Archaeology Wordsmith

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Abbasids: CATEGORY: culture
DEFINITION: The second of two Arab dynasties of the Muslim Empire of the Caliphate (caliphs = rulers) and descended from al-Abbas, uncle of the Prophet Muhammad. It overthrew the Umayyad caliphate in AD 750 and was based in Baghdad until 1258 when it was sacked by the Mongols. The end of the Umayyad dynasty meant a shift in power from Syria to Iraq. The Abbasids' settlement in Baghdad marked the beginning of the golden age of Arabic literature. The Abbasids, of great intellectual curiosity, adapted elements of earlier high cultures and incorporated them into their own.
Abejas phase: CATEGORY: chronology
DEFINITION: The first important agricultural phase in the Tehuacan Valley of Mexico, dating 3500-1500 BC, after the introduction of maize.
abrade: SYNONYM: abrasion (n.)
CATEGORY: artifact
DEFINITION: To scrape or wear away by friction or erosion
Abu Ballas: CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: A site in the Western Desert of Egypt, occupied 8500-5000 years ago.
Abu Ruwaysh: SYNONYM: Abu Rawash; Abu Roash
CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: The Egyptian site of the unfinished pyramid of the 4th Dynasty ruler Djedefra (Redjedef) (c 2566-2558 BC), the third of the seven kings of that dynasty. The pyramid, situated northwest of Giza on the west bank of the Nile, appears unfinished because the walls to the mortuary temple next to it were hastily made of mud brick instead of the usual cut stone. The complex was deliberately ransacked as Djedefra was involved in a dynastic struggle. An Early Dynastic (c. 2925- c. 2575 BC) private cemetery has also been found at Abu Ruwaysh.
accelerator mass spectrometric technique: SYNONYM: AMS technique; AMS radiocarbon dating
CATEGORY: technique
DEFINITION: A relatively new method of radiocarbon dating in which the proportion of carbon isotopes is counted directly (as contrasted with the indirect Geiger counter method) using an accelerator mass spectrometer. The method drastically reduces the quantity of datable material required.
Achaemenids: SYNONYM: Achaemenid dynasty, Achaemenid
CATEGORY: culture
DEFINITION: The Persian dynasty, descendants of Achaemenes (c. 700 BC), which ruled from Cyrus the Great to Darius III (c 550-331 BC). Cyrus II (559-530 BC) overthrew the Medes empire to found a Persian empire, conquering Lydia, Babylonia, the Iranian plateau, and Palestine. His son, Cambyses II, added Egypt in 525 BC. The throne then passed to Darius, who set up an efficient administration of an empire then extending from the Nile to the Indus. This empire united for the first time all the peoples of the east -- from Thrace and Egypt to the Aral Sea and the Indus Valley -- and had as its capitals Parsargadae, Susa, and Persepolis. At Marathon in 490 BC, Darius failed to conquer the Greeks, as his son Xerxes failed at Salamis in 480. Their successors, notably Artaxerxes, fought to consolidate a waning empire. The Achaemenids were finally overthrown in 332 BC by Alexander the Great. The period is an important one in Iranian civilization. It was marked by contacts between the classical civilizations of Europe and the east and the appearance and spread of Zoroastrianism, at its time the most advanced religion outside Judaism. The Achaemenids' most famous monuments are the work of Darius: his capital of Persepolis, outstanding for its architecture and monumental reliefs, and his trilingual rock-cut inscription at Behistun for the key it gave to the translation of the cuneiform script. Other surviving Achaemenid monuments include the tomb of Cyrus the Great at Pasargadae and the rock-cut tomb of Darius at Naqsh-i Rustam near Persepolis.
achieved status or achieved leadership: SYNONYM: (antonym: ascribed status)
CATEGORY: term
DEFINITION: An individual's social standing and prestige or leadership gained through accomplishments and abilities rather than inheritance.
acoustic vase: SYNONYM: acoustic vessel
CATEGORY: artifact
DEFINITION: Large earthenware or bronze vases which were used to strengthen actors' voices and were placed in bell towers to help boost the sound of church bells. A church in Westphalia contains fine 9th-century Badorf Wares and larger Relief-Band Amphorae were used in 10th- and 11th-century churches.
acoustic vases: SYNONYM: acoustic vessels
CATEGORY: artifact
DEFINITION: Large earthenware or bronze vases which were used to strengthen actors' voices and were placed in bell towers to help boost the sound of church bells. A church in Westphalia contains fine 9th-century Badorf Wares and larger Relief-Band Amphorae were used in 10th- and 11th-century churches.
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.
Agate Basin: CATEGORY: site; culture
DEFINITION: A Palaeoindian site of Wyoming with evidence of the killing and butchering of animals. Artifacts include a distinctive point, scrapers, and eyed bone needles. The complex dates to 10,500-10,000 BP.
agate glass: CATEGORY: artifact
DEFINITION: A striped-pattern glass created by mixing molten glass of different colors. The colored bands resemble those of natural agate.
age profile: SYNONYM: catastrophic age profile
CATEGORY: technique
DEFINITION: A pattern of the distribution of an animal population's ages as the result of death by natural causes. This mortality pattern is based on bone- or tooth-wear analysis. It demonstrates a natural" age distribution in which the older the age group the fewer the individuals it has."
aggregate analysis: SYNONYM: mass analysis
CATEGORY: technique
DEFINITION: The analysis of debitage using size as the prime criterion.
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.
Ahmose II (reigned 570-526 BC): SYNONYM: Amasis, Amosis II
CATEGORY: person
DEFINITION: King of the late 26th Dynasty and originally a general in Nubia who came to the throne after his defeat of King Apries (589-570 BC). Ahmose was sent to pacify mutineering troops when they proclaimed him king. He fought Apries in a civil war and killed him in battle, though later giving him a royal burial. His reign was a time of great prosperity in Egypt.
Ajuerado phase: CATEGORY: chronology
DEFINITION: The earliest phase of pre-village, pre-agriculture in Tehuacan Valley, Mexico, from c 7200-7000 BC. There was hunting and gathering.
Akashi: CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: A site near Kobe City, Japan, where fossil Homo bones were found in 1931. The bones have been dated to the Holocene.
alabaster: SYNONYM: Egyptian alabaster
CATEGORY: geology
DEFINITION: A term used by Egyptologists for a type of white, semi-transparent or translucent, stone used in statuary, vases, sarcophagi, and architecture. It is a form of limestone (calcium carbonate), sometimes described as travertine. It was used increasingly from the Early Dynastic period for funerary vessels as well as statuary and altars. Alabaster is found in Middle Egypt, a main source being Hatnub, southeast of el-Amarna. The sarcophagi of Seti I (British Museum) is a fine example. An alabaster (also alabastron or alabastrum) is also the name of a small vase or jar for precious perfumes or oils made of this material. It was often globular with a narrow mouth and often without handles.
alabastron: CATEGORY: artifact
DEFINITION: A Greek container made of alabaster but sometimes clay, used for unguents.
Alashiya: CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: A site mentioned in texts of the 2nd millennium BC as a source of copper; assumed to be Cyprus. The texts also record the workings of the Sea Peoples c 1200 BC.
Alaska Refugium: CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: A large area of interior Alaska that was not glaciated during the latter part of the Pleistocene. It was connected to Beringia and eastern Siberia, allowing access for peoples between Asia and North America.
Almagro Basch, Martin (1911-1984): CATEGORY: person
DEFINITION: A Spanish archaeologist who worked on megaliths, on the dating and interpretation of prehistoric Spanish cave art, and on the site of Ampurias / Emporion.
American Anthropological Association: SYNONYM: AAA
CATEGORY: term
DEFINITION: A professional organization for anthropologists with a special division for archaeologists. The association publishes American Anthropologist and Anthropology Newsletter. The Archaeology Division publishes the monograph series Archaeological Papers of the AAA.
American Society of Conservation Archaeologists: SYNONYM: ASCA
CATEGORY: term
DEFINITION: A professional organization for archaeologists especially committed to the conservation of cultural resources.
Amlash: CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: A site in northwest Iran, southwest of the Caspian Sea, dating to the late 2nd millennium BC. Rich burials in tombs have produced gold and silver vessels, pottery figurines, animal-shaped pottery rhytons (ritual vessels) -- material similar to that at Marlik Tepe.
amphora: SYNONYM: plural amphorae, amphoras
CATEGORY: ceramics
DEFINITION: A large Greek or Roman earthenware storage jar, with a narrow neck and mouth and two handles (two-eared"; each called an anem) at the top. The body of the jar is usually oval and long with a pointed bottom. It was used for holding or transporting liquids especially wine or oil and other substances such as resin. Its shape made it easy to handle and ideal for tying onto a mule's or donkey's back. They were often placed side-by-side in upright positions in a sand-floored cellar. Sinking it into the sand or ground kept the contents cool. Amphorae were also made of glass onyx gold stone and brass and some had conventional jar bottoms with a flat surface. The container would be sealed when full and the handle usually carried an amphora stamp impressed before firing giving details such as the source the potter's name the date and the capacity. Amphorae were probably not normally re-used."
Ampurias: SYNONYM: Emporion
CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: An ancient Greek trading settlement in Spain, 40 km northeast of present-day Gerona. It was originally a colony of Marseilles (Massalia), founded in the early 6th century BC. The town allied with Rome in the 3rd century BC and it became a Roman colony under Augustus (27 BC-14 AD). Ampurias was probably most prosperous between the 5th-3rd centuries BC, when it established extensive trading across the Mediterranean. Its commercial achievements were marked by the minting of coinage. But after Roman presence increased and the harbor began to silt up, the town declined. The end came at the destruction by the Franks in 265 AD.
Anasazi: CATEGORY: culture
DEFINITION: A major cultural tradition of canyon dwellers found in southwestern United States between 100-1600 AD -- mainly in the four corners area of northeastern Arizona, northwestern New Mexico, southeastern Utah, and southwestern Colorado. These Native Americans began settlements with the cultivation of maize. Pottery was unknown at the beginning, but basketry was well developed, hence the name Basket Maker" is given to these early stages. By the sixth century there were large villages of pit houses with farming and pottery and it evolved into the full Anasazi tradition. The first pueblos and kivas were constructed and fine painted pottery made. The next few centuries (the Pueblo I-III periods) were a time of expansion during which some of the most famous towns were founded (Chaco Canyon) and fine polychrome wares produced. At this time the Mogollon people to the south adopted the Anasazi way of life and their Hohokam neighbors were also influenced perhaps suggesting that the Anasazi actually migrated to these areas. In such an arid environment farming was always vulnerable to fluctuations in climate and rainfall and these factors caused considerable population movement and relocation of settlements during 11th-13th centuries with the virtual abandonment of Chaco Canyon in 1150 and the plateau heartland by 1300. From 1300 until the arrival of the Spanish in the 16th century the Anasazi culture and population dwindled and the homeland in northern Arizona was abandoned. Then with the encroachment of nomadic Apache and Navajo tribes and with the arrival of Europeans from the south and east Anasazi territory decreased further. However some pueblos have continued to be occupied until the present day. The generally accepted chronological framework of three Basketmaker and five Pueblo stages was first proposed at the 1927 Pecos Conference. Although exact links are uncertain it is clear that modern Pueblo Indian people are descended from Anasazi ancestors. The name Anasazi is derived from a Navajo word meaning "enemy ancestors" or "early ancestors" or "old people"."
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.
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.
aplastics: SYNONYM: temper
CATEGORY: ceramics
DEFINITION: Intentional or accidental inclusions in pottery clays before firing.
archaeoastronomy: SYNONYM: astroarchaeology
CATEGORY: branch
DEFINITION: The study of the relationship between prehistoric knowledge of astronomical events through calendars, observatory sites, and astronomical images in art and past cultural behavior. The field includes the study of mathematical correlations between archaeological features and the movements of celestial bodies. Some sites (Stonehenge, New Grange) show a definite interest in simple solar observations. Ancient astronomical knowledge can be inferred through the study of the alignments and other aspects of these archaeological sites.
archaeoparasitology: CATEGORY: branch
DEFINITION: The study of parasites in archaeological contexts.
Arezzo vase: CATEGORY: ceramics
DEFINITION: Red-clay Arretine pottery of which many fine examples have been found in or near the town of Arezzo in Tuscany, an important Etruscan city. The red-lustered ware was ornamented in relief and shows evidence of Greek origin.
Arras: SYNONYM: Aras
CATEGORY: site; culture
DEFINITION: The site of an Iron Age cemetery in Yorkshire, England, with at least 90 burials, some barrows covering the burials and some with chariots. There are several related sites (Danes' Graves) in east Yorkshire with similar grave goods which define the Arras culture along with the burials. Material dates the Arras culture to c 5-1 BC and the Arras people seem to have been intruders from the continent. Their artifacts suggest links with the migrations of the Parisii from eastern France and the Rhineland. The chariot gear includes a distinctive three-link horse bit.
Arslan Tash: CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: The site of the ancient city of Hadâtu, a provincial capital of the Assyrian kings of northern Syria, first excavated by the French in 1928. There was a central tell surrounded by a circular wall and a palace and temple containing fine ivories, dating from the beginning of the 8th century BC.
as: CATEGORY: artifact
DEFINITION: A small Roman bronze coin, four of which made a sestertius and sixteen a denarius
Asana: CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: A seasonal Preceramic site in the Andes of southern Peru dating to 7800 BC -- with possibly the earliest domestic structures in the Andean region. A ceremonial complex dating to 2660 BC with altars, clay-lined fire basins, and surface hearths has also been found.
Ascalon: SYNONYM: Askalon, Askelon
CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: A Philistine city on the southern coast of Palestine, southwest of Jerusalem. Excavations have uncovered remains of the Roman period, with some small areas of Philistine levels. Egyptian texts describe Ascalon as one of the cities that revolted against Rameses II. During the Roman period, Ascalon was the birthplace of Herod the Great. It flourished during that time and was occupied in the Byzantine and Arab periods.
ascribed status: SYNONYM: ascribed leadership; cf. achieved status
CATEGORY: term
DEFINITION: An individual's social standing or leadership which was inherited or assigned from his or her parents or other relatives, by sex, or some other fixed criterion.
ash: CATEGORY: geology
DEFINITION: Volcanic material of less than 4 mm in diameter that falls quickly and can bury sites, preserving the stratigraphy, people, and artifacts. Ash is also the soft, solid remains of burned organic material as from cremation.
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.
ash tuff: SYNONYM: tuffa
CATEGORY: geology
DEFINITION: Rock formed from solidified volcanic ash, which often is re-formed after the eruption and deposited elsewhere by water runoff. It is an excellent stratigraphic indicator and, because of the presence of very small crystals, is used to obtain potassium-argon dates.
Ashdod: CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: A Palestinian site of a Canaanite city of the Late Bronze Age that was probably destroyed by the Sea Peoples. It was one of the cities of the Philistine Pentapolis.
Ashkelon: CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: A Palestinian site of the Late Bronze Age with artifacts of Egyptian and Cypriote origin. There was an Iron Age Philistine city and material from the Roman period.
ashlar construction: SYNONYM: achelor, astler, estlar
CATEGORY: structure
DEFINITION: The construction of square blocks of hewn stone laid in regular courses for the facings of walls. It was dressed for building good, smooth-surfaced walls.
Ashoka (d 238 BC?): SYNONYM: also Asoka, Asokan
CATEGORY: person
DEFINITION: The last major emperor of the Mauryan empire of India in the 3rd century BC. He started out as a bloody tyrant, but underwent a spiritual crisis and became a Buddhist, furthering the expansion of that religion throughout India. His reign was c 265-238 BC but has also been given as c 273-232 BC. His kingdom included most of modern Pakistan and India, except the extreme south. Many monuments survive from his period: stupas, rock-cut temples, and commemorative pillars. A series of inscriptions, enshrining Buddhist teaching, survives on rock faces and stone pillars in various parts of the empire.
ashpit: CATEGORY: feature
DEFINITION: A pit used primarily as a receptacle for ash removed from a hearth or firepit. In a pit structure, it is commonly oval or rectangular and located south of the hearth or firepit.
Ashurbanipal (fl. 7th century BC): SYNONYM: Assurbanipal, Asurbanipal, Assurnasirpal
CATEGORY: person
DEFINITION: The last of the great kings of Assyria (668-627 BC), who established the first systematically organized library in the ancient Middle East, a huge collection of Assyrian clay tablets in his palace and that of his grandfather, Sennacherib. The library has been extremely valuable in revealing the art, science, and religion of ancient Mesopotamia. Approximately 20,720 tablets and fragments have been preserved in the British Museum. This collection was assembled by royal command, whereby scribes searched for and collected or copied texts of every genre from temple libraries. Theses were added to a core collection of tablets from Ashur, Calah, and Nineveh itself. The major group includes omen texts based on observations of events; on the behavior and features of men, animals, and plants; and on the motions of the Sun, Moon, planets, and stars. There were dictionaries of Sumerian, Akkadian, and other words, all important to the scribal educational system. Ashurbanipal also collected many incantations, prayers, rituals, fables, proverbs, and other canonical" and "extracanonical" texts. The traditional Mesopotamian epics -- such as the stories of Creation Gilgamesh Irra Etana and Anzu -- have survived mainly due to their preservation in Ashurbanipal's library. Handbooks scientific texts and some folk tales show that this library of which only a fraction of the clay tablets has survived was more than a mere reference library. His many brilliant military campaigns served only to hold what had been already won by previous kings though Egypt regained its independence and Elam was only retained by complete devastation."
Ashurnasirpal II (fl. 8th century BC): SYNONYM: Assurnasirpal II
CATEGORY: person
DEFINITION: King of Assyria 883-859 BC, who consolidated the conquests of his father, Tukulti-Ninurta II, and commanded the last period of Assyrian power before the establishment of the New Assyrian Empire. His military expeditions took him as far as the Mediterranean and, according to his own testimony, he was a brilliant general and administrator. He set the standards of military achievement and brutality which made the Assyrians feared throughout the Near and Middle East. The details of his reign are known almost entirely from his own inscriptions and the reliefs in the ruins of his palace at Calah (now Nimrud, Iraq). He refounded Calah as a military capital beside Assur and Nineveh. By 879 BC the main palace in the citadel, the temples of Ninurta and Enlil, shrines for other deities, and the city wall had been completed. Botanic gardens and a zoological garden were laid out, and water supplied by a canal from the Great Zab River. His son and successor, Shalmaneser III (858-824 BC) expanded the empire.
Asia: CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: A Late Preceramic site on the south-central coast of Peru with a series of mounds and burials with evidence of trephination.
Asiab, Tepe: CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: A semi-permanent settlement in the Zagros region of western Iran, dated between 7100-6750 BC, belonging to the Karim Shahir culture. There is evidence of tool manufacture, settlement patterns, and subsistence methods, including the crude beginnings of the domestication of both plants and animals in this site as well as nearby sites at Guran, Ganj-e Dareh, and Ali Kosh. Burials have been excavated, covered in red ochre.
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.
Asine: SYNONYM: modern Koróni
CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: A pre-Classical Greek settlement and port on the east side of the Akrítas in the Argolid Gulf. It was originally settled by the Argives after the First Messenian War (c 735-715 BC). Evidence of Early, Middle, and Late Helladic settlement and of Hellenistic city walls remains. It was reoccupied during the Middle Ages by refugees from the north who gave it the name of their former village.
Askelon: CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: A city of the Philistines on the coast of Palestine near Gaza. Under Roman levels are Philistine deposits and there is a destruction level, the work of the Peoples of the Sea c 1200 BC, separating these levels from the underlying Late Bronze Age of the Canaanites.
askos: SYNONYM: Greek bag""
CATEGORY: artifact; ceramics
DEFINITION: An assymetric vessel, often squat and duck-shaped, with an off-center mouth, convex top, and single arching handle. It was originally shaped like a leather bottle (uter) for holding water, oil, or wine. Some example have two mouths, one for filling and one for emptying, and others are quite unbalanced and have strange mouths. It later assumed the form of an earthenware pitcher. Askos were popular in the Aegean from the Early Helladic to the Classical period.
Asmar, Tell: SYNONYM: Eshnunna
CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: The ancient city of Eshnunna on the Diyala River of Iraq, inhabited from the Uruk to Old Babylonian period. Excavations here have provided the archaeological definition of the Early Dynastic and Akkadian periods. In the early 2nd millennium BC, Tell Asmar was the center of the kingdom of Eshnunna.
aspartic acid racemization: CATEGORY: technique
DEFINITION: A method for determining the absolute age of bone tissue by discovering the process of cumulative change in the form of amino acids, beginning at the death of an organism.
aspect: CATEGORY: term
DEFINITION: A characteristic or component that constitutes one of the traits of a culture or community. The term also describes a group of components that display a great many of the specific elements (traits) of a culture.
Aspero: CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: A Late Preceramic site on the north-central coast of Peru, dating to 4360-3950 BP. It is one of the largest Preceramic settlements known in the Andes and it had a complex social hierarchy. Six platform mounds and other structures include rooms with artifacts, textiles, plant material, clay figurines, and feathers.
Asprochaliko: SYNONYM: Asprochalico
CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: A large Palaeolithic rock shelter near Ioánnina, in Epirus, northwest Greece. There are Mousterian phases, an earlier one with carefully retouched tools and use of the Levallois technique, and a later phase with small tools. The Upper Palaeolithic levels of backed blades include one radiocarbon-dated to c 26,000 BC (24,000 ? 1000 BC). In the final stage (11,7000 ? 260 BC), geometric microliths and microburins appeared alongside the backed blades. Occupation ended around 9000 BC.
ass: CATEGORY: fauna
DEFINITION: The wild ass was distributed widely in North Africa and Asia. In Asia, it was domesticated as a draft animal c 3000 BC. The modern donkey derives from an animal of Ethiopia and the Sudan, which the Egyptians imported from the 2nd millennium on. The earliest date of these for the African ass is an Egyptian tomb relief of 1650 BC. Remaining populations can be found in Iran (called the onager), northwest India (called the ghorkar), and Mongolia (called the kiang). Asiatic wild asses as a group may also be called onagers, kemiones, or half-asses. Artistic representation of the domestication of asses has been found, but little osteological evidence. The ass arrived in Europe during medieval times. The domestic ass, or donkey, may be hybridized with the horse: a male ass crossed with a female horse produces a mule, and a female ass crossed with a male horse produces a hinny and both hybrids are sterile.
assemblage: CATEGORY: artifact; term
DEFINITION: A group of objects of different or similar types found in close association with each other and thus considered to be the product of one people from one period of time. Where the assemblage is frequently repeated and covers a reasonably full range of human activity, it is described as a culture; where it is repeated but limited in content, e.g. flint tools only (a set of objects in one medium), it is called an industry. When a group of industries are found together in a single archaeological context, it is called an assemblage. Such a group characterizes a certain culture, era, site, or phase and it is the sum of all subassemblages. Assemblage examples are artifacts from a site or feature.
assertive style: CATEGORY: term
DEFINITION: Any style with only vague associations with social identity, such as a tendency to wear certain types of clothing or jewelry.
assessment: SYNONYM: archaeological assessment
CATEGORY: technique
DEFINITION: An aspect of cultural resource management in which the surface of a project area is systematically covered by pedestrian survey in order to locate, document, and evaluate archaeological materials therein.
assimilation: CATEGORY: culture
DEFINITION: In a sociocultural system, the integration of cultural traits from previously distinct cultural groups to the culture, ethnic identity, and language of the dominant cultural group.
association: SYNONYM: associated
CATEGORY: term; technique
DEFINITION: The co-occurrence of two or more objects sharing the same general location and stratigraphic level and that are thought to have been deposited at approximately the same time (being in or on the same matrix). Objects are said to be in association with each other when they are found together in a context which suggests simultaneous deposition. Associations between objects are the basis for relative dating or chronology and the concept of cross-dating as well as in interpretation -- cultural connections, original function, etc. Pottery and flint tools associated in a closed context would be grounds for linking them into an assemblage, possibly making the full material culture of a group available. The association of undated objects with artifacts of known date allows the one to be dated by the other. When two or more objects are found together and it can be proved that they were deposited together, they are said to be in genuine or closed association. Examples of closed associations are those within a single interment grave, the material within a destruction level, or a hoard. An open association is one in which this can only be assumed, not proved. Artifacts may be found next to each other and still not be associated; one of the artifacts may be intrusive.
Assur: SYNONYM: Ashur
CATEGORY: deity; site
DEFINITION: A solar deity which was the chief god of the city of Assur and the kingdom of Assyria. With the latter's conquests, Assur assumed leadership of the Assyrian pantheon and supremacy over the other gods of Mesopotamia. The deity was conceived in anthropomorphic terms. The image of the deity was fed and clothed and was responsible for fertility and security, and represented as a winged sun-disc. It is also the name of the ancient religious capital of the Assyrian empire in northern Mesopotamia, on the bank of the River Tigris at modern Qalaat-Shergat, which was a great trading center and the burial place of the kings even after the government moved to Nineveh. First recorded in the 3rd millennium BC as a frontier post of the empire of Akkad, it then became an independent city-state and finally the capital of Assyria. After Assyria's collapse in 614 BC it failed to survive but was briefly revived under the Parthians. Areas of the palaces, temples, walls, and town have been cleared, and a sondage pit was cut beneath the Temple of Ishtar (pre-Sargonid) to reveal the 3rd and early 2nd millennium levels (the first use of this technique in Mesopotamian excavation). Sumerian statues were found -- among the earliest evidence of Sumerian contact outside the southern plain. For over 2000 years successive kings built and rebuilt the fortifications, temple, and palace complexes: inscriptions associated with these monuments have helped in the construction of the chronology of the site. Three large ziggurats dominated the city with the largest being 60 m square (completed by Shamsi Adad I c 1800 bc). It was originally dedicated to Enlil, but later to Assur; the dedication of the other temples also changed through time. Representations on cylinder seals suggest that many buildings might have had parapets and towers. Assurnasirpal II (883-859 BC) moved the capital to Calah and by 614 BC the city of Assur had fallen to the Median (Medes) army.
