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Results for Neolithic:

Aceramic Neolithic: CATEGORY: chronology
DEFINITION: The early part of the Neolithic period in Western Asia before the widespread use of pottery (c. 8500-6000 BC) in an economy based on the cultivation of crops or the rearing of animals or both. Aceramic Neolithic groups were in the Levant (Pre-Pottery Neolithic A and B), Zagros area (Karim Shahir, Jarmoan), and Anatolia (Hacilar Aceramic Neolithic). Aceramic Neolithic groups are more rare outside Western Asia.
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.
Baikal Neolithic: CATEGORY: chronology; culture
DEFINITION: The Neolithic period of the Lake Baikal region in eastern Siberia. Stratified sites in the area show a long, gradual move from the Palaeolithic to Neolithic stage, starting in the 4th millennium BC. The Postglacial culture was not true" Neolithic in that it farmed but Neolithic in the sense of using pottery. It was actually a Mongoloid hunting-and-fishing culture (except in southern Siberia around the Aral Sea) with a microlithic flint industry with polished-stone blade tools together with antler bone and ivory artifacts; pointed- or round-based pottery and the bow and arrow. Points and scrapers made on flakes of Mousterian aspect and pebble tools showing a survival of the ancient chopper-chopping tool tradition of eastern Asia have also been found. There was a woodworking and quartzite industry and some cattle breeding. The first bronzes of the region are related to the Shang period of northern China and the earliest Ordos bronzes. The area covers the mountainous regions from Lake Baikal to the Pacific Ocean and the taiga (coniferous forest) and tundra of northern Siberia. A first stage is name for the site Isakovo and is known only from a small number of burials in cemeteries. The succeeding Serovo stage is also known mainly from burials with the addition of the compound bow backed with bone plates. The third phase named Kitoi has burials with red ochre and composite fish hooks possibly indicate more fishing. The succeeding Glazkovo phase of the 2nd millennium BC saw the beginnings of metal-using but generally showed continuity in artifact and burial types. Some remains of semi-subterranean dwellings with centrally located hearths occur together with female statuettes in bone."
Capsian and Capsian Neolithic: SYNONYM: Capsian industry
CATEGORY: culture
DEFINITION: A Mesolithic/Stone Age (8000 BC-2700 BC) cultural complex prominent in inland northern Africa near the present border between Tunisia and Algeria. Its shell midden sites are in the area of the great salt lakes of what is now southern Tunisia, the type site being Jabal al-Maqta'. The tool kit of the Capsian is a classic example of the industries of the late Würm Glacial Period and it is apparently related to the Gravettian stage of Europe's Perigordian industry (which dates from about 17,000 years ago). However, it occurs in Neothermal (postglacial) times and, like its predecessor, the Ibero-Maurusian industry (Oranian industry), the Capsian was a microlithic tool complex. It differed from the Ibero-Maurusian, however, in having a far more varied tool kit with large backed blades, scrapers, backed bladelets, microburins, and burins in its earlier phase and a gradual development of geometric microliths later. These became its leading feature by the 6th millennium BC. Shortly after 5000 BC, pottery and domesticated animals were introduced. Some North African rock paintings are attributed to people of the Capsian industry. The Capsian Neolithic, with pointed-base pottery and a stone industry, lasted from c 6200-5300 BP, in the Atlas Mountains of Algeria and the northern Sahara. The name derives from Capsa, the Latin form of Gafsa, a town in south central Tunisia where such artifacts were first discovered. Hunting and snail-collecting seem to have formed the basis of the economy. Human remains from Capsian sites are mostly of Mechta-Afalou type.
Chalcolithic: SYNONYM: Chalcolithic period; Eneolithic, Copper Age
CATEGORY: chronology
DEFINITION: Literally, the Copper Stone Age" a period between the Neolithic (Stone Age) and the Bronze Age from 3000-2500 BC in which both stone and copper tools were used. It was a transitional phase between Stone Age technology and the Bronze Age and an increase in trade and cultural exchanges. The term is much less widely used than other divisions and subdivisions of the Three Age System partly because of the difficulty in distinguishing copper from bronze without chemical analysis partly because many areas did not have a Chalcolithic period at all."
Copper Age: SYNONYM: Chalcolithic, Eneolithic
CATEGORY: chronology
DEFINITION: An intermediate period between the Neolithic and the Bronze Ages, characterized by the use of copper tools. According to the principles of the Three Age System, it should strictly mean the period when copper was the main material for man's basic tools and weapons. It is difficult to apply in this sense as copper at its first appearance was very scarce, and experimentation with alloying seems to have begun early on. The alternative names of Chalcolithic and Eneolithic imply the joint use of copper and stone. In many sequences, notably in Europe and Asia, there is a period between the Neolithic and Bronze Age, separated from each by breaks in the cultural development, within which copper was coming into use and Copper Age is the best term to use. In Asia, the age saw the origins of civilization, and in Europe the great folk movements of the beaker and corded ware cultures, and perhaps the introduction of the Indo-European languages. The period lasted for almost 1000 years in southeast Europe, from 3500 BC.
Eneolithic: SYNONYM: Aeneolithic, Chalcolithic, Copper Age
CATEGORY: chronology
DEFINITION: A period in the Near East and southeastern Europe when copper metallurgy was being adopted by Neolithic cultures, in the 4th and 3rd millennia BC. The period is called the Chalcolithic in the Near East and the Copper Age in other areas.
Final Neolithic: CATEGORY: chronology
DEFINITION: A transition phase where copper and bronze came into use, but stone was still most important.
First Temperate Neolithic: SYNONYM: FTN
CATEGORY: culture
DEFINITION: A term sometimes used to describe the earliest farming cultures in the temperate zone of Europe (and sometimes in other areas). In southeast Europe from c 5400-4500/4300 BC, there was the Starcevo (eastern and northern Yugoslavia), Körös (eastern and southwest Hungary), Cris (west and lowland Rumania), Kremikovci (northwest Bulgaria), and Karanovo (central and southern Bulgaria). The regional groups are differentiated by their individual painted wares, but the group of cultures is unified by non-ceramic traits such a miniature polished bone spoons, fired clay lip-plugs, rod-head figurines, and stamp seals. The vast majority of early FTN sites are located in the major river valleys of the Balkans, either as tell settlements or as short-lived flat sites. Hoe or digging-stick agriculture combined with cattle husbandry was the economic base of most FTN settlements.
food-producing revolution: SYNONYM: 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.
Guinea Neolithic: CATEGORY: culture
DEFINITION: A series of industries in the coastal regions of West Africa during the last 10,000 years. Backed microliths akin to those manufactured in earlier times are associated with pottery and with ground stone ax- and hoe-like implements. One of the few well-described and dated occurrences is at Bosumpra near Abetifi in Ghana, where the occupation is dated between the 4th-2nd millennia BC. Because most of these peoples were nonliterate, there are few records up to c 1000 AD, when Arab historians began describing the western African region. By that time, it already had centralized states, agriculture, and long-distance trading routes.
Khartoum Neolithic: CATEGORY: culture
DEFINITION: Industry of Sudan dating to c 5200 BP and characterized by domesticated animals, pottery, and a special adze.
Kintampo Neolithic: SYNONYM: Kintampo
CATEGORY: culture
DEFINITION: An industry of Ghana in West Africa with the first evidence of animal husbandry and food production, and dated to 3600 BP. This savanna woodland and forest margin in the basin of Black Volta River also had ceramics, flaked stone tools, and scored stone rasps that may have been used for grating or grinding.
Neolithic: SYNONYM: neolithic, New Stone Age
CATEGORY: chronology
DEFINITION: The period of prehistory when people began to use ground stone tools, cultivate plants, and domesticate livestock but before the use of metal for tools. It is the technical name for the New Stone Age in the Old World following the Mesolithic. In the Neolithic, villages were established, pottery and weaving appeared, and farming began. The Neolithic began about 8000-7000 BC in the Middle East and about 4000-3000 BC in Europe. It was followed by the Bronze Age, which began about 3500-3000 BC in the Middle East and about 2000-1500 BC in Europe. The criteria for defining" the Neolithic has become progressively more difficult to apply as both food production and metalworking took a long time to develop. In Britain the Neolithic has other more specific characteristics: the use of pottery and of ground stone (beside the long-employed flaked stone) and the appearance of construction works like the long barrow causewayed camp and megalithic tomb. Elsewhere however some Mesolithic cultures made use of pottery in Japan for example; and certain so-called pre-pottery Neolithic groups had none as at Jericho. If the term Neolithic is to be retained at all it must be based on the appearance of food production (especially cereal grains) sometimes called the Neolithic revolution commencing in southwest Asia 9000-6000 BC. This might be considered the most important single advance ever made by man since it allowed him to settle permanently in one spot. This in turn encouraged the accumulation of material possessions stimulated trade and by giving a storable surplus of food allowed a larger population and craft specialization. All these were prerequisite to further human progress. The Neolithic was followed by the Mesolithic period the Chalcolithic or the Bronze Age depending on the terminology used in different areas and the nature of the archaeological sequence itself. The Neolithic followed the Paleolithic Period."
Neolithic Revolution: SYNONYM: Neolithization
CATEGORY: term
DEFINITION: A term coined by V.G. Childe to describe the origin and consequences of farming -- the development of stock raising and agriculture -- allowing the widespread development of settled village life (c 9000-6000 BC in Asia). This group of cultural processes marked the transition from an economy based on hunting and gathering to an agricultural economy. These processes were linked with development of village life, the beginning of firing techniques, and production of artifacts such as pottery and weaving.
Pastoral Neolithic: SYNONYM: Pastoral Neolithic of East Africa
CATEGORY: culture
DEFINITION: A complex of cultures that appeared in southern Kenya and northern Tanzania about 3500 BC; a general term for the pre-Iron Age food-producing societies of East Africa.. It remains unknown whether they also cultivated plants. The earliest sites are on the plains of northern Kenya and date to the mid-3rd millennium BC. About 1300 years ago, they were absorbed or replaced by iron-using pastoralists and mixed farmers. Disposal of the dead was by burial beneath a stone cairn or between rocks. Stone platters, bowls, and pestles occur on most sites. Settlements show a great range of size, as does the relative importance of herding cattle and small stock in comparison with hunting. Pastoral Neolithic settlement is attested as far to the south as the Serengeti Plain of northern Tanzania. The subdivision of the Pastoral Neolithic in the East African highlands is not clearly defined. Pastoral Neolithic traditions recognized, though not well defined chronologically, are: Elmenteitan, Kansyore, Narosura, Nderit, Njoro River Cave, Oldishi, Olmalenge, and Oltome.
Pre-Pottery Neolithic: CATEGORY: culture
DEFINITION: Early phases of the Neolithic of the Near East/Levant, characterized by the practice of agriculture and permanent settlement prior to the use of pottery. Two phases of the Pre-Pottery Neolithic have been identified: the PPNA phase, with radiocarbon dates in the range 8500-7600 BC; and PPNB, dated c 7600-6000 BC. Recent work suggests a third phase, the PPNC, dated to 6200-5900 BC.
Pre-Pottery Neolithic A: SYNONYM: PPNA
CATEGORY: culture
DEFINITION: Palestinian village-based culture dated 8500-7600 BC, first defined at Jericho. It is derived from the Natufian culture, making use of and developing Natufian architecture (round houses). It offers evidence of first attempts at agriculture in the near East, though still in a hunting context.
Pre-Pottery Neolithic B: SYNONYM: PPNB
CATEGORY: culture
DEFINITION: Levantine culture pre-dating the use of pottery, dated 7600-6000 BC, and first defined at Jericho. It originated in Syria and is characterized by rectangular buildings with lime-coated or plastered floors, by the cultivation of cereal crops, and by the beginnings of small-animal husbandry. Toward the end, it saw the first expansion of agriculture and the spread of Neolithic culture beyond its semi-arid zone towards the temperature coastal regions of Syria (Ras Shamra) and the desert oases. Pottery began to appear sporadically.
Primary Neolithic: CATEGORY: culture
DEFINITION: A term used to describe the earliest British Neolithic cultures, such as the Windmill Hill culture. These cultures were thought to be intrusive early farming groups.
Proto-Neolithic: CATEGORY: chronology
DEFINITION: A transitional period between the hunting-and-gathering cultures of the Epipaleolithic and the farming cultures of the Aceramic Neolithic (c 9300-8500 BC). The term is used variously but here it includes the Pre-Pottery Neolithic A of the Levant and the early stages of the adoption of characteristic Neolithic traits such as animal and plant domestication and the manufacture of pottery.
Secondary Neolithic: CATEGORY: culture
DEFINITION: A term used to describe a number of Neolithic communities composed entirely of Mesolithic peoples who adopted Neolithic equipment. For example, in Britain this was a group characterized by the use of Peterborough Ware or Grooved Ware (Rinyo-Clacton Ware). Such groups of Mesolithic ancestry had acquired the arts of farming and associated crafts (like pottery manufacture) from Primary Neolithic groups, e.g. the Windmill Hill culture.
Ténéré Neolithic: SYNONYM: Tenerian
CATEGORY: culture
DEFINITION: Variant of the so-called Saharan Neolithic complex in the Ténéré Dessert and extends from northeastern Niger into western Chad, Africa, dating from 6500-4500 BP. Chipped stone implements include backed microliths, bifacial projectile points, and discoid knives and the pottery may have connections with contemporary Sudanese Nile valley sites. Rock engravings and rock pictures of animals were also created by the Neolithic (8,000-5,000 BC) inhabitants. A pastoral economy existed as well as hunting; the climatic conditions at the time may have dictated the subsistence. Ténéré is now one of the most forbidding regions of the Sahara, with an extremely hot and dry climate and virtually no plant life. Fossils show that this arid desert was, in the Late Carboniferous Period (320-286 million years ago), a seafloor and later became a humid tropical forest. In the Middle Paleolithic (d 60,000 BC) human habitation is indicated in this region by flint axes, arrowheads, and stone artifacts.
Western Neolithic: CATEGORY: culture
DEFINITION: A main division of the Early and Middle Neolithic cultures of western Europe; it includes the cultures of Chassey, Cortaillod, Lagozza, Windmill Hill, and the Almerian. The local cultures differ in many ways, but have more in common with each other than with cultures of the other major traditions (Danubian, TRB). This can be seen most clearly in the pottery, which shares simple round-based shapes, stringhole lugs rather than handles, and absence of painted decoration or spiral designs. Some scholars feel that these cultures are only loosely connected and that the term Western Neolithic is not useful.
Western Style Neolithic pottery: SYNONYM: Western Neolithic ware
CATEGORY: artifact
DEFINITION: Style of plain or little decorated early and middle Neolithic pottery found in the western parts of the British Isles, especially Ireland. In 1961 Humphrey Case defined Western Neolithic ware pottery as being round-based bowls, normally thin-walled, hard, generally dark-brown, and with a shouldered profile. Four substyles were recognized in Ireland: Dunmurry style; Ballymarlagh style, Limerick style, and the Lyles Hill style. The last mentioned was used by Isobel Smith in 1974 to help define a widespread class of early Neolithic pottery that she called the Grimston-Lyles Hill series; these vessels are now more commonly known as carinated bowls.
: CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: One of the world's earliest towns, a huge Neolithic site in south central Turkey's Konya plain. At least 14 levels have been excavated so far with radiocarbon dates from 6500 BC to 5400 BC, without undisturbed deposits being reached. Cereals were cultivated, cattle and sheep were bred, and hunting took place. Pottery had apparently only just been introduced. Trade in such materials as obsidian and seashells was extensive. There were flaked stone tools and polished obsidian mirrors. The mud-brick buildings were rectangular with access only possible through the roofs. Built-in furniture included benches and platforms. The earliest evidence of religious beliefs have been found at the mound of Çatal Hüyük. Shrines were very frequent, with huge figures of goddesses in the posture of giving birth, leopards, and the heads of bulls and rams modeled in high relief on the walls. Other shrines contain elaborate frescoes of the hunting of deer and aurochs, or vultures devouring headless human corpses. Stone and terra-cotta statuettes found in these shrines represent a female figure, sometimes accompanied by leopards and, from the earlier levels of excavation, a male either bearded and seated on a bull or youthful and riding a leopard. The main deity of these people was evidently a goddess. The dead were buried beneath plastered platforms within the shrines or under the floors of the buildings. Evidence suggests both craft specialization and social stratification.
A Group: SYNONYM: A Horizon, A-Group
CATEGORY: culture
DEFINITION: A term created by American archaeologist George Reisner to refer to a semi-nomadic Nubian Neolithic culture of the mid-fourth to early third millennium BC. The term has evolved into a horizon" because there was also a C Group and the term was misleading that there were two separate ethnic groups rather than two phases of Nubian material culture. Traces of the A group which may have evolved from the Abkan culture survive throughout Lower Nubia. An important site is Afyeh near Aswan Sayala and Qustul. There is evidence among the grave goods that the A Group was engaged in regular trade with the Egyptians of the Predynastic and Early Dynastic periods. The A Group was eventually replaced by the C Group during the Old Kingdom. The existence of a B Group has now been rejected."
Abdul Hosein, Tepe: CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: An aceramic Neolithic site of Iran's Zagros mountains with mud-brick structures, chipped and ground stone tools, clay figurines, and evidence of barley and emmer cultivation.
Abeurador, Balma: CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: An Epipalaeolithic to Late Neolithic cave site in France with 10 layers of human occupation from c 9000-2500 BC.
Abingdon: CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: The type site for a Neolithic pottery c. 3900-3200 BC, found in a causewayed camp about 15 km south of Oxford, England. The pottery is fairly heavy and formed into round-bottomed bowls with frequent-stroke decoration and some having handles.
Abingdon ware: CATEGORY: artifact
DEFINITION: The type site for a Neolithic pottery c. 3900-3200 BC, found in a causewayed camp about 15 km south of Oxford, England. The pottery is fairly heavy and formed into round-bottomed bowls with frequent-stroke decoration and some having handles.
Abu Hureyra, Tell: CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: A small tell on the Euphrates River, 120 km east of Aleppo in Syria. The site was excavated in 1972-73 prior to flooding by the Tabqua/Tabqa Dam. Two major phases of occupation were found: Mesolithic or Epi-Palaeolithic (early 9th millennium BC) to a Pre-Pottery Neolithic B Culture in the 6th millennium. There was a long period of abandonment in the 7th millennium and then a final abandonment c 5800 BC. The site depicted a transition from gathering to cultivation, including large quantities of einkorn wheat, and from hunting to herding (sheep and goats, also gazelle and onager). The Neolithic settlement was of enormous size, larger than any other recorded site of this period -- even Çatal Hüyük. In the uppermost levels, a dark burnished pottery appeared.
Afanasievo culture: CATEGORY: culture
DEFINITION: A Neolithic culture of the Yenisei valley of southern Siberia. The people, who were stock breeders and hunters, probably moved into the area in the late 3rd millennium BC. Excavations uncovered burials under kurgans (low mounds), surrounded by circular stone walls. There was stamped dentate pottery, stone, bone, and bronze tools, and some copper ornaments with the burials. The Afanasievo people were the first food-producers in the area, breeding cattle, horses, and sheep, but also practiced hunting. The Afanasievo were succeeded by the Andronovo culture in the mid-2nd millennium BC.
agriculture: CATEGORY: term
DEFINITION: The cultivation of domesticated crops. The invention of agriculture occurred in the Near East during the Neolithic period (8500-4300 BCE).
Agrigento: SYNONYM: formerly Girgenti, Greek Acragas or Akragas, Latin Agrigentum; also Agrigagas
CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: A wealthy, flourishing Greek and Roman city near the southern coast of Sicily, Italy, originally a colony of Gela and founded by Greeks about 580 BC. The plateau site of the ancient city has extraordinarily rich Greek remains. There are extensive walls with remnants of eight gates and the remains of seven Doric temples, but there has been illegal construction in which the ruins were quarried, so little is standing where some of the buildings once were. Agrigento was sacked by the Carthaginians in 406 BC, a disaster from which it never really recovered. It was refounded by Timoleon, a Greek general and statesman, in 338 BC, but Agrigento was on the losing side for most of the Punic Wars. Agrigento returned to some commercial prosperity when textiles, sulfur and potash mining, and agriculture expanded. It was abandoned once again in the Christian era though areas were used as Roman and Christian cemeteries and catacombs. There is some evidence for even earlier settlement, possibly Neolithic.
Aichbühl: CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: The site of a Middle Neolithic settlement (end of 3rd millennium BC) on the shores of Lake Federsee in southern Germany. There are foundations of about 25 rectangular houses around the lake. They were built of timber, usually divided into two rooms, and most contained a hearth and clay oven. A large central building was likely used for communal purposes and there are some storage structures. Small polished stone hatchets, bone implements, Shoe-Last Adzes, and unpainted pedestal pottery bowls are among the artifacts.
alignment: CATEGORY: structure
DEFINITION: An arrangement of single or multiple rows of standing stones (menhirs) at a site once occupied by humans. They are found mainly in Brittany and the British Isles' highland zones and are often aligned on cairns, henge monuments, or stone circles. Some others are found in Corsica. The rows do not provide much dating evidence, but they were probably set up in the 2nd and 3rd millennium BC (Neolithic, Bronze Age).
Almeria: SYNONYM: Almerian
CATEGORY: site; culture
DEFINITION: A coastal province of southeastern Spain where a Neolithic culture lived in the 5th and 4th millennia BC (c 5500-4300 BC). The village of El Garcel is the typical of the hilltop agricultural communities with circular huts of wattle and daub (with hearths and storage pits), plain baggy pottery, and trapezoidal flint arrowheads. The pottery was of a Western Neolithic tradition, possibly deriving from North Africa. Single and multiple burials were in dry stone cists under round mounds, and thought to be ancestral to the corbel-vaulted tombs of the Copper Age.
