Archaeology Wordsmith

Results for base:

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.
bifurcate: SYNONYMS OR RELATED TERMS: bifurcated base
CATEGORY: artifact
DEFINITION: A point base split into double lobes with indentation similar to notches on sides
centrally based wandering model: CATEGORY: technique
DEFINITION: A model for hunter-gatherer cultures centered around base camps.
database: CATEGORY: database design
DEFINITION: A compilation or storage system for information that is used for decision-making, inferences, interpretation, and testing hypotheses.
dolerite: SYNONYMS OR RELATED TERMS: 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.
flat-file database: CATEGORY: database design
DEFINITION: A set of data records stored in a single large table.
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
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.
omphalos-based jar: CATEGORY: artifact
DEFINITION: Ceramic vessels with a prominent hollow dome raised into the base of the pot.
relational database: CATEGORY: database design
DEFINITION: A structured system of data files organized by controlled redundancy (key attributes and attribute pointers).
snapped base: CATEGORY: artifact
DEFINITION: A term used to describe points that have a part of the base intentionally removed or fractured off as part of the intentional design by the original knapper.
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.
absolute dating: SYNONYMS OR RELATED TERMS: chronometric dating; absolute dates; absolute chronology; absolute age determination (antonym: relative dating)
CATEGORY: chronology; technique
DEFINITION: The determination of age with reference to a specific time scale, such as a fixed calendrical system or in years before present (B.P., BP), based on measurable physical and chemical qualities or historical associations such as coins and written records. The date on a coin is an absolute date, as are AD 1492 or 501 BC.
Abydos ware: CATEGORY: ceramics
DEFINITION: Pottery of Canaanite (Syro-Palestinian) origin found in the royal tombs of the First and Second Dynasties (The Old Kingdom) at Abydos, Saqqara, Abusir el-Melek, and other sites in Upper Egypt, dating to Early Bronze Age II (3300-2700 BCE). The pottery, often red-rose slipped and burnished or painted with geometric motifs, includes jugs, bottles, and jars. Most common are the red-slipped jugs, some of a hard-baked metallic" quality with handles attached to the rim and a typical stamped base. This pottery class took its name from Abydos the first site at which it was found in Upper Egypt."
Aceramic Neolithic: CATEGORY: chronology
DEFINITION: The early part of the Neolithic period in Western Asia before the widespread use of pottery (c. 8500-6000 BC) in an economy based on the cultivation of crops or the rearing of animals or both. Aceramic Neolithic groups were in the Levant (Pre-Pottery Neolithic A and B), Zagros area (Karim Shahir, Jarmoan), and Anatolia (Hacilar Aceramic Neolithic). Aceramic Neolithic groups are more rare outside Western Asia.
acroteria: SYNONYMS OR RELATED TERMS: acroterion, acroters, acroterium, akroterion
CATEGORY: structure
DEFINITION: The pedestals, often without bases, placed on the center and sides of pediments for supporting a statue. Also, a decoration (often a statue) or ornament mounted with plinth on the pinnacle and gable ends (the horizontal coping or parapets) of a classical building.
Adena-Rossville point: CATEGORY: lithics
DEFINITION: Contracting stemmed point with a narrower section at the base than the main part of the point.
age profile: SYNONYMS OR RELATED TERMS: 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."
Ain Mallaha: SYNONYMS OR RELATED TERMS: Eynan
CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: A large village of the early Natufian period near Lake Huleh in Upper Jordan. The three phases contain 50 large circular houses and open areas with storage pits. The well-built houses suggest a permanent occupation. The economy was probably based on the hunting and herding of gazelle and other large animals, fishing, and harvesting cereals. Many of the houses had paved stone floors and a central stone-lined hearth.
Amratian: SYNONYMS OR RELATED TERMS: Naqadah I
CATEGORY: culture
DEFINITION: An Egyptian predynastic culture, centered in Upper Egypt and named for the site El Amrah (or al-'Amirah; c 4500-4000 BC) near Abydos. Numerous sites, dating to c 3600 BC, have been excavated. They reveal an animal husbandry and agricultural lifeway similar to the preceding Badarian culture. There are large cemeteries, like that at Naqada, which imply that the settlements were permanent and large. Many of the dead were buried crouched with rich grave goods. Flint was quarried for the variety of finely worked daggers, points, and tools. Copper came into use for beads, harpoons, and pins. There was trading with Ethiopia, the Red Sea, and Syria based on the finds. Several pottery wares, in a range of shapes, were made: black-topped red ware from the Badarian period onward and white cross-lined (red ware painted in white) added.
analogy: CATEGORY: technique
DEFINITION: An anthropological practice using reasoning based on the assumption that if two things are similar in some respects, then they must be similar in other respects. Ethnographic information from recent cultures is then used to make informed hypotheses about archaeological cultures and to compare societies and culture traits of recorded societies with those of prehistoric sites. Analogy is the basis of most archaeological interpretation (see general and specific analogy).
analysis: SYNONYMS OR RELATED TERMS: analytical archaeology
CATEGORY: technique
DEFINITION: A stage in archaeological research design that involves isolating, describing, and structuring data, usually by typological classification, along with chronological, functional, technological, and constituent determinations. The research involves artifactual and nonartifactual data. The method evolved from the tendency to formalize the archaeological process, especially through the work of LR Binford, DL Clarke, and JC Gardin. Computer science and mathematics are used to elaborate the means for transforming simple descriptions of archaeological data into cultural, economic, and social reconstructions of earlier societies. This type of research is attempts to provide archaeology with a theoretical framework based on scientific method.
Anglo-Saxon Chronicle: CATEGORY: language
DEFINITION: A chronological account of events in Anglo-Saxon and Norman England, a compilation of seven surviving annals that is the primary source of the early history of England. Believed to have been started around 870, during the reign of King Alfred (871-899), it was mostly finished by 891 though further accounts were added until 1154. The annals were probably written in the monasteries of Abingdon, Canterbury, Peterborough, Winchester, and Worcester. They include vivid accounts of the Viking raids, Alfred's reign, and the period of anarchy under Stephen. The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle also included the Venerable Bede's Historia ecclesiastica gentis Anglorum" genealogies regnal and episcopal lists some northern annals and some sets of earlier West Saxon annals. The compiler also had access to a set of late 9th-century Frankish annals. The completeness and quality of the entries vary for different periods; the Chronicle has sparse coverage of the mid-10th century and the reign of Canute for example but is an excellent authority for the reign of Aethelred the Unready and from the reign of Edward the Confessor until the annal ends in 1154. The Chronicle survived in seven manuscripts (one of these being destroyed in the 18th century) and a fragment which are generally known by letters of the alphabet. The oldest the A version is written in one hand up till 891 and then continued in various hands. The B version and the C version are copies made at Abingdon from a lost archetype. B ends at 977 whereas C which is an 11th-century copy ends mutilated in 1066. The D version and the E version share many features. D which was written up until 1079 probably remained in the north whereas the archetype of E was taken south and continued at St. Augustine's Canterbury and was used by the scribe of manuscript F. The extant manuscript E is a copy made at Peterborough written in one stretch until 1121. It is the version that was continued longest. The F version is an abridgment in both Old English and Latin made in the late 11th or early 12th century based on the archetype of E but with some entries from A and it extends to 1058. The fragment H deals with 1113-14 and is independent of E."
Antonine Column: CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: An important monument in Rome. It is a lofty pillar ornamented with a series of bas-reliefs sent up in spirals from the base to the summit. The bas-reliefs represent the victories of the emperor Marcus Aurelius Antoninus.
Apollo 11 Cave: CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: A cave in southern Namibia near the confluence of the Orange and Great Fish Rivers which has a long sequence of industries dating from the Middle Stone Age. There is a series of detached rock slabs with rock paintings dating between 28,450-26,350 years old, among the oldest dated paintings in the world and the oldest dated rock art of southern Africa. Later horizons in the Apollo 11 Cave show a scraper-based industry in the 13th-8th millennia BC that is related to the Albany industry of southern Cape Province. Microlithic findings begin in the 8th millennium.
archaic: SYNONYMS OR RELATED TERMS: Archaic, Archaic period, Archaic tradition
CATEGORY: chronology; culture
DEFINITION: A term used to describe an early stage in the development of civilization. In New World chronology, the period just before the shift from hunting, gathering, and fishing to agricultural cultivation, pottery development, and village settlement. Initially, the term was used to designate a non-ceramic-using, nonagricultural, and nonsedentary way of life. Archaeologists now realize, however, that ceramics, agriculture, and sedentism are all found, in specific settings, within contexts that are clearly Archaic but that these activities are subsidiary to the collection of wild foods. In Old World chronology, the term is applied to certain early periods in the history of some civilizations. In Greece, it describes the rise of civilization from c 750 BC to the Persian invasion in 480 BC. In Egypt, it covers the first two dynasties, c 3200-2800 BC. In Classical archaeology, the term is often used to refer to the period of the 8th-6th centuries BC. The term was coined for certain cultures of the eastern North America woodlands dating from c 8000-1000 BC, but usage has been extended to various unrelated cultures which show a similar level of development but at widely different times. For example, it describes a group of cultures in the Eastern US and Canada which developed from the original migration of man from Asia during the Pleistocene, between 40,000-20,000 BC, whose economy was based on hunting and fishing, shell and plant gathering. Between 8000-1000 BC, a series of technical achievements characterized the tradition, which can be broken into periods: Early Archaic 8000-5000 BC, mixture of Big Game Hunting tradition with early Archaic cultures, also marked by post-glacial climatic change in association with the disappearance of Late Pleistocene big game animals; then Middle Archaic tradition cultures from 5000-2000 BC, and a Late Archaic period 2000-1000 BC. In the New World, the lifestyle lacked horticulture, domesticated animals, and permanent villages.
Argos: SYNONYMS OR RELATED TERMS: Argos (meaning agricultural plain)"
CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: City in the northeastern Peloponnese of Greece, just north of the head of the Gulf of Argolis. The name was applied to several districts of ancient Greece but it is most often used to describe the easternmost part of the Peloponnesian peninsula and the city of Argos was its capital. Homer described it as the fertile plain inhabited by Agamemnon, Diomedes, and other heroes in the Iliad". The site was probably occupied since the Neolithic / Early Bronze Age and was very prominent in Mycenaean times (c 1300-1200 BC). Argos was probably the base of Dorian operations in the Peloponnese c 1100-1000 BC and from then on the dominant city-state of Argolis until it allied itself with Sparta after the Peloponnesian War in 420 BC. In 392 it broke with Sparta to unite with Corinth in the Corinthian War. Argos later joined the Achaean League (229) and Argos became its center after the Roman conquest and destruction of Corinth (146). The city flourished in Byzantine times and did not decline until around 1204 AD. One tyrant Pheidon is thought to have introduced primitive coinage and a weights and measures system. Archaeological excavations began in 1854 on the Argive Heraeum and Argos was famed for its connection with the goddess Hera. There was a natural sanctuary there long before the Dorians came c 1100-1000 BC. The shrine is reported to be of extreme antiquity. The statue of Hera for a new 5th-century temple was done by the celebrated sculptor Polycleitus whose work was said to rival that of Pheidias the sculptor of the Parthenon. There is material evidence of Neolithic Early and Middle Bronze Age a Mycenaean cemetery with chamber tombs Geometric and Archaic features and ruins of the classical and Roman city. The Larisa hill was evidently the Mycenaean acropolis and citadel holding a classical temple. There was also a Roman theater and small odeum. The site is mostly covered by the modern city."
Arles: SYNONYMS OR RELATED TERMS: Latin Arelate
CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: A city in southern France on the left bank of the Rhône that was once a colony founded by Caesar (46 BC) and which has an amphitheater and cryptoporticus dating from 1st century BC. Very little is known of the Celto-Greek settlement, traditionally colonized by the Phocaeans. Marius constructed the Fossae Marianae, a navel canal linking Arles with the sea, in 104 BC. Arles from then on was a service port and naval shipyard. Caesar used it as his naval base in 49 BC when attacking Marseilles (Massilia). Two aqueducts were built to bring water from the Alpilles. Constantine the Great (306-337 AD) adopted the city as one of his capitals. It was a mint in late Roman times and an imperial Roman theater and the largest amphitheater north of the Alps were located there. In the 1st century AD, St. Trophime founded the bishopric, which remained until 1790.