Assyria: SYNONYM: Assyrians
CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: The name of three different empires dating from about 2000-600 BC, the city-state of Assur, and the people inhabiting this northeastern area of Mesopotamia. Originally Semitic nomads in northern Mesopotamia, they finally settled around Assur and accepted its tutelary god as their own. After the fall of the 3rd Dynasty of Ur (2004 BC), Assyria seems to have become an independent city-state and important as middleman in international trade. In its period of greatness, 883-612 BC, there was continuous war in Assyria to keep the empire's lands which at their widest extended from the Nile to near the Caspian, and from Cilicia to the Persian Gulf (Egypt, much of the area to the west as far as the Mediterranean, Elam to the east and parts of Anatolia to the north). Its greatest kings were all warriors, Ashurnasirpal II, Shalmaneser III, Tiglathpileser III, Sargon II, Sennacherib, and Ashurbanipal, who made the name of Assyria feared throughout the ancient East through their military skill and brutality. The main achievements in Assyria, outside warfare, were in architecture and sculpture, particularly the protective winged bulls, etc., which guarded all palace entrances, and the magnificent reliefs of battles, hunts, and military processions which adorned the walls. Assurnasirpal II (833-859 BC) transferred the center of government to Calah (Nimrud). The fortunes of the empire rose and fell under the kings of the 9th-7th centuries: Assurbanipal (668-627 BC) reconquered Egypt, but in 614 BC the empire fell when the Medes invaded Assyria, captured Calah, and destroyed Assur.
Assyrian: CATEGORY: language
DEFINITION: One of the two main dialects of ancient Mesopotamia, used in the north. A Semitic language very close to Babylonian, from which it is thought to have diverged at the end of the 2nd millennium. Assyrian probably disappeared with the destruction of Assyria in 7th century BC. Old Assyrian cuneiform is attested mostly in the records of Assyrian trading colonists in central Asia Minor (c. 1950 BC; the so-called Cappadocian tablets) and Middle Assyrian in an extensive Law Code and other documents. The Neo-Assyrian period was the great era of Assyrian power, and the writing culminated in the extensive records from the library of Ashurbanipal at Nineveh (c. 650 BC).
Assyriology: SYNONYM: Assyriological adj., Assyriologist n.
CATEGORY: related field
DEFINITION: The study of the history, language, and antiquities of ancient Assyria and Babylonia in northern Mesopotamia, principally through cuneiform lists. Assyriologists have reconstructed sequences for Assyria through limmu (eponym) lists found by excavators.
Astarte: SYNONYM: Asherah, Ashtoreth, Ashtart
CATEGORY: deity
DEFINITION: The goddess of the ancient Near East that was the chief deity of many important sites and the fertility goddess of the Phoenicians and the Canaanites. She is sometimes equated with Egyptian Isis, Babylonian Ishtar, Carthaginian Tanit, and Greek Aphrodite, Cybele, and Hera. She originated in Syria as a war goddess, probably introduced into Egypt in the 18th Dynasty (1550-1295 BC). Astarte was usually portrayed as a naked woman on horseback wearing a headdress or bull horns.
astrolabe: CATEGORY: artifact
DEFINITION: An instrument, usually consisting of a disc and pointer, formerly used to make astronomical measurements, especially of the altitudes of celestial bodies and as an aid in navigation.
astronomy: CATEGORY: related field
DEFINITION: Most ancient civilizations studied the skies for astronomical knowledge. Ancient astronomy has been studied by archaeologists in prehistoric Europe through monuments and in Central America through inscriptions and documents. Studies of prehistoric astronomy in Europe have concentrated on the megalithic monuments and stone circles, which have been proven to incorporate alignments of the sun, moon, and brighter stars -- especially significant points in their cycles. Solar alignments occur at New Grange and Stonehenge, lunar orientations at the Recumbent Stone Circles of Aberdeenshire and the Carnac stones in Brittany. Many theories are discussed as to the accuracy of measurements and the degree of astronomical understanding achieved by these early societies. The ability to predict astronomical events would have enhanced political power, which is something suggested in Mesoamerica. The ability to predict events by the governing elite class increased their credibility as able rulers. The Mesoamerican people put great emphasis on the calendar and astronomy and were able to make extremely accurate measurements of the solar year, the appearance of eclipses, and the phases of the Moon. Buildings seen as observatories occur at Chichen Itza and at Palenque, and the Dresden codex is a detailed collection of calculations tracing the eclipses of the Moon and Sun and the cycles of Venus and possibly Mars and Jupiter. The Maya were even aware of the impreciseness of the 365-day year in their Calendar Round and added a correction factor to account for the quarter-day per year discrepancy. The cycle of the Moon, in comparison, was calculated with amazing accuracy (29.5302 days compared to the actual figure of 29.5306). The cycle of Venus (calculated at 583.92) was also pinpointed as accurately as measurements taken by modern astronomical methods. The ancient astronomers' awareness of long-term astronomical phenomena was astonishing.
Asturian: CATEGORY: culture
DEFINITION: A macrolithic industry of the Mesolithic in northern Spain, discovered from shell mounds at cave mouths. It followed the Azilian and is characterized by a long pointed unifacial quartzite pick. It dates to the 9th and 8th millennia BP.
Asuka: CATEGORY: culture; chronology
DEFINITION: A culture and period in Japanese history during which the development of art, the introduction of Buddhism from Korea, and the adoption of a Chinese pattern of government were important. Located in the southwestern part of the Nara Basin (Yamato Plain), the culture flourished from 552-645 AD. In art history, the Asuka culture refers to early Buddhist art and architecture in the Northern Wei style. In chronology, the Asuka period refers more to the reign of Soga family during which Buddhism was promoted and a formal administrative structure with diplomatic relations was introduced. Many old temples and palaces are surviving examples of Asuka architecture, sculpture, and paintings.
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).
Aswan: SYNONYM: Swenet, (Greek) Syene, Assuan, Assouan
CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: A city in Upper Egypt, on the first cataract of the Nile, where the Aswan High Dam has been erected. The ancient site included important antiquities such as the temples (Abusimbel's), the rock-cut tombs of Qubbet el-Hawa, and the island of Elephantine (modern Jazirat Aswan) have been rescued from flooding by international groups who also explored those structures which could not be saved. There are also local quarries on the eastern bank on the Nile which supplied granite for many ancient Egyptian monuments and which are still in operation. Aswan was the southern frontier of pharaonic Egypt. Aswan later served as a frontier garrison post for the Romans, Turks, and British.
Asyut: SYNONYM: ancient Djawty, Lycopolis, Syut, Asiut, Assiout
CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: Capital of the Asyut muhafazah (governorate) and the largest settlement of Upper Egypt, midway between Cairo and Aswan on the west bank of the Nile. It was a center of worship for Wepwawet, the jackal-headed god. In the Middle Kingdom, it was the capital of the 17th nome (province) of Upper Egypt. It was commercially important as a terminus of caravan routes across the deserts. In Hellenistic times it was known as Lycopolis (Wolf City") referring to the worship of the jackal-headed god."
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.
Athabascan: CATEGORY: culture; language
DEFINITION: Native Americans who speak languages of the Athabascan or Dene language family. The Northern variety is in Alaska and the Yukon; the southern variety, including the Apache and Navajo, are in the U.S. Southwest. The groups diverged around 500 AD.
Atlantic period: SYNONYM: Atlantic phase, Atlantic climatic period
CATEGORY: chronology
DEFINITION: In Europe, a climatic optimum following the last Ice Age. This period was represented as a maximum of temperature and evidence from beetles suggests it being warmer than average for the interglacial. It seems to have begun about 6000 BC, when the average temperature rose. Melting ice sheets ultimately submerged nearly half of western Europe, creating the bays and inlets along the Atlantic coast that provided a new, rich ecosystem for human subsistence. The Atlantic period was followed by the subboreal period. The Atlantic period, which succeeded the Boreal, was probably wetter and certainly somewhat warmer, and mixed forests of oak, elm, common lime (linden), and elder spread northward. Only in the late Atlantic period did the beech and hornbeam spread into western and central Europe from the southeast.
atlas: SYNONYM: atlantes (plural) telamon (Latin), caryatid (female)
CATEGORY: structure
DEFINITION: In Greek architecture, male figures which were so called for the story of Titan Atlas, in which humans were used instead of columns to support entablatures, balconies, or other projections. Such figures are posed as if supporting great weights, just as Atlas was bearing the world. The female counterpart is the caryatid, but it is not similarly posed. The earliest known examples of true atlantes occur on a colossal scale in the Greek temple of Zeus (c 500 BC) in Sicily. Atlantes were used only rarely in the Middle Ages but reappeared in the Mannerist and Baroque periods.
atomic absorption spectrometry: SYNONYM: AAS
CATEGORY: technique
DEFINITION: A method of analysis used to determine the chemical composition of metal artifacts -- especially copper -- and non-metallic substances such as flint. It measures energy in the form of visible light waves and is capable of measuring up to 40 different elements with an error rate of around 1 percent. It is not a completely nondestructive technique, since a small sample must be removed from the artifact (between 10 mg. and 1 g., depending on the concentration of the elements). The sample is first dissolved and then atomized in a flame. A beam of light, of carefully controlled wavelength, is shone through the flame to a detector on the other side. The light takes a defined wavelength corresponding to the emission wavelength of the chosen element. The atoms of that element in the sample therefore absorbs a proportion of the light, measured with a photomultiplier, and a comparison of the intensity of the light with that which has not gone through the sample shows the extent of the absorption, thus providing an estimate of the amount of the chosen element in the specimen. One of the method's drawbacks is that a separate measurement (and a different hollow cathode lamp) is necessary for each element, so that analysis for a large number of elements is time-consuming. There are also problems of contamination with the high dilutions necessary for elements present in high concentrations, so that the method is used for the analysis of minor elements and trace elements rather than for major elements. The results are generally more accurate than those obtained using optical emission spectrometry and the technique's use will probably increase, especially for the identification of sources of metal ores through the recognition and quantification of the trace elements.
Austro-Asiatic: CATEGORY: language
DEFINITION: A family of about 150 languages which includes Vietnamese, Munda (eastern India), Mon (southwest Burma), Khmer (Kampuchea), and several minor language groups including Nicobarese, and Aslian of peninsular Malaysia. Vietnamese, Khmer, and Mon are culturally the most important of these and have the longest recorded history. Khmer is spoken primarily in Cambodia, Mon in Thailand and Myanmar (Burma). Vietnamese and Khmer, with the largest number of speakers, are the national languages, respectively, of Vietnam and Cambodia. Austro-Asiatic was once the main linguistic family of mainland Southeast Asia and eastern India, but its speakers have become geographically split into the Tibeto-Burman, Thai, and Austronesian languages.
Awdaghast: SYNONYM: Tegdaoust
CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: The site of a trading center in southern Mauritania at the southern end of the main caravan route across the Sahara to Ghana. In the closing centuries of the 1st millennium AD, it is probably that much gold was exported northwards along this route.
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.
Aztec: SYNONYM: Mexica, Tenochcas
CATEGORY: culture
DEFINITION: The last pre-Columbian civilization to enter the Valley of Mexico after the collapse of the Toltec civilization in c 12 AD, who built a magnificent capital at Tenochtitlán and were later conquered by the Spaniards (1521). They called themselves the Mexica or Tenochca and were the dominant political group of the Late Post-Classic Period. The people spoke Nahuatl. Their origin is obscure, partly because of the deliberate destruction of their own records, but tradition says that in 1193 AD the last of seven Chichimec tribes left Aztlan , a mythical birthplace somewhere north or west of Mexico, and filtered south. For a while they lived around Lake Texococo, but in 1345 they were allowed to found Tenochtitlán (under present-day Mexico City) on some unoccupied islands. By 1428 Tenochtitlán, Texococo, and Tlacopan formed an independent state which controlled most of present-day Mexico from the desert zone in the north to Oaxaca in the south, with extensions as far as the Guatemalan border -- all through military expansion. By inclination and training the Aztecs were militaristic, and a person's status depended on his success as a warrior. The chief god of the Aztecs, Huitzilopochtli, was a war god who required the blood of sacrificial victims, and only constant warfare supplied the altar of the god. Human sacrifice was necessary also to ensure the daily rising of the sun. Other major deities were Huitzilpotchtli (the warrior god and chief deity of Tenochtitlan), Texcatlipoca (god of night, death and destruction), Xipe Totec (god of spring and renewal), and Quetzacoatl, the plumed serpent (god of self-sacrifice and inventor of agriculture and the calendar). Tenochtitlán became a great imperial city, so large that it could not be self-sufficient but had to rely on tributes from its provinces. Luxury goods and necessities were brought to the city, and craftsmen produced jewelry, turquoise mosaics, featherwork, and carved stone. Mold-made clay figurines were common, and the black-on-orange pottery was decorated with geometrical designs and stylized creatures. Little architecture or painting survived the Spanish conquest of 1521. Copies of several books have been preserved (as the Dresden Codex). Aztec society was set in a clearly defined hierarchical class system. At the top was the ruling class (pipil) from whom and by whom the emperors were chosen. The mass of the population were freeman (machuale) and under them were the serfs (mayeques) and then at the bottom the slaves. Most people were of the landholding group called the calpulli, which had its own internal hierarchy. Change of social class was possible through state service in the military and sometimes through merchant activity. The merchants (pochteca) served as early-reconnaissance and espionage groups. The arrival of the Spaniards and the fall of Tenochtitlán after a 90-day siege marked the end of Aztec dominance.
Bactria: SYNONYM: Bactriana, Zariaspa
CATEGORY: site; culture
DEFINITION: An ancient country (satrapy) lying in a fertile region between the mountains of the Hindu Kush (Paropamisus) and the Amu Darya (ancient Oxus River) in what is now part of Afghanistan, Uzbekistan, and Tajikistan. Bactria was especially important between c 600 BC-600 AD, as a center for meeting and trading between the East (China) and West (Mediterranean). It was a satrapy of the Achaemenid empire and was conquered by Alexander the Great in 329 BC. Many Greeks settled in Bactria in the Seleucid period which followed. . Consequently, Greek influence on the culture of central Asia and northwestern India was considerable, especially in art, architecture, coins, and writing. Bactria's capital was Bactra (also called Bactra-Zariaspa; probably modern Balkh, ancient Vahlika).
Bahariya Oasis: SYNONYM: al-Bahriyah Oasis
CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: A fertile depression in the northeast Libyan Desert about 200 km west of the Nile. Archaeological remains date mainly from the early New Kingdom to the Roman period (c 1550 BC-395 AD).
Banas: CATEGORY: site; culture
DEFINITION: A Chalcolithic culture of Rajasthan, Indian, of the 3rd and 2nd millennia BC. Archaeological evidence indicates that early humans lived along the banks of the Banas River (and its tributaries) about 100,000 years ago. The sites at Ahar, Gilund, and Kalibangan reveal Harappan (Indus) and post-Harappan culture (3rd-2nd millennium BC) with black-and-red ware, often with white painted designs, and other related red wares. Copper and bronze were very common and agriculture was attested. The Ahar occupation lasted c 2200-1500 BC. Pottery fragments at Kalibangan are carbon-dated to 2700 BC.
Barrancoid subtradition: SYNONYM: Barrancas; Neo-Indian epoch
CATEGORY: culture
DEFINITION: A ceramic tradition possibly originating on the Caribbean coast of Colombia and established in the Orinoco delta by c 1000 BC. It spread down to the coast and (at turn of millennium) east and west to Guyana and Colombia. The pottery is skillfully modeled with biomorphic ornamentation and broad-lined incised patterns. The type site is Barrancas.
bas-relief: SYNONYM: low-relief, basso-relievo; low relief
CATEGORY: artifact
DEFINITION: A low relief technique of sculpture or carved work in which the figures project less than half of their true proportions from the surface on which they are carved. The term also describes sculptures or carvings in low relief. Mezzo-relievo means projecting exactly half; alto-relievo more than half.
basal edge: CATEGORY: artifact
DEFINITION: The proximal edge of a triangular or lanceolate projectile or stem of a stemmed type. There are eight major types of Basal Edges; Convex, Straight, Concave, Auriculate, Lobbed, Bifurcated, Fractured and Snapped.
basal grinding: CATEGORY: lithics
DEFINITION: The grinding of projectile points at their base and lower edges (so that the lashings will not be cut), a Paleo-Indian cultural practice. Basal thinning obtains the same result through the removal of small chips instead of grinding.
basal notch: CATEGORY: artifact
DEFINITION: A flaking technique applied to accommodate hafting which involved the flaking of notches into the basal edge of a preform.
basal stones: CATEGORY: structure
DEFINITION: The lowest stones in the continuous face of a wall.
basal thinning: CATEGORY: artifact
DEFINITION: The intentional removal of small longitudinal flakes from the base of a chipped stone projectile point or knife to facilitate hafting or produced to remove small, longitudinal flakes from the basal edge of a projectile point in order that the tool or point could be more easily hafted or held.
basal-looped spearhead: CATEGORY: artifact
DEFINITION: Type of leaf-shaped socketed spearhead of the European middle Bronze Age which has two small holes or loops at the base of the blade, one either side of the socket. It is assumed that these were to assist in securing the metal spearhead to the wooden shaft, but they might also have been used to tie streamers of some kind to the top of the spear.
basalt: CATEGORY: geology
DEFINITION: A type of very hard, dark, dense rock, igneous in origin, composed of augite or hornblende containing titaniferous magnetic iron and crystals of feldspar. It often lies in columnar strata, as at the Giant's Causeway in Ireland and Fingal's Cave in the Hebrides. It is greenish- or brownish-black and much like lava in appearance. It is also abundant in Egypt and Greece.
Basarabi culture: CATEGORY: culture
DEFINITION: An Iron Age culture of cemeteries and settlement sites over much of Romania with its type site on the Danube. It is a local version of the Hallstatt culture, dating to 975-850 BC.
base: CATEGORY: ceramics
DEFINITION: The lower portion of a vessel from the lower boundary of the body to the place that would normally be in contact with the surface on which the vessel rested, sometimes a foot or tripod.
base shapes: CATEGORY: artifact
DEFINITION: concave, disk, flat, foot-ring, knob, loop, omphalos, C279pedestal, pod, pointed, ring, round, stump, trumpet/ogee
baselard: CATEGORY: artifact
DEFINITION: A type of dagger, usually used by civilians in the medieval period, with a H shaped hilt.
baseline: CATEGORY: technique
DEFINITION: An imaginary line or standard by which things are measured or compared; one of known measure or position used (as in surveying) to calculate or locate something.
baseward flaking: CATEGORY: artifact
DEFINITION: The removal of flakes from the distal tip at a downward angle towards the basal edge.
basilica: SYNONYM: [Greek 'royal building']
CATEGORY: structure
DEFINITION: Originally a royal palace which consisted of a large oblong building or hall with double colonnades and a semicircular apse at the end, used for a court of justice and place of public assembly. It formed one side of the forum or marketplace. The term owes its original meaning to the fact that in Macedonia the kings, and in Greece the archon Basileus dispensed justice in buildings of this description. The Romans, who adopted the basilica from those countries, used it as a court, a branch of the forum, etc. The first basilica was built at Rome, 182/184 BC. One such building is the Basilica of Maxentius, which has survived in the ruins of the Forum in Rome. Its aisled-hall plan of which was adopted by many early Christian churches. The form of construction remained popular for a variety of religious purposes in Rome, Ravenna, and North Africa from the 4th-12th centuries. Constantine, the first Christian emperor, constructed several basilican churches in the 4th century, including the first St. Peters.
basin of deposition: CATEGORY: feature
DEFINITION: The area which defines the pattern of deposition of layers, e.g. the shape of a cave, room, or pit.
Basin of Mexico: CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: A basin enclosed by mountains with cultural remains as early as 19,000 BC at Tlapacoya and 15,000 BC at Tlatilco. The Basin contains the current capital, Mexico City, Mexico, the remains of Aztec capital of Tenochtitlán, and the cities of Cuicuilco and Teotihuacán. Dry farming, swidden agriculture, chinampas, and irrigation have been used to cultivate the area. Important periods in the area's prehistory were from c 100 BC-650 AD and from 1200-1520 AD, before the Spanish conquest.
basket: CATEGORY: artifact
DEFINITION: A container that is usually woven and may have handles
Basket Maker: SYNONYM: Basketmakers
CATEGORY: culture
DEFINITION: Two early chronological periods of the early Puebloans or Anasazi -- 100-500 AD, followed by the Modified Basket Maker period, 500-700; They lived people in the Four Corners area (northwestern New Mexico, southwestern Colorado, southeastern Utah, and northeastern Arizona) of the U.S. The origin of the Basket Maker Indians is not known, but it is evident that when they first settled in the area they were already excellent basket weavers and that they were supplementing hunting and wild-seed gathering with the cultivation of maize and pumpkins. They lived either in caves or out in the open in shelters constructed of a masonry of poles and adobe mud. Both caves and houses contained special pits, often roofed over, that were used for food storage. The Basket Makers were among the first village agricultural societies in the Southwest. Three Basketmaker stages were recognized at the 1927 Pecos Conference of Southwesternists: Basketmaker I (hypothetical), Basketmaker II (1--450 AD) which was a large base camp and widely scattered seasonal camps where the preferred container was the basket, and Basketmaker III (450--700/750) in which there were small villages of pit houses in well-watered valley bottoms. Specialized structures such as wattle-and-daub storage bins and large rooms for communal activity (possibly early kivas) also began to occur more frequently in the latter stage.
basketry: SYNONYM: cordage
CATEGORY: artifact
DEFINITION: A class of artifacts created by the practice of weaving containers from vegetable fibers, twigs, or leaves. It was known in Mexico before 7000 BC and in Oregon before 8000 BC and the earliest recorded examples in the Old World are from the Fayum in Egypt c 5200 BC. But taking into consideration the perishability of basketry, even these may be comparatively late in the history of the technique. Basketry is not preserved in the same quantities as pottery and stone vessels.
Basques; Basque: SYNONYM: Spanish Vasco, or Vascongado, Basque Euskaldunak or Euskotarak
CATEGORY: culture; language
DEFINITION: A people living in both Spain and France in areas bordering the Bay of Biscay and encompassing the western foothills of the Pyrenees Mountains. The Basques are distinguished partly by an unusual pattern of blood groups, very high in the Rhesus negative factor, and by their language, quite unrelated to any other known one. They probably represent one of the people who inhabited Europe before the arrival of the Indo-Europeans. Basque is the only remnant of the languages spoken in southwestern Europe before that region was Romanized. The origin of the Basque language remains a mystery. It has been hypothesized that Basque had a genetic connection with the now-extinct Iberian and that both languages evolved from the Hamito-Semitic (Afro-Asiatic) language group -- but there is another theory that the similarities between the two arose from geographic proximity. Although Basque and Iberian are similar, the knowledge of Basque could not help decipher ancient Iberian inscriptions discovered in eastern Spain and on the Mediterranean coast of France. Basque is also linked with Caucasian, the ancient language spoken in the Caucasus region.
Basra: SYNONYM: Arabic Al-Basrah
CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: The second-largest city and principal port of Iraq, which from ancient times was a center of commerce, finance, letters, poetry, and science. It was founded as a military encampment by the second caliph, 'Umar I, in 638 about 8 miles (13 km) from the modern town of az-Zubayr, southeastern Iraq. Its proximity to the Persian Gulf on the west bank of the Shatt al-Arab gives it easy access to both the Tigris and Euphrates rivers and eastern frontiers. The first architecturally significant mosque in Islam was constructed there in 665. From the late 9th century Basra suffered a series of disasters and gradually declined. The Zanj (Negro slaves who worked in the fields and plantations of southern Iraq) revolted in 869-873 and sacked the city, and in 923 it was plundered by the Qarmarthians. In 1050, parts of the city were in ruins.
Basse-Yutz: CATEGORY: artifact
DEFINITION: Bronze wine flagons found in Moselle, France, with coral and enamel inlay of c 400 BC. The pair is thought to have come from a Celtic chieftain's grave.
Basta, Tell: SYNONYM: ancient Per-Bastet, Bubastis
CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: The site of a temple and town in the eastern Nile Delta, about 80 km northeast of Cairo which flourished from the 4th Dynasty to the end of the Roman period (c 2614 BC-AD 395). The main monument at the site is the red granite temple of the cat-goddess Bastet.
Bastam: CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: A Urartian settlement in northwest Iran with a citadel of monumental buildings (palaces). Several Urartian texts and sealed bullae kept records of goods stored and traded. Urartian and post-Urartian pottery have been chronologically classified.
Bastet: SYNONYM: Bastis, Bast, Ubasti
CATEGORY: deity
DEFINITION: The ancient Lower Egyptian goddess worshipped in the form of a lioness, and later a cat. Bastet's form was often changed after the domestication of the cat around 1500 BC. Her principal cult center was Bubastis in the Nile River delta but she also had an important cult at Memphis. In the Late and Ptolemaic periods large cemeteries of mummified cats were created at both sites, and thousands of bronze statuettes of the goddess were put there as votive offerings. Her cult was carried to Italy by the Romans, and traces have been found in Rome, Ostia, Nemi, and Pompeii.
