved designs, graphite painting, and stirrup spouts, has Chavín-like features. Radiocarbon dates suggest that this period is centered on c 1200 BC and was closely followed by a pure Chavín stage with the typical pottery and ornament. Next in sequence came levels (Sajarapatac and San Blas phases) with white-on-red pottery, and the uppermost strata (Hiqueras period) were characterized by red vessels, rare negative painting, and copper tools.
kylix: SYNONYM: cylix
CATEGORY: artifact
DEFINITION: A Greek stemmed drinking cup or chalice, usually made of clay or metal. The term was originally used for a cup of any form, but modern scholars restrict it to shallow two-handed stemmed forms. This wide-bowled drinking cup with horizontal handles was one of the most popular pottery forms from Mycenaean times through the classical Athenian period. There was usually a painted frieze around the outer surface, depicting a subject from mythology or everyday life, and on the bottom of the inside a painting often depicting a dancing or drinking scene.
Labastide: CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: Magdalenian cave in Hautes-Pyrénées, France, with many engraved figures and a large polychrome horse painting. There are hearths and engraved stones in the cave, which is dated to 12,310 BC.
Laga Oda: CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: A rock shelter near Harar in southeastern Ethiopia with occupation beginning around the 14th millennium BC. The industry of small blades and numerous backed elements continued into the 2nd millennium AD. The site also contains rock paintings depicting humans, cattle, and fat-tailed sheep.
Lagoa Santa caves: CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: A system of caves in Minas Gerais, Brazil, occupied from the late Pleistocene, with human remains, stone tools, and remains of extinct mastodon and sloth. Dated to 15,300 bp is an industry of quartz flakes. The Cerca Grande complex of 10,000-8000 bp had small rock-crystal flakes, axes, bone projectile points, hammerstones, and a cemetery of 50 flexed inhumations. There are hundreds of rock paintings from the Planalto Tradition of 7000-3000 bp.
Lascaux: CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: A Magdalenian cave in the Dordogne, southwest France, with a spectacular collection of Palaeolithic paintings and engravings. Once the cave was opened to visitors, the delicate atmospheric balance was disturbed and the paintings were attacked by fungus; it was closed to the public in 1963. A small number of archaeological finds from inside the cave probably date to the early Magdalenian including lamps. A Neanderthal skeleton was found a few hundred meters away at Regoudou. There are 600 paintings of aurochs, horses, deer, and signs, accompanied by 1500 engravings dominated by horses. Some of the paintings in the rotunda, especially the bulls, approach life size, which is unusual in cave art. A number of paintings are in two contrasting colors, red iron oxide and black manganese dioxide. It was probably never inhabited, but was used from c 15,000 BC. A nearby facsimile cave, Lascaux II, is now open to the public.
Lashkari Bazar: CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: The site of a large royal palace erected in the 11th and 12th centuries, on the Helmand Rud, near the site of Bust in Afghanistan. Lashkari Bazar was the winter retreat of the rulers of Ghazni. It was conquered by the Arabs c 661, and the 10th century writer Ibn Hauqal described it as a large and wealthy town. Apart from the tell, the principal monument is a ceremonial arch of the Ghorid period. The palace complex at Lashkari Bazar extends northwards from Bust for more than 5 km and was founded by the Ghaznavid sultan Mahmud (998-1030), who with his son Masud I (1030-1041) built the so-called South Palace. Later rulers added two other palaces. The complex also contained barracks and a bazaar. Lashkari Bazar was sacked by the Ghorids in 1151; it was restored by them, then destroyed by the Khwarezmshah or the Mongols in the early 13th century. Excavations revealed elaborate wall paintings in the South Palace and a fine stucco Mihrab in an adjacent mosque.
leister: CATEGORY: artifact
DEFINITION: A two-pronged forklike fish spear made of two bone or antler heads with barbs pointing inwards and backwards. They are recorded from Mesolithic and lakeside Neolithic settlements, as well as present-day use by the Eskimo, mainly for salmon.
Leroi-Gourhan, André George Léandre (1911-1986): CATEGORY: person
DEFINITION: French prehistorian who prepared important works on Palaeolithic art. He worked at Les Furtins, Arcy-sur-Cure, and Pincevent, pioneering techniques of horizontal excavation, the study of occupation floors, and ethnological reconstruction of prehistoric life. He published Treasures of Prehistoric Art" (also published as "The Art of Prehistoric Man in Western Europe" 1967; originally published in French 1965) a magnificently illustrated volume on the art of the Cro-Magnon peoples and "The Dawn of European Art: An Introduction to Palaeolithic Cave Painting" (1982; originally published in Italian 1980) a well-illustrated technical discussion."
Linyi: SYNONYM: 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.
Macassans: CATEGORY: culture
DEFINITION: Indonesian traders, particularly from Sulawesi, who visited tropical Australia during the Indonesian monsoon season. They collected and processed sea-slugs (trepang, bêche-de-mer, sea cucumber), an important ingredient in their cooking. Archaeological evidence consists of stone structures used to support boiling vats, scatters of Indonesian potsherds, ash concentrations from smokehouses, graves, and living tamarind trees descended from seeds brought by the trepangers. Their cultural legacies to the Aborigines included metal tools, dugout canoes, vocabulary, art motifs, song cycles, rituals, and depictions of Macassan praus in rock paintings and stone arrangements. Macassan voyagers to Australia arrived around 1700 AD and continued till the end of the 19th century.
Mali: CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: A landlocked country in western Africa, one of the early African Sudanic states which rose to prominence in the 12th-13th centuries. It effectively took over control of the Bambuk goldfields from ancient Ghana -- as well as their links with the trans-Saharan trade. By the 14th century its rulers controlled an extensive stretch of territory, including the Songhai country of the middle Niger, and Mali's ruler made the pilgrimage to Mecca. The empire declined in the late 15th century after its overthrow by Songhay. Mali was occupied in the Paleolithic and Neolithic, with remains including Asselar man, a human skeleton found north of Timbuktu in 1927, and rock paintings and carvings.
mama-quilla / Mama-Quilla: SYNONYM: Mama-Kilya
CATEGORY: structure
DEFINITION: One of the divisions of the temple of the Sun (Inti); dedicated to the moon. The moon was portrayed as a silver disk with human features.
mark: CATEGORY: artifact
DEFINITION: In rock art studies, any drawing, painting, engraving, or other modification of nature which is the product of some human action.
Matopo: SYNONYM: Southern Rhodesian Wilton; Khami industry
CATEGORY: culture
DEFINITION: Microlithic Later Stone Age industry of the Matopo Hills, southwestern Zimbabwe, dated to 6000 BC. The hills are associated with folklore and tradition, some being venerated as dwelling places of the spirits of departed Ndebele chiefs. The hills contain gigantic caves with Khoisan paintings, and there are Stone and Iron Age archaeological sites.