Altheim: CATEGORY: site; culture
DEFINITION: A small site near Landshut, Bavaria (Germany) which has three concentric rings of ditches and palisades. It is also the name of the Late Neolithic-Copper Age culture of the upper Danube basin.
Amuq: CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: A swampy plain in northern Syria east of Antioch (Antakya) at the foot of the Amanus mountains and beside the Orontes River at the northeast corner of the Mediterranean Sea. Its important sites Tayanat (Neolithic-Chalcolithic), Atchana (Copper Age to Hittite), and Antioch (Hellenistic and Roman). The plain is rich in tell settlements of the prehistoric and later periods. The basic prehistoric sequence for the area has phases designated by letters, as 'Amuq A represents the Early Neolithic.
Amuq: CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: A swampy plain in northern Syria east of Antioch (Antakya) at the foot of the Amanus mountains and beside the Orontes River at the northeast corner of the Mediterranean Sea. Its important sites Tayanat (Neolithic-Chalcolithic), Atchana (Copper Age to Hittite), and Antioch (Hellenistic and Roman). The plain is rich in tell settlements of the prehistoric and later periods. The basic prehistoric sequence for the area has phases designated by letters, as 'Amuq A represents the Early Neolithic.
Anatolia: CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: A mountainous region of present-day Turkey, bounded by the Pontine mountains and Zagros mountains. There are a number of early sites dating c 7000 BC as the rainfall was adequate for dry farming. The area was also important for sources of obsidian, which was exploited from the Upper Palaeolithic onwards and was extensively traded in the Neolithic. The area was an important center in the Neolithic and Chalcolithic, with sites like Catal Huyuk and Can Hasan. It was less important in the Bronze Age but later became the homeland of the Hittite empire in the 2nd millennium BC.
Andersson, Johan Gunnar (1874-1960): CATEGORY: person
DEFINITION: Swedish geologist who laid the foundation for the study of prehistoric China. In 1921, at a cave near Peking, he demonstrated the presence of prehistoric material in that country. He is remembered for his work on the Yang Shao Neolithic culture (dating between 5000-3000 BC) on the middle Yellow River and the Pan Shan cemeteries further west in Kansu. He also carried out the first excavations (1921-1926) at the Palaeolithic cave site at Choukoutien (Zhoukoudian). Andersson started Sweden's Museum of Far Eastern Antiquities.
Ang-ang-hsi: CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: A group of Neolithic sites in Manchuria which demonstrate strong connections with the Novopetrovka and Gromatukha cultures of the Middle Amur in eastern Siberia, especially in stone tool technology. Animal, fish and mollusk remains occur on the sites.
Anlo: CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: A site in Holland with a long sequence of occupation, starting with the Funnel Beaker culture. It was followed by a cattle enclosure during the Late Neolithic (protruding foot beaker) people, then a cemetery of five flat graves with foot beakers and bell beakers with cord ornament. The next phase was a settlement with late varieties of Beaker pottery, followed by a Middle Bronze Age plow soil, and a Late Bronze Age urnfield.
Antequera: SYNONYM: Roman Anticaria, Moorish Madinah Antakira
CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: The site of a town in Málaga province, in the autonomous community (region) of Andalusia, southern Spain, northwest of Málaga, at the foot of the Sierra del Torcal which is famous for its three Neolithic (Copper Age) chambered tombs (dolmens): the Cuevas de Menga, de Viera, and El Romeral. They are partially cut into the hillside, but each is constructed differently. The Cueva de Menga has a huge orthostat chamber c 5 m wide, 3 m high, and 1.45 m long, roofed by five large capstones supported by three central pillars and drystone walls. Human figures in scenes are carved on its walls. The Cueva de Romeral has a magnificent corbel vault nearly 5 m high, dry-stone tholos, and a passage over 30 m long. The Cuevas de Viera has a long orthostat-lined passage with porthole slabs and a small square chamber. A cemetery of rock-cut tombs of the Bronze Age imitating the tholos form is nearby.
Antioch: SYNONYM: Antiochia, Antioch Pisidian, Antiocheia Pisidias, Caesarea Antiochia
CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: An ancient city of Phrygia near the Orontes River and modern Yalvaç in Turkey. It was founded in 300 BC by Seleucus I (c 358-281 BC) after the death of Alexander the Great and was one of the two capitals of the Parthian Empire. It became a Roman city in 64 BC at the hands of Pompey and served as a capital of the province of Syria and was one of the three most important cities of the Roman world. Antioch peaked under Hadrian as a civil and military administrative center, then suffered Persian invasions during the 3rd century AD. It was rebuilt by Diocletian and successive emperors form the 4th century AD. The plain of Anitoch was occupied from the Neolithic onwards. Its ruins include a large rock cutting which may have held the temple of Men Ascaënus, the local Phrygian deity.
Anza: SYNONYM: Anzabegovo
CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: A large settlement of the First Neolithic and Early Vinca periods of Macedonia near the Bregnalnica River. Excavations have revealed a four-phase occupation c 5300-4200 BC. There was cultivation of emmer and wheat as well as some herding. The architecture was mud brick walls to wattle-and-daub timber-framed houses. The artifacts are similar to those found in northern Greece and the Anatolian Late Neolithic.
Aphrodisias: CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: A Pre-Classical and Classical city on the Meander River of southwest Turkey with extant remains of the Roman period, including an agora, odeum, temple of Aphrodite, and baths. There also was an abundance of free-standing statues. The Pre-Classical mounds show Late Neolithic occupation and a sequence of Late Chalcolithic to Late Bronze Age artifacts.
Arapi: CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: A Neolithic-Early Bronze Age settlement site / mound in Thessaly, Greece. It was first occupied in the Aceramic Neolithic and is characterized by polychrome decorated pottery.
Archéodrome de Beaune: CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: A museum of reconstructed buildings and experimental archaeology founded in 1978 in Côte d'Or, France. There is a Palaeolithic encampment, a Neolithic house, and Roman siege works.
Arctic Small Tool tradition: CATEGORY: culture
DEFINITION: The first coastal dwellers of the true Arctic regions who appeared before 2200 BC and who had a hunting tradition and a distinctive set of stone tools, weapon tips, and adzes of small size (hence the name). Their sites stretched from the Bering Sea across the north Canadian coast as far east as northernmost Greenland, though there is no evidence of sleds or boats. Within a century or two of 2000 BC, they also expanded southward in Alaska to the Alaska Peninsula and south along the northeastern American coast to the Gulf of St. Lawrence. The Denbigh Flint Complex (or Arctic Denbigh culture, named for the type site Cape Denbigh, Alaska) is the characteristic tool assemblage. It included small chipped stone artifacts derived from Neolithic eastern Siberia -- such as blades, microblades, burins, scrapers, large bifacial projectile points. There was no pottery and the economics were balanced between products of the land (caribou, lake and river fish, musk ox) and sea mammals. Approximate dates range from 4000-1000 BC and this tradition is thought to be associated with ancestral Eskimo. In Canada and Greenland, the Small Tool people gradually developed into the Dorset culture. In Alaska, the Small Tool people disappeared and were replaced by 400 BC by people of the Norton culture who used Siberian-type pottery.
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.
Argissa: CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: An important Neolithic site in Thessaly, northern Greece, which has given much information on the early phases of the Greek Aceramic Neolithic period. In the Argissa Magula near Larissa, there have been early prepottery Neolithic finds of probably the 6th millennium BC. Timber-framed huts consisted of shallow mud-walled pits that were likely roofed with branches. Obsidian was already being traded and flint tools were made. The earliest known domesticated cattle date from about 6000 BC at Argissa (and Nea Nikomedeia) in Greece, in association with cultivated einkorn, emmer wheat, and barley, millet, lentils. Sheep, goats, and pigs were also cultivate and kept. This site (along with Knossos) is also responsible for the earliest evidence of agriculture, soon after 7000 BC. The site was occupied throughout the Neolithic and well into the Bronze Age.
Argos: SYNONYM: Argos (meaning agricultural plain)"
CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: City in the northeastern Peloponnese of Greece, just north of the head of the Gulf of Argolis. The name was applied to several districts of ancient Greece but it is most often used to describe the easternmost part of the Peloponnesian peninsula and the city of Argos was its capital. Homer described it as the fertile plain inhabited by Agamemnon, Diomedes, and other heroes in the Iliad". The site was probably occupied since the Neolithic / Early Bronze Age and was very prominent in Mycenaean times (c 1300-1200 BC). Argos was probably the base of Dorian operations in the Peloponnese c 1100-1000 BC and from then on the dominant city-state of Argolis until it allied itself with Sparta after the Peloponnesian War in 420 BC. In 392 it broke with Sparta to unite with Corinth in the Corinthian War. Argos later joined the Achaean League (229) and Argos became its center after the Roman conquest and destruction of Corinth (146). The city flourished in Byzantine times and did not decline until around 1204 AD. One tyrant Pheidon is thought to have introduced primitive coinage and a weights and measures system. Archaeological excavations began in 1854 on the Argive Heraeum and Argos was famed for its connection with the goddess Hera. There was a natural sanctuary there long before the Dorians came c 1100-1000 BC. The shrine is reported to be of extreme antiquity. The statue of Hera for a new 5th-century temple was done by the celebrated sculptor Polycleitus whose work was said to rival that of Pheidias the sculptor of the Parthenon. There is material evidence of Neolithic Early and Middle Bronze Age a Mycenaean cemetery with chamber tombs Geometric and Archaic features and ruins of the classical and Roman city. The Larisa hill was evidently the Mycenaean acropolis and citadel holding a classical temple. There was also a Roman theater and small odeum. The site is mostly covered by the modern city."
Ariusd: SYNONYM: Erosd
CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: A Late Neolithic settlement (c 3000 BC) found on a site in Romania's Upper Olt Valley. The regional painted ware is a variant of the Cucuteni-Tripolye culture. At the site, there are at least seven occupation horizons, some with gold jewelry and copper artifacts. The seventh level was a late Copper Age assemblage of the Schneckenberg type.
ash mound: CATEGORY: feature
DEFINITION: A site type found in India where the remains of Neolithic cattle pens of the 3rd millennium BC created by regular fires burning palisades enclosing cattle.
Asikli Hüyük: CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: An Aceramic Neolithic site in central Anatolia, near an obsidian source (Ciftlik) and probably involved in extracting and trading the material. Radiocarbon dates of unstratified contexts at the site are c 7000-6650 BC. It may have been contemporary with Hacilar.
Aswad, Tell: CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: An Aceramic Neolithic site in Syria's Damascus basin, occupied c 7800-6600 BC. There is evidence of early farming (plant cultivation including barley, cereals, emmer wheat, lentils, peas, pulses).
Aszód: CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: A Late Neolithic site (4th millennium BC) in the Zagyva Valley, 30 km east of Budapest, Hungary. There are remains of a settlement with 40 rectangular houses containing rich assemblages and a cemetery with rows of graves. There are varying degrees of wealth in the grave goods. Aszód is a rare example of a site east of the Danube River with a western Hungarian material culture.
Athens: SYNONYM: 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.
Auvernier: CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: A Neolithic and Late Bronze Age lake dwelling on the northern edge of Lake Neuchâtel, Switzerland with Cortaillod, Horgen, and Corded Ware materials as well as Hallstatt (c 1100-750 BC).
Avebury: CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: A site in Wiltshire, England, at which stands one of Britain's finest megalithic monuments (known as henges) and one of the largest ceremonial structures in Europe. It was built c 2000 BC in the Neolithic, where the ridgeways of southern England meet, a natural site for tribal gatherings. It consists of a large bank with internal ditch (1.2 km long) with four equally spaced entrances. Inside the ditch was set a circle of 98 sarsen stones, weighing as much as 40 tons each. In the center were two smaller stone circles, each c 100 meters in diameter. The northern circle contains a U-shaped setting of three large stones, and the southern inner circle once had a complex arrangement of stones at its center. The Ring Stone, a huge stone perforated by a natural hole, stood within the earthworks and main stone circle at the southern entrance. The southern entrance leads out to two parallel rows of sarsens forming an avenue 15 m wide and 2.5 km long which ends at a ritual building (the so-called Sanctuary) on Overton Hill. Traces of a second avenue remain on the opposite side of the monument. From the bottom of the ditch came sherds of Neolithic Windmill Hill, Peterborough, and Grooved Ware styles, while higher up were fragments of South British (Long Necked) Beaker and Bronze Age pottery. Burials with Beaker and Rinyo-Clacton wares have been excavated at the bases of some of the stones. Near the southern end of the Avenue was an occupation site with Neolithic and Beaker sherds. The complex geometry of the site is studied, especially the possible astronomical alignments built into it. The circles at Avebury and the wooden structure on Overton Hill were all probably built at the same time by Neolithic communities.
Avebury, Lord (formerly Sir John Lubbock) (1834-1913): CATEGORY: person
DEFINITION: British archaeologist whose book Prehistoric Times" (7 editions between 1865-1913) achieved bestseller status. An early convert to Charles Darwin's theory of evolution Lord Avebury popularized prehistory both as a term and a subject. He introduced the words "Palaeolithic" (old) and "Neolithic" (new) thereby expanding the three-age system (Thomsen and Worsaae) to a four-age system dividing the Stone Age into old and new periods. He also interpreted cultural change as evidence of invasion from the east and the development of society as the result of economic advance."
ax: SYNONYM: 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."
ax factory: SYNONYM: axe factory
CATEGORY: feature
DEFINITION: An often isolated outcrop of high-quality rock in Europe during the Neolithic period. These sources were exploited for the production of polished stone axes and this became an important industry of the time. The tools were roughly flaked at the factory sites and traded, either as blanks or as finished axes. There were many ax factories in Britain's highlands, northern Ireland, and northwest France. Microscopic analysis is used to identify the rocks by their distinctive crystalline structure, which has enabled the trading networks to be reconstructed.
Ayios Epiktitos-Vrysi: CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: A Neolithic site in northern Cyprus of the late 5th millennium BC with a perimeter wall and ditch protecting semi-subterranean houses.
Azmak, Tell: SYNONYM: Asmaska Moghila
CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: A tell site in southern Bulgaria of the Neolithic and Copper Age. Several settlement horizons, building levels of early Neolithic Karanovo I culture, building levels of Karanovo V and VI cultures, and building phases of Early Bronze Age Karanovo VII culture have been unearthed. The layouts of the villages may yield architectural detail for the whole sequence.
B Group: SYNONYM: B Horizon
CATEGORY: culture
DEFINITION: A term no longer used to describe the final stages of the Neolithic A Group in Nubia (c 2800-2300 BC), prior to the beginning of the C Group phase. In soils, the B horizon lies immediately beneath the A horizon and may reach a depth of 65 to 90 centimeters (26 to 35 inches). It is a zone of more moderate weathering in which there is an accumulation of many of the products removed from the A horizon.
Bükk: CATEGORY: site; culture
DEFINITION: A rugged mountain range in northern Hungary which gave its name to a Middle Neolithic pottery culture of the late 5th millennium BC. There are a number of cave sites with evidence of seasonal occupation and use of rocks for tools. There are hoards of axes and flint blades as well as painted and incised pottery. Obsidian was also exchanged even though there are volcanic tuffs, lavas, and post-volcanic hot springs.
Badarian: CATEGORY: culture
DEFINITION: An Upper Egyptian, Predynastic culture of the later 5th millennium BC, named for the type site of el-Badari, on the east bank of the Nile River. It extended over much of Middle Egypt also. Excavations during the 1920s revealed settlements and cemeteries dating to about 4000 BC (Neolithic). Their fine pottery, black-topped brown ware (later red), was very thin-walled, well-baked, and often decorated with a burnished ripple. This effect was apparently produced by firing it inverted to prevent the air from circulating inside and over the upper rim, keeping these areas black whereas the base and lower wall externally were oxidized to brown or a good red color. Other remains include combs and spoons of ivory, slate palettes, female figurines; and copper, shell, and stone beads. Badarian materials have also been found at Jazirat Armant, al-Hammamiyah, Hierakonpolis (modern Kawm al-Ahmar), al-Matmar, and Tall al-Kawm al-Kabir. Flinders Petrie and other found large numbers of graves with artifacts in 1893-1894 and divided it into two phases: Naqada Culture I and Naqada Culture II.
Baile Herculane: CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: A large cave site in Rumania where flint implements from the Paleolithic Period (about 2,500,000 years ago) and Neolithic objects were found. There is important Palaeolithic, Mesolithic, Neolithic and Copper Age stratigraphy comprising three main occupation horizons: Upper Palaeolithic levels corresponding to the Würm II phase and defined by a quartzite industry with end scrapers; a late Mesolithic level with microlithic flints, crude quartzite tools, and Danube fish bones; and levels of Late Copper Age occupation.
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.
Bandkeramik: SYNONYM: Linearbandkeramik, LBK, Linienbandkeramik (German)
CATEGORY: ceramics; culture
DEFINITION: A pottery of the Danubian I culture, a Neolithic culture that existed over large areas of Europe north and west of the Danube River c 5th millennium BC. It consists of hemispherical bowls and globular jars, usually round-based and strongly suggesting copies of gourds. The name refers specifically to the standard incised linear decoration which was pairs of parallel lines forming spirals, meanders, chevrons, etc. There was farming of emmer wheat and barley and the keeping of domestic animals such as cattle. The most common stone tool was a polished stone adze. The people lived in large rectangular houses in medium-sized village communities or as small, dispersed clusters.
Banpo: CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: The site of an early Yangshao Neolithic village, now a museum at Xi'an, China, in the basin of the confluence of the Yellow River (Huang Ho), the Fen Ho, and Kuei Shui. Radiocarbon dates range from c 4800-4300 BC. The settlement was about 50,000 sq. meters and included a cemetery and pottery kilns outside a ditch that surrounded the residences. Dogs, cattle, sheep, chicken and pigs were domesticated and millet, rice, kaoling, and possibly soybeans grown. The horse and silkworm may also have been raised. Unpainted pottery was cord-marked or stamped, and fine ceremonial" pottery vessels were painted in black or red with some simple geometric patterns and drawings of fish turtles deer and faces. There were some elaborately worked objects in jade as well as everyday objects made from flint bone and groundstone. Sites with similar remains have been excavated at nearby Jiangzhai Baoji Beishouling and Hua Xian Yuanjunmiao. These sites all exhibit the first evidence of food production in China."
Banshan: SYNONYM: Pan-shan
CATEGORY: site; culture; artifact
DEFINITION: Site of a Neolithic cemetery in the Tao River valley of China, the type site of the Banshan (or Pan-shan) culture which belongs to the western or Gansu branch of the Yangshao Neolithic. Banshan is best known for its painted pottery first found in a grave in 1923. Pan-shan ware is generally considered to date from between 2500-2000 BC, but it may extend as far back as 3000 BC or be as late as c 1500 BC (the Shang dynasty). Most are unglazed pottery urns or reddish brown with painted designs in black and brown, probably applied with a brush, consisting of geometric patterns or stylized figures of people, fish, or birds. The wares probably shaped on a slow or hand-turned wheel. The handles are set low on the body of the urns, and the lower part of the body is left undecorated -- much like Greek Proto-Geometric funerary ware. It was an important find because of the lack of Neolithic Chinese pottery up to 1923. A late stage of Banshan is named after the site of Machang.
Banshan pottery: CATEGORY: artifact
DEFINITION: site of a Neolithic cemetery in the Tao River valley of china, the type site of the Banshan (or Pan-shan) culture which belongs to the western or Gansu branch of the Yangshao Neolithic. Banshan is best known for its painted pottery first found in a grave in 1923. Pan-shan ware is generally considered to date from between 2500-2000 BC, but it may extend as far back as 3000 BC or be as late as c 1500 BC (the Shang dynasty). Most are unglazed pottery urns or reddish brown with painted designs in black and brown, probably applied with a brush, consisting of geometric patterns or stylized figures of people, fish, or birds. The wares probably shaped on a slow or hand-turned wheel. The handles are set low on the body of the urns, and the lower part of the body is left undecorated -- much like Greek Proto-geometric funerary ware. It was an important find because of the lack of Neolithic Chinese pottery up to 1923. A late stage of Banshan is named after the site of Machang.
Baoji: SYNONYM: Pao-chi
CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: An area situated on the north bank of the Wei River, a strategic and transportation center since early times, controlling the northern end of a pass across the Tsinling Mountains. There are Neolithic remains which may be antecedents of the Banpo culture. Western Zhou bronzes have been found in the Baoji area. Tombs of the 19th century BC contained ritual vessels and the earliest known evidence of silk embroidery.
barbed and tanged arrowhead: CATEGORY: artifact
DEFINITION: Triangular-shaped flint arrowheads of the later Neolithic and early Bronze Age in Europe. Distinctive in having a short rectangular tang on the base opposite the point, symmetrically set either side of which is a barb. The tang was used to secure the arrow tip to its shaft and usually projects slightly below the ends of the barbs.