Arretine Ware: SYNONYMS OR RELATED TERMS: terra sigillata ware; Samian ware
CATEGORY: ceramics
DEFINITION: A type of bright-red, polished pottery originally made at Arretium (modern Arezzo) in Tuscany from the 1st century BC to the 3rd century AD. The term means literally ware made of clay impressed with designs. The ware was produced to be traded, especially throughout the Roman Empire. It is clearly based on metal prototypes and the body of the ware was generally cast in a mold. Relief designs were also cast in molds which had been impressed with stamps in the desired patterns and then applied to the vessels. The quality of the pottery was high, considering its mass production. However, there was a gradual roughness to the forms and decoration over the four centuries of production. After the decline of Arretium production, terra sigillata was made in Gaul from the 1st century AD at La Graufesenque (now Millau) and later at other centers in Gaul. Examples having come from Belgic tombs in pre-Roman Britain and from the port of Arikamedu in southern India. The style changes and the potter's marks stamped on the vessels made these wares a valuable means of dating the other archaeological material found with them.
aryballos: SYNONYMS OR RELATED TERMS: aryballus; from Greek bag
CATEGORY:
DEFINITION: artifact; ceramics There are two uses for this term -- one for a small Greek vase, one for a large Inca pottery jar. The Greek flask was one-handled, normally globular (quasi-spherical or pear-shaped), with a narrowing neck. It was used mostly for oil, perfume, unguent, or condiments and stood about 2-3 inches (5-8 cm) high. Aryballos were originally made at Corinth from about 575 BC. There were painted patterns on them until 550 BC and sometimes patterns were engraved. The Inca version was a large jar with conical base, tall narrow neck, and flaring rim. It was used for carrying liquids, designed to be carried on the back by a rope which passed through two strap handles low on the jar's body and over a nubbin at the base of the jar neck.
Ashurbanipal (fl. 7th century BC): SYNONYMS OR RELATED TERMS: 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."
Athens: SYNONYMS OR RELATED TERMS: Athínai (modern Greek), Athenai (ancient Greek)
CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: Important classical Greek city-state with evidence for continuous occupation from the Late Neolithic, but because of its continuous occupation and the resulting disturbance of the earlier levels, its history is told from the time of the Mycenaeans in the Late Bronze Age. The citadel on the Acropolis was walled early in its history. It is the capital of Greece and generally considered to be the birthplace of Western civilization. Athens is best known for its temples and public buildings of antiquity. The Parthenon, a columned, rectangular temple built for the city's patron goddess, Athena, is considered to be the culmination of the Doric order of classical Greek architecture. Also located on the Acropolis are the Erechtheum, originally the temple of both Athena and Poseidon, and the Propylaea, the entrance of which is through the wall of the Acropolis. At the foot of the Acropolis, to the south, are the theaters of Herodes and Dionysus, while to the northwest is the Agora, the ancient marketplace of the city. The Kerameikos cemetery documents the city's Iron Age (c 11-8 BC), after which archaeology and history combine to tell of its brilliance through the classical period. It supposedly rivaled Knossos and later resisted successive waves of Dorian invaders. It is still not clear how far Athens, perhaps the base of the very early Ionian colonies, managed to ride out the 'dark age' that followed the collapse of Mycenaean civilization. There is evidence of a cultural and commercial renaissance in the 7th and 6th centuries BC. A major component of this socioeconomic revolution was the borrowing of the Phoenician alphabet for the writing of Greek. Commercial success brought rapid economic growth and a population explosion. New ideas were imported and political upheaval led to experiments in government, such as democracy. Athens resisted Persian invaders and developed a prestige which allowed the establishment of the Delian League and the extension of her political power -- the Athenian empire. In the years 447-431 BC, under Pericles, vast sums were spent on public works, such as the new group of buildings on the Acropolis including the Parthenon. Pericles would not grant the Hellenes the freedom requested by Sparta, which led to the Peloponnesian War (431-404 BC) after which Athens was a dependent of Sparta. Escape from Spartan imperialism in the 4th century BC was threatened by Philip of Macedon and Alexander the Great. By the end of the century, Macedon dominated and Athens did not achieve independence until 228 BC. Rome then intruded in the 2nd and 1st centuries and Athens was sieged and plundered by Sulla. During the Imperial period, Athens was confined to a role as a cultural center and seat of learning for the rich -- which lasted into the 6th century AD, when the edict of Justinian in 529 closed down the schools of philosophy. By the Byzantine period, Athens had become a modest provincial town. Athens' ruins will be difficult to protect from the corrosive atmosphere and millions of visiting tourists.
attribute clustering: CATEGORY: typology
DEFINITION: Any grouping method based on associations between attributes and including Spaulding's configurationist typology and factor analysis.
attribute pointer: CATEGORY: database design
DEFINITION: In relational databases, a field in a many" file that makes a relation with the key attribute of a "one" file. "Site number" could be an attribute pointer in an artifact cataloguing file and refer to the key attribute "Site number" in another file "Sites" with a unique record for each site."
attritional age profile: CATEGORY: technique
DEFINITION: The distribution of ages in an animal population that is the result of selective hunting or predation. A mortality model based on the bone or tooth wear is used to figure out attritional mortality victims (those dying from natural causes or from non-human predation) or by hunting or predation of the most vulnerable individuals -- generally, the young and the old.
Augst: SYNONYMS OR RELATED TERMS: Augusta Raurica, Roman Augusta Rauricorum
CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: The site of a Roman colony and frontier post founded in 44 BC in Switzerland, which flourished under Hadrian until the time of an attack by the Alamanni in 260 AD. There is no evidence of occupation before 15 BC. The site has one of the most complete Roman city layouts north of the Alps with a theater, forum, curia, basilica, theater complex, baths, and city walls. The Romans enlarged the old Celtic settlement, improved water supplies, and constructed the arenas and theaters. Villas were built, providing the bases for agricultural exploitation and for spreading of Roman influence into the surrounding countryside.
Auricle: CATEGORY: artifact
DEFINITION: The corners of a stem of stemmed types or the corners of the base of triangular types which are ear-like.
Auriculate: CATEGORY: artifact
DEFINITION: A major projectile form which has rounded or pointed ears that project from the concave base or stem of points or blades.
Aurignacian: SYNONYMS OR RELATED TERMS: Aurignac (adj)
CATEGORY: culture; chronology
DEFINITION: A series of Upper Palaeolithic cultures in Europe that existed from about 35,000 to 20,000 years (dates also given as 38,000-22,000 years) ago. They were characterized by their use of stone (flint) and bone tools, refinement of those tools, and the development of sculpture and cave painting. The culture is named for the type site Aurignac, in southern France, where such artifacts were discovered. In France it is stratified between the Châtelperronian and the Gravettian (and before the Solutrean and the Magdalenian), but industries of Aurignacian type are also found eastwards to the Balkans, Palestine, Iran, and Afghanistan. At Abri Pataud there is a radiocarbon date of pre-31,000 BC for the Aurignacian, but there are possibly earlier occurrences in central and southeast Europe (Istállóskö in Hungary, Bacho Kiro in Bulgaria). There is still considerable dispute about the extent to which the Aurignacian is contemporary with the cultures of the Perigordian group in southwest France. The sites are often in deep, sheltered valleys. Split-based bone points, carinates (steep-end scrapers), and Aurignac blades (with heavy marginal retouch) are typical of Aurignacian. Aurignacian is also important as the most distinctive and abundantly represented of the early Upper Palaeolithic groups.
Avebury: CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: A site in Wiltshire, England, at which stands one of Britain's finest megalithic monuments (known as henges) and one of the largest ceremonial structures in Europe. It was built c 2000 BC in the Neolithic, where the ridgeways of southern England meet, a natural site for tribal gatherings. It consists of a large bank with internal ditch (1.2 km long) with four equally spaced entrances. Inside the ditch was set a circle of 98 sarsen stones, weighing as much as 40 tons each. In the center were two smaller stone circles, each c 100 meters in diameter. The northern circle contains a U-shaped setting of three large stones, and the southern inner circle once had a complex arrangement of stones at its center. The Ring Stone, a huge stone perforated by a natural hole, stood within the earthworks and main stone circle at the southern entrance. The southern entrance leads out to two parallel rows of sarsens forming an avenue 15 m wide and 2.5 km long which ends at a ritual building (the so-called Sanctuary) on Overton Hill. Traces of a second avenue remain on the opposite side of the monument. From the bottom of the ditch came sherds of Neolithic Windmill Hill, Peterborough, and Grooved Ware styles, while higher up were fragments of South British (Long Necked) Beaker and Bronze Age pottery. Burials with Beaker and Rinyo-Clacton wares have been excavated at the bases of some of the stones. Near the southern end of the Avenue was an occupation site with Neolithic and Beaker sherds. The complex geometry of the site is studied, especially the possible astronomical alignments built into it. The circles at Avebury and the wooden structure on Overton Hill were all probably built at the same time by Neolithic communities.
Aylesford: CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: A cemetery of cremation burials of the 1st century BC discovered in the 1880s in the county of Kent, England. It was excavated by Sir Arthur Evans, who identified the grave goods as belonging to the Iron Age Belgae. It is thought to represent the arrival of Belgic peoples fleeing from Gaul in advance of Caesar's army. Aylesford and Swarling are now the type sites of that culture in southeastern England. There was urned cremation in flat graves and the use of wheel-thrown pots with pedestal bases and horizontal cordon ornament. Brooches (fibula), wooden stave-built buckets, and bronze have also been found. The culture survived for a time after the Roman conquest in 43 AD.
Badarian: CATEGORY: culture
DEFINITION: An Upper Egyptian, Predynastic culture of the later 5th millennium BC, named for the type site of el-Badari, on the east bank of the Nile River. It extended over much of Middle Egypt also. Excavations during the 1920s revealed settlements and cemeteries dating to about 4000 BC (Neolithic). Their fine pottery, black-topped brown ware (later red), was very thin-walled, well-baked, and often decorated with a burnished ripple. This effect was apparently produced by firing it inverted to prevent the air from circulating inside and over the upper rim, keeping these areas black whereas the base and lower wall externally were oxidized to brown or a good red color. Other remains include combs and spoons of ivory, slate palettes, female figurines; and copper, shell, and stone beads. Badarian materials have also been found at Jazirat Armant, al-Hammamiyah, Hierakonpolis (modern Kawm al-Ahmar), al-Matmar, and Tall al-Kawm al-Kabir. Flinders Petrie and other found large numbers of graves with artifacts in 1893-1894 and divided it into two phases: Naqada Culture I and Naqada Culture II.
Baikal Neolithic: CATEGORY: chronology; culture
DEFINITION: The Neolithic period of the Lake Baikal region in eastern Siberia. Stratified sites in the area show a long, gradual move from the Palaeolithic to Neolithic stage, starting in the 4th millennium BC. The Postglacial culture was not true" Neolithic in that it farmed but Neolithic in the sense of using pottery. It was actually a Mongoloid hunting-and-fishing culture (except in southern Siberia around the Aral Sea) with a microlithic flint industry with polished-stone blade tools together with antler bone and ivory artifacts; pointed- or round-based pottery and the bow and arrow. Points and scrapers made on flakes of Mousterian aspect and pebble tools showing a survival of the ancient chopper-chopping tool tradition of eastern Asia have also been found. There was a woodworking and quartzite industry and some cattle breeding. The first bronzes of the region are related to the Shang period of northern China and the earliest Ordos bronzes. The area covers the mountainous regions from Lake Baikal to the Pacific Ocean and the taiga (coniferous forest) and tundra of northern Siberia. A first stage is name for the site Isakovo and is known only from a small number of burials in cemeteries. The succeeding Serovo stage is also known mainly from burials with the addition of the compound bow backed with bone plates. The third phase named Kitoi has burials with red ochre and composite fish hooks possibly indicate more fishing. The succeeding Glazkovo phase of the 2nd millennium BC saw the beginnings of metal-using but generally showed continuity in artifact and burial types. Some remains of semi-subterranean dwellings with centrally located hearths occur together with female statuettes in bone."