Mawangdui: SYNONYM: Ma-wang-tui
CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: Site in Hunan province, China, near Chang-Sha (Changsha City), of three Early Han-dynasty tombs with features of both shaft and mounded tombs. Tomb No. 2 belonged to the first marquis of Dai (d. 186 BC), a high official of the Han administration. Nos. 3 and 1 are apparently the tombs of his son (d. 168 BC) and wife (d. shortly after 168 BC). In construction and contents the three tombs are far different from Han princely burials in the north and reflect the lingering traditions and material culture of the Chu kingdom, which had fallen to Qin less than a century earlier. Each tomb takes the form of a massive compartmented timber box at the bottom of a deep stepped shaft; the shaft was filled in with rammed earth and a mound was raised over it. The contents of Tomb No. 1 were very well preserved: the body of the wife of the marquis, wrapped in silk and laid inside four richly decorated nested coffins. The 180 dishes, toilet boxes, and other lacquer articles, silk clothing, offerings of food, musical instruments, small wooden figures of servants and musicians, and a complete inventory of the grave goods written on bamboo slips depict extreme wealth. Tomb 3 was furnished in the same fashion as Tomb 1, but contained more silk paintings, three rare musical instruments, and an extraordinary collection of manuscripts, some on silk and some on bamboo slips, including some of the earliest known maps from China, treatises on medicine and astronomy, comet charts, and important literary texts (the Daoist/Taoist classic Dao De jing" ("Tao te ching") the "Yi jing" ("Book of Changes")) The contents of Tomb 2 are comparable to those of Tomb 1 but poorly preserved."
Maya: SYNONYM: Classic Maya
CATEGORY: culture
DEFINITION: Very important culture of Mesoamerica, one of the major Classic civilizations, which occupied the peninsula of Yucatan and Belize, the lowland jungle south of it, and the highlands of Guatemala and western Honduras. The civilization developed from other pre-Classic cultures by about 200 BC and continued until being conquered by the Spaniards in 1541 AD. By c 200 BC, at sites like Tikal and Uaxactún, the first pyramids were being built. Population increase and the introduction of new ceramic and architectural forms are accompanied by an artistic transition from Olmec through Izapan to Mayan. The classic Maya civilization dates to c 292 AD, the earliest Long count date found on stele 29 at Tikal. The Early Classic period (200-600) was the golden age of the lowland culture and the great centers acted as foci for administration, religion, and the arts. Architecture, sculpture, and painting were highly developed; records were kept in hieroglyphic writing, and elaborate ceremonies were carried out in the temples on top of their pyramids. A class of astronomer-priests observed the sun, moon, and planets, and had evolved a calendrical system more accurate than the Julian calendar used in Christian Europe. In mathematics the priests used a vigesimal system with the concept of zero and with a positional notation. The Classic Maya culture is characterized by an immense investment of labor in construction of ceremonial architecture, the erection of stelae, and a growing differentiation between the elite and the peasant population. The Maya practiced swidden agriculture as well as intensive agriculture, terracing and raised fields, and arboriculture. Polychrome pottery is a hallmark of the Maya Lowland Classic culture. The Late Classic period (c 600-900 AD) shows development in sculpture and architecture -- and regional styles can be recognized. Northern Yucatan began to come into its own at sites like Chichén Itzá and Uxmal, where fine buildings in the Punc style were erected during the 7th-9th centuries. The later part of this period witnessed the end of civilization in the lowlands; the great centers were abandoned during the 9th and early 10th centuries. The Post-Classic period, c 900 to the Spanish conquest, had strong Mexican influence, particularly at Chichén Itzá where buildings were constructed in the Toltec style of central Mexico, and the art shows representations of Toltec warriors overpowering Maya chiefs. During the collapse in the southern Lowlands, centers in the northern Lowlands began to grow, c 800-1000 AD. The South's decline may have played a role in the North's prosperity. Sometime around 1200, the Itzá were driven from their capital, and Mayapán became the leading city of Yucatan. In about 1440-1450, Mayapán was overthrown and there followed a time of disunity and warfare which lasted until the Spaniards conquered Yucatan in 1541. The Maya kingdoms of highland Guatemala were subdued in 1525, but in the lowlands the descendants of the exiled Itzá held out until 1697. The collapse of Maya culture (in c 900) is a puzzling phenomenon, but its relative suddenness still remains without satisfactory explanation. There are no Long Count dates after 900, after which time lowland populations dwindled by as much as 90 percent. The term Maya also refers to a culture area and is typically divided into the lowland and highland Maya. Descendants of the Maya still occupy the region.
meander: CATEGORY: artifact
DEFINITION: Any running design consisting of a single line or band twisting regularly. The spiral meander is a simple running spiral, the square meander a rectilinear form of the same thing. The earliest known examples of finger painting are the prehistoric decorative and figurative meanders" traced on walls of the Altamira caves in Spain."
Mimi style: SYNONYM: Mimi figures
CATEGORY: artifact
DEFINITION: A style of art associated with the Pirri culture of Arnhem Land in which plain red stylized human figures showing vigorous movement are depicted. The thin, sticklike human figures are a feature of the Arnhem Land Rock Art of northern Australia. The painting are thought to be about 3000 years old, earlier than x-ray art.
Ming Dynasty: CATEGORY: culture
DEFINITION: Major late Dynasty of China (1368-1644 AD), succeeding Mongol Yüan Dynasty (1280-1368). The period is known for painting and decorative arts, porcelain, lacquer, cloisonné, and textiles. The burial sites of the Ming emperors are near modern Beijing. The Ming extended the Chinese empire into Korea, Mongolia, and Turkistan on the north and into Vietnam and Myanmar (Burma) on the south, exercising more far-reaching influence in East Asia than any other native rulers of China.
