Archaeology Wordsmith

Results for Iron:

bar iron: CATEGORY: artifact
DEFINITION: A piece of iron cut from blooms and lengths of bar, probably for transportation, which were then reworked.
biological environment: CATEGORY: flora; fauna
DEFINITION: Those elements of the habitat consisting of living organisms; the living component of the total environment.
bog iron: SYNONYMS OR RELATED TERMS: lake ore, limnite, marsh ore, meadow ore, morass ore, swamp ore, bog iron ore
CATEGORY: geology
DEFINITION: A workable, porous type of brown hematite (impure hydrous oxides) found in bogs (and also in marshes, swamps, peat mosses, and shallow lake beds). This deposit is formed when iron-bearing surface waters come into contact with organic material and iron oxides are precipitated through oxidation of algae, iron bacteria, or the atmosphere. It is frequently found in areas with subarctic or arctic climatic conditions.
branding iron: CATEGORY: artifact
DEFINITION: A heated iron used to label, burn or mark animals, slaves, criminals etc.
Chaironeia: SYNONYMS OR RELATED TERMS: Chaeronea
CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: A Middle Neolithic settlement on a mound in Boeotia, Greece, with distinctive red-on-cream pottery. The site has a stone lion which guards the tomb of Thebans killed in a battle in 338 BC.
cultural environment: CATEGORY: term
DEFINITION: Those elements of the habitat created or modified by human cultures; a component of the total environment as seen by cultural ecology.
depositional environment: CATEGORY: term; geology
DEFINITION: Any stratum or unit making up a separate layer of material at an archaeological site; the total of sedimentary and biological conditions, factors, and processes that result in a deposit(s). A depositional history is the order in which objects are deposited at a site.
environment: CATEGORY: term
DEFINITION: The complex of physical, chemical, and biological factors that act upon an organism or an ecological community and ultimately determine its form and survival. The pace of environmental change quickened dramatically with the introduction of agriculture from 7000 years ago onwards: forests were cut down and cultivation led to soil degradation and erosion. New species were introduced, both as crops and weeds, and the relentless growth of population ensured that man's activities made an ever-increasing impact on the landscape.
environmental archaeology: CATEGORY: branch
DEFINITION: A subfield of archaeology which is the study of the environment in archaeological contexts. It includes not only the study of past flora (pollen analysis, palaeobotany, palaeoethnobotany, archaeobotany), and fauna (archaeozoology), but also that of insects (insect analysis), fish (fish bone analysis), and snail shells (molluscan analysis). All are studied in an attempt to recover the total environment of a past society and to understand man's impact on, and changes to, that environment. It is a field in which interdisciplinary research, involving archaeologists and natural scientists. Many disciplines are involved in this study: climatology, Quaternary geology, soil science, palaeobotany, zoology, and human biology.
environmental circumscription: CATEGORY: term
DEFINITION: An explanation for the origins of the state that emphasizes the fundamental role exerted by environmental constraints and by territorial limitations.
environmental indicator(s): CATEGORY: technique
DEFINITION: A method in which species of plants and animals are used to indicate a feature of the environment. If the modern environmental requirements are known, the presence of preserved remains of the same species in ancient deposits and soils may suggest that similar conditions prevailed in the past. Many such indicator fossils are used to reconstruct temperature. However, the absence of an environmental indicator does not imply lack of the conditions which it is supposed to indicate. The method is only reliable when whole communities, comprising many different species, all indicate the existence of a particular environment.
fire-dog: SYNONYMS OR RELATED TERMS: andiron
CATEGORY: artifact
DEFINITION: An instrument consisting of an iron bar held horizontally at one end by an upright support, used to ensure the proper burning of a fire. A pair of these was put at each side of the hearth or fireplace to support burning wood; the end of a log could rest on the crosspiece, which was supported by two uprights. Decorative iron examples come from La Tene Iron Age contexts, mostly in graves. In a kitchen fireplace, the upright support might hold a rack in front for the spit to turn in.
grappling iron: CATEGORY: artifact
DEFINITION: A device with hooks or claws attached to a rope and used for dragging or grasping.
hematite: SYNONYMS OR RELATED TERMS: bloodstone, red hematite, red iron ore, red ocher, rhombohedral iron ore, haematite
CATEGORY: geology
DEFINITION: A heavy, deep red iron oxide commonly used by the Indians as decorative body paint and pictographs. Steel-gray crystals and coarse-grained varieties are known as specular iron ore; thin scaly types are called micaceous hematite. Much hematite occurs in a soft, fine-grained, earthy form called red ochre or ruddle. Red ochre is used as a paint pigment; a purified form, rouge, is used to polish plate glass. The most important deposits of hematite are sedimentary in origin and the largest deposit is in the Lake Superior district in North America.
iron: CATEGORY: geology
DEFINITION: A ductile, malleable, magnetic metallic element, used to make artifacts of both practical and decorative function. Its oxide form, hematite, is found naturally and the technique of ironworking was mastered around 1500 BC by the Hittites. Iron began to spread and replace bronze for man's basic tools and weapons -- the start of the Iron Age. Early in the 1st millennium BC, iron industries were established in Greece and Italy, and by 500 BC, iron had replaced bronze for the manufacture of tools and weapons throughout Europe. The pre-Columbian New World, however, did not develop iron technology. Iron smelting is more complicated than for copper or tin, since the first smelt gives only slaggy lumps, the bloom. Hammering at red heat is then required to expel stone fragments and combine carbon with the iron to make in effect a steel; the resulting metal is far superior to copper or tin. The two basic methods of working it are by forging -- hammering into shape at red heat -- and casting. The Chinese used the latter method as early as the 5th century BC, but it was not employed in Europe until the Middle Ages. The first evidence of iron smelting in Egypt dates to the 6th century BC. Large-scale steel manufacture depends on the production of cast iron, which in Europe dates only from the 14th century AD. The West did not enter the 'Age of Steel' until the 19th century with the invention of the Bessemer and Siemens processes, which are industrial processes for obtaining liquid metal of any desired carbon content by the decarburization of cast iron. Steel was made in China within a few centuries of the first known use of smelted iron. In principle, modern techniques descended from China's casting techniques.
Iron Age: CATEGORY: chronology
DEFINITION: The period during which iron was utilized by early man, beginning about 3000 years ago, following the Stone Age and Bronze Age in the Three-Age System. In this period, tools, implements, and weapons were first made of iron. Iron had many advantages over bronze, so its spread was rapid. The Iron Age began at different times in different parts of the world according to the availability of iron ore and the state of knowledge. In Europe, the earliest iron appears around 1100 BC. The traditional timing of the transition from bronze to iron is placed in the early 1st millennium BC. The age began about 1500 BC in the Middle East, about 900 BC in southern Europe, and after 400 BC in northern Europe. In most of Asia the Iron Age falls entirely within the historic period. In America, iron was introduced by the arrival of Europeans; in Africa, it began before the earlier metal ages. The southern African Iron Age is divided into the Early Iron Age, 200-1000 AD and the Late Iron Age, 1000 AD till the 19th century. The term is general and arbitrary. There is evidence that meteorites were used as a source of iron before 3000 BC, but extraction of the metal from ores dates from about 2000 BC.
iron pyrites: CATEGORY: artifact
DEFINITION: A nodule of iron pyrites used to create fire in combination with tinder and flint or another nodule of iron pyrites.
iron-making, direct process: CATEGORY: geology
DEFINITION: The technique of smelting iron ore in a furnace with charcoal and limestone to produce a spongy, low-carbon form of iron known as a bloom. This ductile material can be forged into tools and weapons.
iron-making, indirect process: CATEGORY: geology
DEFINITION: The technique of smelting iron ore in a furnace at a very high temperature to yield a molten, high-carbon form of iron. The high-carbon content makes it too brittle for most direct uses, so it must undergo a secondary process, oxidization, to make it more ductile. It can then be forged into weapons and tools. The indirect process of iron-making was developed in China early in the first millennium BC. The Chinese made iron artifacts, heating blooms in a fire and hammering the red-hot metal to produce the desired objects; iron made in this way is known as wrought iron.
ironstone: CATEGORY: geology
DEFINITION: A hard sedimentary rock rich in iron, especially a siderite in a coal region. This ore of iron, commonly a carbonate, has clayey impurities. Ironstone china is a hard heavy durable white pottery developed in England early in the 19th century.
Ironstone china: CATEGORY: artifact
DEFINITION: A hard heavy durable white pottery developed in England early in the 19th century
magnetite: SYNONYMS OR RELATED TERMS: lodestone, magnetic iron ore
CATEGORY: geology
DEFINITION: A strongly magnetic form of iron ore, a major constituent of magnetitite and a common accessory mineral in igneous rocks. In the Mesoamerican region, magnetite was commonly mined and polished to make mirrors and compasses. It frequently has distinct north and south poles, and has been known for this property at least since 500 BC.
microenvironment: CATEGORY: geography
DEFINITION: A small or relatively small, usually distinctly specialized and effectively isolated habitat -- as a forest canopy. It is a characteristic biotic assemblage, often exploited as a distinctive ecological niche. These minimal subdivisions of the environment allow alternative opportunities for exploitation.
Natal Early Iron Age: CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: A South African province of Natal which has traces of the furthest southeastern extension of the Early Iron Age complex of sub-Saharan Africa, which has been linked with the dispersal of peoples speaking Bantu languages. Evidence for Early Iron Age settlement is found in the fertile areas of the lower river valleys and dates from about the 4th century AD. Closely related sites are known from the Transvaal, as at Broederstroom and Lydenburg.
palaeoenvironment or paleoenvironment: CATEGORY: geology
DEFINITION: The ancient environment, which can be reconstructed using techniques such as archaeozoology and palynology.
paleoenvironmental reconstruction: SYNONYMS OR RELATED TERMS: palaeoenvironmental reconstruction
CATEGORY: technique
DEFINITION: The determination of the prehistoric environment of an archaeological site, using the methodologies of geology, botany, palynology, and archaeozoology. The paleoenvironment is the ancient environment.
perceived environment: CATEGORY: term
DEFINITION: The physical environment as perceived by a human society, not by archaeologists.
physical environment: CATEGORY: geography
DEFINITION: Nonbiotic elements of the habitat created or modified by natural forces; a component of the total environment as seen by cultural ecology.
Proto-Three Kingdoms: SYNONYMS OR RELATED TERMS: Late Iron Age, Lelang
CATEGORY: chronology
DEFINITION: The protohistoric period of the Korean peninsula, c 1-300 AD, which preceded the Three Kingdoms period of Koguryo, Silla, and the Paekche. Archaeological finds of the period are mainly from Lelang and Koguryo in the north and Samhan in the south. Bronze and iron were used and iron made at shell midden sites on the southern coast. In actuality, the Three Kingdoms period was c 57 BC-668 AD.
snarling iron: CATEGORY: artifact
DEFINITION: A rod used to create repousee work on metal vessels. The rod is Z shaped.
Tairona: CATEGORY: culture
DEFINITION: Late prehistoric culture of northeast Colombia in the Sierra Nevada de Santa Marta. The Taironas were organized into small political states (chiefdoms) and had one of the most advanced cultures of the Caribbean mainland. Their crafts were ceramic ware (black and red painted with zoomorphic design and appliqué); stone utensils (metates); bone and shell ornaments; and beads, buttons, and jewelry made of gold, copper, and gold-copper alloy (tumbaga). Most sites, like Pueblito and Buritaca-200, have hundreds of stone foundations for circular houses. There are also remains of tombs, stone-built retaining walls, bridges, stairways, roads, agricultural terraces, and irrigation canals. A central feature of most villages was a ceremonial building, usually on a platform-mound, and often of dressed masonry. The town site at Pueblito had all these features and, in addition, paved streets, the remains of large irrigation projects, and urn burials. Specialized funerary vessels are often modeled with life forms which are similar to Mesoamerican motifs. Populations in the thousands occupied Tairona towns and villages at the time of the Spanish conquest.
wrought iron: CATEGORY: artifact
DEFINITION: Iron having a low carbon content that is tough and malleable and so can be forged and welded
achzib ware: CATEGORY: ceramics
DEFINITION: A Phoenician, Iron Age II, red slip pottery type consisting primarily of jugs with trefoil mouth of mushroom" rims red slipped and highly burnished."
adaptation: CATEGORY: culture
DEFINITION: The process of microevolutionary change in a species enabling it to become better fitted to survive within changing environmental conditions or other external stimuli.
aerobic: CATEGORY: term
DEFINITION: An environmental state requiring or using free oxygen in the air for metabolic purposes and which, therefore, causes decay in organic structures. Many materials, including plants, leather, flesh, food remains, and clothing will disintegrate in aerobic conditions.
African food production: CATEGORY: term
DEFINITION: Research into the beginnings of food production in Africa has shown that the intensive use of cereals and experimentation with crops began at a rather early date, maybe as far back as the 16th millennium BC in Upper Egypt and Nubia. The best-documented example is a Wadi Kubbaniya where there is evidence of the earliest instances of plant cultivation anywhere in the world, confirming that this was a native African achievement. Food production was generally not practiced in North Africa before about the 5th millennium BC. Most of the indigenous species such as finger and bulrush millet, sorghum, yams, African rice, teff, enset, and noog were brought under cultivation between the 4th and 2nd millennia BC. South of the Equator the advent of food production did not occur before the beginnings of the Iron Age.
Akjoujt: CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: A site in southern Mauritania that appears to have been an early copperworking center in Africa, from c. 5th century BC or earlier. It is one of the few Saharan or sub-Saharan areas where there may have been a Copper Age preceding the Iron Age. Arrowheads, spearheads, axes, pins, and some decorative items of copper are attributed to this period.
Alamgirpur: CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: The easternmost site of the Harappan civilization, northeast of Delhi in the Ganges Valley. It was a small late Harappan settlement. After a gap of unknown duration, there were later occupations which showed Painted Grey Ware and iron use.
Alesia: CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: An Iron Age site where the last Celtic stand against the Roman invasion in 52 BC took place. It is an oppidum with remains of Caesar's siege works.
All Cannings Cross: CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: A n Early Iron Age site in Wiltshire, southern England. The settlement contained rectangular houses and evidence of iron smelting. Fine haematite-coated bowls with horizontal furows above the carinations have been found.
Allen's Rule: CATEGORY: term
DEFINITION: A biological generalization about body proportions and climate that says that mammals living in colder environments will have stockier bodies and shorter limbs to reduce heat loss. A related rule, Bergmann's Rule, states that body weight tends to a minimum in warmer regions, increases to a certain threshold as temperature declines, and then falls off again as temperature falls further.
Altai: CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: The mountain range and region of southern Siberia which has yielded important prehistoric remains. Rising above 4000 meters, this area has Palaeolithic deposits (Ulalinka Creek) and a late glacial occupation (Ust' Kanskaia Cave). Some food-producing cultures appeared c 3rd millennium BC and metallurgy entered c 2nd millennium, when copper ore was exploited. Pastoral nomadism and horseback riding were introduced in the 1st millennium BC. There are rich burials which indicate a society of social differentiation and a warrior elite which acquired precious goods from far-flung regions. In the 4th-2nd centuries BC, iron gradually replaced bronze. Altai groups are also characterized by animal art styles, similar to the Scythians who occupied the steppes of southern Russia to the west.
amber: CATEGORY: artifact
DEFINITION: Fossilized pine resin, a transparent yellow, orange, or reddish-brown material from coniferous trees. It is amorphous, having a specific gravity of 1.05-1.10 and hardness of 2-2.5 on the Mohs scale, and has two varieties -- gray and yellow. Amber was appreciated and popular in antiquity for its beauty and its supposed magical properties. The southeast coast of the Baltic Sea is its major source in Europe, with lesser sources near the North Sea and in the Mediterranean. Amber is washed up by the sea. There is evidence of a strong trade in amber up the Elbe, Vistula, Danube, and into the Adriatic Sea area. The trade began in the Early Bronze Age and expanded greatly with the Mycenaeans and again with the Iron Age peoples of Italy. The Phoenicians were also specialist traders in amber. The soft material was sometimes carved for beads and necklaces.
amino acid dating: SYNONYMS OR RELATED TERMS: amino-acid dating; aminostratigraphy; amino-acid racemization, amino acid racemization
CATEGORY: technique
DEFINITION: A method of absolute (chronometric) dating which is hoped to fill the gap between radiocarbon dates and potassium-argon dates. It is used for human and animal bone and other organic material. Specific changes in its amino acid structure (racemization or epimerization) which occur at a slow, relatively uniform rate, are measured after the organism's death. The basis for the technique is the fact that almost all amino acids change from optically active to optically passive compounds (racemize) over a period of time. Aspartic acid is the compound most often used because it has a half-life of 15,000-20,000 years and allows dates from 5,000-100,000 years to be calculated. However, racemization is very much affected by environmental factors such as temperature change. If there has been significant change in the temperature during the time in which the object is buried, the result is flawed. Other problems of contamination have occurred, so the technique is not fully established. It is fairly reliable for deep-sea sediments as the temperature is generally more stable.
Amur Neolithic: CATEGORY: culture
DEFINITION: A number of Neolithic cultures recognized near the Amur River in eastern Siberia. They are mainly defined by the presence of pottery. In the Middle Amur region, the earliest phase is known as the Novopetrovka blade culture. Later is the Gromatukha culture, with unifacially flaked adzes, bifacially flaked arrowheads, and laurel-leaf knives and spearheads. Settlements on Osinovoe Lake, which are characterized by large pit houses, date to around the 3rd millennium BC. Millet was cultivated, representing the first food production in the area, and there was fishing. A fourth Neolithic culture in the area, dating to the mid-2nd millennium BC was a combination of farming and fishing by people who moved there from the Lower Amur area. The Neolithic of the Lower Amur is known from sites such as Kondon, Suchu Island, and Voznesenovka. Fishing provided the economic basis for the establishment of unusually large sedentary settlements of pit houses -- a situation paralleling the examples from the Northwest coast of North America. In the 1st millennium BC, iron was introduced and fortified villages constructed. In Middle Amur, millet farming became the lifeway.
anaerobic: CATEGORY: term
DEFINITION: Without air; the opposite of aerobic. This term is used to describe environmental conditions where oxygen is not present and where decay of organic material is partially or completely stopped. Anaerobic conditions are usually waterlogged but may also occur when a layer or clay, plant, or animal remains is sealed. The remains survive much better than under normal conditions because there is insufficient oxygen for bacterial or fungal growth. The organic materials reach a state of equilibrium beyond which they do not decay.
Ananino: CATEGORY: culture
DEFINITION: An Iron Age culture of the mid-1st millennium BC in the Volga basin of Russia that had strong connections with the Scythians to the south.
Anasazi: CATEGORY: culture
DEFINITION: A major cultural tradition of canyon dwellers found in southwestern United States between 100-1600 AD -- mainly in the four corners area of northeastern Arizona, northwestern New Mexico, southeastern Utah, and southwestern Colorado. These Native Americans began settlements with the cultivation of maize. Pottery was unknown at the beginning, but basketry was well developed, hence the name Basket Maker" is given to these early stages. By the sixth century there were large villages of pit houses with farming and pottery and it evolved into the full Anasazi tradition. The first pueblos and kivas were constructed and fine painted pottery made. The next few centuries (the Pueblo I-III periods) were a time of expansion during which some of the most famous towns were founded (Chaco Canyon) and fine polychrome wares produced. At this time the Mogollon people to the south adopted the Anasazi way of life and their Hohokam neighbors were also influenced perhaps suggesting that the Anasazi actually migrated to these areas. In such an arid environment farming was always vulnerable to fluctuations in climate and rainfall and these factors caused considerable population movement and relocation of settlements during 11th-13th centuries with the virtual abandonment of Chaco Canyon in 1150 and the plateau heartland by 1300. From 1300 until the arrival of the Spanish in the 16th century the Anasazi culture and population dwindled and the homeland in northern Arizona was abandoned. Then with the encroachment of nomadic Apache and Navajo tribes and with the arrival of Europeans from the south and east Anasazi territory decreased further. However some pueblos have continued to be occupied until the present day. The generally accepted chronological framework of three Basketmaker and five Pueblo stages was first proposed at the 1927 Pecos Conference. Although exact links are uncertain it is clear that modern Pueblo Indian people are descended from Anasazi ancestors. The name Anasazi is derived from a Navajo word meaning "enemy ancestors" or "early ancestors" or "old people"."
Anse au Meadow, L': CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: A site on the northern peninsula of Newfoundland that is the only known Viking settlement in the New World. The Norse explorers were the first Europeans to reach what is now Canadian explorers, c 1000 AD, as is recorded in the Icelandic sagas and recently confirmed by the archaeological discovery of the site at L' Anse-aux-Meadows. Excavations revealed traces of turf-walled houses similar to those at Viking sites in Greenland and Iceland. Also found was a spindle whorl, iron nails, and a smithy with pieces of bog-iron and several pounds of slag -- all of Norse origin. Radiocarbon dates range from AD 700-1080 with a concentration around 1000, which is the period when, according to the sagas, Norsemen led by Leif Eriksson sailed west from Greenland and explored the coast of America, which they named Vinland.
anthracology: CATEGORY: related field
DEFINITION: The study of human interactions with the plant environment. Wood charcoal from archaeological sites is studied by microscope and statistically analyzed.
anvil: CATEGORY: artifact
DEFINITION: A block, usually of iron, upon which objects are shaped and hammered e.g. in smithing.
archaeological reconnaissance: SYNONYMS OR RELATED TERMS: archeological reconnaissance
CATEGORY: technique
DEFINITION: A systematic method of attempting to locate, identify, and record the distribution of archaeological sites on the ground by looking at areas' contrasts in geography and environment.
archaeozoology: SYNONYMS OR RELATED TERMS: zooarchaeology
CATEGORY: branch
DEFINITION: The study of animal remains, especially bones, from archaeological contexts, including the identification and analysis of faunal species as an aid to reconstructing human diets, determining the impact of animals on past economies, and in understanding the environment at the time of deposition. Animal remains are collected, cleaned, sorted, identified, and measured for their study and interpretation. The study of bones involves calculations of minimum numbers of individuals belonging to each species found; their size, age, sex, stature, dentition, and whether the bones have any marks from implements implying butchering and eating. Archaeologists attempt to answer questions such as how many species of domesticated animals there were, how far wild animals were exploited, how many very young animals there were to determine kill patterns and climate changes, in what way bones were butchered, what the sex ratios there were in determining breeding strategies, and if there were any animals of unusual size. By analyzing remains from different parts of a site it may be possible to understand some of the internal organization of the settlement, while a comparison between sites within a region may show areas of specialization.
Arene Candide: CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: A cave site at Finale Ligure on the Italian Riviera whose excavation revealed a stratigraphy extending from the Upper Palaeolithic through Epi-Palaeolithic, to Early, Middle, and Late Neolithic, as well as poor levels from the Bronze and Iron Ages up to the Roman period. There were some rich burials in the 1st, 2nd, and 4th levels. The 1940s excavations by Bernabò Brea helped him make important interpretations of the Neolithic period in the Mediterranean.
Arikamedu: CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: A site on the Madras coast of southern India near Pondicherry excavated by Mortimer Wheeler. It was an important trading post of the Romans after the mid-first century BC, though black-and-red ware found there began well before the period of Roman contact. A town with warehouses in an industrial quarter was built. Black-and-red Iron Age wares associated with Arretine ware of the 1st century AD, Mediterranean amphorae, and imperial Roman coins were found by Wheeler. Other excavations have found Roman pottery, beads, intaglios, lamps, and glass which indicate continuous occupation. Graffiti on pottery indicates the presence of Indian traders.
armor: SYNONYMS OR RELATED TERMS: arms, armour, body armor
CATEGORY: artifact
DEFINITION: Protective clothing with the ability to deflect or absorb arrows, bullets, lances, swords, or other weapons during combat. There are three main types: 1) armor made of leather, fabric, or mixed materials reinforced by quilting or felt, 2) mail, of interwoven rings or iron or steel, and 3) rigid armor of metal, plastic, horn, wood, or other tough material, including plate armor of the Middle Ages' knights. Armor was used well before historical records were kept by primitive warriors. The first was likely made of leather hides and included helmets. It was found that in the 11th century BC, Chinese warriors wore 5-7 layers of rhinoceros skin. Greek heavy infantry wore thick, multilayered linen cuirasses in the 5th century BC. Armor is found along with arrows, clubs, hammers, hatchets, and other weaponry and is often ornamented. The defensive armor, the shield, and thorax, were called hopla, and people wearing them were called hoplites.