Belbasi: CATEGORY: site; culture
DEFINITION: A cave on the southern coast of Anatolia which gave its name to a late Palaeolithic culture. The tool kit includes tanged arrowheads, triangular points, and obliquely truncated blades. There are rock engravings in shelters such as Beldibi, the only known cave art in western Asia.
bell glass: CATEGORY: artifact
DEFINITION: A bell-shaped glass cover used, especially formerly, as a cloche
Benghazi/Banghazi: SYNONYM: ancient Euesperides; later Berenice; Italian Bengasi
CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: Seaport city of northeastern Libya, the de jur capital, which was founded by the Greeks of Cyrenaica as Hesperides (Euesperides) in the 6th century BC. It was replaced in the mid-3rd century by a new city, named Berenice by the Egyptian pharaoh Ptolemy III in honor of his wife. It continued in occupation until the 10th or 11th century ad and was ultimately replaced by the city of Benghazi, remaining a small town until it was extensively developed during the Italian occupation of Libya (1912-42). Excavations offer evidence of Classical and Hellenistic levels and the refurbishing of the enclosing walls during Justinian's time (reigned 527-565 AD).
Beni Hassan: SYNONYM: Bani Hasan, Beni Hasan
CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: A Middle Kingdom archaeological site, on the eastern bank of the Nile, Egypt, about 150 miles south of Cairo. The site is known for its rock-cut tombs of the 11th- and 12th-dynasty (2125-1795 BC) officials of the 16th Upper Egyptian (Oryx) nome, or province. Some of the 39 tombs are painted with scenes of daily life and important biographical texts. The governors of the nome, whose capital was Menat Khufu, ancestral home of the 4th-dynasty pharaohs, administered the eastern desert. The tomb of one, Khnumhotep II, contains a scene showing Semitic Bedouin merchants in richly colored garments entering Egypt. A rock-cut shrine of Pakhet, known as Speos Artemidos, built by Queen Hatshepsut and Thutmose III of the 18th dynasty, lies one mile north, in an ancient quarry, with a smaller shrine of Alexander II nearby. There are some small tombs dating back to the 6th Dynasty (2345-2181 BC).
Bewcastle Cross: CATEGORY: artifact
DEFINITION: A runic standing cross monument in the churchyard of Bewcastle, Northumberland, northern England, dating from the late 7th or early 8th century. Although the top of the cross has been lost, the 15-foot (4.5-meter) shaft remains, with distinct panels of the figures of Christ in Majesty, St. John the Baptist, and St. John the Evangelist, while on the back there is an inhabited vinescroll. Like the Ruthwell Cross, that at Bewcastle possesses a poem inscribed in Runic script. The worn inscription suggests that the monument was a memorial to Alchfrith, son of Oswiu of Northumbria, and his wife Cyneburh (Cyniburug). It is one of the finest examples of Early Christian Northumbrian art.
bias: CATEGORY: measure
DEFINITION: Systematic overestimate or underestimate of a parameter or measurement.
biased sample: CATEGORY: technique
DEFINITION: Sampling technique in which certain units have more chance of inclusion than others.
bifurcate: SYNONYM: bifurcated base
CATEGORY: artifact
DEFINITION: A point base split into double lobes with indentation similar to notches on sides
biomass: CATEGORY: flora; fauna
DEFINITION: The total weight of the plant and animal life (organic substances and organisms) existing at a given time in a given area.
body: SYNONYM: fabric, paste, ware
CATEGORY: artifact
DEFINITION: Clay or a mixture of clay and inclusions (temper) that is suitable for forming vessels or that has been fired into a vessel
bog iron: SYNONYM: lake ore, limnite, marsh ore, meadow ore, morass ore, swamp ore, bog iron ore
CATEGORY: geology
DEFINITION: A workable, porous type of brown hematite (impure hydrous oxides) found in bogs (and also in marshes, swamps, peat mosses, and shallow lake beds). This deposit is formed when iron-bearing surface waters come into contact with organic material and iron oxides are precipitated through oxidation of algae, iron bacteria, or the atmosphere. It is frequently found in areas with subarctic or arctic climatic conditions.
Boghazköy: SYNONYM: Boghaz Keui, ancient Hattusas, Bogazkoy, Boghaz Koy
CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: The site of the Hittite capital of Hattusas, excavated by Hugo Winckler in the early 20th century and which yielded thousands of cuneiform tablets from which much of Hittite history was reconstructed. The capital is on a rock citadel near the Halys River in central Turkey and the site had been occupied since the Chalcolithic times. In c 1500 BC, it became the citadel of Hattusas. As the Hittites' power grew, so did their capital, all within a massive defensive wall of stone and mudbrick. Six gateways were decorated with impressive monumental carved reliefs, showing a warrior, lions, and sphinxes. Four temples have been excavated within the walls, each grouped around an open porticoed court. Two buildings housed the archives with over 10,000 inscribed clay tablets inscribed in cuneiform script and the Hittite language. A cemetery close to the city held large numbers of cremation burials, a surprisingly early occurrence of this rite. The city fell at the same time as the empire, c 1200 BC. Little is known of the Chalcolithic or Hittite Old Kingdom phases on the site; excavation has in the main concentrated on the monuments of the New Kingdom city.
bolas stone: SYNONYM: bolas; bola; plural bolases
CATEGORY: artifact
DEFINITION: Weighted balls of stone, bone, ivory, or ceramic that are either grooved or pierced for fastening to rawhide thongs and used to hunt prey. The bolas, still found today among some of the peoples of South America and among the Eskimo, usually consists of two or more globular or pear-shaped stones attached to each other long thongs. They are whirled and thrown at running game, with the thongs wrapping themselves around the limbs of the animal or bird on contact. Bolas stones have been found in many archaeological sites throughout the world, including Africa in Middle and Upper Acheulian strata.
bone measurement: CATEGORY: technique
DEFINITION: The measurement of bones to compare size and shape between different individuals. The dimensions of skeletal structures can be taken using a variety of calipers and other measuring equipment. Multivariate analysis is one method of comparison which helps to identify and distinguish bones by species and sex and for studying the genetics of groups of animals. Much work has been done in human skull measurement to investigate genetic relationships of ancient populations.
Boomplaas: CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: A cave in the Folded Mountain Belt of the Cape Province, South Africa, containing a long sequence of Upper Pleistocene and Holocene deposits. The earliest occupation was probably around 80,000 years ago. There was a long 'Middle Stone Age' sequence and then occupations attributed to the Robberg, Albany, and Wilton industries.
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.
brain endocast: SYNONYM: endocranial cast
CATEGORY: technique
DEFINITION: A cast of the cranial cavity (inner surface of the cranium) to produce an accurate image of and the approximate shape of the brain. These are made by pouring latex rubber into a skull. The fossil record can yield endocranial casts and, from them, possible brain volumes -- especially of early man.
brass: CATEGORY: geology
DEFINITION: The general name for alloys of copper with zinc or tin, with the proportions about 70-90% copper and 10-30% of the other base metal. It is possible that due to difficulties in introducing the zinc ore calamine into the melt, brass appeared later in use than bronze (copper and tin) and other copper alloys. Mosaic gold, pinchbeck, prince's metal, are varieties of brass differing in the proportions of the ingredients. Corinthian brass is an alloy of gold, silver, and copper.
Brassempouy: CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: A series of early Upper Palaeolithic deposits in southwest France near Brassempouy, famous for carved ivories and broken statuettes of Venus" or "Lady". These statues are thought to be the work of Cro-Magnon artists."
Breasted, James Henry (1865-1935): CATEGORY: person
DEFINITION: American Egyptologist, archaeologist, and historian who excavated Megiddo (Armageddon), established ancient Egyptian historical periods, and founded University of Chicago's Oriental Institute (1919). Breasted promoted research on ancient Egypt and the ancient civilizations of western Asia as well as compiled a record of every known Egyptian hieroglyphic inscription and published a translation of these in a five-volume work, Ancient Records of Egypt" (1906). He led expeditions to Egypt and the Sudan (1905-1907) and copied inscriptions from monuments that had been previously inaccessible or were perishing. The Oriental Institute is a renowned center for the study of the ancient cultures of southwest Asia and the Middle East. His other books included "History of Egypt" (1905) and "Ancient Times" (1916) and "Development of Religion and Thought in Ancient Egypt" (1912). His excavation at Megiddo uncovered a large riding stable thought to have been King Solomon's and one at Persepolis yielded some Achaemenid sculptures."
breastplate: CATEGORY: artifact
DEFINITION: A piece of armor covering the chest
Bubastis: SYNONYM: Tell Basta
CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: An Egyptian site in the southeastern Nile delta with monuments of the 22nd Dynasty.
Buchau: SYNONYM: Wasserburg Buchau
CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: A Late Bronze Age settlement site in southern Germany with two Urnfield period occupations. There were single-room buildings and a larger two-roomed building in one occupation; the second settlement had nine complexes of large multi-room houses with outbuildings.
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.
button and loop fastener: CATEGORY: artifact
DEFINITION: A fastener made of a metal circle connected to a metal loop fixed to an object and used to fasten to another object by means of a button or a loop. The usage of these items is unclear, could include use for animals or for dress.
cadastre: SYNONYM: cadaster
CATEGORY: language
DEFINITION: A public record of the extent, value, and ownership of land within a district for purposes of taxation.
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.
calabash: CATEGORY: artifact
DEFINITION: The hollow shell of a gourd or pumpkin or the fruit of the calabash tree, used as a storage or drinking vessel. Such a shell was used for household utensils, water bottles, kettles, musical instruments, etc. It is round or oval and hard enough to be used in boiling liquids over a fire.
cameo glass: CATEGORY: artifact
DEFINITION: A Roman artifact of layered, multicolored glass with the effect of a cameo cut from onyx. The Portland Vase in the British Museum is an important example.
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.
canopic jar: SYNONYM: canopic vase, canopea
CATEGORY: artifact
DEFINITION: An ancient Egyptian funerary ritual in which four covered vessels of wood, stone, pottery, or faience were used to hold the organs removed during mummification. The embalmed liver, lungs, stomach, and intestines were placed in separate canopic jars. The jars or urns were then placed beside the mummy in the tomb, to be reunited in spirit, subject to the appropriate spells and rituals having been performed. The earliest Canopic jars came into use during the Old Kingdom (c 2575-2130 BC) and had plain lids. During the Middle Kingdom (c 1938-1600 BC), the jars were decorated with sculpted human heads, probably depicting of the deceased. Then from the 19th dynasty until the end of the New Kingdom (1539-1075 BC), the heads represented the four sons of the god Horus (Duamutef, Qebehsenuf, Imset, Hapy). In the 20th dynasty (1190-1075 BC) the practice began of returning the embalmed viscera to the body. The term appears to refer to a Greek demigod, Canopus, venerated in the form of a jar with a human head.
Cape Coastal Ware: CATEGORY: ceramics
DEFINITION: A Stone Age pottery style from the coast of southern Namibia to eastern Cape Province, South Africa, after c 1600 BP. It is characterized by point-based pots.
Capua: SYNONYM: modern Santa Maria di Capua Vetere; Casilinum
CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: An ancient city of Italy, founded around 600 BC by the Etruscans, whose people spoke the Oscan dialect of Italic. There had been an early Iron Age settlement in the 9th century BC. After the period of Etruscan domination, it fell to the Samnites c 440 BC. Capua supported the Latin Confederacy in its war against Rome in 340 BC. After Rome's victory in the war, Capua became a self-governing community, and its people were granted limited Roman citizenship. In 312 BC, Capua was connected with Rome by the Appian Way and its prosperity increased to make it the secondmost important in Italy. During the Second Punic War (218-201 BC) Capua sided with Carthage against Rome. When the Romans recaptured the city in 211 BC, they deprived the citizens of political rights. Spartacus, the slave leader, began his revolt at Capua in 73 BC. Although it suffered during the Roman civil wars in the last decades of the republic, it prospered under the empire until 27 BC. The Vandals sacked Capua in 456 AD and Muslim invaders destroyed everything except the church of Sta. Maria in 840. Capua was famous for its bronzes and perfumes. There are ruins of a theater, amphitheater, baths, ceremonial arch of Hadrian, and a mithraeum with painted frescoes. The Etruscan artifacts include characteristic pottery, bronzes, and tombs, and an important document of the Etruscan language -- the Capua Tile, an inscription of some 62 lines that was either religious or ritual text.
Carcassonne: CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: A city in southwest France occupied as early as the 5th century BC by the Iberians and then by Gallo-Romans. Its inner rampart was built in 485 AD. The site is one of the best-preserved examples of a medieval fortified town in Europe with an inner wall and citadel dating from 11th-13th centuries. The site was extensively restored in the 19th century and the church of Saint-Vincent and the cathedral of Saint-Michel, both 13th century, survive.
Carthage: SYNONYM: (adj Carthaginian, Punic) Carthago; Kart-Hadasht
CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: A great city of antiquity founded, according to tradition, on the north coast of Africa by the Phoenicians of Tyre in 814 BC and now a suburb of Tunis. However, Phoenician occupation on the site is archaeologically attested from about a century later. The Aeneid tells of the city's founding by the Tyrian princess Dido, who fled from her brother Pygmalion (a king of Tyre). Until around 500 BC Carthage was one of three great mercantile powers in the central Mediterranean, together with the Etruscans and Western Greeks. Much of Carthage's revenue came from its exploitation of the silver mines of North Africa and southern Spain, begun as early as 800 BC, and from its role as a middleman in trade. Carthage was for many years in conflict with the Greeks, especially in Sicily. Carthage lost both Sicily and Sardinia to Rome in 241 BC at the close of the First Punic War. From an enlarged domain in southern Spain, the Carthaginian general Hannibal in 218 BC led his army across the Alps to victories in Italy. When Hannibal returned to Africa, he was defeated at Zama in 202 BC. Though humiliated, Carthage survived until it was destroyed by Rome in 146 BC, after having fought the three Punic Wars of the 3rd and 2nd centuries. Carthage was then reconstructed as a Roman city by Julius Caesar and Octavian. The Roman city prospered by shipping grain and olive oil to Italy. Carthage replaced Utica as the capital of the African province and it became the second largest city in the western part of the empire, after Rome itself. The Phoenician/Punic remains include the citadel, Byrsa, the Sanctuary of Tanit, and two manmade harbors (all pre-146 BC); the Roman remains are the Antonine Baths, odeum, theater, circus, amphitheater, aqueduct, and areas of streets and houses. Also on the Byrsa site stood an open-air portico, from which the finest Roman sculptures at Carthage have survived. The standard of living in Carthage was probably far below that of the larger cities of the classical world. In Roman times, beds, cushions, and mattresses were luxuries. The Punic language and its distinctive alphabet remained in use long after the city's destruction. After the breakup of the Roman empire, the Vandals took Carthage in 439 and stayed in control until the Byzantine invasion in 533. Carthage was the capital of the Byzantine empire in Africa until the Arab takeover of 698.
Casas Grandes: CATEGORY: culture; site
DEFINITION: A culture, river, and site in Chihuahua, northern Mexico. The town's name, Spanish for great houses refers to the extensive, multistoried ruins of a pre-Columbian town, which was probably founded in 1050 and burned around 1340, after which the abandoned valley lands were occupied by the Suma, who migrated in from the east. Ruins of this type are common in the valleys of the Casas Grandes and its tributaries. The earliest culture, also called the Viejo, was characterized by Mogollon-type pottery and pithouse dwellings. The following period, the Medio, had adobe houses. A third period, the Tardio, came after 1300 AD and was heavily influenced by Mesoamerica. The area was settled by the Spaniards in 1661/1662 and is now a national monument under the jurisdiction of the National Institute of Anthropology and History.
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.
casemate wall: CATEGORY: feature; structure
DEFINITION: A defensive wall consisting of parallel walls with a space or internal chambers in the thickness of the wall. Sometimes the chambers were rooms; sometimes they were filled with debris or left empty.
Cashel: SYNONYM: Rock of Cashel
CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: A rock in Tipperary, Ireland, which rises dramatically 358 feet (109 m) above the surrounding plain. On the summit of this limestone outcrop is a group of ruins, including the remains of the town's defenses, St. Patrick's Cathedral, the bishop's castle, and an ancient cross. The rock was the stronghold of the kings of Munster from the 4th century. St. Patrick consecrated Cashel as a bishopric c 450. In 1101 the rock was given to the church by King Murtagh O'Brien.
casing nail: CATEGORY: artifact
DEFINITION: A nail similar to a finishing nail but heavier and used for trim where strength and concealment are required
cask: CATEGORY: artifact
DEFINITION: A strong wooden barrel
Caskey, John (1908-1981): CATEGORY: person
DEFINITION: An American archaeologist who served as director of the American School of Classical Studies at Athens and worked at Lerna and Ayia Irini.
Caso y Andrade, Alfonso (1896-1970): CATEGORY: person
DEFINITION: Mexican archaeologist and government official who explored the early Oaxacan cultures and who excavated Tomb Seven at Monte Albán, the earliest-known North American necropolis. His discovery and analysis of the burial offerings at Tomb Seven proved that Monte Albán had been occupied by the Mixtec people after they had displaced the Zapotecs before the Spanish conquest. Caso found evidence of five major phases, dating back to the 8th century BC, and established a rough chronology through comparisons with other sites. Caso also deciphered the Mixtec Codices. He made important contributions to regional archaeology and to the interpretation of Mixtec manuscripts, Mexican calendars, and dynastic history in general. He held posts as head of the Department of Archaeology at the National Museum, director of the museum, and director of the National Institute for Indian Affairs.
Cass ny Hawin: CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: A Mesolithic settlement site on the Isle of Man with a stone tools, including microliths.
Cassibile: CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: A Late Bronze Age settlement and cemetery containing 2,000 rock-cut chamber tombs near Syracuse in southeast Sicily. It is the type site of a Late Bronze Age phase -- Pantalica II -- of the early 1st millennium BC. The Pantalica culture was characterized by large urban settlements. Artifacts include a distinctive buff painted ware with plume or 'feather' motifs, c 1250-1000 BC, and a number of typical bronze types, including stilted and thick-arc fibulae and shaft-hole axes.
Cassivellaunus (fl. 1st century BC): SYNONYM: Cassivelaunus
CATEGORY: person
DEFINITION: A powerful British chieftain who was defeated by Julius Caesar during Caesar's second raid of Britain in 54 BC. Cassivellaunus is the first man in England whose name we know and he led his tribe, the Catuvellauni, a group of Belgic invaders from the River Marne area. He used guerrilla tactics and chariot warfare successfully until Caesar captured the fortified settlement, identified as present-day Wheathampstead, Hertfordshire. Cassivellaunus agreed to provide hostages and pay an annual tribute to Rome, but there is no evidence that he kept these promises. His son was Cunobelin, the Cymbeline" written about by Shakespeare."
cast: CATEGORY: artifact
DEFINITION: A molded object
Castanet: CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: An Upper Palaeolithic rock shelter at Castelmerle, southwest France. There were two Aurignacian levels with art objects of carved or painted stone. The art from Castanet and neighboring Blanchard rock shelter is amongst the earliest known, dating c 33,000 BC.
caste: CATEGORY: term
DEFINITION: Social class with clearly delineated boundaries; one is usually born into a caste and ascribed social and economic roles on the basis of caste affiliation. It is difficult or impossible to ascend from one caste to a higher one.
castellation: CATEGORY: ceramics
DEFINITION: A pronounced vertical appendage on the rim of a vessel, much like the part of a castle wall.
Castelluccio: CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: An Early Bronze Age settlement and cemetery of rock-cut tombs near Syracuse, Sicily. Excavated by Orsi in 1891-1892, the cemetery contained several hundred tombs used for collective burial and one tomb had a carved facade and several were closed by slabs with carved double spirals. The characteristic pottery was a buff ware painted with black or green lines and designs. Pottery shapes included splay-necked cups and pedestaled bowls. There were also bossed bone plaques, showing connections with the Aegean world well before 2000 BC.
caster: CATEGORY: artifact
DEFINITION: A small swiveled wheel (often one of a set) fixed to a leg (or the underside) of a piece of furniture
casting: CATEGORY: artifact; geology
DEFINITION: Casting consists of pouring molten metal into a mold, where it solidifies into the shape of the mold. The process was well established in the Bronze Age (beginning c 3000 BC), when it was used to form bronze pieces. It is particularly valuable for the economical production of complex shapes, from mass-produced parts to one-of-a-kind items or even large machinery. Three principal techniques of casting were successively developed in prehistoric Europe: one-piece stone molds for flat-faced objects; clay or stone piece molds that could be dismantled and reused; and one-off clay molds for complex shapes made in one piece around a wax or lead pattern (cire perdue). Every metal with a low enough melting point was exploited in early Europe, except iron and steel, was used for casting artifacts.
casting: CATEGORY: artifact
DEFINITION: Casting consists of pouring molten metal into a mold, where it solidifies into the shape of the mold. The process was well established in the Bronze Age (beginning c 3000 BC), when it was used to form bronze pieces. It is particularly valuable for the economical production of complex shapes, from mass-produced parts to one-of-a-kind items or even large machinery. Three principal techniques of casting were successively developed in prehistoric Europe: one-piece stone molds for flat-faced objects; clay or stone piece molds that could be dismantled and reused; and one-off clay molds for complex shapes made in one piece around a wax or lead pattern (cire perdue). Every metal with a low enough melting point was exploited in early Europe, except iron and steel, was used for casting artifacts.
casting flash: SYNONYM: casting jet, casting seam
CATEGORY: artifact
DEFINITION: A thin irregular ridge of metal on the outer face of a casting, resulting from seepage of the molten metal into the joint between the separate components of the mould used in its manufacture. A casting jet is similar but is a small plug of metal that originally filled the gate or aperture used to fill the mould. During the final cleaning and finishing of a cast object the jet and flash are usually knocked off and filed smooth.
casting jet: CATEGORY: artifact; geology
DEFINITION: A plug of metal which is knocked out after an artifact is cast and which fits exactly into the opening (aperture or gate) of a mold. When casting metal into a bivalve or composite mold, the aperture through which the metal is poured into the mold becomes filled up with molten metal, and this plug of metal cools and hardens with the object. When the finished artifact is removed from the mold, the casting jet is still attached; in most cases it is knocked off and the scar polished down the metal plug being melted down for re-use. In some cases, however, it may be left on, particularly on neck rings and bracelets. Examples are sometimes in founder's hoards.
casting seam: CATEGORY: artifact; geology
DEFINITION: The place where a small amount of molten metal will run into the joint between the surfaces of the parts of the casting mold. In a bivalve or composite mold, this seepage results in a visible seam when the object is removed from the mold. It is usually filled and polished off; unfinished objects are often found with a visible seam or ridge.
casting-on technique: CATEGORY: artifact; geology
DEFINITION: A method used in a secondary stage of making metal objects for adding handles, legs, and hilts to complex artifacts. A clay mold is placed around part of an existing object and molten metal is then poured in and fuses onto the original object.
castle: CATEGORY: structure
DEFINITION: A medieval European structure, generally the residence of a king or a lord of the territory. The word 'castle' is derived from Latin 'castellum', a fortified camp, and there are various linguistic forms, including chateau, castello, castrum, and burg. These medieval strongholds developed rapidly from the 9th century. The word is sometimes applied to prehistoric earthworks, such as Maiden Castle, England. Castles developed with the feudal system which installed a societal classification in which land and other privileges were granted in return for military service. Castle architecture had three essential elements: a tower (keep or donjon), residence for the noble, and a fortified enclosure wall. The first late Carolingian types were likely modeled on the fortified homesteads of the Slavs, and in the 10th century the manor or principal house was then set up on a raised mound within the enclosure. This motte and bailey" type was introduced to France in the 11th century. The Normans then it to the British Isles and southern Italy and also built stone keeps within their enclosures. Later 12th-century castles in France and England have large stone walls gateways modeled on Arabic and Byzantine forts and massive circular central keeps. Multiple walls with strengthened gateways are an invention of the mid-13th century. The introduction of the cannon and other firearms in the 15th and 16th centuries made castles vulnerable to attack. Castle architecture was revised with low walls which could be defended all around by artillery the guns mounted on bastions and redans."
Castor box: CATEGORY: artifact
DEFINITION: A shallow vessel in color-coated ware ( Nene Valley Ware) with a fitting lid of Roman date. Usually both box and lid were rouletted.