Minoan: CATEGORY: culture
DEFINITION: The Bronze Age civilization of Crete, a name coined by Sir Arthur Evans derived from the legendary ruler of Knossos, Minos. The civilization is divided into three phases: Early (c 3000-2000 BC), Middle (c 2000-1550 BC), and Late (c 1550-1050 BC). Each had three subdivisions marked with Roman numerals. They stand out as the first civilized Europeans, with a highly sophisticated way of life and material equipment, and were surprisingly modern. They probably represented a fusion between Anatolian immigrants and the native Neolithic population, with some trading contacts through the east Mediterranean. In the Middle Minoan period, urbanization became apparent, towns appeared and, a Minoan specialty, the first of the great palaces, Knossos, Mallia, and Phaestos. Overseas trade was greatly expanded, too. The height of its development was in the 18th-15th centuries BC. By about 1580 BC Minoan civilization began to spread across the Aegean to neighboring islands and to the mainland of Greece. Minoan cultural influence was reflected in the Mycenean culture of the mainland, which began to spread throughout the Aegean about 1500 BC. The palaces were destroyed c 1450, probably by the cataclysmic eruption of Santorini/Thera -- or by conquerors from the mainland. After that, Greek-speaking Mycenaeans gained control of Knossos and Crete; only Knossos was reoccupied on a significant scale. The final fall of Knossos, c 1400 BC, marked the end of Crete's period of greatness. Their Linear A script has not been deciphered, but Linear B has been successfully translated as an early form of Greek, written in a syllabary, but belongs only to the period of mainland domination, and is therefore more relevant to Mycenaeans than Minoans. Their pottery is among the most artistic of any place or time, using abstract curvilinear, floral, and marine designs. Craftsmen reached high levels of technical skill and aesthetic achievement in pottery, metal work, stonework, jewelry, and wall painting (the palaces are lavishly decorated with frescoes). Vessels, figurines, and magnificent seal stones were also carved in stone and bronze and gold objects made. There were many bull sporting events. Cult activities normally took place either in hilltop shrines, often in caves, or in small shrines within the palaces, and often involved animals, including goats and especially bulls. There is an alternative division of the Minoan civilization into Prepalatial (Early Minoan I-III), Protopalatial (Middle Minoan I-II), Neopalatial (Middle Minoan III-Late Minoan IIIA1), and Postpalatial (Late Minoan IIIA2-IIIC).
Mississippian: SYNONYM: Mississippi tradition
CATEGORY: chronology; culture
DEFINITION: A group of cultures which arose in southeastern North America -- especially the central and lower Mississippi Valley -- after 700 AD into the historic period. It spread over a great area of the Southeast and the mid-continent, in the river valleys of what are now the states of Mississippi, Alabama, Georgia, Arkansas, Missouri, Kentucky, Illinois, Indiana, and Ohio, with scattered extensions northward into Wisconsin and Minnesota and westward into the Great Plains. It stands in contrast to the Woodland Tradition with three new traits -- building of rectangular, flat-topped mounds as bases for temples; burial mounds becoming less prominent; and radical pottery changes (pulverized shell rather than grit used for temper). New pottery shapes and forms, such as olla, and new types of decoration (burnishing, painting) appeared. Maize became the predominant crop, accompanied by beans and squash, which supplemented hunting and gathering. The largest of the earthworks is Monks Mound, in the Cahokia Mounds near Collinsville, Illinois. The Mississippian is divided into the periods Temple Mound I (700-1200 AD) and Temple Mound II (1200-1700 AD). It was the last major cultural tradition in prehistoric North America. By the late 17th century, all the major centers had been abandoned.
Mixtec: CATEGORY: culture
DEFINITION: A linguistic and cultural group of the Oaxaca state of southern Mexico, especially the Mixteca Alta region. The Mixtecs and Zapotecs struggled for power in Oaxaca and Early Mixtec dynasties date to the 7th century AD. The people were mainly skilled craftsmen -- known for their metalwork, painting, stone carving, and turquoise mosaic -- living in this mountainous country. Several books/codices have survived, and trace the history and politics of the Mixtec dynasties before the Spanish Conquest. During the Post-Classic period, they ventured into Zapotec territory and occupied much of the Valley of Oaxaca (Monte Albán, Mitla). The influence of Mixtec art is apparent as far north as Cholula, in the state of Puebla, where a regional Mixteca-Puebla style came into being, and was in turn one of the formative influences on Aztec art. Many of the finest objects from Aztec territory were probably the work of Mixtec artisans. The polychrome pottery had a lacquerlike polish and brilliant colors. Parts of the Mixteca were conquered by the Aztecs in the early 16th century, but in the south some Mixtecs remained independent until the arrival of the Spaniards. Their capital was at Tilantongo.
Mnevis: SYNONYM: Mer-wer, Menuis, Nemur, Merwer
CATEGORY: deity
DEFINITION: In ancient Egyptian religion, the sacred bull regarded as the ba ('power' or physical manifestation) of the sun-god at Heliopolis. As one of several sacred bulls in Egypt, he was most closely associated with the sun god Re-Atum. There was only one Apis, Buchis, or Mnevis bull at any one time. Although not attested until later, the cult of Mnevis probably dated to the 1st dynasty (c 2925-2775 BC) or earlier. The Mnevis bull was either black or piebald in color, and in sculptures and paintings he was represented with a solar disk between his horns.
mobiliary art: SYNONYM: home art; French art mobilier; chattel art
CATEGORY: artifact
DEFINITION: A general term used to describe the small and portable objects produced by artists during the Upper Palaeolithic period. These included carved or engraved stone, bone, ivory, or antler, and small crudely fired clay models. Artifacts include figurines, artists' trial pieces, decorated weapons, tools, and ornaments. The distribution extends from Siberia to Spain. Cave art covers the paintings, engravings, and reliefs found on the walls of caves and rock shelters of the same period. Unlike wall art, which is difficult to date, mobiliary art is usually found in archaeological layers and can therefore be dated. The earliest pieces probably date to about 35,000 years ago and they continued being made throughout the Upper Palaeolithic to c 10,000 BC.
Moche: SYNONYM: 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.
Momil: CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: A site on Sinu River in western Colombia, which has two ceramic periods -- Momil I 1000-500 BC and Momil II of 500 BC-1 AD. The site is also significant for its evidence of the transition from manioc to maize farming. Momil I had stone tools, both percussion and pressure flaked, incised and stamped pottery, and circular-rimmed griddles. Momil II had troughed metates, similar to those used in Mesoamerica. New vessel forms, hollow figurines, and the earliest known occurrence of negative resist painting in Colombia, also appear.
mosaic: SYNONYM: mosaic work
CATEGORY: artifact
DEFINITION: A technique of decoration used mainly on floors or walls involving the setting of small colored fragments of stone, tile, mineral, shell, or glass, each called a tessera (plural tesserae), in a cement or adhesive matrix. Mosaic also refers to a tesselated area, often of complex designs and, possibly, inscriptions. Mosaic floors were made from small squares, triangles, or other regular shapes up to an inch in size. They were laid in cement to form designs, figures of animals, or classical figures representing the seasons, etc. Old limestone would be used for white and various reds, browns, or grays from baked clays. Glass, too, was sometimes incorporated. The earliest known mosaics date from the 8th century BC and are made of pebbles, a technique refined by Greek craftsmen in the 5th century BC. Greek mosaics were simple pebble floors and then became more complex and sophisticated under Macedonian kings. Mosaics are known from Pompeii and Rome, Tivoli, Aquileia, and Ostia -- as well as Africa, Antioch, Sicily, and Britain. Under the Roman Empire, the achievements of the 5th-6th century Byzantine artists at Ravenna are impressive. An excellent collection of mosaics from Pompeii may be seen in the Mueo Nazionale at Naples, and a good selection of Imperial Roman provincial work may be seen at the Museum of Le Bardo, outside modern Tunis, Tunisia. Pre-Columbian American Indians favored mosaics of semiprecious stones such as garnet and turquoise and mother-of-pearl. These were normally used to encrust small objects such as shields, masks, and cult statues. Mosaic as an art form has most in common with painting. It represents a design or image in two dimensions. It is also, like painting, a technique appropriate to large-scale surface decoration.
muller: CATEGORY: lithics
DEFINITION: A small grinding stone, often for use with pigments but also grains, ores, and drugs. In painting, it is an instrument used in conjunction with a slab to grind artists' colors by hand. From ancient Egyptian times until the 18th century, porphyry (a rock of feldspar crystals) was used.