Arras: SYNONYMS OR RELATED TERMS: Aras
CATEGORY: site; culture
DEFINITION: The site of an Iron Age cemetery in Yorkshire, England, with at least 90 burials, some barrows covering the burials and some with chariots. There are several related sites (Danes' Graves) in east Yorkshire with similar grave goods which define the Arras culture along with the burials. Material dates the Arras culture to c 5-1 BC and the Arras people seem to have been intruders from the continent. Their artifacts suggest links with the migrations of the Parisii from eastern France and the Rhineland. The chariot gear includes a distinctive three-link horse bit.
Arthur (c 5th century AD?): CATEGORY: person
DEFINITION: The legendary British king who is described in medieval romances as the leader of a knightly fellowship called the Round Table. It is said that he rallied the British against the Anglo-Saxon invaders and that behind the legend there may be a sub-Roman warleader who filled such a role. Though his name does not survive in contemporary records, he may have led the British at the battle or siege of Mount Badon which stopped the Saxon advance c 490 AD for some fifty years hence. All the historical references to him in the chronicles of Bede, Gildas, Nenius, Geoffrey of Monmouth and others were written between 100 and 600 years after the event, so they are considered unreliable for archaeologists. The search probably started with the monks of Glastonbury, who in 1191 claimed to have found the burial of King Arthur and Queen Guinevere inscribed with the words, Here lies Arthur in the Isle of Avalon buried". Various locations as far apart as Cornwall and Scotland are claimed as the site of Mount Badon; the refortified Iron Age hillfort of Badbury Rings in Dorset seems the most credible possibility. The site of Arthur's court at Camelot may be the historical site of South Cadbury. Excavations carried out at South Cadbury revealed an important fortified settlement of the 5th and 6th centuries which could have been the center from which British resistance to the Saxons was organized."
artifact: SYNONYMS OR RELATED TERMS: artefact
CATEGORY: artifact
DEFINITION: Any object (article, building, container, device, dwelling, ornament, pottery, tool, weapon, work of art) made, affected, used, or modified in some way by human beings. It may range from a coarse stone or a needle to a pyramid or a highly technical accomplishment -- and these objects are used to characterize or identify a people, culture, or stage of development. The most common artifacts are pieces of broken pottery, stone chips, projectile points, and tools. The environment may play a part in the nature of an artifact if it has been seriously altered by man through fire, house and road construction, agricultural practices, etc. Therefore, the line is sometimes hard to draw between a natural object and one used by man, but there is no doubt when it can be shown that man shaped it in any way, even if only accidentally in the course of use. Artifacts are individually assignable to ceramic, lithic, metal, or organic, or other lesser-used categories. A sociotechnic artifact is a tool that is used primarily in the social realm. A technomic artifact is a tool that is used primarily to deal with the physical environment.
Ashkelon: CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: A Palestinian site of the Late Bronze Age with artifacts of Egyptian and Cypriote origin. There was an Iron Age Philistine city and material from the Roman period.
Athens: SYNONYMS OR RELATED TERMS: Athínai (modern Greek), Athenai (ancient Greek)
CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: Important classical Greek city-state with evidence for continuous occupation from the Late Neolithic, but because of its continuous occupation and the resulting disturbance of the earlier levels, its history is told from the time of the Mycenaeans in the Late Bronze Age. The citadel on the Acropolis was walled early in its history. It is the capital of Greece and generally considered to be the birthplace of Western civilization. Athens is best known for its temples and public buildings of antiquity. The Parthenon, a columned, rectangular temple built for the city's patron goddess, Athena, is considered to be the culmination of the Doric order of classical Greek architecture. Also located on the Acropolis are the Erechtheum, originally the temple of both Athena and Poseidon, and the Propylaea, the entrance of which is through the wall of the Acropolis. At the foot of the Acropolis, to the south, are the theaters of Herodes and Dionysus, while to the northwest is the Agora, the ancient marketplace of the city. The Kerameikos cemetery documents the city's Iron Age (c 11-8 BC), after which archaeology and history combine to tell of its brilliance through the classical period. It supposedly rivaled Knossos and later resisted successive waves of Dorian invaders. It is still not clear how far Athens, perhaps the base of the very early Ionian colonies, managed to ride out the 'dark age' that followed the collapse of Mycenaean civilization. There is evidence of a cultural and commercial renaissance in the 7th and 6th centuries BC. A major component of this socioeconomic revolution was the borrowing of the Phoenician alphabet for the writing of Greek. Commercial success brought rapid economic growth and a population explosion. New ideas were imported and political upheaval led to experiments in government, such as democracy. Athens resisted Persian invaders and developed a prestige which allowed the establishment of the Delian League and the extension of her political power -- the Athenian empire. In the years 447-431 BC, under Pericles, vast sums were spent on public works, such as the new group of buildings on the Acropolis including the Parthenon. Pericles would not grant the Hellenes the freedom requested by Sparta, which led to the Peloponnesian War (431-404 BC) after which Athens was a dependent of Sparta. Escape from Spartan imperialism in the 4th century BC was threatened by Philip of Macedon and Alexander the Great. By the end of the century, Macedon dominated and Athens did not achieve independence until 228 BC. Rome then intruded in the 2nd and 1st centuries and Athens was sieged and plundered by Sulla. During the Imperial period, Athens was confined to a role as a cultural center and seat of learning for the rich -- which lasted into the 6th century AD, when the edict of Justinian in 529 closed down the schools of philosophy. By the Byzantine period, Athens had become a modest provincial town. Athens' ruins will be difficult to protect from the corrosive atmosphere and millions of visiting tourists.
Atlantic Bronze Age: SYNONYMS OR RELATED TERMS: carp's tongue sword complex
CATEGORY: culture
DEFINITION: A late Bronze Age metalworking industry which developed on the west coast of France (Brittany to Gironde) c 1000-500 BC and spread to southern England and Iberia. The unifying factor of these areas was very active trading along the Atlantic seaways. It is known from a large number of hoards with typical products being the carp's tongue sword, end-winged ax, hog-backed razor, and bugle-shaped object of uncertain function. The tradition flourished west of the area dominated by the central European Urnfield cultures.
Atranjikhera: CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: A site in Uttar Pradesh, northern India, with a series of occupation levels. The earliest level contained ochre-colored pottery. It was followed by a level with black and red ware, followed by a series of layers with painted gray ware, which also produced iron tools and weapons. The radiocarbon dates so far recorded are unreliable.
auger: SYNONYMS OR RELATED TERMS: augering (n)
CATEGORY: tool
DEFINITION: A tool used to probe into the ground and extract a small sample of a deposit without performing actual excavation. Its applications in archaeology are as a means of sampling and understanding the geological environment of a site and also for extracting peat for pollen analysis. There are various types of augers and they can be manual- or power-driven. Simple augers bring up samples on the thread of a drill bit. More elaborate ones open a chamber to collect a core after the drill has bored to an appropriate depth. Augering is generally restricted to the earliest stages of archaeological reconnaissance to determine the depth and characteristics of deposits.
Aulnat: CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: An important Iron Age settlement site in Puy-de-Dome, France, dating to the 3rd century BC, with evidence of gold, silver, bronze, coral, glass, bone, and textiles. It was abandoned soon after the Roman conquest.
ax: SYNONYMS OR RELATED TERMS: axe
CATEGORY: lithics
DEFINITION: One of the last major categories of stone tool to be invented, around the end of the last Ice Age in the Palaeolithic. A flat, heavy cutting tool of stone or metal (bronze) in which the cutting edge is parallel to the haft and which might have the head and handle in one piece. Its main function was for woodworking (hewing, cleaving, or chopping trees) but it was also used as a weapon of war, as the battle-ax. There are many forms of ax, depending on the different materials and methods of hafting. The word ax" is now used instead of celt. "Hand-ax" is used to denote the earlier implement which was not hafted. In Mesolithic times stone axes were usually chipped from a block of flint and could be resharpened by the removal of a flake from the end. In the Neolithic axes were polished and often perforated to aid hafting. Axes are now usually iron with a steel edge or blade and fixed by means of a socket in the handle. Smaller lighter ones are called hatchets."
axle: CATEGORY: artifact
DEFINITION: A rod or spindle, either fixed or rotating, on which a wheel or group of wheels is fixed. The axle cap is Usually made of iron, this bound the end of an axle and was perforated to allow a linch pin to pass through the axle and keep the wheel in place
Aylesford: CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: A cemetery of cremation burials of the 1st century BC discovered in the 1880s in the county of Kent, England. It was excavated by Sir Arthur Evans, who identified the grave goods as belonging to the Iron Age Belgae. It is thought to represent the arrival of Belgic peoples fleeing from Gaul in advance of Caesar's army. Aylesford and Swarling are now the type sites of that culture in southeastern England. There was urned cremation in flat graves and the use of wheel-thrown pots with pedestal bases and horizontal cordon ornament. Brooches (fibula), wooden stave-built buckets, and bronze have also been found. The culture survived for a time after the Roman conquest in 43 AD.
Azelik: CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: A series of sites in Niger which have yielded evidence of metalworking at a very early date, possibly to late 2nd millennium for copper smelting. There may have been a brief Copper Age" (as at Akjoujt) before the adoption of iron which was rare in sub-Saharan Africa."
Babadag: CATEGORY: site; culture
DEFINITION: A tell site and culture of the Late Bronze Age, located in Rumania. Several occupation levels have been identified, all of which are associated with rich assemblages of bones, bronze tools carbonized cereals, iron tools, and pottery.
Bader, Otto Nikolaevich (1903-1980): CATEGORY: person
DEFINITION: A Russian archaeologist who worked on sites from the Palaeolithic to the Iron Age, including Kapovaya Cave and Sungir.
ballista: SYNONYMS OR RELATED TERMS: balista
CATEGORY: artifact
DEFINITION: An ancient heavy missile launcher designed to hurl javelins or heavy balls on the principle of a crossbow. The smaller ballista was just that -- a basic, large crossbow fastened to a mount. It was also used to hurl iron shafts, Greek fire, heavy darts, etc. during sieges. The huge, complicated Roman ballista, however, was powered by torsion derived from two thick skeins of twisted cords through which were thrust two separate arms joined at their ends by the cord that propelled the missile. The largest ballistas were quite accurate in hurling 60-pound weights up to about 500 yards. The catapult was yet another machine used for firing bolts and other arrow-like missiles. The two terms are often used interchangeably.
Bambandyanalo: CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: A hill that forms the eastern boundary of K2 in Transvaal, South Africa, where a site dates to the 11th-12th centuries AD -- the southern African Iron Age.
Ban Chiang: SYNONYMS OR RELATED TERMS: Ban Chiang Hian
CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: A settlement site in northeast Thailand with burial deposits from 3600 BC-1600 AD and which was occupied from c 4500 BC. Rice was grown and bronze cast according to the earliest records. Iron and rice paddy field cultivation began in the 2nd millennium. The basal burials are associated with incised and cord-marked pottery, copper and bronze artifacts. Levels dated to the late 2nd and 1st millennia BC have produced a variety of curvilinear painted red-on-buff pottery, together with iron, and bones of water buffalo. However, there is disagreement over the dating of Ban Chiang,, especially for the bronze, iron, and painted pottery.
Ban Don Ta Phet: CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: A burial site near U Thong, Thailand dating to c 400-200 BC with etched stone and beads from India and other evidence of long-range trade by sea and land routes. Local wares were iron tools and cast-bronze bowls.
Ban Nadi: CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: A settlement site near Ban Chiang, Thailand, occupied from c 1500 BC-250 AD. It was the location of tin-bronze production after 500 BC, with axes, projectile points, and jewelry. Iron was smelted and forged for bangles, hoes, knives, and spearheads fro c 100 BC to 200 AD. The bronze wares were bowls, bracelets, and lead-bronze bells.
Ban Tha Kae: CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: A prehistoric site in central Thailand near copper sources with a long sequence from Neolithic through Iron ages, paralleling Khorat sites.
Bantu: CATEGORY: language
DEFINITION: A Niger-Congo language family, with approximately 60,000,000 speakers of more than 200 distinct languages, who occupy almost the entire southern projection of the African continent (roughly from the bulge downward). The classification is linguistic as the cultures of the Bantu speakers are extremely diverse. The languages are closely interrelated, indicating expansion of the population from a single source, probably the eastern Nigeria/Cameroon area. Throughout the region these first farming settlements are marked by a common pottery tradition, the 'Early Iron age' complex.
barrow: SYNONYMS OR RELATED TERMS: burial mound; tumulus; burial cairn
CATEGORY: feature
DEFINITION: A round or elongated mound of earth or stones used in early times to cover one or more burials; a grave mound. The mound is often surrounded by a ditch, and the burials may be contained within a cist, mortuary enclosure, mortuary house, or chamber tomb. There are two types, the long (elongated) and the round barrow (also known as tumuli). The former were built in the Late Stone Age, the latter in the Bronze Age, though burial under a round mound was occasionally practiced during the Roman, Anglo-Saxon, and Viking periods.. The long barrow was a tribal or family burial vault built of stone slabs, some weighing many tons, and covered with earth or stones. The large, round barrows were often communal. They are often found in prehistoric sites in Britain -- earthen (or unchambered) long barrows from the Early and Middle Neolithic (Windmill Hill Culture). Other long barrows were constructed over megalithic tombs of gallery grave types. Most of the British round barrows incorporate circles of stakes. Bowl barrows --- simple round mounds, often surrounded by a ditch --- were the most common form, used throughout the Bronze Age and sporadically also in the Iron Age. The Wessex Culture of the southern English Early Bronze Age was characterized by special types of barrows: bell, disk, saucer, and pond barrows. Bell barrows have relatively small mounds and a berm or gap between the mound and the ditch; disk barrows are very small mounds in the center of a circular open space, surrounded by a ditch; saucer barrows are low disk-like mounds occupying the entire space up to the ditch; while the oddly named pond barrows are not mounds at all, but circular dish-shaped enclosures surrounded by an external bank. The related term 'cairn' is used to describe a mound constructed exclusively of stone. Barrow burials occur also in Roman and post-Roman times: one of the most famous of all barrows in Britain is that covering the Anglo-Saxon boat burial at Sutton Hoo.
basalt: CATEGORY: geology
DEFINITION: A type of very hard, dark, dense rock, igneous in origin, composed of augite or hornblende containing titaniferous magnetic iron and crystals of feldspar. It often lies in columnar strata, as at the Giant's Causeway in Ireland and Fingal's Cave in the Hebrides. It is greenish- or brownish-black and much like lava in appearance. It is also abundant in Egypt and Greece.
Basarabi culture: CATEGORY: culture
DEFINITION: An Iron Age culture of cemeteries and settlement sites over much of Romania with its type site on the Danube. It is a local version of the Hallstatt culture, dating to 975-850 BC.
battering-ram: CATEGORY: artifact
DEFINITION: An ancient military engine" used for smashing in doors and battering down walls. It consisted of a beam of wood with a head of iron -- originally a ram's head but later in the form of a ram's head -- and swung by chains from an overhead scaffolding. It had a roof to protect those working it from the missiles of the garrison."
Battersea Shield: CATEGORY: artifact
DEFINITION: A late Iron Age parade shield found in the River Thames at Battersea, England. It was a fine example of insular Celtic Art, with an elongated bronze body with rounded ends and decorated in relief and with red glass inlay.
battle-ax: SYNONYMS OR RELATED TERMS: battleaxe, battle-axe
CATEGORY: lithics
DEFINITION: A type of prehistoric stone weapon, designed as a weapon of war. It is always of the shaft-hole variety, and frequently has a hammer, knob, or point at the opposite end from the cutting edge. In stone, they are common throughout most of Europe in the Late Neolithic and Copper Age, and often associated with corded ware and beakers. (The term Battle-Ax culture is often used as a synonym for Corded Ware or Single Grave culture.) Further east, more elaborate ones of copper or gold were more ceremonial than functional. The Vikings made iron battle-axes and used them well into the Middle Ages. The pole-ax is distinguished from the battle-ax by a spike on the back of the ax.
beans: CATEGORY: flora
DEFINITION: The seeds or pods of certain leguminous plants of the family Fabaceae and important to man since the beginning of food production. Most modern beans are of the genus Phaseolus, different species of which occur wild in two hemispheres. Their cultivation commenced at an early date in both. These species all originated in Mexico and South America, spreading to the Old World after Columbus. The earliest finds of cultivated Phaseolus beans are from 6th millennium BC Peru and Mexico. Vicia faba, the ancestor of the broad bean, was confined to the Old World, and was already being grown in the Neolithic Near East. Later in the Neolithic, the species appeared in Spain, Portugal, and eastern Europe. During the Bronze Age, the field bean grew in southern and central Europe, and by the Iron Age it reached Britain.
beetle: CATEGORY: fauna
DEFINITION: Any member of the insect order Coleoptera, with at least 250,000 species (the largest order in the animal kingdom), characterized by their special forewings, which are modified into hardened wing covers (elytra) that cover a second pair of functional wings. The order includes some of the largest and smallest insects and is the most widely distributed insect order. Beetles can be found in all environments except Antarctica and the peaks of the highest mountains. Most feed either upon other animals or upon plants, but some eat decaying matter. Many beetles are very dependent on particular features of their environment; some, for example, live only in the bark of a particular tree. It is this particularity" that makes beetles useful for reconstructing ancient environments. Parts of the tough beetle exo-skeleton may be well-preserved in acidic or waterlogged conditions (as in peats silts and lake clays). The temperature preferences of beetles may be determined from the fossils making it possible to reconstruct climatic changes. Beetles can also be used to investigate changes in vegetation living conditions and food-storage problems."
Beijing: SYNONYMS OR RELATED TERMS: Pei-ching, Peking
CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: The modern capital of China. More than 2,000 years ago, a site just outside present-day Peking was already an important military and trading center for the northeastern frontier of China. The Shang civilization reached this area in the early part of their dynasty and a grave of c 14th century BC at Pinggu Liujiacun contained bronze ritual vessels and a bronze ax with a blade of forged meteoritic iron. There have been many early Zhou finds, notably at the cemetery site of Fangshan Liulihe. In 1267, during the Yüan (Mongol) dynasty (1206-1368), a new city built on the site (called Ta-tu) which became the administrative capital of China. During the reigns of the first two emperors of the Ming dynasty (1368-1644), Nanking was the capital, and the old Mongol capital was renamed Pei-p'ing (Northern Peace"); the third Ming emperor however restored it as the Imperial seat of the dynasty and gave it a new name Peking ("Northern Capital"). Peking has remained the capital of China except for a brief period (1928-49) when the Nationalist government again made Nanking the capital (then to Chungking during World War II)."
Belgae: CATEGORY: culture
DEFINITION: Any of the inhabitants of Gaul north of the Sequana and Matrona (Seine and Marne) rivers of mixed Celtic and Germanic origin, first described by Julius Caesar in mid-first century BC. Their origins on the continent can be traced back to the La Tène period in the 5th century BC and evidence suggests that the Romans penetrated into those areas about 150 BC. In Caesar's day, they held much of Belgium and parts of northern France and southeast England. The Belgae of Gaul formed a coalition against Caesar after his first Gallic campaign but were subdued the following year (57 BC). During the first half of the 1st century BC, Belgae from the Marne district had crossed to Britain and had formed the kingdom that in 55 BC was ruled by Cassivellaunus. After further Gallic victories (54-51 BC) by Caesar, other settlers took refuge across the Channel, and Belgic culture spread to most of lowland Britain. The three most important Belgic kingdoms, identified by their coinage, were centered at Colchester, St. Albans, and Silchester. Archaeologically, the Belgae can be identified with the bearers of the Aylesford-Swarling culture, otherwise known as Iron Age C. Coinage, the heavy plow, and the potter's wheel were introduced by the Belgae. They lived in large fortified settlements called oppida and amphorae and Italian bronze vessels have been found in their richly furnished tombs.
Belgic pottery: CATEGORY: artifact
DEFINITION: General term, now almost obsolete, sometimes applied to the range of late Iron Age wheel-turned pottery vessels found in southeastern England, especially Aylesford-Swarling pottery, even though this is too late to be directly related to Belgic settlement from the continent.
belt hook: SYNONYMS OR RELATED TERMS: toggle
CATEGORY: artifact
DEFINITION: Small decorative and functional objects used as garment hooks in China, Korea, and other Near Eastern areas as early as the 7th century BC. Belt hooks have been found in Han tombs in southwestern China, but this luxury item was most in vogue during the Warring States period (5th-3rd centuries BC). These belt hooks were inlaid with gold or silver foil, polished fragments of turquoise, or more rarely with jade or glass; sometimes they were gilded. Most examples are bronze, often lavishly decorated with inlays, but some are made of jade, gold, or iron. The belt hook consists of a bar or flat strip curving into a hook at one end and carrying at the other end, on the back, a button for securing it to the belt. The hooks vary widely in size, shape, and design, and although contemporary sculptures sometimes show them at the waists of human figures, some examples are far too large to have been worn and their function is unclear. Textual evidence hints that the belt hook was adopted by the Chinese from the mounted nomads of the northern frontier of inner Asia, perhaps along with other articles of the horseman's costume. They were probably worn by both men and women.
Benfica: CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: A site in Angola with many shell middens, stone artifact assemblages, and Early Iron Age pottery dated to the 2nd century AD.
Beth-Shan: SYNONYMS OR RELATED TERMS: Bet She'an, Baysan (Arabic), Beisan (modern); Scythopolis
CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: A very large tell of northeastern Israel, site of one of the oldest inhabited cities of ancient Palestine. Overlooking the town to the north is Tel Bet She'an (Arabic Tall al-Husn), one of the most important stratified mounds in Palestine. It was excavated in 1921-1933 by the University of Pennsylvania, which discovered the lowest strata date from the late Chalcolithic period in the country (c 4000-3000 BC) through Bronze Age and Iron Age levels and upward to Byzantine times (c AD 500). Buildings, including temples and administrative buildings, span the Egyptian period -- the earliest from the time of Thutmose III (ruled 1504-1450 BC), and the latest dating to Rameses III (1198-66 BC). Important stelae (stone monuments) show the conquests of Pharaoh Seti I (1318-1304 BC) and of the worship of the goddess Astarte. During the Hellenistic period, the city was called Scythopolis; it was taken by the Romans in 64 BC and given the status of an imperial free city by Pompey. In 1960 a finely preserved Roman amphitheater, with a seating capacity for about 5,000, was excavated. The city was an important center of the Decapolis (a league of 10 Hellenistic cities) and under Byzantine rule was the capital of the northern province of Palaestina Secunda. All these periods were also represented in the surrounding cemeteries. It declined after the Arab conquest (636 AD).
Bibracte: SYNONYMS OR RELATED TERMS: modern Mont Beurvray
CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: An Iron Age Gallic town and oppidum in central France. It was the capital of the Aedui tribe at the time of Caesar and the site where he defeated the Helvetii tribe, the climax of his first campaign in Gaul (58 BC). Augustus moved the inhabitants to his new town Augustodunum (Autun), about 30 km away, in 12 BC. Excavations in the 19th century revealed remains of both the Iron age settlement and the Roman period, including a large temple, houses, and metalworking workshops. Imported objects such as coins, amphorae, black and red glaze pottery dating to before the Roman conquest have been found, indicating that Bibracte was a major trading and production center in the late Iron Age.
Bigo: CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: A great earthwork site in western Uganda associated with the Chwezi people. The massive linear earthworks, over 6 1/2 miles long (10 km), is a ditch system, some of it cut out of rock, enclosing a large grazing area on a riverbank. It may have comprised both a royal capital and a cattle enclosure. Its construction would have required considerable labor and supports a distinction between cultivators and a pastoral aristocracy, which later became typical of this area. Radioactive carbon dating suggests Bigo was occupied from the mid-14th to the early 16th century. The site has also yielded early 13th-15th century AD roulette-decorated pottery, characteristic of the later Iron Age over much of East Africa.