Castor ware: CATEGORY: ceramics
DEFINITION: A distinctive pottery named after a Roman settlement site on the north bank of the Nene in Northhamptonshire. Castor ware is a slate-colored pottery which commonly had hunting scenes of dogs, boars, etc. on the outer surface, which were applied by squeezing paste from a bag or applying by brush. The E barbotine hunt cups were a highlight of the native Romano-British potter's craft.
castro: CATEGORY: term
DEFINITION: Portuguese term for a fortified site, ranging from the small walled citadels of the Copper Age (e.g. Vila Nova de Sao Pedro) to the hillfort settlements of the Celtic Iron Age.
casual find: CATEGORY: technique
DEFINITION: A nonscientific discovery of an archaeological object, as by an explorer or hunter.
casual tool: CATEGORY: artifact
DEFINITION: Object used as a tool once or twice for a specific purpose and discarded with no purposeful modification
catastrophe theory: SYNONYM: catastrophism
CATEGORY: term; related field
DEFINITION: A mathematical theory and branch of geometry which demonstrates ways in which a system can undergo sudden large changes as one or more of the variables that control it are continuously changed. I.e., the theory explains change through a succession of sudden catastrophes. A small change in one variable can produce a sudden discontinuity in another. Archaeologists use the theory to show how sudden changes can stem from comparatively small variations. It has been used to explain the dramatic change in settlement patterns and the collapse of Maya and Mycenaean civilizations by comparatively small changes without there being large causes such as invasions or natural disaster.
catastrophic profile: SYNONYM: catastrophic age profile
CATEGORY: technique
DEFINITION: A table plotting the age and sex of animal bones which shows the natural distribution of animals in a herd, suggesting natural disaster or unselective slaughter.
centrally based wandering model: CATEGORY: technique
DEFINITION: A model for hunter-gatherer cultures centered around base camps.
Cerro de las Mesas: CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: A site in southern Veracruz, Mexico, in the plains of the Papaloápan River that is a hybrid site of Pre-Classic and Classic periods. Dozens of earthen mounds are scattered over the surface in a seemingly haphazard manner, and the archaeological sequence is long and complex. The site reached its apogee in the Early Classic, when the stone monuments for which it is best known were carved. Most important are a number of stelae, some of which are carved in a low-relief style recalling Late Formative Tres Zapotes, early lowland Maya, and Cotzumalhuapa. Cerro de las Mesas pottery, deposited in rich burial offerings of the Early Classic, is much like that of Teotihuacan, with slab-legged tripods. Potters made large, hollow, handmade figures of the gods and the most spectacular discovery on the site was a cache of 782 jade objects, many of Olmec workmanship. Cerro de las Mesas is famous for Remojadas-style pottery figurines, found in great quantity as burial goods. Because the Classic occupation contains abundant Teotihuacan materials and two Maya Long Count dates (ad 468 and ad 533), it is usually interpreted as a redistribution point for materials from both Mexico and the Maya lowlands.
Ch'in Dynasty: SYNONYM: Kin, Qin
CATEGORY: culture
DEFINITION: Dynasty of 221-206 BC that unified China into a single empire. The Ch'in, from which the name China is derived, established the approximate boundaries and basic administrative system that Chinese dynasties were to follow for the next 2,000 years. The dynasty was originated by the state of Ch'in, one of the many small feudal states into which China was divided between 771-221 BC. In 247 BC, the boy king Chao Cheng came to the throne and he completed the Ch'in conquests and created the Ch'in empire. Chao Cheng proclaimed himself Ch'in Shih huang-ti (First Sovereign Emperor of Ch'in"). To rule the vast territory the Ch'in installed a rigid authoritarian government; they standardized the writing system standardized the measurements of length and weight and the width of highways abolished all feudal privileges built the Great Wall and in 213 ordered all books burned except those on utilitarian subjects. Excavations have found examples of the standard weights and measures imposed on China. There is also a spectacular large group of lifesize pottery figures of warriors horses and chariots found in area adjacent to the tomb of the first Ch'in emperor Ch'in Shih huang-ti."
Ch'ing Dynasty: SYNONYM: Qing, Manchu dynasty
CATEGORY: culture
DEFINITION: The last imperial dynasty of China (1644-1911/12 AD), Manchu in origin. Under the Ch'ing, the territory tripled in size and the population grew from 150,000,000 to 450,000,000 and an integrated national economy was established. There are some elaborately constructed tombs. Ch'ing porcelain is technically masterful, but Ch'ing artists were individualistic and innovative.
chasing: CATEGORY: artifact
DEFINITION: A technique for the decoration of metalwork by engraving on the outside of the raised surface. The metal is worked from the front by hammering with tools that raise, depress, or push aside the metal without removing any from the surface. Chasing is the opposite of embossing, or repoussé, in which the metal is worked from the back to give a higher relief. Strictly chasing refers to line decoration applied to the face of repoussé work with a tracer, but the term is frequently used more generally to describe any hammered or punched decoration on metal.
chasing tool: SYNONYM: chaser
CATEGORY: artifact
DEFINITION: A kind of punch used in metalworking to create repousse style ornament.
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.
Chateau Gaillard: SYNONYM: (French: Saucy Castle")"
CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: A 12th-century castle built by Richard the Lion-Heart on his return from the Third Crusade in 1196. Sitting on the Andelys cliff overlooking the Seine River in France, substantial portions of it still stand. Château Gaillard, the strongest castle of its age, guarded the Seine River valley approach to Normandy. It was successfully besieged by Philip II in 1204. The French isolated the fort with a double ditch, then collapsed part of the châtelet and penetrated the main fortress through the latrines.
Chester: SYNONYM: Roman Deva, Castra Devana
CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: The site of the Roman headquarters of the 20th Legion. It was an important Roman town but was deserted by the early 5th century. There are a number of Roman remains, including the foundations of the north and east walls. Modern Chester overlies the massive Roman camp (castra) of some 24 hectares, sited strategically on the River Dee. Perhaps already a small fort by 60 AD, the fortress and an aqueduct were firmly established in 76-79. Outside the fortifications lay a civilian settlement, an amphitheater, cemeteries, and quarries. Roman abandonment came about 380.
Chin Dynasty: SYNONYM: Jin, Juchen, Jurchen, Ju-Chen, Ruzhen, Jurched, Jurchid
CATEGORY: culture
DEFINITION: A Chinese dynasty (AD 1115-1234) founded by the Jurchen tribes of Manchuria, who were formerly vassals of the Khitans or Liao dynasty (AD 916-1125). They overran most of northern China and captured the Sung capital of K'ai-feng, forcing the Chinese to move their capital south to Hang-chou in 1126. The empire covered much of Inner Asia and all of North China.
chinampa: SYNONYM: chinampas; floating garden
CATEGORY: geography; term
DEFINITION: A system of cultivation on small, stationary, artificial islands made of vegetation and mud in shallow freshwater lakes, created in the Valley of Mexico (Xochimilco). These very fertile fields were created by massive Aztec reclamation projects and consisted of little islands, each averaging 6 to 10 m (19.7 to 32.8 feet) wide and 100 to 200 m (30.5 to 656.2 feet) long, with fertilization from the organic wastes in mud and aquatic life. Periodic renewal of this mud layer created a permanent supply of fertile soil so that as one crop was harvested it could be immediately replaced with another. Much of Aztecs' Tenochtitlan utilized such intensively farmed, reclaimed land. The champas were normally separated by a system of canals which allowed both access and water circulation.
Choga Zanbil: SYNONYM: Dur-Untash, Choga Zambil, Chogha Zambil, Dur Untashi
CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: An ancient Elamite site located near Susa in southwestern Iran. It is especially known for its remains dating to the Middle Elamite Period (c 1500-1000 BC), when the Elamite ruler Untash-Gal built a magnificent ziggurat, temples, and a palace. The remains of the ziggurat, the largest one known, are 335 feet (102 m) square and 80 feet (24 m) high, less than half its estimated original height. Other palaces, a reservoir, and the fortification walls have been excavated of the city, which was lavishly laid out but never completed. There are also a variety of small artifacts, including an excellent collection of Middle Elamite cylinder seals, and evidence of glass and glazes.
Chou: SYNONYM: Chou Dynasty, Zhou
CATEGORY: culture
DEFINITION: The dynasty that ruled ancient China from 1122-256/255 BC), establishing the political and cultural characteristics that would be identified with China for the next 2,000 years. Some date the dynasty to 1027-1050 BC. The Chou coexisted with the Shang for many years, living just west of the Shang territory in what is now Shensi province. At various times they were a friendly tributary state to the Shang, alternatively warring with them. The Chou overthrew that of Shang in 1027 BC and was itself destroyed by the Ch'in in 256. Its capital in the Western Chou period was at Tsung Chou in Shensi, moving to Loyang in Honan in 771, to begin the Eastern Chou period. The archaeological evidence comes mainly from the excavation of tombs. Iron came into use c 500 BC, both forged and cast. Bronze remained the material for weapons and the Chou bronzes are the most famous of their artworks. The sword, crossbow, and use of roof tiles were other technological innovations of the dynasty.
Chumash: CATEGORY: culture
DEFINITION: A late prehistoric and historic Native American culture originally living along the coast of southern California and speaking a Hokan language. Chumash also occupied the three northern channel islands off Santa Barbara. The major Chumash groups were the Obispeño, Purismeño, Ynezeño, Barbareño, and Ventureño, Emigdiano, and Cuyama. The Chumash were skilled artisans, made wooden-plank canoes and vessels of soapstone, as well as a variety of tools out of wood, whalebone, and other materials. They produced basketry, did rock painting, and started of clamshell-bead currency in the area. The Chumash were among the first native Californians to be encountered by the Spanish explorer Juan Rodríguez Cabrillo, who visited the islands in 1542-1543.
Civita Castellana: SYNONYM: Falerii
CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: A site near Rome, originally the capital of the Faliscans, the 9th-century-BC Falerii Veteres. It was reputedly founded by the Pelasgians from Argos. The Faliscans were a tribe belonging to the Etruscan confederation against Rome. The city was destroyed by the Romans in 395 BC and again in 241 BC. Faliscan vases have been found in its rich necropolis.
civitas: CATEGORY: term
DEFINITION: A term used in the later Roman Republic and under the Roman Empire for a favored provincial community. Some were exempted from tribute payment and Roman judicial jurisdiction. Others received grants of self-government and were not subject to military occupation. The term also referred to citizenship in ancient Rome.
clasp: CATEGORY: artifact
DEFINITION: A device with interlocking parts for fastening; also, a buckle or brooch
class: CATEGORY: typology; technique
DEFINITION: A general group of artifacts, like hand axes" which can be broken down into specific types like "ovates" etc."
classic example: CATEGORY: artifact
DEFINITION: A subjective term used to refer to a specific point specimen which represents the truest form of a particular point type or blade.
classic orders of architecture: SYNONYM: order of architecture
CATEGORY: structure
DEFINITION: The Grecian Doric, Ionic, and Corinthian and the Roman Tuscan, Doric, Ionic, Corinthian, and Composite orders as defined by the particular type of column and entablature in one basic unit. A column consists of a shaft together with its base and its capital. The column supports a section of an entablature, which constitutes the upper horizontal part of a classical building and is itself composed of (from bottom to top) an architrave, frieze, and cornice. The form of the capital is the most distinguishing characteristic of a particular order. The five major orders are: Doric, Ionic, Corinthian, Tuscan, and Composite.
classic, Classic, Classical: SYNONYM: Classical Age, Classic Period
CATEGORY: culture; chronology
DEFINITION: A general term referring to the period of time when a culture or civilization reaches its highest point of complexity and achievement. In a broader sense, the term often describes the whole period of Greek and Roman antiquity with the following breakdown: Early Classical Period 500-450 BC, High Classical Period 450-400 BC, and Late Classical 400-323 BC. Specifically, the term describes, in New World chronology, the period between the Formative (Pre-Classic) and the Post-Classic, which was characterized by the emergence of city-states. During the Classic stage, civilized life in pre-Columbian America reached its fullest flowering, with large temple centers, advanced art styles, writing, etc. It was originally coined for the Maya civilization, initially defined by the earliest and most recent Long Count dates found on Maya stelae, 300-900 AD. A division between Early and Late Classic was arbitrarily set at 600 AD, but since in some areas, e.g. Teothihuacan, great civilizations had already collapsed, some scholars regard this date as marking the end of the Classic Period. By extension, the word came to be used for other Mexican cultures with a similar level of excellence (Teotihuacán, Monte Albán, El Tajín). In these areas the cultural climax was roughly contemporary with that of the Maya, and the term Classic took on a chronological meaning as well. The full Maya artistic, architectural, and calendric-hieroglyphic traditions took place during the Early Classic. Tikal, Uaxactún, and Copán all attained their glory then. In the Late Classic, between 600-900 AD, ceremonial centers in the Maya Lowlands grew in number, as did the making of the inscribed, dated stelae and monuments. The breakdown of the Classic Period civilizations began with the destruction of the city of Teotihuacán in about 700 AD. Some date the Classic period to 300-900 AD.
classical: SYNONYM: Classic, Classical
CATEGORY: artifact
DEFINITION: A general term referring to the period of time when a culture or civilization reaches its highest point of complexity and achievement. In a broader sense, the term often describes the whole period of Greek and Roman antiquity with the following breakdown: Early Classical period 500-450 BC, High Classical period 450-400 BC, and Late Classical 400-323 BC. Specifically, the term describes, in New World chronology, the period between the Formative (Pre-Classic) and the Post-Classic, which was characterized by the emergence of city-states. During the Classic stage, civilized life in pre-Columbian America reached its fullest flowering, with large temple centers, advanced art styles, writing, etc. It was originally coined for the Maya civilization, initially defined by the earliest and most Recent Long Count dates found on Maya stelae, 300-900 AD. A division between Early and Late Classic was arbitrarily set at 600 AD, but since in some areas, e.g. Teothihuacan, great civilizations had already collapsed, some scholars regard this date as marking the end of the Classic Period. By extension, the word came to be used for other Mexican cultures with a similar level of excellence (Teotihuacán, Monte Albán, El Tajín). In these areas the cultural climax was roughly contemporary with that of the Maya, and the term Classic took on a chronological meaning as well. The full Maya artistic, architectural, and calendric-hieroglyphic traditions took place during the Early Classic. Tikal, Uaxactún, and Copán all attained their glory then. In the Late Classic, between 600-900 AD, ceremonial centers in the Maya Lowlands grew in number, as did the making of the inscribed, dated stelae and monuments. The breakdown of the Classic Period civilizations began with the destruction of the city of Teotihuacán in about 700 AD. Some date the Classic period to 300-900 AD.
classical archaeology: CATEGORY: branch
DEFINITION: A field within historical archaeology specializing in the study of Old World Greek and Roman civilizations, their antecedents and contemporaries.
classification: CATEGORY: technique
DEFINITION: The ordering of archaeological data that share certain attributes or characteristics into groups and classes; the divisions arrived at by such a process. Classification is the first step in the analysis of archaeological data -- when particles or objects are sorted or categorized by established criteria, such as size, function, material, or color.
clast: SYNONYM: clastic (adj)
CATEGORY: geology
DEFINITION: An individual grain of a rock that becomes part of a sediment. Archaeological debris often consists of rocks or grains resulting from the breakdown of larger rocks. A clastic deposit is made up of fragments of preexisting rock.
clastic rock: CATEGORY: artifact
DEFINITION: A rock composed of broken pieces of older rocks
closed association: CATEGORY: technique
DEFINITION: The relationship of two or more objects that are found together and that can be proved to have been deposited together.
coiled: SYNONYM: coiled basketry
CATEGORY: artifact
DEFINITION: Concerning a method of basketry based on a spirally coiled foundation, esp. that made with a vertical stitch or weft. A basket is said to be coiled when a long bundle of fibrous material is laid up, spiral fashion. Each coil is sewn by a slender splint to the coil below it. The basketmaker would pierce the fiber bundle with a bone awl and pass the splint through the hole thus made. In ceramics, coiling is a construction technique where the vessel is formed from the base up with long coils or wedges of clay that were shaped and joined together.
coiling: SYNONYM: coiled basketry, coil basket, coiled (adj)
CATEGORY: artifact
DEFINITION: A method of basketry based on a spirally coiled foundation, esp. that made with a vertical stitch or weft. A basket is said to be coiled when a long bundle of fibrous material is laid up, spiral fashion. Each coil is sewn by a slender splint to the coil below it. The basketmaker would pierce the fiber bundle with a bone awl and pass the splint through the hole thus made.
Colchester: SYNONYM: Camulodunum, Camolodunum; Colneceaste; Colcestra
CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: A district and borough northeast of London, England that was the capital of the pre-Roman Belgic ruler Cunobelinus by 43 AD, formerly an Iron Age Celtic settlement (oppidum) surrounded by dikes. Though it burned down in 60 AD, Colchester soon became one of the chief towns in Roman Britain and there are surviving walls and gateways from this period. Some of the masonry of the temple to Claudius survives in the foundations of the Norman castle.
compass map: CATEGORY: tool
DEFINITION: A map of a region or site created by using a compass to control geographical direction and, usually, pacing or tape measures to control distances, but not elevation.
component: SYNONYM: focus; phase
CATEGORY: term
DEFINITION: A culturally homogeneous stratigraphic layer within a site that belongs to one culture and is interpreted as the remains of a single people during a relatively brief period of time. At a particular site, there may be present several components, recognized by critical changes in the artifact assemblages. A number of similar and contemporary components make up a phase.
core-formed glass: CATEGORY: artifact
DEFINITION: A type of glass made by twisting melted glass around a core, often with different colors. This technique was used especially in the Classical and Hellenistic periods of the eastern Mediterranean.
corrugated fastener: CATEGORY: artifact
DEFINITION: A fastener used in making light-duty miter joints, such as on screens and large picture frames
Covalanas: CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: An Upper Palaeolithic painted cave in the Canabrian region of northern Spain. The style, including a finger-blob technique, suggests that it belongs to a primitive stage of cave art, possibly preceding the Solutrean.
Coxcatlán phase: CATEGORY: culture
DEFINITION: Occupation phase of Mexico's Tehuacán Valley from c 5500-4500 BC. Maize first appeared, though wild and semi-domesticated plants were still eaten along with small game.
creaser: CATEGORY: artifact
DEFINITION: A flat edged blade used in leatherworking
crescent: SYNONYM: Great Basin Transverse point
CATEGORY: lithics
DEFINITION: A crescent-shaped bifacially flaked stone tool generally restricted to the Paleo-Indian period and almost always found in association with extinct Pleistocene lakes. They were possibly used for hunting large shorebirds.
crown glass: CATEGORY: artifact
DEFINITION: A traditional window glass made by spinning a bubble of molten glass on the end of a rod until it forms a flat disk
cuirass: CATEGORY: artifact
DEFINITION: A piece of armor to protect the torso, both front and back, and often molded to the contours of the body. Originally made of thick leather, it was variously made of laminated linen, sheet bronze, or iron, or scales of horn, hide, or metal. In Homeric and Hellenistic times, it was made of bronze. Cuirasses of leather as well as iron were worn by officers in the armies of the Roman Empire. Later made of steel, the cuirass was forerunner to body armor worn to deflect bullets.
cutlass: CATEGORY: artifact
DEFINITION: A flat heavy slightly curved blade.
Cyclopean masonry: SYNONYM: cyclopean construction, cyclopean wall, cyclopean monuments, Pelasgian
CATEGORY: structure
DEFINITION: A style of masonry that calls for large, close-fitting, irregularly shaped stones, used typically in Mycenaean fortifications. The massive stone wall's gaps between the inner and outer faces of the huge stone boulders were filled with small stones and clay. It is named after the Greek mythical character Cyclops, thought by the Greeks to have built the walls of Tiryns, which are constructed in this fashion. The technique occurs widely elsewhere in the Mediterranean (Nuraghe, Naveta, Talayot, Torre), and was sometimes employed by the Inca and other Andean peoples.
cylindrical tripod vase: SYNONYM: cylindrical vase
CATEGORY: ceramics
DEFINITION: A ceramic form popular in the Early Classic Period in Mesoamerica and an important artifact of Teotihuacan. It is cylindrical in shape and stands on three slab or cylindrical legs and frequently has a knobbed lid.
Dakhla Oasis: SYNONYM: ad-Dakhilah Oasis
CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: One of a chain of oases located in the Libyan Desert, west of the Egyptian city of Luxor. The main pharaonic sites in Dakhla include a town site of the Old Kingdom (2686-2160 BC) and its associated cemetery of 6th Dynasty mastaba tombs, near the modern village of Balat.
damascening: SYNONYM: damaskeening
CATEGORY: artifact
DEFINITION: The art of incrusting one metal on another, in the form of wire, which by undercutting and hammering is completely attached to the metal it ornaments. The process of etching slight ornaments on polished steel wares is also called damascening. Although related to pattern-welding, this technique used in the manufacture of sword blades probably developed independently. First a high-carbon steel is produced by firing wrought iron and wood together in a sealed crucible; the resulting steel, or wootz, consists of light cementations in a darker matrix, and this, together with a series of complicated forging techniques at relatively low temperatures produced the delicate 'watered silk' pattern with the alternating high- and low-carbon areas. Damascene steel was very strong and highly elastic.
Damascus: CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: A rich oasis city at the inland end of a pass in Syria and the modern capital of Syria. Damascus was occupied by the 3rd millennium BC, but the settlements of the prehistoric, biblical and Roman periods underlie the modern and medieval city and are therefore not readily available for excavation. Excavations have demonstrated that an urban center existed in the 4th millennium BC at Tall as-Salhiyah, southeast of Damascus. Pottery from the 3rd millennium BC has been found in the Old City. Before the 2nd millennium BC an intricate system of irrigation for Damascus and al-Ghutah had been developed. Egyptian texts and references in the Bible attest the city's importance in international trade from the 16th century BC; it appears as Dimashqa in the Tell El-Amarna documents. The Aramaeans conquered Damascus in the late 2nd millennium BC and it was subsequently annexed by the Israelites (10th century BC) and later the Assyrians (8th century BC). By 85 BC it had become capital of Nabatean kingdom; by 64 BC it was a Roman city of commercial and strategic importance, and subsequently a major Byzantine garrison. Damascus was captured by the Arabs in 635 and chosen as their capital by the Ummayads, who formed the first Islamic dynasty and ruled from 661-750. Its most famous Islamic monument if the Great Mosque of the caliph al-Walid, built in 706-714/715. Among ancient cities of the world, Damascus is perhaps the oldest continuously inhabited. Its name, Dimashq in Arabic (colloquially ash-Sham, meaning the northern as located from Arabia), derives from Dimashka, a word of pre-Semitic etymology, suggesting that the beginnings of Damascus go back to a time before recorded history.
Dasas: CATEGORY: culture
DEFINITION: The inhabitants of northwestern India at the time of the Indo-European migrations, described in the Rig-Veda" as having dark faces and snub noses unintelligible speech and worshipping strange gods but living in fortified cities (pur) and being very rich especially in cattle. The Dasas are often identified with the inhabitants of the towns of the Indus Valley culture."
Dashly: CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: An area of southern Bactria, Afghanistan, with Bronze Age, Achaemenid, and Classical sites. There are major architectural ruins from these periods.
database: CATEGORY: database design
DEFINITION: A compilation or storage system for information that is used for decision-making, inferences, interpretation, and testing hypotheses.
death assemblage: CATEGORY: term
DEFINITION: The population of carcasses when members of a life assemblage die.
death mask: CATEGORY: artifact
DEFINITION: A cast of a person's face taken after death.
deductive nomological explanation: SYNONYM: D-N; deductive-nomological reasoning; deductive reasoning
CATEGORY: technique
DEFINITION: A formal method of explanation based on the testing of hypotheses derived from general laws. A general law is established, the ramifications are deduced, and the ramifications are then used to explain a specific set of data. Some archaeologists believe that this is the appropriate way to explain cultural processes.
depas: SYNONYM: depas amphikypellon
CATEGORY: artifact
DEFINITION: The Homeric term which Schliemann used to describe the two-handled cups which he found in the Early Bronze Age contexts at Troy
deposited assemblage: CATEGORY: term
DEFINITION: Set of carcasses or body parts deposited on a site.
diaspora: CATEGORY: term
DEFINITION: The dispersion of people, either forced or voluntary, from a central area of origin to many distant regions. In particular, the dispersion of Jews among the Gentiles after the Babylonian Exile or the aggregate of Jews or Jewish communities scattered in exile" outside Palestine or present-day Israel."
Dinas Powys: CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: An Iron Age Hill Fort near Cardiff, Wales, which was refurbished in the sub-Roman and medieval periods. Traces of hearths, a collection of Mediterranean imported pottery, and metal-working debris such as molds, furnaces, and ovens have been found.
direct measurement: CATEGORY: measure
DEFINITION: Measurement that can be compared with a standard scale, as on a ruler or Munsell chart.
dog-leash technique: CATEGORY: technique
DEFINITION: A method of defining an archaeological recovery area by attaching a rope to a centrally located marker stake and tracing the boundary in a circle.
dolerite: SYNONYM: diabase
CATEGORY: geology
DEFINITION: A fine- to medium-grained, dark gray to black intrusive igneous rock with the composition of basalt. It is extremely hard and tough and is commonly quarried for crushed stone (trap). It is used for monumental stone and is one of the dark-colored rocks commercially known as black granite. Diabase is widespread.
domus de janas: CATEGORY: structure
DEFINITION: The Sardinian name for a kind of rock-cut chamber tomb, often with many interconnecting rooms, found on the island from the Copper Age and Early Bronze Age. The term means 'house of the fairies' and describes often complex, multi-chambered tombs.
Dos Aguas: CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: A rock shelter with paintings of the Spanish Levantine (Mesolithic) type situated in Valencia, Spain. Hunters of food and marine shellfish can be seen in cave art at Dos Aguas. More than 7,500 figures painted by these hunters and gatherers are known from all over the eastern and southern peninsula, dating from 7000-3500 BC. Located in the open air, usually beneath rock overhangs or in protecting hollows, are animated representations of people dancing, including two women in voluminous skirts at Dos Aguas.
Dos Pilas: CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: The largest Maya city of the Petexbatun part of Guatemala during the Late Classic period. The tomb of a Late Classic ruler was discovered which included a spectacular headdress.