Barkaer: CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: A site of the final Early Neolithic (phase C, TRB culture) in northeast Jutland, Denmark. There was a cobbled street, two timber buildings (80 m long and divided into 26 single rooms) which were at first thought to be houses but may have been burial structures. Offerings in the pits below the buildings included amber beads, copper objects, and pottery.
barley: CATEGORY: flora
DEFINITION: A hardy group of staple cereals (genus Hordeum), cultivated in all parts of the world and since at least 7000 BC in the Near East, at least as early as wheat. The two-row barley, Hordeum distichum, was derived from the wild H. spontaneum, distributed from the Aegean to the Hindu Kush. It is recorded from Jarmo, and spread as far as Neolithic Switzerland before being replaced by the second group. Six-row barleys, H. hexastichum, arose from H. distichum in cultivation. Its distribution extended from China to Egypt and Switzerland, and it is still occasionally grown. Modern barleys are all H. tetrastichum, a development from hexastichum recorded as early as the Neolithic in Britain and Denmark. All the domestic barleys are closely related and their nomenclature is jumbled. Barley is used as food (in the US and Great Britain) and in the preparation of malt liquors and spirits.
Barnenez: CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: A Neolithic site in Brittany with radiocarbon dates in the 5th millennium BC. It consists of two long cairns, one with 11 passage graves placed side by side. They display a range of architectural techniques, using both large megalithic slabs and drystone walling; some chambers had corbelled vaults. Its dates may make it one of the earliest megalithic tombs in Europe.
barrow: SYNONYM: 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.
Batalimo: CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: A site in the Central African Republic with a large Neolithic tool assemblage of flakes, sidescrapers, flaked axes, and elaborately decorated pottery.
battle-ax: SYNONYM: battleaxe, battle-axe
CATEGORY: lithics
DEFINITION: A type of prehistoric stone weapon, designed as a weapon of war. It is always of the shaft-hole variety, and frequently has a hammer, knob, or point at the opposite end from the cutting edge. In stone, they are common throughout most of Europe in the Late Neolithic and Copper Age, and often associated with corded ware and beakers. (The term Battle-Ax culture is often used as a synonym for Corded Ware or Single Grave culture.) Further east, more elaborate ones of copper or gold were more ceremonial than functional. The Vikings made iron battle-axes and used them well into the Middle Ages. The pole-ax is distinguished from the battle-ax by a spike on the back of the ax.
Battle-Ax culture: SYNONYM: Battle-Axe culture; Single-Grave culture; Single Grave culture; Battle Ax culture, Corded Ware culture
CATEGORY: culture
DEFINITION: A number of Late Neolithic cultural groups in Europe that appeared between 2800-2300 BC. So-named for their characteristic shaft-hole polished stone battle-ax, the people were also known for their use of horses. Their place of origin is not certain, but it was most likely east rather than west of their area of spread. It was a homogeneous culture with central European trade links and it remained in some areas through the Stone and Bronze ages. In central Europe, the Beaker Folk came into contact with the Battle-Ax culture, which was also characterized by beaker-shaped pottery (though different in detail). The two cultures gradually intermixed and later spread from central Europe to eastern England. The Battle-Ax people were also responsible for the dissemination of Indo-European speech.
Beacharra ware: CATEGORY: artifact
DEFINITION: Style of decorated middle Neolithic pottery found in western parts of Scotland and classified by Stuart Piggott into three groups: unornamented bag-shaped bowls (A); decorated carinated bowls with a rim diameter less than the diameter at the carination and incised or channeled ornament (B); and small bowls with panel ornament in fine whipped cord (C).
Beaker people: SYNONYM: Beaker Folk, Beaker culture; Bell Beaker culture
CATEGORY: culture
DEFINITION: A widespread Late Neolithic European people of the third and second millennium BC named after the characteristic bell-shaped beakers found buried with their dead. These people spread a knowledge of metalworking in central and western Europe from c 2500-2000 BC. They first came to Britain between 1900-1800 BC in successive waves, via Holland, from the Rhineland. Their origins are uncertain, with theories of them being the Battle-Ax people from south Russia and Spanish Megalithic people from Almeria or from Portugal and Hungary. They were copper and bronze workers and famous for their great collective tombs. The assemblages of grave goods -- decorated pottery, fighting equipment (arrowheads, wristguards, daggers) -- were characteristic of the people, who lived in small groups mainly by major river routes as they were known traders. Burial was by contracted inhumation in a trench, or under a round barrow, or as a secondary burial in some form of chamber tomb. Each burial was accompanied by a beaker, presumably to hold drink, probably alcoholic, for the dead man's last journey.
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.
Beidha: SYNONYM: Bayda', Al-, Beida
CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: A site in south-central Yemen near Petra that was first occupied in the Early Natufian and Aceramic Neolithic. It is situated on a high plateau and, until the unification of the two Yemen states in 1990, was part of North Yemen (San'a'), though it lay near the disputed frontier with South Yemen. At first it was a semi-permanent camp which lived off goat and ibex. Beidha was reoccupied c 7000 BC by a Pre-Pottery Neolithic A [PPNA} group, who lived in a planned community of roughly circular semi-subterranean houses. They domesticated goats and cultivated emmer, wheat, and barley. There was a succeeding PPNB phase in which the buildings changed to complexes of large rectangular rooms, each with small workshops attached and with plastered floors and walls. Burials without skulls were found and there was also a separate ritual area away from the village. Finds from the site include materials from great distances, including obsidian from Anatolia and cowries and mother-of-pearl from the Red Sea.
Bel'kachi I: CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: A settlement site on the Aldan River in central Siberia, occupied during the Neolithic (c 4th millennium BC). Finds include the earliest date for pottery in Siberia, for a hand-molded, sand-tempered ware decorated with net or mat impressions. There was a succeeding phase, often known as the Bel'kachinsk culture (3rd millennium BC), which had distinctive pottery style, decorated with impressions from a cord-wrapped paddle. In that area during the Late Neolithic (2nd millennium BC), check-stamped ware, made by beating with a grooved paddle, appeared. Changes in stone and bone tools occurred during the development of the Neolithic, but throughout the economic basis remained hunting and fishing.
Beldibi: CATEGORY: site; culture
DEFINITION: A rock shelter which gave its name to a Mesolithic or 'Proto-Neolithic' culture succeeding the Belbasi culture in southern Anatolia. Phases contained imported obsidian and early forms of pottery. There is no evidence of food production or herding. Bones of deer, ibex, and cattle occur and subsistence was likely by coastal fishing and the gathering of wild grain.
Bell Beaker: CATEGORY: ceramics; culture
DEFINITION: A type of pottery vessel found all over western and central Europe from the final Neolithic or Chalcolithic, c 2500-1800 BC. The culture's name derives from the characteristic pottery which looks like an inverted bell with globular body and flaring rim. The beakers were valuable and highly decorated. They are often associated with special artifacts in grave assemblages, including polished stone wristguards, V-perforated buttons, and copper-tanged daggers.
bi disk: SYNONYM: bi
CATEGORY: artifact
DEFINITION: A flat jade disc with a small hole in the center, made in ancient China for ceremonial purposes, possibly symbolizing Heaven. Bi disks have also been described in ancient Chinese texts as a symbol of rank. Jade disks and disklike axes have been found in 4th- and 3rd-millennium BC graves at east-coast Neolithic sites such as Beiyinyangying. Polished stone disk segments are known still earlier at Banpo.
Boat-ax culture: SYNONYM: Boat-axe culture, Boat Axe culture
CATEGORY: culture
DEFINITION: A culture of eastern Scandinavia found in the late Neolithic Period, c 2000 BC, that was an outlier of the European Battle-Ax cultures. This single-grave culture spread rapidly through Sweden, Finland, and the Danish islands. The people displayed the aspects of a homogeneous culture, with central European trade links. Its characteristic weapon is a slender stone battle-ax shaped like a simple boat with upturned ends. The term 'Boat-ax culture' is sometimes used for the east Scandinavian variant of the Single Grave or Corded Ware culture in which these axes occur.
boatmaking: CATEGORY: artifact
DEFINITION: Boatmaking and navigation has been important to man for thousands of years -- for communication, transport, and fishing. There is much evidence of dugout canoes from Mesolithic times onward, the earliest being at Perth and in Denmark. Neolithic people used skiffs as well as dugout canoes. Plank boats appeared in the Middle Bronze Age. In the Roman period, boats started being made with nails. Seagoing vessels existed, but there is not much evidence except for skin boats, like the Irish curragh. Classical writers describe plank-built boats with sails of leather on the Atlantic before the Romans arrived. Full documentation begins only with the Vikings. The Americas have yielded two regional pre-conquest types of craft: the reed caballitos of the Peruvian coast and Lake Titicaca, and the seagoing balsa rafts from the Gulf of Guayaquil. The oldest boat in Europe was found on the Tay. It is a dugout canoe used by Maglemosian immigrants from Denmark 10,000 years ago.
Bocca Quadrata: SYNONYM: Square Mouth
CATEGORY: culture
DEFINITION: A Middle Neolithic culture of northern Italy characterized by pottery vessels with rounded bodies and square mouths, decorated with incised geometric motifs.
Boian: CATEGORY: culture
DEFINITION: A Neolithic culture (c 7000-3500 BC, some say Middle Neolithic c 4200-3700 BC) in lower Danube valley of southern Romania and characterized by terrace-floodplain settlements, consisting at first of mud huts and later of fortified promontory settlements of small tells. The Boian phase was marked by the introduction of copper axes, the extension of agriculture, and the breeding of domestic animals. The distinctive Boian pottery was decorated by rippling, painting, and excised or incised linear designs with white paste. Intramural burial is most common, but occasional large inhumation cemeteries are known. By spreading northward into Transylvania and northeastward to Moldavia, the Boian culture gradually assimilated earlier cultures of those areas. Flourishing exchange networks are known to involve Prut Valley flint, Spondylus shells from the Black Sea, and copper.
Bosumpra: CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: A cave site near Abetifi, Ghana, which yielded one of the first scientifically excavated assemblages of a West African Neolithic industry. Radiocarbon dating has shown that occupation began around the middle 4th millennium BC and continued for at least 3000 years. Throughout the sequence, a microlithic chipped-stone industry was associated with simple pottery and with ground-stone ax- or hoe-like implements.
Bougon: CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: A cemetery site of megalithic tombs at Deux-Sèvres, France with radiocarbon dates to the mid-5th millennium BC, making them among the oldest chambered tombs in Europe. There is pottery from the Early Neolithic and Late Neolithic/Early Bronze Age.
Bouqras: CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: 7th-millennium BC Pre-Pottery Neolithic village near the River Euphrates in Syria. The first occupation phase had two levels with rectangular mud-brick houses. The next four levels had more solid mud-brick houses, some with plastered floors, benches, and pillars. The economy was based on hunting of wild animals, except in the final phase when sheep and cattle were bred. Sickle blades, pounders, and querns were used for wild or cultivated plants in the first phase. Artifacts include a white ware, made of mixed lime and ash and used to cover baskets, producing watertight vessels. Obsidian occurs in large quantities, indicating extensive trade networks linking Bouqras with the source sites in Anatolia.
Boyne: SYNONYM: Boyne Valley tombs
CATEGORY: site; culture
DEFINITION: The site of prehistoric ritual monuments and Neolithic passage graves in the valley of the River Boyne, Ireland, dating to the 4th millennium BC. The complex includes five henges, a number of mounds, and the three great passage graves of Newgrange, Dowth, and Knowth. These megalithic tombs are set in round mounds and usually set on hilltops or grouped in cemeteries. These structures are notable for their size, their decoration, and the architectural expertise involved. The term 'Boyne culture' is sometimes used to describe the material found inside passage graves all over Ireland. Its characteristics are highly decorated Carrowkeel style of pottery, bone pins with poppy- or mushroom-shaped heads, pendants, and beads.
Broad Spectrum Revolution: SYNONYM: Kebaran Complex, Natufian
CATEGORY: term
DEFINITION: A theory that there was a subsistence change in western Asia to a wide range of foodstuffs, including small mammals, invertebrates, aquatic resources, and plants in the Late Pleistocene -- a prelude to the 'Neolithic revolution'.
Bubanj: SYNONYM: Bubanj-Hum
CATEGORY: culture
DEFINITION: A Late Neolithic culture of late 4th to early 3rd millennia BC in the Morava valley of eastern Yugoslavia, close to Nis. The site, on a gravel terrace of a river, was first excavated in the 1950s and the culture is derived from the Vinca and closely related to Salcuta in Romania. The main periods recognized include the early Neolithic Starcevo with graphite painted ware and Vinca-like dark burnished ware; a phase of Baden pottery; and an Early Bronze Age occupation.
Bukit Tengku Lembu: CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: A rock shelter site in Malaysia with remains related to the Ban Kao Neolithic and black ware that may be Indo-Roman rouletted ware.
Burgaschi-See Sud: CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: A lake settlement site of the Neolithic Cortaillod culture in Switzerland, dated to the mid-4th millennium BC. The organic remains are well-preserved as on other Cortaillod sites. The most important hunted fauna were red deer, roe deer, aurochs, and wild boar. Domesticated cattle, sheep, goat and pig were kept. Artifacts include copper beads.
burial: CATEGORY: term
DEFINITION: Inhumation or cremation -- the laying of a body in the ground, in a natural or artificial chamber, or in an urn after burning. In collective burial, a single chamber is used for more than one corpse. A primary burial is one for which a burial monument such as a barrow was erected. The term secondary burial is used for the practice of collecting the bones of a skeleton after the flesh has decayed, and placing them in some form of ossuary. In fractional burial, only some of the bones are so collected and interred. Archaeologists can learn a great deal about prehistoric societies by studying skeletons and the way they were buried. In some cultures, bodies were buried stretched out; in others they were placed in the ground in a fetal, or flexed position. In still other societies, the dead were exposed on platforms or in charnel houses, then when the flesh had decayed or been scavenged, the disarticulated bones were made into a bundle and buried. Sometimes bodies were cremated and the remains buried. Goods interred with a burial give many clues to the social position of the person and their culture and the study of bones can reveal sex, age, and information about nutrition and disease. The earliest deliberate burial of their dead was that of Neanderthal man of Palaeolithic times 100,000 years ago. They were buried in the cave in which the family continued to live. Food and tools were buried with them, proof of the belief in an afterlife. Neolithic man buried his dead in the long barrow, a communal tomb. Inhumation was followed by cremation in the Late Bronze Age.
burial mound: CATEGORY: feature
DEFINITION: A large artificial hill of earth and stones built or placed over the remains of the dead at the time of burial. In England the equivalent term is barrow; in Scotland, cairn; and in Europe and elsewhere, tumulus. In western Europe and the British Isles, burial cairns and barrows date primarily from the Neolithic Period and Early Bronze Age (4000 BC-600 AD).
Burzahom: CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: A Neolithic site in the Vale of Kashmir with phases of occupation dating from c 3050 BC to the 3rd-4th centuries AD. Deep pit dwellings are associated with ground stone axes, bone tools, and coarse gray burnished pottery. These characteristics plus the absence of blades, use of pierced rectangular knives, and association of dog skeletons with human burials, all seem to point to connections with central and northern Asia, as Mongolia, rather than with the rest of the Indian subcontinent. Hunting seems to have been the main basis of the economy. Phase II has houses of mud and mudbrick and Phase III has a group of large stones arranged in a rough semicircle.
Butmir: CATEGORY: culture; site
DEFINITION: A Late Neolithic settlement near Sarajevo in Bosnia which gave its name to a culture, though the type site is not characteristic of the entire Butmir culture. The site represents a classic or late phase, defined by richly decorated ceramics (with incised meander designs) and a wide range of fired clay anthropomorphic figurines of various physical types, costume, and pathological condition. The culture was related to the Vinca culture. The Butmir culture comprises the Middle and Late Neolithic of central Bosnia, in the period c 4350-3700 BC.
Byblos: SYNONYM: modern Gebeil, Gubla, Jubeil, Gebail, Jubayl, Jebeil; ancient/biblical Gebal; adjective Jiblite (Kubna, ancient Egyptian; Gubla, Akkadian)
CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: An ancient seaport on the Mediterranean coast just north of Beirut, Lebanon and one of the oldest continuously inhabited towns in the world. Papyrus received its early Greek name (byblos, byblinos) from its being exported to the Aegean through Byblos. The English word Bible is derived from byblos as the (papyrus) book." Excavations revealed that Byblos was occupied at least by the Neolithic period (c 8000-4000 BC) and that an extensive settlement developed during the 4th millennium BC. Byblos was the main harbor for exporting cedar and other valuable wood to Egypt from 3000 BC on. Egyptian monuments and inscriptions on the site describe to close relations with the Nile valley throughout the second half of the 2nd millennium. During Egypt's 12th dynasty (1938-1756 BC) Byblos became an Egyptian dependency and the chief goddess of the city Baalat with her well-known temple at Byblos was worshipped in Egypt. After the collapse of the Egyptian New Kingdom in the 11th century BC Byblos became the most important city of Phoenicia. Byblos has yielded almost all of the known early Phoenician inscriptions most of them dating from the 10th century BC. The crusaders captured the town in 1103 but they later lost it to the Ayyubids in 1189. The ruins today consist of the crusader ramparts and gate; a Roman colonnade and small theater; Phoenician ramparts three major temples and a necropolis."
Cadbury: SYNONYM: 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.
Cai Beo: CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: A site in north Vietnam with a sequence from the late Hoabinhian stone tool so to edge-grinding (c 5000 BC) to Neolithic polished stone adzes (c 4500 BC).
callaïs: CATEGORY: geology; artifact
DEFINITION: A greenish decorative stone occasionally used for beads from the Late Neolithic to Early Bronze Age in western Europe.
Cambodia: SYNONYM: Kampuchea
CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: Neolithic peoples inhabited present-day Cambodia during the 2nd and 1st millennia BC. Stone tools have been found in terraces of the Mekong River in possible association with tektites from a shower that fell c 600,000 to 700,000 years ago. In western Cambodia there is an important Hoabinhian sequence from the cave of Laang Spean dating to 4300 BC. A major Neolithic mound site at Somrong Sen yielded elaborate assemblage which seems to predate 100 BC. Khmer civilization developed over several distinct periods, starting with the Hindu-Buddhist kingdoms of Funan and Chenla in the 1st century AD, which extended into the 8th century.
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.
Can Hasan: CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: The site of a number of tells in southern Turkey. Can Hasan III was an aceramic Neolithic settlement c 6500 BC. There were at least seven structural phases, with dark burnished pottery in several levels and painted pottery in one. The villagers were agriculturists, growing einkorn and emmer, lentil, and vetch in the earlier phases. The main Can Hasan mound was occupied in the late Neolithic and Chalcolithic periods.
cannibalism: CATEGORY: term
DEFINITION: The eating of human flesh by men. This is done either out of dire need or for ritual purposes, when parts of deceased relatives or enemies may be eaten so that their power can be magically acquired. Disarticulated bones of humans, as well as animals, have been found in the ditches of Neolithic camps, which is thought to be suggestive of cannibalism. Its existence in Paleolithic cultures is suggested by the lengthwise splitting of long bones so as to extract marrow from them. In Mesoamerica, there is evidence among hunter-gatherers at start of Holocene through the 1st millennium BC in farming villages. There were many written documents concerning cannibalism from the Aztecs of the 15th century AD. To the Aztecs, the human flesh sacrificed and offered to the gods became a sacred food.
Capelitti: CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: A cave site in the Aures Mountains of eastern Algeria which has evidence of early North African pastorialism by a 'Caspian Neolithic' population. Sheep and/or goats appear to have coincided with the beginning of pottery-making from the 5th millennium BC. By the 3rd millennium, small domestic cattle are also attested.
Carchemish: SYNONYM: Europus
CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: An ancient city-state near modern Jarabulus, Syria. The site was a strategic crossing at the Euphrates River for caravans in Syrian, Mesopotamian, and Anatolian trade. The great tell of Carchemish was excavated by David G. Hogarth and later by Sir Leonard Woolley and was first occupied in the Neolithic Period. Halaf ware from the Chalcolithic (5th millennium BC) was found as well as later finds of Uruk-Jamdat Nasr pottery, a product of the southern Euphrates Valley in Sumerian cities of c 3000 BC. There were also tombs from the end of the Early Bronze (c 2300 BC) and the Middle and Late Bronze Age (c 2300-1550; c 1550-1200 BC). Written records concerning Carchemish first appear in the Mari letters -- royal archives of Mari, c 18th century BC. At that time the city was a center for trading wood and shipped Anatolian timber down the Euphrates. The large fortified citadel was important under the empire of the Hittites (14th century BC) and remained so after the fall of the empire, during the period of Syro-Hittite city-states (12th-8th centuries BC). The monumental city gates, temples, and palaces all bore considerable numbers of carved reliefs and inscriptions of the period. The Hittite hieroglyphic inscriptions were of great importance in helping to piece together its history down to its annexation by Assyria in 716 BC.
Cardial Ware: SYNONYM: Cardial pottery
CATEGORY: ceramics
DEFINITION: An impressed ware of the Early Neolithic in the western Mediterranean (Sardinia, Corsica, Liguria, Provence, and Spain). Soft clay was impressed with the serrated edge of the cardium (cockle) shell, from which it received its name.
Carnac: CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: A village in western France near the Atlantic coast that is the site of more than 3,000 prehistoric stone monuments of the alignment type. These menhirs are arranged in three groups of 10-13 parallel rows, which ended at semicircles or rectangles of standing stones. The single stone menhirs and multistone dolmens were made from local granite and are worn by time and weather and covered in white lichen. The area also has a series of long cairns of mid-Neolithic to Early Bronze Age which covers funerary chambers and secondary cists. The grave goods included polished axes of rare stones such as jadeite and fibrolite, stone boxes containing charcoal, cattle bones, and pottery. The area was clearly an important ritual center, venerated by the Bretons until fairly recent times, and adopted by the Romans for religious purposes. Christians added crosses and other symbols to the stones. In 1874, James Miln uncovered the remains of a Gallo-Roman villa one mile east of the village. The Musée Miln-Le Rouzic in Carnac has an important collection of artifacts.