Bilzingsleben: CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: A travertine site in Germany at which Middle Pleistocene specimens of skull fragments and teeth show resemblances to Homo erectus. Excavations have turned up thousands of stone tools of a Lower Palaeolithic Clactonian-type culture. An interglacial environment is indicated with a date in the penultimate or Holstein interglacial, perhaps some 250,000-350,000 years ago.
biosphere: CATEGORY: flora; fauna
DEFINITION: The regions of the earth's crust and atmosphere that are occupied by living organisms; also, all of the earth's living organisms interacting with the physical environment.
biotope: CATEGORY: flora; fauna
DEFINITION: The smallest subdivision of a habitat, constituting a specific plant and animal grouping and a high degree of uniformity in the subdivision's environmental conditions.
bird bones: CATEGORY: fauna
DEFINITION: The identification of bird bones preserved on archaeological sites is a very specialized skill. Interpretation may be carried out in terms of diet and reconstruction of the ancient environment.
Biskupin: CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: An Early Iron Age defended settlement of the Lusatian culture of c 550-400 BC, on a former island in Lake Biskupin, northwest Poland. The island site was ringed by a breakwater of piles and fortified by a rampart of timber compartments filled with earth and stones. Inside were more than 100 wooden cabins, which were all erected within a year, arranged along parallel streets made of logs. Up to 1200 people may have been housed there. Workshops for craftsmen in bone, bronze, and horn have been excavated. Waterlogged ground preserved the structures.
bit, horse: CATEGORY: artifact
DEFINITION: The domesticated horse was probably first controlled with a simple halter. Bits, the mouthpiece of a horse's bridle, consisting of a bit-mouth and adjacent parts to which the reins are attached. Bits with cheek-pieces of antler did not appear in central Europe until after 1800 BC and they were later replaced by bronze bits. Bits without a cheek-piece, in 2-piece or 3-piece form, were introduced in the Iron Age.
Black Earth: CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: A distinctive area of Russia where the soil coloration resulted from intensive settlement activity and major deposits of iron ore.
Black-and-red ware: SYNONYMS OR RELATED TERMS: black and red ware
CATEGORY: ceramics
DEFINITION: Any Indian pottery with black rims and interior and red on the outside, due to firing in the inverted position, which was made beginning in the Iron Age. Characteristic forms include shallow dishes and deeper bowls. It first appeared on late sites of the Indus civilization and was a standard feature of the Banas culture. This ware has been found throughout much of the Indian peninsula with dates of the later 2nd and early 1st millennium BC. In the first millennium it became widespread in association with iron and megalithic monuments. In the Ganges Valley it post-dates ochre-colored pottery and generally precedes painted gray ware.
bloom: CATEGORY: geology
DEFINITION: The spongy mass of material made up of iron and slag, produced from the initial smelting of iron ore. The slag and impurities are mostly driven off in preliminary forging. To produce useful iron, bloom must be hammered at red heat to expel the stone and add a proportion of carbon to the metal. The term also refers to a mass of iron after having undergone the first hammering or an ingot of iron or steel, or a pile of puddled bars, which has been passed through one set of 'rolls', made into a thick bar, and left for further rolling when required for use.
boat burial: SYNONYMS OR RELATED TERMS: boat grave
CATEGORY: term; feature
DEFINITION: A type of burial during the Late Iron Age in which a body or its cremated remains were placed in a boat, which was then covered by a mound of earth. This was a north European practice, common in Scandinavia and Britain from c 550 to 800 AD. This pagan ritual was widely adopted by the Vikings and practiced to a lesser extent by the Anglo-Saxons and Germans. In Norway alone there are 500 known boat burials, and many more from the rest of Scandinavia and other Viking colonies. To these seafaring people, ships were a means of transport, a way of life, and symbols of power and prestige. The Anglo-Saxon poem Beowulf" describes the belief that the journey to the afterlife could be achieved in a vessel. In Anglo-Saxon Britain there are three 7th century examples in Suffolk including the rich burial of Sutton Hoo. The best-known after Sutton Hoo are the 9th-century barrows of Oseberg and Gokstad in Norway and the 10th-century barrow at Ladby in Denmark. Burial in churchyards became customary in the 11th century in those areas."
bog burial: CATEGORY: term
DEFINITION: Areas where human bodies are found in peat bogs in Scandinavia and northern Europe, including more than 160 from Denmark, and which are remarkably well-preserved. The chemicals in the peat preserve the bodies, which allows archaeologists to study aspects of past life, including the soft tissues of the bodies themselves and the contents of the stomachs. Burials and ritual deposits were interred in these bogs in antiquity, especially during the Bronze and Iron ages.
bolt: SYNONYMS OR RELATED TERMS: quarrel
CATEGORY: artifact
DEFINITION: An iron arrow or missile, especially stout and short with a blunt or thickened head, discharged from a crossbow or other engine.
Brahmagiri: CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: A settlement site and cemetery dating from at least the 2nd millennium BC in southern India. Wheeler found a Chalcolithic level (c 2800-1250 BC) with abundant microliths, polished stone axes, and crude burnished gray pottery, an Iron Age level (1st millennium BC) with black-and-red ware, 300 tombs, stone circles, and ossuaries for bones, and a level from the 1st century AD with rouletted ware and traces of Roman contact. Bone points and some evidence of a stone-blade industry have also been found. There are many cattle bones, but also sheep and goats. The culture seemed to continue with little change for many centuries.
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."
briquetage: CATEGORY: artifact
DEFINITION: Thick-walled very coarse ceramic material used for the manufacture of evaporation vessels in saltmaking from the mid 2nd millennium BC through to medieval times in northern Europe. The forms and fabrics of briquetage vessels are fairly distinctive and allow trade patterns and distribution networks to be established, especially for Iron Age times. Also known as very coarse pottery (VCP)
Broederstroom: CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: An Early Iron Age village site in Pretoria, South Africa from the mid-1st millennium AD. Its remains, including 13 circular houses, gives a fairly complete picture of life at the time. There was iron-smelting and herding of cattle, sheep, and goats. Broederstroom pottery suggests connections with contemporary people to the northwest.
bronze: CATEGORY: geology
DEFINITION: An alloy of copper and tin that is harder than copper. Bronze was made before 3000 BC, though it was not used in tools and weapons for some time. Tin added to copper made casting easier and the edges of tools and weapons harder. The proportions of copper and tin varied widely (67-95 percent copper in surviving artifacts) and the addition of zinc, nickel, lead, arsenic, or antimony is also known. Adding tin to copper makes casting easier and the edges of tools and weapons harder. The main disadvantage was the comparative scarcity of tin. A higher percentage of tin produces potin or speculum. The Bronze Age of the Three Age System began in Eurasia when it replaced copper as the main material for tools and weapons. It was then replaced by the more common and efficient iron, but was still used for decorative purposes. Modern bronze also contains zinc and lead.
Bronze Age: CATEGORY: chronology
DEFINITION: The second age of the Three Age System, beginning about 4000-3000 BC in the Mideast and about 2000-1500 BC in Europe. It followed the Stone Age and preceded the Iron Age and was defined by a shift from stone tools and weapons to the use of bronze. During this time civilization based on agriculture and urban life developed. Trading to obtain tin for making bronze led to the rapid diffusion of ideas and technological improvements. The Iron Age began about 1500 BC in the Mideast and 900 BC in Europe. Bronze artifacts were valued highly and became part of many hoards. In the Americas, true bronze was used in northern Argentina before 1000 AD and it spread to Peru and the Incas. Bronze was never as important in the New World as in the Old. The Bronze Age is often divided into three periods: Early Bronze Age (c 4000-2000 BC), Middle Bronze Age (c 2000-1600 BC), and Late Bronze Age (c 1600-1200 BC) but he chronological limits and the terminology vary from region to region.
Brythons: SYNONYMS OR RELATED TERMS: Britons
CATEGORY: culture
DEFINITION: A combination of Nordic and Alpine peoples who arrived in southeast England about 550 BC. They introduced iron and gave their name to Britain. During the Roman occupation, England was inhabited by Celtic Brythons, but the Celts withdrew before the Teutonic Angles, Saxons, and Jutes into the mountainous areas of western and northern Britain and to Ireland.
buried soil: SYNONYMS OR RELATED TERMS: paleosol
CATEGORY: geology
DEFINITION: Any ancient land surface buried and undisturbed under a structure or within a deposit, such as peat. Buried soil reflects the nature of the soil, at least at a very local level, at the time the structure was erected or the natural deposit laid down. Buried soil may be analyzed for faunal, insect, molluscan, and pollen remains which would give information about the environment of the period. Such soils are frequently preserved under barrows, mounds, or ramparts, or buried within the fill of a ditch.
Butser: CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: An experimental farm and museum in Hampshire, England. Iron Age plant cultivation, animal husbandry, and architecture are tested and studied.
Byci Skála: CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: A prehistoric cave site near Brno, Czechoslovakia, with artifacts and faunal remains of the Middle and Upper Palaeolithic and the Hallstatt (Early Iron Age). There are sidescrapers and burins, numerous bronze objects, inhumation burials and cremated bones. Several burials included wagons with iron tires, likely to have been high-status people.
Cadbury: SYNONYMS OR RELATED TERMS: Cadbury castle
CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: Three hillforts in Somerset, the most important being South Cadbury which has been equated with the Camelot of King Arthur. Excavation has shown that it was indeed occupied in the fifth century AD. There are also extensive remains of pre-Roman Iron Age occupation and a settlement of the Neolithic.
camp: CATEGORY: structure; feature
DEFINITION: A term used to describe any kind of ditched or embanked enclosure -- from the Neolithic causewayed camps to Iron Age hill forts and Roman fortifications. Used to describe ancient works, it usually means the entrenched and fortified site within which an army lodged or defended itself. The Roman army erected temporary fortifications called camps when on campaigns.
Capua: SYNONYMS OR RELATED TERMS: modern Santa Maria di Capua Vetere; Casilinum
CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: An ancient city of Italy, founded around 600 BC by the Etruscans, whose people spoke the Oscan dialect of Italic. There had been an early Iron Age settlement in the 9th century BC. After the period of Etruscan domination, it fell to the Samnites c 440 BC. Capua supported the Latin Confederacy in its war against Rome in 340 BC. After Rome's victory in the war, Capua became a self-governing community, and its people were granted limited Roman citizenship. In 312 BC, Capua was connected with Rome by the Appian Way and its prosperity increased to make it the secondmost important in Italy. During the Second Punic War (218-201 BC) Capua sided with Carthage against Rome. When the Romans recaptured the city in 211 BC, they deprived the citizens of political rights. Spartacus, the slave leader, began his revolt at Capua in 73 BC. Although it suffered during the Roman civil wars in the last decades of the republic, it prospered under the empire until 27 BC. The Vandals sacked Capua in 456 AD and Muslim invaders destroyed everything except the church of Sta. Maria in 840. Capua was famous for its bronzes and perfumes. There are ruins of a theater, amphitheater, baths, ceremonial arch of Hadrian, and a mithraeum with painted frescoes. The Etruscan artifacts include characteristic pottery, bronzes, and tombs, and an important document of the Etruscan language -- the Capua Tile, an inscription of some 62 lines that was either religious or ritual text.
caravanserai: SYNONYMS OR RELATED TERMS: khan; caravansary
CATEGORY: structure
DEFINITION: In the Middle East, a public building that served an unfurnished inn or staging post for sheltering caravans and other travelers. It was usually constructed outside the walls of a town and was a quandrangular enclosure with massive walls with small windows near the top and small air holes near the bottom. A heavy-doored gateway was the entrance and it was secured from within by massive iron chains. Refreshments were available to the travelers.
casting: CATEGORY: artifact; geology
DEFINITION: Casting consists of pouring molten metal into a mold, where it solidifies into the shape of the mold. The process was well established in the Bronze Age (beginning c 3000 BC), when it was used to form bronze pieces. It is particularly valuable for the economical production of complex shapes, from mass-produced parts to one-of-a-kind items or even large machinery. Three principal techniques of casting were successively developed in prehistoric Europe: one-piece stone molds for flat-faced objects; clay or stone piece molds that could be dismantled and reused; and one-off clay molds for complex shapes made in one piece around a wax or lead pattern (cire perdue). Every metal with a low enough melting point was exploited in early Europe, except iron and steel, was used for casting artifacts.
casting: CATEGORY: artifact
DEFINITION: Casting consists of pouring molten metal into a mold, where it solidifies into the shape of the mold. The process was well established in the Bronze Age (beginning c 3000 BC), when it was used to form bronze pieces. It is particularly valuable for the economical production of complex shapes, from mass-produced parts to one-of-a-kind items or even large machinery. Three principal techniques of casting were successively developed in prehistoric Europe: one-piece stone molds for flat-faced objects; clay or stone piece molds that could be dismantled and reused; and one-off clay molds for complex shapes made in one piece around a wax or lead pattern (cire perdue). Every metal with a low enough melting point was exploited in early Europe, except iron and steel, was used for casting artifacts.
castro: CATEGORY: term
DEFINITION: Portuguese term for a fortified site, ranging from the small walled citadels of the Copper Age (e.g. Vila Nova de Sao Pedro) to the hillfort settlements of the Celtic Iron Age.
cauldron: CATEGORY: artifact
DEFINITION: A large metal vessel for cooking, usually with a round base, heavy flange rim, and handles for suspending it over a fire. Examples date from the European Late Bronze Age, with especially important ones from Urartu. In the Iron Age, they were sometimes made of silver. These cauldrons were usually made of sheet bronze riveted together and having 2-4 handles. Cauldrons were a sign of great wealth or power.
cauldron chains: CATEGORY: artifact
DEFINITION: Pairs of connected short lengths of iron chain used to suspend a bronze cauldron over a source of heat.
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.
Cayla de Mailhac: CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: A site in southwestern France with a settlement and a series of cemeteries of Late Bronze Age and Early Iron Age c 700-100 BC. Occupation began with an urnfield culture. Iron became common in a second phase and a cart burial from La Redorte shows similarities to the Hallstatt Iron Age cultures. Phase III is dated to the second half of the 6th century BC by imports of Greek black figure ware and Etruscan pottery. The settlement of Phase IV was enclosed by a rampart and had houses of sun-dried brick. Datable material included Greek red figure pottery and fibula brooches of Hallstatt/early La Tène types. The last phase was of the La Tène culture.
Celtic art: SYNONYMS OR RELATED TERMS: La Tène art
CATEGORY: artifact
DEFINITION: An art style of the European Iron Age, c 500 BC, developed presumably by Celtic peoples. It originated on the middle Rhine River, extending to the upper Danube and the Marne. Its finest specimens are from the British Isles in the first century BC and AD. It appears most commonly in bronzework or other metals, weapons and horse gear, eating and drinking vessels, personal ornaments, and monumental stone carvings. It seems likely that the craftsmen worked under the direct patronage of the chieftains. Techniques employed were decoration in relief, engraving, and inlay. Stylistically, Celtic art combines elements taken from the classical world, from the Scythians to the east and from the local earlier Hallstatt Iron Age. The art developed into several styles in continental Europe (Early, Waldalgesheim, Plastic and Sword styles) but came to an end with the Roman occupation. In Ireland, the art style returned after the Roman withdrawal.
Cerveteri: SYNONYMS OR RELATED TERMS: ancient Caere; Roman Caere vetus, Etruscan Xaire, Greek Agylla
CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: One of the most important cities in Italy, north of Roman, whose earliest occupation was the Iron Age Villanovan of the 9th-8th centuries BC. It flourished from the 7th-5th centuries as one of the 12 major cities of the Etruscan federation. Two necropoleis from this period have been identified, with evidence for pit, trench, and chamber tombs. Accumulating wealth is reflected in the grandeur of many surviving tombs. There were two ports, Pyrgi and Alsium, the former with evidence of temples, which have provided scholars of the Etruscan language an important pieces of evidence -- a text on gold laminae. The city lost importance during the Roman period, and by the early Empire was reported to be no more than a village.
Chagar Bazar: SYNONYMS OR RELATED TERMS: Tell Chagar Bazar
CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: A tell site on a tributary of the River Khabur in northeast Syria with levels from the 5th millennium BC (Halaf period) to the mid-2nd millennium BC. It gradually grew in size and importance and during the reign of the Assyrian king, Shamsi Adad I (early 2nd millennium BC) and was an administrative center. Excavated by Sir Max Mallowan from 1935-37, it yielded an important sequence of prehistoric wares, particularly Halaf and Samarra. There was iron (from the 28th c BC) and copper, too.
chain mail: SYNONYMS OR RELATED TERMS: mail
CATEGORY: artifact
DEFINITION: A type of protective body armor in the form of interlinked metal rings, worn by European knights and other military men throughout most of the medieval period. An early form of mail, made by sewing iron rings to fabric or leather, was worn in late Roman times and may have originated in Asia, where it was worn for many centuries.
Chanhu-Daro: SYNONYMS OR RELATED TERMS: Chanhudaro, Chanhu-daro
CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: A city of the Harappan civilization of the 3rd millennium BC that is located in the Indus Valley south of Mohenjo-Daro in modern Pakistan. First excavated in the 1930s, it was characterized by a gridiron street plan and drainage system of typical Harappan towns. Evidence was found for the processes of sawing, flaking, grinding, and boring of stone beads. Occasional copper or bronze weapons of foreign" type are found in late contexts at Chanhu-daro. Excavation also showed that like Mohenjo-Daro Chanhu-Daro had been inundated by floods: it was twice destroyed and subsequently rebuilt on a different plan. After the end of the Indus Valley civilization it was reoccupied by the Jhukar culture."
Chifumbaze: CATEGORY: site; culture
DEFINITION: An Early Iron Age complex found over a wide area of eastern/southeastern Africa, dating from 2500 years ago till the 11th century AD. The sites have evidence of metallurgy and manufacture of pottery. The complex is divided into the Urewe or Eastern Stream tradition and Kalundu or Western Stream tradition.
Choisy-au-Bac: CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: A settlement site at the confluence of the Oise and Aisne rivers in France, occupied from the Late Bronze Age to Hallstatt D in three main phases. There is bronze-working debris and iron-working furnaces.
Chondwe: CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: Early Iron Age site in Zambia, dating to the 4th-5th centuries AD. There is evidence linking it with the Lusaka area and other areas to the west, for small-scale exploitation of the region's copper deposits, and some regional trade.
Chou: SYNONYMS OR RELATED TERMS: Chou Dynasty, Zhou
CATEGORY: culture
DEFINITION: The dynasty that ruled ancient China from 1122-256/255 BC), establishing the political and cultural characteristics that would be identified with China for the next 2,000 years. Some date the dynasty to 1027-1050 BC. The Chou coexisted with the Shang for many years, living just west of the Shang territory in what is now Shensi province. At various times they were a friendly tributary state to the Shang, alternatively warring with them. The Chou overthrew that of Shang in 1027 BC and was itself destroyed by the Ch'in in 256. Its capital in the Western Chou period was at Tsung Chou in Shensi, moving to Loyang in Honan in 771, to begin the Eastern Chou period. The archaeological evidence comes mainly from the excavation of tombs. Iron came into use c 500 BC, both forged and cast. Bronze remained the material for weapons and the Chou bronzes are the most famous of their artworks. The sword, crossbow, and use of roof tiles were other technological innovations of the dynasty.
circumscription: CATEGORY: term
DEFINITION: The act or process of being enclosed by either environmental boundaries or social boundaries
climatic change hypothesis: CATEGORY: term
DEFINITION: The idea that environmental variables, as climate, influence the course of events. This hypothesis has been used to explain the extinction of megafauna and the origins of agriculture.
closed system: CATEGORY: term
DEFINITION: A system that is isolated and internally self-regulating, receiving no feedback or information from external sources, nor matter, light, heat, or energy from its environment.
Clusium: SYNONYMS OR RELATED TERMS: Clusius, Chiusi
CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: An ancient Etruscan town on the site of modern Chiusi, in Tuscany, Italy. Clusium enjoyed good agricultural fertility deposits of iron and copper ore, natural hot springs, and a key position on trade routes. Settlement appears to be unbroken and successful from the first Villanovan dwellers onwards. It was founded in the 8th century BC on the site of an older Umbrian town known as Camars. In the early 6th century BC it allied with Arretium (Arezzo) as part of the 12-city Etruscan confederation. At the end of the 6th century BC, Clusium's king, Lars Porsena, attacked Rome and may even have captured the city in an attempt to restore the power of the Tarquins there. In 391 BC, Clusium allied with Rome against invading Gauls. Like other Etruscan cities, Clusium was surrounded by cemeteries and tombs. Excavation of Clusian tombs, mostly cut into the soft tufa rock, has yielded earthenware funerary (canopic) jars, as well as ceramic human figures and Greek and locally made pottery. There is evidence for persistence of the cremation rite, seen in the wide variety of cinerary urns, canopic jars, and the characteristic hollow seated figures made from pietra fetida limestone. Clusium also had a reputation for fine bronze and stone craftsmanship. The decorations on sarcophagi in the tombs are a major source of inscriptions in the Etruscan language.
Coalbrookdale: CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: The site of the first cast-iron bridge, spanning the River Severn at Coalbrookdale, Shropshire, England, now a British national monument and considered the birthplace of the Industrial Revolution. Abraham Darby pioneered the smelting of iron with coke here in 1709 and the bridge was by Thomas Pritchard and erected by John Wilkinson and Abraham Darby in 1777-1779.
Coclé: CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: A region in Panama where the type site of Sitio Conte has yielded deep rectangular tombs with grave goods of a rich ceramic and metallurgical tradition of c 500-1000 AD. The Coclé region 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. The extremely fine polychrome pottery is characterized by decoration of intricate geometric patterns and by stylized biomorphic forms. Gold- and tumbaga-working techniques, probably imported from Columbia, include cire perdue casting. Some association with Tairona is recognized in some artifacts especially in the wing-shaped pendants. In addition to the grave goods, there are indications that wife and servant sacrifice took place at the death of an important person.
Colchester: SYNONYMS OR RELATED TERMS: Camulodunum, Camolodunum; Colneceaste; Colcestra
CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: A district and borough northeast of London, England that was the capital of the pre-Roman Belgic ruler Cunobelinus by 43 AD, formerly an Iron Age Celtic settlement (oppidum) surrounded by dikes. Though it burned down in 60 AD, Colchester soon became one of the chief towns in Roman Britain and there are surviving walls and gateways from this period. Some of the masonry of the temple to Claudius survives in the foundations of the Norman castle.
collagen content: SYNONYMS OR RELATED TERMS: collagen dating
CATEGORY: technique
DEFINITION: Collagen is a protein abundant in living bone, which contains about 4% nitrogen. Collagen survives long after death and the collagen content of a bone, measured by the amount of nitrogen present, yields information as to its relative date. The rate of decay is varies with temperature and other aspects of the environment, but collagen dating can only give relative dates for different bone samples from a particular site. The test is used mainly in association with the fluorine test and radiometric assay, as in the cases of Piltdown and Swanscombe Man.
colorant: CATEGORY: artifact
DEFINITION: A chemical element that contributes color to a mixture; unglazed, low-fired pottery is colored chiefly by carbon, iron, and manganese, whereas a broader range of colors occurs in glazes
computer simulation: SYNONYMS OR RELATED TERMS: computer simulation studies
CATEGORY: technique
DEFINITION: Reconstruction of the past based on the production of computerized models. The computer model describes ancient conditions and variables and those are used to generate a sequence of events that are compared against the known archaeological record. The computer imitates the dynamic behavior of an explicit model and helps scientists examine how such systems respond to changing conditions and also to refine and test hypotheses about the past. In an example study of hunter-gatherers, the effect of various changes in the natural environment on such factors as the population settlement pattern or subsistence could be monitored; or the growth of a settlement system could be studied under different conditions of population, economy, technological, or environmental change. The relationships between the various elements in the cultural system must be specified, and then any variety of actual conditions can be simulated. The data used could be derived from observations and the simulation used to examine the effect of different assumptions; the results could then be compared to the observed data to test their validity.
concretion: CATEGORY: geology
DEFINITION: A mass of mineral matter found generally in rock of a composition different from its own and produced by deposition from aqueous solution in the rock. It is usually formed around a nucleus that may consist of archaeological debris. Concretions form under certain conditions and the study of their characteristics may aid reconstruction of the environmental conditions of the time.
contamination: CATEGORY: term
DEFINITION: Materials that are not part of a natural archaeological deposit or assemblage but which have intruded or altered the deposit or assemblage. The term is often applied to samples taken for radiocarbon dating which have been affected by their environment, for example by humus, which also contains carbon, and may be much younger than the sample, thus resulting in an inaccurate age determination.
coracle: SYNONYMS OR RELATED TERMS: curragh
CATEGORY: artifact
DEFINITION: Primitive, light, small bowl-shaped boat with a wattle frame of grasses, reeds, or saplings covered with hides. They were first known in the Iron Age and are still used in Wales and along coastal Ireland, usually with a canvas and tar covering. The term also refers to an Old English boat of wickerwork covered with hides. Native Americans used the similar bullboat, covered with buffalo hides, on the Missouri River, and the corita, often sealed with bitumen, on the Colorado.
cornelian: SYNONYMS OR RELATED TERMS: carnelian
CATEGORY: geology
DEFINITION: A translucent, semiprecious variety of the silica mineral chalcedony that owes its red to reddish brown color to hematite (iron oxide). Found in India, Brazil, Australia, Africa, and the Nile Valley. It was highly valued and used in rings and signets by the Greeks and Romans.