Douglass, Andrew Ellicott (1867-1962): CATEGORY: person
DEFINITION: An American astronomer who developed the dendrochronology dating method. He outlined the method as early as 1901, but it was not until 1929 that he was able to publish an unbroken sequence of tree-rings for the Southwest US, extending back from the present day to the early years of the present era. This provided a dating method for the southwestern Pueblo villages.
Dryas: CATEGORY: chronology
DEFINITION: A series of cold climatic phases in northwestern Europe, during a time when the North Atlantic was in almost full glacial condition. Dryas I was c 16,000/14,000 BP, Dryas II (Older Dryas) was c 12,300-11,800 bp, and Dryas III (Younger Dryas) was c 11,000-10,000 bp. It is named after a tundra plant. . The increasing temperature after the late Dryas period during the Pre-Boreal and the Boreal (c 8000-5500 BC, according to radiocarbon dating) caused a remarkable change in late glacial flora and fauna.
Dynastic Period: SYNONYM: Dynastic Egypt
CATEGORY: chronology
DEFINITION: A period of ancient Egypt's history tied to a framework of 30 dynasties (ruling houses) of kings, or pharaohs, who rule from the time of the country's unification into a single kingdom in c 3100 BC until its conquest by Alexander the Great in 332 BC. The two Predynastic kingdoms of Upper and Lower Egypt were united by the legendary king Menes, possibly to be identified with the historical King Narmer. The Dynastic Period was followed by a Greek Period when the country was ruled by the Ptolemys, descendants of Alexander the Great's general. The Ptolemaic Period and Egypt's independence were brought to an end in 30 BC when Queen Cleopatra VII died and the country was absorbed into the Roman Empire. The political history, largely derived from written sources, has a detailed and, for the most part, precise chronology. From the 21st Dynasty onwards, Egypt's cohesion broke, and from the 11th-7th centuries BC, Libyan, Asian and Nubian contenders vied with Egyptians for control of the state. The divine ruler, the pharaoh, was ultimately responsible for the complex bureaucracy and was also the figurehead of the official religion, the personification of the sun god Ra, counterpart of Osiris, the god of the land of the dead. Because of their belief in the afterlife, the royal tombs of the pharaohs in particular reflect the great wealth and concentration of resources at the pharaoh's disposal. Much of our information about ancient Egyptian history comes from the records that were carefully maintained by the Egyptians themselves, notably by the priests who were regarded as the guardians of the state's accumulated wisdom.
dynasty: CATEGORY: term
DEFINITION: Any line of rulers whose right to power is inherited; usually a line of kings, related by blood, who succeed each other on a throne. Egyptian history was divided into 31 dynasties by Manetho in the 3rd century BC when he wrote a history of Egypt. The dynasties of Mesopotamia were distinguished by their places of origin rather than their relationships, e.g. those of Ur, Larsa, etc. In China the dynasties were longer-lived and often encompassed only regions, those of Shang and Chou spanning twelve centuries. The term is sometimes used for rulers from a single city or ethnic group.
Early Dynastic period: SYNONYM: Archaic Period
CATEGORY: chronology
DEFINITION: A chronological phase in southern Mesopotamia between c 2900-2330 BC, ending with the founding of the Dynasty of Akkad. It was also known as the Pre-Sargonid period. The Sumerian city-states flourished under their separate dynastic rulers -- Ur, Umma, Kish, and Lagash. The period is 3100-2450 BC on what is called the high chronology" (the other being the "medium chronology"). The term itself is derived from the Sumerian 'king list' which implies that Sumer was ruled by kings at this stage although archaeological evidence for the existence of kingship is meager before the middle of the period. Traditionally it is divided by archaeologists into three subdivisions -- ED I II and III -- each of approximately 200 years duration. The Royal Tombs of Ur belong the ED III period. The Early Dynastic phase shows clear continuity from the preceding Jemdet Nasr and represents a period of rapid political cultural and artistic development. Within the period the pictographic writing of the earlier period developed into the standardized cuneiform script. This period represents the earliest conjunction of archaeological and written evidence for the history of southern Mesopotamia."
East Greek pottery: CATEGORY: ceramics
DEFINITION: A type of pottery produced during the Archaic Period within the Greek islands an on the western coast of Turkey at Chios, Samos, Ephesus, Miletus, Clazomenae, and Rhodes.
East Midland burnished ware: CATEGORY: artifact
DEFINITION: Type of Roman pottery dating to the 3rd and 4th centuries AD and found mainly in the northeast midlands of England. The pots produced were grey-brown in color and were dominated by bowls and jars
East Rudolf: SYNONYM: Koobi Fora
CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: An important site on the northeastern shore of Lake Turkana (Lake Rudolf) in northern Kenya for research into earliest man, with major contributions to knowledge of the Australopithecines and Hominids (Australopithecus boisei, A. africanus, and Homo habilis). There are sediments rich in fossils and volcanic layers of the 1-3 million year time range.
East Spanish rock art: CATEGORY: artifact
DEFINITION: An art style of southeastern Spain, found on the walls of shallow rock shelters and probably of the Mesolithic period. The subjects are lively scenes from everyday life, with warriors, hunters, dancers, and animals. The style is unlike that of cave art, the figures being small and painted in solid colors with no attempt at light and shade.
Easter Island: SYNONYM: Rapa Nui
CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: The easternmost inhabited island of Polynesia, a small volcanic one, about 2500 miles from South America and 1250 miles from Pitcairn Island, its nearest inhabited Polynesian neighbors. It was settled by the Polynesians early in 1st millennium AD and developed a horticultural economy. By 700 AD, the inhabitants built large stone platforms (ahu), some of cut stone, and between 1000-1700 AD these platforms supported rows of huge stone statues (moai), some with separate top knots. Shaped by stone tools, as there is no metal on the island, from quarries in volcanic craters, there are about 300 platforms and about 600 statues. By about 1700, the warrior chiefdoms were fighting and all the statues were toppled from their pedestals. The platforms were used for human burial in stone chambers inserted into the stonework. There is a village of stone houses and many petroglyphs. The Europeans discovered Easter Island in 1722, after which the culture and population. The islanders also carved on wooden boards in an undeciphered script, Rongorongo. Easter Island culture represents the cultural development an isolated human community.
Eastern Chin Dynasty: CATEGORY: culture
DEFINITION: A phase of the Chin dynasty; the ruling house of Chinese origin controlling southeastern China from 317-420 AD when northern China was under rule of Turkic tribes. There are numerous tombs and Yueh Ware. It was one of the Six Dynasties of China.
Eastern Gravettian: CATEGORY: culture
DEFINITION: An Upper Palaeolithic industry across central and eastern Europe during the last glacial maximum, c 30,000-20,000 BP. Assemblages include shouldered points, backed blades, and some Venus figurines.
Eastern Zhou [Chou] period: CATEGORY: culture
DEFINITION: The latter part of the Zhou dynasty, from 770 BC to the extinction of the Zhou royal house in 256 BC. The term also refers to the period up to the founding of the Qin dynasty in 221 BC.
Eastgate point: CATEGORY: artifact
DEFINITION: Type of projectile head developed c. AD 500 as an arrowhead during the late Archaic Stage in the Great Basin and western interior of North America.
El Castillo: CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: Cave site in northern Spain, spanning the entire Palaeolithic. Its earliest Aurignacian material has been dated to c 38,700 bp. There are engravings and paintings of the Upper Palaeolithic, c 20,000-10,000 BC, in the caves.
El Riego phase: CATEGORY: culture
DEFINITION: The occupation phase of c 7000-5500 BC in Tehuacán Valley, Mexico, with a hunter-gatherer society. Squash, chili peppers, and avocados may have been domesticated by the very small population.
electronic distance measuring devices: SYNONYM: EDM
CATEGORY: technique
DEFINITION: Any surveying or mapping instrument using electronics and infrared or laser beams in measuring and calculating distances, points, and angles. They often work with computers.
endocast: SYNONYM: endocranial cast
CATEGORY: tool
DEFINITION: An internal cast, as of the inside of the human skull. A cast of the cranial cavity showing the approximate shape of the brain.
entasis: CATEGORY: structure
DEFINITION: In architecture, the exaggerated convex curve of a column, spire, or similar upright member, intended to give the optical illusion of straight sides. Almost all Classic columns use entasis. It was exaggerated in Doric work. Entasis is also occasionally found in Gothic spires and in the smaller Romanesque columns.
entrance grave: SYNONYM: undifferentiated passage grave
CATEGORY: structure
DEFINITION: A type of megalithic chamber tomb characterized by a chamber without separate passage, under a round barrow. It shares features of both passage grave and gallery grave. The round mound is in the passage grave tradition, but there is no clear distinction between the entrance passage and the funerary chamber, hence the alternative term, undifferentiated passage grave. The chamber form is similar to that of the galley grave. Entrance graves are found in southern Spain, Brittany, southwest Ireland, and the Channel Isles.
Erligang phase: SYNONYM: Erh-li-kang
CATEGORY: culture
DEFINITION: A stage of the early Bronze Age in North China seen in two strata at Zhengzhou Erligang, classified archaeologically as Middle Shang. The phase preceded the Anyang period (c 1300-1030 BC) and radiocarbon dates have been c 1600-1550 bc. The massive rammed-earth fortification, 118 feet wide at its base and enclosing an area of 1.2 square miles, would have taken 10,000 men more than 12 years to build. Also found were ritual bronzes, including four monumental tetrapods, palace foundations; workshops for bronze casting, pot making, and bone working; burials; and two inscribed fragments of oracle bones. The Erligang phase may correspond to the widest sway of the Shang empire and is known for its highly developed bronze-casting industry. Some Chinese archaeologists call the phase Early Shang.
Eshnunna: SYNONYM: Tell Asmar
CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: An ancient city under the mound of Tell Asmar, northeast of Baghdad, Iraq. It was a city-state in the Early Dynastic period (early 3rd millennium BC) and there are shrines, sculpture, palaces, and private houses. It became politically important in the 19th and 18th centuries BC, when it was involved in a struggle for power with Assur, Mari, Elam, and Babylon. It is rarely mentioned in history after its conquest by Hammurabi of Babylon, c 1761 BC.
eustasy: SYNONYM: adj. eustatic
CATEGORY: geology
DEFINITION: Changes in sea level on a global basis, usually as the result of a major event such as the end of a glaciation. In such a case a eustatic rise due to the melting of the glaciers can be expected in a post-glacial period. These sea-level movements can be independent of any change in the height of the land, but isostasy can happen contemporaneously as a result of the same phenomenon. This worldwide alteration in sea level is independent of any isostatic movement of the land. At the end of a glaciation melting of the water previously held in the ice sheets raises sea levels (eustatic rise), and a high level can often be correlated with an interglacial period or with the postglacial phase. Such fluctuations have occurred throughout the Quaternary, due to changes in the extent of ice sheets and thus in the volume of water locked up as ice. The larger the ice sheets, the less water available to the sea, and so sea level is lower during glacials than during interglacials. Evidence exists for a whole series of eustatic sea level fluctuations, but the most widespread is the 'high stand' in c 120,000 bp, just before the start of the last cold stage, when sea levels were between 2-10 meters higher than at the present day. During the maximum extent of the ice-sheets of the last cold stage, eustatic sea level was much lower than that of today. Large areas of continental shelf were exposed, some being occupied by the ice sheets themselves. Recovery of sea level at the end of the last cold stage is relatively well known from deposits in the Netherlands, Scandinavia, and Scotland, but is complicated by isostatic changes. The North Sea and English Channel flooded, separating Britain from the Continent, by about 7000 bp. Ireland became a separate island at about the same time. Scandinavia had a complicated series of different seas and lakes, until a sea similar to today's Baltic became established around 7000 bp. The main factors that influence sea level are global ice volumes, plate tectonics, changes in ocean volumes and dimensions, and the movement of mantle material.
Eyasi: CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: A late Middle Pleistocene site in northern Tanzania with faunal remains including archaic Homo sapiens and extinct mammal species as well as artifacts.
faience: SYNONYM: faïence, fayence; frit, paste
CATEGORY: ceramics
DEFINITION: A name used for the medieval pottery of Faenza in northern Italy, one of the chief seats of the ceramics industry in the 16th century; it was an early majolica. It is also used for the tin-glazed earthenware made in France, Germany, Spain, and Scandinavia as distinguished from Faenza majolica, and that made in The Netherlands and England, which is called delft. But most accurately, it is the primitive form of glass developed in Mesopotamia in the 3rd millennium BC and then, almost as early, in Egypt; it is sometimes called Egyptian faience. It is a substance composed of a sand and clay mixture baked to a temperature at which the surface begins to fuse to a bluish or greenish glass. It was colored with copper salts to produce a blue-green finish and used especially for beads and figurines, particularly in the second millennium BC. Its main use in the Bronze Age was for beads, seals, figurines, and similar small objects. The glazed material could be comprised of a base of either carved steatite (soapstone) or molded clay with a core of crushed quartz (or quartz and soda-lime) fired so that the surface fuses into a glassy coating. Examples occur also in Bronze Age contexts in Europe, including the Wessex Culture.
Fakheriyah, Tell: SYNONYM: Washukanni
CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: Perhaps the site of Washukanni, the capital of the kingdom of Mitanni in northern Mesopotamia on River Khabur. Tablets, statues, ivories of 2nd millennium BC have been found.
Farafra Oasis: SYNONYM: ancient Ta-iht, al-Farafirah Oasis
CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: A fertile depression in the Western Desert of Egypt, west of modern Asyut. The smallest of the major Egyptian oases, it is first mentioned in texts dating to the Old Kingdom (2686-2181 BC) and by the 19th Dynasty (1295-1186 BC) it was said to have been inhabited by Libyans.
Faras: SYNONYM: ancient Pachoras
CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: A former capital of the Nubian kingdom of Nobatia, located on the border of modern Egypt and Sudan on the west bank of the Nile. It was first established as a small Egyptian fortress in the Middle Kingdom (2055-1650 BC) and continued in use in the 18th to 19th Dynasties (1550-1186 BC) with the construction of five Egyptian temples.
fast ray: CATEGORY: term
DEFINITION: The component of light passing through an anisotropic mineral with the lower index of refraction.
fastening: CATEGORY: artifact
DEFINITION: A device that closes or secures something
faunal association: CATEGORY: technique
DEFINITION: A relative age determination technique based on archaeological associations with remains of extinct species.
Five Dynasties period: CATEGORY: chronology
DEFINITION: In Chinese history, period of time between the fall of the T'ang dynasty (AD 907) and the founding of the Sung (Song) dynasty (960), when five would-be dynasties followed one another in quick succession in North China. The era coincides with the Ten Kingdoms -- the 10 regimes which dominated separate regions of South China -- during the same period.
flashing: CATEGORY: artifact
DEFINITION: The thin rough-edged projections on a casting made from a piece mold from which the cast metal has seeped or forced its way into seams, joins or cracks in the mold. On the exterior of a cast these are generally sawn off and filed down
flask: CATEGORY: artifact
DEFINITION: A narrow-mouthed jar without handles.
flat-file database: CATEGORY: database design
DEFINITION: A set of data records stored in a single large table.
focus: SYNONYM: phase
CATEGORY: term
DEFINITION: A group of components that share high frequencies of similar cultural traits. The components will probably not be identical but should have a sufficient number of significant traits in common to indicate a relationship.
Formative: SYNONYM: Pre-Classic, Formative period; Preclassic
CATEGORY: chronology
DEFINITION: A cultural stage in North America when agriculture and village settlement were developed, accompanied by pottery, weaving, stonecarving, and ceremonial objects and architecture. In the New World, especially Mesoamerica, it is also called the Pre-Classic period and preceded the Classic period. The period was also characterized by initial complex societies (chiefdoms) and long-distance trade networks. In Mesoamerica, it is divided into Early (2000-1000 BC), Middle (1000-300 BC), and Late (300 BC-300 AD). In Andea South America, the period is usually framed within the period 1800-1 BC -- and includes the Initial Period and Early Horizon. It begins with the introduction of ceramics. This occurred c 7600 bp in Amazonia and c 5200 bp in northwest Columbia.
Fort Rock Cave: SYNONYM: Fort Rock Basin
CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: An ancient Pleistocene site in Oregon dated to over 13,000 BP and associated sites with a long sequence of occupation in the same lake basin. Deposits of pumice from an eruption of nearby Mount Mazama in c 5000 bc provided excellent chronological control for these sites. Associated artifacts, including a mano and metate, projectile points, and other stone artifacts indicate an early hunting and gathering subsistence pattern for this period. Later contexts contain artifacts of the Desert Tradition. Occupation continued into historic times, but looting has caused the archaeological record to be unreliable after c 1000 BC.
fossil assemblage: CATEGORY: term
DEFINITION: The part of a deposited assemblage that survives in a site or locality until discovery.
fracture-based: CATEGORY: artifact
DEFINITION: Special chipping technique that knocked off long thin slivers of flint from point edges, usually done on base bottom, occasionally on lower shoulders
Fraser River: CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: A complex of sites in the Fraser River delta in British Columbia, Canada, showing the sequence of the Northwest Coast Tradition of three periods: Early 1000 BC-1 AD; Intermediate 1-1250 AD; and Late from 1250 AD. Three culturally distinct areas (the Canyon, the Plateau, and the Delta) contain evidence of the differing influences which influenced the Northwest Coast Tradition materials. Canyon sites provide evidence of a long occupation covering Big Game Hunting Tradition, Old Cordilleran Culture, and Archaic. Taken together, the sites indicate a movement from inland to the coast beginning c 2000 BC.
Gargas: CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: A cave in southern France (Hautes-Pyrénées) containing important examples of Late Paleolithic mural art, paintings, and engravings dating from the Aurignacian Period, the oldest phase of European Stone Age art. The site was first known for its Ice Age fauna. There are approximately 150 engravings of animals and 250 red or black hand prints. A curious feature of these silhouettes is that many are representations of mutilated hands with one or more finger joints missing, most frequently the last two joints of the last four fingers. The significance of the hand prints and the missing fingers is unknown. The cave was occupied from at least the Middle Palaeolithic and the animal engravings are attributed to the Gravettian.
Gash: CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: A series of sites in the Atbara region of Sudan with a food-producing economy and human burials indicating a social hierarchy. The main site is Mahal Teglinos.
gastrolith: CATEGORY: lithics
DEFINITION: A stone or pebble ingested by a fish, reptile, or bird for the purpose of grinding food to aid digestion.
geoglyph: SYNONYM: Nasca lines; Nazca Lines
CATEGORY: artifact; lithics
DEFINITION: Any ground-constructed example of rock art, such as intaglios or rock alignments; straight lines, geometric shapes, and other representative designs found on the desert plain. Geoglyphs can be formed by piling up materials on the ground surface or by removing surface materials and most suggest a largely ceremonial function.
Gerasa: SYNONYM: Jerash
CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: A major Roman city of Judea (modern Jordan), founded by the Seleucids. Extensive remains include colonnaded street, forum, stadium, triumphal arch, theater, and temples to Athena and Zeus. Gerasa was one of the 10 cities of the Decapolis league.
Ghassul: SYNONYM: Teleilat, Teleilat el Ghassul; Ghassulian
CATEGORY: site; culture
DEFINITION: Chalcolithic site northeast of the Dead Sea in the Jordan Valley with four major occupations indicated -- most notably the culture of the 4th millennium BC known from the sites of Teleilat Ghassul and Nahal Mishmar. The houses were of pisé (simple mud-brick on stone foundations) and had elaborate polychrome frescoes. A wide range of well-made pottery shapes were in use, which were found on many other Palestinian sites. Carbonized date and olive stones are among the earliest evidence for the cultivation of these fruits. Burials were in cists, made of stone slabs and covered by stone cairns. The culture exploited copper early on and was the last period of large-scale stone tool use in Palestine.
Glasinac: CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: A mountain valley near Sarajevo in Bosnia where there are several thousand tumuli of the Late Bronze and Early Iron Ages (10th-1st centuries BC) containing more than 10,000 cremation burials. Inhumation was the dominant rite and some graves were very richly equipped. The metal and ceramic objects show connections with Greece, Italy, and the Danube valley.
glass: CATEGORY: artifact
DEFINITION: A hard, amorphous, inorganic, usually transparent, brittle substance made by fusing silicates, sometimes borates and phosphates, with certain basic oxides and then rapidly cooling to prevent crystallization. It was first developed from faience about 4,000 years ago in the Near East, but was rarely used for anything larger than beads until Hellenistic and Roman times. Glass bottles in Egypt are represented on monuments of the 4th Dynasty (at least 2000 BC). A vase of greenish glass found at Nineveh dates 700 BC. Glass is in the windows at Pompeii and the Romans stained it, blew it, worked it on lathes, and engraved it. Natural glasses, such as obsidian, are rare, but cryptocrystalline materials, with fine crystal structures somewhat like glasses, are relatively common (e.g. flint).
glass layer counting: CATEGORY: technique
DEFINITION: A dating technique for glass based on the idea that the layers present in the surface crust of ancient glass were added annually and that counting them would yield a chronometric date. Research showed different numbers of layers on different parts of the same piece, and for some pieces of known date, not enough layers to suggest annual growth. Therefore, an understanding of the processes which lead to the formation of the layers is necessary before the technique can be used with any confidence.
Glastonbury: CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: A lake village in Somerset, England, which has yielded more data than any other site about life in the British Iron Age. The village was built on a wooden platform keyed to the underlying peat and was enclosed by a timber palisade. Inside were more than 90 round huts with clay and plank floors. They had central hearths for the fires. Cobbled paths and alleyways ran between the huts. Preservation was so good that the excavators recovered baskets, iron objects (including currency bars and tools with their original hafts), dugout canoes, fragments of spoked wheels, lathe-turned bowls, basins and tubs decorated with La Tène art motifs, farming and fishing gear, basketry and wickerwork, and evidence of potting, weaving, and metalworking from the village. Occupation started from the 3rd/2nd to the 1st century AD, just before the Roman conquest. On the high ground nearby is an Iron Age earthwork, Roman pottery, and a Dark Age structure dated to the 6th century AD. Glastonbury, like Cadbury Castle, is linked in folklore with King Arthur. A rotary quern was invented here and eventually became universal. The Benedictine Abbey of St. Mary at Glastonbury was perhaps the oldest (c 166 AD) and certainly one of the richest in England.
Glastonbury ware: CATEGORY: artifact
DEFINITION: A type of middle Iron Age pottery manufactured at a number of centers in the southwest of England. A wide range of forms are known, principal amongst which are globular bowls, jars, and shouldered bowls. Incised decoration in curvilinear motifs and so-called tram-line pattern is common
Golasecca: CATEGORY: culture
DEFINITION: An Iron Age culture whose type site is a cemetery in Lombardy, Italy. Occupied from the 9th century BC to the 3rd century BC, it is an urnfield cemetery with some burials accompanied by wheeled vehicles. Some contain rich grave goods of metal, showing connections both with the Hallstatt Iron Age culture of central Europe and with the Etruscans in central Italy.
gold-glass: CATEGORY: artifact
DEFINITION: Denoting a technique used to decorate Greek silver plate with gold foil. Some of the more important examples of the technique, which include cups, a phiale, and a kantharos, have been found at Duvanli and Semibratny with complex figured scenes like chariot races. Detail is incised in the gold foil. It is used particular on Athenian pottery.
Goodwin, Astley John Hilary (1900-1959): CATEGORY: person
DEFINITION: The first archaeologist in sub-Saharan Africa, who wrote (with C. Van Riet Low), The Stone Age Cultures of South Africa" (1929) in which they classified the southern African Stone Age into Earlier Middle and Later stages which is still used today."
Gorodtsov, Vasili Alekseevich (1860-1945): CATEGORY: person
DEFINITION: Russian archaeologist who developed the Bronze Age chronology for Russia, focusing on formal typology. He also wrote syntheses of Russian prehistory and worked at Gontsy, Il'Skaya I, and Timonovka.
grass-marked pottery: SYNONYM: grass-tempered pottery
CATEGORY: ceramics
DEFINITION: Pottery either marked or tempered with grass. In western Britain, there are examples of pottery covered with 'grass' impressions from Ulster, the Hebrides, and Cornwall, especially around the 5th-6th centuries AD. The term also refers to crude handmade ware made in various parts of Frisia in the Migration Period and in certain parts of southern England in the Early Saxon period in which ferns and other organic material was used as tempering.
grass-tempered ware: CATEGORY: artifact
DEFINITION: Pottery embodying chopped grass or straw in its fabric as a tempering agent. Grass-tempered wares are well represented amongst pagan Saxon communities of the immediate post-Roman period in southern and eastern England; indeed the presence of such pottery is the basis upon which sites of the period are recognized.
Great Basin: SYNONYM: Great Basin Desert
CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: A natural region of western North America, with rugged north-south mountains and broad valleys, covering 190,000 square miles. It is bordered by the Sierra Nevada Range on the west, the Wasatch Mountains on the east, the Columbia Plateau on the north, and the Mojave Desert on the south. Most of Nevada, the western half of Utah, and portions of other states lie within its boundaries.
Great Silla Dynasty: SYNONYM: Unified Silla period
CATEGORY: culture
DEFINITION: First unification of Korean peninsula under single rule (668-935 AD). The Unified Silla period produced more granite Buddhist images and pagodas than any other period and the T'ang Dynasty of China exerted considerable influence over the culture.