Carrowkeel ware: CATEGORY: artifact
DEFINITION: A type of later Neolithic pottery found in Ireland during the 3rd millennium BC, named after material recovered from the passage graves at Carrowkeel in Co. Sligo, Ireland. The fabric of Carrowkeel ware is generally rather thick, coarse, and heavily gritted. The forms comprise mainly open round-bottomed bowls and hemispherical cups. Decoration is extensively applied, often all over the outer surface of the vessel and over the rim, and is typically ?stab and drag' or impressed. Some of motifs used resemble PASSAGE GRAVE ART.
carved stone ball: CATEGORY: artifact
DEFINITION: Roughly spherical or slightly lobate artificially shaped carved stones dating to the later Neolithic and found only in Scotland. Where decorated, the motifs used are similar to those in MEGALITHIC ART. Unornamented stone balls are, however, found in other areas of the British Isles in 4th and 3rd millennia BC contexts.
Cascioarele: CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: A small settlement on an island in the Danube River, southern Rumania. Excavations have revealed occupation layers of the Middle, c 3900-3700 BC, and Late Neolithic, c 3700-3500 BC. A complete village plan has been found from the later occupation with one large central structure surrounded by six smaller structures. The finds have ritual implications and technological importance. There is evidence of heavy reliance on wild animal meat.
causewayed camp: CATEGORY: structure
DEFINITION: A hilltop entrenchment characteristic of Neolithic times, 4th millennium BC, especially in southern Britain. The hilltop was enclosed by a series of concentric ditches, 1-4 in number, with internal banks and which were not continuous but interrupted by solid causeways (undisturbed lanes of earth). Pottery, animal bones, and domestic garbage stratified within the ditches show that the camps were used during the entire Neolithic period. A common theory about the camps' use is as meeting places used at intervals by the population of a wide area.
Cavdar: SYNONYM: Cevdar
CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: A tell site in western Bulgaria of the first temperate Neolithic, dating to c 5100-4700 BC. There are Kremikovci occupation levels and one Karanovo level. The farming economy grew emmer wheat and barley and raised cattle. Kremikovci painted wares include a rich polychrome assemblage dating to the end of the Early Neolithic.
ceramics: SYNONYM: pottery
CATEGORY: artifact; ceramics
DEFINITION: The art or process of making useful and ornamental articles from clay by shaping and then hardening them by firing at high temperatures. Ceramics are generally known as pottery, but the term also refers to the manufacture of any product from a nonmetallic mineral by firing at high temperatures. The exceptional porcelain and stonewares of China are very well known, from as early as the Yang-Shao Neolithic culture, c 4500 BC.
Cernavoda: CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: A cemetery site of the Late Neolithic near the Black Sea coast of Rumania dating to the mid-4th millennium BC. Over 300 inhumations are known, occurring in groups, some with rich grave goods of the Hamangia culture. There is also a Late Copper Age site dating to the 3rd millennium BC that ranges over the Black Sea coast of Rumania and Bulgaria. The latter had short-lived occupation sites and is associated with the Ezero group.
Cernica: CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: A Neolithic site of the late 5th millennium BC in Rumania. There is a settlement and cemetery with over 350 graves, some with richer grave goods of marble, shell and bone beads, and some copper ornaments.
Cerny: CATEGORY: culture
DEFINITION: An Early Neolithic culture of the Paris and Loire regions of France, c 4400-4000 BC. Cerny followed Villeneuve-St.-Germain and preceded the Chasséen. It was characterized by round-based vessels with impressed decoration or applied cordons.
Ch'ü-chia-ling culture: CATEGORY: culture
DEFINITION: Neolithic culture of central China in the middle and lower Yangtze River valley in the 4th and 3rd millennia. It followed the Yang-Shao culture and preceded the Lung-Shan culture and shared a significant number of traits with the Ta-hsi culture. There was cultivation of rice, flat polished axes, ring-footed vessels, goblets with sharply angled profiles, ceramic whorls, and black pottery with designs painted in red after firing. Characteristic Ch'ü-chia-ling ceramic objects include eggshell-thin goblets and bowls painted with black or orange designs; double-waisted bowls; tall, ring-footed goblets and serving stands; and many styles of tripods. The whorls suggest a thriving textile industry. The chronological distribution of ceramic features suggests a transmission from Ta-hsi to Ch'ü-chia-ling, but the precise relationship between the two cultures is not known.
Ch'i-chia culture: SYNONYM: Qijia
CATEGORY: culture
DEFINITION: A Late Neolithic culture in northwest China dating from c 1700 BC which shows North Eurasian influence. Descendant of earlier painted pottery Neolithic cultures, it is characterized by the use of amphora-like jars with loop handles, comblike designs, and by copper tools (axes and rectangular knives). The culture survived into historic times and remains from as late as the 1st century BC have been found. Evidence of the culture was first found in Ch'i-chia-p'ing in the early 1920s by Swedish geologist Johan Gunnar Andersson. In the 1950s, important finds were located in nearby Yang-wa-wan and Ts'ui-chia-chuang by the Chinese archaeologists Pei Wen-chung and Hsia Nai. The Ch'i-chia people lived in large villages in terraces along the Huang Ho (Yellow River) and buried their dead in pits.
Ch'ing-lien-kang culture: CATEGORY: culture
DEFINITION: The name given an Eastern Neolithic culture of China, c 4000-3000 BC, found in the provinces of southern Shantung, Kiangsu, and northern Chekiang. Painted pottery with flowerlike designs existed that had certain affinities with pottery from western Neolithic Yang-Shao culture. Pottery on high pierced stands, fine flat polished axes, and decorative pendants in jade have also been found.
Chaironeia: SYNONYM: 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.
Champ Durand: CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: A Neolithic fortification in Vendée, France and associated material of the Late Neolithic, including Peu-Richardien decorated pottery of c 3300-3000 BC.
Changsha: SYNONYM: Ch'ang-sha
CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: City and capital of Hunan province, China, where Neolithic sites have been investigated since 1955. Isolated finds hint at Shang and Western Zhou settlement in this area. Over a thousand Chu burials have been excavated, with the richest being the early 2nd century BC tombs at Mawangdui. Artifacts from the Chu capital at Jiang-ling are comparable in date and importance.
Chassey: SYNONYM: Chasséen culture
CATEGORY: culture
DEFINITION: A Middle Neolithic culture found over most of France, named for the Camp de Chassey, which appeared c 4300 BC. By this time, Chassey pottery had superseded impressed ware in the south and the new style is found in caves, village sites, cists, pit graves, and megalithic chamber tombs. The earliest Chassey pottery is often decorated with scratched geometric patterns, whereas the later wares are more plain and have pan-pipe (flûte de pan) lugs. In north and central France, the culture appeared c 3800. In many areas the Chassey people were the first Neolithic farmers. The pottery and flintwork of the Paris basin differ in many ways from those of the Midi. One distinctive form of vessel, the vase support with scratched decoration, is confined to the Paris basin and western France. Both cave and open settlements were occupied.
Chateauneuf-les -Martigues: SYNONYM: Martigues
CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: A large rock shelter northwest of Marseilles in southern France, with a series of deposits from the Upper Palaeolithic to the Neolithic. There was impressed ware and a radiocarbon date in the early 6th millennium BC. It was probably the site of the Roman camp, Maritima Avaticorum.
Cheng-chou: SYNONYM: Cheng Chou, Chengxian
CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: The site of the Shang dynasty capital from 1500-1200 BC, in Honan province, China on the Yellow River. Following villages of the Yang Shao and Lung Shan cultures, four phases of Shang occupation have been traced. Cemeteries of pit graves have been found and a rectangular wall enclosed an area divided into different quarters. Outside this city, in addition to remains of large public buildings, a complex of small settlements has been discovered. Since 1950 archaeological finds have shown that there were Neolithic settlements in the area. The site remained occupied after the Shang dynasty moved its capital again; Chou (post-1050 BC) tombs have also been discovered. It is thought that in the Western Chou period (1111-771 BC) it became the fief of a family named Kuan. In 605 AD it was first called Cheng-chu.
Chevdar: SYNONYM: Cevdar
CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: An early Neolithic tell site in Bulgaria. It was the target of one of the earliest uses of flotation in European archaeology, on soil samples from floors and ovens.
Chiozza: CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: A Neolithic settlement site in Emilia in northern Italy, of the later 5th or early 4th millennium BC. Structural remains are oval and circular pits. The pottery was square-mouthed and the term Chiozza is sometimes used for this type of pottery or its latter phase.
Chirand: CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: A site on the lower Ganges River in northeast India with five periods of occupation: Neolithic (Chirand I), Chalcolithic (Chirand II A-B), Northern Black Polished Ware (Chirand III), early 1st millennium AD, and medieval. Chirand I dated to the early 2nd millennium BC and perhaps the 3rd.
chopper: SYNONYM: chopping tool
CATEGORY: lithics
DEFINITION: Any large, simple stone or pebble tool with a single, transverse cutting edge. It was used for hacking, breaking, or chopping and was especially characteristic of Middle Pleistocene, pre-Acheulian industries of the Old World, such as Choukoutien, in the Clactonian in England, and at the earliest levels of Oldowan industries. This crude tool was made by striking a limited number of flakes from the edge of a cobble or fist-size rock to produce a coarse cutting edge. It persisted until the Neolithic.
Chotnica: SYNONYM: Hotnica
CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: Tell settlement site of the Late Neolithic, c late 5th-early 4th millennium BC, in northern Bulgaria. The cultures found represent regional variants on Rumanian groups of the lower Danube Valley. There are three main occupation horizons: I, with pits and post holes and a rich pottery assemblage; II, Boian level with ceramics; and III, a complete village plan with over 15 houses. A hoard of 44+ gold ornaments was found in the third horizon.
Chulmun: CATEGORY: culture
DEFINITION: A post-glacial hunter-gatherer and agricultural culture of the Korean peninsula, from the 7th-2nd millennia BC, who produced a Neolithic textured-surface pottery (Chulmun 'comb-patterned'). They began to cultivate millet by the end of the period and the pottery was succeeded by Mumun pottery. Shortly thereafter, rice was introduced. Chulmun sites are Amsadong, Tongsamdong, and Osan-Ri.
Circea: CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: A settlement site of the Early Neolithic Cris in the Olt Valley of southwestern Rumania, dating from the late 6th to mid-5th millennia BC. Four main occupation phases have been found, all of which are defined by rich painted ware assemblages. Level I has some of the earliest white-on-red painted pottery of the First Temperate Neolithic and the latest level has polychrome painted pottery of Starcevo-Cris.
circumpolar cultures: SYNONYM: Arctic Stone Age
CATEGORY: culture
DEFINITION: A group of related cultures in the most northerly (Arctic) regions of Europe, including Siberia, and North America. These peoples lived north of the region where settled farming life was possible. Although contemporary with Neolithic and Bronze Age communities farther south, the circumpolar tribes remained semi-nomadic hunters and gatherers. They adopted pottery from the farming peoples and their trade connections, making egg-shaped bowls with pitted or comb-stamped decoration. Characteristic tools were hunting and woodworking equipment, often of ground slate. Rock carvings and artifacts attest the use of skin boats, skis, and sledges which suggest long-distance trade -- especially of amber. The sites and cemeteries are usually close to water. Fishing was an important activity and they exploited food sources such as elk, reindeer, and seal.
Cishan: SYNONYM: Tz'u-shan
CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: An early Neolithic millet-cultivating site in China. Features include pithouses, storage pits, and burials with artifacts including querns, ground-stone sickles, tripod vessels, and bone and stone fishing and hunting implements. Animal domestication is also attested to the site, dating to the early 6th millennium BC.
Ciumesti: CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: A small number of Mesolithic and Neolithic settlement sites in northwest Rumania. Late Mesolithic, Early Neolithic Cris, and later Neolithic Linear Pottery sites have been found. The chipped stone assemblages are distinguished by a high percentage of obsidian, procured from the Tokaj Mountains some 180 km away in northeastern Hungary.
Clairvaux-les-lacs: CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: Neolithic village sites occupied from 3700-2400 BC in Jura, France. Many buildings, organic remains, and some pottery (Burgundian Middle Neolithic) has been found.
Clyde-Carlingford tombs: CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: A series of megalithic chamber tombs in southwestern Scotland and northern Ireland with some radiocarbon dates before 3000 BC, an early stage of the Neolithic. They are sometimes described as segmented gallery graves, since they have subdivided rectangular chambers. Another important characteristic was a concave or semicircular forecourt. In some of the Irish examples, this was oval or circular and they are described as court cairns. The overlying cairns are long and either oval, rectangular, or trapezoidal in shape. Collective inhumation was the normal practice, although cremation sometimes occurred in Ireland.
collective tomb: CATEGORY: structure
DEFINITION: A chamber tomb of Neolithic times, either rock-cut or megalithic, built to contain many burials, often successive depositions spread over a long time. By 4000 BC the first big collective tombs were built from boulders in Spain.
Coppa Nevigata: CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: A small mound prehistoric site on the coast of southeast Italy, first occupied in the Early Neolithic. The first occupants were shellfish gatherers who used impressed cardial ware pottery and had a microlithic flint industry as early as the 6th millennium BC. A later occupation belongs to the Apennine Bronze Age.
Corded Beaker culture: CATEGORY: culture
DEFINITION: A Late Neolithic culture in central and northern Europe from c 2800 BC, named after a characteristic cord-marked decoration found on pottery. The Corded beaker culture belongs to the so-called Battle-Ax cultures of Europe. There were two phases of new burial rites, with individual rather than communal burials and an emphasis on burying rich grave goods with adult males. The first phase, characterized by Corded Ware pottery and stone battle-axes, is found particularly in central and northern Europe. The second phase, dated to 2500-2200 BC, is marked by Bell Beaker pottery and the frequent occurrence of copper daggers in the graves; it is found from Hungary to Britain and as far south as Italy, Spain, and North Africa. At the same time, there was an increase in the exchange of prestige goods such as amber, copper, and tools from particular rock sources.
corded ware: SYNONYM: Corded Ware
CATEGORY: ceramics; culture
DEFINITION: A Late Neolithic pottery ware decorated with twisted cord ornament found over much of north and central Europe in the 2nd half of the 3rd millennium BC. The commonest shapes are the beaker and the globular amphora. The ware is always associated with primitive agriculture, the stone battle ax, and usually with single burial under a small barrow or kurgan. The ware may derive from Denmark, central Germany (Saxo-Thuringia), eastern Poland, or the Ukraine. The culture received its name from the characteristic pottery. Some groups also had metal artifacts. There is some evidence that Corded Ware people had domesticated horses and wheeled vehicles, and they are sometimes interpreted as nomadic groups -- possibly Indo-European speaking -- who spread across northern Europe from the east. Closely related are the Globular Amphora and Funnel Beaker cultures.
Corinth: CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: An ancient city of Greece, located where the Peloponnese meets the isthmus that connects it to the Greek mainland. The city has an exceptionally high acropolis on Acronocorinth Hill and profited from having ports on both the Corinthian and Saronic Gulfs. The site was occupied from before 3000 BC, but its history is obscure until the early 8th century BC, when the city-state of Corinth began to develop as a commercial center. There is evidence of a Neolithic and an Early Bronze Age settlement at Corinth, both of considerable size. There is little evidence of Mycenaean settlement, however, and the next major settlement belonged to the Dark Age, c late 10th century BC. Corinth was a very important city throughout the Archaic, Classical, and Hellenistic periods. Corinth's political influence was increased through territorial expansion in the vicinity, and by the late 8th century it had secured control of the isthmus. The Corinthians established colonies at Corcyra and Syracuse, later making them dominant in trade with the western Mediterranean. From c 720-570 BC, Corinthian painted vases in the black-figure technique (which the Corinthians invented) were exported all over the Greek world. Workshops dating to this period have been excavated in the potters' quarter at Corinth, producing both pottery and terracottas. Corinthian pottery provides the most useful dating method available to archaeologists studying this period. Northwest of the agora stand seven Doric columns, which are the remains of the Temple of Apollo (c 550 BC). Callimachus is said to have invented the Corinthian column capital here c 450-425 BC. Corinth was involved in most of Greece's political struggles and in 146 BC was destroyed by the Roman general Lucius Mummius. In 44 BC, Julius Caesar reestablished Corinth as a Roman colony. Many of the visible remains date from the classical Greek and especially the early Roman periods, including a Roman agora (marketplace), the Odeon, the Pirene fountain, the Glauke fountain, temples, villas, baths, pottery factory, gymnasium, basilica, theater, and an amphitheater. Parts of the classical fortifications on the acropolis survive. In the later medieval period it then passed from Frankish to Venetian and eventually to Turkish hands. Substantial buildings from all these periods have been found in excavations since 1896. Modern Corinth was founded in 1858, 3 miles north of the ancient town, after an earthquake leveled the latter.
Cortaillod: CATEGORY: site; culture
DEFINITION: A Neolithic village site of pile dwellings on the edge of Lake Neuchâtel, and the type site of the oldest Neolithic culture in western Switzerland, with a starting date of c 3800 BC and lasting to after 2500 BC. Cortaillod is noted for the fine preservation of wood, cloth, and plant remains, and for its plain round-based pottery of Western Neolithic type. A large number of wooden and birch-bark utensils and containers have been found as well as organic remains, including fruits and nuts as well as cereals, pulses, and flax. The houses were built on wooden frames with walls of clay set on closely spaced timbers; the roof were probably thatched. The inhabitants practiced mixed farming, plus hunting and fishing. The round-based dark burnished pottery demonstrates connections with the Chassey culture of France.
Cotofeni: CATEGORY: culture; site
DEFINITION: A late Eneolithic / Late Copper Age culture in the eastern Balkans, mainly in southern Rumania and dating to the 3rd millennium BC. The sites were small, short-lived settlements suggesting agriculture and fishing as well as movement for seasonal reasons. Most burial sites used inhumation rites, although cremation is found. Cotofeni sites have a rich pottery assemblage with handled mugs and pitchers with lentil-impressed decoration.
court cairn: SYNONYM: Clyde-Carlingford tomb
CATEGORY: structure
DEFINITION: A type of Neolithic (c 3500 BC) chamber tomb common in southwest Scotland and northern Ireland. Its features include an elongated rectangular or trapeze-shaped cairn with an unroofed semicircular forecourt at one end. The courtyard gives access to the burial chamber proper, which is normally a gallery with two or more chambers separated by jambs, or by a combination of jambs and sills. This basic form sometimes called a 'horned cairn' has many variants. In the 'lobster-claw' or 'full court', cairns the wings of the facade curve around until they almost meet at the front of the tomb to enclose a circular or oval forecourt. Sometimes a cairn contains more than one tomb or there are subsidiary chambers. Court cairns continued to be used until the end of the Neolithic period around 2200 BC. The later court cairns share many features with the Severn-Cotswold tombs of southwest Britain and with the transepted gallery graves near the river Loire.
Coveta de l'Or: SYNONYM: Coveta del Or
CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: A cave site in eastern Spain near Valencia with Early Neolithic cardial (impressed) ware pottery, bones of domestic animals (einkorn), and remains of cultivated emmer and bread wheats. Large, deep pottery jars may have been used for grain storage. The radiocarbon dates are of mid-5th millennium BC.
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.
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.
Cris culture: CATEGORY: culture
DEFINITION: An Early Neolithic culture of Romania and Moldova, part of the complex of Balkan Early Neolithic cultures. Cris settlements were flat and open.
Crvena Stijena: CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: A prehistoric cave site near the Adriatic coast in Montenegro. Artifacts and faunal remains date back to the last glaciation and deposits include the Palaeolithic, Mousterian, Upper Palaeolithic (Aurignacian), Early and Late Mesolithic (with microlithic flint industries and a large faunal sample of red deer and chamois), Early Neolithic (with Impressed Ware and Danilo-Kakanj pottery, also macrolithic flint industry), Late Neolithic (Danilo culture), and a Late Bronze Age level (with Hallstatt A-B metalwork).
Cu Lao Rua: CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: A late Neolithic to early Bronze Age site near Saigon, Vietnam with shouldered polished stone adzes.
Cucuteni-Tripolye: CATEGORY: culture
DEFINITION: A Neolithic culture of southeastern Europe, distributed throughout the Ukraine (Tripolye culture) and Moldova and Romania (Cucuteni culture), which arose about 3000 BC. The type site of the Cucuteni is in the Siret valley of Romania and the type site of the Tripolye is near Kiev in Ukraine. The Cucuteni is divided into stages: Pre-Cucuteni, Cucuteni A, AB and B, dating c 4200-3000 BC. Tripolye is divided into five phases -- A, B1, B2, C1 and C2 -- the latest dating to the full Early Bronze Age in the 3rd millennium BC. The late Cucuteni-Tripolye phase is regarded as the local climax of Neolithic cultural development. They produced fine wares (red or orange and was decorated with curvilinear designs painted or grooved on the surface) on a large scale and long chipped stone blades. They also mastered metallurgical techniques such as alloying, casting, and welding. There was a subsistence economy depending on fruits and the earliest recorded domestication in Europe of the horse. The villages consisted of long, rectangular houses, though the Tripolye people practiced shifting agriculture and frequently moved.