Cortes de Navarra: CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: An Urnfield settlement site of the Late Bronze and Early Iron Ages near Sargossa in the Ebro Valley of northern Spain. Narrow, rectangular mudbrick houses were arranged in rows on terraces and the site is actually a tell. Some archaeologists regard the appearance of such traits in southern France and northern Spain in the early 1 millennium BC as indicating the movement of Celtic groups into the area.
crannog: CATEGORY: geography; feature
DEFINITION: An artificial island in a lake, bog, or march that forms the foundation for a small settlement and upon which a fortified structure is usually built. This structure was typical of prehistoric Ireland, Scotland, and the Isle of Man, especially during the first century AD. The island was constructed from brushwood, stones, peat, and timber, and usually surrounded by a wooden palisade. Most crannogs probably represent single homesteads. The oldest examples in Ireland have yielded early Neolithic material (Bann flakes) and others have Beaker pottery. Most of them, however, are of Late Bronze Age, Iron Age, Early Christian, or medieval. The most interesting is that in Lough Cur in Limerick.
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.
Crickley Hill: CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: A Neolithic causewayed camp and Iron age hillfort in Gloucestershire, southwest England. The site was used for several centuries and the ditches and banks were refurbished several times. The final Neolithic phase had deeper quarry ditches and a rampart faced with drystone walling at the front and a timber stockade at the back and a wooden fence on the top. There were two gateways and evidence of burning and large numbers of flint arrowheads indicate that the site was attacked and burnt down around 1500 BC. There is also a stone circle erected in the Late Neolithic. The site was abandoned for nearly two millennia, when it was once again used for a defended settlement. Two phases of Iron Age occupation are represented, probably falling between 700-500 BC. The earlier phase was characterized by rectangular houses and square storage huts, while the second phase had one large round house, smaller round buildings, and more small square huts, perhaps granaries. The site was burned down again c 500 bc and never reoccupied.
cross-bed: CATEGORY: geology
DEFINITION: A sedimentary structure with fine strata (laminae) within a bed which are inclined relative to the bounding beds. Orientation of cross-bedding can be used to reconstruct past depositional environments that may have related archaeological deposits.
cross-laminae: CATEGORY: geology
DEFINITION: A sedimentary structure in which laminae are deposited at an inclined angle to the main depositional surface (bedding plane). The constituents and orientation of cross-laminae can be used to reconstruct past depositional environments.
cuirass: CATEGORY: artifact
DEFINITION: A piece of armor to protect the torso, both front and back, and often molded to the contours of the body. Originally made of thick leather, it was variously made of laminated linen, sheet bronze, or iron, or scales of horn, hide, or metal. In Homeric and Hellenistic times, it was made of bronze. Cuirasses of leather as well as iron were worn by officers in the armies of the Roman Empire. Later made of steel, the cuirass was forerunner to body armor worn to deflect bullets.
cultural adaptation: CATEGORY: term
DEFINITION: The whole of the adjustments of a human society to its environment. It is the process of change undergone by a community to better conform with environmental conditions or other external stimuli.
cultural ecology: CATEGORY: term
DEFINITION: A term describing the dynamic relationship between human society and its environment, in which culture is viewed as the primary adaptive mechanism in the relationship.
cultural selection: CATEGORY: term
DEFINITION: The process that leads to the acceptance of some cultural traits and innovations that make a culture more adaptive to its environment; somewhat akin to natural selection in biological evolution. The process leads to differential retention of cultural traits that increase a society's potential for successful cultural adaptation, while eliminating maladaptive traits.
cultural system: CATEGORY: term
DEFINITION: The nonbiological mechanism that relates the human organism to its physical and social environments. It is a perspective that thinks of culture and its environment as a number of linked systems in which change occurs through a series of minor, linked variations in one or more of these systems.
culture area: CATEGORY: term
DEFINITION: Major anthropological subdivisions of the North American continent, characterized by relatively uniform environments and relatively similar cultures. It is a geographical region in which general cultural homogeneity is to be found, defined by ethnographically observed cultural similarities within the area. A culture area is also a geographic area in which one culture prevailed at a given time. This concept was devised as a means of organizing museum data. Examples are the Southwest, the Northwest Coast.
Cumae: CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: An ancient city, probably the oldest Greek mainland colony in the west, and home of the Sibyline Oracle (Greek prophetess), described by Virgil in the opening of the sixth book of the Aeneid. Located on a hill on the Italian coast west of Naples, it was founded about 750 BC by Greeks, though there were earlier Bronze and Iron Age settlements, too. Cumae came to control the most fertile parts of the Campanian plain and fought mainly with the Etruscans during the last half of the 6th century and first half of the 5th. The Samnites, however, overwhelmed Cumae in 428/421 BC, and was dominated by Rome from 338 BC. In 1205 it was destroyed, but remains of fortifications and graves from all periods have been found on the city's acropolis hill and elsewhere on the site. It is probably through Cumae that a Chalcidaean version of the Greek alphabet was transmitted to the Etruscans in the 7th century BC and thence eventually to the Italian peninsula.
currency bar: CATEGORY: artifact
DEFINITION: A strip of iron about 1 1/2 inches wide and 2-3 feet long and pinched up at one end, which served as a unit of currency in Britain during the late Iron Age, before the introduction of coins by the Belgae. The bars may have originated as sword blanks or roughouts. Their distribution was mainly in Dorset and the Cotswolds, with some in the Severn basin.
Dürrnberg bei Hallein: CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: An Iron Age salt mining center in Austria from the 5th century BC. It eclipsed the mining complex at Hallstatt. There are many wealthy burials and artifacts linking the site with other part of central Europe and the Mediterranean.
Dacia: CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: A Roman frontier province north of the Danube in the area of the Carpathian Mountains and Transylvania, in present-day western Romania, spanning c 106-270 AD. The Dacians were agricultural and worked their rich mines of gold, iron, and silver. As a people, they first lived south of the Danube and traded with the Greeks. They were a threat to the Romans from 112 BC, extending their kingdom. The Dacian Wars (85-89 AD) took place under the emperor Domitian and then the Romans under Trajan reopened hostilities in 101-106 AD, finally taking the country. The Dacian Wars were commemorated on Trajan's Column in Rome. The Romans exploited the Dacian mines, constructed roads, and made Sarmizegethusa and Tsierna (Orsova) colonies. The new province was divided under Hadrian: Dacia Superior was Transylvania and Dacia Inferior was the region of Walachia. Marcus Aurelius made the provinces a single military region in about 168 AD; but the province was abandoned by Aurelian in 270.
daga: CATEGORY: term
DEFINITION: A puddled clay used to plaster the walls and floors of houses in the Iron Age settlements of sub-Saharan Africa.
dagger: CATEGORY: artifact
DEFINITION: A short stabbing knife which, in ancient and medieval times, was not very different from a short sword. From about 1300 the European dagger was differentiated from the sword. In earliest antiquity, it was made of flint, copper, bronze, iron, or bone. It is difficult to distinguish it from an inoffensive knife blade. Prehistoric daggers were made in flint by the Beaker Folk in the Neolithic-Early Bronze Age, about 1900 BC. Bronze dagger, tanged for wooden hilt, were imported by Beaker Folk from western Europe between 1900-500 BC. The fully developed style of the Iron Age came to be in the 1st century BC. In copper it was ancestral to the rapier, sword, spear, and halberd.
Daima: CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: A series of large mounds in northeastern Nigeria, which constitute the remains of early farming villages on the southern flood plain of Lake Chad and were occupied from about 600 BC-1200 AD. For the first five centuries, the Daima people only had polished stone axes and tools of bone, plus stone grinders and querns. There is pottery present from first occupation and evidence of domesticated cattle, sheep, and goats. Cultivation of sorghum was important, as was hunting and fishing. Iron was introduced the 1st-6th centuries AD. Some centuries later, however, Daima became part of a more wide-ranging trade system.
damascening: SYNONYMS OR RELATED TERMS: damaskeening
CATEGORY: artifact
DEFINITION: The art of incrusting one metal on another, in the form of wire, which by undercutting and hammering is completely attached to the metal it ornaments. The process of etching slight ornaments on polished steel wares is also called damascening. Although related to pattern-welding, this technique used in the manufacture of sword blades probably developed independently. First a high-carbon steel is produced by firing wrought iron and wood together in a sealed crucible; the resulting steel, or wootz, consists of light cementations in a darker matrix, and this, together with a series of complicated forging techniques at relatively low temperatures produced the delicate 'watered silk' pattern with the alternating high- and low-carbon areas. Damascene steel was very strong and highly elastic.
Dambwa: CATEGORY: culture
DEFINITION: An Early Iron Age division of the Chifumbaze complex, of the 5th-8th centuries AD, in the Zambezi Valley and northwest Zimbabwe.
Danebury: CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: An Iron Age hillfort in Hampshire, England, dating to the 6th century BC. The defenses were built with a timber-laced rampart, remodeled twice, and the main gateway is just as old. Within the ramparts, there was a permanent settlement. By the 4th century, rows of 4- and 6-post structures, flanked the roads, but were later replaced by circular houses. The site was abandoned c 100 BC.
Dejbjerg: CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: A bog site in west Jutland where two pre-Roman Iron Age vehicles were found, believed to be imports from southern Gaul. They were decorated with openwork bronze, bronze masks, bosses, and lattice work. The wheels had iron tires and pegs of hard wood to act as ball-bearings.
demography: SYNONYMS OR RELATED TERMS: population estimation
CATEGORY: related field
DEFINITION: The study of the distribution, density, and vital statistics of populations. The statistical study of populations with reference to natality, mortality, migratory movements, age, and sex, among other social, ethnic, environmental, and economic factors indicate the processes which contribute to population structure and their temporal and spatial dynamics.
dendrochronology: SYNONYMS OR RELATED TERMS: tree-ring dating
CATEGORY: technique
DEFINITION: An absolute chronometric dating technique for measuring time intervals and dating events and environmental changes by reading and dating the pattern (number and condition) of annual rings formed in the trunks of trees. The results are compared to an established tree-ring sequence for a particular region with consideration to annual fluctuations in rainfall which result in variations in the size of the rings laid down by trees on the outside of their trunks. These variations, given favorable conditions, form a consistent pattern; and sections or cores taken from beams in ruins have been matched to provide a long chronology over large areas. The method is based on the principle that trees add a growth ring for each year of their lives, and that variations in climatic conditions will affect the width of these rings on suitable trees. In a very dry year growth will be restricted, and the ring narrow, while a wet and humid year will produce luxuriant growth and a thick ring. By comparing a complete series of rings from a tree of known date (for example, one still alive) with a series from an earlier, dead tree overlapping in age, ring patterns from the central layers of the recent tree and the outer of the old may show a correlation which allows the dating, in calendar years, of the older tree. The central rings of this older tree may then be compared with the outer rings or a yet older tree, and so on until the dates reach back into prehistory. Problems that arise are when climatic variation and suitable trees (sensitive trees react to climatic changes, complacent trees do not) are not be present to produce any significant and recognizable pattern of variation in the rings. Another problem is that there may be gaps in the sequences of available timber, so that the chronology 'floats', or is not tied in to a calendrical date or living trees: it can only be used for relative dating. Also, the tree-ring key can only go back a certain distance into the past, since the availability of sufficient amounts of timber to construct a sequence obviously decreases. Only in a few areas of the world are there species of trees so long-lived that long chronologies can be built up. This method is especially important in the southwestern United States, Alaska, and Scandinavia, dating back to several thousand years BC in some areas. Dendrochronology is of immense importance for archaeology, especially for its contribution to the refining of radiocarbon dating. Since timber can be dated by radiocarbon, dates may be obtained from dendrochronologically dated trees. It has been shown that the radiocarbon dates diverge increasingly from calendrical dates provided by tree-rings the further back into prehistory they go, the radiocarbon dates being younger than the tree-ring dates. This has allowed the questioning of one of the underlying assumptions of radiocarbon dating, the constancy of the concentration of C14 in the atmosphere. Fluctuations in this concentration have now been shown back as far as dendrochronological sequences go (to c 7000 BC), and thus dating technique is serving the further research on another. In 1929, A.E. Douglass first showed how this method could be used to date archaeological material. The long-living Bristlecone Pine (Pinus aristata) of California has yielded a sequence extending back to c 9000 bp. In Ireland, oak preserved in bogs has produced a floating chronology from c 2850-5950 bp.
desert varnish: CATEGORY: geography
DEFINITION: A chemical dark-colored crust or film of iron and manganese oxides (usually with some silica) that is deposited on exposed rocks, artifacts, and petroglyph surfaces. Of bacterial origin, this varnish becomes polished by wind abrasion can be used in cation ratio dating; its organic matter can be analyzed by accelerator mass spectrometer radiocarbon dating.
Dhang Rial: CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: A mound in southern Sudan with a two-part Iron Age sequence starting in 500 AD, with an earlier ceramic Stone Age occupation.
Dhlo Dhlo: SYNONYMS OR RELATED TERMS: Danangombe
CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: A later Iron Age site located northeast of Bulawayo, Zimbabwe and the 17th-19th century AD capital of the Torwa state. Occupation probably began during the 16th century, marked by elaborately decorate dry-stone terrace-retaining walls surrounding extensive house platforms. The foundation of the site is comparable to stone structures at Khami and Naletale. Dhlo Dhlo appears to have had access to imported luxury goods from coastal trade.
diatom: CATEGORY: fauna
DEFINITION: A microscopic, unicellular algae which grow in marine or fresh water and secrete silica skeletons (microfossils) that distinct by species. Their chances of survival are enhanced due to the silica and their deposition in anaerobic conditions. Diatoms can be sampled through deep sea or lake cores. Different species are associated with different habitats, so examples in archaeological deposits can yield information on the changing environment, particularly at coastal sites.
diatom analysis: CATEGORY: technique
DEFINITION: A method of environmental reconstruction based on plant microfossils. Diatoms are unicellular algae, whose silica cell walls survive after the algae die, and they accumulate in large numbers at the bottom of both fresh and marine waters. Their assemblages directly reflect the floristic composition of the water's extinct communities, as well as the water's salinity, alkalinity, and nutrient status.
diatomite: CATEGORY: geology; fauna
DEFINITION: Microfossils formed from the silicate exoskeletons of diatoms found in marine or fresh water. Different species are associated with different habitats, so examples in archaeological deposits can yield information on the changing environment.
Dinas Powys: CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: An Iron Age Hill Fort near Cardiff, Wales, which was refurbished in the sub-Roman and medieval periods. Traces of hearths, a collection of Mediterranean imported pottery, and metal-working debris such as molds, furnaces, and ovens have been found.
distribution: SYNONYMS OR RELATED TERMS: distributional archaeology; distribution patterns
CATEGORY: term; technique
DEFINITION: Simply, the spatial location of archaeological sites or artifacts. More specifically, a definition of the spatial location of artifacts, structures, or settlement types over a landscape. Analysis of the distribution of a particular artifact type may lead to conclusions about the nature of the industry or culture which produced or used it. The distribution of objects is studied by the plotting of an artifact's find-places on a distribution map. This is the visual representation of the distribution of some archaeologically significant trait or traits. The relationship of the find-spot symbols to the natural environment may reveal something about communication networks, economic subsystem, cultural or technological entities. The distribution map should show the extent of a culture of which the traits are distinctive, outlying occurrences being explained by diffusion, especially if spread along natural routes. The origin of more localized traits may be defined. The overlaying of one trait on another may suggest association or sequence, while mutually exclusive distributions can imply contemporaneity. The emphasis is on individual parts of archaeological deposits rather than on the site as a unit.
domestication: SYNONYMS OR RELATED TERMS: domestic animals
CATEGORY: term
DEFINITION: The adaptation of an animal or plant through breeding in captivity for useful advantage to and by humans. Early agriculturists controlled fauna through selection and breeding so that animals might produce more of what man needed than their wild forebears. The definition includes the taming of cats and dogs as house pets, as well as the care and control of cattle, sheep, goat, pig, horse, llama, camel, guinea pig, etc. It included breeding for produce such as milk, meat, hides, and wool, and the training of animals for draft and carrying. This selection by man resulted in osteological changes in the animals, so that in general domesticated animals can be distinguished by their remains from their wild ancestors. The process of domestication was a slow one; dogs likely being the first in Mesolithic times. Sheep were likely domesticated by 9000 BC in Iraq. Goats, cattle, and pigs followed in the next 3000 years, all in southwest Asia. The horse appears in the 2nd millennium, and the camel in the 1st. In the New World, domesticable animals were far fewer, notably the dog, llama, and guinea pig. The change involved, from hunting and gathering to food production was one of the most important in human development. Adaptations made by animal and plant species to the cultural environment as a result of human interference in reproductive or other behavior are often detectable as specific physical changes in faunal or floral ecofacts.
Dong-son: SYNONYMS OR RELATED TERMS: Dong Son
CATEGORY: culture; site
DEFINITION: A classic Bronze Age site in north Vietnam and its culture, dating c 500 BC to 100 AD. It was preceded by the Go Bong (c 2000-1500 BC), Dong-Dau (c 1500-100 BC), and Go Mun (c 1000-500 BC) phases of the Vietnamese Bronze Age. The Dong-son culture thus overlaps the Chinese conquest of northern Vietnam in 111 BC. Characteristic are large incised cast-bronze drums, bronze situlae (buckets), bells, tools, and weapons from elaborate boat burials and assemblages in lacquered wood coffins. Dong-son drums of presumed Vietnamese manufacture were traded through wide areas of Southeast Asia and southern China to as far as New Guinea, and the Dong-son bronze-working tradition was by far the richest and most advanced ever to develop in Southeast Asia. Iron was used for tools. There is evidence for developing urbanism in defensive earthworks and wet rice cultivation. Major sites include Chao Can, Viet Khe, Lang Ca, and Co Loa.
Dorians: CATEGORY: culture
DEFINITION: Peoples who invaded southern Greece from the north around the end of the 2nd millennium BC (1100) after the decline of the Mycenaeans. Some speculate that the Dorians were responsible for the Mycenaeans' overthrow. It has proved difficult to recognize their products in the archaeological record, and therefore it hard to discover their origins. In classical times the important Dorian dialect was spoken through much of the Peloponnese, the southern Aegean islands, and the southwest coast of Asia Minor. They also introduced the use of iron for swords. The invading Dorians had a relatively low cultural level, however, and after sweeping away the last of the declining Mycenaean and Minoan civilizations, they the region into a dark age out of which the Greek city-states did not emerge until almost three centuries later.
Dowris: CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: A site in Ireland where a hoard of over 200 bronzes of the Irish Late Bronze Age have been dated to the 8th century BC. Implements of the Dowris A phase (c 1000-c 800 BC) include many gold ornaments and a series of bronzes showing great proficiency in casting and sheet metalwork. Ireland was at this time in contact with Mediterranean and Nordic lands. Bronze cauldrons and V-notched shields demonstrate western links, while U-notched shields, bronze buckets and horns, pins with sunflower-shaped heads, and the use of conical rivets show connections with northern and central Europe. Ireland did not enter the Iron Age until just after 400 BC (i.e. during the La Tène period), though a few swords and axes show contact with Hallstatt Iron Age cultures. Dowris B and C were the final Irish bronze industries (c 800-400 BC) contemporary with the first part of the continental Iron Age.
Druids: CATEGORY: culture
DEFINITION: A powerful Celtic priesthood of the Gauls and Britons from the 1st century BC through the 1st century AD. They led the resistance to the Romans, and when they were finally defeated in 78 AD they were exterminated, partly due to human sacrifices that they carried out. The Druids believed in reincarnation, worshipped the moon and heavenly bodies, and built circular temples in forest groves. Archaeologically the only material definitely attributed to them is a hoard of bronze and iron at Llyn Cerrig Bach in Anglesey. It is no held that they built Stonehenge or Avebury.
dun: CATEGORY: structure
DEFINITION: A Scottish/Irish term for a fortified stone dwelling place. There are large duns of hill-fort type and small defended homesteads. Some examples, of both ring fort and promontory fort types, have galleries or passages within the drystone enclosure wall. The oldest duns belong to the late Iron Age, but they continued to be built into the early Christian and medieval periods.
Dundo: CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: A town of northeastern Angola with mines where alluvial deposits are worked for diamonds. A sequence of stone industries includes an Acheulian occupation succeeded by Sangoan and then Lupemban industries, the last being dated to before 30,000 BC. The Lupemban continued until c 13,000 BC. From c 12,000 BC, Tshitolian industries developed and continued until after the introduction of iron-working around the beginning of the Christian era.
eco-functional theory: CATEGORY: term
DEFINITION: Any theory which posits that human culture is an adaptation to the environment and thus culture functions to maintain humans and the environment in a sustainable balance.
ecological determinants approach: SYNONYMS OR RELATED TERMS: ecological determinism
CATEGORY: technique
DEFINITION: A research strategy in settlement archaeology that emphasizes the location of human settlements in response to specific ecological factors; the study of changes in the environment that determine changes in human society.
ecology: CATEGORY: related field
DEFINITION: The study of entire assemblages of living organisms and their physical milieus, which together constitute an integrated system. In archaeology, ecology seeks to reconstruct the past environment of man and his impact upon it. The term encompasses the relationship of plants and animals with their environment -- climate, geology, soils, vegetation, other animals, man-made structures. Environmental archaeology is concerned with the ecology of man, but also with the ecology of other animals and plants living in the same environment.
ecosystem: CATEGORY: flora; fauna
DEFINITION: The complex of living organisms, their physical environment, and all their interrelationships in a particular unit of space; the total living community of a single environment -- the flora, fauna, insects, and man himself -- and the interactions of the constituent parts as well as their relationship with the non-living environment. The flow of energy through an ecosystem leads to a clearly defined structure, biotic diversity, and system of exchange cycles between the living and nonliving parts of the ecosystem.
el-Hesy, Tell: CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: Palestianian site important from the Middle Bronze Age through the Iron Age. It was here that Sir Flinders-Petrie carried out his pioneering work on stratigraphy.
electrum: CATEGORY: geology
DEFINITION: A natural or artificial alloy of gold and silver (at least 20%) from which artifacts were once made and used to make the first known coins in the Western world. Most natural electrum contains copper, iron, palladium, bismuth, and perhaps other metals. The process of extracting the silver from the gold is complex; it was used particularly for decorative vessels. Electrum's color was whiter and more luminous than that of gold, and its metal supposed to ward off poison. In the ancient world, the main source was Lydia, in Asia Minor, where the alloy was found in the area of the Pactolus River (modern Turkey).
element: CATEGORY: geology
DEFINITION: A substance that cannot be broken down any further, made up of atoms with the same atomic number. It joins with other elements to form compounds. Common examples are hydrogen, gold, and iron. The term also means, in faunal analysis, the specific part of the animal (e.g. humerus).