Gvardzhilas-Klde: CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: An Upper Palaeolithic cave site in the Greater Caucasus of Georgia. Artifacts include backed blades, Gravettian points, needles, and harpoons.
gymnasium: SYNONYM: pl. gymnasia
CATEGORY: structure
DEFINITION: An area in ancient Greek used as a sports ground. It could be within or outside the city and normally had a palaestra, running track, dressing rooms, bathrooms, and other rooms for exercise and ball games. It was for men only, except at Sparta, and was also a center of education (philosophy, literature, and music). The Academy of Plato and the Lyceum of Aristotle were both gymnasia. The combination of health for the body and education for the mind might represented an ideal to the Greeks. The literal meaning of the word 'gymnasion' was school for naked exercise" and every important city had one."
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.
Halicarnassus: SYNONYM: Bodrum
CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: A Greek city on the west coast of Turkey (once Asia Minor), the birthplace of the 5th-century BC historian Herodotus. Formed part of the Delian league, its peak period was as capital city of Mausolus (satrap), who ruled Caria from 377-353 BC. He built walls, public buildings (agora, theater), and the famous Mausoleum (one of the Seven Wonders of Ancient World) as his funerary temple, of which nothing now remains but fragments preserved in the British Museum. Halicarnassus' sack by Alexander The Great in 334 BC is the last major event on record. Virtually all traces of ancient Halicarnassus has now unfortunately disappeared under modern Bodrum. Some sections of the city wall survive, and the site of the mausoleum, the tomb of Mausolus, is known.
Han Dynasty: CATEGORY: culture
DEFINITION: A historical dynasty and period in China, after the collapse of the brief rule of the Ch'in (Qin) Dynasty, from 206 BC to 220 AD. This dynasty took over the control of a unified China and had two main periods: Western (Early) Han (206 BC-8 AD) and Eastern (Late) Han (25-220 AD), separated by the Wang Meng (Wangman) of 9-25 AD. The Western Han capital was Chang'an and the Eastern (Late) Han (25-220 AD) at Lo-Yang (Luoyang). Next to the rich tombs at Mawangdui and Mancheng, perhaps the most revealing Han archaeological finds are a number of tombs whose wall paintings, decorated tiles, and stone reliefs form the earliest substantial corpus of Chinese pictorial art. The Han dynasty started iron and salt monopolies, extended itself through the commandery system, opened trade to the West via the silk route, and began the tradition of court histories.
hard-paste: SYNONYM: true porcelain
CATEGORY: artifact
DEFINITION: Denoting true porcelain made of fusible and infusible materials (usually kaolin and china stone) fired at a high temperature. Developed in early medieval China, it was not made in Europe until the early 18th century.
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.
Hascherkeller: CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: A Late Bronze Age and Early Iron Age site of the Hallstatt period in Bavaria, Germany. The farmsteads enclosed by earthworks showed pottery and bronze casting activities in the 1st millennium BC. It is typical of the period in central Europe before the emergence of large centers of production and commerce.
hasp: CATEGORY: artifact
DEFINITION: A hinged or looped clasp that fits over a staple and is secured by a pin, bolt or padlock.
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.
Hassuna: SYNONYM: Tell Hassuna
CATEGORY: site; culture
DEFINITION: A prehistoric tell site near Mosul in northern Iraq with a sequence of a pre-Samarran culture in northern Mesopotamia. The site has given its name to the pottery ware present in its lowest levels, dated to the 6th millennium BC, and a culture complex. This pottery may be related to that of the upper levels at Jarmo and is widely distributed. It was usually a buff ware in simple shapes, sometimes burnished, sometimes painted or incised with simple geometric patterns. In higher levels it was replaced by Samarra ware. Evidence from Yarim Tepe, another important Hassuna site, indicates that they were already experimenting with metallurgy and that pottery-making was a specialist activity (with true pottery kilns). The appearance of stamp seals suggests the importance of private ownership. There were several Halaf levels and 'Ubaid levels. Subsistence was cereal cultivation and herding cattle, goat, and sheep. The material culture used copper, turquoise, and carnelian beads.
hasta: CATEGORY: artifact
DEFINITION: A spear or shaft used for thrusting, or as a missile for hurling from the hand, or as a bolt from an engine. Hastile is the shaft of the spear.
Hastinapura: CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: A site on the upper Ganges in India which revealed important prehistoric stratigraphy. The lowest level, with ochre-colored pottery, was followed by painted gray ware, mudbrick walls, etc. Over this, there was a settlement of mud-brick houses with northern black polished ware and coinage of the later 1st millennium BC. Over this were levels down to the 15th century AD.
Hattusas: SYNONYM: Boghaz Köy; Hattusa, Hattusha, Khattusas, Bogazköy
CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: The ancient name for Boghaz Köy, the capital of the Hittites, who established a powerful empire in Anatolia and northern Syria in the 2nd millennium BC.
Head-Smashed-In: CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: A bison kill site in southern Alberta, Canada, with evidence of use from 3700 BC.
Herakleopolis Magna: SYNONYM: Ihnasya el-Medina; ancient Henen-nesw; Ninsu, Nen-nesut
CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: An ancient Egyptian site that was the capital of the 20th nome of Upper Egypt and the cult center for the god Harsaphes. Its peak came when it was the capital of the 9th and 10th Dynasties of the First Intermediate Period (2181-2055 BC). The city was lost by the clan when Mentuhotpe II of the 11th Dynasty attacked in 2040 BC. There is an Old Kingdom shrine, temple of Harsaphes, and necropolis of Herakleopolis at Gebel Sedment.
Hermopolis Magna: SYNONYM: el-Ashmunein; ancient Khmun
CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: An ancient pharaonic capital in northern Egypt, of the 15th Upper Egyptian nome. It was the cult center of Thoth, of which there are remains of his great temple, and had its necropolis at Tuna el-Gebel. The earliest dates of the stone structures are from the Middle Kingdom. There is also the remains of a Roman basilica.
hexastyle: CATEGORY: structure
DEFINITION: Of a Classical building, having six columns on the facade.
Hohenasperg: CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: An Iron Age oppidium on a 6th century BC site of the Hallstatt D period. Hohenasperg was a commercial center whose finds included many luxury items from Greece.
holdfast: CATEGORY: artifact
DEFINITION: A metal fastener used to hold a tile or stone against a spacer and driven into a wall thus forming a flue between the wall and the tile or stone. Also used to hold timber together
homeostasis: CATEGORY: term
DEFINITION: A term used to describe a relatively stable state of equilibrium or a tendency toward such a state between the different but interdependent elements or groups of elements of an organism, population, or group. In systems thinking, it is used to describe the action of negative feedback processes in maintaining the system at a constant equilibrium state.
hourglass perforation: SYNONYM: hour-glass perforation
CATEGORY: lithics
DEFINITION: A type of perforation found in many prehistoric stone artifacts in which holes are drilled from opposite sides of the artifact. The perforation tends to be biconical or hourglass in form.
Huashan: CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: A site in southwest China with the world's largest rock art panel. It is a limestone cliff along the Zuojiang River with over 1800 red paintings of anthropomorphs and zoomorphs. The art was done between 2370-2115 years ago in between the Early Warring States period and the Eastern Han Dynasty.
Huasteca: CATEGORY: culture
DEFINITION: An area on the northeastern fringe of Mesoamerica in northern Veracruz and Tamaulipas provinces of Mexico and the Maya-speaking group that lived there. The people were hunter-gatherers and the area has an archaeological sequence from the Early Preclassic to the Aztec conquest and Spanish contact. The cultural climax of the Huasteca occurs in the Early Post-Classic. The largest of the Huasteca centers (Las Flores, Tamuin) contain only moderately sized pyramids surrounded by a number of housemounds. The monumental sculpture is of relatively poor quality. The hallmarks of the Huastec culture are structures on a round plan, a black-on-white hard paste pottery, and carved shell ornaments.
Hyksos: SYNONYM: Heka Khaswt, Hycsos, Poimenes, Mentiou Sati, Asian Shepherds, Scourges
CATEGORY: culture
DEFINITION: A nomadic desert tribe of Palestine whose name means rulers of foreign lands" and who infiltrated Egypt during the Second Intermediate Period (1800-1650 BC). They infiltrated the Eastern Delta during the Middle Kingdom and from 1630 to 1521 BC they dominated the Nile Valley from their capital of Avaris in the Delta. They became powerful enough to form the 15th Dynasty; traditionally they also formed the 16th Dynasty. Their breaking of Egyptian isolation opened the way for the flowering of culture in the New Kingdom which immediately followed their expulsion by Ahmose. Ahmose was the founder of the 18th Dynasty and the end of the Hyksos rule marked the beginning of the New Kingdom. The Hyksos were responsible for the introduction of the horse and chariot and perhaps the upright loom olive and pomegranate. They made improved battle axes and fortification techniques. The name Hyksos was used by the Egyptian historian Manetho (fl 300 BC) who according to the Jewish historian Josephus (fl 1st century AD) translated the word as "king-shepherds" or "captive shepherds.""
hypotheticodeduction: SYNONYM: hypothetico-deductive explanation, hypothetico-deductive reasoning
CATEGORY: technique
DEFINITION: A type of scientific reasoning in which a hypothesis is made, predictions are deduced, and then the hypothesis tested for accuracy against archaeological data. Deductive reasoning is used to find and verify the logical consequences. Developed by Sir Isaac Newton in the late 17th century, it is a procedure for the construction of a scientific theory that will account for results obtained through direct observation and experimentation and that will, through inference, predict further effects that can then be verified or disproved by empirical (observed or experienced) evidence derived from other experiments.
Ignateva Cave: SYNONYM: Yamazy-Tash
CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: A cave site in the southern Urals of Russia with microliths and faunal remains from the late Upper Palaeolithic. There are also numerous schematic cave paintings. The upper layer has Iron Age remains.
impasto: CATEGORY: ceramics
DEFINITION: A type of early pottery of Etruria, made from unrefined clay and fired to a dark brown or black, especially during the Villanovan period. Some were biconical urns and hut models and were used for cremations. Impasto is also a paint that is applied to a canvas or panel in quantities that make it stand out from the surface. It was used frequently to mimic the broken-textured quality of highlights -- i.e., the surfaces of objects that are struck by an intense light.
indirect measurement: CATEGORY: measure
DEFINITION: Measurement that does not involve direct comparison of a phenomenon with a standard scale but it mediated by other measures thought to be correlated with the measure.
inductively coupled plasma emission spectrometry: SYNONYM: ICPS
CATEGORY: technique
DEFINITION: A technique used to identify trace elements in stone, pottery, and metal artifacts in an attempt to trace the components' origins. It is based on the same basic principles as optical emission spectrometry, but the generation of much higher temperatures reduces problems of interference and produces more accurate results.
infrastructural determinism: SYNONYM: infrastructure
CATEGORY: technique
DEFINITION: A research strategy used by cultural materialists, in which priority is assigned to modes of production and reproduction. Technological, demographic, ecological, and economic processes are the most important elements for satisfying basic human needs (the 'independent variable'); the social system is the dependent variable. These primary elements lie at the causal heart of every sociocultural system. Domestic and political subsystems (the 'structure') are considered to be secondary. Values, aesthetics, rituals, religion, philosophy, rules, and symbols (the 'superstructure') are tertiary.
Intihuasi Cave: CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: An Argentinian site with long occupation and clear chronological continuity and similar to the Desert Tradition. Its lowest level, dated to c 6000 BC, contains willow-leaf points and other hunting tools in association with manos, milling stones, and ground-stone ornaments. Other levels contain medium-sized triangular points, bone projectile points, and a ceramic level (c 750 AD).
intuitive map: SYNONYM: compass map
CATEGORY: term
DEFINITION: A preliminary map of an archaeological site.
Isis: SYNONYM: Aset, Eset
CATEGORY: deity
DEFINITION: Important Egyptian goddess, wife of Osiris and mother of Horus. She was anthropoid in form and goddess of the Moon. She was a powerful magician and also venerated as the ideal mother. She became the symbolic mother of the Egyptian king, who was himself regarded as a human manifestation of Horus. She had important temples throughout Egypt, as at Philae and Behbet el-Hagar, and Nubia. By Greco-Roman times she was dominant among Egyptian goddesses. Several temples were dedicated to her in Alexandria, where she became the patroness of seafarers." From Alexandria her cult spread throughout the Mediterranean including Greece and Rome. In Hellenistic times the mysteries of Isis and Osiris developed; these were comparable to other Greek mystery cults."
isostasy: SYNONYM: isostatic uplift
CATEGORY: geology
DEFINITION: An alteration in the height of the land relative to the sea; the distribution of mass within the Earth's crust is balanced by large-scale topography. These variations are not necessarily associated with changes in sea-level (eustasy), but a major event such as glaciation can affect both land and sea. The weight of ice sheets can cause a lowering in the height of the land, but a thaw at the end of a glaciation frees the land of this pressure and it rises. Continental crust behaves like a body 'floating' on the denser underlying layers. Loading of one area may cause down-warping of the crust, which is compensated by uplift elsewhere. Removal of the load causes the crust to readjust to its former state. It is a theory that the condition of approximate equilibrium in the outer part of the earth is approximately counterbalanced by a deficiency of density in the material beneath those masses, while deficiency of density in ocean waters is counterbalanced by an excess in density of the material under the oceans. This phenomenon has occurred during the Quaternary, due to the development of large ice-sheets. The enormous weight of ice has caused downwarping of the continental crust beneath. At the ice-sheet margins, there was a compensatory uplift. On melting of the ice-sheets, the crust readjusted by uplift in the areas directly underneath and downwarping at the edges. This process is continuing today, for example in northern Europe.
jasper: CATEGORY: geology
DEFINITION: A high-quality chert or agate often used as raw material for the manufacture of stone tools. It is an opaque, fine-grained or dense variety of the silica mineral that is mainly brick red to brownish red. Jasper has long been used for jewelry and ornamentation, has a dull luster but takes a fine polish. Its hardness and other physical properties are those of quartz.
Jastorf culture: CATEGORY: culture
DEFINITION: Iron Age culture of the southern Baltic during the late Hallstatt (600-300 BC), with some of the earliest iron metallurgy of the area. It extended from Lower Saxony through Pomerania.
Jaszdozsa: CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: An Early Bronze Age tell settlement near Szolnok, Hungary. Occupation layers of the Hatvan and Füzesabony groups have been found, with well-preserved domestic architecture.
Jefferson, Thomas (1743-1826): CATEGORY: person
DEFINITION: The third president of the United States and considered by many to be the father of American archaeology because of his meticulous excavation of a Virginia burial mound. Jefferson was the first person, in North America or anywhere, to undertake (1784) excavations of a prehistoric site as a means to understanding the people who built it. He wanted to find out why the burial mounds on his land had been built. One mound he excavated carefully with trenches, noting that in a number of levels that skeletons had been placed in the ground and covered -- producing a mound 12 ft (4 m) high. In observing the different levels, he was anticipating the stratigraphical method which became common practice in Europe and America only at the end of the 19th century. Worsaae's work in Denmark came a half a century later and the wider adoption of stratigraphical excavation methods was 100 years later.
Jemdet Nasr: SYNONYM: Jamdat Nasr
CATEGORY: site; artifact; chronology
DEFINITION: A small site between Baghdad and Babylon, near Kish, Iraq, which has given its name to a period of Mesopotamian chronology and its black-and-red painted pottery ware. The period of 3100-2900 BC was characterized by writing in pictographs, pottery with painted designs or plum red burnished slip, and plain pottery with beveled rims. Cylinder seals are squat and plain and drill used in designs. The period is characterized by increasing populations, the development of more extensive irrigation systems, towns dominated by temples, increased use of writing and cylinder seals, more trade and craft specialization. The period -- equivalent to Uruk III of the Eanna Sounding sequence -- was followed immediately by the Early Dynastic period of Sumer. A building of Jemdet Nasr date may be the oldest palace discovered in southern Mesopotamia.
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.
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.
Kapovaya: SYNONYM: Kapovo, Shul'gantash
CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: A painted cave in southern Urals of European Russia, important for cave art that is otherwise unknown in central and eastern Europe. The rare examples of east European Palaeolithic cave art include representations of woolly mammoth and woolly rhinoceros and geometric figures. A cultural layer with stone artifacts and ornaments is dated to the Upper Palaeolithic.
Karasuk: CATEGORY: culture
DEFINITION: A Bronze Age culture that succeeded the Andronovo culture in southern Siberia in the late 2nd millennium BC. The three main, basically successive, yet often overlapping cultures were the Afanasyevskaya, Andronovo, and Karasuk. The Karasuk culture developed when a gradual change was made from settled communities to seasonal transhumance. Two settlements of large pit houses are known and many cemeteries of stone cists covered by a low mound and set in a square stone enclosure equipped with round-bottomed pots; many of these are in the Minusinsk Basin. The Karasuk people were farmers who concentrated on sheep- and cattle-breeding. They also practiced metallurgy on a large scale; the most characteristic artifact is a bronze knife or dagger, with a curved profile and a decorated handle, related to China's An-Yang. They produced a realistic animal art, which probably contributed to the development of the later Sytho-Siberian animal art style. Remains of bridles mark the beginning of horse riding on the Siberian steppe. The character of their material culture came from exchange with the centers of Far Eastern metallurgy. The Karasuk culture originated and spread its influences farther to western Siberia and Russian Turkistan than did the Andronovo. Trade relations extended to central Russia. Chronology of this period is based on comparisons with northern Chinese bronzes. The Karasuk period persisted down to c 700 BC.
Kas: SYNONYM: Kas-Ulu Burun
CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: Site of a Bronze Age shipwreck off Cap Uluburun, Turkey, which was probably going to the Aegean when it sank in the 14th century BC. Objects found in 1982 in the shipwreck include the first known gold scarab of the Egyptian queen Nefertiti. Other items are copper, tin and glass ingots, bronze tools and weapons, jewelry for the Near East, Egypt, and the Aegean; and pottery from Cyprus, Canaan, and Mycenae. The ship's contents reveal a tight web of interconnections in the later 14th century among Mycenaean Greece, Cyprus, Egypt, Palestine, Syria, and Africa.
Kasori: CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: A Middle or Late Jomon plaza-type shell midden village in Chiba prefecture, Japan. There were at least 47 pit houses in a circular plan, with shell deposits around the rim. It is the type site for Kasori Jomon ceramics.
Kassala: CATEGORY: culture
DEFINITION: A cultural phase of eastern Sudan including the Butana, Gash, and Mokram groups.
Kassites: CATEGORY: culture
DEFINITION: A people of the central Zagros mountains who occupied Babylon after the Hittite raid c 1595 BC and who had a distinctive culture and language. Their occupation ended with the city's conquest by Assyria and Elam c 1157 BC. The Kassites may or may not have been Indo-Europeans, but their rulers were probably Indo-Aryan aristocracy who taught them horsebreeding and riding, which they introduced into Mesopotamia. One important source of information on the Kassites was the Amarna correspondence on foreign relations of 14th century BC. The Kassites used distinctive boundary stones called kudurru. The Kassite rule represents the longest episode of political integration in the history of southern Mesopotamia. Important sites are Aqar Quf, Warka, and Nippur.
Kastri: CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: A site on the island of Kythera, Greece, of an Early Helladic settlement later colonized by the Minoans in c 2500 BC. Kastri prospered from trade between Crete and Laconia. The site of Delphi was occupied by the modern village of Kastrí until 1890, when the village was moved to a site nearby and renamed Delphi. There is another Kastri on the island of Syros.
Kastritsa: CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: An Upper Palaeolithic cave site in northwest Greece with occupation beginning c 22,000-11,000 bp. Artifacts include backed blades, shouldered points, bone points, and decorated pebbles.
Kharga Oasis: SYNONYM: al-Wahat al-Kharijah; al-Kharijah
CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: The southernmost and largest of the major Egyptian western oases, which is located in the Libyan Desert about 175 km east of Luxor. There are traces of Middle Palaeolithic (Mousterian) occupation at Kharga and its material culture was closely connected with that of the Nile valley throughout the Pharaonic period. This oasis is of approximately the same age as the Epi-Levalloisian sites of the Sebilian and the Fayyum Depression.
Khasekhemwy (fl. 27th century BC): SYNONYM: Khasekhem; Khasekhemui; Khesekhem
CATEGORY: person
DEFINITION: The sixth and last king of Egypt in the 2nd Dynasty (c 2775-2650 BC) who ended the internal struggles of the mid-2nd dynasty and reunited the country. He was the last Abydene/Abydos ruler. Probably starting from a base at Hierakonpolis, Khasekhemwy extended his control over the whole kingdom. His monuments refer to his unification of Upper and Lower Egypt and other inscriptions suggest that he raided Nubia and his name has been found in Lebanon, probably indicating trade with the Syrians. Annals of the Old Kingdom record great technological advances that were made during his last six years. Khasekhemwy was an ancestor of the 3rd-dynasty king, Djoser.
Kheit Qasim: CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: Three sites in east-central Iraq. Kheit Qasim I has a large Early Dynastic cemetery of brick tombs with multiple inhumations, unusual for southern Mesopotamia. Kheit Qasim III was a small 'Ubaid site.
Khryashchi: CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: Palaeolithic site on the Northern Donets River in Russia dating to the late Middle Pleistocene. The artifacts include flake and core tools.
Klasies River Mouth: CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: A complex of caves and overhangs on the south coast of South Africa (Cape Province). It provides one of the most complete sequences available for the area, including sea-level changes of the Late Pleistocene -- at least the last 60,000 years. A long development of the 'Middle Stone Age' shares some features with the Pietersburg industries and is interrupted by a phase attributed to Howiesons Poort. This is followed by Later Stone Age deposits containing three painted stone slabs and burials with shell beads dating to 5000 years ago. The site has some of the oldest-known remains of anatomically modern Homo sapiens, dating to 100,000 years ago. There are indications of cannibalism in the Late Pleistocene and exploitation of the marine resources around 120,000 years ago.
Klein Aspergle: CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: The site of a rich Celtic burial of the early La Tène period in Ludwigsburg, Würtemberg, Germany. Funerary offerings included an Etruscan bronze vessel, a native copy of an Etruscan beaked flagon, gold mounts for a pair of drinking horns, and two imported Attic cups dated around 450 BC. In the same village is a slightly earlier tumulus burial, of the late Hallstatt D period, with imported ivories (including a sphinx) as well as bronzes.
Koryo Dynasty: CATEGORY: culture
DEFINITION: Kingdom of Korea from 918-1392 AD; the dynasty lasted from 935-1392. It turned to Buddhism in adversity, built many temples, and made exquisite Celadon objects. Koryo's close cultural ties with China during the Sung period (960-1279) resulted in direct influences from the advanced Chinese urban culture. The peace of the realm was often disrupted by invaders from Manchuria, first Khitan, then Juchen, and finally by the Mongols. In 1232, the Koryo court fled to Kanghwa Island off the west coast of Korea, leaving the country to Mongol devastation and control. The art of Koryo never again equaled its pre-Mongol achievements. It is from the name Koryo that the Western word Korea is derived.
Krasnyj Yar: CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: Upper Palaeolithic site in south-central Siberia, occupied from around the Last Glacial Maximum of 25,000-14,000 bp. The artifacts include wedge-shaped microcores, microblades, points, and endscrapers.
Kuntur Wasi: SYNONYM: La Copa
CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: A site near Cajamarca in the northern highlands of Peru, of the Chavin culture of Early Horizon period c 800 BC. The central structure was a stone-faced, triple-terraced pyramid, surmounted by a temple or temples. Three-dimensional statues and other carved stone are executed in the Chavin style with the characteristic feline motif common. Other associated features, however, such as ceramics, appear to be a mixture of Chavin and later styles, suggesting that the site may extend beyond the Early Horizon.
Kura-Araxes culture: SYNONYM: Eastern Anatolian Bronze Age, Transcaucasian Early Bronze Age
CATEGORY: culture
DEFINITION: Culture complex of Early Bronze Age sites of Transcaucasia, eastern Anatolia, and northwest Iran, probably of the later 4th through later 3rd millennia BC. The complex is characterized by black or red highly burnished pottery. There were portable hearths and some circular houses.
Kutikina: SYNONYM: Fraser Cave
CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: Limestone cave of southwest Tasmania occupied from 20,000-15,000 years ago. It established the Pleistocene occupation of the area.
La Ferrassie: CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: A rock shelter in the Dordogne, southwest France, with Middle Palaeolithic material and burials of several Neanderthal. Occupation began in the Mousterian period, to which belong two Neanderthal adults and five children, buried in shallow trenches. There are several layers of 'Ferrassie', a subdivision of the Charentian Mousterian tradition, with Levallois flaking. There is a long series of Upper Palaeolithic levels, including Châtelperonian, Aurignacian, and finally a thin Gravettian level. The stratification has contributed to an understanding of the Upper Palaeolithic sequence in France.
Labastide: CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: Magdalenian cave in Hautes-Pyrénées, France, with many engraved figures and a large polychrome horse painting. There are hearths and engraved stones in the cave, which is dated to 12,310 BC.