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.
Naj Tunich: CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: Cave in southeastern Guatemala with Maya cave art of the 8th century AD. There are 100 paintings and some petroglyphs, mostly hieroglyphic texts and human figures.
Nanna: SYNONYM: Akkadian Sin
CATEGORY: deity
DEFINITION: The Sumerian moon god; also known as the Akkadian/ Semitic Sin. With his consort Ningal, he was the patron deity of Ur, where his temple and ziggurat were built. Nanna was intimately connected with the cattle herds that were the livelihood of the people in the marshes of the lower Euphrates River, where the cult developed.
Naukratis: SYNONYM: Kom Gi'eif, Naucratis
CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: An ancient Greek town in the Nile River delta, on the Canopic (western) branch of the river. An emporion (trading station") with exclusive trading rights in Egypt Naukratis was the center of cultural relations and trade between Greece and Egypt in the pre-Hellenistic period. It was established by Milesians in the 7th century BC and flourished throughout the classical period. There was a shared administrative building called the Helleneion. It declined after Alexander's conquest of Egypt and the foundation of Alexandria (332 BC). There is evidence for the minting of silver and bronze coins and for the existence of a new building program under the early Ptolemies. By Roman imperial times the site may have been abandoned. Dedications to deities and Greek pottery have thrown light on the early history of the Greek alphabet and the commercial activity of various Greek states especially in the 6th century BC. It was mentioned by Herodotus as the chief point of contact between Egypt and Greece until Hellenistic period and rise of Alexandria."
neutron activation analysis: SYNONYM: NAA
CATEGORY: technique
DEFINITION: A physical method of chemical analysis used to determine the composition of various substances such as flint, obsidian, pottery, coins, etc. found in archaeological contexts. It can be totally nondestructive to the sample and involves the excitation of the atomic nuclei rather than the atomic electrons. The specimen is bombarded with neutrons which interact with nuclei in the sample to form radioactive isotopes that emit gamma rays as they decay. The energy spectrum of the emitted rays is detected by a scintillation or semiconductor counter. Constituent elements and concentrations are identified by the characteristic energy spectrum of emitted rays and their intensity. The time between the neutron activation of the sample and the measurement of the gamma rays depends on the half-lives of the radioactive isotopes, which may range from seconds to thousands of years: often a few weeks may be necessary before measurement takes place. Neutron activation analysis has an advantage over X-ray fluorescence spectrometry since it analyzes the whole specimen as opposed to the surface only. Care must be taken that the neutron dose is not so great as to make the specimen radioactively unsafe for handling. The method is particularly useful for the identification of trace elements; however, it is not universally applicable since some elements have too short a half-life for measurement, and others do not form radioactive isotopes. The method is accurate to about plus or minus 5 percent. Neutron activation analysis of certain Hopewell artifacts made of obsidian has proven that the source of the obsidian was in what is now Yellowstone National Park.
Niaux: CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: One of the greatest Palaeolithic painted caves, in Ariège in the Pyrenees, southwest France. No trace of occupation has been found in the huge cave. The paintings are in black; bison and horse are the animals most frequently depicted. The 'Salon Noir' has six panels of black bison, horse, ibex, and deer figures, which were probably sketched in charcoal and then painted with different pigments. A new gallery discovered in 1970 has hundreds of Palaeolithic footprints. Much of Niaux's art is late Magdalenian (11th millennium BC).
ochre: SYNONYM: ocher
CATEGORY: geology
DEFINITION: Soft varieties of iron oxide (hematite, limonite, goethite)which were ground and used with other materials in prehistory to make pigment. Ochre occurs naturally and was much used for coloring matter, as in cave art, pottery painting, and personal decoration. Red ochre was certainly used ceremonially to give an impression of life to the corpse during funerary rites. There are many records from the Upper Palaeolithic onwards of ochre staining of skeletons. It was mixed with earth, clay, blood, or grease to make the paint. Ochre was used as crayons or powder in Aurignacian period for paintings on walls of caves or on bone or stone artifacts. It was mainly yellow, brown, black, orange, and red (hematite).
Oenpelli Shelters: CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: A group of five sites in Arnhem Land, northern Australia (Padypadiy, Nawamoyn, Malangangerr, Tyimede I and II). Similar tool assemblages dating from 20,000-3000 BC show up at Malanganerr, Nawamoyn, Tyimede II -- thick flake scrapers with steep edges, horsehoof cores, stone hammers, grinders, and waisted or grooved ground-edge axes. The ground-edge axes found at Malangangerr and Nawamoyn in levels dated to 20,000-16,000 BC are the oldest examples of edge-grinding known in Australia. The sudden appearance of estuarine species in shell middens of 5000-4000 BC in the Malangangerr and Nawamoyn deposits reflect rising sea levels. About 2000 years later, at all five sites, small stone points and scrapers appeared and continued until the present. There is also much bark painting in the area.
olive: CATEGORY: flora
DEFINITION: Subtropical, broad-leaved, evergreen tree and its edible, oil-producing fruit. It was recorded from El Garcel in Spain in the Neolithic and the edible olive was grown on the island of Crete about 3500 BC; the Semitic peoples apparently cultivated it as early as 3000 BC. Olive oil was prized for anointing the body in Greece during the time of Homer; and it was an important crop of the Romans c. 600 BC. Later, olive growing spread to all the countries bordering the Mediterranean.
Ottonian: CATEGORY: culture
DEFINITION: The successors to Carolingians, the empire of Otto emperors, 936-1024 AD. As inheritors of the Carolingian tradition of the Holy Roman Empire, the German emperors also assumed the Carolingian artistic heritage, the conscientious revival of late antique and Early Christian art forms. Ottonian art later developed a style of its own, particularly in painting, ivory carving, and sculpture; there was a hieratic quality in some art, especially manuscript painting. Their architecture consisted of fortress-like basilicas with massive walls, groups of towers, and tiny windows. The achievements of Ottonian artists provided background and impetus for the Romanesque style.