Elmenteitan: CATEGORY: culture
DEFINITION: A Pastoral Neolithic stone industry of early East Africa in a restricted area on the west side of the central Rift Valley in Kenya. Typical artifact assemblages include large double-edged obsidian blades, plain pottery bowls, and shallow stone vessels. Domestic cattle and small stock were herded. The dead were cremated, as at the mass-burial site at Njoro River Cave (c 1000 BC), one of the earliest Elmenteitan sites. The industry continued into the 1st millennium AD. The name also applies to the Pastoral Neolithic and Iron Age pottery tradition associated with the stone artifacts.
enamel: CATEGORY: artifact
DEFINITION: A comparatively soft glass, a compound of flint or sand, red lead, and soda or potash. The materials are melted together, producing an almost clear glass, with a slightly bluish or greenish tinge (flux or frit). The degree of hardness of the flux depends on the proportions of the components in the mix. Enamels are called hard when the temperature required to fuse them is very high and it will not decompose as soft enamel would. Soft enamels require less heat to fire them and consequently are more convenient to use, but they do not wear as well. Enamel was first used in the Bronze and Iron Ages. It was often melted and united with gold, silver, copper, bronze, and other metals in a furnace. Enamel is colored white by oxide of tin, blue by oxide of cobalt, red by gold, green by copper. Different kinds of enamel are: 1) inlaid or incrusted, 2) transparent, showing designs on the metal under it, 3) painted as a complete picture. The various techniques practiced by craftsmen in the past differ mainly in the methods employed in preparing the metal to receive the powdered enamel. Some of those methods are cloisonné, champlevé, encrusted enameling, and painted enamels.
encaustic: SYNONYMS OR RELATED TERMS: (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.
Engaruka: CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: An Iron Age site on the western side of the Eastern Rift Valley in northern Tanzania with the remains of an Iron Age irrigation system of the 14th century AD. It was an important and concentrated agricultural settlement, occupied for over a thousand years. Water from streams flowing into the valley was dispersed through an elaborate network of stone-lined furrows to serve a large number of small stone-terraced fields. Sorghum was one of the crops that was cultivated. However, its pottery does not seem to have been related to those that became widespread in the 1st millennium AD. It is assumed that its inhabitants were Cushitic speakers.
Ensérune: CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: Iron Age oppidum (promontory fort) in Hérault, southern France, first founded in the 6th century BC. It had defenses of Cyclopean masonry and well laid-out stone houses, both of which are very similar to those found on Greek settlements in the area. Large storage jars and silos excavated into the tufa were probably for grain or water. Nearby is a large cremation cemetery of the 3rd century with inurned burials. A major reconstruction took place in c 200 BC and then again in the 4th century.
Este: CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: An ancient town on the edge of the Po plain near Padua, Italy. It has given its name to a rich Iron Age culture, the Atestine, of the 9th century BC. Profiting from its position, it flourished down to the invasion of the Celts in 4th century BC, and is particularly famous for its fine red and black cordoned vases, its magnificent situla art, and much fine sheet bronze work. The area was annexed by Rome in 184 BC.
Etruria: CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: The area to the north of Rome, bounded by the Tiber and Arno Rivers and the Tyrrhenian Sea. The Etruscans inhabited the area and colonized Aleria, the Po Valley, and parts of Campania. The area is rich in gold, iron, and bronze. The dead were buried in underground tombs or tumuli and were accompanied by a range of funerary goods. The tombs are an important source of Athenian pottery.
Etruscan: CATEGORY: culture
DEFINITION: The people who occupied north central Italy (ancient Etruria, modern Tuscany) in the 1st millennium BC. They can first be recognized in the 8th century BC, distinguished from their predecessors the Villanovans by the wealth and oriental appearance of their tombs. They developed a high level of civilization very quickly, with extensive trade contacts with Greece and Carthage, and across the Alpine passes to central Europe. Their cities were large and rich: Populonia, Vetulonia, Tarquinia, and Caere (Cerveteri) near the coast, and Veii, Clusium (Chiusi) and Perusia (Perugia) inland. Etruscan influence spread widely, through Rome itself down to Campania in the south, and north to the Po valley and the civilization reached its height in the 6th century BC. Conflict with the Celts in the north and Rome in the south led to conquest by the latter, beginning with Veii in 396 BC and completed early in the 2nd century BC. The Etruscans' own writings, in an alphabet borrowed from the Greeks, can be transliterated, but little of their non-Indo-European language can be translated. Etruscan tombs show their genius; the finest are mounds covering a burial vault, as in the cemeteries of Tarquinia and Cerveteri. The vaults may be elaborately frescoed with scenes from life, mythology, or the rites associated with death. Also remarkable is a tomb at Cerveteri, the walls of which are covered with stucco reliefs of everyday objects. There is a high preponderance of imports, especially metalwork and Athenian pottery. Typical products of the Etruscans are decorated bronze mirrors, bucchero pottery, and sophisticated filigree jewelry. The influence of the Etruscans on Roman civilization was enormous. Rome is indebted to the Etruscans not only for its early kings, such as the notorious Tarquin, but virtually for the total infrastructure of its civilization. Roman culture is essentially the continuation of Etruscan under another name and language. Among areas of continuity are religion (e.g. Etruscan haruspex and Roman augury), political and social organization, strategic arts, architecture, art, drama, theater and civil engineering (notably hydraulics, such as aqueducts and drainage systems). The origin of the Etruscans has been a subject of debate since antiquity. Herodotus, for example, argued that the Etruscans descended from a people who invaded Etruria from Anatolia before 800 BC and established themselves over the native Iron Age inhabitants of the region, whereas Dionysius of Halicarnassus believed that the Etruscans were of local Italian origin.
Far'ah, Tell el-: SYNONYMS OR RELATED TERMS: el-Fara
CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: Two tells of this name, excavated in Palestine, inland from Gaza. The northern tell had a 4th millennium BC Chalcolithic settlement with circular, semi-subterranean dwellings and an Early Bronze Age occupation. It later became an Israelite town; for a few years in the 9th century BC, the northern tell was the capital of Israel (Tirzah), before Omri moved to Samaria. The southern tell may have been a Hyksos fortification. Its remains include a large building of the Late Bronze Age and remains of the Philistines from the Iron Age. The most impressive material came from five rich Philistine tombs containing characteristic Philistine decorated pottery, native Late Bronze Age undecorated wares, bronze bowls, daggers and spears; an iron dagger and an iron knife were also found, among the earliest finds of this metal in Palestine.
feedback: CATEGORY: term
DEFINITION: A concept in archaeological applications of systems theory reflecting the continually changing relationship between cultural variables and their environment. It is the modification, adjustment, or control of a process or system by a result or effect of the process -- especially by a difference between a desired and an actual result.
Fengate: CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: A series of farmsteads in England dating from the Middle Neolithic to the end of the Middle Bronze Age and then reoccupation in the Early Iron Age.
fibula: SYNONYMS OR RELATED TERMS: pl. fibulae
CATEGORY: artifact
DEFINITION: In antiquity, a clasp, buckle, or brooch of various designs, usually shaped like a modern safety pin. It was often used for fastening a draped garment such as a toga or cloak, made of bronze, gold, silver, ivory, etc.; and consisted of a bow, pin, and catch. It is the Latin word for brooch" and is so named for the outer of two bones of lower leg or hindlimb which together with the tibia resemble an ancient brooch. The earliest examples date to around 1300 BC. There are two main families of fibulae. In the south they were made in one piece starting with the Peschiera or violin bow form in northern Italy and Mycenaean Greece. From this developed the arc fibula north of the Mediterranean and the harp and spectacle fibulae in the eastern Alps in the years around 1000 BC. From the Certosa form was derived the long series of La Tène Iron Age varieties. Even wider variation is found among the succeeding Roman fibulae leading on to the final forms in the Saxon and Migration periods. Around the same time there was an apparently independent development in northern Europe of the two-piece variety. Fibula types include: violin bow arc elbowed serpentine dragon harp disk with 'elastic bow' leech boat two-piece fibula spiral La Tène I III. Fibula terms include: catchplate pin spring bow stilt elongated catchplate disk catchplate knobbed (Certosa) catchplate. Although primarily functional fibulas were often also highly decorated items of personal adornment sometimes inlaid with glass and precious stones. An enormous number of different types of fibulae were made and they can often be a useful guide to dating."
fieldwork: SYNONYMS OR RELATED TERMS: field study
CATEGORY: technique
DEFINITION: Any form of archaeological research or exploration carried out in an actual setting in the natural environment -- excavation, surveying, fieldwalking, etc. -- rather than in a laboratory, museum, or other such facility. Some archaeologists call everything they do outdoors 'fieldwork', but others distinguish between fieldwork and excavation. Fieldwork, in the narrow sense, consists of the discovery and recording of archaeological sites and their examination by methods other than the use of the shovel and the trowel.
fire: CATEGORY: term
DEFINITION: The natural product of combustion, seen in the form of flame and smoke. The use of fire was a major landmark in man's adaptation to the cooler environment of the earth; it is often considered the single most important discovery by early man. Man probably knew how to make fire between 500,000-800,000 years ago in Europe or Asia. The ability to make fire efficiently and at will rather than merely catching it from natural sources may date from less than 200,000 years ago. Fire is first found on occupation sites of the Lower Palaeolithic period, approximately half a million years ago, although true hearths do not become typical until the penultimate glacial period, perhaps 200,000 years ago. Hearths and thick deposits of burnt material are typical of the last glacial period, by which time it is likely that the two main methods of making fire (the friction method of rubbing or rotating sticks to generate heat and the percussion method of striking sparks with iron and flint) were both in use.
Flandrian: CATEGORY: chronology
DEFINITION: Of or pertaining to the period since the retreat of the ice sheet and the rise of sea-level at the end of the last glaciation in northwestern Europe. The Flandrian can be dated by radiocarbon and ranges from 10,000 bp (the end of the Devensian) up to the present day. These deposits represent the latest Quaternary interglacial stage, equivalent to the Holocene epoch. The Flandrian includes sediments similar to those of previous interglacials, deposits on archaeological sites which contain Mesolithic, Neolithic, Bronze Age, Iron Age, Roman, Dark Age, medieval, and more recent artifacts.
flesh hook: CATEGORY: artifact
DEFINITION: A type of implement found in late Bronze Age and Iron Age contexts in Europe which comprises a long bronze shank, sometimes heavily decorated and ornamented with attachments, one end of which is bent and worked to form between one and three sharpened hooks. They are often associated with bronze buckets and cauldrons and it is believed they were used as serving implements to distribute choice cuts of meat at a feast.
floodplain: SYNONYMS OR RELATED TERMS: flood-plain
CATEGORY: geology
DEFINITION: A landform created by deposits in a river valley that floods. As the flood waters recede, the suspended sediment is deposited as alluvium and causes slow vertical accretion. Floodplains are often made up of secondary features such as individual flood basins, abandoned channels, secondary flood channels, tributary stream courses, and natural levees. They are prime agricultural land and archaeological deposits may be well-preserved in the subenvironments.
fogou: SYNONYMS OR RELATED TERMS: fougou; souterrain
CATEGORY: structure
DEFINITION: A type of Iron Age structure found in Cornwall, England, and also in Scotland, Ireland, and Brittany. They are constructed like a gallery, partially or mostly under ground, and are usually covered by a mound of earth and stone slabs. They are generally found near settlements and may have been used as storerooms or as refuges, or both. Many date to the 2nd and 1st centuries BC and the earliest are from Brittany, c mid 1st millennium BC.
food-producing revolution: SYNONYMS OR RELATED TERMS: Neolithic Revolution
CATEGORY: term
DEFINITION: A term used to describe the development of farming and animal husbandry and the beginning of settled village life. The first indications of the beginning of the revolution from food-gathering to food producing are found in approximately 9000 BC. The change is associated with great improvements in making stone tools. Digging sticks and the first crude plows, stone sickles, querns that ground grain by friction between two stones and irrigation techniques for keeping the ground watered and fertile -- all these became well established in the great subtropical river valleys of Egypt and Mesopotamia before 3000 BC. The coming of the Iron Age to southern Africa almost 2,000 years ago brought with it the food-producing revolution. Agriculture combined with pastoralism supported much larger settled communities than had been possible and enabled more complex social and political organizations to develop.
forging: CATEGORY: geology
DEFINITION: In metalworking, the heating of a metal to soften it and then working it by hammering. It is a process used for the working of iron and steel after smelting. Though copper and other metals can be worked cold" with occasional annealing this is not a suitable procedure for iron and steel. Forging involves the heating of the bloom to red heat and hammering. This would be carried out on a flat anvil with a hammer to remove impurities and the remains of slag. The resulting bars of iron could then be thinned down and hammered into shape again continuously heating the iron and hammering while red-hot. During the forging process iron can be bent flanges or other features introduced or sheet metal produced."
formation process: SYNONYMS OR RELATED TERMS: site formation process
CATEGORY: term; technique
DEFINITION: The total of the processes -- natural and cultural, individual and combined -- that affected the formation and development of the archaeological record. Natural formation processes refer to natural or environmental events which govern the burial and survival of the archaeological record. Cultural formation processes include the deliberate or accidental activities of humans. On a settlement site, for example, the nature of human occupation, the activities carried out, the pattern of breakage and loss of material, rubbish disposal, rebuilding, or re-use of the same area will all influence the surviving archaeological deposits. After the site's abandonment, it will be further affected by such factors as erosion, glaciation, later agriculture, the activities of plants and animals, as well as the natural processes of chemical action in the soil. Reconstruction of these processes helps to relate the observed evidence of an archaeological site to the human activity responsible for it.
fossil cuticles: CATEGORY: artifact
DEFINITION: The outermost layer of the skin of leaves or blades of grass, made of cutin, a very resistant, protective material that survives in the archaeological record often in feces. Cuticular analysis is useful to palynology in environmental reconstruction.
Gandhara: SYNONYMS OR RELATED TERMS: Gandhara grave culture complex
CATEGORY: site; culture
DEFINITION: A culture of the 2nd and 1st millennia BC in the valleys of northwestern Pakistan -- and the Achaemenid (Persian) satrapy of this name. This culture was important in passing Persian ideas on to the civilizations of the Ganges valley. It also introduced Hellenistic art styles to India. Western influence is also apparent in the grid town planning found at the Gandharan cities of Charsada and Taxila. Characteristic burials are in tombs consisting of two small chambers, one on top of the other; the lower chamber contained both the burial (inhumed or cremated) and the grave goods, while the upper chamber was empty. The population, which bred livestock and carried out agriculture, were accomplished metalworkers, producing tools, weapons, and ornaments of copper, bronze, gold, silver, and iron. The pottery within the grave goods was mostly a red or gray plain burnished type.
Gaocheng: SYNONYMS OR RELATED TERMS: Kao-ch'eng
CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: Area in southern Hebei province, China, with widely scattered Shang remains. At Taixicun, the main occupation postdates the Erligang Phase and has one radiocarbon date of c 1500 BC. The site is dominated by three large rectangular Hangtu platforms and a large house foundation with sacrificial burials. Other graves yielded bronze ritual vessels, fragments of lacquer, and a bronze ax with a blade of meteoritic iron. Evidence suggests that it may be the location of a Shang capital occupied after Zhengzhou but before Anyang.
Gatung'ang'a: CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: An early Iron Age site in the eastern highlands of Kenya, c second half of the 1st millennium AD. The pottery has similarities with Kwale ware.
Gaza: CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: A Palestinian site under modern Gaza; the southernmost city of the Philistine Pentapolis. Philistines, Egyptians, and 'Peoples of the Sea' occupied the site. The earliest evidence comes from two cemeteries, one to the north and one to the east of the main mound, with shaft graves containing pottery and daggers of the late 3rd millennium BC. On the tell itself, the earliest excavated remains are of the Middle Bronze Age (2nd millennium BC); earliest of all was a cemetery, underlying a large building interpreted by Flinders-Petrie as a palace of the Middle Bronze Age II period. This was succeeded by four other large buildings, of the later Bronze Age and early Iron Age. There are famous mosaics in the Synagogue from c 6th century AD and the Great Mosque, originally a cathedral of the 12th century AD.
ge: SYNONYMS OR RELATED TERMS: ko
CATEGORY: artifact
DEFINITION: A dagger-ax, the characteristic weapon of the Chinese Bronze Age during the Shang Dynasty and then made from iron from the Zhou Dynasty onwards. The dagger-shaped bronze blade, usually with a flat tang but occasionally with a shaft hole, was mounted perpendicular to the wooden shaft. The blade had a crosspiece parallel to the shaft to help hold it in place. Bronze Age blades and non-functional jade replicas of blades often appear as mortuary gifts in Shang tombs. The earliest ge yet known have come from Erlitou, c mid-2nd millennium BC. In the Eastern Zhou period the ge was sometimes combined with a spear, the ge blade at right angles to the spearhead, to form a ji. The ji was in existence by the late 6th or early 5th century BC. They are chopping implements.
general evolution: CATEGORY: term
DEFINITION: The long-term progressive" change characteristic of human culture in general as opposed to the short-term localized social and ecological adjustments that cause specific cultures to differ from one another as they adapt to their own unique environments (specific evolution). It is the overall advance or progression stage by stage as measured in absolute terms; the evolution from heterogeneity toward homogeneity."
Geographic Information Systems: SYNONYMS OR RELATED TERMS: GIS
CATEGORY: technique
DEFINITION: Computer-generated mapping systems that allow archaeologists to plot and analyze site distributions against environmental and other background data derived from remote sensing, digitized maps, and other sources. It is computerized technology for storage, analysis, and display of geographically referenced information.
geology: CATEGORY: geology; related field
DEFINITION: The study of the physical, chemical, and biological processes and products of the earth; simply, the study of the history of the earth and an understanding of the time scale over which man developed. Geology's aims overlap considerably with those of archaeology, particularly in the prehistoric periods. For example, work on the stratigraphy of the Quaternary to provide a geological chronology for the study of the reconstruction of environmental changes throughout the Quaternary forms an essential background to all archaeology. The palaeontology of fossil hominids and the other animals that lived at the same time is another area in which geology and archaeology overlap. The geological methods of dating such as radiocarbon, palaeomagnetism, and potassium-argon form the basis of most prehistoric chronologies. Geophysical techniques are used for the location of sites and petrology traces the origins of stone implements and inclusions in pottery.
geometric: SYNONYMS OR RELATED TERMS: 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."
Gergovia: CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: An Iron Age oppidum and capital of the Averni, in Puy de-Dôme, France. Vercingetorix, the Gallic chief, took refuge there in 52 BC and repulsed Julius Caesar's attempts to capture the site -- the first outright defeat of Caesar in Gaul. It is an historic monument.
Getae or Getian: SYNONYMS OR RELATED TERMS: Geto-Dacians, Thraco-Getians
CATEGORY: culture
DEFINITION: A tribal name for peoples in the territories of modern Romania and Bulgaria during the later Iron Age. They are often referred to as Thraco-Getians or Geto-Dacians, and were strongly influenced by both Celts and Scythians. Their culture developed from the 4th century BC until their conquest by Rome in 106 AD. It is a local version of La Tène.
Gezer: CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: An important Biblical tell site of Palestine near Jerusalem, occupied from the Chalcolithic (5th millennium BC) to the Byzantine period. The first fortified town belonged to the Middle Bronze Age (early 2nd millennium BC); an important discovery of this phase was a 'High Place' (ceremonial meeting place) consisting of a row of 10 tall monoliths. To the Iron Age belong the remains of a gateway built by Solomon. Succeeding levels show a decline, with destruction attributed to Assyrians and later, Babylonians. The city became important again in the Hellenistic period. The most noteworthy finds were a potsherd with one of the earliest uses of the alphabet (18th-17th c BC) and the Gezer calendar (11th-10th centuries BC), the oldest known inscription in Early Hebrew writing. The city was particularly prosperous during 2nd millennium BC and is mentioned in Egyptian texts from 15th century onwards.
Gilimanuk: CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: A settlement and burial site in western Bali, Indonesia, of the early 1st millennium AD. There are extended burials, jar burials, and stone sarcophagi and burial goods including bronze, iron, and glass and stone beads of local and imported origin.
Giyan, Tepe: CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: A long-lived tell site south of Hamadan, western Iran, going back to late Halaf c mid-5th millennium BC. Excavations provided the cultural sequence that was the standard for Luristan for some time. The five-phase sequence continued into the Iron Age and had a series of painted pottery styles. In the 2nd millennium, the native painted pottery replaced by the gray monochrome ware believed to be associated with the first Indo-European speaking Iranians. Its highest level shows it to have been an outpost of Assyria, with a palace of the 8th century BC.
Glasinac: CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: A mountain valley near Sarajevo in Bosnia where there are several thousand tumuli of the Late Bronze and Early Iron Ages (10th-1st centuries BC) containing more than 10,000 cremation burials. Inhumation was the dominant rite and some graves were very richly equipped. The metal and ceramic objects show connections with Greece, Italy, and the Danube valley.
Glastonbury: CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: A lake village in Somerset, England, which has yielded more data than any other site about life in the British Iron Age. The village was built on a wooden platform keyed to the underlying peat and was enclosed by a timber palisade. Inside were more than 90 round huts with clay and plank floors. They had central hearths for the fires. Cobbled paths and alleyways ran between the huts. Preservation was so good that the excavators recovered baskets, iron objects (including currency bars and tools with their original hafts), dugout canoes, fragments of spoked wheels, lathe-turned bowls, basins and tubs decorated with La Tène art motifs, farming and fishing gear, basketry and wickerwork, and evidence of potting, weaving, and metalworking from the village. Occupation started from the 3rd/2nd to the 1st century AD, just before the Roman conquest. On the high ground nearby is an Iron Age earthwork, Roman pottery, and a Dark Age structure dated to the 6th century AD. Glastonbury, like Cadbury Castle, is linked in folklore with King Arthur. A rotary quern was invented here and eventually became universal. The Benedictine Abbey of St. Mary at Glastonbury was perhaps the oldest (c 166 AD) and certainly one of the richest in England.
Glastonbury ware: CATEGORY: artifact
DEFINITION: A type of middle Iron Age pottery manufactured at a number of centers in the southwest of England. A wide range of forms are known, principal amongst which are globular bowls, jars, and shouldered bowls. Incised decoration in curvilinear motifs and so-called tram-line pattern is common
gleying: SYNONYMS OR RELATED TERMS: gley horizon
CATEGORY: geology
DEFINITION: The process of waterlogging of soil in which iron is bacterially reduced under anaerobic conditions. Gleying may result from a raised water table or from impeded drainage within the soil profile -- especially in bogs, fens, floodplains, lakes, and swamps. The soil is blue, gray, or olive in coloring and forms gley horizons.
Glob, Peter Vilhelm (1911-1985): CATEGORY: person
DEFINITION: A Danish archaeologist who wrote An Archaeological History from the Stone Age to the Vikings" (also published as "Danish Prehistoric Monuments" 1971; originally published in Danish 1942) "The Mound People: Danish Bronze-Age Man Preserved" (1974 reissued 1983; originally published in Danish 1970) and "The Bog People: Iron Age Man Preserved" (1969 reissued 1988; originally published in Danish 1965). His writings focused on the bog bodies of Tollund and Grauballe; he was also Director General of Museums and Antiquities in Denmark."
Godin Tepe: CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: A site in the Kangavar valley of Luristan, western Iran, with continuous occupation from the early 5th millennium to c 1600 BC (late Iron Age) when it was abandoned following an earthquake and not reoccupied for around 800 years. The cultural sequence provides the framework for the cultural history of this section of the Zagros Mountains. The earliest two building levels are associated with straw-tempered, poorly fired pottery and a stone industry. Most interesting is Godin V of the late 4th millennium BC in which Late Uruk materials (bevel-rimmed bowls, pottery, seal styles, tablets) are found. In Godin II, c 750 BC, the site was a fortified town of the Medes, and an important building with three colonnaded halls and a throne room has been excavated. A stain on an amphora has revealed the world's earliest wine c 3500 BC.