Lagash: SYNONYM: Al Hiba, modern Telloh
CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: One of the most important capital cities of ancient Sumer, located midway between the Tigris and Euphrates rivers in southeast Iraq. The city was founded in the prehistoric Ubaid Period, c 5200-3500 BC, and was still occupied as late as the Parthian era, 247 BC-224 AD. In the Early Dynastic Period, the Stele of the Vultures was erected to celebrate the victory of King Eannatum over the neighboring state of Umma. Control of Lagash fell to Sargon of Akkad (reigned c 2334-2279 BC). Lagash revived about 150 years later, prospering under Gudea, though they were nominally subject to the Guti, a people who controlled much of Babylonia from about 2230-2130. Lagash was endowed with many temples, including the Eninnu, House of the Fifty a seat of the high god Enlil. French excavators found at least 50,000 cuneiform texts which have proved one of the major sources for knowledge of Sumer in the 3rd millennium BC. Dedicatory inscriptions on stone and on bricks also have provided the chronological development of Sumerian art. The ancient name of the mound of Telloh was actually Girsu, while Lagash originally denoted a site southeast of Girsu, later becoming the name of the whole district and also of Girsu itself. The site continued into Old Babylonian times, though after its absorption into the Ur III state, it declined in importance.
lamassu: CATEGORY: artifact
DEFINITION: The colossal stone, part-human, part-animal, figures carved on the doorways of Assyrian and Achaemenid buildings, as at Nineveh. These were guardian figures.
Langkasuka: CATEGORY: culture
DEFINITION: An early Indianized state in the Pattani region of peninsular Thailand. The name of first appears (as Lang-ya-hsiu) in a Chinese source of the 6th century AD, asserting that it was founded 400 years earlier; its name reappears in later Malayan and Javanese chronicles. Langkasuka was the most important of the Indianized states and controlled much of northern Malaya. Malaya developed an international reputation as a source of gold and tin, populated by renowned seafarers. Between the 7th and 13th centuries many of these small, often prosperous peninsular maritime trading states may have come under the loose control of Shrivijaya, the great Sumatra-based empire.
Las Bocas: CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: A site in Puebla, Mexico, known for its hollow figurines and other pottery in the Olmec style, at the eastern entrance to the Morelos Plain. Las Bocas is noticeably similar to a site at the other end of the plain, Chalcatzingo, and is thought to have been one of a series of Olmec trading stations. Burials similar to those at Tlatilco further confirm the Olmec connection.
Las Haldas: CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: Initial Period ceremonial site on the north-central coast of Peru. The earliest ceramics have yielded radiocarbon dates of about 1800 BC. There is a stepped pyramid, three plazas, smaller mounds, and sunken courts along a linear axis.
Lascaux: CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: A Magdalenian cave in the Dordogne, southwest France, with a spectacular collection of Palaeolithic paintings and engravings. Once the cave was opened to visitors, the delicate atmospheric balance was disturbed and the paintings were attacked by fungus; it was closed to the public in 1963. A small number of archaeological finds from inside the cave probably date to the early Magdalenian including lamps. A Neanderthal skeleton was found a few hundred meters away at Regoudou. There are 600 paintings of aurochs, horses, deer, and signs, accompanied by 1500 engravings dominated by horses. Some of the paintings in the rotunda, especially the bulls, approach life size, which is unusual in cave art. A number of paintings are in two contrasting colors, red iron oxide and black manganese dioxide. It was probably never inhabited, but was used from c 15,000 BC. A nearby facsimile cave, Lascaux II, is now open to the public.
Lashkari Bazar: CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: The site of a large royal palace erected in the 11th and 12th centuries, on the Helmand Rud, near the site of Bust in Afghanistan. Lashkari Bazar was the winter retreat of the rulers of Ghazni. It was conquered by the Arabs c 661, and the 10th century writer Ibn Hauqal described it as a large and wealthy town. Apart from the tell, the principal monument is a ceremonial arch of the Ghorid period. The palace complex at Lashkari Bazar extends northwards from Bust for more than 5 km and was founded by the Ghaznavid sultan Mahmud (998-1030), who with his son Masud I (1030-1041) built the so-called South Palace. Later rulers added two other palaces. The complex also contained barracks and a bazaar. Lashkari Bazar was sacked by the Ghorids in 1151; it was restored by them, then destroyed by the Khwarezmshah or the Mongols in the early 13th century. Excavations revealed elaborate wall paintings in the South Palace and a fine stucco Mihrab in an adjacent mosque.
Lasithi: CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: A plain on Crete which has been occupied since the Neolithic and which was intensively used by the Minoans.
Last Glacial Maximum: SYNONYM: Late Pleniglacial
CATEGORY: chronology
DEFINITION: The geological period dating between 25,000-14,000 bp, during which global temperatures reached the lowest levels of the Upper Pleistocene (127,000-10,000 bp). Massive continental ice sheets formed in the northern hemisphere and sea levels fell worldwide. The people were anatomically modern and conducted industries of the Upper Palaeolithic in unglaciated parts of the Old World.
Lchashen: CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: Bronze Age site by Lake Sevan, Armenia, with pit graves under stone cairns. There are traces of wheeled wagons, carts, and chariots.
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.
leaching cast: CATEGORY: geology
DEFINITION: Soil or sediment leached down from above by some mechanism.
Leakey, Mary Douglas (1913-1996): CATEGORY: person
DEFINITION: English-born archaeologist and paleoanthropologist who made several of the most important fossil finds subsequently interpreted and publicized by her husband, the noted anthropologist Louis Leakey. She discovered the skull of Proconsul africanus, an apelike ancestor of both apes and early humans that lived about 25,000,000 years ago. At Olduvai Gorge she found the skull of an early hominid Australopithecus boisei (Zinjanthropus). At Laetoli, she discovered several sets of footprints made in volcanic ash by early hominids who lived about 3.5 million years ago. The footprints indicated that their makers walked upright; this discovery pushed back the advent of human bipedalism to a date earlier than had previously been suspected by the scientific community. Among Mary Leakey's books were Olduvai Gorge: My Search for Early Man" (1979) and the autobiographical "Disclosing the Past" (1984)."
lepaste: CATEGORY: artifact
DEFINITION: A large vessel shaped like the cylix but resting on a broad stand, used for holding pure wine.
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.
Liao Dynasty: CATEGORY: culture
DEFINITION: A dynasty formed by the nomadic Khitan tribes (907-1125) in much of present-day Manchuria (Northeast Provinces) and Mongolia and the northeastern corner of China proper. There were elaborate chambered tombs.
life assemblage: CATEGORY: term
DEFINITION: The living community of animals from which fossils are derived.
Loch Lomond stadial: SYNONYM: Younger Dryas
CATEGORY: chronology
DEFINITION: A widespread but short interval of renewed glacial activity and cold climatic conditions in the British Isles. This event occurred about 11,000 years ago, some 2,000 years before the dissipation of the ice sheet. It is a stadial of the Devensian cold stage during which small glaciers were formed in the high mountains of Wales and the Lake District and an icecap was formed over the highlands of Scotland. The Loch Lomond stadial may be correlated with Godwin's Pollen Zone III and the Younger Dryas (Scandinavia).
lomas: CATEGORY: geography
DEFINITION: Patches of vegetation outside of valleys that were watered at that season by fogs. The Peruvian coast was covered with areas of this type of vegetation which could live off the moisture from the fog in the air. Lomas were created as a result of climatic shift at end of Pleistocene. Lomas culture was developed in these areas by hunters who turned to exploitation of this vegetation as their economic basis. They set up seasonally occupied camps during the winter months. The lomas provided wild seeds, tubers, and large snails; deer, camelids (probably guanaco), owls, and foxes were hunted. Milling stones, manos, mortars, pestles, and projectile points frequently occur in the assemblages. Around 2500 BC, a further climatic change made much of the lomas dry up, and the area became a desert. Lomas sites were abandoned in favor of permanent settlement at the littoral zone along the coast, where maritime resources were exploited. The deposits are not thick enough to show stratification, but they have been arranged in chronological order by comparing the implement types and noting their distribution within the shrinking patches of vegetation.
lost-wax: SYNONYM: cire perdue, lost-wax casting; lost wax process, lost-wax casting technique
CATEGORY: artifact
DEFINITION: A method of casting metals in which the desired form was carved in wax, coated with clay and baked; the wax runs out through vents left in the clay for the purpose, and molten metal is then poured through the same vents into the mold. When the metal is cool, the clay is broken off to reveal the metal casting. Each mold can only be used once. The technique was first developed in the 4th millennium BC in the Near East, especially by the Shang bronzeworkers of China. It was also used for gold in South America and Mesoamerica. The method was used for casting complex forms, such as statuary.
Lowasera: CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: A beach site on the eastern shore of Lake Turkana (formerly Lake Rudolf) in northern Kenya, formed between the 9th-4th millennia BC. The site was occupied from at least the 7th millennium BC by people who produced both microlithic and macrolithic implements and depended for their livelihood on fish caught by means of barbed bone harpoons similar to those from Early Khartoum. The early pottery at Lowasera was of wavy-line style; the later pottery was undecorated. Occupation continued until after the retreat of the lake at the end of the 4th millennium BC.
lustral basin: CATEGORY: structure
DEFINITION: In Minoan architecture, a sunken room reached by a short flight of steps and often screened off by a parapet. They were either bathrooms or used for ritual purification.
Maa-Palaekastro: CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: Site of a fortified settlement on the west coast of Cyprus, first occupied in the 13th century BC, possibly by the Sea Peoples. An ashlar structure may have been their sanctuary. In the 12th century BC, the settlement was destroyed by fire, then taken over for a period by the Mycenaean Greeks.
Macassans: CATEGORY: culture
DEFINITION: Indonesian traders, particularly from Sulawesi, who visited tropical Australia during the Indonesian monsoon season. They collected and processed sea-slugs (trepang, bêche-de-mer, sea cucumber), an important ingredient in their cooking. Archaeological evidence consists of stone structures used to support boiling vats, scatters of Indonesian potsherds, ash concentrations from smokehouses, graves, and living tamarind trees descended from seeds brought by the trepangers. Their cultural legacies to the Aborigines included metal tools, dugout canoes, vocabulary, art motifs, song cycles, rituals, and depictions of Macassan praus in rock paintings and stone arrangements. Macassan voyagers to Australia arrived around 1700 AD and continued till the end of the 19th century.
Madagascar: CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: An island in the Indian Ocean off the east coast of Africa which was one of the last major tropical land masses to be settled by man. There is no evidence for human presence prior to the 1st millennium AD. It is generally accepted that the island's first settlers came from Indonesia, perhaps from Borneo. Later, probably in about the 11th century AD, Bantu-speaking immigrants from East Africa also arrived.
Maiden Castle: CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: One of the largest and most famous Iron Age hillforts in Britain, located in Dorset, England. The oldest structure on the hilltop is a Neolithic causewayed camp (c 2000-1500 BC), followed after an interval by an earthen long barrow, which is partly built over the ditches of the earlier camp. Occupation resumed in the Early Iron Age (c 5th century BC) with the construction of a hillfort (c 250 BC) which was later extended to fortify the entire hill. Maiden Castle was at that time a permanent settlement with stone and wooden huts linked by surfaced trackways. Sometime before 50 BC, the site came under the control of the Belgae and became the tribal capital of the Durotriges, with coinage and imported Gallo-Roman luxuries. During the Roman conquest, the fort was sacked by Vespasian's legion (43-44 AD), and the slain defenders were buried in a cemetery near the east gate. The Romans moved the remaining population to a new site at Durnovaria (Dorchester), and the hillfort was abandoned until the 4th century AD when a Romano-Celtic temple was built there.
Malthus, Thomas Robert (1766-1834): CATEGORY: person
DEFINITION: English economist and demographer, best known for his theory that population growth overrun available food resources unless it is controlled by catastrophes such as war, epidemics, or natural disasters -- or with limits on reproduction.
Mangaasi: CATEGORY: culture
DEFINITION: A long-lived pottery tradition of central Vanuatu, Melanesia, dated to between c 700 BC-1600 AD. It had incised and applied relief and is quite different from the ancestral Polynesian Lapita pottery. It was a Melanesian tradition, with parallels in the northern Solomons and New Caledonia.
Mangaasi pottery: CATEGORY: artifact
DEFINITION: A long-lived pottery tradition of central Vanuatu, Melanesia, dated to between c 700 BC-1600 AD. It had incised and applied relief and is quite different from the ancestral Polynesian Lapita pottery. It was a Melanesian tradition, with parallels in the northern Solomons and New Caledonia.
manioc: SYNONYM: cassava, yuca
CATEGORY: flora
DEFINITION: A starchy root plant native to the tropical lowland zone of South America, where it was cultivated along with other root crops. Its origin may have been in Venezuela before 2500 BC and it became established in the Andes and reached the Peruvian coast before 2000 BC. Manioc can grow under various conditions, but only in the lowland forest did manioc retain its position as the main food plant. On archaeological sites, large clay disks are often interpreted as griddles on which were baked flat cakes made of a flour prepared by roasting grated manioc roots and juice-catching pots for the prussic acid they contain. The plant underwent elaborate detoxification process (including grating, pulping, draining and finally cooking) before consumption. It was the staple diet throughout most of Amazonia and the Caribbean at the time of European contact. Manioc is the source of tapioca.
Marianas Islands: CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: An island group in western Micronesia with a sequence starting with settlement around 1500 BC, by island people in Southeast Asia. They made a distinctive red-slipped ware (Marianas Redware Phase), sometimes incised with lime-filled decoration, closely related to Philippine wares. By 800 AD, a plain, unslipped ware was in use, and stone architecture had developed. Parallel rows of upright pillars topped with hemispheric capstones (halege) were erected. The pillars were supports for structures called latte (after which term the culture is named), which may have served as houses or canoe sheds. Each village had from one to several latte structures. Stone and shell tools were used and the betel nut was chewed, as shown by extended burials most often located between the rows of latte.
Marquesas Islands: CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: An island group of Eastern Polynesia, first settled c 300 AD.
Marseilles: SYNONYM: Greek Massalia; Roman Massilia
CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: City on the coast of southern France, an important Mediterranean port founded in either c 600 or 540 BC according to tradition. Originally it was a colony of Phocaea in western Turkey. By c 535 BC, they were prosperous enough to dedicate a treasury at the sanctuary of Delphi in mainland Greece. Even under Roman rule, the port was fairly independent and maintained its Greek culture. There are remains of Roman docks.
Masada: CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: Palestinian site with a great rock fortress-palace complex built by Herod the Great (37-4 BC). It lies west of the Dead Sea, where the last survivors of the First Jewish Rebellion (Zealots) of 70 AD defied the Roman army (66-73 AD), and whose siege works can still be traced. Although first fortified by the Hasmonean king Alexander Jannaeus (ruled 103-76 BC), Herod was the chief builder of Masada. His constructions (37-31 BC) included two ornate palaces (one of them on three levels), heavy walls, and aqueducts, which brought water to cisterns holding nearly 200,000 gallons. After Herod's death (4 BC), Masada was captured by the Romans, but the Jewish Zealots took it by surprise in AD 66. A synagogue and ritual bath discovered there are the earliest yet found in Palestine.
mask: CATEGORY: artifact
DEFINITION: An object worn, or carried, to cover the face.
Maskhutah, Tell el-: SYNONYM: Tall al-Maskhutah; ancient Per-Atum, Per Tum; biblical Pithum
CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: Ancient Egyptian city located near Ismailia in al-Isma'iliyah muhafazah (governorate). Mentioned in the Bible (Exodus 1:11) as one of the treasure cities built for the pharaoh by the Hebrews, it was known to have been enlarged by the Ramesside pharaohs, especially by Ramses II (reigned 1279-13 BC), in whose reign the Exodus of the Hebrews may have taken place. The site has yielded sphinxes and statues of Ramses II and the best preserved of the trilingual stelae that commemorated Darius I the Great's completion of the Nile-Red Sea Canal. It was the capital of the eighth nome of Lower Egypt during the Late Period (747-332 BC). It was a site of pharaonic storehouses built by the Hebrews under Egyptian bondage.
masonry construction: CATEGORY: structure
DEFINITION: An architectural construction method in which stones are laid on top of one another. Dry-laid are stones laid without mortar, dry-laid/daubed are dry-laid with daub pressed into the joints, and wet-laid are stones set in wet mortar.
Maspero, Gaston Camille Charles (1846-1916): CATEGORY: person
DEFINITION: French Egyptologist who succeeded August Mariette as Director of the Egyptian Antiquities Service and who edited the first 50 volumes of the immense catalog of the collection there. He excavated numerous sites from Saqqara to the Valley of the Kings. At Deir el Bahari (Dayr al-Bahri), he came upon fabulous collection of 40 royal mummies, s, including those of the pharaohs Seti I, Amenhotep I, Thutmose III, and Ramses II, in inscribed sarcophagi, as well as a profusion of decorative and funerary artifacts. Maspero's intensive study of these findings was published in Les Momies royales de Deir-el-Bahari" (1889; "The Royal Mummies of Dayr al-Bahri"). He also published an account of the Nubian monuments threatened by construction of first Aswan Dam. He helped found the Egyptian Museum in 1902. During his second tenure as director general (1899-1914) Maspero regulated excavations tried to prevent illicit trade in antiquities sought to preserve and strengthen monuments and directed the archaeological survey of Nubia. His writings include "Histoire ancienne des peoples de l'Orient classique". (1895-97; "Ancient History of the Peoples of the Classic Orient") "L'Archéologie égyptienne" (1887; "Egyptian Archaeology") "Les Contes populaires de l'Égypte ancienne" (4th ed. 1914; "Popular Tales of Ancient Egypt") and "Causeries d'Égypte" (1907; "New Light on Ancient Egypt")."
mass: CATEGORY: measure
DEFINITION: A measure of the amount of material, independent of gravity, measured with a balance.
massebah: CATEGORY: artifact
DEFINITION: A standing stone or group of stones in the Levant similar to a dolmen. There was probably a cult purpose when erected by Canaanites (as at Gezer, Hazor). When set up by the Israelites, it was likely commemorative.
mastaba: CATEGORY: structure
DEFINITION: The Arabic word for 'bench', a mudbrick superstructure of Egyptian tombs, mainly of the Archaic Period and Old Kingdom, including the royal tombs of the 1st and 2nd Dynasty. It was a low, rectangular building with a flat roof and vertical or slightly inclined walls that enclosed the shaft to the underground burial chamber. Later versions were reinforced with stone and more elaborate. It often contained a chapel, a statue of the deceased, and sometimes large numbers of rooms. The pyramids were a direct development from them. At first, kings as well as their nobles and officials were buried in mastabas, but from the 3rd Dynasty, pharaohs had pyramids and the mastabas of their eminent subjects were built around the pyramids.
mastodon: CATEGORY: fauna
DEFINITION: Any of the various now-extinct species of large mammals related to elephants. It looked like a stocky, long elephant, had long reddish-brown hair, and shorter, straighter tusks than the mammoth. The American mastodon (Mammut americanum), is classified as a browser from its low-crowned teeth, as opposed to the woolly mammoth (Mammuthus primigenius), which because of its high-crowned teeth, is classified as a grazer. It lived on spruce and pine. The mastodon had large hemispherical cusps on the surface of each molar tooth. They first appeared in the early Miocene and continued in various forms through the Pleistocene Epoch (from 1,600,000-10,000 years ago). In North America, mastodons probably persisted into post-Pleistocene time and were contemporaneous with historic North American Indian groups. Mastodons had a worldwide distribution; their remains are quite common and are often very well preserved. Hunting may have led to its extinction.
mastos: CATEGORY: artifact
DEFINITION: A breast-shaped drinking cup, usually with one horizontal and one vertical handle. In Athens, black-glossed and figured-decorated examples have been found.
Maszycka Cave: CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: Cave site near Krakow, Poland, on the Pradnik River, with an Upper Palaeolithic assemblage assigned to the Magdalenian c 17,500-16,500 BP. Human skeletal remains of 16 people are associated with the layer. The uppermost layer contained Neolithic remains.
Mauryan empire: SYNONYM: Mauryas
CATEGORY: culture
DEFINITION: An ancient Indian state, c 321-185 BC, centered at Pataliputra (modern Patna) near the junction of the Son and Ganges rivers. After Alexander the Great's death in 323 BC, Candra Gupta (Chandragupta) founded the dynasty that encompassed most of the subcontinent except for the Tamil south. He drove the Greeks out of India and established the Mauryan empire as an efficient and highly organized autocracy with a standing army and civil service. The Buddhist Mauryan emperor Ashoka (reigned c. 265-238 BC, or c. 273-232 BC) is well-known, especially from the stone edicts that he had erected throughout his realm, which are among the oldest deciphered original texts of India. The dynasty subsequently declined and was deposed by Sunga in 187 BC.
Maya: SYNONYM: Classic Maya
CATEGORY: culture
DEFINITION: Very important culture of Mesoamerica, one of the major Classic civilizations, which occupied the peninsula of Yucatan and Belize, the lowland jungle south of it, and the highlands of Guatemala and western Honduras. The civilization developed from other pre-Classic cultures by about 200 BC and continued until being conquered by the Spaniards in 1541 AD. By c 200 BC, at sites like Tikal and Uaxactún, the first pyramids were being built. Population increase and the introduction of new ceramic and architectural forms are accompanied by an artistic transition from Olmec through Izapan to Mayan. The classic Maya civilization dates to c 292 AD, the earliest Long count date found on stele 29 at Tikal. The Early Classic period (200-600) was the golden age of the lowland culture and the great centers acted as foci for administration, religion, and the arts. Architecture, sculpture, and painting were highly developed; records were kept in hieroglyphic writing, and elaborate ceremonies were carried out in the temples on top of their pyramids. A class of astronomer-priests observed the sun, moon, and planets, and had evolved a calendrical system more accurate than the Julian calendar used in Christian Europe. In mathematics the priests used a vigesimal system with the concept of zero and with a positional notation. The Classic Maya culture is characterized by an immense investment of labor in construction of ceremonial architecture, the erection of stelae, and a growing differentiation between the elite and the peasant population. The Maya practiced swidden agriculture as well as intensive agriculture, terracing and raised fields, and arboriculture. Polychrome pottery is a hallmark of the Maya Lowland Classic culture. The Late Classic period (c 600-900 AD) shows development in sculpture and architecture -- and regional styles can be recognized. Northern Yucatan began to come into its own at sites like Chichén Itzá and Uxmal, where fine buildings in the Punc style were erected during the 7th-9th centuries. The later part of this period witnessed the end of civilization in the lowlands; the great centers were abandoned during the 9th and early 10th centuries. The Post-Classic period, c 900 to the Spanish conquest, had strong Mexican influence, particularly at Chichén Itzá where buildings were constructed in the Toltec style of central Mexico, and the art shows representations of Toltec warriors overpowering Maya chiefs. During the collapse in the southern Lowlands, centers in the northern Lowlands began to grow, c 800-1000 AD. The South's decline may have played a role in the North's prosperity. Sometime around 1200, the Itzá were driven from their capital, and Mayapán became the leading city of Yucatan. In about 1440-1450, Mayapán was overthrown and there followed a time of disunity and warfare which lasted until the Spaniards conquered Yucatan in 1541. The Maya kingdoms of highland Guatemala were subdued in 1525, but in the lowlands the descendants of the exiled Itzá held out until 1697. The collapse of Maya culture (in c 900) is a puzzling phenomenon, but its relative suddenness still remains without satisfactory explanation. There are no Long Count dates after 900, after which time lowland populations dwindled by as much as 90 percent. The term Maya also refers to a culture area and is typically divided into the lowland and highland Maya. Descendants of the Maya still occupy the region.
measurement: CATEGORY: measure
DEFINITION: An observation made by reference to a standardized scale.
Meillacoid phase: SYNONYM: Melliac
CATEGORY: culture; ceramics
DEFINITION: One of two ceramic series (the other being Chicoid) which emerged from the Ostinoid series. Originating in Haiti, it remained largely confined to the western Greater Antilles. Sites are usually village shell middens, but are often close to good agricultural land. The characteristic pottery is thin and hard but with a rough surface texture and simple incision, sometimes combined with appliquéd strips. The dates are usually within 850-1000 AD, although some sites in central Cuba endured to as late as 1500.
Middle Assyrian: CATEGORY: culture; chronology
DEFINITION: A period in the history of the Assyrian empire extending from the 14th-12th centuries BC. In the Late Bronze Age, Assyria was dominated by the Mitanni state, but in the 14th century BC, Assyria became dominant. Ashur-uballit I created the first Assyrian empire and initiated the Middle Assyrian period. With the help of the Hittites, he destroyed the dominion of the Aryan Mitanni (a non-Semitic people from upper Iran and Syria) and ravaged Nineveh. Later, allied with the Kassite successors in Babylonia, Ashur-uballit ended Hittite and Hurrian rule. By intermarriage he then influenced the Kassite dynasty and eventually dominated all of Babylonia, thus paving the way for the Neo-Assyrian mastery during the Sargonid dynasty (12th to 7th century). The succeeding Assyrian kings expanded the empire through northern Mesopotamia and the mountains to the north and briefly occupied Babylonia. Several kings weakened Assyria, but then others brought back its dominion. Middle Assyrian is also the name of a form of cuneiform that was used extensively in writing law code and other documents. Middle Assyrian laws were found on clay tablets at Ashur (at the time of Tiglath-pileser I, 1114-1076 BC).
Middle Awash: CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: River valley of northeast Ethiopia with rich Hominid fossil finds as well as archaeological sites dating from the Miocene to the Holocene. Australopithecine fossils from c 4.5-2.5 million years ago (mainly A. afarensis) and some of the oldest-known stone artifacts in the world (flaked cobble Oldowan Complex, c 3-2.5 mya) were found there.