Paglicci: CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: Prehistoric cave site on the Gargano peninsula on the Adriatic coast of Italy. Excavations have yielded a long sequence of Upper Palaeolithic levels of Gravettian or Epi-Gravettian type dating from c 24,700-20,000 bp. There are engraved objects from several levels, a few cave paintings, and two burials covered in ochre.
painted glass: CATEGORY: artifact
DEFINITION: Glass which has been colored and decorated by painting
paper: CATEGORY: artifact
DEFINITION: A thin vegetable based sheet used for writing, drawing, printing etc.
Payne, Humfry (1902-1936): CATEGORY: person
DEFINITION: English Archaeologist who directed the British School at Athens from 1929-1936. He prepared a definitive study of Archaic Corinthian art, Necrocorinthia" in 1931 in which a vast body of important information on archaic vase painting and other arts practiced at Corinth was gathered and classified.. He also compiled an illustrated catalog of the Archaic sculpture from the Acropolis in Athens "Archaic Marble Sculpture from the Acropolis" (1936)."
Pech Merle: CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: Cave site in Quercy, France, with Palaeolithic paintings and engravings of three phases from 20,000-10,000 BC. It was not inhabited but there are animal figures, dots, and signs.
pediment: CATEGORY: structure
DEFINITION: A low-pitched gable forming the top section of the facade of a classical Greek and Roman temple; a triangular recess usually found at both ends of classical temples and treasuries and often filled with sculpture. In the classical temple, the outline of the triangle is formed by horizontal and 'raking' cornices which carry decorative moldings. The vertical 'back wall' (tympanum) is often decorated with painting, relief, or sculpture. Each of the three corners was also faced with a special 'corner-piece' (acroterion). It is located above the entablature.
penannular: CATEGORY: artifact
DEFINITION: A term referring to an artifact in the form of a ring, but with a small break at one point, used particularly for forms of brooch and torc. It means not a complete ring". The penannular brooch was characteristic of Irish production; generally of great size and probably worn on the shoulder with the pin pointing upward it was decorated with interlaced patterns. It was the most common type of dress fastener of the sub-Roman period; it remained popular in Celtic regions of Britain up until the 10th century. There is an extensive typology for these ornaments and they vary in appearance from plain bronze or iron rings to elaborately inlaid and gilded examples such as the Tara brooch which was made around 700 AD in Ireland."
Pict: SYNONYM: Cruithni, Cruithne; Painted People, Pictae
CATEGORY: culture
DEFINITION: An ancient people who lived in eastern-northeastern Scotland, known as the Painted People" probably referring to a custom of body painting or tattooing. Probably descendants of pre-Celtic aborigines or from the Bay of Biscay where they had helped Caesar defeat the Veneti the Picts were described in 297 AD by a Roman writing of the "Picts and Irish [Scots] attacking" Hadrian's Wall. They were the principal enemies of Rome in north Britain. Then or soon after they developed two kingdoms north of the Firth of Forth which became a united "Pict-land" by the 7th century. In 843 Kenneth I MacAlpin king of the Scots became also king of the Picts uniting their two lands in a new kingdom of Alba which evolved into Scotland. The Pictish kingdom is known for its symbol stones and crosses. Their name for themselves was Cruithni. There is little archaeological material which can be confidently attributed to the Picts except for the symbol stones."
Pomongwe: CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: A cave in Matopo Hills near Bulawayo, Zimbabwe, with fine rock paintings, especially of giraffe. The cave has a long sequence of stone industries and the name Pomongwe also refers to a Later Stone Age industry of southwestern Zimbabwe dated between 10,800-9400 bp. At the very bottom of the deep archaeological deposits at Pomongwe are a few artifacts possibly of Sangoan type. Later occupations are attributed successively to the Charaman, Bambata, Tshangula, and Wilton industries. Interstratified between the last two is the Pomongwe culture's assemblage, containing utilized flakes and crude scrapers with virtually no other stone implements. Some see it as a regional industry within the Oakhurst Complex.
Quimbaya: CATEGORY: culture; artifact
DEFINITION: A late prehistoric culture of western Colombia, South America, dated 300-1600 AD. It is known for its fine goldwork -- flasks, helmets, jewelry, pins, etc. It represents some of the most advanced metallurgical techniques in the prehistoric New World. Pottery with negative painting and incision, and sometimes modeled, belongs to the final centuries before the Spanish Conquest. The Coclé region in Panama was strongly influenced by the Quimbaya style. It is particularly known for its striking gold pieces set with precious stones, including emeralds, quartzes, jaspers, opals, agates, and green serpentines.
red-figure or red-figured: SYNONYM: Red-Figure ware
CATEGORY: ceramics
DEFINITION: A technique of decorating pottery in which the area of the figure is left empty (reserved) and the detail is painted in. The red of the clay would contrast with the black. It is an important phase in Greek vase painting, the inverse of black-figure style, and it started in Athens in the late 6th century BC and was popular to the 4th century BC. Other local schools also developed in the late 5th century, especially in southern Italy, and continued until c 300 BC. It was also produced at Corinth.
reflex bow: CATEGORY: artifact
DEFINITION: A small but powerful bow made such that, until strung, the ends of the bow project forwards rather than backwards. The simple bow, made from a single piece of wood, was known to Neolithic hunters; it is depicted in cave paintings by 30,000 BC. The first improvement was the reflex bow, a bow that was curved forward, or reflexively, near its center so that the string lay close against the grip before the bow was drawn. This increased the effective length of the draw since it began farther forward, close to the archer's left hand.
rock art: CATEGORY: artifact
DEFINITION: Painting and engraving on rock or cave surfaces, done as decoration, depiction of narratives, or for religious purposes. There are petroglyphs (carvings on rock face), engravings (incisions), and pictographs (paintings on rock surfaces). A great deal of rock art occurs throughout African continent. In contrast to painted caves of Europe, the African art takes the form either of paintings in rock shelters (not in caves) or engraving on open rock outcrops or boulders.
Romanesque: CATEGORY: structure
DEFINITION: A style of architecture which emerged about 1000 and lasted until about 1150, by which time it had evolved into Gothic. It was hybrid style of architecture and ornament, transitional from the classical Roman to the introduction of the Gothic. It was a combination of horizontal and arched construction and the ornament included natural and fanciful objects. The term also refers to a style of monumental sculpture and painting.
Rouffignac: CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: A huge cave in the Dordogne, southwest France, with Mesolithic levels (Sauveterrian and Tardensoisian) at the entrance dating from 9150-8370 bp. Deep inside this large cave system are black paintings and engravings in which mammoth predominates from the Magdalenian. There has been much controversy on which of the cave's paintings and engravings are authentic and which are modern.