Bakong: CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: The earliest surviving temple mountain in southeast Angkor, Cambodia, the first Cambodian temple to be built primarily of stone (sandstone) rather than brick. It was built by king Indravarman I (reigned 877-c 890 AD) and was probably finished in 881. The central tower of the pyramidal structure in 34 meters high. At the summit of the central shrine was a linga, the phallic emblem sacred to Shiva. Around the base of the terraced pyramid stood eight large shrines inside the main enclosure, with a series of moats, causeways, and auxiliary sculptures guarding the approaches to the exterior. Bakong became the model for many larger royal temples at Angkor. These served as monuments to the greatness of their patrons and, subsequently, as their tombs.
band: CATEGORY: term
DEFINITION: A term in cultural anthropology describing the simplest type of human social organization consisting of a small number of nuclear families (30-50 people) who are informally organized for subsistence and security purposes. Bands are egalitarian and based mainly on kinship and marriage and the division of labor is based on age and sex. Bands may also be integrated into a larger community, usually called a tribe. Bands exist in sparsely populated areas and use primitive technologies (and are often hunters and gatherers) -- ranging from the desert-dwelling Australian Aborigines, the Pygmies of the Congo rain forests, and the Kaska Indians of the Yukon. Bands often moved seasonally to exploit wild (undomesticated) food resources.
Bandkeramik: SYNONYMS OR RELATED TERMS: Linearbandkeramik, LBK, Linienbandkeramik (German)
CATEGORY: ceramics; culture
DEFINITION: A pottery of the Danubian I culture, a Neolithic culture that existed over large areas of Europe north and west of the Danube River c 5th millennium BC. It consists of hemispherical bowls and globular jars, usually round-based and strongly suggesting copies of gourds. The name refers specifically to the standard incised linear decoration which was pairs of parallel lines forming spirals, meanders, chevrons, etc. There was farming of emmer wheat and barley and the keeping of domestic animals such as cattle. The most common stone tool was a polished stone adze. The people lived in large rectangular houses in medium-sized village communities or as small, dispersed clusters.
barbed and tanged arrowhead: CATEGORY: artifact
DEFINITION: Triangular-shaped flint arrowheads of the later Neolithic and early Bronze Age in Europe. Distinctive in having a short rectangular tang on the base opposite the point, symmetrically set either side of which is a barb. The tang was used to secure the arrow tip to its shaft and usually projects slightly below the ends of the barbs.
barrel urn: CATEGORY: artifact
DEFINITION: Type of large middle Bronze Age pot found within the overall repertoire of the Deverel-Rimbury ceramic tradition of southern Britain in the period 1500 BC through to 1200 BC. Usually over 60cm high, barrel urns have a distinctive profile, wider in the middle than at the base or the rim, often with applied cordons that are decorated with finger-tip impressions. Found on domestic sites where they were presumably used as storage vessels and as containers for cremations often found as secondary burials in earlier round barrows.
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 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.
Basket Maker: SYNONYMS OR RELATED TERMS: 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.
Bedsa: CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: A rock-cut Buddhist temple in Deccan, India that is dated 1st century BC. Its interior is elaborately decorated and the pillars have vase-shaped bases and bell-shaped capitals surmounted by sculpted human and animal groups. In front of the temple is a facade and a large entrance with decorated pillars.
beehive quern: CATEGORY: artifact
DEFINITION: Type of rotary quern common in Roman times which had an extremely thick dome-shaped upper stone with a slightly flared base; some authorities believe such querns have a phallic symbolism
biconical: CATEGORY: artifact
DEFINITION: A vessel is said to be biconical when the sides make a sharp, inward change of direction, as if two truncated cones were placed base to base.
Big Game Hunting tradition: SYNONYMS OR RELATED TERMS: Big Game Hunting culture
CATEGORY: culture
DEFINITION: Any of several ancient North American cultures based on hunting herd animals such as mammoth and bison; the first indigenous cultural complex of the continent. It may have developed from an earlier hunting culture whose people arrived in North America between 20,000-40,000 years ago in an interstadial (break) in the Wisconsin Ice Age. It is also probable that this culture derived from a migration across the Bering Land Bridge c 13,000-14,000 BC. The remains of these cultures have been found mainly in the North American Plains as well as in the eastern and southwestern regions of North America. Lanceolate projectile points, such as Clovis and Folsom, characterize the tradition. The big-game-hunting tradition began to decline or change after 8000 BC.
biostratigraphy: CATEGORY: measure
DEFINITION: In paleontology, a technique for the relative chronology of deposits based on the assumption that the set of fossils found in a deposit reflects the paleoecology of a particular time and place.
blade: SYNONYMS OR RELATED TERMS: blade tool; blade-~ (used attributively)
CATEGORY: lithics
DEFINITION: A long, narrow, sharp-edged, thin flake of stone, used especially as a tool in prehistoric times. This flake is detached by striking from a prepared core, often with a hammer. Its length is usually at least twice the width. The blade may be a tool in itself, or may be the blank from which a two-edged knife, burin, or spokeshave is manufactured. This term, then, is used by archaeologists in several ways: (1) It can refer to a fragment of stone removed from a parent core. The blade is used to manufacture artifacts in what is known as the blade and core industry". (2) That portion of an artifact usually a projectile point or a knife beyond the base or tang. (3) In certain cultures small artifacts are called microblades. It was a great technological advance when it was discovered that a knapper could make more than one tool from a chunk of stone. The Châtelperronian and Aurignacian were the earliest of the known blade cultures -- associated with the arrival of modern humans. Industries in which many of the tools are made from blades became prominent at the start of the Upper Palaeolithic period. A typical blade has parallel sides and regular scars running down its back parallel with the sides. A 'backed blade' is a blade with one edge blunted by the removal of tiny flakes. Blades led to another invention -- the handle. A handle made it easier and much safer to manipulate a sharp two-edged blade."
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.
box: CATEGORY: artifact
DEFINITION: A container with a flat base and sides and usually a lid
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.
Breuil, Abbé Henri (1877-1961): SYNONYMS OR RELATED TERMS: Breuil, Henri-Édouard-Prosper
CATEGORY: person
DEFINITION: A French archaeologist who was regarded as an authority on prehistoric cave paintings of Europe and Africa. He devoted much of his life to studying examples of prehistoric art in southern France, northern Spain, and southern Africa. Breuil was a fine draftsman, and his greatest contributions were in the recording and interpretation of cave art in more than 600 publications. He proposed a series of four successive art styles, based on the superposition of paintings found in many caves, and held the view that the purpose of the paintings was sympathetic magic, to ensure success in hunting. Breuil fit the Aurignacian culture into its right place within the French Palaeolithic sequence and was responsible for working out the chronologies of French Upper and Middle Paleolithic periods.
Bronze Age: CATEGORY: chronology
DEFINITION: The second age of the Three Age System, beginning about 4000-3000 BC in the Mideast and about 2000-1500 BC in Europe. It followed the Stone Age and preceded the Iron Age and was defined by a shift from stone tools and weapons to the use of bronze. During this time civilization based on agriculture and urban life developed. Trading to obtain tin for making bronze led to the rapid diffusion of ideas and technological improvements. The Iron Age began about 1500 BC in the Mideast and 900 BC in Europe. Bronze artifacts were valued highly and became part of many hoards. In the Americas, true bronze was used in northern Argentina before 1000 AD and it spread to Peru and the Incas. Bronze was never as important in the New World as in the Old. The Bronze Age is often divided into three periods: Early Bronze Age (c 4000-2000 BC), Middle Bronze Age (c 2000-1600 BC), and Late Bronze Age (c 1600-1200 BC) but he chronological limits and the terminology vary from region to region.
Bubalus period: CATEGORY: chronology
DEFINITION: The earliest phase of rock art in northern Africa, between 12,000-8,000 BC, in which large-scale carvings of animals appeared. These early engravings -- in southern Oran, in Algeria, and in Libya -- reflect a hunting economy based on the now-extinct giant buffalo Homoioceras antiquus or Bubalus antiquus (hence the name).
Bug / Dniester: SYNONYMS OR RELATED TERMS: Bug-Dniester
CATEGORY: culture
DEFINITION: A complex of sites in two river valleys in Russia from the 5th millennium BC. Each phase is typified by short-lived sites on river terraces, occupied year-round for 5-10 years. There was hunting, fishing and shell-collecting, and some domestication of pigs, cattle, and einkorn wheat. Pointed-base pottery evolved there.
Bylany: CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: A large village settlement of the Danubian culture in the loess lands of the Bohemian plain of Czechoslovakia. This large site had many phases of occupation, including by people who made stroke-ornamented pottery. There were timber-framed long houses in the three main phases of the Linear Pottery sequence. Subsistence was based on emmer wheat cultivation and cattle husbandry.
Byzantine empire: SYNONYMS OR RELATED TERMS: Byzantium (later Constantinople, now Istanbul)
CATEGORY: site; culture
DEFINITION: The eastern half of the Roman Empire, based in Byzantium (later Constantinople, now Istanbul), an ancient Greek settlement on the European side of the Bosporus. It was inaugurated in AD 330 by the Emperor Constantine I who transferred the capital of the Roman Empire to Byzantium. The empire survived the collapse of the Western empire until overrun by the Ottoman Turks in 1453. Originally a Greek colony at the entrance to the Black Sea, a typical Roman town was then laid out over it. Remains of the imperial palace lie south of the former Greek city nucleus. The land walls, giving the city an area greater than that of Rome, were built by Theodosius II (408-450 AD) and are among the best-preserved ancient fortifications anywhere. In the 7th century BC Dorian Greeks founded the settlement of Byzantium on a trapezoidal promontory on the European side of the Bosporus channel which leads from the Mediterranean to the Black Sea and separates Europe from Asia. Septimus Severus (193-211 AD) was responsible for restoring the city, re-walling it and beginning the construction of the limestone racecourse, the Hippodrome. In 368 AD, Valens raised his still impressive aqueduct. In 413 Theodosius II built the colossal surviving walls of stone and brick-faced concrete, with 96 variously shaped towers, and the principal entrance at the Golden Gate. The Eastern Christian empire preserved much of Greek and Roman culture and introduced eastern ideas to the west. Byzantium was essentially a Christian church state, preserving its religion against the onslaught of Islam, despite the Arab encroachments on Palestine, Syria, and northern Africa during the 6th-7th centuries AD. The Byzantine period is the time, about the 6th-12th centuries AD, when its style of architecture and art developed. Byzantine architecture is noted for its Christian places of worship and introduced the cupola, or dome, an almost square ground plan in place of the long aisles of the Roman church, and piers instead of columns. The apse always formed part of Byzantine buildings, which were richly decorated, and contained much marble. St. Sophia (532-537), St. Mark's (Venice, 977) and the Cathedral of Aix-la-Chapelle (796-804) are of pure Byzantine style. Byzantine painting preceded and foreshadowed the Renaissance of art in Italy. Mosaics are perhaps the supreme achievement of Byzantine art.