Mildenhall: SYNONYM: Mildenhall Treasure
CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: A town in Suffolk, England, famous for the treasure of silver comprising the household silver of a wealthy Roman family near the remains of a 4th-century Roman building. The silver was richly decorated with figured reliefs and the 34 pieces include a large dish depicting the head of Oceanus, ringed by friezes of sea and other deities reveling; two smaller platters with Bacchic scenes; a niello dish with geometric design; a covered bowl with centaurs; goblets; ladles and eight spoons, five with Christian inscriptions. Possibly the owners buried their family plate in the troubled days of the Anglo-Saxon invasions. The collection is now in the British Museum in London.
milecastle: SYNONYM: mile fort, mile castle
CATEGORY: structure
DEFINITION: A fortlet (small fort) set at intervals of one Roman mile along a major well-defended frontier -- such as Hadrian's Wall. They measured 60-70 x 50-60 ft. A roadway passed through the center of the milecastle and through the wall itself, with gateways at both entrances. There were two barrack buildings parallel with the road. In one corner, next to the wall, was a stairway up to the wall top; in the other was the cookhouse. It is estimated that 30-100 men could be accommodated in each milecastle.
millefiori glass: CATEGORY: artifact
DEFINITION: Decorative glass formed by cutting slices from bundles of thin multi-colored glass rods, fused together (the word literally means ?a thousand flowers'). The slices were then set into a background mount of metal or enamel. The technique seems to have been developed by Anglo-Saxon craftspeople.
Ming Dynasty: CATEGORY: culture
DEFINITION: Major late Dynasty of China (1368-1644 AD), succeeding Mongol Yüan Dynasty (1280-1368). The period is known for painting and decorative arts, porcelain, lacquer, cloisonné, and textiles. The burial sites of the Ming emperors are near modern Beijing. The Ming extended the Chinese empire into Korea, Mongolia, and Turkistan on the north and into Vietnam and Myanmar (Burma) on the south, exercising more far-reaching influence in East Asia than any other native rulers of China.
Minusinsk Basin: CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: A steppe region on the upper Yenisei River in southern Siberia, surrounded by forested mountains. Very large numbers of burial mounds of different periods exist in the area and some 40,000 bronze objects survive in collections -- presumably only a fraction of the number originally present. There were many mines in the Basin, worked as early as the 14th century BC.
misclassification: CATEGORY: typology
DEFINITION: Incorrect assignment of an observation at the nominal or ordinal scale; attributing to the wrong class or category.
Mithras: CATEGORY: deity
DEFINITION: A Persian demigod who achieved independence and importance during the Roman empire, and best known as the savior deity of the Roman mystery cult of Mithraism. Especially in military circles, his worship challenged early Christianity. He is portrayed as a young man in a Phrygian cap, usually in the act of kneeling on the back of a bull to dispatch it by a sword thrust in the neck. A Mithraeum is a building, often semi-subterranean, containing a passage between broad shelves on which the worshippers reclined during the ceremonies. The end wall may hold a fresco or relief of Mithras himself. From the 1st century BC onwards, he begins to appear in the Roman world as the god of a mystery cult. His disciples, who were exclusively men and often limited to the ranks of soldiers and businessmen, were promised life and happiness after death. As in other mystery cults, the rites were kept secret, and truth and benefits came only to initiated believers, who had to pass through a sequence of seven grades of initiation. These were the stages of the Raven (Corax), Bride (Nymphus), Soldier (Miles), Lion (Leo), Persian (Perses), Runner of the Sun (Heliodromos), and Fater (Pater). The disciple also underwent baptism, took part in the reenacting of the sacred meal, and bore the seal of his discipleship on his body. Mithraism expanded rapidly from the second half of the 1st century AD.
moccasin: CATEGORY: artifact
DEFINITION: A soft leather slipper or shoe, having the sole turned up and sewn to the upper in a gathered seam, originally worn by North American Indians
Mongoloid: SYNONYM: Mongoloid geographic race, Asian geographic race.
CATEGORY: culture
DEFINITION: A major race of humankind to which American Indians, Eskimos, and Aleuts belong. This human populations (local races and microraces) is located in east, southeast, and east-central Asia. Mongoloid peoples are also found on many of the islands off the Asian mainland (e.g., Japan, Indonesia, the Aleutian Islands) and in the North American Arctic (the Eskimo).
Mont Lassois: CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: Iron Age hillfort in Cote-d'Or, France, on a route from the River Seine to the Mediterranean. Occupation is dated to the 6th century BC (Hallstatt D), the residence of a Celtic chieftain. The hillfort of Vix seems to have been the center of political authority and extensive trade relations. The rich Celtic and Greek artifacts found there, including Massiliote wine amphorae and Attic black figure ware, as well as those from the nearby tumulus burials near the villages of Vix and Sainte-Colombe-sur-Seine, indicate trade between the Celts and the Greeks.
mosque: SYNONYM: Arabic: masjid
CATEGORY: structure
DEFINITION: Any house or open area of prayer in Islam. The earliest mosques were simple enclosures, imitating the courtyard of the Prophet Muhammad's house at Medina of the 7th century AD. Most mosques have large areas, partly covered and partly open, where the community meets for prayer. Mosques usually, but not always, face Mecca, the direction of which (qibla) is indicated by a niche (mihrab) at the center of the end wall. To the right, there is a stepped pulpit (minbar). Outside the mosque, the most prominent feature is the minaret(s) (manar), usually towers, from which the muezzin gives the call to prayer. Schools and libraries are frequently attached to mosques. In some cases a maktab (elementary school) is attached to a mosque, mainly for the teaching of the Qur'an, and informal classes in law and doctrine are given for people of the surrounding neighborhood.
motte: SYNONYM: motte and bailey, motte-and-bailey castle
CATEGORY: structure
DEFINITION: An elevated mound of earth, part of the motte-and-bailey castle, which was crowned with a timber palisade and surrounded by a defensive ditch that also separated the motte from a palisaded outer compound, called the bailey. Access to the motte was by means of an elevated bridge across the ditch from the bailey. This structure appeared in the 10th and 11th centuries between the Rhine and Loire rivers and eventually spread to most of western Europe. The motte was usually made of earth, but sometimes of stone. Attached to it may be one or more baileys, which are enclosures surrounded by ramparts or stone walls. Motte should not be confused with moat; the latter was a ditch. The motte was formed from the soil originally dug from the ditch. It was the mound on which the wooden castle of the motte and bailey was built in early Norman times. Motte-and-bailey was the type of wooden castle first erected by Norman conquerors and it was an expedient, quickly erected, medieval fortification. Several classic examples of motte and bailey castles are illustrated in the Bayeaux tapestry, with wooden towers and palisades on top of the motte.
Mount Mazama ash: SYNONYM: Mazama Ash
CATEGORY: geology
DEFINITION: Volcanic ash (or tephra) originating from the eruption of Mount Mazama (Crater Lake, Oregon) nearly 7000 years ago (6600 years ago). Undisturbed beds of Mazama ash provide important contextual dates for archaeological sites throughout the northwestern United States and southwestern Canada. The eruption also produced Crater Lake in Oregon. Great thicknesses of pumice were deposited on the flanks of Mount Mazama, while finer material was blown over great distances by the winds. The widespread distribution of the Mazama Ash has made it useful in archaeological studies as a horizon, or time, marker. Studies of sediments formed in relation to the ash deposits suggest that the ash formed at a time when generally drier climates prevailed in the regions in which the ash occurs. The mineralogical composition of the ash is distinctive and allows it to be distinguished from other volcanic ash deposits.
muff glass: SYNONYM: cylinder glass
CATEGORY: artifact
DEFINITION: A flat piece of window glass made by blowing a bubble of glass. The bubble was swung to and fro on the blow-pipe as it was being blown so that it became a long cylindrical bubble. The ends were cut off the cylinder which was then split along the middle and allowed to uncurl on a flat surface in an oven to produce a flat sheet of glass.
Mulloy, William Thomas (1917-1978): CATEGORY: person
DEFINITION: American archaeologist who developed the cultural chronology of the northwest Plains, especially at Pictograph Cave in Montana. He also worked on Easter Island on orongo, ahu, and their moai.
Mylasa: SYNONYM: Milas
CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: A town in Asia Minor possibly founded by Mausolus, ruler of Caria (377-353 BC). Hellenistic and Roman site with Corinthian-style Temple of Zeus, Temple of Augustus and Rome, and ceremonial arch.
Mylonas, George (1898-1988): CATEGORY: person
DEFINITION: Greek archaeologist who excavated at Ayios Kosmas, Eleusis, Mycenae, and Olynthus.
Nasbeh, Tell en-: SYNONYM: Tell en-Nasbeh; Tall al-Nasbeh; Tel Mizpe
CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: A site near Jerusalem, occupied throughout the Iron Age. Noteworthy were its massive rubble walls, 4 m thick, with projecting towers and a very strong gateway. It is the probable site of biblical Mizpah.
Nasca: SYNONYM: Nazca
CATEGORY: culture
DEFINITION: Major culture of the southern coast of Peru during the Early Intermediate Period, c 200 BC-600 AD, developed out of Paracas. The principal Nasca site is at Cahuachi on the Nasca River, with a great adobe temple atop a mound, some walled courts and large rooms, and a number of smaller constructions. The earliest pottery, of roughly the 2nd century BC, still shows Paracas influence in the iconography and the use of up to 16 colors, but the paint was not put on before firing. Typical Nasca pottery with designs of fish, birds, severed heads, human figures and demons, shows a long internal development. The final Nasca substyle incorporates patterns taken from the art of Huari, and this contact was soon followed by invasion. Stylistically, the Nasca ceramics have been divided into nine phases. With the expansion of the Huari empire to the coast around the 7th century AD, Nasca culture came to an end and was replaced by a local version of Huari. To the Nasca period belong some (or all) of the desert markings, the so-called 'Nasca lines', made by scraping away the weathered surface of the desert to expose the lighter material beneath. Motifs include lines, geometrical patterns, and a few animal or bird forms. The dead were buried in large cemeteries, mainly near Cahuachi. Nasca survived into the Middle Horizon, when it became fused with the more dominant Huari and Tiahuanaco styles.
Nasca lines: SYNONYM: geoglyphs; Nazca lines
CATEGORY: feature
DEFINITION: In the Peruvian desert or Nasca region of the southern coast, geometric and geomorphic patterns created by the removal of surface stones to reveal the pale earth beneath. The lines were made by clearing the surface of small red/brown stones and exposing the lighter-colored soil underneath. The straight lines radiate to points in small hills and suggest a ceremonial function. The straight lines date to the Early Intermediate as well as to later periods. Maria Reiche, a researcher, believes that the figures represent constellations and the straight lines have astronomical significance. Others believe the lines pointed toward sacred places. The Nasca lines are virtually indecipherable from ground level, but are plainly visible from the air. The lines have been preserved by the extreme dryness of the climate of the region.
Nasera: SYNONYM: Apis Rock
CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: Boulder hill in northern Tanzania with a deep deposit of Middle and Later Stone Age material.
Nasik: CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: A town in western India, an important religious center attracting thousands of pilgrims annually because of the sanctity of the Godavari River and because of the legend that Rama, the hero of the Ramayana epic, lived there for a time with his wife Sita and his brother Laksmana. Nasik is the site of the Pandu (Buddhist) and Chamar (Jaina) cave temples dating to the 1st century AD.
needle-case: CATEGORY: artifact
DEFINITION: A container in which needles are held.
Nene Valley ware: SYNONYM: Castor Ware
CATEGORY: ceramics
DEFINITION: A type of Roman pottery made by an organized industry on the banks of the River Nene west of Peterborough, by the Roman town of Water Newton (ancient Durobrivae), England, from the 2nd-4th centuries AD. (It was formerly known as Castor Ware.) The commonest shapes are drinking vessels and tumblers, made of a light clay with a dark slip, sometimes with a white decoration. Decoration was by applied scales, rouletting, or barbotine. Barbotine ornamentation is applied to pottery by squeezing a bag containing thin clay slip in the same way as a cake is iced today. It may be applied by brush or spatula as well. The best known are the Hunt Cups, showing dogs pursuing deer or hares, but human scenes also occur. It is a local ware, made in imitation of the dark, glossy Rhenish wares, and was perhaps the first fine ware to be produced locally in Roman Britain.
Neo-Assyrian: CATEGORY: chronology; language
DEFINITION: A political period of the Assyrian empire in the Iron Age, an extension of the Middle Assyrian. It lasted from Assurnasirpal II (883-859 BC) till Sargon, Sennacherib, Esarhaddon, and finally, Assurbanipal (668-627 BC). The Assyrian empire was destroyed by the Babylonians and Medes in 612 BC. The Neo-Assyrian period was the great era of Assyrian power, and the writing culminated in the extensive records from the library of Ashurbanipal at Nineveh (c 650 BC). Neo-Assyrian is also the name of the cuneiform script of the time.
Nevasa: CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: Prehistoric site on the northern Deccan plateau in western central India with a Middle Palaeolithic industry, a regional Chalcolithic with Jorwe ware of the later 2nd millennium BC, and a settlement of the late 1st millennium BC with wares of late Iron Age southern India. Another phase shows trade with Rome by the early 1st millennium AD. Glass beads and bangles characteristic of the Hindu culture of about 200 BC have been discovered in Nevasa excavations.
nonplastic: CATEGORY: artifact
DEFINITION: Material in a clay, mineral or organic, which by virtue of generally large particle size lacks the property of plasticity and reduces the stickiness of the clay
Northwest Coast tradition: CATEGORY: culture
DEFINITION: A series of prehistoric groups of the northern California coast, Oregon, Washington, British Columbia, and southeastern Alaska, with origins in the Fraser River delta and clearly established by 1000 BC. Their subsistence was based on hunting and gathering of riverine and marine food sources (mollusks, salmon, halibut, sea mammals). Characteristics in the archaeological record include bone and slate hunting tools, stone effigy carving, and woodworking tools. Totem poles and elaborately carved long houses are still a cultural feature in the area.
Norton: SYNONYM: Norton tradition phase
CATEGORY: culture
DEFINITION: A series of Arctic Alaska cultures, mainly coastal, dating from c 500 BC-1100 AD, with the first pottery of the region. The Choris culture, the earliest manifestation, has pottery that is Asiatic in origin, fiber-tempered with linear- and check-stamp decoration. Sometimes designated Paleo-Eskimo, the Norton tradition embraces the cultural continuum Choris-Norton-Ipiutak. The Norton aspect of this continuum is typically represented by the presence of poorly fired, check-stamped pottery and tools of crude appearance, made from basalt rather than chert. Polished slate implements and oil lamps appear as well as points, tips, side blades; discoidal scraper bits, broad flat labrets, and toggling harpoon heads. Cape Denbigh, Cape Krusenstern and Onion Portage for example, all have a Norton component. The extent to which the Norton tradition was ancestral to any of the Eskimos is open to interpretation, though the Yup'ik Eskimo are likely descendants of Norton people.
oasis: SYNONYM: plural oases
CATEGORY: geography
DEFINITION: A fertile patch in a desert. There are five major oases in western Egypt: Siwa, Bahariya, Farafra, Dakhla, and Kharga. Except for some Old Kingdom and First Intermediate settlements in Dakhla, most of the oases were probably not occupied until the 1st millennium BC. Two-thirds of the total population of the Sahara are sedentary peoples living in oases and these areas have vegetative growth. In all Saharan oases the date palm constitutes the main source of food, while in its shade are grown citrus fruits, figs, peaches, apricots, vegetables, and cereals such as wheat, barley, and millet.
Ocsöd-Kovashalom: CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: Late Neolithic site of the Tisza culture, on the Körös River in eastern Hungary. There are many settlement features, including ovens, storage pits, rubbish pits, and burials.
Old World: SYNONYM: eastern hemisphere
CATEGORY: geography
DEFINITION: The Eastern Hemisphere, with special reference to Europe, Africa, and Asia; the part of the world known to Europeans before contact with the Americas.
Older Dryas: CATEGORY: chronology
DEFINITION: A stadial of the Weichselian cold stage, dating to between c 12,000-11,800 bp.
omphalos-based jar: CATEGORY: artifact
DEFINITION: Ceramic vessels with a prominent hollow dome raised into the base of the pot.
onomasticon: SYNONYM: plural onomastica
CATEGORY: language
DEFINITION: A Greek thesaurus of terms, a type of ancient text consisting of lists of various categories of names, from plants and animals to cities or professions. The onomastica were presumably intended to serve both as repositories of knowledge and as training exercises for scribes.
open association: CATEGORY: technique
DEFINITION: An assumed relationship between two or more artifacts that are found together, when it cannot be proved that they were deposited together.
Owasco tradition: CATEGORY: culture
DEFINITION: The precursor to the Iroquois culture in New York state, dated to c 1000-1300 AD. It is characterized by ceramics with cord-wrapped paddles, smoking pipes with straight stems, and the growing of corn, beans, and squash. Their elongated houses were ancestral to the Iroquois longhouse.
Oxus Treasure: CATEGORY: artifact
DEFINITION: A collection of Persian art of the Achaemenidian period (6th-4th century BC) now in the British Museum, London. It was discovered in 1877 on the bank of the Oxus River near the present Afghanistan-Russian border. This large hoard of gold and silver metalwork included a variety of jewelry, ornamental plaques, figurines, chariot models, and vessels. One of the armlets consists of a circular gold band with its two ends meeting in the form of finely worked griffins.
Oxyrhynchus: SYNONYM: Arabic Bahnasa
CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: Ancient Greco-Roman town west of the Nile on the left bank of the Bahr Yusuf in Middle Egypt, best known for its papyri texts. Oxyrhynchus was a regional capital which was reasonably prosperous in the Roman period, and developed into a church and monastic center during the Coptic period. A large number of fragmentary papyri were written or copied and these texts are now of central importance in the reconstruction of the manuscript tradition of a number of major classical authors, including Homer, Pindar, and Aristotle. Also included are previously lost works or sections of works, such as Menander and Callimachus. They were uncovered, first by B.P. Grenfell and A.S. Hunt (1897-1907), and later by Italian scholars early in the 20th century. The papyri -- dating from about 250 BC to 700 AD and written primarily in Greek and Latin but also in demotic Egyptian, Coptic, Hebrew, Syriac, and Arabic -- include religious texts (e.g., miracles of Sarapis, early copies of the New Testament, and such apocryphal books as the Gospel of Thomas) and also masterpieces of Greek classical literature. The works of the so-called Oxyrhynchus historian" were also found."
Paccaicasas: SYNONYM: Paccaicasa
CATEGORY: culture
DEFINITION: The earliest stone tool complex of the Ayacucho Valley, in the central highlands of Peru, which may represent man's earliest presence in South America. Radiocarbon dates of 17,620 BC and 12,730 BC were obtained from sloth bone found in association with crude stone tools and flakes of volcanic tuff. Choppers, bifacial tools, and waste flakes therefore dated between 18,000-12,000 BC.
painted glass: CATEGORY: artifact
DEFINITION: Glass which has been colored and decorated by painting
Palaeoasiatic: CATEGORY: culture; language
DEFINITION: A theoretical early 'race' of Homo sapiens sapiens in northeastern Asia. This race included the postglacial Chulmun and Jomon inhabitants of Korea and Japan and the modern Ainu. The far northeastern region of Siberia is the home of the so-called Paleoasiatic peoples, including the Chukchi, Koryak, Itelmen, and Yukaghir. The term also refers to a language group; the languages of the indigenous peoples of the Eurasian Arctic and subarctic can be grouped into four classes: Uralic, Tungusic, Turkic, and Paleoasiatic.
Palaikastro: CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: Minoan settlement site on the island of Crete, a Neopalatial town with no palace yet discovered. Palaikastro in eastern Crete was an important town with blocks of houses marked by colored stone foundations, narrow streets with drains, and pottery of exceptional quality.
Pampa de las Llamas or Moxeke: CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: Major Initial Period ceremonial center on the north-central coast of Peru. The site is on a linear axis with the large mound of Moxeke at one end and Huaca A at the other. There are small U-shaped structures parallel to the central axis.
Paracas: CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: Large ceremonial area and major Early Horizon culture on the south coast of Peru, showing direct influence from Chavín -- especially in the pottery (called Ocucaje in the Ica Valley). The pottery is a highly individual polychrome ware with designs executed in resinous paint applied after the pot was fired, including paint-filled incisions of Chavinoid deities. This early period pottery was not well-fired. Desert conditions have preserved all kinds of organic materials, including fine textiles, in rich burials. The best known graves belong to the closing stages of the culture and are of two types: deep shafts leading into underground chambers with several mummy bundles (Paracas Cavernas), and pits or abandoned houses filled with sand and containing more than 400 mummy bundles (the type site, Paracas Necropolis). These people also engaged in artificial deformation of the skull by binding the skull in infancy. Much of the material from the necropolis belongs to the earliest stage of the Nasca culture, which developed out of Paracas in about the 2nd century BC. The Paracas culture's earlier phase, called Paracas Cavernas, is dated 900 BC-1 AD; the Paracas cultures of the middle Early Intermediate Period (c 1-400 AD) are referred to as the Paracas Pinilla and the Paracas Necrópolis phases. There are no large temple structures at the type site.
paradigmatic classification: CATEGORY: typology
DEFINITION: A type of systematics that employs a preconceived set of classes defined by the intersection of dimensions or attributes.
paraskenia: CATEGORY: structure
DEFINITION: In a Greek theater, the side wings of the skene -- which was originally a mask-changing building and developed into an edifice decorated with columns, with three doors used for entrances and exits and the appearance of ghosts and gods.
Parthian: SYNONYM: Parthia, Parthava (modern Khorasan)
CATEGORY: culture
DEFINITION: A steppe people from east of the Caspian Sea who entered northeastern Iran and set up a kingdom at the expense of the Seleucid empire and Bactria. The Parthian empire existed from 247 BC-224 AD. The earliest Parthian capital was probably at Dara; two of the later capitals were Nisa and Hecatompylos. Between 160-140 BC, Mithridates I extended the Parthian state into an empire, incorporating Iran and most of Mesopotamia, which survived 350 years of almost constant conflict with the Seleucids and later the Romans until its overthrow by the Sassanians in the early 3rd century AD. When flourishing, the Parthians established an oriental empire with Greek civilization grafted on. Their culture and location was an important intermediary between the Near and Far East and they controlled most of the trade routes between Asia and the Greco-Roman world. The silk road to China was opened under Mithradates II (124/123-87 BC). The Parthians were also famous for their superlative horsemanship.
Pasargadae: CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: The first dynastic capital of the Achaemenian Empire, situated northeast of Persepolis in modern southwestern Iran. Traditionally, Cyrus II the Great (reigned c 559- 529 BC) chose the site because it lay near the scene of his victory over Astyages the Mede (550 BC). The buildings are scattered over a wide area; they include two palaces, a gatehouse and a square stone tower, as well as a religious area with a large fire altar. Trilingual inscriptions in Elamite, Babylonian (Akkadian), and Old Persian, all in the cuneiform script, occur on the palaces and gatehouse. Southwest of the palaces is the tomb of Cyrus, almost intact: an impressive rectangular stone chamber with a gabled roof, set on a high stepped plinth. At the extreme southern edge of the site, an impressive rock-cut road or canal indicates the course of the ancient highway that once linked Pasargadae with Persepolis. After the accession of Darius I the Great (522 BC), Persepolis replaced Pasargadae as the dynastic home.
Pasemah Plateau: SYNONYM: Pasemah
CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: A plateau in southern Sumatra with a series of impressive prehistoric megalithic monuments -- massive slab graves and a rich collection of life-sized anthropomorphic carvings. The large stones are roughly carved into the shape of animals, such as the buffalo and elephant, and human figures -- some with swords, helmets, and ornaments and some apparently carrying drums. They are stylistically similar to those of Iron Age burials of the last centuries BC, and remote connections with the Dong Son culture of northern Vietnam and the megalithic cultures of south India are likely.
Paso: CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: A shell mound on the shore of Lake Tondano in northern Sulawesi, which is the best-preserved pre-Neolithic midden to be excavated in Indonesia. Dated to c 6500 BC, there are obsidian flake tools and bone points pre-dating the Toalian. Its inhabitants lived on shellfish and hunted the local fauna. Paso provides and important terminus post quem for the small flake and blade industries and Neolithic cultures (after 3000 BC) which later appear in the region.
pass-through: CATEGORY: feature
DEFINITION: An opening similar to a doorway but too small for an adult to fit through. It occurs at or below the vertical midpoint of a wall.
passage grave: SYNONYM: passage tomb
CATEGORY: structure
DEFINITION: A category of megalithic or chambered tomb in which there is a burial chamber and a separate passage into the tomb; the chamber is reached from the edge of the covering mound via a long passage. It includes the earliest known megalithic graves of Europe, dating from about 5000 BC (in Brittany). The diagnostic features are a round mound covering a burial chamber (often roofed by corbelling) approached by a narrower entrance passage. The distinction between passage and funerary chamber proper is very marked. The origin of the passage grave is unclear. Passage graves occur throughout the area where megalithic tombs occur in Europe, but have a predominantly western distribution. In some areas, passage graves were still being constructed in the Bronze Age.
passive remote sensing: CATEGORY: technique
DEFINITION: Any geophysical sensing method which measures physical properties such as magentism and gravity without the need to inject energy to obtain a response.
Passo di Corvo: CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: A large Middle Neolithic settlement site on the Tavoliere plain in Puglie, southeast Italy, with a radiocarbon date of 5200 BC. The site is concentrically ditched (known as a villaggio trincerato) and encloses about 100 circular hut enclosures. The site has produced evidence of a mixed farming economy and abundant pottery of various types, including Impressed Ware and a variety of red painted wares.
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