Samarkand: SYNONYM: Samarqand, Maracanda
CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: City in east-central Uzbekistan that is one of the oldest cities of Central Asia. In the 4th century BC, then known as Maracanda, it was the capital of Sogdiana and was captured (329 BC) by Alexander the Great. It benefited from its location in a fertile oasis at the point where the Silk Route from the West divided, one branch proceeding to China and other to India. Excavations have revealed abundant Graeco-Sogdiana material. A palace of the 6th or 7th century AD yielded wall paintings comparable with the famous paintings from Pendzhikent.
San Vicnezo al Volturno: CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: An important Benedictine monastery in central Italy, founded in the early 8th century and sacked by the Arabs in 881 and eventually abandoned. The site appears to overlie a late Roman complex. A crypt of c 830 is an example of an important painting technique of the time.
Sautuola, Marcellino Sanz de (1831-1888): CATEGORY: person
DEFINITION: Spanish amateur geologist and archaeologist who excavated Altamira Cave, near Santillana, in northern Spain, which contains the earliest known (c 13,000-20,000 BC) examples of Stone Age painting. The colored ceiling paintings in a side cavern, which came to be regarded as the Sistine Chapel of Prehistory" were the most spectacular. Sautuola had accurate drawings of the paintings prepared and published a book in 1880. He was unable to persuade scholars of the paintings' authenticity and died dishonored and bitter. Not until other similar paintings had been found in southwestern France (1895-1901) was Sautuola's contribution finally vindicated. "
scanning electron microscopy: SYNONYM: SEM
CATEGORY: technique
DEFINITION: A technique used to gain information on the microscopic and submicroscopic structure of a wide range of materials ceramics, metals, stone, teeth, hair etc. It involves a type of electron microscope (SEM) in which a beam of electrons systematically sweeps over the specimen, the electron beam passing through a series of magnetic lenses which demagnify the beam diameter. The backscattered electrons and secondary electrons emitted are detected by means of a scintillation or semiconductor counter. The angle at which the beam hits the surface of the specimen determines the number of backscattered and secondary electrons detected, and thus the pattern of contrast represents the topography and elements of the specimen. The signal from these emissions is processed and an image of the object is displayed on a screen. Its advantages over transmission electron microscopy include a greater depth of focus at high magnification and its ability to deal with specimens of much greater bulk, making it less destructive. The chemical composition of the material of the surface can also be deduced from the backscattered electrons. No elaborate specimen-preparation techniques are required for examination in the scanning electron microscope, and large and bulky specimens may be accommodated.
Schela: SYNONYM: Schela Cladovei
CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: Late Mesolithic and Neolithic site in western Romania of the Iron Gates gorge of the River Danube with radiocarbon dates of 6800-5600 BC. The Schela group is contemporary with the sites of Vlasac, Lepenski Vir, and Padina and includes cave as well as open sites. Burials are found, located around a hearth, with feet pointing toward it. There was herding and plant-gathering to supplement fishing and hunting. Remains of the Neolithic Cris culture were in another layer.
scorper: CATEGORY: artifact
DEFINITION: A small steel metalworking tool with a broad sharp edge used for removing the background from designs on metalwork to allow the pattern to stand out. The tool may also be moved forward or backward through the metal on alternate corners -- thus producing a zigzag or tremolo line. It is likely that scorpers had to be of iron or steel to work on bronze, and therefore they may belong to later stages in the development of metalworking than tracers. In ancient minting, engraving of the details was carried out by the use of scorpers. In wood engraving, scorpers were used for cutting away large spaces after outlining and engraving, so as to leave only the drawing in relief.
sgraffito ware: CATEGORY: ceramics
DEFINITION: Sgraffito ware is glazed vessels prepared first by incising decoration in the surface and then adding paint in the incisions prior to the application of glaze. There is a contrast between the brightly colored decoration and the overall color of the glazed vessel. Byzantine sgraffito wares date to the 11th-12th centuries in western Europe. It was not until the 16th-17th centuries that the technique was established in northern Europe. Sgraffito ware was produced by Islamic potters and became common throughout the Middle East. The 18th-century scratch blue class of English white stoneware is decorated with sgraffito patterns. Sgraffito ware was produced as early as 1735 by German settlers in colonial America. Sgraffito is also a form of fresco painting for exterior walls, done in Europe since the Middle Ages. A rough plaster undercoat is followed by thin plaster layers, each stained with a different color. These coats are covered by a fine-grain mortar finishing surface. The plaster is then engraved with knives and gouges at different levels to reveal the various colored layers beneath. It is also a glass-decorating technique.
silk: CATEGORY: term
DEFINITION: Thread that can be drawn off the cocoon spun by the grub of the moth Bombyx mori and used for weaving fine cloth, which originated in China in Neolithic period. The silk industry was established by the Anyang period, c 1300-1030 BC. The Anyang oracle bones include characters for silk, silk fabrics, silkworm, and mulberry tree, and traces of silk fabrics are occasionally found preserved. Silk fabric was used as a writing surface at least as early as the 5th century BC. Both manuscripts and paintings on silk have come from Chu tombs of the 5th century BC and later. Elaborate methods of weaving were developed by the Han Dynasty (206 BC-220 AD) and textiles exported in large numbers along Silk Route to Roman world and later to Byzantium. The route is the collective name for several overland and ocean routes for silk trade from the 1st-8th centuries AD. From Chang'an, capital of the Han Dynasty, the main route went west through the Gansu corridor.
Song: SYNONYM: Sung
CATEGORY: culture
DEFINITION: Chinese dynasty that ruled the country 960-1279 AD (only in the south after 1127) during one of its most brilliant cultural epochs. During the Sung dynasty, commerce developed; trade guilds were organized; paper currency came into increasing use; and several cities with populations of more than one million flourished along the principal waterways and the southeast coast. Widespread printing of the Confucian Classics and the use of movable type, beginning in the 11th century, brought literature and learning to the people. The Sung dynasty is particularly noted, however, for the great artistic achievements that it encouraged and subsidized. The capital was at Kaifeng near the Yellow River; during the Southern Song (1127-1279) it was at Hangzhou. The study of antiquities flourished, with large collections of artifacts collected, catalogs published, and epigraphic works compiled. The present-day nomenclature of bronze Ritual Vessels is owed largely to the work of Song epigraphers.
Spanish Levant Art: CATEGORY: structure; artifact
DEFINITION: A series of rock shelters in the arid region of the Spanish Levant (Mediterranean Spain) with paintings in red and black from the Mesolithic. The scenes were quite unlike Palaeolithic art and the depictions offer information about the character of everyday life.
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.
tapa: CATEGORY: artifact
DEFINITION: Paperlike barkcloth of the Pacific Islands made by soaking and then beating the inner bark of the paper mulberry tree. It was used for paintings in Oceanic arts.