calendar: SYNONYMS OR RELATED TERMS: calendrics
CATEGORY: term
DEFINITION: A cyclical system of measuring the passage of time. The day is the fundamental unit of computation in any calendar. Most ancient civilizations (and perhaps some non-literate prehistoric societies) developed calendrical systems to mark the passage of time and various methods have been employed by different peoples. Where these were both carefully calculated and written down, as in Egypt, Mesopotamia and Mesoamerica, they are of considerable assistance to archaeologists for dating purposes. In the Americas, the origins of calendrics are still obscure, but evidence from Monte Albán suggests that the 52-year Calendar Round was known by the 6th century BC. The Long Count system was in use by c 1st century BC if not before. Ancient Near Eastern calendars varied from city to city and from period to period. In most cities the year started in the spring and was divided into 12 or 13 months. In some places the months were of fixed length; in others they were lunar months starting at the first sighting of the crescent of the new moon. As there are more than 12 lunar months in a solar year additional, or intercalary, months were included so that every third year contained 13 months. The earliest Egyptian calendars were based on lunar observations combined with the annual cycle of the Nile inundation, measured with nilometers. On this basis, the Egyptians divided the year into 12 months and three seasons: akhet (inundation), peret (spring/ crops), and shemu (harvest). The Egyptians had 30-day months and 5 intercalary days in their solar or civil calendar. For agricultural purposes and for determining religious festivals, they used a different calendar based on observations of Sirius, the dog star. The calendar in use in ancient Mesopotamia and the Levant was lunar, based on 12 months of 30 days each. This produced a year of only 354 days, about 11-1/4 days short of the true solar year; the necessary correction was made by the addition of seven months over a period of 19 years. This type of calendar is still used in both Judaism and Islam for religious purposes, though many countries now also employ the Gregorian solar calendar for secular purposes. The origin of the calendric system in general use today -- the Gregorian calendar -- can be traced back to the Roman republican calendar, which is thought to have been introduced by the fifth king of Rome, Tarquinius Priscus (616-579 BC). This calendar was likely derived from an earlier Roman calendar -- a lunar system of 10 months -- that was supposedly devised about 738 BC by Romulus, the founder of Rome. In the year 46 BC, Julius Caesar corrected the calendar by having a year of 445 days (known as the ultimus annus confusionis' or 'the last year of the muddled reckoning'). He then adapted the Egyptian solar calendar for Roman use, inserting extra days in the shorter months to bring the total up to 365, with the addition of a single day between the 23rd and 24th February in leap years. This calendar, known as the Julian Calendar, remained in use until the time of Gregory XIII in 1582, who made a further correction (of eleven days) and instituted the calendar which is in general use today. Very useful to Mesoamerican archaeologists is the Maya Long Count or Initial Series, which was a means of recording absolute time. Its starting date of 3113 BC (using the Goodman-Thompson-Martinex correlation) marks some mythical event in Maya history and itself stands at the beginning of a cycle 13 Baktuns long. A Baktun at 144,000 days in the largest unit of time in the calendar and is further divided into smaller units: the Katun (7200 days); the Tun (360 days); the Uninal (20 days) and the Kin (a single days). Thus Long Count dates are expressed in terms of these units in a five place notation. Therefore the date 9.18.0.0.0. indicates the passage of 9 x 144,000 plus 18 x 7200 days since the initial date of 3113 BC. In cultural contexts, however, the dates are inscribed as a series of hieroglyphs which incorporate numeration via bars (units of five) and dots (units of one). Short count dating replaced the Long Count after 900 AD and the Katun replaced the Baktun as the largest unit. It is less precise, however.
Calendar Stone: CATEGORY: artifact
DEFINITION: A 20-ton, 4-meter wide carved monolith commissioned by the emperor Axayacatl in 1479, which symbolizes the Aztec universe. The populations of central Mexico believed that they were living in the fifth epoch of a series of worlds (or suns) marked by cyclical generation and destruction. The central figure of the stone is this fifth sun, Tonatuih. Surrounding this are four rectangular cartouches containing dates and symbols for the gods Ehecatl, Texcatlipoca, Tlaloc and Chilchihuitlicue who represent the four worlds previously destroyed and the dates of the previous holocausts -- 4 Tiger, 4 Wind, 4 Rain, and 4 Water. The central panel contains the date 4 Ollin (movement) on which the Aztecs showed that they anticipated that their current world would be destroyed by an earthquake. In a series of increasingly larger concentric bands, symbols for the 20 days of the month, precious materials, and certain stars are represented. The outermost band depicts two massive serpents whose heads meet at the stone's base. The Calendar Stone" is in the Museo Nacional de Antropología (National Museum of Anthropology) in Mexico City."
Canaanite amphora: CATEGORY: artifact
DEFINITION: Common transport vessel of the Late Bronze Age in the eastern Mediterranean. Canaanite amphoras average 30 inches in height and have a short, relatively narrow flaring mouth, a wide shoulder with two handles on it, and a tapering profile running down to a narrow pointed base. They were made in various centers in the eastern Mediterranean and were roughly contemporary with stirrup jars.
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.
Capsian and Capsian Neolithic: SYNONYMS OR RELATED TERMS: Capsian industry
CATEGORY: culture
DEFINITION: A Mesolithic/Stone Age (8000 BC-2700 BC) cultural complex prominent in inland northern Africa near the present border between Tunisia and Algeria. Its shell midden sites are in the area of the great salt lakes of what is now southern Tunisia, the type site being Jabal al-Maqta'. The tool kit of the Capsian is a classic example of the industries of the late Würm Glacial Period and it is apparently related to the Gravettian stage of Europe's Perigordian industry (which dates from about 17,000 years ago). However, it occurs in Neothermal (postglacial) times and, like its predecessor, the Ibero-Maurusian industry (Oranian industry), the Capsian was a microlithic tool complex. It differed from the Ibero-Maurusian, however, in having a far more varied tool kit with large backed blades, scrapers, backed bladelets, microburins, and burins in its earlier phase and a gradual development of geometric microliths later. These became its leading feature by the 6th millennium BC. Shortly after 5000 BC, pottery and domesticated animals were introduced. Some North African rock paintings are attributed to people of the Capsian industry. The Capsian Neolithic, with pointed-base pottery and a stone industry, lasted from c 6200-5300 BP, in the Atlas Mountains of Algeria and the northern Sahara. The name derives from Capsa, the Latin form of Gafsa, a town in south central Tunisia where such artifacts were first discovered. Hunting and snail-collecting seem to have formed the basis of the economy. Human remains from Capsian sites are mostly of Mechta-Afalou type.
carbon-14 dating: SYNONYMS OR RELATED TERMS: radiocarbon dating
CATEGORY: technique
DEFINITION: The occurrence of natural radioactive carbon in the atmosphere allows archaeologists the ability to date organic materials as old as 50,000 years. Carbon-14 is continuously produced in the atmosphere and decays with a half-life of 5,730-year (+/- 40 years). Unlike most isotopic dating methods, the carbon-14 dating technique relies on the progressive decay or disappearance of the radioactive parent with time. This is now a common method for estimating the age of a carbonaceous archaeological artifacts. The radioactivity of an artifact's carbon-14 content determines how long ago the specimen was separated from equilibrium with the atmosphere-plant-animal cycle. The method is based on the principle that all plants and animals, while they are alive, take in small amounts of carbon-14 and when they die, the intake ends. By measuring the loss rate of the carbon 14, the age of the object can be established. Measurement of the carbon-14 activity in a cypress beam in the tomb of the Egyptian Pharaoh Snefru, for example, established the date of the tomb as c 2600 BC.
caryatid: SYNONYMS OR RELATED TERMS: pl. caryatides; korai
CATEGORY: structure
DEFINITION: A supporting base or column of a structure shaped in the form of a woman. Most often, a caryatid supported a porch, entablature, or a colonnade and was in the form of a draped woman bearing it on her head. The best known are of the Erechtheum at Athens (420-415 BC) and other examples part of three small buildings (treasuries) at Delphi in Greece (550-530 BC). The figures' origin can be traced to mirror handles of nude figures carved from ivory in Phoenicia and draped figures cast from bronze in archaic Greece. Caryatids were used in the Roman emperor Hadrian's Villa at Tivoli, the Villa Albani at Rome, two colossal figures at Eleusis, in Marcus Vipsanius Agrippa's Pantheon, and in the colonnade surrounding the Forum of Augustus at Rome. The male counterparts of caryatids are called 'atlantes'.
cation-ratio dating: SYNONYMS OR RELATED TERMS: cation ratio dating
CATEGORY: technique
DEFINITION: A method of direct dating rock carvings and engravings, potentially applicable to Paleolithic artifacts with a strong patina caused by exposure to desert dust. The technique is based on the principle that cations of certain elements are more soluble than others; they leach out of rock varnish more rapidly than the less soluble elements, and their concentration decreases with time. A cation is an ion carrying a positive charge which moves toward the negative electrode/cathode during electrolysis.
cauldron: CATEGORY: artifact
DEFINITION: A large metal vessel for cooking, usually with a round base, heavy flange rim, and handles for suspending it over a fire. Examples date from the European Late Bronze Age, with especially important ones from Urartu. In the Iron Age, they were sometimes made of silver. These cauldrons were usually made of sheet bronze riveted together and having 2-4 handles. Cauldrons were a sign of great wealth or power.
Cerny: CATEGORY: culture
DEFINITION: An Early Neolithic culture of the Paris and Loire regions of France, c 4400-4000 BC. Cerny followed Villeneuve-St.-Germain and preceded the Chasséen. It was characterized by round-based vessels with impressed decoration or applied cordons.
chamberstick: CATEGORY: artifact
DEFINITION: A single candle holder with a curved handle coming from the base
channel flake: CATEGORY: lithics
DEFINITION: The long, thin blade if stone removed longitudinally from the base of a fluted Paleo-Indian projectile point by percussion or pressure from the center line of either face. The smooth depression it leaves behind is known as a flute or channel.
Chavín de Huántar: SYNONYMS OR RELATED TERMS: Chavín
CATEGORY: site; culture
DEFINITION: The area of the great ruin of the earliest highly developed culture in pre-Columbian Peru, which flourished between about 900 and 200 BC and may have originated c 1200 BC. During this time Chavín art spread over the north and central parts of what is now Peru. It is not known whether this was the actual center of origin of the culture and art style. The central building at Chavín de Huántar is a massive temple complex constructed of dressed rectangular stone blocks, with interior galleries and bas-relief carvings on pillars and lintels. The principal motifs of the Chavín style are human, feline, and crocodilian or serpentine figures. Carved stone objects, fantastic pottery that demonstrates the most advanced skill, stone construction, and remarkably sophisticated goldwork have been found. Chavín pottery is known from the decorated types found in the temple and in graves on the northern coast, where it is called Cupisnique. Until the end of the period, the ware was monochrome -- dull red, brown, or gray -- and stonelike. Vessels were massive and heavy and the main forms are open bowls with vertical or slightly expanding sides and flat or gently rounded bases, flasks, and stirrup-spouted bottles. The surface may be modeled in relief or decorated by incision, stamping, brushing, rouletting, or dentate rocker-stamping. Some bowls have deeply incised designs on both the inside and outside faces. Its art style was never surpassed in the complexity of its iconography. The buildings, which show several periods of reconstruction, consist of various temple platforms containing a series of interlinked galleries and chambers on different levels. In the oldest part of the complex is a granite block, the Lanzón, on which is carved a human figure with feline fangs and with snakes in place of hair. Relief carvings in a similar style decorate the lintels, gateways, and cornices at the site, and human and jaguar heads of stone were on the outside wall of one of the platforms. On the coast, where stone is scarce, the highland architecture is replaced by work in adobe. Further south, the Paracas culture shows strong continuing Chavín influence.
Cheops (fl early 26th c BC): SYNONYMS OR RELATED TERMS: Kheops, Khufu, Khufwey, Khnomkhufwey
CATEGORY: person
DEFINITION: The second king of the 4th Dynasty (c 2575-2465 BC) of Egypt who erected the Great Pyramid of Giza. It is the largest of the three pyramids, the length of each side at the base averaging 755 3/4 feet (230.4 m) and its original height being 481 2/5 feet (147 m). Cheops/Khufu reigned c 2570 BC. His sons, Djedefre (Redjedef) and Chephren (Khafre), succeeded him.
Chiricahua: CATEGORY: culture
DEFINITION: The second of three chronological stages of the Cochise culture in southern Arizona and New Mexico, with dates clustering between 4000-500 BC. The appearance of distinctive, side-notched projectile points indicates an interest in hunting though a mixed food-gathering economy is indicated by assemblages commonly including cobble manos, shallow basin grinding slabs, choppers, and scrapers. There were large base camps, storage pits, and outlying specialized-activity camps that show some permanence. There is evidence from Bat Cave in New Mexico of the cultivation of primitive maize.
chronology: CATEGORY: chronology; technique
DEFINITION: Any method used to order time and to place events in the sequence in which they occurred. A sequential ordering that places cultural entities in temporal, and often spatial, distribution. It involves the collection of dates or successive datings establishing the position in time of a series of phenomena such as the phases of a civilization or the events of the history of a state. A chronology is relative/floating when only the order of a succession of facts is known, but not their dates, and absolute when the opposite is true. For periods or areas for which no textual evidence is available, relative chronologies have to be established and these are mostly based on pottery sequences and typology. Relative chronology is also based on the application of the principles of stratigraphy and cross-dating. The discovery of inscribed monuments and calendars associated with dated astronomical observations contributed to the development of an Egyptian chronology and it has served as a framework -- through cross-dating -- for all other Near Eastern chronologies. Inscribed Egyptian objects found in Near Eastern contexts have allowed the latter to be dated. Absolute chronology is based on scientific methods such as radiocarbon dating, thermoluminescence dating, and archaeomagnetism. Dates are often calibrated with dendrochronological dates. For dates after 1500 BC, an absolute chronology is not likely to change by more than ten years.
cippus: SYNONYMS OR RELATED TERMS: pl. cippi
CATEGORY: structure
DEFINITION: A small, low column or pillar of stone, usually rectangular or cylindrical and with moldings at the top and bottom instead of a capital and a base. Often inscribed, it is normally associated with burials or tombs and used as a landmark, memorial, or a sepulchral monument.
classic orders of architecture: SYNONYMS OR RELATED TERMS: 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.