Gokomere: CATEGORY: site; culture
DEFINITION: An Early Iron Age site in south-central Zimbabwe, occupied between the 5th-7th centuries AD, which is also the name of an Early Iron Age industry. Its characteristic pottery is accompanied by copper and iron fragments.
Golasecca: CATEGORY: culture
DEFINITION: An Iron Age culture whose type site is a cemetery in Lombardy, Italy. Occupied from the 9th century BC to the 3rd century BC, it is an urnfield cemetery with some burials accompanied by wheeled vehicles. Some contain rich grave goods of metal, showing connections both with the Hallstatt Iron Age culture of central Europe and with the Etruscans in central Italy.
grain impression: CATEGORY: artifact
DEFINITION: A cereal grain which has been incorporated by chance in an artifact, such as pottery, bricks, daub, etc. The impression left in the clay may be clear enough for identification to be possible and thus provide useful evidence on the crops in cultivation at the time. On firing, or as a result of decomposition of time, the organic material is lost but its outline remains, often in great detail. Casts of these impressions are taken using latex rubber, and the original plant or animal may be identified. Before the widespread sieving and flotation of deposits began to yield large amounts of environmental evidence, these grain impressions were an important method of getting information on farming practices.
Grauballe Man: CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: A Danish bog burial in central Jutland of the Roman Iron Age with a radiocarbon date c 310 AD. Grauballe Man was naked and his neck had been cut almost from ear to ear. His skin was particularly well-preserved by the peat. His last meal had consisted of a gruel made of 63 different types of identifiable seeds.
Great Zimbabwe: CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: A Late Iron Age site in southeastern Zimbabwe, by far the largest and most elaborate of the dry-stone constructions to which the term dzimbahwe is applied. After an Early Iron Age phase of 500-900 AD, the main sequence of occupation began around 1000 when Shona speakers occupied Zimbabwe Hill and began building stone walls around 1300. Great Zimbabwe was the capital of the Shona empire from 1270-1450 AD, which stretched from the Zambezi River to the northern Transvaal of South Africa and eastern Botswana. There was a class system and the kings accumulated wealth through trade, attested by items such as glass vessels and beads, pottery, and porcelain. Gold was the principal export; Great Zimbabwe appears to have been at the center of a network of related sites through which control was exercised over the gold-producing areas. Archaeologically, the culture is called the Zimbabwe Tradition and is divided into Mapungubwe, Zimbabwe, and Khami phases. In the 15th century the site declined with trade and political power shifting to the north near the Zambezi Valley.
Gumanye: CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: A Late Iron Age site in southern Zimbabwe, c 1000-1100 AD. It gives its name to a facies of the Kutama tradition. It marks a clear break with the preceding Early Iron Age with the appearance of Shona people at Great Zimbabwe.
Gundestrup: CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: The find spot of a great silver cauldron of late pre-Roman Iron Age in a bog in northern Jutland, Denmark, that was clearly a votive offering. On the 12 plaques which decorate both the inside and outside of the bowl are scenes from Celtic mythology. The cauldron was probably manufactured in Romania or Bulgaria or possibly Thrace during the 1st or 2nd century BC.
Gussage All Saints: CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: An Iron Age settlement in Dorset, England, with evidence of metalworking -- bronze fittings for chariots and harnesses. It may have been an area of vehicle production.
Guweicun: SYNONYMS OR RELATED TERMS: Ku-wei-ts'un
CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: A late Eastern Zhou cemetery site in Hui-hsien, China. Three large shaft tombs has north and south entrance ramps and are similar in construction to far earlier Shang tombs. The largest of the three was marked at ground level by a low mound edged with large stones, a new feature modeled on works of the northern nomads. A number of cast-iron tools -- plowshares, picks, hoes, shovels, axes, and chisels -- were found in the tomb.
habitat: CATEGORY: term
DEFINITION: The physical environment where a plant or animal naturally or normally lives and grows. An area in the biome where different communities and populations flourish, each with specific locales.
Haguenau: CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: A Bronze Age and Iron Age cemetery of burial mounds in Bas-Rhin, France. The richest mounds date to c 1500-1350 BC when the area was under the influence of the Tumulus culture of southern Germany. There were heavy palstaves and pottery with geometric excised decoration.
Haithabu: SYNONYMS OR RELATED TERMS: Hedeby
CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: A medieval Danish trading settlement on the Jutland Peninsula in northwest Germany of the 7th century AD, important in the southeast Baltic region. Its trade included slaves, furs, textiles, iron, and weapons; it was one of the earliest Scandinavian urban centers. In the early 9th century King Godfred of Denmark built the Danewirk, an earthwork barrier, along the base of the peninsula south of Hedeby to protect it from Frankish incursions.
Hallstatt: SYNONYMS OR RELATED TERMS: Hallstatt period
CATEGORY: site; culture
DEFINITION: A site on Lake Hallstatt in the Austrian Alps with a cemetery of over 3000 cremation and inhumation graves with great quantities of local and imported grave goods. There were prehistoric salt mines in the area. Hallstatt is also a late Bronze age and early Iron Age cultural tradition, c 1200-6000 BC in continental temperate Europe. The term also refers to a cultural period of the Late Bronze Age and Early Iron Age in central Europe, divided into four phases, Hallstatt A, B, C, and D. In central European archaeology the terms Hallstatt A (12th and 11th centuries BC) and Hallstatt B (10th-8th centuries BC) are used as a chronological framework for the urnfield cultures of the Late Bronze Age. The first iron objects north of the Alps appear at the close of this period, and the Iron Age proper begins with the Hallstatt C (or I) stage of the 7th century BC. The area of fullest development is Bohemia, upper Austria and Bavaria, where hillforts were constructed and the dead were sometimes interred on or with a four-wheeled wagon, covered by a mortuary house below a barrow. Sheet bronze was still used for armor, vessels, and decorative metalwork, but the characteristic weapon was a long iron sword (or bronze copy). These swords are found as far afield as southeast England, in the so-called 'Iron Age A' cultures. During the Hallstatt D (or II) period, in the 6th century, the most advanced cultures are found further west, in Burgundy, Switzerland, and the Rhineland. Wagon burials are still prominent and trade brought luxury objects from the Greek and Etruscan cities around the Mediterranean. By the close of this period in the mid-5th century BC, elements of Hallstatt culture are found from southern France to Yugoslavia and Czechoslovakia. The Hallstatt precedes the La Tène period; the Hallstatt Iron Age culture certainly developed out of the Urnfield Bronze Age groups.
Hallur: CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: A prehistoric site in southern southern India, which has produced evidence of a Neolithic-Chalcolithic culture of the 2nd millennium BC, characterized by one-roomed circular houses, burnished gray ware, an abundant ground stone industry, and a few copper objects. A later level has Black and Red Ware, iron objects, and a radiocarbon date of c 1100-1400 BC. Three periods have been define: Hallur IA, IB, and II.
Hama: SYNONYMS OR RELATED TERMS: ancient Hamath; Epiphaneia
CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: A city in central Syria on the Orontes River that was an important prehistoric settlement, which became the kingdom of Hamath under the Aramaeans in the 11th century BC. It fell under Assyrian control in the 9th century BC, later passing under Persian, Macedonian, and Seleucid rule. A Neolithic occupation comparable to that of Mersin was succeeded by a village with Halaf pottery. Later levels continue through to the Iron Age, when it was an inland site of the Phoenicians. During the 2nd millennium BC, Hama was a large town, but it does not appear in ancient documents until c 1000 BC, when it became capital of an Aramaean kingdom. Excavations revealed a fine palace of this period, with evidence of ivory carving. The Arabs took the city in the 7th century AD.
Hambledon Hill: CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: A Neolithic causewayed camp and Iron Age hillfort in Dorset, England. The causewayed camp of the 3rd millennium BC had pits of pottery, flint tools, and bone. Human skulls had been placed at regular intervals along the ditch bottom. The disarticulated human remains of the camp may reveal exposure of corpses. A long barrow was nearby on the same hilltop. Much later, in the first millennium BC, there was an impressive Iron Age hillfort on another ridge of this three-spurred hill.
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.
hanging bowls: CATEGORY: artifact
DEFINITION: Thin bronze, shallow bowls found in Anglo-Saxon graves up until the 7th century, an important part of a Celtic metal-working tradition which has its origins in the Roman and pre-Roman Iron Age. They have three equally spaced suspension rings, fixed to the bowl by escutcheons usually decorated with colored enamel and millefiori.
Harappan civilization: SYNONYMS OR RELATED TERMS: Indus Valley civilization
CATEGORY: culture
DEFINITION: One of the great civilizations of antiquity, located in Pakistan and northwest India in the 3rd millennium BC. Nearly 300 settlements of the civilization are known: two large cities (Mohenjo-Daro and Harappa), and a number of smaller towns and villages (Chanhu-Daro, Judeirjo-Daro, Kalibangan, and Lothal). The Harappan civilization was characterized by a high level of architectural, craft, and technical achievement. We know little of the political, social, and economic structure of the civilization because, although it was literate, the script remains undeciphered. Like other early civilizations in Mesopotamia and Egypt, the Harappan civilization was based on the cultivation of cereal crops (plus rice and cotton), probably with irrigation. Among the most distinctive achievements of this civilization are the architecture and town planning, with the use of true baked brick for building, and cities and towns laid out on a grid-iron street plan, perhaps the earliest examples of town planning in the world. Among crafts, the most outstanding were the seals, mostly made of steatite and decorated with carefully executed incised designs. The Harappan civilization came to an end early in the 2nd millennium, either as a result of environmental factors (excessive flooding) or as a result of invasions by Aryan intruders. It is divided into three phases -- Early, Mature (Urban), and Late (Post-Urban) and emerged from Punjab and Baluchistan regions.
Hascherkeller: CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: A Late Bronze Age and Early Iron Age site of the Hallstatt period in Bavaria, Germany. The farmsteads enclosed by earthworks showed pottery and bronze casting activities in the 1st millennium BC. It is typical of the period in central Europe before the emergence of large centers of production and commerce.
Heekeren, H. Robert Van (1902-1974): CATEGORY: person
DEFINITION: Dutch archaeologist who spent his career in Indonesia and wrote two important books -- The Stone Age of Indonesia" (1957 1972) and "The Bronze-Iron Age of Indonesia" (1958). Van Heekeren excavated on Sulawesi and Java."
helmet: CATEGORY: artifact
DEFINITION: Protective headgear that goes back almost as far as evidence for warfare. The basic function was to protect the head, face, and sometimes the neck from the cutting blows of swords, spears, arrows, and other weapons. The Assyrians and Persians had helmets of leather and iron, and the Greeks created bronze helmets, some of which covered the entire head, with only a narrow opening in front for vision and breathing. The Romans developed several forms of helmets, including the round legionary's helmet and the special gladiator's helmet, with broad brim and pierced visor, giving exceptional protection to head, face, and neck. The troops on the Royal Standard of Ur wear leather helmets. The Blue Crown worn by pharaoh in the New Kingdom of Egypt was a war helmet. One type covered with boar's tusks was current among the Mycenaeans. More obviously for parade than war are the bronze examples from the European Late Bronze and Iron Ages. Among the Villanovans the cinerary urn was often covered with the helmet of the dead warrior. Several fine examples from Britain are decorated with Celtic art. The New World has yielded helmets made of gold and of wood encrusted with turquoise mosaic. The term 'helm' was applied by both Saxons and Normans, in the 11th century, to the conical steel cap with a noseguard, the common head piece of the day. Helmet is the diminutive of helm.
hematite coating: SYNONYMS OR RELATED TERMS: haematite coating
CATEGORY: ceramics
DEFINITION: A surface treatment for pottery involving the application of powdered hematite iron ore before firing. Hematite may have been mixed with a slip and then applied, or painted on as a suspension in water. When fired the surface normally appears red, although under reduced firing conditions it may turn black.
Hembury: CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: A Neolithic causewayed camp in Devon, England, with radiocarbon dates showing occupation from 4200-3900 BC. It has given its name to the plain pottery (also called Windmill Hill pottery) of the earliest Neolithic in southern England, round-bottomed bowls frequently with lug handles. An Iron Age hillfort was later built and postholes of a circular Neolithic house have been found beneath the Iron Age gate. The Neolithic deposit included greenstone and flint axes and charred spelt wheat -- by far the earliest occurrence of this type of wheat in Britain.
Hengistbury Head: CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: An Upper Palaeolithic / Creswellian site with flint artifacts with thermoluminescence dates of c 12,500 bp. There is also a nearby Mesolithic site with evidence of flintknapping. The site became important c 100 BC (Iron Age) as a trading center with continental Europe; Roman wine amphorae were among the imports.
Hesi, Tell el-: CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: A tell site in southern Palestine occupied from the Early Bronze Age, c 2600 BC, to the Hellenistic period/Iron Age. Its excavation by Sir Flinders Petrie and F.J. Bliss were the first stratigraphic excavations in the area, and lent much information on pottery typology and successive building levels. Their work began the establishment of an absolute chronology for Palestinian prehistory, through the discovery of imported, datable Egyptian objects in association with local material.
Heuneburg, The: CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: An Early Iron Age fortified site and hillfort of the Hallstatt period on the upper Danube in Baden-Württemberg, Germany. The site was the center of the dominant Celtic chiefdom in southwest Germany c 600-500 BC. Wine amphorae and Attic Black-Figure pottery were imported from the Greek city of Massalia, demonstrating Heuneburg's wealth. There are nearby princely burials of the same date, including the rich Hohmichele tumulus. This covered a timber mortuary house containing the body of an archer accompanied by a wooden wagon and precious offerings. The site has five main building phases, the most remarkable of which was the second, when the traditional timber-framed construction was replaced by a Greek type of construction, with a bastioned wall built of mud-brick on stone foundations.
hill figure: CATEGORY: feature
DEFINITION: A type of monument found on the chalk downs of southern Britain where a human or horse figure, is cut into the hillside and stands out white against the green turf. The oldest figure, the White Horse of Uffington, may date to the Late Iron Age. The Cerne Abbas giant in Dorset is of the Roman period, and the Long Man of Wilmington may be either Roman or Saxon. All the others are of more recent date, and are usually commemorative or purely ornamental than religious in nature.
hillfort: SYNONYMS OR RELATED TERMS: hill fort
CATEGORY: structure
DEFINITION: Any well-fortified structure located on a hilltop and enclosed by at least one wall of stone and earth, commonly referring to sites of the Late Bronze Age or Iron Age. The earliest date to c 1000 BC. Some hillforts contain houses and were perhaps royal residences or, in the case of large forts of oppidum type, true towns; others seem to lack permanent buildings, and were probably refuges where the people and flocks from the surrounding area took shelter in times of crisis. At first they were usually promontory forts, but in the last four centuries BC the true hillfort, with defense works following the contours, became the predominant form. From about the second century BC until the Roman conquest, hillforts were common throughout Celtic lands. In Britain most of the great forts were built during the two and a half centuries before the conquest of 43 AD, but in Ireland and highland Britain hillforts continued to be built and used for several more centuries. They are found throughout much of Europe, except Russia and Scandinavia. In size, hillforts ranged from less than one acre to several hundred acres.
hippo sandal: CATEGORY: artifact
DEFINITION: Iron shoes worn by draft animals during Roman times for temporary protection of their hooves or to aid grip in wet conditions.
Hittite: SYNONYMS OR RELATED TERMS: Hatti, Kheta
CATEGORY: culture; language
DEFINITION: A people of obscure origin who infiltrated Anatolia and the Levant from the north during the later 3rd millennium BC. In the Old Kingdom (c 1750-1450) they established a state in central Turkey with its capital first at Kussara, then at Boghazköy. They overran north Syria c 1600 and pushed on as far as Babylon. Under the empire (1450-1200) a more stable state was built up over most of Anatolia and north Syria, displacing the kingdom of the Mitanni and successfully challenging Assyria and Egypt. The end came quite suddenly in the Late Bronze Age c 1200 BC, notably by movements of the Peoples of the Sea and Anatolian groups from the north. The Hittite outposts in north Syria, however, survived as a chain of Syro-Hittite or neo-Hittite city-states -- Karatepe, Sinjerli, Sakçe, Gözü, Malatya, Atchana, and Carchemish -- down to their final annexation by the Assyrians in the 8th century BC. They are also known for their metal-working. They exploited and traded copper, lead, silver and also iron; indeed, they were among the first peoples to use iron, and for a period maintained a virtual monopoly in the new metal. Their language, Hittite and Hieroglyphic Hittite, is Indo-European, the earliest to be recorded. Hurrian, the language of the Hurri, was non-Indo-European, as of course was the Akkadian much used for commercial and foreign correspondence. The Akkadian cuneiform script was generally used too, though for monumental purposes local hieroglyphs were preferred. The discovery of the Hittite language was the major advance this century in the field of Indo-European languages -- with archives yielding thousands of tablets in many languages. The great period of the empire was 14th-13th centuries BC when a vast amount of material was recorded -- some in the important sister Anatolian languages of Palaic and Luvian.
Hjortspring: CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: A peat bog on the Danish island of Als where a votive deposit with a boat or war canoe was deposited in c 200 BC (pre-Roman Iron Age). With the boat were many shields, spears, and swords. The boat was plank-built, sewn together without the use of nails, with room for about 50 oarsmen. The bow and stern were upturned and had ramlike projections. There were also everyday items such as bowls, boxes, and smith's tools.
Hochdorf: CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: An Iron Age tumulus in Baden-Würtetemberg, Germany, from the 6th century BC (late Hallstatt). One burial chamber had very rich grave goods, including Mediterranean materials, a Greek bronze cauldron, gold-covered shoes, and bronze couch.
Hod Hill: CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: An Iron Age site in Dorset, England, with evidence of circular huts defended by huge ramparts. The site was attacked by the Romans in 44 AD. The fortification seems to have been damaged by fire c 52-53 AD and not reused.
Hohenasperg: CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: An Iron Age oppidium on a 6th century BC site of the Hallstatt D period. Hohenasperg was a commercial center whose finds included many luxury items from Greece.
Hohmichele, the: CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: A rich Hallstatt grave near the Heuneburg hillfort on the Danube in southern Germany. The barrow was one of the satellite graves around the hillfort and covered a central grave and 12 secondary burials of the 6th century BC Iron Age. The central grave was robbed in antiquity, but it had been an inhumation grave within a wood-lined chamber, which acted as the display area for the wealth of the deceased. The walls seem to have been draped in textiles with thin gold bands, and the deceased, dressed in finery including silk, was placed on a bed next to a four-wheeled wagon. It is the earliest documented occurrence of silk in Europe. The objects implied wine-drinking ceremonies and there is furniture directly imported from the south (central Europe).
holism: CATEGORY: term
DEFINITION: Theoretical approach which seems change in human society as the product of large-scale environmental, economic, and social forces and discounting individual wishes, desires, beliefs, and will.
Holy Cross Mountains: CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: Low mountains in central Poland that were important sources of flint during the Mesolithic, Neolithic, and Early Bronze Age and as a center for iron metallurgy during the Iron Age.
horseshoe: CATEGORY: artifact
DEFINITION: A covering for the base of a horse's foot consisting of a narrow band of iron in the form of an extended circular arc
human ecology: CATEGORY: related field
DEFINITION: The systematic study of the dynamic interrelationships between humans and their environments.
Hyrax Hill: CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: A site located on Lake Nakuru in central Kenya with Later Stone Age material and a pastoral Neolithic settlement. The earlier settlement is attributed to the East African Pastoral Neolithic complex. The second phase is of the Iron Age, and includes a series of so-called Sirikwa Holes which are interpreted as semi-subterranean cattle pens constructed by Nilotic-speaking peoples. There is also a cemetery of stone-covered flexed burials.
ice cores: CATEGORY: technique
DEFINITION: Borings taken from the Arctic and Antarctic polar ice caps, containing layers of compacted ice, useful for the reconstruction of paleoenvironments and paleoclimatology and as a method of absolute dating. Continuous cores, sometimes taken to the bedrock below, allow the sampling of an ice sheet through its entire history of accumulation. Because there is no melting, the layered structure of the ice preserves a continuous record of snow accumulation and chemistry, air temperature and chemistry, and fallout from volcanic, terrestrial, marine, cosmic, and man-made sources. Actual samples of ancient atmospheres are trapped in air bubbles within the ice. This record extends back more than 300,000 years.
Igbo Ikwu: SYNONYMS OR RELATED TERMS: Igbo Ukwu
CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: A site in southeast Nigeria dating to the 9th century AD with rich Iron Age deposits and bronze objects. It has yielded remarkable evidence for artistic and technological development and accumulation of wealth in that part of West Africa during the closing centuries of the 1st millennium AD. A corpse was interred in a deep pit, sitting on a stool surrounded by extensive regalia; the burial chamber was then roofed over and the bodies of attendants were placed above it. Further offerings were deposited nearby, most notably the delicate and intricate cire perdue bronze castings of vases, bowls, and items of personal adornment. Domestic pottery and enormous numbers of glass beads were also in the deposits.
Ignateva Cave: SYNONYMS OR RELATED TERMS: 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.
Ilopango: CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: The site of a catastrophic volcanic eruption in south-central El Salvador in the late Pre-Classic Period, c 260 AD. At least two volcanic events occurred close together and the effects devastated a large area, forcing the local populations of early Maya to migrate north and east into the lowlands of central Guatemala and Belize. This sudden influx of migrants may have given rise to the improved agricultural methods which mark the beginning of the Classic Maya civilization. Archaeological evidence at Barton Ramie (and at Altar De Sacrificios) indicates a period of noticeable environmental and demographic change at that time.
Inariyama: CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: A keyhole-shaped kofun (tumulus) in Saitama Prefecture, Japan. There are at least three other kofun by the same name in different parts of Japan. The one in Saitama has two moats around a mound. An X-ray examination revealed an inscription with 115 characters on an iron sword. It referred to a person called Wakatakeru, who is likely to be Emperatro Yuraku of the Yamato court, and a date of 471/531.
independent invention: SYNONYMS OR RELATED TERMS: parallelism
CATEGORY: term
DEFINITION: A theory that a few of the total mass of cultural traits possessed and shared by the peoples of the world have been invented more than once. The theory maintains the likelihood of new ideas, such as the invention of copper and iron working, or the erection of particular types of monumental building, were invented in more than one place at the same or different times, opposing the theory of diffusion. New chronometric dating techniques have shown the probability of independent invention for at least some of these ideas.
Indus civilization: SYNONYMS OR RELATED TERMS: Indus Valley civilization, Harrapan civilization
CATEGORY: culture
DEFINITION: The earliest known urban culture of the Indian subcontinent, identified in 1921-1992 by its two capitals -- Harappa and Mohenjo-Daro -- both in modern Pakistan. It was also the most extensive of the three earliest civilizations, the other two being Mesopotamia and Egypt. It was one of the greatest civilizations of antiquity, but its origins are obscure. By around 2300 BC, the Indus civilization was fully developed and in trading contact with Sargonid Sumer. Radiocarbon dates from several sites support an origin c 2600 BC, and suggest that by 2000 BC the civilization was in marked decline. The Indus River seems to have played a significant part, as many sites show deposits left by frequent catastrophic floods. Exploitation of the vegetation, particularly for the baking of enormous quantities of brick, caused the decline of the countryside. The final collapse seems to have been due to hostile attack. A few inhumation cemeteries have been found associated with the gridiron-plan cities and there were elaborate drainage systems, also. The site of Mohenjo-Daro had a great bath, assembly hall, and other monumental buildings. There was widespread use of an undeciphered hieroglyphic script and standard weights and measures. The economy was based on mixed agriculture and humped cattle were the most important domestic animals. The pottery was mass-produced and plain. Artistically the finest products were square steatite seals, carved with local or mythical animals and brief inscriptions. The civilization's effect on the later culture and religion of India seems to have been considerable.