Cuiry-lès-Chaudardes: CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: An Early Neolithic site of the Paris Basin's Linear Pottery culture that was occupied c 4800 BC. There were timber longhouses, pits, potsherds decorated in Bandkeramik, grindstones, flint tools, and waste flakes.
cultivation: CATEGORY: term
DEFINITION: The raising of plants by man for his use; deliberate propagation of a species primarily for its fruit, seed, leaf, or fiber. Cultivation greatly increased and stabilized man's food supply. The change from food gathering to food production has been called the Neolithic Revolution, and was one of the most important advances in human development. The first among Old World crops were wheat and barley, developed as cultivated species c 7th millennium BC. To these were added oats and rye in Europe, millet in Asia, and sorghum in Africa. In the Americas, the process was equally slow. First crops included beans, cotton, gourds, maize, manioc, potatoes, and squashes.
culture: CATEGORY: term
DEFINITION: In a general sense, the whole way of life of man as a species. In a more specific usage, it is the learned behavior, social customs, ideas, and technology characteristic of a certain people or civilization at a particular time or over a period of time (such as Eskimo culture). In this sense, a culture is a group of people whose total activities define what they represent and are transmitted to others in the group by social (mainly linguistic) -- as opposed to genetic -- means. Culture includes the production of ideas, artifacts, and institutions. In a more restricted sense (as in the term 'blade culture') culture signifies the artifacts or tool- and implement-making tradition of a people or a stage of development. Similar or related assemblages found in several sites within a defined area during the same time period, considered to represent the activities of one specific group of people is a culture. Cultures are often named for a particular site or an artifact. The word 'culture' in archaeology means a collection of archaeologically observable data; it is defined as the regularly occurring assemblage of associated artifacts and practices, such as pottery, house-types, metalwork, and burial rites, and regarded in this sense as the physical expression of a particular social group. This usage is especially associated with Gordon Childe, who popularized this concept as a means of analyzing prehistoric material. Thus the Bandkeramik culture of Neolithic Europe is an hypothesized social group characterized by its use of a particular type of pottery, houses, etc. The term, in reference to the specific elements of material culture, is most often used in the Old World.
Cumbrian club: CATEGORY: artifact
DEFINITION: A term given to a distinctive type of large polished stone axe of middle Neolithic date made in the Lake District of northwest England. Also known as a ?Cumbrian-type' stone axe. The main features of a Cumbrian club are its large size (150-380mm long), broad-butted form, long, narrow proportions, its maximum width more or less in the middle of its length, and a distinct ?waisting' of constriction towards the butt end. All known examples are made of Langdale tuff (Group VI), examples being traded out from the Lake District to most other parts of the British Isles. The large size of these implements suggests they are ceremonial, prestige, or display objects.
cup-and-ring mark: SYNONYM: cup mark, cup and ring mark
CATEGORY: artifact; lithics
DEFINITION: The commonest form of rock carving in the British Isles, consisting of a cup-like depression surrounded by one or more concentric grooves. Cup-and-ring marks are found on standing stones, singular or in stone circles, and on the slabs of burial cists, as well as on natural rock surfaces. In its classic form most cup-and-ring art belongs in the Bronze Age, but the motif occurs on passage graves, for example in the Clava tombs and on the capstones at Newgrange, where it may show links with similar rock carvings in northwest Spain. They are also found in Ireland and Scotland and can be dated to the Neolithic period of the 4th-3rd millennium BC.
Curacchiaghiu: CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: A rock shelter in southern Corsica, France, with a sequence of deposits from Mesolithic and Neolithic occupation levels dating to the 7th millennium BC -- the earliest evidence of man in Corsica. The Early Neolithic levels (6th millennium BC) had pottery with punctated and incised decoration, and a lithic industry with geometric trapezes on hard rock and obsidian imported from Sardinia.
cursus: CATEGORY: structure
DEFINITION: A Neolithic ritual monument consisting of a long narrow enclosure or avenue delineated by banks and external ditches. William Stukeley coined the term for the Stonehenge example which is more than 3 km long. These monuments clearly represent a very considerable investment of labor for Neolithic communities, but their function remains unknown. This type of monument is found only in Britain, and belongs to the later part of the Neolithic. The Dorset Cursus (the longest known example) in Cranborne Chase is six miles long, 100 yards wide, flanked by banks and external ditch, and is the largest prehistoric monument in Britain.
Cyprus: CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: The third largest island in the Mediterranean, on its east end. Cyprus was inhabited as early as the late Neolithic Age (mid-6th millennium BC) and by the late Bronze Age (c 1600 BC-c 1050 BC) had become a trading center, visited and settled by Mycenaeans and Achaeans, who introduced Greek culture and language. By 800 BC, Phoenicians had begun to settle there. By the 7th century BC, a number of Cypriot kingdoms had achieved great wealth and influence. It was finally taken over by the Ptolemys of Egypt and then annexed by Rome in 58 BC. Initially its most important center was Enkomi; later Salamis.
Dölauer Heide: CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: A Neolithic settlement in southeastern Germany of the Funnel Beaker culture. Excavations revealed fortifications of bank-and-ditch systems, a palisade, and a number of barrows -- all on a hilltop.
Da But: CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: A marine shell midden near Thanh-hoa in northern Vietnam, which has produced a mixed Bacsonian and Neolithic stone industry together with ochre-stained burials and pottery. It has been dated to c 4000 BC.
Dadunzi: SYNONYM: Ta-tun-tzu
CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: A Neolithic site in Pei Xian, Jiangsu province, China, with three main levels named after the nearby sites of Qinlian'gang, Liulin, and Huating. The lowest (Qinglian'gang) level at Danunzi yielded a radiocarbon date of c 4500 BC. In the middle (Liulin) level, extraordinary painted pottery was found with the usual undecorated pots native to the local Qinglian'gang tradition. Both the shapes and the painted designs copy the Yangshao pottery of Miaodigou; radiocarbon dates suggest that the Liulin phase belongs in the 4th millennium BC. Some graves of the Liulin phase at Dadunzi contained sacrificed dogs. At Dawenkou in Shangdong, where the lower level belongs to the Huating phase, pigs appear instead, and the graves often take the form of a stepped pit -- significant as forerunners of characteristic Shang burial practices. Perforated tortoise shells from Liulin graves may likewise foreshadow tortoise plastrons in Shang oracle bones.
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.
Dahe: SYNONYM: Ta-ho
CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: A Neolithic village site, now preserved as a museum, at Zhengzhou in China. Several Yanshao levels are overlaid by Hougang II and Shang remains; radiocarbon dates range from c 3700-3050 BC. The uppermost Yanshao level is a late stage of the Miaodigou I culture; the expected painted pottery is found alongside unpainted pots, including ding and dou shapes, that recall the Huating-Dawendou phase of the Qinglin'gang culture. This pottery may represent the beginnings of a westward movement of east-coast influences that eventually transformed the Yangshao tradition, giving rise to the Hougan II culture.
Damous el Ahmar: CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: A cave site with Capsian Neolithic industry in Algeria.
Danilo: CATEGORY: site; culture
DEFINITION: A Neolithic culture of the Dalmatian coast of Croatia and parts of Bosnia, dating to 4700-3900 BC. The site consists of large numbers of pits and post holes, whose associated material has been subdivided typologically into five phases. There are two associated pottery styles, painted in black and broad red bands on buff ware, and incised on dark burnished ware, belong in the Middle Neolithic. The geometric designs suggest connections with contemporary wares in Italy, particularly Ripoli and Serra D'Alto. There was also a long blade and tanged point stone industry closely related to fishing.
Danubian culture(s): CATEGORY: culture
DEFINITION: Early farming culture(s) of the Danube basin of central and eastern Europe, of the Neolithic and Eneolithic, starting c 5300 BC. The stages, named by Gordon Childe, were Danubian I (Linear Pottery culture), Danubian II (later Neolithic cultures, such as Tisza, Lengyel, Rossen, and stroke-ornamented pottery cultures), and Danubian III (late Lengyel, Brzesc, Kujawski, Jordanow). The first stage was based on slash and burn cultivation and the shoe-last celt, objects of spondylus shell, and the use of bandkeramik. There were substantial timber longhouses during occupations and after abandonment, sites were later reoccupied and villages rebuilt. By the mid-5th millennium, the Danubian II cultures (Rössen, stroke-ornamented ware, Lengyel, Tisza) arose. The term is now outdated.
Dapengeng: SYNONYM: Ta-p'en-keng
CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: A Neolithic site in Taiwan, near Taipei City, of a 6th-5th millennia BC postglacial culture. It is typified by coarse cord-marked pottery, sometimes called the Yue Coastal Neolithic, with the use of plant cordage for decorating the vessels. A later stage had geometric pottery.
Dar es-Soltan: CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: A cave site on the Atlantic coast of Morocco with a long sequence of late Aterian industry, followed by Iberomaurusian and Capsian Neolithic remains. The site is associated with human remains of Mechta-Afalou type.
Dar Tichitt: CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: A series of very early Neolithic farming sites on the southern fringes of Sahara Desert in southern Mauritania. The first village settlements of the Naghez phase, 1200-1000 BC, had circular compounds connected by wide paths. Fishing, hunting, and wild grasses were the village's subsistence. During Chebka phase, 1000-700 BC, lakes dried up, so animal husbandry increased and millet was cultivated. The Akanjeir phase, 700-300 BC, saw further climatic deterioration, ending permanent settlement.
Dawenkou: SYNONYM: Ta-wen-k'ou
CATEGORY: site; culture
DEFINITION: A Middle Neolithic site in Shandong Province, China, which gave its name to a culture of c 4500-2700 BC. There is elaborately shaped pottery and increasingly rich burials.
Delos: CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: A small island in the Aegean, in the middle of the Cyclades, the birthplace of Apollo and Artemis. There was an important sanctuary which contained a colossal marble kouros and a sanctuary of Artemis with a temple. There are four main groups of ruins on the western coast: the commercial port and small sanctuaries; the religious city of Apollo, a hieron (sanctuary); the sanctuaries of Mount Cynthos and the theater; and the region of the Sacred Lake. There is evidence for some late Neolithic and some Mycenaean settlement; it was inhabited from the late 3rd millennium BC. Sometime early in the 1st millennium BC, its association with the worship of Apollo was established. The island became a populous religious and political center, with an oracle that was perhaps second only to Delphi. Delos was also chose as the headquarters and treasury for the important maritime alliance against the Persians, the Delian League (487 BC). Tine streets, Greek and oriental temples, meeting houses for the merchant guilds, a unique colonnaded ('hypostyle') hall, and splendid houses were built. Rome took the island in 166 BC, and eventually it was abandoned. Excavations have been conducted since 1873 by the French School of Athens.
Dereivka: SYNONYM: Dereivca
CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: A Late Neolithic settlement site located on the river Omifinev in the Ukraine and dated to the 3rd millennium BC. A site of the Sredni Stog culture includes a cemetery of the Mariupol type, with 100+ extended inhumations arranged in groups. Adjacent to the cemetery is the settlement with Dnieper-Donets pottery, traces of dwellings, hearths, and other features.
Dhimini: CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: A small fortified Late Neolithic settlement site in Thessaly, Greece. Within the multiple walls and elaborate system of fortifications are a large megaron palace and smaller buildings. The typical pottery was elegant bichrome with spirals and meanders painted in black or white on a yellow or buff ground. Two tholos tombs date from the Mycenaean period.
Diana: CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: A site on the island of Lipari, of the Aeolian Islands north of Sicily, which has given its name to a local Late Neolithic culture with dates in the early 4th millennium BC. Diana had a very distinctive pottery with a glossy red slip and splayed lugs or tubular handles, found also on Sicily and mainland Italy. The culture is associated with the last phase of intensive exploitation of the Lipari obsidian source.
digging stick: CATEGORY: artifact
DEFINITION: A straight, often pointed, wooden tool for loosening or digging up the ground. It was used in food-gathering economies to turn up roots or burrowing animals, and in Neolithic communities for cultivation until displaced by the hoe and later (in the Old World) by the plow. It could be made more efficient by adding a perforated stone as a weight onto the shaft near the lower end.
Dimolit: CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: A Neolithic open settlement site in northern Luzon, Philippines, dating from c 2500 BC. The occupation had pottery, flakes with edge-gloss, and postholes of small square houses, and items paralleled in Taiwanese Neolithic sites.
ding: SYNONYM: ting
CATEGORY: artifact; ceramics
DEFINITION: A Chinese tripod bowl with solid legs. From the Neolithic it was made of ceramic and from the Shang period it occurred in bronze; there were also quadrapods.
Diring: CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: A Neolithic site in northeast Siberia with burials of the Ymyakhtakh culture and an assemblage of quartzite cores, pebble tools, and flakes.
Dissignac: CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: A Neolithic burial mound in Loire-Atlantique, France, with two passage graves, microliths, Early Neolithic pottery, and a palaeosol with pollen of cultivated cereals dated to c 4000 BC.
Divostin: CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: A Neolithic site in Serbia with occupations of the Early Starcevo and Vinca cultures dating from c 5250-4960 (Starcevo) to c 3900-3300 BC (Vinca). Excavation uncovered seven complete house-plans of the Late Vinca village, including one house containing 100 pots. The subsistence economy was based on cattle husbandry and agriculture. Cult objects included a model ritual scene and many fired clay anthropomorphic figurines.
Djeitun: CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: A Neolithic site of a 6th millennium BC (and possibly late 7th) culture of Turkmenia characterized by mud-brick architecture of one-roomed houses with lime-plastered floors. Both floors and walls were sometimes painted. The subsistence economy was based on cereal agriculture (barley, wheat), accompanied by the rearing of sheep, cattle, and goats and the hunting of gazelle, onager, wild pig, and smaller animals. The Djeitun culture had a microlithic flint industry and chaff-tempered pottery, decorated with simple painted designs. The culture was the earliest Neolithic of central Asia.
Dnieper-Donets: SYNONYM: Dnepr-Donets
CATEGORY: culture
DEFINITION: A 3rd- and 2nd-millennium BC Late Neolithic culture of the Ukraine. Large numbers of small settlements are known with hunter-gatherer subsistence known. Large quantities of comb-pricked pots found but grave goods were rare except for copper rings and tooth necklaces. Extended inhumation was the norm; the physical type in these burials is identified as Cro-Magnon.
dolmen: CATEGORY: structure
DEFINITION: In antiquity (especially in France), a word for a megalithic tomb consisting of orthostats and capstone or for megalithic chamber tombs in general. This was usually a stone structure consisting of upright columns supporting a slab roof and known from Neolithic times. In English archaeological literature 'dolmen' should be used only for tombs whose original plan cannot be determined or for tombs of simple unspecialized types which do not fit into the passage grave or gallery grave categories; it is also used for relatively small, closed megalithic chambers, such as the dysser of Scandinavia. The name was probably derived from Cornish 'tolmen' (stone table). The word has a second meaning for the enclosure for burial in a jar of the Yayoi period in Japan consisting of a single large stone slab supported on a ring of stones. A third meaning is for a megalithic stone burial feature in western China and coast Yellow Sea area, dating to the 1st millennium BC, of which there are three forms -- raised table, low table, and unsupported capstone.
Don Noi: CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: A Neolithic site in Thailand where stone-working was done near chalcedony quarries, dating to the 3rd millennium BC. Tools made included flaked adzes utilized flakes.
Dudesti: CATEGORY: site; culture
DEFINITION: The type site of a Middle Neolithic culture of southeastern Romania, of the late 5th millennium BC. Contemporaneous with the Vadastra, Vinca A/B, and Karanovo III, Dudesti sites are typically short-lived occupations, defined by storage pits and post-holes. Most sites are limited to the first terraces of major river valleys. The largely undecorated pottery is a derivative of the dark burnished ware tradition of the south Balkans.
Durrington Walls: CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: A Neolithic (late 3rd millennium BC) henge monument in Wiltshire, England, with a large twin-entrance, and first occupied by people who made pottery of the Windmill Hill, Grooved Ware, and Beaker styles. Inside, the excavators found remains of two large circular timber structures, each of which had evidence for several different phases of construction.
dyss: SYNONYM: pl. dysser
CATEGORY: structure
DEFINITION: The Danish name for the earliest type of megalithic chamber tomb found in Scandinavia in the Early Neolithic. The oldest dysser are rectangular slab cysts roofed with capstones and containing 1-6 skeletons. The burial chamber is covered with a mound which rises to the height of the capstone and has a retaining kerb of stones. Drysser are associated with an early phase (C) of the TRB culture. Similar but less massive cysts were built by other TRB groups elsewhere in northern Europe.
Ebbsfleet: CATEGORY: site; artifact
DEFINITION: A small valley in southern England with an important series of loams and gravels spanning the last two glacial periods and intervening interglacial. Stone tools included Levallois flakes, but only a few hand axes and other tool types were found. The area has also given its name to a decorated pottery style of the Neolithic period. The first Jutes, Hengist and Horsa, landed at Ebbsfleet in the Isle of Thanet in 449 AD.
Ebbsfleet ware: SYNONYM: Peterborough ware
CATEGORY: artifact
DEFINITION: A family of elaborately decorated Neolithic ceramics found in southern and eastern parts of the British Isles. Dating to the period 3000 to 2000 BC, Isobel Smith divided Peterborough wares into three successive styles-Ebbsfleet, Mortlake, and Fengate-on the basis of their occurrence in the ditch fills at Windmill Hill. It is now recognized that these three groups overlap rather more than originally thought, and that they are best seen as part of the broad group of impressed wares found over much of northern Europe in the 3rd millennium BC. The decoration on Peterborough ware consists of pits, ?maggot impressions' made by impressing tightly rolled cord, and the impressions made by pressing the ends of bird bones into the soft clay before firing. Some of the later vessels are the first in Britain to be made with flat bases.
Egolzwil: CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: A series of Neolithic sites around former Lake Wauwil in Switzerland from the earliest phase of the Neolithic in that area. Most of them belong to the Cortaillod culture and have well-preserved organic material. The site of Egolzwil 4 had ten rectangular wooden houses placed close together. Food remains include cereals, lentils, beans, and flax, and wild strawberries and chestnuts; animal remains include both domesticated and wild animals, and duck, salmon, perch, and carp from the lake. The earliest settlement, Egolzwil 3 dated to the late 5th or early 4th millennium BC.
einkorn: CATEGORY: flora
DEFINITION: A variety of wheat (Triticum monococcum) cultivated in Neolithic times. It has pale red kernels and is a hulled grain (i.e. the glume remains on the grain after threshing), found at farming sites of the 8th and 7th millennia BC. Like the other cereals, it could be used for bread-making or for porridge. It probably originated in southeastern Europe and southwestern Asia, and is still grown in mountainous parts of southern Europe as grain for horses.
El Khril: CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: Capsian Neolithic site near Tangier in northern Morocco. The pottery is of cardial type, similar to contemporary Iberian wares, and is associated with evidence for the herding of small animals.
Elateia: SYNONYM: Drakhmani; Drachmani
CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: An important Neolithic settlement site in central Greece, with the most complete stratified sequence of Greek Neolithic pottery deposits for the region. Radiocarbon dates place its beginnings c 5500 BC. A series of pottery styles has been recognized, starting with undecorated dark and light-surfaced wares, later replaced by black polished and polychrome painted wares. Certain coal-scuttle shaped vessels on four legs, presumably for ritual use, show connections with the Danilo culture of Yugoslavia. Rectangular houses were built of timber with earthen floors.
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.
Elsloo: CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: A settlement and cemetery of the Neolithic Linear Pottery culture of southern Netherlands. Long houses of various types have been found, as in the other Dutch sites of this culture (Geleen, Sittard, Stein). Elsloo has been organized into six main chronological phases. The grave goods have provided information about the Linear Pottery social stratification.
epi-Paleolithic cultures: SYNONYM: Epipalaeolithic, Epipaleolithic
CATEGORY: culture
DEFINITION: The final Upper Palaeolithic industries that emerged at the end of the final glaciation; the continuation of Paleolithic (Old Stone Age) cultures after the end of the last Ice Age, followed by Neolithic. In the Levant, it was c 20,000-10,000 BP.
Epicardial: CATEGORY: ceramics
DEFINITION: An Early Neolithic pottery style of c 5300-4600 BC which was developed from the Cardial style in southern France. The decoration is incised.
Er Lannic: CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: The site of two Neolithic stone circles on an islet in France, now partly submerged. There were stone-built cists or hearths, polished stone axes, and pottery.
Ertebølle: CATEGORY: culture
DEFINITION: The final Mesolithic culture of the west Baltic coastal region and coastal kitchen midden culture of Scandinavia. The type site is a coastal shell mound in Jutland, Denmark, dated to c 3900-3250 BC. Pollen analysis places the start of the culture within the Atlantic period, after c 5000 BC. The later phases of Ertebølle are marked by the introduction of pottery and polished stone axes, perhaps as a result of contact with the newly arrived Neolithic farmers to the south.
Esh Shaheinab: CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: The type site for the Khartoum Neolithic in the Sudan, dated to the second half of the 4th millennium BC. Fishing was evidently of major importance and was conducted both by means of shell fish-hooks and with harpoons whose barbed bone points were pierced for attaching a line. Edge-ground axes and adzes were made of bone and stone. The microlithic stone industry and the pottery were very similar to those from Early Khartoum. Domestic stock has radiocarbon dates of 5300 bp.
Eutresis: CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: A settlement site in Boeotia, central Greece, first occupied in Middle, Late, and sub-Neolithic, but the most important occupation was of the Bronze Age beginning c 3450 BC. The Middle Helladic seems here to have carried on late, unaffected by the Late Helladic of the Mycenaeans elsewhere. The site was inhabited continuously until the 13th century BC, when it was extensively fortified and subsequently abandoned. It was reoccupied in the Classical and Hellenistic periods. Eutresis is the type site for the Early Helladic I Eutresis culture.