Clovis point: SYNONYMS OR RELATED TERMS: Clovis spear point
CATEGORY: lithics
DEFINITION: A distinctive, fluted, lanceolate (leaf-shaped) stone projectile point characteristic of the early Paleo-Indian period, c 10,000-9000 BC, and often found in association with mammoth bones. It is named for Clovis, New Mexico, where it was first found. The concave-based projectile point has a longitudinal groove on each face running from the base to a point not more than halfway along the tool. The base of a Clovis point is concave and the edge of the base usually blunted through grinding, probably to ensure that the thongs, attaching the point to the projectile, were not cut. It is assumed to have been a spear because of its size; the length of points varies from 2-4 in. (7-12 cm), and their widest width is 1-1 1/2 in (3-4 cm). Clovis points and the artifacts associated with them (grouped together as the Llano complex) are among the earliest tools known from the New World and have been found over most of North America, with a few outliers as far south as Mexico and Panama. It is the earliest projectile point of the Big Game Hunting tradition of North America. From these points came the later, more sophisticated points, such as the Folsom.
cluster analysis: SYNONYMS OR RELATED TERMS: cluster sampling
CATEGORY: technique
DEFINITION: A multivariate statistical technique which assesses the similarities between units or assemblages, based on the occurrence or non-occurrence of specific artifact types or other components within them. It also involves comparing the distances between points or objects, whose dimensions are measurements or scores for a number of variables. Cluster analysis results are normally plotted as a dendrogram" a treelike representation of the distances between objects in hyperspace. Items that are closer together are deemed to be more closely related. Researchers select a case by random sampling and then include contiguous cases as part of the sample."
Cochise: CATEGORY: culture
DEFINITION: An ancient North American Indian culture that existed 9,000-2,000 years ago, in Arizona and western New Mexico. The culture was named for the ancient Lake Cochise (now Willcox Playa, Arizona), near which important finds were made. The Cochise, a local variant of the Desert Culture, contrasted with the Big-Game Hunting cultures to the east (Clovis, Folsom), and was based on the gathering and collecting wild plant foods. In later stages, there is evidence of the development of agriculture. The Cochise culture has been divided into three developmental periods. The earliest stage, Sulphur Spring, dates from 6000 or 7000 BC to about 4000 BC and is characterized by milling stones for grinding wild seeds and by various scrapers, but no knives, blades, or projectile points. Its type site has been associated with mammoth and extinct horse remains and there are some indications that hunting was done. During the second stage, Chiricahua, lasting from 4000 to perhaps 500 BC, the appearance of projectile points seems to indicate an increased interest in hunting, and the remains of a primitive form of maize in Bat Cave (NM) suggest the beginnings of farming. In the final or San Pedro stage, from 500 BC to the beginning of the Christian era, milling stones were replaced by mortars and pestles (mano and metate), and pit houses (houses of poles and earth built over pits) appeared. During the San Pedro stage, pottery appeared in the area of the Mogollon Indians. The poorly understood Cazador phase may bridge the long hiatus between Sulphur Springs and Chiricahua, but the evidence so far in inconclusive.
Cody complex: CATEGORY: culture
DEFINITION: A North American flint industry with a late Plato tool assemblage representing the last of the plains-based hunting groups. First identified in Cody, Wyoming, it dates to c 7500-5000 BC. There are Eden and Scotsbluff varieties of finely worked lanceolate blades and projectile points and a unique asymmetrical knife with a shoulder on one side (the Cody knife), usually found with bison remains.
cognized model: CATEGORY: technique
DEFINITION: A representation of reality which is based in part on idealized expectations about the real situation.
coil-building: SYNONYMS OR RELATED TERMS: coiling, coil-built pottery
CATEGORY: ceramics
DEFINITION: A method of pottery-making in which a rope of clay is coiled around a flat base and continued up to form the walls of a pot. The layers of clay are pressed together, and the inside and outside smoothed off to remove the lines between the coils. Frequently this is not done completely, and the coils may still be visible. Pottery often breaks along the coil lines.
coiled: SYNONYMS OR RELATED TERMS: 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: CATEGORY: ceramics
DEFINITION: A primary forming technique for producing pottery vessels, by which ropelike cylinders of the body are gradually added along the circumference of the vessel, starting at a disklike base, to build up the vessel's shape.
coiling: SYNONYMS OR RELATED TERMS: 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.
column: CATEGORY: structure
DEFINITION: In architecture, a cylindrical or slightly tapering support or pillar for some part of a building, usually made of stone or wood. There were classic orders" of columns which had specific shapes for the base shaft and capital which supported the entablature. In Gothic and Norman architecture the column was the pillar or pier supporting an arch. A column may also stay alone as Trajan's Column in Rome. A circuit of columns enclosing an open space in the interior of a building was called a peristyle."
compilation: CATEGORY: term
DEFINITION: A set of interrelated propositions (data) describing material remains, usually through symbolic representation, that facilitates the study of ancient people. Examples are field notebooks, artifact catalogues, archaeological databases.
computer simulation: SYNONYMS OR RELATED TERMS: computer simulation studies
CATEGORY: technique
DEFINITION: Reconstruction of the past based on the production of computerized models. The computer model describes ancient conditions and variables and those are used to generate a sequence of events that are compared against the known archaeological record. The computer imitates the dynamic behavior of an explicit model and helps scientists examine how such systems respond to changing conditions and also to refine and test hypotheses about the past. In an example study of hunter-gatherers, the effect of various changes in the natural environment on such factors as the population settlement pattern or subsistence could be monitored; or the growth of a settlement system could be studied under different conditions of population, economy, technological, or environmental change. The relationships between the various elements in the cultural system must be specified, and then any variety of actual conditions can be simulated. The data used could be derived from observations and the simulation used to examine the effect of different assumptions; the results could then be compared to the observed data to test their validity.
contextual seriation: SYNONYMS OR RELATED TERMS: sequence dating
CATEGORY: technique
DEFINITION: A seriation technique, also called sequence dating, pioneered by Sir Flinders Petrie in the 19th century, in which artifacts are arranged according to the frequencies of their co-occurrence in specific contexts -- usually burials. This relative dating method, based on shared typological features, enabled Sir Flinders Petrie to establish the temporal order of a large number of Egyptian graves.
Cordilleran: SYNONYMS OR RELATED TERMS: Cordilleran ice sheet; Laurentide
CATEGORY: chronology; culture
DEFINITION: The ice mass that covered the coastal mountains along the Pacific Ocean coast of North America from northern Washington state into southern Alaska. At its maximum extent, about 20,000 years ago, it connected with the Laurentide ice sheet to the east and with the Pacific Ocean to the west, and reached a thickness of some 3 kilometers (1 mile). The Cordilleran Geosyncline is a linear trough in the Earth's crust in which rocks of Late Precambrian to Mesozoic age (roughly 600 million to 66 million years ago) were deposited along the western coast of North America, from southern Alaska through western Canada and the United States, probably to western Mexico. The eastern boundary of the geosyncline extends from southeastern Alaska along the eastern edge of the Northern Cordillera and Northern Rocky Mountains of Canada and Montana, along the eastern edge of the Great Basin of Utah and Nevada, and into southeastern California and Mexico. The Old Cordilleran culture appeared in the Pacific Northwest about 9000 or 10,000 BC and persisted until about 5000 BC in some areas. Subsistence was based on hunting, fishing, and gathering. Simple willow-leaf-shaped, bipointed projectile points are characteristic artifacts.
cordoned urn: CATEGORY: artifact
DEFINITION: A type of middle Bronze Age pottery found mainly in the northern parts of the British Isles during the 2nd millennium BC, probably derived from COLLARED URNS. Cordoned urns are generally tall straight-sided vessels with a flat base, slightly flaring body and a simple rim. Their name derives from the fact that the outer face is decorated with applied cordons which often define regions of the surface which are ornamented with incised decoration.
corner notch: SYNONYMS OR RELATED TERMS: corner-notched, corner-notched point
CATEGORY: artifact
DEFINITION: A major projectile form which is described as a point that has had notches for hafting struck into the corners of the base. Also, a flaking technique applied to accommodate hafting which involved the flaking of notches into the basal corners of a preform base
correlation: CATEGORY: technique
DEFINITION: The use of various methods, often multiple methods, to demonstrate the equivalency of stratigraphic units. This term refers to the relation of one stratigraphical unit to another, by petrological, osteological, lithographic, cultural, chronological, or palaeontological means. For example, stratigraphic units may be correlated using palaeontological criteria, absolute dating methods, relative dating methods, cross-dating methods, and position relative to the glacial-interglacial cycle by examining physical and biological attributes. Correlation of fossil inclusions is a principle of stratigraphy: that strata may be correlated based on the sequence and uniqueness of their floral and faunal content.
Cortaillod: CATEGORY: site; culture
DEFINITION: A Neolithic village site of pile dwellings on the edge of Lake Neuchâtel, and the type site of the oldest Neolithic culture in western Switzerland, with a starting date of c 3800 BC and lasting to after 2500 BC. Cortaillod is noted for the fine preservation of wood, cloth, and plant remains, and for its plain round-based pottery of Western Neolithic type. A large number of wooden and birch-bark utensils and containers have been found as well as organic remains, including fruits and nuts as well as cereals, pulses, and flax. The houses were built on wooden frames with walls of clay set on closely spaced timbers; the roof were probably thatched. The inhabitants practiced mixed farming, plus hunting and fishing. The round-based dark burnished pottery demonstrates connections with the Chassey culture of France.
crepido: CATEGORY: structure
DEFINITION: In Roman antiquity, a kind of base or stand upon which another object rests, and by analogy the embankment of a quay, a dike, or jetty. Also used for the raised causeway for foot passengers at the side of a road or street (as in Pompeii) or for the platforms or stages around a great altar.
cross-dating: SYNONYMS OR RELATED TERMS: cross dating
CATEGORY: technique
DEFINITION: A correlation dating technique that can yield a relative or absolute age or chronology. The basis of cross-dating is the occurrence of finds in association. The assumption is that a particular type of artifact, for example a type of sword, when found in an undated context will bear a similar date to one found in a dated context, thus enabling the whole of the undated context to be given a chronological value. The method is based on the assumption that typologies evolved at the same rate and in the same way over a wide area or alternatively on assumptions of diffusion. Many of the chronologies constructed before the advent of chronometric dating techniques were based on cross-dating. New techniques such as radiocarbon dating showed some of the links established by cross-dating to be invalid, so the method has become somewhat discredited. However, its use is still helpful where recognizable products of dateable manufacture are found in undated contexts with no possibility of using a chronometric dating technique. So in the absence of geochronology, two cultural groups can only be proved contemporary by the discovery of links between them. If in culture A an object produced by culture B is found, A must be contemporary with, or later than, B. The term cross-dating ought strictly to be used only when an object of culture A is also found in proved association with culture B, when overlap of at least part of the time span of each is proved. Items having an established date, such as dated coins or buildings, or ceramics of known manufacture are most often used. By itself, a cross-dated chronology does not give absolute dates, but it may be calibrated by reference to other dating methods. A type of cross-dating has always been used in geology and stratigraphical sequences are often correlated by the assemblages of fossils they contain; this is known as biostratigraphy. The archaeological versions of cross-dating may have been developed directly out of the geological method and may have been based on a false analogy between biological fossils and archaeological artifacts.
cultural processual approach: SYNONYMS OR RELATED TERMS: cultural process
CATEGORY: technique
DEFINITION: A deductive approach to archaeological research that is designed to study the changes and interactions in cultural systems and the processes by which human cultures change throughout time. A cultural process is the cumulative cause-and-effect of the mechanisms and interactions within a culture that produce stability and/or change. The delineation of cultural process is one of the goals of archaeological research. Processual archaeologists use both descriptive and explanatory models based on functional, ecological, or multilinear cultural evolutionary concepts of culture.
culture-historical approach: SYNONYMS OR RELATED TERMS: culture history, culture historical approach, culture-historical theory
CATEGORY: technique
DEFINITION: An approach to archaeological interpretation which uses the procedure of the traditional historian; the organization of the archaeological record into a basic sequence of events in time and space. This approach assumes that artifacts can be used to build a generalized picture of human culture and descriptive models in time and space, and that these can be interpreted. It is the reconstruction of the prehistoric past based on temporal and spatial syntheses of data and the application of general descriptive models usually derived from a normative concept of culture and induction. Culture history is the chronological arrangement of the time phases and events of a particular culture.