Tarquinia: SYNONYM: Roman Tarquinii; Etruscan Tarkhuna
CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: Great Etruscan city in Tuscany, Italy, famous for tombs with a series of grave painting from the 6th-1st centuries BC and the remains of a wall and base of the great central temple of the 4th-3rd century BC. Traditionally the earliest of the cities of Etruria, there was an earlier Villanovan settlement (10th-7th century BC). It is also important for its contribution to early Rome of that city's early kings, the Tarquins, as well as a cultural and technological heritage. It did not come under Roman control until 353 BC. The Villanovan burials are especially rich in bronze artifacts, particularly horse and chariot items, shields, and helmets. The Etruscan painted tombs are usually approached by steeply descending dromoi and they show scenes of funeral banqueting and games, and later the demons of the underworld. Sarcophagi mostly have relief decoration. The city shows traces of a grid plan, tufa city walls, and the remains of the 4th-3rd century BC temple (Ara della Regina).
Tassili n'Ajjer: SYNONYM: Tassili-n-Ajjer
CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: Site in southeast Algeria with famous but undated rock art covering most of the Saharan sequence. The art is in three styles -- archaic" paintings of large animal and human figures and geometric abstract symbols; a "naturalistic" style with humans and animals portrayed in great detail in scenes showing cattle running and herdsmen with bows; and a "cubist" style with dark shapes and light areas. Stone forms which were probably used as tomb sculpture have also been found at the Tassili site. There is much stone painting but not much stone carving or engraving. Scholars have been unable to decipher the hieroglyphic language that is engraved on the rocks."
Teleilat Ghassul: SYNONYM: Tulaylat al-Ghassul
CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: Type site of the Ghassulian in the Jordan Valley (Palestine) near the Dead Sea, dated c 3800-3350 BC. It is known for polychrome geometric and figurative mural paintings in trapezoid-shaped mud-brick houses. The Ghassulian stage was characterized by small settlements of farming peoples whose pottery was elaborate in style, and included footed bowls and horn-shaped goblets. The Ghassulians also smelted copper.
Tlaloc: CATEGORY: deity
DEFINITION: Mesoamerican rain and fertility god, usually depicted wearing a fringed mouth-mask or a spectacle-shaped frame round his eyes, recognized this way in the art of the Aztec people of Teotihuacán. Under various names Tlaloc was worshipped by other of the Mexican tribes: Chac (Lowland Maya), Tajin (Totonacs) and Cocijo (Zapotecs). Images of Tlaloc occur in many contexts over a considerable period of time, e.g. at Copán, Monte Alban, Kaminaljuyu and Chichen Itza. During the Classic Period his image appears on pottery, wall painting, and architecture.
tlatoani: CATEGORY: term
DEFINITION: The Nahuatl (Aztec) term for ruler, the head of the state. All household heads owed allegiance, respect, and tax obligations to the tlatoani. It was mostly an inherited position; in some areas, succession passed from father to son; in others, the succession went through a series of brothers and then passed to the eldest son of the eldest brother. In still other states, the office was elective, but the choice was limited to sons or brothers of the deceased ruler. The ruler lived in a large, multiroom masonry palace inhabited by a number of wives, servants, and professional craftsmen. He was carried in a sedan chair in public and held considerable power: appointing bureaucrats, promoting to higher military status, organizing military campaigns, and distributing of booty and tribute. He also owned private estates with serfs, was the final judge in legal cases, was titular head of the religious cult, and head of the town market.
Toprakkale: SYNONYM: Topra Kaleh
CATEGORY: site; artifact
DEFINITION: Site on Lake Van, eastern Anatolia (Turkey), which was the center of the Urartian state, c 850-600 BC. There is a large temple complex which was a Urartian fortress, storerooms, and residential area, including bronze, carved ivory, and silk artifacts. There are other temples, storerooms, etc. in the area in which some wall paintings remain. The walls of Toprakkale, erected in the 8th century BC, were of cyclopean masonry and sloped slightly inward, perhaps as a defense against earthquakes. Artifacts show a high level of artistic achievement, in bronze, gold, silver, and ivory. Excavations have also uncovered a basalt floor inlaid with limestone and marble, parts of a decorated marble frieze, and brilliantly polished red pottery vessels. Toprakkale is also the name of a fine burnished red ware of the Urartian period.
Toprakkale complex: CATEGORY: artifact
DEFINITION: site on Lake Van, eastern Anatolia (Turkey), which was the center of the Urartian state, c 850-600 BC. There is a large temple complex which was a Urartian fortress, storerooms, and residential area, including bronze, carved ivory, and silk artifacts. There are other temples, storerooms, etc. in the area in which some wall paintings remain. The walls of Toprakkale, erected in the 8th century BC, were of Cyclopean masonry and sloped slightly inward, perhaps as a defense against earthquakes. Artifacts show a high level of artistic achievement, in bronze, gold, silver, and ivory. Excavations have also uncovered a basalt floor inlaid with limestone and marble, parts of a decorated marble frieze, and brilliantly polished red pottery vessels. Toprakkale is also the name of a fine burnished red ware of the Urartian period.
Tsodilo Hills: SYNONYM: Nqoma
CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: Later Stone Age and Iron Age rock shelters with rock art, in northwest Botswana. Depression Shelter in the Tsodilo Hills has evidence of continuous Khoisan occupation from about 17,000 BC to about 1650 AD. There is also evidence of early farming settlement there, alongside Khoisan hunter and pastoralist sites, dated from about 550 AD. Archaeologists therefore have difficulty in interpreting the hundreds of rock paintings in the Tsodilo Hills, which were once assumed to be painted by Bushman" (San) hunters remote from all pastoralist and farmer contact."
Uan Muhuggiag: CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: Cave site in the Acacus Mountains, Libya, with rock paintings. Occupations were c 7500 bp and 4800 bp.
Umm Dabaghiyah: CATEGORY: site; culture
DEFINITION: Early 6th-millennium BC type site of the Umm Dabaghiyah culture, the earliest-known culture of the northern Iraq plain, a pre-Hassuna occupation of Mesopotamia. The small site has long buildings with rows of small cell-like rooms arranged around a central space. Some wall paintings have been recorded with hunting scenes -- something relied upon heavily for the economy. Domesticated sheep, goats, cattle, and pigs were also kept and some domesticated cereals are present, possibly imported. Pottery is abundant in all the four main phases and includes incised, burnished, plain, and painted types similar to 'archaic' Hassuna pottery. Other sites of this culture are Yarim Tepe, Telul Thalathat, and Tell es-Sotto (Tell Soto).