Ezero: CATEGORY: site; culture
DEFINITION: An Eneolithic and Early Bronze Age site in central Bulgaria which lends its name to a culture of the lower Danube basin and the Black Sea coast of Bulgaria. There were two building phases of the Veselinovo culture (Karanovo III) dated c 4320 BC, a level with Karanovo IV pottery, eight building levels of the Copper Age (Karanovo V-VII) dated c 3630 BC, and nine building levels of the Early Bronze Age. The Bronze Age levels have radiocarbon dates of c 2500-2200 BC and the pottery has affinities with the Early Bronze Age of Troy. Ezero had a very rich bone, antler, and stone industry and provides the most detailed chronology for southeastern Europe for the time period.
Faiyum: CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: A fertile area of the Egyptian Sahara which receives water from an arm of the Nile. It was important during the Neolithic and developed only during the Middle Kingdom and the Greco-Roman period.
Fenbitou: SYNONYM: [Feng-pi-t'ou]
CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: A site and Neolithic culture on the southwestern coast of Taiwan, dating to 2400-1800 BC.
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.
Fengate ware: SYNONYM: Peterborough ware
CATEGORY: artifact
DEFINITION: A family of elaborately decorated Neolithic ceramics found in southern and eastern parts of the British Isles. Dating to the period 3000 to 2000 BC, Isobel Smith divided Peterborough wares into three successive styles-Ebbsfleet, Mortlake, and Fengate-on the basis of their occurrence in the ditch fills at Windmill Hill. It is now recognized that these three groups overlap rather more than originally thought, and that they are best seen as part of the broad group of impressed wares found over much of northern Europe in the 3rd millennium BC. The decoration on Peterborough ware consists of pits, ?maggot impressions' made by impressing tightly rolled cord, and the impressions made by pressing the ends of bird bones into the soft clay before firing. Some of the later vessels are the first in Britain to be made with flat bases.
Fernando Po: SYNONYM: Bioko, Formosa
CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: An island off the coast of Equatorial Guinea, once called Formosa, of particular archaeological interest. A Neolithic technology existed and continued till the early centuries of the 2nd millennium AD, presumably due to the absence of sources of metal. A similar situation existed in the Canary Islands. This site in western Africa lies in a strategic situation from which the Niger mouths and the Slave Coast could be watched.
Ferrières: SYNONYM: Ferrières-les-Verreries
CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: A Late Neolithic dolmen (passage grave) in Hérault, southern France, and the type site of the culture which existed c 3200-2800 BC. Its pottery is characterized by incised-line and geometric motif decoration. The earlier variety belongs to the Neolithic period and the later style is contemporary with the Copper Age pottery of Fontbouïsse. Ferrières pottery has been found in caves, village sites, passage graves, and cremation cemeteries.
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.
flint: SYNONYM: chert, firestone
CATEGORY: geology
DEFINITION: A type of hard stone, often gray in color, found in rounded nodules and usually covered with a white incrustation. A member of the chalcedony group of water-bearing silica minerals, it was found from early use to fracture conchoidally and was ideal for making stone tools with sharp edges. It is chemically a quartz, but has a different microcrystalline structure. It can therefore be flaked readily in any direction and so shaped to many useful forms. It occurs widely, and where available was the basic material for man's tools until the advent of metal; it is commonest 'stone' of the Stone Age. The only types of stone preferred to it were obsidian and the tougher rocks used for ground tools in the Neolithic. The term is often used interchangeably with chert and also as a generic term denoting stone tools in the Old World. Nodules of flint occur commonly as seams in the upper and middle chalk of northwest Europe. During the Neolithic and Copper Age of Europe, flint workers recognized that flint from beds below ground were of superior quality to surface flint, especially for the manufacture of large tools such as axes. These beds were exploited by sinking shafts and then excavating galleries outwards. Flint mines are known from many areas of Europe and good examples occur in Poland (Krzemionki), Holland, Belgium (Spiennes) and England (Grimes Graves).
Fontbrégoua: CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: Cave site in southern France with Epipalaeolithic and Neolithic occupations, dating to c 8000 BC. Hunting and gathering remains are hazelnuts and plants; there was domestic livestock and pottery of the Cardial and Epicardial phases. Neolithic remains include pits of human bones with cutmarks and pits of butchered animals bones, possibly evidence for cannibalism. There are also Middle Neolithic Chasséen, Late Neolithic, and Bell Beaker artifacts.
food vessel: SYNONYM: food vessel culture
CATEGORY: culture; artifact
DEFINITION: One of the two main cultures of the Bronze Age; the name given to a series of pottery vessels in northern Britain, Scotland, and Ireland. It was a prototype derived from that of the Beaker Folk and other Neolithic cultures. The food vessel culture people were hunters and farmers, raising sheep and growing corn. They also sold bronze and other metal goods made in Ireland. They buried food vessels with their dead (inhumation, in crouched positions, buried in cists under cairns or barrows). In the graves, too, are found the crescent-shaped necklaces of jet and shale beads, and gold necklaces of the same shape (lunula) from Ireland. Then there are bronze, halbards, axes, daggers, earrings of gold and bronze, bone hairpins, and plano-convex flint knives. The culture is dated to 2000-1600 BC.
fort: SYNONYM: fortress, fortification
CATEGORY: structure
DEFINITION: A fortified place or position prepared for defensive or protective purposes and usually surrounded by a ditch, rampart, and parapet. Forts were first built on hilltops, from late Neolithic to Roman times. Even farmhouses had earthworks of ditch, rampart, and wooden stockade built against raiding parties. At first, stockades were built on hilltops without massive earthworks. The origins of fortification in the Greek and Roman world were probably influenced by eastern Mediterranean civilizations and were in the major cities of the Greek Bronze Age. In ancient days, fortifications hindered the best attacking troops for months and even years.
Fort Harrouard: CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: A Middle Neolithic fort in Eure-et-Loir, France, that was occupied till the Gall-Roman period. There was a Chasséen phase with decorated vase supports and terra-cotta female figurines, an Artenacien occupation, and evidence of metallurgy in the Middle and Late Bronze Age (crucibles, molds, etc.).
Fuchsberg: CATEGORY: ceramics
DEFINITION: A Neolithic pottery style of the Danish Early and Middle Neolithic, c 3400 BC. It was characterized by rich incised decoration and has been found at Sarup and Toftum.
Funnel Beaker: SYNONYM: funnel-necked beaker culture; Funnel(neck) Beaker; Trichterbecher or TRB
CATEGORY: ceramics; culture
DEFINITION: A vessel with a globular body and expanded neck, characteristic of the Early and Middle Neolithic culture of northern Europe. The funnel beaker is not directly related to the bell-beaker of central and western Europe. The complex culture represents the first agriculturists in Scandinavia and the north European plain, appearing from 3500 BC onwards. It is named after the characteristic pottery, which is often found in megalithic tombs in northern Germany.
gallery grave: SYNONYM: allée couverte
CATEGORY: structure
DEFINITION: A tunnel-shaped megalithic tomb of Europe, characterized by a rectangular chamber with no separate entrance passage. The structure therefore resembles a megalithic corridor under an elongated mound, though sometimes they are cut in the rock. Gallery graves are frequently but not always found under long barrows; they may be subdivided (segmented) or have additional side chambers (transepted). They are sometimes associated with elaborate facades and forecourts. Local variants are distributed in Catalonia, France, the British Isles, northwards as far as Sweden, as well as in Sardinia and south Italy. Most of the tombs were built during the Neolithic period from the early 4th millennium BC on and were still in use during the Copper Age when Beaker pottery was introduced; the Sardinian examples belong to the full Bronze Age. Many contain multiple burials.
Garcel, El: SYNONYM: El Garcel
CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: A Middle Neolithic hilltop settlement in Almeria, southeast Spain, the type site of the earlier phase of the Almerian culture, c 5th millennium BC. Excavations have produced evidence of wattle-and-daub round houses, storage pits, undecorated round- and pointed-based pottery and, before the end of the settlement, copper slag, suggesting the local development of metallurgy.
Gavrinis: CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: A Neolithic rectangular cairn on an island in the Gulf of Morbihan, France, with one of the most elaborately decorated passage graves in Europe. The designs pecked into the walls include representations of polished stone axes as well as abstract patterns. The radiocarbon date is c 3400 BC.
Gawra, Tepe: CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: A tell site east of the Tigris River near Khorsabad, Iraq, occupied from the 6th-2nd millennia BC. The earliest material was of the Halaf period, while the succeeding period shows increasing contacts with the southern Mesopotamian 'Ubaid culture. It was as a northern outpost of the 'Ubaid culture in the 5th-4th millennia. Three temples facing onto open courtyards show resemblance to works at Eridu and Warka. There is evidence for surprisingly extensive trade. Neolithic settlers used undecorated pottery and Halaf pottery. The succeeding period is contemporary with the Uruk and Jemdet Nasr periods to the south; this is often described as the 'Gawra period' late 4th millennium BC). In this period there is abundant evidence for differential wealth and social position, seen in the grave goods. Several temples of the period have an unusual form with separate portico. The most distinctive building of this phase, however, is a circular structure known as the 'Round House'.
Geleen: CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: A settlement of the Neolithic Linear Pottery culture in southern Holland, c 6500 BP, which has produced house types similar to those of other Dutch sites of this culture, including Elsloo, Sittard, and Stein.
Geometric pottery: CATEGORY: ceramics
DEFINITION: The well-fired, stamp-impressed pottery characteristic of c 2000 BC-300 AD sites in south and southeastern China. The 'Geometric pottery cultures' seem to have grown out of local Neolithic predecessors and characterize the protohistoric Wucheng, Hushu, and Maqiao cultures of the region.
Ghar Dalam: CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: A cave site in southern Malta near Birzebbuga which has lent its name to the island's earliest Neolithic phase. The culture, dated to the late 5th millennium BC, is characterized by evidence of domesticated animals and cultivated plants and by the use of Impressed Ware similar to that of contemporary eastern Sicily (Stentinello). There was obsidian from Lipari. The earliest archaeological remains date from about 3800 BC. Neolithic farmers lived in caves like those at Dalam or villages like Skorba (near Nadur Tower).
Ghar-i Khar: SYNONYM: Dopnkey Cave
CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: Cave site in the mountains of western Iran, occupied from the Middle Palaeolithic onwards. The Upper Palaeolithic industry is similar to the Baradostian at Shanidar Cave. The cave has also yielded a Neolithic level with pottery, probably associated with a food producing community.
Gilf el Kebir: CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: A plateau of Nubian sandstone in the Sahara Desert of southwest Egypt with Late Acheulian artifacts and Neolithic material (stone tools, grinding stones, bone, pottery) and prehistoric rock engravings.
Gladkaia I: CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: A Neolithic occupation site in eastern Siberia, dating to c 2nd millennium BC. The population of Gladkaia I lived by hunting and fishing and used pottery and tools made of obsidian.
globular amphora: SYNONYM: Globular Amphora culture
CATEGORY: ceramics; culture
DEFINITION: A type of pottery vessel which has given its name to a Late Neolithic or Copper Age culture of the 3rd millennium BC through much of Germany, Poland, and western Russia. The amphora itself is bulbous in shape with a narrow neck and small handles (for hanging) and appeared with the eastern wing of the European funnel-necked beaker culture differentiated from the western part. Some examples are undecorated, while others have incised, stamped or cord-impressed ornament on the upper part of the vessel. There are individual burials in stone cists under barrows, accompanies by the globular amphora. The culture is closely linked both TRB Culture and may be a parallel development to the Single Grave/Corded Ware group in Scandinavia of 2600-2200 bc.
Gobi: CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: The great desert of east central Asia that stretches across vast lands in the Mongolian People's Republic and the Inner Mongolia region of China. Mesolithic and Neolithic material was discovered, proving that climatic conditions were much less extreme in the past. Finds included many microliths, together with polished stone axes and coarse pottery. The items show influences from Siberia and, to a lesser extent, China. The ancient Silk Road traversed the southern part of the Ala Shan Desert and crossed the Ka-shun Gobi as it skirted north and west around the Takla Makan Desert. The Gobi region first became known to Europeans through the vivid 13th-century descriptions of Marco Polo.
Goljamo Delcevo: SYNONYM: Golyamo Delchevo
CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: A Neolithic and Copper Age tell site of the Cucuteni-Tripolye culture in northeast Bulgaria. The settlement with adjoining cemetery are dated pre-4000 to 3600 BC and has 16 occupation layers with many complete house-plans. There is a system of rectangular fortifications with palisades. In the small Copper Age cemetery of 30 graves, contracted inhumation is the norm, with occasional cenotaph graves.
Gomolava: CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: A large, frequently occupied, double-tell site on the Sava River in Serbia. On both tells, the prehistoric sequence goes from the Late Neolithic to the Middle Ages. The Late Neolithic occupation belongs primarily to the Vinca culture, with houses, pits, and a cemetery with copper grave goods. The subsistence economy of most levels indicates reliance on einkorn wheat, flax, and cattle husbandry.
Gonvillars: CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: A Neolithic cave site in France with a Bandkeramik camp from c 5000 BC. There was hunting, pottery, domesticated animals, and cultivated cereals. This was followed by Rössen occupation c 4000-3500 BC.
Gortyn: SYNONYM: Gortyna
CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: Ancient Greek city of western Crete, considered the most important city of Classical Greek and Roman Crete. Although unimportant in Minoan times, Gortyn displaced Phaestus as the dominant city in the Mesara. It shared or disputed control of the island with Knossos until the Roman annexation in 67 BC. It controlled the sea route between east and west through its ports of Matalon and Leben. The great civic inscription, or code of Gortyn, dating to c 450 BC, was discovered in 1884; it is the most extensive monument of Greek law before the Hellenistic Age. The Gortynian Law Code was incorporated by the Romans into the back wall of an Odeum when this was being reconstructed in 100 AD under Trajan. The Code, written boustrophedon (alternately from left and right), contains rules of civil law concerning such matters as family, adultery, divorce, property, mortgage, and the rights of slaves. Later excavations disclosed most of the plan and public buildings of the Roman city, which was the administrative capital of the Roman province of Crete and Cyrenaica; identifiable are a preaetorium, agora, and odeum. The acropolis appears to have Neolithic and Late Bronze Age evidence and there are traces of a temple of the 8th-7th centuries BC. Homer refers to the city , and describes it as walled, though no walls survive. A votive deposit associated with an altar on the slope of the hill contained a wide selection of objects from all periods from Late Minoan III through to Roman. Gortyn maintained its importance through early Christian times, becoming an early Byzantine religious center.
Gródek Nadbuzny: CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: A Neolithic settlement of the Funnel Beaker culture of southeast Poland with evidence of copper metallurgy.
Gradesnitsa: CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: A Late Neolithic village site of the Gumelnita culture in northwest Bulgaria with Karanovo I and Copper Age layers. Excavations have revealed complete early Neolithic house plans, succeeded in the Copper Age by a large village of three occupational phases with houses arranged in streets. In a Copper Age ritual assemblage is a house model inscribed with signs and the so-called Gradesnitsa plaque -- a fired clay disc covered in elaborate incised symbols -- similar to the one found at Tartaria.
Graig Llwyd: CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: A Neolithic ax factory and stone quarry in north Wales with fine-grained igneous rock. The axes date from c 4000-2500 BC and widely traded; they have been found as far away as southern England, Yorkshire, and east Lothian.
Grand Pressigny: CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: A complex of flint quarries in Indre-et-Loire, France, whose products were widely traded throughout western Europe in the Late Neolithic and Copper Age. The distinctive caramel-colored flint was exported in the form of blocks and unfinished blanks. The exploitation of Grand Pressigny flint took place c 2800-2400 BC.
Great Langdale: CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: A Neolithic ax factory in Cumbria, northwest England, with high-quality stone quarried at several sites and traded over very wide areas of England by the Peterborough people, c 4000-3000 BC.
Grimes Graves: SYNONYM: Grime's Graves
CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: The oldest known Neolithic flint mine in England, in Norfolk, with the remains of around 350 mine shafts. The high-quality flint had three banks: floorstone, wallstone, and topstone. The products, mainly ax blades, were roughly chipped to shape at the site and were then traded in semi-finished condition. The miners used flint tools, deer's antlers as picks or wedges, and animal shoulder blades as spades. Excavation was probably by wooden shovel (a product of the polished ax and chisel) or possibly the shoulder blades of oxen. It is estimated that 50,000 picks made of red-deer antler were used during the 600 years of activity in the mine, which began about 2300 BC. In one shaft, the miners made a chalk statuette of a fat pregnant woman and a phallus of chalk; this practice, a fertility cult, was used to bring fruitful results in further mining. There are differing dates for the use of the mine shafts.
Grimston: SYNONYM: Hanging Grimston
CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: A Neolithic long barrow in Yorkshire, England, which is the type site of the Grimston-Lyles Hill pottery ware. The pottery is characterized by plain, round-bottomed carinated bowls with an everted rim but without handles. It was current across most of Britain c 4500-3300 BC. Some variants, as at Ebbsfleet in Kent, made more use of decoration.
Grimston ware: CATEGORY: artifact
DEFINITION: A type of early and middle Neolithic pottery found in the northeast of England, named after the site of Hanging Grimston in what was formerly the East Riding of Yorkshire. Characterized by fine fabrics, good-quality finish, and round-bottomed forms with a carinated profile. In 1974 Isobel Smith suggested that such pots were part of a far wider distribution of carinated vessels found right across the British Isles and she proposed the term Grimston-Lyles Hill ware. These vessels represent the earliest style of pottery found in the British Neolithic, although the term shouldered bowl is now preferred to Grimston-Lyles Hill.
Grivac: CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: A large open site of the Starcevo and early Vinca periods in Serbia with rectangular houses dated to c 4375-3980 BC for Vinca and c 5300 BC for the architectural remains of the Starcevo. The Starcevo occupation is the earliest radiocarbon date yet known from the Serbian Neolithic.
Grooved Ware: SYNONYM: Rinyo-Clacton
CATEGORY: ceramics
DEFINITION: A pottery style of the British Late Neolithic, widely distributed c 2750-1850 BC. The characteristic vessel is flat-based with straight vertical or outward sloping walls. It was formerly known as Rinyo-Clacton after two widely separated findspots (Clacton in Essex and Rinyo in the Orkney Islands). Throughout eastern and southern England, where it is particularly frequent on henge sites (Stonehenge and Durrington Walls), it is decorated with shallow grooving or sometimes with applied cordons. A Scottish group, where appliqué cordons were much used in addition, is represented in Orkney at sites like Rinyo and Skara Brae. It is also found in settlement sites and in chambered tombs.
Grotta dell'Uzzo: CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: A cave site of northwest Sicily with Mesolithic (c 8000-6500 BC) and Early Neolithic (c 6000 BC) deposits. The Early Neolithic contained cardial impressed ware, domesticated animal bones, and traces of wheat and barley. It was followed by Middle Neolithic layers with Stentinello and painted Masseria La Quercia ware and then dark Diana wares of the Late Neolithic. It may be one of the earliest Neolithic sites of the central Mediterranean.
Gua Cha: CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: A large limestone rock shelter in central Malaysia, occupied from c 10,000/8000 BC and 1000 AD. The lowest level is Hoabinhian, spanning 8000-1000 BC with burials. Neolithic burials with southern Thai / Ban Kao pottery affinities span c 1000 BC-1000 AD. Stone tools span the transition. A similar sequence is found at Kota Tongkat and Gua Cha's Neolithic sequence relates to the ancestry of the present orang asli (Austro-Asiatic-speaking aborigines) of central Malaya.
Gua Kechil: CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: A limestone rock shelter in central Malaysia, with remains related to the Ban Kao Neolithic, just as other sites such as Gua Cha. This site also had a late phase of the Hoabinhian with cord-marked pottery. The Neolithic assemblage dates to c 2800 BC.
Gua Lawa: CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: A limestone rock shelter near Sampung in eastern Java whose sequence may show a transition from a pre-ceramic assemblage of small hollow-based stone arrowheads to a Neolithic assemblage with cord-marked pottery and many bone and antler tools.
Gudenus Cave: CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: A prehistoric cave site on the Danube River in Austria with artifacts and faunal remains starting with the Middle Palaeolithic (sidescrapers, bifaces, cave bear, woolly mammoth, reindeer). There is an Upper Palaeolithic/Magdalenian assemblage and a Neolithic.
Gudnja: CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: A cave site in a steep valley in southern Dalmatia, Croatia. The occupation levels discovered include: Early Neolithic Impressed Ware; Middle Neolithic Danilo culture; Late Neolithic regional variant of the Hvar culture; and Copper Age. This site has yielded the first radiocarbon dates for the Dalmatian Neolithic: the Impressed Ware occupation dates to c 5200-4600 BC, the Danilo levels to c 4600-4450 BC.
gui: SYNONYM: kuei
CATEGORY: artifact; deity
DEFINITION: In Chinese religion, a troublesome spirit that roams the world, causing misfortune, illness, and death. These were believed to be the spirits of individuals who were not buried properly or whose families neglected to make proper memorial offerings. The term also refers to a Chinese Neolithic tripod pottery pitcher, first made with solid legs and then acquiring bulbous hollow-shaped legs and to an early Chinese bronze ritual bowl with handles. The latter often bore writing as well as complex designs. The bronze gui was known in the Shang period but was especially common in Western Zhou. These items were used in protective rituals as talismans devised to ward gui away from the family abode.
Gumelnita: SYNONYM: Gumelnitsa, Gumeilnita
CATEGORY: culture
DEFINITION: A Late Neolithic/Copper Age culture of eastern Romania, Bulgaria, and northern Greece (eastern Balkans) c 3800-3000/2500 BC. There were permanent villages of rectangular houses forming low tells, use of copper and gold, and a flourishing painted pottery. The pottery was often decorated with graphite designs. Gumelnita can be derived from the Hamangia, Boian, and Maritza cultures which preceded it in this area. The culture parallels the partitioning of the closely related Karanovo V and VI culture in Bulgaria. The Gumelnita represents the climax of the Neolithic sequence in south Rumania.