Cuvier, Georges (1769-1832): CATEGORY: person
DEFINITION: French zoologist who was the founder of comparative anatomy and paleontology. He was an expert on fossil bones and one of the most influential proponents of catastrophism". Although Cuvier's theory of catastrophism did not last he based the science of palaeontology on a firm empirical foundation. He introduced fossils into zoological classification showing the progressive relation between rock strata and their fossil remains and by demonstrated in his comparative anatomy and his reconstruction of fossil skeletons the importance of functional and anatomical relationships."
cylinder seal: CATEGORY: artifact
DEFINITION: A cylinder engraved with a design, scene, and/or inscription which was impressed onto the plastic clay when the cylinder seal was rolled over a clay tablet. This was the standard seal form of the Mesopotamian civilization, starting in the Uruk period. The incised stone cylinder was rolled over a soft surface so that the design appeared in relief. These seals were used to mark property and to legalize documents. Dating is based on changes in the design carved on the seal as well as the seal's size and proportion.
Dálriada: CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: A kingdom founded by Fergus and his brothers when they led the Scots from Ireland to the northeast coast of Scotland in the 5th century AD, roughly the modern county of Argyll (Argyllshire). It was ruled from the rock fortress of Dunadd, a nucleated fortified citadel dating to around 500. It consists of a dry-stone central stronghold with two outer walled enclosures. In about 843, Kenneth MacAlpin extended his rule over the Picts to lay the foundations of the kingdom of Scotland. Dálriada was important for its Celtic church under St. Columba and for the island of Iona which was a base for the conversion of northern Britain to Christianity. The Dariada introduced the Picts to their version of the Ogham script as well as the Scottish/Gaelic language.
dado: CATEGORY: structure
DEFINITION: In Classical architecture, the plain lower portion between the base and cornice of the pedestal of a column. The term also referred to the lower portion of a wall, distinctively decorated, paneled, or painted, up to 2-3 feet above the floor. Internal walls were so treated between the 16th-18th centuries, though toward the close of that period the dado was left plain and merely defined by a rail along the wall.
Danevirke: SYNONYMS OR RELATED TERMS: Danekirke
CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: A 5th-century line of earthwork fortifications that cut across the base of the Jutland peninsula, forming the southern boundary of Viking Age Denmark (now in Germany). Timbers in its construction have been dated to about 737 AD, but these were likely replacement timbers, making the first building phase still earlier. It is puzzling archaeologically because the traces of only one large timber hall have been found, associated with enormous quantities of imported luxury items including a great deal of West European glass. Godfrey, king of Denmark who halted Charlemagne's march northward, began the construction of the Danevirke.
Danubian culture(s): CATEGORY: culture
DEFINITION: Early farming culture(s) of the Danube basin of central and eastern Europe, of the Neolithic and Eneolithic, starting c 5300 BC. The stages, named by Gordon Childe, were Danubian I (Linear Pottery culture), Danubian II (later Neolithic cultures, such as Tisza, Lengyel, Rossen, and stroke-ornamented pottery cultures), and Danubian III (late Lengyel, Brzesc, Kujawski, Jordanow). The first stage was based on slash and burn cultivation and the shoe-last celt, objects of spondylus shell, and the use of bandkeramik. There were substantial timber longhouses during occupations and after abandonment, sites were later reoccupied and villages rebuilt. By the mid-5th millennium, the Danubian II cultures (Rössen, stroke-ornamented ware, Lengyel, Tisza) arose. The term is now outdated.
data dictionary: CATEGORY: database design
DEFINITION: Documentation of all the files, fields, relations, and processes used in a database.
deductive nomological explanation: SYNONYMS OR RELATED TERMS: 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.
Delphic Oracle: CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: The most famous ancient oracle, located at Delphi on the slopes of Mt. Parnassus above the Corinthian Gulf. Traditionally, the oracle first belonged to Mother Earth (Gaea) but later was either given to or stolen by Apollo. At Delphi the medium was a woman over fifty, known as the Pythia, who lived apart from her husband and dressed in a maiden's clothes. Though the oracle, at first called Pytho, was known to Homer and was the site of a Mycenaean settlement, its fame did not come until the 7th-6th centuries BC, when Apollo's advice or sanction was sought by lawmakers, colonists, and cult founders. The Pythia's counsel was most used to predict the outcome of wars or political actions. Consultations were normally restricted to the seventh day of the Delphic month, Apollo's birthday, and were at first banned during the three winter months when Apollo was believed to be visiting the Hyperboreans in the north, though Dionysus later took Apollo's place at Delphi during that time. The usual procedure required a sponsor and the provision of a pelanos (ritual cake) and a sacrificial beast that conformed to rigid physical standards. The Pythia and her consultants first bathed in the Castalian spring; afterward, she drank from the sacred spring Cassotis and then entered the temple. There she apparently descended into a basement cell, mounted a sacred tripod, and chewed leaves of the laurel, Apollo's sacred tree. While in this drugged state, the Pythia would speak, often unintelligibly. Her words, however, were not directly recorded by the inquirer; instead they were interpreted and written down by the priests in what were often very ambiguous words.
dendrochronology: SYNONYMS OR RELATED TERMS: tree-ring dating
CATEGORY: technique
DEFINITION: An absolute chronometric dating technique for measuring time intervals and dating events and environmental changes by reading and dating the pattern (number and condition) of annual rings formed in the trunks of trees. The results are compared to an established tree-ring sequence for a particular region with consideration to annual fluctuations in rainfall which result in variations in the size of the rings laid down by trees on the outside of their trunks. These variations, given favorable conditions, form a consistent pattern; and sections or cores taken from beams in ruins have been matched to provide a long chronology over large areas. The method is based on the principle that trees add a growth ring for each year of their lives, and that variations in climatic conditions will affect the width of these rings on suitable trees. In a very dry year growth will be restricted, and the ring narrow, while a wet and humid year will produce luxuriant growth and a thick ring. By comparing a complete series of rings from a tree of known date (for example, one still alive) with a series from an earlier, dead tree overlapping in age, ring patterns from the central layers of the recent tree and the outer of the old may show a correlation which allows the dating, in calendar years, of the older tree. The central rings of this older tree may then be compared with the outer rings or a yet older tree, and so on until the dates reach back into prehistory. Problems that arise are when climatic variation and suitable trees (sensitive trees react to climatic changes, complacent trees do not) are not be present to produce any significant and recognizable pattern of variation in the rings. Another problem is that there may be gaps in the sequences of available timber, so that the chronology 'floats', or is not tied in to a calendrical date or living trees: it can only be used for relative dating. Also, the tree-ring key can only go back a certain distance into the past, since the availability of sufficient amounts of timber to construct a sequence obviously decreases. Only in a few areas of the world are there species of trees so long-lived that long chronologies can be built up. This method is especially important in the southwestern United States, Alaska, and Scandinavia, dating back to several thousand years BC in some areas. Dendrochronology is of immense importance for archaeology, especially for its contribution to the refining of radiocarbon dating. Since timber can be dated by radiocarbon, dates may be obtained from dendrochronologically dated trees. It has been shown that the radiocarbon dates diverge increasingly from calendrical dates provided by tree-rings the further back into prehistory they go, the radiocarbon dates being younger than the tree-ring dates. This has allowed the questioning of one of the underlying assumptions of radiocarbon dating, the constancy of the concentration of C14 in the atmosphere. Fluctuations in this concentration have now been shown back as far as dendrochronological sequences go (to c 7000 BC), and thus dating technique is serving the further research on another. In 1929, A.E. Douglass first showed how this method could be used to date archaeological material. The long-living Bristlecone Pine (Pinus aristata) of California has yielded a sequence extending back to c 9000 bp. In Ireland, oak preserved in bogs has produced a floating chronology from c 2850-5950 bp.
descriptive type: CATEGORY: artifact
DEFINITION: A type based on the physical or external properties of an artifact
descriptive types: CATEGORY: typology
DEFINITION: Types based on the physical or external properties of an artifact.
desktop study: CATEGORY: technique
DEFINITION: An office-based search of historical and existing archaeological records about a site.
diatom analysis: CATEGORY: technique
DEFINITION: A method of environmental reconstruction based on plant microfossils. Diatoms are unicellular algae, whose silica cell walls survive after the algae die, and they accumulate in large numbers at the bottom of both fresh and marine waters. Their assemblages directly reflect the floristic composition of the water's extinct communities, as well as the water's salinity, alkalinity, and nutrient status.
direct historical approach: SYNONYMS OR RELATED TERMS: DHA
CATEGORY: technique
DEFINITION: The technique of working backwards in time, from the present into the past, from historic sites of known age into earlier times. This method of chronological ordering is based on the comparison of historically documented or contemporary artifacts with those recovered from archaeological contexts. An analogy or homology is made using historical records or historical ethnographic data for the site and the surrounding region. This technique was developed by W.D. Strong in the 1930s.
Divostin: CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: A Neolithic site in Serbia with occupations of the Early Starcevo and Vinca cultures dating from c 5250-4960 (Starcevo) to c 3900-3300 BC (Vinca). Excavation uncovered seven complete house-plans of the Late Vinca village, including one house containing 100 pots. The subsistence economy was based on cattle husbandry and agriculture. Cult objects included a model ritual scene and many fired clay anthropomorphic figurines.
djed pillar: CATEGORY: artifact
DEFINITION: In Egypt, a widely found amulet of roughly cruciform style with at least three crossbars. It seems to have been a fetish from prehistoric times and came to represent the abstract concept of stability. Like the ankh, it was commonly used in friezes and painted inside the base of coffins.
Djeitun: CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: A Neolithic site of a 6th millennium BC (and possibly late 7th) culture of Turkmenia characterized by mud-brick architecture of one-roomed houses with lime-plastered floors. Both floors and walls were sometimes painted. The subsistence economy was based on cereal agriculture (barley, wheat), accompanied by the rearing of sheep, cattle, and goats and the hunting of gazelle, onager, wild pig, and smaller animals. The Djeitun culture had a microlithic flint industry and chaff-tempered pottery, decorated with simple painted designs. The culture was the earliest Neolithic of central Asia.
Doric order: SYNONYMS OR RELATED TERMS: doric, Doric style, Doric column
CATEGORY: structure
DEFINITION: A style of architecture used on mainland Greece and in the western Mediterranean with the plainest of capitals and a simple column with no pedestal or base and a distinctive echinus and abacus. The order was distinguished by being the earliest and simplest. The fluted columns had a diameter-to-height ratio of one-to-eight and the frieze was alternating triglyphs (triple groove) and metopes (brow). It was named after the tribe of the Dorians.
ear: CATEGORY: artifact
DEFINITION: Pointed or rounded projections from the base or hafting area of certain projectile points.
Early Khartoum: CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: A base camp site within modern Khartoum which provided the first clear picture of the so-called 'Aquatic Civilization'. The site had traces of sun-dried daub suggesting the presence of temporary structures. Fishing done with bone-headed harpoons was the economic basis of the settlement. Other artifacts include chipped and ground stone and pottery with 'wavy-line' decoration. Dates of 6th or 5th millennium BC seems probable; similar harpoons at Tagra, to the south, are dated to c 6300 BC.
Ebbsfleet ware: SYNONYMS OR RELATED TERMS: Peterborough ware
CATEGORY: artifact
DEFINITION: A family of elaborately decorated Neolithic ceramics found in southern and eastern parts of the British Isles. Dating to the period 3000 to 2000 BC, Isobel Smith divided Peterborough wares into three successive styles-Ebbsfleet, Mortlake, and Fengate-on the basis of their occurrence in the ditch fills at Windmill Hill. It is now recognized that these three groups overlap rather more than originally thought, and that they are best seen as part of the broad group of impressed wares found over much of northern Europe in the 3rd millennium BC. The decoration on Peterborough ware consists of pits, ?maggot impressions' made by impressing tightly rolled cord, and the impressions made by pressing the ends of bird bones into the soft clay before firing. Some of the later vessels are the first in Britain to be made with flat bases.