Ingombe Ilede: CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: An Iron Age site in southern Zambia, occupies in the 14th-15th centuries AD by peoples who engaged in extensive trade in copper and gold. Elaborate graves contained metal bangles, ingots, iron hoes and gongs, bundles of copper wire, woven cotton cloth, marine gastropod shells, gold beads, and imported glass beads. This evidence for development of trade in the Zambezi Valley coincides in date with the decline of Great Zimbabwe.
ingot: CATEGORY: geology
DEFINITION: A shaped or cast mass of unwrought metal resulting from smelting or other extraction process. Ingots are often it will be of a standard weight, sometimes of a guaranteed purity. Examples include the ingot of the Mycenaeans (c 30 kg of copper) in the shape of an oxhide, the bronze ingot torc of the European Bronze Age, the iron currency bar of the English Iron Age, and the Roman lead pig stamped with the smelter's name.
insect analysis: CATEGORY: technique
DEFINITION: Any studies of insect remains in an attempt to reconstruct past environments. Pollen analysis and molluscan analysis can reveal information on climate, the environment and, sometimes, the activities of man. Insect remains are usually found in the form of the exoskeleton, parts such as the wing-cases of beetles, and they always come from anaerobic deposits such as ditches, wells, pits, and peat bogs; many of the parts of insects that are species-distinctive do not survive in archaeological deposits. They can be separated from the soil sample by flotation. Insects respond more quickly than plants to climatic change, and may therefore assist in the identification of micro-climatic phases. Insects also have habitat preferences, which is helpful in identifying specific environments.
Inyanga: CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: A series of mountains that separate Zimbabwe from Mozambique which has evidence of a prolonged sequence of Iron Age occupation. Early Iron Age settlement, related to that at Gokomere, is attested at several sites around Ziwa Mountain. Between the 16th and 18th centuries, and perhaps earlier, extensive irrigation works were built. Other stone structures date from the same period, including semi-subterranean structures interpreted as stock pens.
Ipiutak: CATEGORY: culture
DEFINITION: An Eskimo/Inuit culture of northwestern Alaska, probably dating from the 2nd to the 6th century AD. The type site at Point Hope is the largest Eskimo/Inuit village ever discovered in Alaska. The village had about 600 houses and many burials accompanied by finely carved bone and ivory objects. The art style includes animal forms which show links with Siberia and northern Eurasia. The people were sea and land hunters and expert stoneworkers with no pottery. A Siberian origin has been suggested, based on similarities in burial practices and ceremonialism, animal carvings and designs, and some use of iron; there seem to be links with the Kachemak culture. It has also been suggested that the culture developed from the Choris-Norton-Near Ipiutak subtradition, intermingled with Northern Maritime and Siberian influences. Ipiutak is particularly important for its demonstration of the continuing influence of Siberian cultures on the Eskimo/Inuit tradition. It is the most recent variation of the Norton tradition, a series of Arctic Alaska cultures dating from 1000 BC-1000 AD. Projectile points and other stone implements are similar to those of the preceding Norton culture.
Israelites: CATEGORY: culture
DEFINITION: A branch of Semitic people of nomadic origin who emerged in the Levant at the start of the Iron Age, c 1200 BC. This emergence is identified with a shift of settlement, small villages dispersed in upland regions replacing urban life. They are said to have been led by Moses from Egypt to the Promised Land of Palestine. They conquered the Canaanites and the Philistines in some areas and created a powerful monarchy with its capital at Jerusalem in the 10th century BC. The Canaanites retained control of the coastal area, however. Shortly thereafter, it split into the kingdoms of Israel and Judah, later to be destroyed, respectively, by the Assyrians in 722 BC and Babylonians in 587 BC. Although there exists a wealth of documentary evidence for the Israelites in the Bible, they are difficult to identify in the archaeological record. The major building works of the united kingdom belong to the reign of Solomon.
Jarlshof: CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: A settlement site at the southern tip of the Shetland Island, Scotland, with a settlement from the early 2nd millennium BC. This early occupation was a Late Neolithic village comparable to Skara Brae and it was followed after an interval by oval houses of the Late Bronze Age, a round house and wheelhouse with Souterrain of the Iron Age, a Viking settlement, and continuous occupation throughout the Dark Ages. It was named after a house in a Sir Walter Scott novel. Some of the most interesting artifacts recovered from the Norse levels are a series of slates incised with drawings of animals and abstract decorations.
Jastorf culture: CATEGORY: culture
DEFINITION: Iron Age culture of the southern Baltic during the late Hallstatt (600-300 BC), with some of the earliest iron metallurgy of the area. It extended from Lower Saxony through Pomerania.
Jebel et Tomat: CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: A settlement site in central Sudan with evidence of sorghum cultivation by the 3rd century AD. The site was occupied through the first five centuries of the Christian era by mixed-farming people who supplemented their rare iron tools by continuing the production of chipped stone artifacts.
Jericho: SYNONYMS OR RELATED TERMS: Tell es-Sultan
CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: An important site in the Jordan Valley of Israel with a continuous sequence from the Natufian to the Late Bronze Age. Camping occupation of the Mesolithic c 9000 BC developed into the pre-pottery Neolithic c 8350-7350 BC when there was a walled town of mud-brick houses, which is amongst the earliest permanent settlements known. There was at least one massive stone tower. To the succeeding PPNB levels dated 7250-5850 BC, belongs the series of famous plastered skulls. In c 1580, the Hyksos settlement, with its tombs, plastered glacis, woodwork, basketry, pottery, and bronze, was destroyed by the Egyptians. The Late Bronze Age town captured by Joshua's Israelites has left very few traces. There was some reoccupation during the Iron Age.
K2: CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: Late Iron Age site in northern Transvaal, South Africa occupied in the 11th-12th centuries AD. It is the name of the initial phase of the Leopard's Kopje Complex of the Limpopo Valley, characterized by bone and ivory working.
Kabambian: CATEGORY: culture
DEFINITION: Iron Age industry of southeastern Zaire which succeeds the Kisalian and is best known from numerous graves, especially at Sanga. The industry is dated between the 14th-18th centuries AD and is marked by an abundance of copper cross-shaped ingots (croisettes), of standardized weights, which may have served as a medium of exchange.
Kalambo: SYNONYMS OR RELATED TERMS: 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.
Kalambo Falls: CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: A site on the Zambia-Tanzania border at the southeast corner of Lake Tanganyika which has yielded one of the longest archaeological sequences (100,000 years) in sub-Saharan Africa and important pollen and radiocarbon data. The ancient lake deposits preserved objects from the Stone and Iron Ages. The oldest deposit contained Late Acheulian tools, dating to the late Middle Pleistocene. Wooden objects, food remains, and evidence that man was already using fire have been found. Pollen preserved in the deposits indicates that the local late Acheulian climate was cooler and wetter than that of today. The sequence continued with Sangoan (radiocarbon dated to 50,000-40,000 BC), followed by Early Middle Stone Age (Lupemban, 30,000 BC) industries related to those of the Congo, then Magosian, and a microlith-using Late Stone Age culture of Wilton type, and finally (from mid-4th century AD) remains of early agricultural and iron-using peoples who were probably of Bantu stock. Early Iron Age occupation of the Kalambo basin appears to have been established by the 4th century AD and to have continued through much of the 1st millennium.
Kalomo: CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: A Late Iron Age industry in southern Zambia, dating from the end of the 9th till the 13th century AD. The industry probably developed from an Early Iron Age ancestor in the valley and spread to the plateau. The people were subsistence farmers, herding cattle and small stock, cultivating a variety of food crops, making pottery and a few metal tools, and occupying villages beside river valleys or on artificially built mounds.
Kalundu: CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: A mound site near Kalomo in southern Zambia with an Early Iron Age tradition of the Chifumbaze complex of the same name dating to the 5th-9th centuries AD.
Kamabai: CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: Rock shelter site in Sierra Leone with levels dating from 4500-600 BP, the Later Stone Age through Guinea Neolithic to the Iron Age.
Kamilamba: CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: Named after a site in the Upemba depression of the valley of the upper Lualaba in southeastern Zaire, this is the initial phase of the local Early Iron Age, precursor of the Kisalian. Dated to between the 5th and 8th centuries ad, it is poorly illustrated by the research so far undertaken, but the associated pottery shows affinities with that from settlements of the same age in the Copperbelt area further southeast.
Kampong Sungei Lang: CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: A site near Klang, Malaysia, with a metal age boat burial dated to c 300 BC. The grave goods include two Dong Son bronze drums, Mutisalah beads, and iron implements. It may be contemporary with the Bernam-Sungkai slab graves.
Kansanshi: CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: An ancient copper mine near the modern Solwezi in central Zambia's Copperbelt. Small-scale exploitation of the copper deposit appears to have begun during the Early Iron Age of the second half of the 1st millennium AD. Large-scale workings are not attested before the 14th or 15th century.
Kansyore ware: CATEGORY: ceramics
DEFINITION: A comb-stamped pottery found at several pre-Iron Age sites around Lake Victoria in East Africa in the first millennium BC. The makers of Kansyore ware appear to have been hunter-gatherers, makers of a backed microlith industry.
Kapwirimbwe: CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: An Early Iron Age village site near modern Lusaka, Zambia, dated to about the 5th century AD, that gives its name to a tradition of the Chifumbaze complex. The elaborately decorated pottery is similar to that from contemporary Copperbelt sites. Iron-working was a major industry. A late phase, 9th-11th centuries AD, is represented at the Twickenham Road site.
Katoto: SYNONYMS OR RELATED TERMS: Katotan
CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: An Iron Age cemetery on the Lualaba River, southeastern Zaire, probably dating to around the 13th century AD, and is contemporary with the Iron Age Kisalian tradition. The collective graves were accompanied by rich and varied grave goods including pottery, copper, and iron artifacts, notably an iron gong of a type which serves as a symbol of political authority in central African societies. The presence of sea shells and imported glass beads indicates links with the Indian Ocean coast.
Katuruka: CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: An Early Iron Age site in Buhaya, northeastern Tanzania. The pottery appears to be of the Urewe type known from other parts of the Lake Victoria basin. There is also evidence of sophisticated iron-smelting technology during the last few centuries BC. It is the oldest-known evidence for ironworking in central and southern Africa.
Kausambi: SYNONYMS OR RELATED TERMS: Kaushambi
CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: A site in the Ganges Valley of northern India which was a great urban center in the early historical period. Its earliest wall, of mudbrick faced with baked brick 12 m high, was built about 500 BC. Within it is a Buddhist monastery the fifth century BC where, according to an inscription, the Buddha himself stayed for a time. Of the same period is a building interpreted as a palace, with walls of stone rubble. The site has provided important information about the origins and development of the Gangetic Iron Age urban civilization. The earliest levels contain pottery related to the Ochre Colored Pottery horizon and are dated to the mid-2nd millennium BC. The second level has black-and-red, red, gray, and black wares and iron objects also appear, in the second quarter of the 1st millennium BC. There was Northern Black Polished Ware in the third level of around 500 BC.
Kayatha: CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: A site with three Chalcolithic cultures on the Malwa plateau of central India. The first dated to the second half of the third millennium BC, was characterized by Kayatha ware of violet-painted brown slip and incised and red-painted buff wares. The second phase had pottery similar to the Banas culture, white painted black-and-red ware, dated to the early 2nd millennium BC. The last phase, of the second quarter of the 2nd millennium, belonged to the Malwa culture. There was also an Iron Age level.
Khorat: SYNONYMS OR RELATED TERMS: Korat plateau
CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: A saucer-shaped low plateau in northeast Thailand occupying 60,000 square miles and drained by the Chi and Mun rivers. Rice agriculture began before the 4th millennium BC. The plateau's development is divided into General Period A, c 3600-2000 BC; General Period B, c 2000-800/400 BC; General Period C, c 800/400 BC-300/500 AD; and General Period D, c 300/500-1300 AD. The initial settlement had polished stone adzes and stone and shell jewelry indicating some trade. The second period was the transition to the use of tin-bronze and production of bronze using imported metals. In the third period, iron replaced bronze and wet rice cultivation was established. The fourth period saw an expansion of settlements, formation of small states, long-distance trade, and some Indianization.
Kilwa: CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: A major trading city of the East African coast, on an island off Tanzania. For three centuries before the arrival of the Portuguese in 1500 it was the leading entrepot on the East African coast. It was first occupied in the 9th century AD, with the earliest settlement being a village of thatched, timber-framed houses. The only industries were iron-working and the manufacture of shell beads. Small quantities of pottery from western Asia and, towards the end of the period, chlorite-schist from Madagascar indicate commercial activity on a modest scale. Prosperity began c 1200, marked by the introduction of coins, widespread use of masonry, and the construction of the mosque. In the 14th century the sultan built a spectacular palace, known as Husuni Kubwa, just outside the town. The establishment of a wealthy Islamic community is identified with the arrival of the so-called Shirazi dynasty which, according to tradition, came from the Persian Gulf. In the 14th and 15th centuries, Kilwa controlled the coast far to the south and grew even more wealthy through its control of the trade in Zimbabwean gold. The arrival of the Portuguese in the Indian Ocean at the end of the 15th century heralded Kilwa's decline.
Kisalian: CATEGORY: culture
DEFINITION: An Iron Age industry of southeastern Zaire which succeeded the Kamilambian c 8th century AD. There is a large cemetery site at Sanga on the shore of Lake Kisale, with numerous objects in ceramics, iron, copper, and ivory and items suggesting East African coastal trade. The industry reached its full development in the 10th-14th centuries. The funerary practices indicate the beginning of a hierarchical society in central Africa.
Korean periodization: CATEGORY: chronology
DEFINITION: Classification of the eras of Korea by archaeologists and historians. The major divisions following the Palaeolithic are: Chulmun, 7000-1000 BC; Bronze Age, 700 BC-0 AD; Iron Age, 400 BC-300 AD; Proto-Three Kingdoms, 0 -300 AD; Three kingdoms, 300-668; United Silla, 668-935; Koryo, 935-1392; Yi, 1392-1910; Japanese Colonial, 1910-1945; Modern, and 1945-present.
Korucu Tepe: CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: Mound of the Altinova plain of eastern Anatolia where 12 phases of occupation began with the Early Chalcolithic, c 4500 BC. The Korucu sequence, which runs to the Early Iron Age c 800 BC, is used for regional comparative chronology. There is some connection with the Halaf and Kura-Araxes cultures and a late Uruk connection.
Kuban culture: SYNONYMS OR RELATED TERMS: Koban culture
CATEGORY: culture
DEFINITION: A regional variant of the earlier Bronze Age 'North Caucasian' culture group, located in the Kuban Valley of southwestern Russia dated to the mid-2nd millennium BC. It was also the name of an industrial complex of the late Bronze Age to early Iron Age, dated to the early 1st millennium BC in the same area. That culture was distinguished by rich Kurgan graves, use of the battle-ax, and a range of metal objects including the 'Pontiac' hammerheaded pin. The heavy concentration of Caucasian bronzes in the amber source zone of east Prussia indicates an extensive amber trade.
Kulna Cave: CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: Cave site in Moravia, Czechoslovakia with lower levels of the Last Interglacial and Early Glacial with a Middle Palaeolithic industry. The Middle Palaeolithic industry probably dates to the early Last Glacial. There are also Late Upper Palaeolithic / Magdalenian, Neolithic, Iron Age, and newer remains.
Kumadzulo: CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: An Early Iron Age village site near Victoria Falls, southern Zambia, dated between the 5th-7th centuries AD. Kumadzulo has preserved the remains of several rectangular pole and clay houses of unusually small size. There was herding of domestic animals and the presence of grindstones and iron hoes indicate that food crops were cultivated.
Kurtén, Björn (1924-1988): CATEGORY: person
DEFINITION: Finnish palaeontologist who studied Pleistocene mammals of the Holarctic, contributing to our knowledge of their environments and of human palaeoecology.
Kush: SYNONYMS OR RELATED TERMS: Cush
CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: An Egyptian term for Upper Nubia and the independent states of the region during periods of Egyptian weakness. It is the name applied to the area which, during and after the pharaonic period, was subject to Egyptian cultural and /or political influence. Kush's main period of independence began c 9th century BC. In the 8th century, the kings of Kush conquered Egypt and ruled briefly there as the 25th Dynasty, being expelled southwards after the Assyrian invasion of Egypt in 671 BC. In their homeland, the Kushites' capital was established first at Napata near the fourth Nile cataract, then move to Meroe about 600 BC. There the capital was better situated to exploit trade-routes eastward to the Red Sea and Ethiopia as well as those of the Nile Valley. Timber was also more plentiful and was used to fuel the Meroitic iron industry, which probably began on a small scale in about the 6th century BC. The kingdom of Kush survived till 350 AD, when the final collapse of Meroe was probably due to an invasion from Axum (Aksum).
Kutama: CATEGORY: culture
DEFINITION: Early to Late Iron Age tradition of southern Africa during the late 1st millennium AD. It includes the Gumanye, Harare, K2, Leopard's Kopje, Mambo, Mapungubwe, and Woolandale pottery Groups.
Kwale: CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: Site in southeast Kenya which has given its name to the Early Iron Age industry of that area and northern Tanzania. It was a branch of the Eastern Stream or Urewe tradition of the Chifumbaze Early Iron Age complex, starting in the 2nd century AD. The highly characteristic pottery, Kwale ware, occurs far down the East African coast in Mozambique and eastern Transvaal, where it is dated to the 4th century AD.
L'Anse aux Meadows: SYNONYMS OR RELATED TERMS: L'Anse-aux-Meadow
CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: A site on Epaves Bay, northern Newfoundland, Canada, with evidence of a Viking settlement founded in the late 10th century AD. There are remains of Scandinavian-style turf-built houses and other artifacts of European origin: iron rivets, slag, a ring-headed bronze pin, and a soapstone spindle whorl. Supporting documents, such as Groen-lendingabok, Erik's Saga, and the map of Sigurthur Stefansson, also indicate that around 1000, Norse sailors journeyed to a land west of Greenland, which they called Vinland. The site has produced a series of radiocarbon dates which cluster around 1000 AD.
La Gorge-Meillet: CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: Rich Iron Age chariot burial of the Marnian culture, Marne, France. The body of a youth is accompanied by sword, bronze helmet, gold items, spearheads, wheelmade pottery vessels, and an Etruscan bronze flagon. It is dated to La Tène c 475-450 BC.
La Tène: SYNONYMS OR RELATED TERMS: La Tene period
CATEGORY: site; culture
DEFINITION: The site of a great Iron Age votive deposit in the shallow water at the east end of Lake Neuchâtel, Switzerland. Excavations revealed wooden piles, two timber causeways, and a mass of tools and weapons of bronze, iron, and wood (swords, fibulae, spearheads, etc.). Some of these objects bore curvilinear patterns which are the hallmark of La Tène (Celtic) art everywhere from central Europe to Ireland and the Pyrenees. La Tène has given its name to the second major division of the European Iron Age, which followed the Hallstatt period over much of the continent and lasted from mid-5th century BC until the Celts were subdued by Roman conquest c 50 BC. Settlement was characteristically in hillforts and, from the 3rd and 2nd centuries BC, massive oppida occur. As in the Hallstatt culture, there is a notable distinction between the markedly wealthy burials of chieftains and their associates, and burials of other members of society. The highest development, and the birth of the art style, took place in west central Europe from the Rhineland to the Marne. Contact with the Greek and Etruscan worlds brought wine, metal flagons, and Attic drinking cups into lands north of the Alps, and La Tène art shows links with that of the Scythians to the east. In Britain, contact with the continental La Tène cultures is shown by chariot burials and the presence of La Tène art motifs on metalwork and pottery. British cultures showing La Tène influence are sometimes grouped within an Iron Age B complex. In Ireland, which the Romans never invaded, a Celtic culture and an art style with La Tène elements persisted into the Early Christian period. It is subdivided into La Tène I c 480-220 BC, La Tène II c 220-120 BC, and La Tène III c 120-Roman conquest(at different times in different areas).
La Tène art: SYNONYMS OR RELATED TERMS: Celtic art
CATEGORY: artifact
DEFINITION: An art style of the European Iron Age, c 500 BC, developed presumably by Celtic peoples. It originated on the middle Rhine River, extending to the upper Danube and the Marne. Its finest specimens are from the British Isles in the first century BC and AD. It appears most commonly in bronzework or other metals, weapons and horse gear, eating and drinking vessels, personal ornaments, and monumental stone carvings. It seems likely that the craftsmen worked under the direct patronage of the chieftains. Techniques employed were decoration in relief, engraving, and inlay. Stylistically, Celtic art combines elements taken from the classical world, from the Scythians to the east and from the local earlier Hallstatt Iron Age. The art developed into several styles in continental Europe (Early, Waldalgesheim, Plastic and sword styles) but came to an end with the Roman occupation. In Ireland, the art style returned after the Roman withdrawal.
lapis lazuli: SYNONYMS OR RELATED TERMS: khesbed
CATEGORY: geology
DEFINITION: A semiprecious stone of an intense blue color, very popular in the ancient Near East for decorative inlays, beads, seals, etc. It is a metamorphosed form of limestone, rich in the blue mineral lazurite, which is dark blue in color and often flecked with impurities of calcite, iron pyrites, or gold. Its main source was Badakhshan, northern Afghanistan, and in Iran, from which it was traded as far as Egypt. The Egyptians considered that its appearance imitated that of the heavens, therefore they considered it to be superior to all materials other than gold and silver. They used it extensively in jewelry until the Late Period (747-332 BC), when it was particularly popular for amulets. One of the richest collection of lapis lazuli objects was found in the burials at Tepe Gawra. It has also been found at Ovalle, Chile.
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.
latchlifter: CATEGORY: artifact
DEFINITION: An early kind of key, found in Roman and early medieval contexts, it is simply a bent piece of iron rod with an expanded end that could be pushed through a hole in a wooden door to raise a catch-bar on the inside.
Later Stone Age: CATEGORY: chronology
DEFINITION: The third and final phase of Stone Age technology in sub-Saharan Africa, dating from about 30,000+ years ago until historical times in some places. There was much art and personal decoration, evidence of burials, and in assemblages some microlithic stone tools. Pottery and stone bowls appear during the last three millennia as the lifeways changed to herding from nomadic hunting and gathering. The large number of distinctive Later Stone Age industries that emerged reflect increasing specialization as hunter-gatherers exploited different environments, often moving seasonally between them, and developed different subsistence strategies. As in many parts of the world, changes in technology seem to mark a shift to the consumption of smaller game, fish, invertebrates, and plants. Later Stone Age peoples used bows and arrows and a variety of snares and traps for hunting, as well as grindstones and digging sticks for gathering plant food; with hooks, barbed spears, and wicker baskets they also were able to catch fish and thus exploit rivers, lakeshores, and seacoasts more effectively. The appearance of cave art, careful burials, and ostrich eggshell beads for adornments suggests more sophisticated behavior and new patterns of culture. These developments apparently are associated with the emergence between 20,000 and 15,000 BC of the earliest of the historically recognizable populations of southern Africa: the Pygmy, San, and Khoi peoples, who were probably genetically related to the ancient population that had evolved in the African subcontinent.
laterite: CATEGORY: geology
DEFINITION: A soil layer that is rich in iron oxide and derived from a wide variety of rocks weathering under strongly oxidizing and leaching conditions. It forms in tropical and subtropical regions where the climate is humid.
Latians: SYNONYMS OR RELATED TERMS: Latin
CATEGORY: culture
DEFINITION: The ancient people of Latium; an Iron Age people of the region just south of Rome. Their cremation cemeteries are known particularly from the Alban Hills, and from Rome itself. The Latians seem to have developed from the Pianello urnfielders, notably those who buried their dead in the cemetery at Allumiere, and were certainly the ancestors of the Romans. The first huts on the Palatine Hill were built by these people in the 9th century BC. Latium was an ancient area in west-central Italy, originally limited to the territory around the Alban Hills, but extending by about 500 BC south of the Tiber River as far as the promontory of Mount Circeo.