Gura Baciului: CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: An Early Neolithic site of the Cris culture of Transylvania that is similar to Karanovo I, Sesklo, and Anza settlements. Obsidian from Hungarian sources is a major component of the lithic assemblage.
Habasesti: CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: A stratigraphic settlement site of the Late Neolithic Cucuteni culture, in north Moldavia, Rumania. The main settlement level (Cucuteni A3), has a radiocarbon date of c 3130 BC. A village of almost 70 houses is on a promontory site, which is defended by a ditch and palisade. Rich polychrome painted ware and a group of large copper bossed pendants, with affinities in Denmark and Austria, have been found.
Hacilar: CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: A small but important site in the lake region of southwest Turkey, with a Late Neolithic and early Chalcolithic (c 5600-4500 BC). The aceramic early levels have some radiocarbon dates in the 7th millennium BC. The houses were of mudbrick or wood and daub on stone foundations, with an upper story of wood. They were finished internally in plaster, rarely painted. Crops included barley, emmer, and lentils and bones of sheep, deer, and cattle were also found. The site was abandoned and reoccupied in the Late Neolithic, early in the 6th millennium BC, when it had more substantial houses, monochrome red to brown pottery, and some use of copper. Querns, mortars and braziers were fitted into mud plaster floors, while recesses in the walls acted as cupboards. The kitchen was separated from the living rooms and upper stories were used as granaries and workshops. Female figurines of a unique style were also made. The latest phase of this period was burnt c 5400 BC and when the site was reoccupied it was smaller; this settlement was also burnt c 5050-5000 BC. The Hacilar (Chalcolithic) period had a fortified settlement, characterized by boldly painted red on white pottery.
Haddenham: CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: A Neolithic long barrow in Cambridgeshire, England, important for its being an example of the type of wooden structures which may have existed in non-megalithic long mounds of northern Europe. The site was covered by fen peat, thus preserving the original barrow in waterlogged conditions.
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: SYNONYM: 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.
Hamangia: CATEGORY: site; culture
DEFINITION: A Late Neolithic culture of the Black Sea near the mouth of the Danube (Romania and Bulgaria) which was contemporaneous with the early periods of the Boian and Maritsa cultures. The culture was rather short-lived, c 4000-3700 BC and was succeeded by the Gumelnita culture. It is regarded by some as a branch of the Impressed Ware culture, arriving by sea from the Aegean before 4300 BC. Noteworthy are its spondylus shell bracelets and its famous terra-cotta and marble figurines.
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.
hang-t'u: SYNONYM: hangtu
CATEGORY: structure
DEFINITION: A type of rammed-earth construction of walls and foundation platforms for buildings developed by the Chinese from Late Neolithic (Longshan) period and Shang Dynasty (c 1600-1027 BC), notably at An-Yang. It was also used for shaft tombs in the Shang and Zhou (Chou) periods. Earth was packed between wooden forms in successive thin layers, each layer being pounded down before the next was added. Hangtu walls have been found at only two Late Neolithic sites, Chengziyai and Hougang. Much of the Great Wall of China was originally built of rammed earth.
Hanging Grimston: CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: A long barrow on Yorkshire Wolds, England of the British Earlier Neolithic of the 4th millennium BC. It gave its name to the Grimston-Lyles Hill pottery whose characteristic vessel was the round-based carinated bowl with everted rim.
Hasanlu: CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: A tell site on Lake Urmia, northwest Iran, with a sequence beginning in the late 7th millennium BC. Much information has been gained on the early Ceramic Neolithic phase of the late-7th to mid-6th millennia BC. The citadel dates from the 10th century BC and is surrounded by a lower town. Four buildings on the citadel, facing onto a court and linked to a higher court with further buildings, have been interpreted as a palace complex. In c 800 BC, Hasanlu was destroyed. One of the skeletons held a magnificent gold bowl decorated with mythical scenes in relief. The bowl is related artistically to the finds from Marlik and Ziwiyeh. Other rich finds of gold, silver, electrum, glass, and ivory have been made at Hasanlu.
Hassi Mouilah: CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: An Algerian Capsian Neolithic site of c 5300 BP with point-based pots with impressed decoration, projectile points, geometric microliths, ostrich eggshell and amazonite beads.
Haua Fteah: CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: A large cave site in Cyrenaica, Libya, with the most complete sequence, back to c 78,000 BC, of Upper Pleistocene and Holocene industries known from a single site in North Africa. The oldest flint industry is a Libyan variant of the pre-Aurignacian (Libyan Amudian), and is followed successively by Levalloiso-Mousterian (60,000 years ago), Dabban (40,000 years ago), Oranian (18-16,000 years ago), Libyco-Capsian, and finally (from c 6800-6400) by Neolithic with pottery and domesticated animals. Based upon the striking of parallel-sided blades from prismatic cores, the earliest stage has clear affinities with broadly contemporary industries in Syria, Lebanon, and Israel. Its makers exploited both large game animals and seafood resources. There was a return to blade technology with the Dabban industry and the beginning of the Dabban occupation of Crenaica seems to have coincided with the onset of very arid conditions in the Saharan regions to the south. The Oranian had small backed bladelets.
Hazleton: CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: A Neolithic chambered long Severn-Cotswold barrow in Gloucestershire, England, with two megalithic chambers. The radiocarbon dates were c 4700 BC.
Helwan: SYNONYM: Hulwan
CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: A prehistoric and pharaonic settlement near the eastern bank of the Nile by Cairo. The name is sometimes applied to the material from the neighboring Neolithic site of El Omari.
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.
Hembury ware: CATEGORY: artifact
DEFINITION: Style of plain early and middle Neolithic pottery found in southwestern England during the 4th millennium BC. Named after the Neolithic enclosure site of Hembury in Devon, Hembury ware is characterized by round-bottomed vessels with straight sides or S-profiled bodies.
Hemudu: SYNONYM: Ho-mu-tu
CATEGORY: site; culture
DEFINITION: An Early Neolithic site in Zhejiang Province, China, dating back to the late 6th and early 5th millennia BC. Two radiocarbon dates of c 5000 and c 4800 BC are the earliest yet for rice cultivation and it is the type-site of the southern rice-growing regime (millet was grown in the north). Pigs, dogs, and water buffalo were domesticated. Hoes or spades made from cattle scapulae have been found in large quantity; stone tools were few and crude. Timber houses show the use of a mortise-and-tenon technique. The low-fired handmade pottery includes shallow Ding tripods. It was succeeded by the Qingliangang culture in the Early Neolithic and by the Daxi, Qujialing, and Liangzhu cultures in the Middle Neolithic, c 3800-2800 BC.
henge: SYNONYM: henge monument
CATEGORY: structure
DEFINITION: A circular, prehistoric religious enclosure constructed of wood or stones and enclosed by ditches, banks, and walls -- and found only in the British Isles. Henge monuments are characteristic of the megalithic period in southern and eastern England in particular. To the west and north, henges often enclose a stone circle. There are 13 such examples, including Avebury and Stonehenge. The circular area is delimited by a ditch with the bank normally outside it. Class I henges have a single entrance marked by a gap in the earthworks, while those of Class II have two such entrances placed opposite each other. Avebury had four entrances. Many henges have extra features such as burials, pits, circles of upright stones (Avebury, Stonehenge) or of timber posts (Durrington Walls, Woodhenge). Henges are often associated with Late Neolithic pottery of grooved ware, Peterborough and Beaker types, dating from the centuries after 2500 BC. Occasional examples were still in use in the Bronze Age, e.g. Stonehenge. Henges are believed to have been focal points for 'ritual' activity, but there is much controversy over their design. They range in size from c 30 meters to more than 400 meters in diameter (Avebury, Durrington Walls).
Herpaly: CATEGORY: culture
DEFINITION: A regional variant of the three Late Neolithic cultures (Tisza, Herpaly, Czöszhalom) of the Great Hungarian Plain, c 4000-3400 BC. The Herpaly culture, distributed in the northern Alföld zone, is characterized by tell settlement. Throned figures and anthropomorphic and zoomorphic figurines indicate ritual activities.
Hoabinhian: SYNONYM: Hoabinh
CATEGORY: culture
DEFINITION: A little-known Mesolithic or Neolithic culture (early-to-mid-Holocene stone tool industry) of southeast Asia (type site is Hoa Binh, Vietnam) dating from 10,000-2000 BC. There are many chipped, pecked, and polished stone axes found in piles of shells. Its importance lies in its position between the earliest centers of rice growing in India and China, and in the part it most have played in diffusing the knowledge of agriculture into Indonesia and the Pacific. The Neolithic assemblages have pottery and ground stone tools for several millennia after 6000 BC. It is best described as a techno-complex with successive cultural accretions, the Hoabinhian cannot be regarded as an archaeological culture of chronological horizon. The majority of Hoabinhian sites found to date are in rock shelters and coastal shell middens. The three recognized phases are: archaic with unifacially worked pebble tools, intermediate with smaller pebble tools and bifacial working and edge-grinding, and late characterized by some pottery, smaller scrapers, grinding stones, knives, piercers, polished stone tools, and shell artifacts.
hoe: SYNONYM: mattock
CATEGORY: artifact
DEFINITION: One of the oldest tools of agriculture, a digging implement consisting of a blade set at right angles to a long handle (haft). Early hoes had stone or wooden blades. Examples made from antler go back to the Mesolithic. Most early hoes were used by the farming peoples of the Neolithic. Hoes succeeded the digging stick and gave rise to the plow. The digging stick, precursor of most agricultural hand tools, was simply a sharpened branch sometimes weighted with a stone.
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.
Homolka: CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: A Late Neolithic fort site in Bohemia of the Rivnac culture.
Hong Kong: CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: An island country with evidence of human habitation from Neolithic times. The excavated artifacts suggest an influence from northern Chinese Stone Age cultures, most notably the Lung-shan. Before the British occupation, Hong Kong Island was inhabited only by a small fishing population. Hong Kong was firmly incorporated in the Chinese cultural sphere in the late Chou and Han Dynasties (late 1st millennium BC). The earliest sites in Hong Kong date from about 3500 BC and belong to Yueh coastal Neolithic. There was geometric-stamped pottery during the 2nd millennium BC.
Hongshan: SYNONYM: [Hung-shan]
CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: A site in Liaoning Province, China, an the name of a Neolithic culture dated to c 3500-3000 BC. Hongshan had elaborate jade animal ornaments, large temple sites, female figurines, and masks.
Horgen: CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: A Middle and Late Neolithic culture with its type site on Lake Neuchâtel in Switzerland. The pottery consists of rough bucket-shaped vessels with decoration limited to a few appliqué cordons. The bucket shapes and ornament resemble that of the French Seine-Oise-Marne culture. Horgen succeeded the Cortaillod (in western Switzerland) and the Pfyn. Horgen pottery is found on settlement sites and also in Megalithic tombs and the culture dated to c 3400-2800 BC. There was a decline in the use of copper.
Hou-kang: SYNONYM: Hougang
CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: The type site of a Neolithic culture (also called Honan Lung-shan, Henan Longshan) in Honan province, China, the first to show Yangshao, Honan Longshan, and Shang remains in stratigraphic succession. Other cultural sites are Xiawanggang and Dahe. The radiocarbon dates obtained from Hou-kang are c 4400-4200 BC for the Banpo-type Yangshao level and c 2350 BC for the Honan Lung-shan level.
house of the dead: CATEGORY: structure
DEFINITION: A type of wooden building above a tomb or connected to a grave, widespread in Denmark and Germany, but also found in other areas of northern Europe during the Neolithic period.
huang: CATEGORY: artifact
DEFINITION: A flat semicircular or arc-shaped jade pendant known from Neolithic sites in China and made throughout the Bronze Age.
hunebed: CATEGORY: structure
DEFINITION: The Dutch name (literally 'Hun's grave') for a local variety of megalithic chamber tombs in the northern Netherlands and northern Germany. The tombs are built of large stones and consist of a round or oval mound surrounded by a kerb and covering a rectangular burial chamber with its entrance on one of the long sides. A few examples have an entrance passage, giving them a T plan which suggests an association with the passage graves of Denmark. The Danish tombs are slightly later than the oldest Dutch ones, but in both places they were built by the TRB culture during the Neolithic in the 4th and 3rd millennia BC.
Hvar: SYNONYM: Dimos
CATEGORY: site; culture
DEFINITION: An island with a large number of Late Neolithic and Copper Age sites, off the Dalmatian coast and part of present-day Croatia. The caves have yielded striking Late Neolithic pottery -- dark burnished ware with red crusted decoration. Hvar has been continuously inhabited since early Neolithic times, and an ancient wall surrounds the old city of Hvar. Since the vast majority of Hvar sites are caves, the economy was likely based on fishing and shell-collecting. In 385 BC Greek colonists founded Dimos (presently Hvar) and Pharos (Stari Grad), and in 219 BC the island became Roman. Slavs fleeing the mainland in the 7th century AD settled on the island. The pottery is found in neighboring areas of the mainland, where it is known as the Lisicice style. The island's occupation probably began in the 4th millennium BC.
Hypsithermal: CATEGORY: chronology
DEFINITION: A Holocene climatic optimum in the Eastern Woodlands, equivalent to the Altithermal segment of the Holocene Epoch (Holocene is 10,000 years ago-present), dated on the basis of pollen studies. The Hypsithermal Climatic Interval began about 9,000 years ago and ended about 2,500 years ago. It has been divided into smaller units beginning with the Boreal. The Hypsithermal follows the Pre-Boreal and precedes the Sub-Atlantic intervals. It was a time of comparatively warm climatic conditions which resulted in the elimination of many cooler plant and animal refuges and the extinction of some species. In many parts of the world, pine forests gave way to forests dominated by oak during the Hypsithermal. Mesolithic and Neolithic cultures are contemporaneous with Hypsithermal events in both the New and Old Worlds.
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.
Icknield Way: CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: An early Neolithic trackway across England from Norfolk to Wiltshire, connecting camps on the hilltops. It ran from Avebury and Stonehenge to the coast of Norfolk, the site of the major flint mines known as Grime's Graves. In parts the track is doubled above and below the spring line of the escarpment, suggesting seasonal variation in use.
Ile Carn: CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: Early Neolithic passage grave in Brittany, of dry-stone walling with a corbelled vault to the chamber and dated to c 3270 bc. Inside were only a few sherds and flint flakes.
Ileret: SYNONYM: Koobi Fora
CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: A site on the east side of Lake Turkana in Kenya which has yielded important archaeological sites from the Pleistocene and one from the late 3rd millennium BC. Domestic cattle and sheep make this one of the earliest sites in East Africa with evidence for pastoralism. Associated pottery and stone bowls serve as a link with Pastoral Neolithic sites of significantly later date in the Rift Valley highlands to the south. The site of Koobi Fora is very important for its finds of early Hominid fossils and stone artifacts from 2.5-1 million years ago.
Impressed Ware: CATEGORY: ceramics
DEFINITION: The earliest Neolithic pottery of the Mediterranean area, with decoration impressed into the clay by sticks, combs, fingernails, or seashells, from before 6000 BC to around 4000 BC (though till later in North Africa). The pottery itself was characterized as having simple round-bottomed shapes. The serrated edge of the cardium shell was particularly popular in the western area and it is also known as Cardial Ware. Before c 5000 BC the ware is found mainly in caves or rock shelters or shell midden sites, where it is associated with hunting-gathering and breeding of sheep. Around 5000 BC, crop cultivation was introduced and large settled villages sprang up. Other types of pottery are found alongside Impressed Ware at this stage, including fine red painted ware in Italy, Stentinello Ware in Sicily, and Ghar Dalam ware in Malta, which represent specialized versions of Impressed Ware. The pottery style may have originated in Asia Minor or even Yugoslavia (Starcevo culture).
Indonesia: CATEGORY: geography; site
DEFINITION: The most southerly and largest portion of island Southeast Asia. It is divided by the Huxley/Wallace Line into westerly Sunadaland and easterly Wallacea, the former being settled by Homo erectus (Java man) by 2 million years ago. Around 40,000 years ago, people moved across Huxley's Line to reach Australia and New Guinea (early Australoid populations). Small flake and blade industries popped up in eastern Indonesia and Australia after 4000 BC and the spread of Neolithic cultures correlated with Austronesian expansion after 3000 BC. Bronze metallurgy spread in the 1st millennium BC.
Isbister: CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: A Neolithic chambered tomb on the island of South Ronaldsay, Orkney, Scotland, dating to c 3150 BC. Remains of 342 people were found within the chambers, mostly as disarticulated bones that were sorted.
Jabrud: SYNONYM: Yabrud
CATEGORY: site; culture
DEFINITION: A site of three rock shelters in Syria, each with long series of Palaeolithic industries, as well as some Natufian and Neolithic material. Jabrud is the type site of the Jabrudian industry, which is broadly contemporary with the Amudian and Late Acheulian of the Middle East. The Jabrudian is distinguished by well-made, thick side scrapers of Mousterian type and some bifacial blades similar to those of the Amudian as well as hand axes. At Jabrud the industry bears a strong resemblance to some Mousterian industries from France. The dating probably falls within the Riss-Würm interglacial or the first Würm interstadial. It marks one of the ways in which the transition from Lower Palaeolithic to Middle Palaeolithic cultures occurred in the Levant, about 150,000 BP, a kind of final Acheulian.
jade: CATEGORY: geology
DEFINITION: A name applied to two distinct minerals, nephrite and jadeite; a general term for a semiprecious stone used in East Asia from the Neolithic onwards. Jade, in the form of polished axes, was traded in Neolithic Europe but chiefly known from contexts in China and Mesoamerica. It is too hard to be cut or flaked, but may be worked by abrasion. The most highly prized of the two is jadeite.
Jankovich: CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: Prehistoric cave site near the River Danube, north-central Hungary, with a Middle Palaeolithic assemblage of bifacial foliates and sidescrapers. An Upper Palaeolithic assemblage, Neolithic, and Bronze Age artifacts, were also found.
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.
Jarmo: CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: A small aceramic Neolithic to ceramic Neolithic village site in the foothills of the Zagros mountains of northern Iraq. Jarmo was used to explain the origins of food production by Robert Braidwood, as the site dates to the later 7th millennium BC and there was carbonized wheat and barley. Its radiocarbon dates place it amongst the world's earliest food-producing settlements. Goat and dog bones show domestication. The first 11 of its 16 levels had no pottery, though clay-lined pits were baked in situ. Square houses of pisé were built with clay ovens and grain pits which included flint and obsidian chipped stone tools, stone bowls, and clay figurines. Flaked and ground stone were freely used for tools and utensils. It is the type site of the Jarmoan culture.
Java: CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: A major island of Indonesia, best known for its remains of Homo erectus dating from 1,000,000-500,000 BP. Neolithic and Bronze Age cultures are known. The colonization of Java apparently took place from mainland Southeast Asia, and domestic agriculture is known to have been practiced there as early as 2500 BC. Indian traders began arriving in Java from about the 1st century AD, and the resulting Hindu Indian influence developed in the kingdom of Mataram in the 8th century AD.
javelin head: CATEGORY: artifact
DEFINITION: A kind of large flint projectile point used during the Neolithic in the British Isles. Usually lozenge-shaped in outline with slightly convex curves on the leading edges. Finely made, and sometimes polished and ground on the large flat sides, presumably to reduce the weight and produce a thinner blade.
Jebel Uweinat: CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: A mountainous region of the eastern Sahara, where Libya, Sudan, and Egypt meet. The many rock shelters had prehistoric occupation, with abundant rock art. The art is of particular interest for its representations of various creatures, including giraffe and ostrich, which are tethered. It was a focal point for Neolithic herders around 6200 BP.
Jericho: SYNONYM: 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.
Jevisovice: CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: Late Neolithic site in Moravia of the Funnel Beaker and Baden cultures used as a guide to the Late Neolithic and Eneolithic of the Carpathian Basin.
Jordanów: SYNONYM: Jordansmühl; Jordanów Slaski; Jordanova
CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: A settlement and cemetery site in Silesia, southern Poland, the type site for a subgroup of the Late Neolithic Lengyel culture. Its pottery is incised or painted, and copper objects were beginning to be used -- among the earliest-known from north of the Carpathians. The settlement had timber houses which were trapezoidal in plan.
Judeidah: CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: A tell site in the Amuq plain of northern Syria. Its lowest level, XIV, was of the Neolithic Mersin type, with a long series of succeeding deposits.
Kökénydomb: CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: Neolithic settlement of the Tisza culture of Hungary. The rectangular houses were decorated with elaborate incised decoration. Clay pedestals, or altars, are among the ceramics.
Körös: CATEGORY: culture
DEFINITION: Early Neolithic culture of southern Hungary which belongs to the complex including Karanovo I, Cris, and Starcevo cultures. The Körös variant is distinguished by its footed vessels and relative lack of painted wares. It is believed to have been the precursor of the Linear Pottery culture that developed on the Hungarian Plain.
Kadero: CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: Important Khartoum Neolithic site on the edge of the old Nile flood plain which has lent information on the early development of food production in the central Sudan. Kadero was an extensive village inhabited during the second half of the 4th millennium BC. Herding was mainly of cattle, with some sheep and goats. There were many grindstones, and grain impressions on the pottery indicate the presence of wild panicum, sorghum, and finger millet. Burials included stone mace heads, palettes, carnelian bead necklaces, ivory bracelets, pottery, and ochre.