Elko point: CATEGORY: artifact
DEFINITION: Large, roughly triangular-shaped chipped stone points with concave, straight, or slightly concave bases. Two main forms are known: those with corner notches on the base and those with ?ears' on the base. Dated to the period 1300 BC to AD 700 among Desert Archaic Stage communities of the Great Basin and western interior of North America.
Emirean: SYNONYMS OR RELATED TERMS: Emiran
CATEGORY: culture
DEFINITION: An early Upper Palaeolithic industry of the Levant region, named for the Emireh cave at the north end of the Sea of Galilee (Israel) which yielded tools and triangular arrowheads with a base tapered by means of bifacial retouches (Emireh points). It is the earliest stage of the Upper Palaeolithic recognized in the eastern Mediterranean region. The Emiran is believed to date from about 30,000 bc and may be transitional from the Mousterian.
empirical: CATEGORY: technique
DEFINITION: Based on practical experience and observation of physical evidence.
enumerative methods: CATEGORY: technique
DEFINITION: Dating techniques based on the observation and counting of measurable events, such as the growth of tree rings or deposition of sediments.
Epi-Acheulian: CATEGORY: culture
DEFINITION: A term used to describe stone industries from the early Middle Paleolithic which combine some very rare Acheulian-type bifaces with an already well-developed tool kit based on flakes.
Erligang phase: SYNONYMS OR RELATED TERMS: 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.
estimated number of individuals: CATEGORY: measure
DEFINITION: A measure of the actual number of individuals in an unobserved population, often based on two small samples or on paired elements in fragmentary evidence.
estimated vessel equivalents: CATEGORY: measure
DEFINITION: A unit in quantifying fragmentary pottery equal to the circumferential proportion of a rim or base sherd.
ethnography: SYNONYMS OR RELATED TERMS: ethnographic study
CATEGORY: related field
DEFINITION: The description and analysis of contemporary cultures, which is based almost entirely on in-depth fieldwork. The formulating of generalizations about culture and the drawing of comparisons are components of ethnography. It is part of the subdiscipline of cultural anthropology. An important technique is participant observation, whereby the anthropologist lives in the society being studied. Ethnography provides data to archaeologists through analogy and homology. An ethnographic study is that of the cultural characteristics of a particular ethnic or social group.
Eve theory: CATEGORY: term
DEFINITION: The hypothesis that all modern humans are descended from a common first mother who lived in southern Africa about 200,000 years ago. The Eve" theory is similar to the Noah's Ark model and is based on genetic research showing that as modern humans spread throughout the world they rarely if at all interbred with existing but more archaic humans such as the Neanderthals. The "Eve" theory does not imply a creationist view only that there has been a chance survival of a single line of mitochondrial DNA."
experimental archaeology: SYNONYMS OR RELATED TERMS: experimental studies
CATEGORY: branch
DEFINITION: The reconstruction and reproduction of past behavior and processes to obtain or evaluate archaeological data and test hypotheses about the way man dealt with subsistence and technology. The experiments involve such activities as creating and using stone tools, duplicating prehistoric methods of farming, building, and travel, etc. The term is normally used only for those experiments which deal with material culture, such as industry, the building of structures, mining, and crop processing. The more theoretical aspects, such as ideas about the development and organization of society, are generally thought of a part of processual archaeology rather than experimental. Reconstructions can be based on excavated ground plans, and some of these have been deliberately burned or left to decay so that an idea can be gained of what the archaeologist might expect to find later. Boats have been built and sailed, food has been cooked in earth ovens and eaten, stone monuments have been laboriously erected, and trumpets and stringed instruments have been made and played. Although past events are not exactly repeatable, experimental simulation can prove very instructive and is being increasingly used. One of the earliest examples was General Pitt-Rivers' observations of the rate and duration of ditch silting on his excavations at Cranbourne Chase in the 19th century.
factor analysis: CATEGORY: technique
DEFINITION: A multivariate mathematical technique which assesses the degree of variation between artifact types, and is based on a matrix of correlation coefficients which measure the relative association between any two variables. This statistical technique calculates the relative importance of a set of factors that together are assumed to influence some observed set of values or properties.
faience: SYNONYMS OR RELATED TERMS: 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.
Faiyum ""A"": CATEGORY: culture
DEFINITION: The earliest-known phase of the Predynastic sequence of Lower Egypt with settlements in the northern Faiyum area. The economic base was agriculture, though there was much hunting of large mammals (elephant, hippopotamus).
Faiyum A"": CATEGORY: culture
DEFINITION: The earliest-known phase of the Predynastic sequence of Lower Egypt with settlements in the northern Faiyum area. The economic base was agriculture, though there was much hunting of large mammals (elephant, hippopotamus).
Farnham pottery: SYNONYMS OR RELATED TERMS: Alice Holt ware
CATEGORY: artifact
DEFINITION: Major Romano-British pottery industry based around Farnham in Surrey, England, producing a wide range of wares between the mid 1st century AD and the 4th century AD. Grey and cream-colored fabrics predominate.
faunal association: CATEGORY: technique
DEFINITION: A relative age determination technique based on archaeological associations with remains of extinct species.
faunal dating: CATEGORY: technique
DEFINITION: A method of relative dating based on observing the evolutionary changes in particular species of mammals, so as to form a rough chronological sequence.
Fayyum, al- or Fayum: SYNONYMS OR RELATED TERMS: Fayoum, Fayum region, ancient Ta-she, She-resy, Moeris
CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: A large fertile depression in the Libyan Desert, southwest of Cairo near the west bank of the Nile, with two prehistoric cultures dating to c 5000 BC and c 4500 BC. These early settlements were of the first food-producing peoples of Egypt. Emmer and barley were cultivated and cattle, sheep, and pigs bred. Saw-edged sickle flints, mat-lined silo pits, and saddle querns have been found and ax heads were of flaked flint or ground pebbles. Hollow-based flint arrowheads, bone dart tips, stone maceheads, and bone harpoons were used for hunting and fishing. Artifacts of special note include a threshing flail and a wooden sickle set with flint teeth. Pottery was in use and beads of ostrich eggshell and seashells of both Mediterranean and Red Sea types were imported. Lake Qarun had fish which were a delicacy for Egyptians throughout the ages. In Middle Empire (c 2000 BC), the pharaohs (Amenemhet III) engaged in huge irrigation and drainage schemes and the area was famous for orchards and gardens. After a period of decline, the Ptolemies in turn took an interest in the area, establishing a number of small towns there, the papyrus archives which have survived in great quantity and excellent state of preservation. The region incorporates archaeological sites dating from the late Palaeolithic to the late Roman and Christian periods (c 8000 BC-641 AD), including Shedet (later Crocodilopolis), chief center for worship of the crocodile-god Sebek, near which al-Fayyum town now lies.
Fengate ware: SYNONYMS OR RELATED TERMS: Peterborough ware
CATEGORY: artifact
DEFINITION: A family of elaborately decorated Neolithic ceramics found in southern and eastern parts of the British Isles. Dating to the period 3000 to 2000 BC, Isobel Smith divided Peterborough wares into three successive styles-Ebbsfleet, Mortlake, and Fengate-on the basis of their occurrence in the ditch fills at Windmill Hill. It is now recognized that these three groups overlap rather more than originally thought, and that they are best seen as part of the broad group of impressed wares found over much of northern Europe in the 3rd millennium BC. The decoration on Peterborough ware consists of pits, ?maggot impressions' made by impressing tightly rolled cord, and the impressions made by pressing the ends of bird bones into the soft clay before firing. Some of the later vessels are the first in Britain to be made with flat bases.
firestarter: SYNONYMS OR RELATED TERMS: firestarter kit
CATEGORY: artifact
DEFINITION: A wood tool having a base with drilled holes and a stick that is rubbed through the holes in the base to produce enough friction to give a spark.
First Temperate Neolithic: SYNONYMS OR RELATED TERMS: FTN
CATEGORY: culture
DEFINITION: A term sometimes used to describe the earliest farming cultures in the temperate zone of Europe (and sometimes in other areas). In southeast Europe from c 5400-4500/4300 BC, there was the Starcevo (eastern and northern Yugoslavia), Körös (eastern and southwest Hungary), Cris (west and lowland Rumania), Kremikovci (northwest Bulgaria), and Karanovo (central and southern Bulgaria). The regional groups are differentiated by their individual painted wares, but the group of cultures is unified by non-ceramic traits such a miniature polished bone spoons, fired clay lip-plugs, rod-head figurines, and stamp seals. The vast majority of early FTN sites are located in the major river valleys of the Balkans, either as tell settlements or as short-lived flat sites. Hoe or digging-stick agriculture combined with cattle husbandry was the economic base of most FTN settlements.
fission track dating: SYNONYMS OR RELATED TERMS: fission-track dating; fission track age determination
CATEGORY: technique
DEFINITION: A chronometric dating technique based on the natural, spontaneous nuclear fission of Uranium 238 and its byproduct, linear atomic displacements/tracks. The basis for this technique is that a uranium isotope, U 238, as well as decaying to a stable lead isotope, also undergoes spontaneous fission. One in every two million atoms decays in this way. Fission is accompanied by an energy release which sends the resulting two nuclei into the surrounding material, the tracks causing damage to the crystal lattice. These tracks can be counted under a microscope after the polished surface of the sample has been etched with acid. The concentration of uranium can be determined by the induced fission of U 235 by neutron irradiation of the sample. Since the ratio of U 235 to U 238 is known, and is constant, a comparison of the number of tracks from natural fission and the number from induced fission will give the age of the sample. Though the method has been limited in its archaeological use so far, it has already proved a useful check method for potassium-argon dating for volcanic deposits at Olduvai Gorge, Tanzania, and obsidian, tephra beds, mineral inclusions in pottery, and some man-made glasses have also been dated. A further use of the method is based on the fact that fission tracks disappear if the substance is heated about 500? or so: thus a date achieved for clay (like a hearth), pottery, or obsidian that had been burnt gives the date of burning or firing, since previous fission tracks would have disappeared.
Flemish black ware: CATEGORY: ceramics
DEFINITION: A type of later medieval pottery known from paintings of the Renaissance period. Some of the wares were well-decorated but most Flemish wares were coarse black wares with pinched bases. They emerged a Roman tradition of potterymaking in Flanders.
fluted lanceolate projectile point: CATEGORY: lithics
DEFINITION: A stemless point with rounded edges, a channel chipped into the spine, and no differently shaped projection at the base.
fluted point: SYNONYMS OR RELATED TERMS: fluted projectile point
CATEGORY: lithics
DEFINITION: A projectile point with a distinctive longitudinal groove left after removal of a channel flake; a long, medial channel notched to the base of a flake. The channeled flake is removed from one or both faces by striking the specially prepared base sharply with a piece of wood or bone. The sharp ridges of the flutes were ground smooth near the base of the point, to prevent them from cutting the bindings when the point was inserted into a notched foreshaft. These points have extreme symmetry, careful flaking, and the removal of a long, parallel and shallow flake from one or both sides. Fluted points are characteristic of the Palaeoindian peoples of North America such as the Clovis and Folsom projectile points.
Folsom: SYNONYMS OR RELATED TERMS: Folsom culture
CATEGORY: culture
DEFINITION: A village in northeastern New Mexico which lends its name to the remains of a prehistoric culture first found there and especially to its characteristic projectile point (Folsom point). It was a Stone Age culture, characterized by refinement of fluted projectile points, marking a significant advance over the projectile points of the earlier Clovis culture. The culture is believed to be 10-13,000 years old (11,000-10,200 BP). It was the scene of one of the first New World discoveries of artifacts associated with extinct fauna (the remains of 23 extinct giant bison). Folsom points are usually dated between c 9000-8000 BC. Folsom points are slightly different from Clovis: smaller, with their widest dimension near the middle rather than towards the base; more concave base than Clovis, and edges of Folsom points were retouched. Another site, Blackwater Draw has its Folsom layer dated to 8340 BC.