Upper Paleolithic: CATEGORY: chronology; culture
DEFINITION: The final part of the Paleolithic period, from about 40,000 years ago to about 10,000 years ago. It was characterized by the development of bladed stone tools and regional stone-tool industries (e.g. Perigordian, Aurignacian, Solutrean, and Magdalenian of Europe), the hunting of large herd animals, human burials, the appearance of cave paintings and other art forms, and during which modern humans (Cro-Magnon man) replaced the Neanderthals. There were also localized industries in the Old World and the oldest known cultures of the New World. Upper Paleolithic industries exhibit greater complexity, specialization, and variety of tool types and distinctive regional artistic traditions emerged. This includes small sculptures (clay and stone figurines, ivory carvings), monumental paintings, incised designs, and reliefs on the walls of caves.
Uqair, Tell: SYNONYM: Uqair
CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: Tell site south of Baghdad, Iraq, with a temple of the Uruk phase with unexpectedly fine wall paintings depicting mythical scenes. The fine polychrome wall paintings had human and animal figures. A small subsidiary chapel, later in date than the temple, contained a collection of pottery and four clay tablets inscribed with pictographic symbols of the kind used in the Jemdet Nasr period (4th millennium BC). The site was occupied from the 'Ubaid period.
Verulamium: SYNONYM: modern St. Albans
CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: Romano-British town across from St. Albans, Hertfordshire, England. Before the Roman conquest, Verulamium was the capital of Tasciovanus, prince of the Catuvellauni; under Roman rule it soon was made a municipium. Destroyed by Boudicca (or Boadicea; queen of the Iceni) in 60-61 AD, it soon regained its prosperity. Among its ruins are the city grid plan, the forum, a theater associated with a temple of Romano-Celtic type, a market hall, two triumphal arches, fragments of the town wall, and many well-appointed houses with fine mosaics and wall paintings. It was still of some importance when it was visited by St. Germanus in 429, but thereafter was replaced by St. Albans. It is thought to be the third largest Roman town in Britain.
Vicús: CATEGORY: site; artifact
DEFINITION: Early Horizon culture of the Piura basin in north Peru where deep shaft tombs were discovered. The Vicús tombs have produced abundant metalwork, modeled wares resembling the Gallinazo style and early Moche ceramics, and a local style of pottery with negative painting. Vicús material covers most of the 1st millennium AD and was eventually replaced by Chimú.
Wandjina figure: CATEGORY: artifact
DEFINITION: A type of anthropomorphic bichrome or polychrome painting made in the Kimberley region of Western Australia, succeeding the Bradshaw style (c 3000 BC) and persisting to the present. Wandjina takes its name from the ancestor spirits depicted in the paintings. The large white spirit figures are outlined in black and have mouthless, circular faces that are framed in red, rayed halos. The Bradshaw style was a series of bichrome and monochrome figures.
white-ground: CATEGORY: ceramics
DEFINITION: Athenian pottery technique, especially of the 5th century BC, where white slip was applied to the vessel surface and the decoration painted on that. The white-ground lekythoi -- funerary vases with the figures painted in color against a white background -- are the most common shapes employing this technique. It was also used on monumental funerary lekythoi. The white-ground lekythoi are believed to be the most reliable source information about monumental Greek paintings of the Classical period.
Wilton: SYNONYM: Wiltonian
CATEGORY: culture
DEFINITION: Microlithic Later Stone Age industry with its type site in a rock shelter in Cape Province, South Africa and found in other parts of eastern and southern Africa. It is the African equivalent of the Mesolithic cultures of Europe, though of later date, and in its final stage shows contact with the Iron Age farmers of the 1st millennium AD. It occurred over the last 8000 years. In the rock shelter area, the characteristic tool is the tiny convex or 'thumbnail' scraper; crescent-shaped backed microliths, adzes, and backed blades are also present. There is rock painting, plant remains, and faunal remains of non-gregarious" browsing antelope as well as evidence of fishing. Around the beginning of the Christian era the descendants of the Wilton folk acquired domestic sheep and possibly cattle and learned the art of pottery manufacture (called post-climax Wilson or ceramic Wilton)."
writing: CATEGORY: language
DEFINITION: Any system for symbolizing the symbols of a language. Writing was developed independently several times in different places and both the writing materials and the types of script show great variation. The earliest true writing developed in southern Mesopotamia in the 4th millennium BC Uruk culture. The writing material was clay; it was first inscribed and later impressed with a stylus to produce the wedge-shaped cuneiform signs. The earliest signs were pictograms ('picture writing', in which the signs represent stylized pictures of the objects in question), but these rapidly developed into ideograms (the signs indicated not only the original object, but also associated objects or concepts). The Egyptian hieroglyphic script, used for inscriptions on stone, painting on walls, and also writing on papyrus, appears well before 3000 BC. There is dispute as to whether the Egyptians developed writing independently or whether the art was diffused from Mesopotamia. The Harappan Civilization of the Indus Valley had a writing system of its own, dated to the second half of the 3rd millennium BC and is found almost exclusively on stamp seals and seal impressions. It has not been deciphered. The first true alphabet, with signs for individual letters, seems to have developed in the Levant, probably in the first half of the 2nd millennium BC. The first definite evidence comes from Ugarit in the mid-2nd millennium BC. The Phoenicians spread the alphabet throughout the Mediterranean and theirs is ancestral to most of the alphabets in use today. In China, writing developed independently, first appearing on oracle bones of the Shang dynasty. In Europe the only pre-Classical writing occurs in the Aegean in the 2nd millennium BC -- the hieroglyphic and Linear A scripts of the Minoans, as yet undeciphered, and the Linear B of the Mycenaeans, used to record an early form of Greek. The development of writing in the Americas occurred only in Mesoamerica -- the glyphic writing of the Maya and related groups, found in inscriptions carved on monuments, and the pictographic writing of Post-Classic groups such as the Mixtecs and Aztecs, found on manuscripts of bark or deerskin known as codices.
X-ray art: SYNONYM: x-ray art, x-ray style, X-ray style
CATEGORY: artifact
DEFINITION: A style of prehistoric rock art depicting animals by drawing or painting the skeletal frame and internal organs. The origin of the style can be traced to the Mesolithic art of northern Europe, where the earliest examples were found on fragments of bone in southern France dating from the late Magdalenian. Animals painted in the X-ray motif have also been discovered in the art of hunting cultures in northern Spain, Siberia, the Arctic Circle, North America, western New Guinea, New Ireland, India, and Malaysia. It is found today primarily in the Aboriginal rock, cave, and bark paintings of eastern Arnhem Land, in northern Australia. Figures painted in X-ray style vary in size up to 8 feet (2.5 m) in length and are delicate, polychromed renderings of the interior cavity of the animal.
zoomorph: CATEGORY: artifact
DEFINITION: An object, figure, or picture depicting an animal form, such as those found in cave paintings. An animal form used as a symbol in art.

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