Kakanj: CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: The type site for a Middle Neolithic regional group in north-central Bosnia, located near Visoko and dated c 4700-4300 BC. The culture is typified by fine monochrome wares and decorative elements with affinities in the coastal Danilo culture. There are working pits, flint production areas, and a rich bone-working assemblage.
Kalavasos: CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: A site in southern Cyprus that began with an Aceramic Neolithic I settlement in 7th millennium BC. Another area had a Chalcolithic site of the early 4th millennium BC. Another, occupied c 1325-1225 BC, is an extensive Late Cypriot town. Copper and gypsum are mined at Kalavasos.
Kalumpang: CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: A Neolithic site in Sulawesi which, along with Minanga Sipakko, has produced late Neolithic assemblages of polished stone adzes, ground slate projectile points, and pottery. Some aspects of the artifacts are similar to Taiwanese Neolithic and Lapita wares of Oceania.
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.
Kamennaya Mogila: CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: A Mesolithic or Aceramic Neolithic site in the southern Ukraine, similar to that of the Bug-Dniester culture at Soroki.
Kamid al Loz, Tell: SYNONYM: Kumidi
CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: A site in Lebanon, Kumidi, that was the seat of a state during the Late Bronze Age (mentioned in the Amarna archive). Settlement began in the late Neolithic and continued to Byzantine times. In the Middle Bronze Age and Late Bronze Age, it was a walled down with a palace and temples. Its location made it strategically important.
Karanovo: CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: A tell site in eastern Bulgaria which has given the basic chronological sequence from the Early Neolithic, and much of the Eneolithic, to the Bronze Age, 7th to mid 2nd millennium BC, of the eastern Balkans. There were seven major phases of occupation. Karanovo I is the earliest Neolithic and forms part of the complex of cultures that include Starcevo, Cris, and Körös. The architecture was wattle-and-daub and eventually the 50-60 early, scattered, square huts were replaced by rectangular, larger, plastered, and painted ones. Karanovo II also represents the First Temperate Neolithic level. Karanovo III has Middle Neolithic Veselinovo levels, with dark burnished and carinated pottery. Level IV is the Kalojanoven level and V represents Marica levels, with graphite painted wares and excised pottery -- both are contemporaneous with the Late Neolithic Vinca culture of the western Balkans. Level VI is the main Eneolithic Gumelnita occupation with graphite painted wares and copper metallurgy. Level VII is the Early Bronze Age level. Almost all the period designations have become known as cultures in their own right (e.g. the Karanovo III culture).
Karbuna: CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: One of the earliest hoards discovered in the Balkan Neolithic of the Cucuteni-Tripolye culture in Moldova. The Karbuna hoard of 852 objects was discovered in a Tripolye A-B1 pot and it includes some of the earliest cast copper items, shell, marble, and bone jewelry. The date of deposition is disputed c 3800/3500 BC and the hoard has been interpreted as either a shaman's kit or as a communal ornament collection.
Kazanlik: SYNONYM: Kazanluk
CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: A large Neolithic, Copper Age (Eneolithic), and Early Bronze Age tell in the Valley of Roses, southern Bulgaria. The stratigraphy includes a Karanovo I occupation; Veselinovo occupation levels; Karanovo V-VI layers (with a stone wall enclosing the site at the end of this period), and an Early Bronze Age occupation. The Kazanluk Tomb, discovered in 1944 on the outskirts of town, is a Thracian burial tomb of an unknown ruler from the 4th or 3rd century BC. The fine murals that decorate the entire tomb distinguish it from 13 similar known examples.
Kenyon, (Dame) Kathleen Mary (1906-1978): CATEGORY: person
DEFINITION: British archaeologist who made major contributions to the understanding of the history of Palestine -- especially through work at Jericho and Jerusalem. The work at Jericho established the existence of an aceramic Neolithic (PPNA/B) and an Epipalaeolithic subsistence on wild cereals in the 9th-8th millennia BC.
Kephala: CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: A Late (Final) Neolithic settlement and cist grave cemetery on the Cycladic island of Kea, dated to the mid-4th millennium BC. The cemetery of graves made of small flat stones in circular or rectangular constructions each had a number of burials. Children were commonly buried in pottery jars (pithoi). The typical pottery was covered with a red slip and decorated by patter burnishing. Evidence for copper-smelting was found, one of the earliest occurrences in the Aegean. There is evidence of close links between Kephala and sites in Attica (Athens, Thorikos).
Khirokitia: CATEGORY: site; culture
DEFINITION: An Early Neolithic settlement in southern Cyprus, first occupied in the aceramic Neolithic I of the 7th millennium BC. It was abandoned and reoccupied in Neolithic II, later 5th millennium BC. The settlement, surrounded by a massive wall, consisted of round houses of mudbrick on stone footings. Hearths and benches were found inside and some houses had burials with grave goods (especially stone bowls) underneath the floors. There was a fine stone industry, using Anatolian obsidian and flint for tools, local andesite for both tools and containers, and Levantine carnelian for beads. The site has given its name to the Early Neolithic culture of the island.
Kiskevély: CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: Cave site near Budapest, Hungary, with Middle Palaeolithic tools of the Last Glacial Gravettian as well as Neolithic remains.
Kizilkaya: CATEGORY: culture
DEFINITION: A mid- to late-6th millennium BC Neolithic culture of the Taurus Mountains above Antalya, in southern Turkey. The culture is known mostly for its pottery, which shows links both with that of Early Neolithic Catal Hüyük and that of Late Neolithic Hacilar; it may fit chronologically between the two.
Knossos: SYNONYM: Cnossus
CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: A well-known palace site on the island of Crete that has been inhabited almost continuously from 6000 BC when the first Neolithic settlement was constructed. It was the location of the chief palace of the Minoans, near Herakleion at the center of the north coast of Crete. The Neolithic settlement was succeeded by an Early Minoan one, but little is known about this phase. The site was leveled for the palace at the beginning of the Middle Minoan period, c 2000 BC. Around the palace were the main buildings, the throne room, reception halls, shrines, magazines, and the domestic quarter of at least three stories. Large banks of rooms of various types were arranged around a central courtyard, giving rise to the story of the labyrinth. Unlike the other Cretan palaces, Knossos survived the violent eruption of Santorini/Thera c 1450 BC, but came under new rulers, Mycenaeans. The palace was opulent and the frescoes show the bull sports which took place in or near the palace, the courtiers who watched them, others in ceremonial procession carrying offerings, and the priest-king himself. Clay tablets with inscriptions in Linear A and B show the careful accounting which supported this show. From them, too, we learn that in the last phase of occupation the rulers of the palace were Greek. Knossos likely governed much of Crete. The palace site was finally destroyed probably c 1375 BC, though Knossos remained prosperous and powerful, emerging as one of the foremost Greek city-states on Crete.
Knowth: CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: One of the largest Neolithic burial grounds on the River Boyne in County Meath, Ireland. It is a circular burial mound containing two passage graves entered from opposite sides. The first is a large but simple passage grave, with several decorated stones but no evidence of corbelling. The second tomb, also a passage grave, has a corbel-vaulted burial chamber with three niches. One of these contained a stone basin ornamented with grooves and circular designs, and there is further carving on the walls of the tomb itself. The central mound was surrounded by at least 15 smaller tombs, each under its own cairn, and these 'satellite' tombs included both entrance graves and passage graves of cruciform plan. Knowth is one of the three principal elements of the Boyne Valley megalithic cemetery, dating from the 4th millennium BC. Knowth was later reoccupied in the early historic period when Souterrains were constructed within the mound. Excavations have also revealed the remains of the Early Christian royal center here, belonging to the Northern Brega known from the Irish annals.
Kobystan: CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: The site of rock art in Azerbaijan on the eastern end of the Caucasus Mountains, Mesolithic and Neolithic, Bronze Age and medieval. Hunting-gathering peoples used a microlithic toolkit who eventually made pottery.
Kok Charoen: CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: A site in central Thailand, dating to the 2nd and 1st millennia BC, which yielded occupational remains and more than 60 burials furnished with pottery similar to that of Non Nok Tha. It is considered to be the largest Neolithic burial site so far discovered in Southeast Asia.
Kostolac: CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: Eneolithic site in the Carpathian basin of Serbia and name of a culture considered a variant of the Baden culture.
Kremikovci: CATEGORY: culture
DEFINITION: Early Neolithic culture of the Balkans, on the Bulgarian border in Macedonia. It is contemporaneous with the Karanovo I culture of southern Bulgaria, Starcevo culture of Serbia and Bosnia, Körös culture of southern Hungary, and the Cris culture of Romania. The ceramics are white-on-red or black-on-red painted decoration.
Krivodol group: CATEGORY: culture
DEFINITION: Eneolithic regional culture of northwest Bulgaria, c 3000-2800 BC, with a settlement at Zaminets.
Krzemionki: CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: Middle and Late Neolithic flint mine of the Holy Cross Mountains of central Poland. It was used by the Funnel Beaker and Globular Amphora cultures.
Kujavish grave: SYNONYM: Kujavian grave
CATEGORY: feature
DEFINITION: A distinctive type of grave of central Poland during the middle part of the local Neolithic / TRB culture. Each tomb consists of a triangular or trapeze-shaped mound which covers a single flat grave containing an extended inhumation burial. The chamber or a trench was usually stone-built, covered by long trapezoidal barrows, and sometimes surrounded by a stone kerb. Very few of these tombs had more than one burial.
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.
kurgan: CATEGORY: feature
DEFINITION: The Russian word for a burial mound (barrow or tumulus) covering a pit grave, mortuary house, or catacomb grave. It is mainly connected with Eneolithic and Bronze Age burial practices. The earliest kurgans appeared during the 4th millennium BC among the Copper Age peoples of the Caucasus, and soon afterwards in the south Russian steppe and the Ukraine. Shortly after 3200 BC, the kurgan cultures began influencing most of the east, central, and northern Europe. The local Late Neolithic and Copper Age communities adopted such new traits as globular amphora vessels, corded ware, asymmetrical stone battle-axes, domesticated horses, and burial of a single body (often sprinkled with ochre) in a pit or mortuary house, covered by a barrow. After c 2500 BC, several regional kurgan-derived cultures can be recognized. In Russia, the kurgan tradition persisted late and was still practiced by the historical Scythians and Sarmatians of the steppe zone. Three forms of kurgan burial can be identified: Yamnaya (pit-grave) burial, dated c 2400-1800 BC; Katakombnaja (catacomb-grave) burial, dated c 2300-1800 BC; and Srubnaya (timber grave) burial, dated c1600-900 BC.
La Chaussée-Tirancourt: CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: Late Neolithic allée couverte (gallery grave) of c 2900 BC in Somme, France. It was used until c 2000 BC and remains of over 350 people have been preserved.
La Cotte de Saint-Brelade: CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: Cave site on Jersey of the Channel Islands with prehistoric remains of Paleolithic man and there is abundant evidence of the Neolithic and Bronze ages. There are Acheulian bifaces, Mousterian artifacts, and Neanderthal teeth. Jersey was linked to the continent in times of low sea level.
Lagozza: SYNONYM: Lagozza di Besnate
CATEGORY: site; culture
DEFINITION: Late Neolithic lake village settlement in Lombardy, Italy, dated to c 3600 BC. Remains of wooden pile dwellings exist in the type site of the Lagozza culture, characterized by finely made black-burnished carinated bowls. Decoration is rare, consisting of radiating lines on the lower walls or scratched cross-hatched triangles. Instead of proper handles, simple and multiple perforated lugs were used, including the flûte de pan. The culture is related to, and possibly derived from, Chassey (France) and Cortaillod (Switzerland). Spindle whorls and loom-weights show textile production. The culture was established in the north and spread slowly down the Adriatic side of Italy to the Marche and Ripoli in the Late Neolithic, and to Ariano by the Copper Age, surviving there to give rise to the Apennine culture of the Bronze Age. Copper axes are among the earliest copper items of northern Italy.
Lake Besaka: CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: A series of sites in southeastern Ethiopia where, in the mid-2nd millennium BC, local stone industries made a variety of scrapers. Stone bowls, akin to those of the East African Pastoral Neolithic sites far to the south, also occur.
lake dwelling: SYNONYM: lake village
CATEGORY: term
DEFINITION: A type of Neolithic settlement found common in prehistoric Europe in areas with many lakes, such as Switzerland, Germany, and north Italy. Such a settlement was formerly on the edge of a lake but is now buried by lakeshore sediment or underwater. They should properly be labeled lakeside villages, since in most cases they were constructed on the shore and not on stilts over the water, as was formerly believed. They were, however, frequently constructed on timber platforms and subsequently rising water levels in the lakes have preserved these platforms and much other wooden material, as well as artifacts of other organic substances. Cultures in which lake villages were common include Chassey, Cortaillod, Horgen, and Polada.
landnam: CATEGORY: term
DEFINITION: A Danish word meaning 'land taking', used to describe a common form of early agriculture in which an area of woodland was cleared and cultivated (which has been identified in the pollen record). The land was later abandoned and was taken over by weeds, finally reverting to woodland. Its regeneration began with the birch, a rapid colonizer of areas cleared by fire. Landnam has been recognized in pollen analysis by changes in the pollen spectra: the drop in tree pollen, the appearance of grass and plantain pollens, a subsequent increase in the latter, and an eventual reappearance of the tree pollen. Landnam range in date from Neolithic to Bronze Age.
Larisa: SYNONYM: Larissa
CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: Mousterian site in northern Greece and a Final Neolithic culture with a black polished pottery. In antiquity, Larissa was the seat of the Aleuad clan, founded by Aleuas, who claimed descent from Heracles. The poet Pindar and the physician Hippocrates died there. In 357 BC the last Aleuads called in Philip II of Macedonia against the tyrants of Pherae, and from 344 to 196 Larissa remained under Macedonia. Rome then made it capital of the reorganized Thessalian League. The emperor Justinian fortified the city, whose name means citadel"."
Larnian culture: CATEGORY: culture
DEFINITION: A Mesolithic culture, named after Larne, Ireland, and found only on sites close to coasts and estuaries in western Scotland and eastern Ireland. It is characterized by shell middens and the early toolkits include leaf-shaped points made on a flake, the oldest unambiguous implement in Ireland, and scrapers. Some are dated to 6000 BC. Later assemblages contain more flakes than blades and include tranchet axes and very small scrapers. . More recent work casts doubt on the antiquity of the people who were responsible for the Larnian industry; association with Neolithic remains suggests that they should be considered not as Mesolithic but rather as contemporary with the Neolithic farmers. The Larnian could then be interpreted as a specialized aspect of contemporary Neolithic culture. Lake and riverside finds, especially along the River Bann, show a comparable tradition. A single radioactive carbon date of 5725 +/- 110 BC from Toome Bay, north of Lough Neagh, for woodworking and flint has been cited in support of a Mesolithic phase in Ireland.
Lasithi: CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: A plain on Crete which has been occupied since the Neolithic and which was intensively used by the Minoans.
Le Mas d'Azil: CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: Huge river tunnel and limestone grottoes in Ariège of the French Pyrenees with occupation from the Aurignacian to the Bronze Age. The Magdalenian level has portable art dated to the 12th millennium BC. The Azilian material, between the Palaeolithic and Neolithic, included perforated barbed points and painted pebbles. The site is rich in Palaeolithic remains.
Leang Tuwo Mane'e: CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: Rock shelter on the coast of Karakellang, Talaud Islands, northeastern Indonesia, which has produced a preceramic small blade industry, c 3000 BC, followed by the appearance of a Neolithic assemblage by about 2000 BC, probably introduced from the Philippines.
leister: CATEGORY: artifact
DEFINITION: A two-pronged forklike fish spear made of two bone or antler heads with barbs pointing inwards and backwards. They are recorded from Mesolithic and lakeside Neolithic settlements, as well as present-day use by the Eskimo, mainly for salmon.
Lerna: CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: Long-lived coastal settlement site near Argos in the Peloponnese, southern Greece. Middle and Late Neolithic villages were succeeded by a fortified township of Early Helladic II (c 3000 BC, Early Bronze Age). At this stage it was a fortified township, surrounded by a stone wall with D-shaped bastions. Houses, built of mud-brick on stone foundations, include a building known as the House of Tiles, roofed with stone and terra-cotta tiles -- a very early appearance of this roofing technique. Around 2400-2200 BC it burnt down and was rebuilt in Early Helladic III (Middle Bronze Age), when the first pieces of Minyan Ware appear; the radical cultural change suggests the burning was intentional. Scattered imports from Crete assist in the dating. Two rectangular shaft, royal graves contemporary with the Shaft Grave B circle at Mycenae, c 1600 BC (Middle Helladic), were the latest material on the site.
Les Fouaillages: CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: Neolithic cairn on Guernsey, Channel Islands, with pottery of Cerny type dated to c 4300 BC. It covered a megalithic cist on one end, a closed megalithic cist in the middle, and a passage grave on its widest end.
Let: CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: A settlement of the Early Neolithic Cris culture, the Rumanian regional variant of the First Temperate Neolithic, with later Boian and Gumelnita occupation levels. It is dated to the early 5th millennium BC, and is a rare example of a multi-level Cris site, with three occupation horizons, each characterized by differing styles of painted wares.
Levallois core: CATEGORY: artifact
DEFINITION: A prepared core from which a single flake or blade has been produced. The technique was primarily used in the Palaeolithic and Neolithic.
Levantine art: CATEGORY: artifact
DEFINITION: Rock art found mainly in eastern Spain and dating to the Neolithic period. Small red-painted deer, ibex, humans, etc. were used in hunting scenes. The art was once assigned to the Mesolithic.
Levkas: SYNONYM: Leucas
CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: One of the Ionian Islands off the west coast of Greece, which was once believed to be Homer's Ithaca, home of Odysseus. Mycenaean remains at Nidhrí on the east coast testify to early occupation and convince some scholars that Leucas, not Ithaca, was the home of Odysseus.The cave of Chirospilia has yielded Neolithic material, but more important are the Early and Middle Bronze Age cemeteries. The former included the rites of jar burial and partial cremation under barrows. Two groups of tombs of the Middle Bronze Age contained some Minyan Ware, and show some links with the shaft graves of Mycenae, as also with burial mounds in Albania. In the mid-7th century BC, Corinthian colonists established themselves just south of the present capital and dug a canal through the isthmus. Under Roman rule in the 2nd century BC, a stone bridge, of which there are some remains, was constructed to the main island. In 167, the Romans made Levkas a free city.
li: CATEGORY: artifact
DEFINITION: A cooking vessel common in the Chinese Neolithic and Bronze Ages in both pottery and bronze. It is a small tripod bowl with hollow legs, characteristic of the Henan and Shaanxi Longshan cultures (Hougang II, Kexingzhuang II) that in Shang and Chou times was copied in bronze. The Xian steamer was a perforated bowl set atop a li and first appeared in Henan Longshan pottery and bronze in the Shang period.
Li Chi (1896-1979): SYNONYM: [Li Ch'i]
CATEGORY: person
DEFINITION: Chinese archaeologist responsible for establishing the historical authenticity of the semilegendary Shang dynasty of China (c 1766-1122 BC). He supervised numerous excavations at Anyang (An-yang), working to identify the features distinguishing the Shang civilization from previous Neolithic cultures. More than 300 tombs, including four important royal burial sites, were uncovered and carefully studied. Some 1,100 skeletons and oracle bones, unquestionably linked with the Shang period, were recovered. Li Chi created a typology of bronzes based on their shapes, of ceramic sherds, and bone hairpins. Following the Japanese invasion of China and the expulsion of the Chinese Nationalists from the mainland, many of Li's Anyang remains and notes were lost. After escaping to Taiwan, he established the first archaeology and anthropology department at a Chinese university (National University in Taipei). He published a number of books, including The Beginnings of Chinese Civilization" (1957). "
Liang-chu: SYNONYM: Liangzhu
CATEGORY: culture; site
DEFINITION: A Middle and Late Neolithic culture in central southern China, with its type site in Jiangsu Province, originating c 3000 BC. Its painted pottery succeeded Yang-Shao culture and preceded or was contemporary with the Longshan culture; Liangzhu is a continuation of the Majibang culture of the same region and is of Hemudu lineage. The jade industry was very advanced with intricate incising and relief carvings of the taotie motif. It was a rice-growing culture.
Linear Pottery culture: SYNONYM: Linearbandkeramik; LBK; Danubian I
CATEGORY: culture
DEFINITION: The earliest Neolithic culture of central Europe, western Ukraine to eastern France, between c 4500-3900 BC. It is so named after curvilinear incised patterns which make its pottery so recognizable. This was the first farming culture in central Europe, based on grain cultivation and domesticated livestock, lasting to 3200 BC on its periphery. The Linear Pottery core area stretches from eastern Hungary to the Netherlands, including settlement concentrations in the Pannonian Basin, Bohemia, Moravia, central Germany and the Rhineland. A second rapid expansion occurred eastwards round the northern rim of the Carpathians, from Poland to the Dnieper. Linear Pottery is characterized by incised and sometimes painted pottery (3/4 spherical bowl) with linear designs (curvilinear, zigzag, spiral, and meander patterns), polished stone shoe-last adzes, and a microlithic stone industry. Small cemeteries of individual inhumations are common as are longhouses with rectangular ground plans. The remarkable uniformity that characterized the Linear Pottery culture in its core area broke down after c 4000 BC and the cultures that emerged -- Tisza, Lengyel, Stroke-Ornamented Ware, Rossen etc. -- were more divergent in characteristics. It is most possible that it derived from the Körös culture of the northern Balkans.
Lipari: CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: An acropolis site on Lipari island of the Aeolian