Lausitz: SYNONYMS OR RELATED TERMS: Lusatia, Lusatian
CATEGORY: culture
DEFINITION: A northeasterly group of the European Urnfield cultures, occurring in East Germany, Poland, and parts of Czechoslovakia, which emerged c 1500 BC and survived well into the Iron Age c 300 BC. Fortified settlements occur, seen in the well-preserved site at Biskupin. The dead were cremated and placed in urns and buried either in urnfields or under barrows. The good-quality pottery was often decorated with graphite painted designs and plastic ornament. The bronze industry, of general Urnfield type, flourished; iron was introduced from the Hallstatt Iron Age culture from the later 7th century BC. Historic Lusatia was centered on the Neisse and upper Spree rivers, in what is now eastern Germany, between the present-day cities of Cottbus (north) and Dresden (south).
Lelesu: CATEGORY: culture
DEFINITION: Early Iron Age tradition of the Chifumbaze complex in central Tanzania.
Leopard's Kopje: SYNONYMS OR RELATED TERMS: Nthabazingwe
CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: A site near Khami, southwestern Zimbabwe, and the name of a later Iron Age industry which developed in c 10th-11th century AD. At the type site, large circular houses were excavated. During later phases, from about the 14th century, gold mining and building with stone occurred. The complex covered adjacent areas of the northern Transvaal, South Africa. There was trade with the East African coast, class distinction, and the development of sacred leadership leading up to the Zimbabwe culture.
Leopards Hill: CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: A cave in south-central Zambia, east of Lusaka with a dated sequence from c 20,000 BC through a Nachi-Kufan I phase and successive stages, to the appearance of the local Early Iron Age in about the 5th century AD.
limonite: CATEGORY: geology
DEFINITION: Limonite is the catchall name widely applied to hydrous iron oxide minerals. It is more specifically an impure hydrated iron oxide varying in color from dark brown to yellow, colloidal or amorphous in character.
Lincoln: SYNONYMS OR RELATED TERMS: Roman Lindum
CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: An important Roman colony in eastern England on the main Roman route north. The site is on the intersection of two principal Roman roads, the Fosse Way and Ermine Street, and shows earlier traces of Iron Age occupation. Roman use was possibly from as early as c 43 AD, and by c 60 a turf and timber fortress was built for the 9th Legion. By about the end of the 1st century, a colonia was established with stone walls and tower defenses. Industrialized pottery production is probable and remains survive, mostly from the 3rd and 4th centuries, of walls, baths, mosaic floors, and a stone sewage system. Evidence for an aqueduct seems to show an uphill gradient, which may imply the use of pumps. Three Roman gateways still exist, including Newport Arch.
linear earthwork: SYNONYMS OR RELATED TERMS: dyke, dike
CATEGORY: feature
DEFINITION: An earthwork, dike, ditch, or bank that is created in a straight line, not curving around to form an enclosure. Such earthworks were of various lengths and created for various purposes. Some Bronze and Iron Age examples may be ranch boundaries with no defensive value, but later Iron Age and the post-Roman Dark Age may be either boundary markers or defense works. Many of these later dikes cut across communication route or lines of easy access, and would have been an effective obstacle against chariots or wheeled vehicles.
lithofacies: CATEGORY: geology; lithics
DEFINITION: A part of sediment or rock that is different in composition or character, such as grain size. Characteristics of sediment are closely related to their depositional environment. Lithofacies is a lateral, mappable subdivision of a designated stratigraphic unit, distinguished from adjacent subdivisions on the basis of lithology -- or a facies (appearance and characteristics of a rock) characterized by particular lithologic features.
lithofacies analysis: CATEGORY: technique
DEFINITION: A technique used to identify and interpret depositional environments in which archaeological deposits are found. The lithofacies are determined by geometry, vertical sequences, and lateral associations. Lithofacies models or maps, generalized summaries of sediment characteristics of specific depositional environments, serve as guides to interpretation. Such a map shows variation in the overall lithologic character of a given stratigraphic unit and its changing composition throughout its geographic extent.
Little Woodbury: CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: A palisaded Iron Age farmstead, south of Salisbury in Wiltshire, England, whose excavation set new standards in British Iron Age studies. It consisted of a circular post-built house surrounded by corn-drying frames, granaries, and storage pits, all enclosed within a wooden stockade. It was probably occupied from the 4th-2nd centuries BC.
locational analysis: CATEGORY: technique
DEFINITION: Any of a set of techniques borrowed from geography to study the relationships between a site or sites and the environment. The relationship between sites can be examined in different ways: nearest-neighbor analysis, network analysis, rank-size rule, central place theory, and site catchment analysis. Locational analysis is the search for additional information from the geographical placing and spacing of sites, the significance of which can sometimes be tested mathematically.
longhouse / long house: CATEGORY: structure
DEFINITION: In Neolithic times, an elongated (oblong) wooden post house that appeared in central Europe with the first farming communities within the Early Neolithic Bandkeramik cultures, about 4500-3000 BC, as well as the later Iron Age, about 100 BC-500 AD, of north-central Europe. It also applies to the Late Woodland cultures of northeast North America, about 1300-1600 AD, especially the Iroquois and Huron. Life in the longhouse had ended by 1800, but the meeting room of the contemporary tribe continues to be called the longhouse. In North American antiquity, longhouses were divided into living quarters for a number of groups. In Europe, structures may have been multipurpose buildings for dwellings and livestock stables. Among the most famous are those of the Linear Pottery culture, which reach lengths of up to 40 meters. Archaeologically, the two halves of the long house are often distinguished by the existence of a hearth in the living quarters, a central drain, and sometimes stalls in the byre. The purpose of the European long house was to keep stock during the wet winter months, and at the same time to provide dwelling for the farmers. In Upper Palaeolithic times, the long house was an elongated above-ground structure of up to 100 meters in length, with a central series of hearths. The walls and roofing were probably supported by wooden poles and large mammal bones. Remains of these have been found in Kostenki, Pushkari, and Avdeevo.
Lopburi: SYNONYMS OR RELATED TERMS: Lop Buri; Lavo
CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: Settlement in central Thailand occupied from the Copper Age and in a region of copper and bronze production during the 2nd and 1st millennia BC. Some sites made copper and iron into the Khmer occupation. Lopburi, already a provincial capital, became a major center during the 11th-13th centuries AD and gives its name to the Khmer-influenced art of that time. It was the summer capital of the Ayutthaya king Narai (reigned 1657-88). Thereafter the city declined, and many of its buildings decayed.
lorica hamata: CATEGORY: artifact
DEFINITION: Latin term for a type of body armor worn by Roman legionaries, consisting of a shirt made of iron chain mail.
lorica segmentata: CATEGORY: artifact
DEFINITION: Latin term for a type of body armor worn by Roman legionaries, consisting of a cuirass made from iron strips hinged together.
lorica squamata: CATEGORY: artifact
DEFINITION: Latin term for a type of body armor worn by Roman legionaries, consisting of a cuirass made from shaped scales of iron and bronze riveted together.
Luangwa pottery: CATEGORY: artifact
DEFINITION: A Late Iron Age complex of central, eastern, and northern Zambia in the 2nd millennium AD with a distinctive pottery style. It appeared a s a break from the Chifumbaze complex in the 11th century, originated in Zaire, and has continued into Recent times. The term (also Luangwa variant) is also used for Earlier Stone Age Sangoan collections from eastern Zambia. This facies of the Sangoan industry is found in gravel deposits of the Luangwa and tributary valleys of eastern Zambia, and is marked by large picks and other core tools made from water-rounded cobbles.
Luangwa tradition: CATEGORY: culture
DEFINITION: A Late Iron Age complex of central, eastern, and northern Zambia in the 2nd millennium AD with a distinctive pottery style. It appeared a s a break from the Chifumbaze complex in the 11th century, originated in Zaire, and has continued into recent times. The term (also Luangwa variant) is also used for Earlier Stone Age Sangoan collections from eastern Zambia. This facies of the Sangoan industry is found in gravel deposits of the Luangwa and tributary valleys of eastern Zambia, and is marked by large picks and other core tools made from water-rounded cobbles.
Lukenya Hill: CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: An inselberg (boulder-hill) in southern Kenya, southeast of Nairobi, with material from the Middle Stone Age to the Late Iron Age. Numerous rock shelters and other sites have preserved this long sequence of prehistoric occupation. A backed microlith industry was established by the 16th millennium BC and probably long before. A fragment of human skull associated with this industry displays modern Negroid features.
Luristan: CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: A region of the central Zagros mountains on the border of west-central Iran, where a distinctive bronze-working industry flourished 2600-600 BC. It is characterized by horse trappings, utensils, weapons, jewelry, belt buckles, and ritual and votive objects of bronze -- which became most distinctive around 1000 BC. Scholars believe that they were created either by the Cimmerians, a nomadic people from southern Russia who may have invaded Iran in the 8th century BC, or by such related Indo-European peoples as the early Medes and Persians. The immigrants grafted onto a population of Kassites who had already developed a bronze industry around 2000 BC. Important Luristan sites are Tepe Giyan and Tepe Djamshidi, Tepe Ganj Dareh, Tepe Asiab, Tepe Sarab, Tepe Guran, and especially Tepe Sialk. Many bronzes were placed into museum collections as a result of persistent looting of tombs from the 10th-7th centuries BC. Iron also appears at an early date in the Luristan tombs.
Lusatian culture: SYNONYMS OR RELATED TERMS: Lausitz culture; Lusatia
CATEGORY: culture
DEFINITION: A Late Bronze Age and Early Iron Age (Hallstatt period) culture of Poland and eastern Germany, an urnfield culture which had formed by c 1500 BC. Larger settlements, such as Biskupin, Senftenberg, and Sobiejuchy, are fortified. The culture is noted for its bronzework and its fine dark pottery, sometimes graphite-burnished and generally decorated with bosses and fluted ornament. Iron tools were adopted in the north throughout the earlier Iron Age. In some classifications, the Middle Bronze Age 'pre-Lausitz' phase is considered the first stage of the Lusatian culture proper.
Lydenburg: CATEGORY: site; culture
DEFINITION: An Early Iron Age site in eastern Transvaal, South Africa, occupied from 460-600 AD. The culture of this name made fired-clay human heads of up to life-size. They are thought to have been used in rituals.
Mössbauer spectroscopy: CATEGORY: technique
DEFINITION: A technique used in the analysis of artifact composition, particularly iron-bearing minerals in pottery. It involves the measurement of the gamma radiation absorbed by the iron nuclei, which provides information on the particular iron compounds in the sample, and hence on the conditions of firing when the pottery was being made. Samples are bombarded with gamma rays and a record made of the detected amount of absorption by iron nuclei. The use of this method of physical analysis has been confined mainly to the examination of iron compounds, though other uses have been suggested. The Mössbauer effect of recoil-free emission and absorption of gamma rays only occurs with a limited number of isotopes, of which one of the iron isotopes is useful in archaeological contexts. Because of its sensitivity to short-range crystalline order, the technique is better for examining poorly crystallized iron-bearing minerals than X-ray diffraction. This type of spectroscopy is also used for the study of nuclear hyperfine structure, chemical shifts, and chemical analysis.
Münsingen-Rain: CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: Iron Age cemetery near Berne, Switzerland, with more than 200 graves of the early and middle La Tène periods (to c 200 BC). The graves are scattered along a ridge, and the cemetery has a horizontal stratigraphy with the oldest tombs at the north and the more recent ones at the southern end. Grave goods include swords, spears, fibulae, and a necklace of amber beads.
mace: CATEGORY: artifact
DEFINITION: A small clublike weapon, usually of stone, crafted to fit snugly in the hand, for pounding. It often had a perforated head and was attached to a shaft of wood (or ivory or horn), often tapering towards the end that was gripped. Many maceheads have been excavated from Predynastic and Early Dynastic cemeteries in Egypt. In medieval times, it was made of iron and used for breaking defensive armor.
Magdalenska Gora: CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: Early Iron Age (Hallstatt period) complex of tumuli of the early La Tene period, located near Smarje/Sticna, in Slovenia. The cemetery comprises large barrows into which as many as 40 burials are inserted. The rich grave goods include weapons, armor, helmets, horse trappings, jewelry, and bronze vessels, including a complete bronze situlae -- all from the 7th century BC.
Maglemosian: SYNONYMS OR RELATED TERMS: Maglemosan
CATEGORY: culture
DEFINITION: The first Mesolithic culture of the north European plain, found in Scandinavia, the northern Balkans, northern Scotland, and northern England, and lasting from c 9000/8000-5000 BC. The way of life was adapted to a forest and river/lakeside environment. Much has been preserved in waterlogged deposits. Thus more is known about the Maglemosian industry than about other tool industries of the same period. The tool kit included microliths, woodworking tools such as chipped axes and adzes, picks, barbed points, spearheads of bone or antler, and fishing gear. Wooden bows, paddles, and dugout canoes have been found, and the dog was already domesticated. The Maglemosian industry was named after the bog (magle mose, big bog in Danish) at Mullerup, Denmark, where evidence of the industry was first recognized. The Maglemosian industry was also highly artistic, with decorative designs on tools and decorative objects, such as pendants and amulets.
magnetic: CATEGORY: term
DEFINITION: Of or pertaining to magnetism, the ability to be magnetized or affected by a magnet, or relating to the earth's magnetic field. Magnetism is a class of physical phenomena associated with the motion of charge, the attraction for iron observed in lodestone and a magnet. It is associated with moving electricity, exhibited by electric currents, and characterized by fields of force. It can be an electric current in a conductor or charged particles moving through space, or it can be the motion of an electron in atomic orbit.
magnetic surveying: SYNONYMS OR RELATED TERMS: electromagnetic surveying
CATEGORY: technique
DEFINITION: A technique for the location of archaeological features adapted from techniques used in geological surveying. It is based on the fact that features with thermo-remanent magnetism, like hearths or kilns, or features with a high humus content, like pits or ditches, and iron objects, distort the earth's magnetic field from the normal. Instruments such as the proton magnetometer or the differential fluxgate gradiometer are used to measure those disturbances, and by plotting the results, a map of the features can be built. The ways in which the different types of feature distort the magnetic field vary, though they can all be picked up on the same instrument. Hematite or magnetic, present in most clays, have a small magnetic effect when unburnt, since the grains point in random directions and cancel each other out. Once heated to about 700? C or more, the grains line up, increasing the magnetic effect and causing an anomaly in the magnetic field. This thermo-remanent magnetism is also the basis for magnetic dating. The presence of modern iron as in wire fences can cause problems with this technique of location; if the area to be surveyed is clearly crossed with power lines or fenced with iron posts, a resistivity survey may be more suitable. The method of surveying used requires a grid to be measured out on the site and readings to be taken at regular intervals. The nature of the site may prevent such a grid being laid out, for instance if it is heavily wooded, and magnetic survey may not be possible on these sites. It is one of the most commonly used geophysical surveying methods.
magnetometer: SYNONYMS OR RELATED TERMS: proton magnetometer
CATEGORY: tool
DEFINITION: A geophysical instrument that measures the intensity and sometimes direction of the Earth's magnetic field. It is used in electromagnetic surveying to identify changes in the field within soil or sediment that might be caused by subsurface features, hearths, kilns, or metal artifacts. When a current is passed through a coil in a bottle of water or alcohol the protons of the hydrogen atoms align themselves to its magnetic field. When the current is cut off, the protons realign themselves according to the earth's field, its strength being indicated by the frequency of their gyration on realignment. This sets up a weak current which is transmitted back from the bottle to the instrument and there registered on dials. The resulting figures are plotted to reveal anomalies in field strength -- usually due to buried iron, kilns, hearths, or to pits or ditches. These features can thus be rapidly located without disturbance of the ground, and excavation can be directed to the most promising areas. Magnetrometry is the use of a magnetometer for mapping subsurface anomalies. There are a number of designs, but two are particularly widely used. The proton magnetometer makes an absolute measurement of field strength, but is intermittent in operation: each reading is initiated by the push of a button, and takes some seconds to appear on the display of the instrument. Fluxgate magnetometers work on a different principle, and give a continuous reading, which makes surveying less time-consuming. Most fluxgate machines do not however measure field strength directly, but rather are gradiometers, measuring the vertical gradient of the earth's' magnetic field, i.e. how fast the field strength changes with vertical distance from the earth's magnetic field Gradient measurements can also be used in archaeological surveys and have an advantage over absolute measurements. The earth's field strength varies continuously during the day at any one location. Absolute measurements taken at different times have to be calibrated for this effect if they are to be comparable. Gradient measurements are not affected by this diurnal drift in field strength, and so do not need to be calibrated. Proton gradiometers are also available. The fluxgate, differential fluxgate, and proton gradiometer take continuous measurements of relative vertical change in the intensity of field strength.
Maiden Castle: CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: One of the largest and most famous Iron Age hillforts in Britain, located in Dorset, England. The oldest structure on the hilltop is a Neolithic causewayed camp (c 2000-1500 BC), followed after an interval by an earthen long barrow, which is partly built over the ditches of the earlier camp. Occupation resumed in the Early Iron Age (c 5th century BC) with the construction of a hillfort (c 250 BC) which was later extended to fortify the entire hill. Maiden Castle was at that time a permanent settlement with stone and wooden huts linked by surfaced trackways. Sometime before 50 BC, the site came under the control of the Belgae and became the tribal capital of the Durotriges, with coinage and imported Gallo-Roman luxuries. During the Roman conquest, the fort was sacked by Vespasian's legion (43-44 AD), and the slain defenders were buried in a cemetery near the east gate. The Romans moved the remaining population to a new site at Durnovaria (Dorchester), and the hillfort was abandoned until the 4th century AD when a Romano-Celtic temple was built there.
Mailhac: CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: A series of important Late Bronze Age and Iron Age sites near Narbonne in southwest France, dating from the 8th-1st centuries BC. The sites comprise a defended hilltop settlement (Le Cayla) and a series of urnfield cemeteries (Le Moulin, Grand Bassin I and II). The earliest phase has an urnfield-type cemetery, wooden houses, and evidence of farming supplemented by hunting. In the second phase (early 6th century BC), Hallstatt influences include iron and a chieftain's wagon burial (La Redorte). Greek and Etruscan imports appear in both graves and occupation deposits in this and in the succeeding phase. Occupation ended early in the 1st century BC with a burning, probably a Roman punitive action after threatened uprisings in the area.
Majolica: SYNONYMS OR RELATED TERMS: Maiolica; faience; delft
CATEGORY: ceramics
DEFINITION: Tin-glazed earthenware -- a distinctive kind of colorful, decorated earthenware that is tin enameled and glazed -- usually of Italian, Spanish, or Mexican origin. This earthenware was introduced by Moorish potters from the island of Majorca in the 15th century. Distinguishing features of Majolica ware are coarseness of ware, intricacy of pattern, occasionally prismatic glaze. Made of potter's clay mixed with marl and sand, and is soft or hard according to the nature of the composition and the degree of heat under which it is fired in the kiln. Soft wares are either unglazed or lustrous, or glazed, or enameled. The majolica painter's palette was usually restricted to five colors: cobalt blue, antimony yellow, iron red, copper green, and manganese purple; the purple and blue were used, at various periods, mainly for outline. A white tin enamel was used also for highlights or alone on the white tin glaze in what was called bianco sopra bianco, white on white." The Italian lustrous ware is properly Majolica and originated in s Faenza Deruta Urbino Orvieto Gubbio Florence and Savona."
malacology: CATEGORY: related field
DEFINITION: The study of mollusks as indicators of past diet and environmental conditions.
Mambo: CATEGORY: culture
DEFINITION: A Late Iron Age phase of the Leopard's Kopje complex of southern Zimbabwe. It is dated to the 10th-11th centuries AD.
Man-ch'eng: SYNONYMS OR RELATED TERMS: Mancheng
CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: Site in Hebei province, China, where two Early Han-dynasty tombs are cut into a rock cliff -- the tombs of Liu Sheng (c 113 BC), Prince of Chung-shan, and his wife Tou Wan. Numerous grave goods, 2800 items, including jade, gold, silver, iron, glass articles; inlaid and gilded vessels, earthenware, lacquer ware, silk fabrics, and fine weapons are in the chambered tombs behind sealed doors. Both tombs were provided with large stores of food and wine and escorts of chariots and horses. The bodies of Liu Sheng and Dou Wan were dressed in shrouds made of jade plaques sewn together with gold thread, the first of some dozen jade shrouds thus recovered from Han tombs.
Manching: CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: Large oppidum of the late Iron Age in Bavaria, Germany, near Ingolstadt, dated to the La Tène period c 200 BC. It was one of the largest oppida in Europe. Manching, at that time adjacent to the Danube, may have been a regional market. The defense was an elaborate construction consisting of four-mile-long walls built of timber and stones and including four gateways. The organization of the settlement was preplanned, with streets up to 30 feet wide and regular rows of rectangular buildings in front of zones containing pits and working areas; other areas were enclosed for granaries or horse stalls. The site was divided into work areas for particular crafts, such as wood, leather, and iron working. Coins were minted and used on the site. There is evidence of a violent end to the settlement c 50 BC.
Manda: CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: The site of a Swahili city-state apparently established in the 9th century and distinguished for its seawalls of coral blocks, each of which weighs up to a ton. Located in the Lamu Archipelago off the coast of Kenya, it had numerous stone-built (and wattle-and-daub) houses. Trade, which seems to have been by barter, was considerable, with the main export probably of ivory. Manda had close trading connections with the Persian Gulf -- Siraf in particular. It imported large quantities of Islamic pottery and, in the 9th and 10th centuries, Chinese porcelain. There is evidence of a considerable iron-smelting industry at Manda.
Mapungubwe: CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: Late Iron Age hilltop site in northern Transvaal, that was South Africa's first urban center. It has given its name to the southern facies of phase B of the Leopard's Kopje complex and it was occupied between 1220-1270 AD. The material from the earliest levels is very similar to that from the nearby site of Bambandyanalo. Mapungubwe was a forerunner of the developments at Great Zimbabwe and may have been the capital of a state that controlled trade with the East African coast. In Mapungubwe and Great Zimbabwe, a wealthy and privileged elite built with stone and were buried with gold and copper ornaments, exotic beads, and fine imported pottery and cloth. Their homes, diet, and ostentatious burials are in stark contrast to those of the common folk. The 13th-century burial of an important official uncovered at Mapungubwe was accompanied by a gold-covered statue of a rhinoceros, a golden staff, and other artifacts -- one of the earliest indications of gold mining in southern Africa. The Mapungubwe gold was panned from alluvial deposits.
Marlik Tepe: CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: Early Iron Age royal cemetery of the late 2nd millennium BC southwest of the Caspian Sea in northern Iran. Its tombs include a wealth of gold and silver vessels, jewelry, and weapons. Some graves have rectangular stone slabs on which the body with its grave goods was laid and then covered with earth. Characteristic decoration is in relief and portrays mythical animal and human figures. Marlik Tepe may represent an early phase in the development of the art of the Medes.
Marnian: SYNONYMS OR RELATED TERMS: Marnians
CATEGORY: culture
DEFINITION: An Iron Age / La Tène culture of northeastern France, who occupied a region centered on the Marne Valley. They were characterized by chariot burials from the time c 475-325 BC. They may have invaded or traded with Britain in the 3rd and 2nd centuries BC. There were close connections between the Marne region groups and the Arras culture of eastern Yorkshire.
material culture: CATEGORY: term
DEFINITION: The artifacts and ecofacts used by a group to cope with their physical and social environment. Material culture includes the buildings, tools, and other artifacts that constitute the material remains of a former society -- its technology and artifacts combined. Material culture thus embraces folk architecture, folk arts, and folk crafts. For example, the construction of houses, the design and decoration of buildings and utensils, and the performance of home industries, according to traditional styles and methods, make up material culture. The distinction is made between those aspects of culture that appear as physical objects, and those aspects which are nonmaterial. It is the major source of evidence for archaeology.
Matola: CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: Early Iron Age shell midden site near Maputo on the coast of southern Mozambique. Its pottery is used to define the Matola section of the first Iron Age farmers in the area. The pottery recovered is remarkably similar to that from Kwale near the Kenya coast far to the north. There may have been an extremely rapid southward spread of Early Iron Age cultural traits along the eastern coast of Africa between the 3rd-5th centuries AD.
Matopo: SYNONYMS OR RELATED TERMS: 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.
Maxton: CATEGORY: site; culture
DEFINITION: Early Iron Age sit