Folsom point: SYNONYMS OR RELATED TERMS: Folsom projectile point
CATEGORY: lithics
DEFINITION: A distinctive Palaeoindian fluted projectile point with a single flute on each face and fine pressure flaking. Found in association in sites around Folsom, New Mexico, from c 9000-8000 BC (alternately 11,000-10,200 BP), they differ from Clovis points in the length of the flute, which extends over most of the point's side. Folsom points are smaller, with their widest dimension near the middle rather than towards the base; more concave base than Clovis, and edges of Folsom points were retouched.
foot: CATEGORY: ceramics
DEFINITION: An appendage attached along the circumference of a vessel's base to raise it above the surface on which the vessel rest.
footring: CATEGORY: artifact
DEFINITION: A low pedestal-like ring formed on the base of a vessel to enable it to stand more securely.
foramen magnum: CATEGORY: term
DEFINITION: A large oval opening in the base of the skull through which the medulla oblongata passes, linking the spinal cord and brain. Its position is an indication of posture. If the foramen magnum is far forward on the skull base, it indicates an upright posture, like that of humans, with the head balanced on top of the spine. In four-footed animals, the head hangs from the end of the vertebral column, and the foramen magnum is placed posteriorly. In apes, with the assumption of semierect posture, the foramen had moved partially downward and forward. In human evolution, the foramen magnum has continued to move forward as an aspect of adaptation to walking on two legs, until the head became balanced vertically on top of the vertebral column.
form attribute: CATEGORY: artifact
DEFINITION: Attribute based on the physical characteristics of an artifact, including overall shape, shape of parts, and measurable dimensions - leading to form classification
form type: CATEGORY: artifact
DEFINITION: An artifact class based on form attributes
frequency seriation: CATEGORY: technique
DEFINITION: A relative age determination technique in which artifacts or other archaeological data are chronologically ordered by ranking their relative frequencies of appearance. It is based on the idea that an artifact type first steadily grows in popularity and then steadily declines.
frying pan: CATEGORY: artifact
DEFINITION: A term used to describe any shallow circular vessel or bowl with a decorated base found in the Early Bronze Age of the Cyclades, especially the Cycladic Grotta-Pelos and Keros-Syros cultures. Made of clay, the handle was split into two knob-like projections and the stamped or incised decoration often included spirals. The vessel's purpose is unknown, perhaps ritual but not for cooking. It has been suggested that when filled with water they were used as mirrors. The resemblance to a frying pan is superficial and certainly misleading.
Fuegian tradition: SYNONYMS OR RELATED TERMS: Shell Knife culture
CATEGORY: culture
DEFINITION: A primitive people inhabiting the South American archipelago of Tierra del Fuego from c 2000 BC. The culture, a coastal tradition of the Alacaluf tribes, was often called the Shell Knife culture. It was based on the exploitation of marine resources and operative on the southern coast and offshore islands of southern Chile. The beginning of the tradition was marked by a change from land-oriented hunting and gathering; bone and stone tool technology persisted well into historic times. The primitive cultures of the Ona and Yámana (Yahgan) of Tierra del Fuego are so similar that anthropologists traditionally group them with the neighboring Chono and Alakaluf of Chile into this one Fuegian culture area". The Ona inhabit the interior forests and depend heavily on hunting guanaco (a small New World camel). The Yámana are canoe-using fishermen and shellfish gatherers. They are all nomadic and are sparsely scattered over the landscape and poor in material culture."
Fulton turkey tail point: CATEGORY: lithics
DEFINITION: A leaf-shaped side-notched point -- with notches chipped into each side of the base to form a stem below the main part of the point, generally 3 3/4-6 inches long.
functional type: CATEGORY: artifact
DEFINITION: A type based on cultural use or function rather than on outward form or chronological position
functional type: CATEGORY: term
DEFINITION: Classification based on cultural use or function rather than on outward form or chronological position.
functional typology: SYNONYMS OR RELATED TERMS: functional type
CATEGORY: term
DEFINITION: Classification based on cultural use or function rather than on outward form or chronological position.
gadroon: CATEGORY: artifact; ceramics
DEFINITION: A decorative pattern used in the ornamentation of gold and silver metalwork and pottery, consisting of an embossed tear shape. A gadroon is one of a set of convex curves or arcs joined at their ends to form this pattern, usually one of a series radiating from the base of a work.
Gallo-Belgic ware: CATEGORY: artifact
DEFINITION: Vessels imported from Gaul in the late 1st century BC and early 1st century AD, usually in black or silver-grey fabrics (terra nigra), or white fabric coated with red slip (terra rubra), or a dense white or cream fabric like pipeclay. Close British imitations of these fabrics and forms are known, and further copying of the forms was wide-spread. The imported vessels often have the name of the potter stamped on the inner surface of the base, a practice imitated in but usually with illegible markings.
Garcel, El: SYNONYMS OR RELATED TERMS: El Garcel
CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: A Middle Neolithic hilltop settlement in Almeria, southeast Spain, the type site of the earlier phase of the Almerian culture, c 5th millennium BC. Excavations have produced evidence of wattle-and-daub round houses, storage pits, undecorated round- and pointed-based pottery and, before the end of the settlement, copper slag, suggesting the local development of metallurgy.
gelifluction: CATEGORY: geology
DEFINITION: A geologic process occurring when the active layer of permafrost moves under the influence of gravity. The soft flowing layer is often folded and draped on hillsides and at the base of slopes as solifluction, or gelifluction, lobes. Gelifluction can cause destruction or redistribution of archaeological deposits.
general analogy: SYNONYMS OR RELATED TERMS: general theory
CATEGORY: term
DEFINITION: An analogy used in archaeological interpretation based on broad and generalized comparisons that are documented across many cultural traditions. The broadest level of archaeological theory, referring to frameworks that describe and attempt to explain cultural processes that operated in the past.
geophysics: CATEGORY: related field
DEFINITION: The study of the physical properties of the earth -- structure, composition, and development -- such as magnetism, radioactivity, vulcanism, etc. Its applications to archaeology have been to provide dating methods (geochronology) and techniques for exploration (magnetometer and resistivity survey). Some dating techniques, e.g. palaeomagnetism, are based on geophysical properties of the earth. It is a subdiscipline of both geology and physics.
georeferenced: CATEGORY: database design
DEFINITION: Pertaining to data that is input to a GIS database using a common mapping reference (e.g. UTM grid) so that the data can be spatially analyzed
GIS: CATEGORY: technique
DEFINITION: Geographical Information Systems; linked maps and databases.
glacial eustacy: CATEGORY: geology
DEFINITION: The theory that the adjustments in sea levels and the earth's crust result from expansion and contraction of Pleistocene ice sheets. It has been suggested based on observed patterns of Cretaceous rocks and physical calculations that, as the Earth's continents move about, the oceans bulge out at some places to compensate, and thus sea-level rise is different from ocean basin to ocean basin.
glacis: CATEGORY: feature
DEFINITION: The open, smooth slope below the outer rampart of a fortification at the base of a defensive wall, where the attackers are exposed to the missiles of the defenders, particularly characteristic of the Middle Bronze Age in the Levant.
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.
glaze: SYNONYMS OR RELATED TERMS: enamel, couverte
CATEGORY: ceramics
DEFINITION: A type of slip applied to pottery which produces an impermeable and glassy surface when fired at high temperatures. It is usually produced by coating pottery with powdered glass and reheating them to a temperature where the glass begins to fuse. Glaze is a vitreous substance and, like glass, glaze is made from silica; this substance only melts at a temperature higher than that which would melt the pot, so a flux must be added to make it useable. Silica is present in most pottery, so in these cases only the flux -- an oxide of sodium, lead, or potassium -- needs to be added, and a colorant if required, usually in the form of a frit crushed and suspended in water. The pot is then fired at a temperature suitable for melting the glaze (somewhere between 900?-1200? C depending on the constituents), which runs into an even layer all over the pot. Known in ancient Egypt where a mixture of fine sand, quartz or crystal dust was used with an alkaline base (soda, potash). Glaze or couverte can be identified in the Persian faiences and Flemish stoneware. In Hellenistic period, lead glaze was invented, in which lead monoxide replaced soda or potash. A large variety of glazes may be used, varying in color, texture, and suitability for different types of pottery.
Global Positioning System: SYNONYMS OR RELATED TERMS: GPS
CATEGORY: tool
DEFINITION: A satellite-based system used in determining the location of archaeological sites by triangulation from orbiting satellites. The Global Positioning System has 18 satellites, six in each of three orbital planes spaced 120? apart. The GPS is designed to provide fixes anywhere on Earth to an accuracy of 20 meters and a relative accuracy 10 times greater.
globular urn: CATEGORY: artifact
DEFINITION: A type of middle Bronze Age pottery found widely in southern England and forming part of the range of vessels within the Deverel-Rimbury tradition. Characterized by a flat base, expanded body, and vertical neck, globular urns are generally large and made from fairly coarse fabrics. Decoration is usually confined to the upper body and neck and is typically incised or made with impressed cord. Some examples have lugs or applied decoration at the junction between the body and the neck.
grape cup: CATEGORY: artifact
DEFINITION: Type of miniature cup or accessory vessel found in early Bronze Age (Wessex II) graves in southern England. Generally less than 15cm across, grape cups are characterized by having a narrow base, narrow mouth, and an expanded rather bulbous body covered in small applied balls of clay so that they look like a small bunch of grapes.
Grave Creek Mound: CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: The largest cone-shaped earth mound in the New World, found in northern West Virginia, of the Adena culture. The mound is about 19 meters high and the base is 73 meters and it was the center of a complex of smaller mounds and earthworks, and constructed during the 3rd and 2nd centuries BC.
Greek fire: CATEGORY: term
DEFINITION: Any of several flammable materials used in warfare in ancient and medieval times. Ancient writers refer to flaming arrows, firepots, and such substances as pitch, naphtha, sulfur, and charcoal, but true Greek fire was evidently a petroleum-based mixture. It was evidently invented during the reign of Constantine IV Pogonatus by a Greek-speaking Syrian refugee from the Arab conquest of Syria. It could be thrown in pots or discharged from tubes and was difficult to put out when alight.
grid amplitude: CATEGORY: technique
DEFINITION: A method of defining the location of features and artifacts on a site by plotting from a reference point oriented to magnetic north or some other known point. Meridian lines run north-south and baselines run east-west on a grid square.
grinding: CATEGORY: artifact
DEFINITION: A method of stoneworking employed in the smoothing of an edge or surface by rubbing it with a hammerstone or other abrader prior to use. Performed on projectiles or blades so that hafting materials (lashings) would not be cut by sharp edges of the base. Also commonly referred to as Basal Grinding when the base and sides of the stem have been ground.
Grooved Ware: SYNONYMS OR RELATED TERMS: Rinyo-Clacton
CATEGORY: ceramics
DEFINITION: A pottery style of the British Late Neolithic, widely distributed c 2750-1850 BC. The characteristic vessel is flat-based with straight vertical or outward sloping walls. It was formerly known as Rinyo-Clacton after two widely separated findspots (Clacton in Essex and Rinyo in the Orkney Islands). Throughout eastern and southern England, where it is particularly frequent on henge sites (Stonehenge and Durrington Walls), it is decorated with shallow grooving or sometimes with applied cordons. A Scottish group, where appliqué cordons were much used in addition, is represented in Orkney at sites like Rinyo and Skara Brae. It is also found in settlement sites and in chambered tombs.
Gua Lawa: CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: A limestone rock shelter near Sampung in eastern Java whose sequence may show a transition from a pre-ceramic assemblage of small hollow-based stone arrowheads to a Neolithic assemblage with cord-marked pottery and many bone and antler tools.
guide flake: SYNONYMS OR RELATED TERMS: guided flakes
CATEGORY: artifact
DEFINITION: Any small flakes taken from the bases of fluted points prior to the removal of channel flakes and intended to guide the direction and width of the flute
Guo Moruo (1892-1978): CATEGORY: person
DEFINITION: Important person in Chinese archaeology who used a Marxist interpretation of history in all his work. He produced a monumental study of inscriptions on oracle bones and bronze vessels, Liang Chou chin wen tz'u ta hsi t'u lu k'ao shi"h (1935 new ed. 1957; "Corpus of Inscriptions on Bronzes from the Two Chou Dynasties"). He was the leading authority on Shang bone inscriptions and on bronze from Chou period using these first written texts as a basis for his study of Chinese society. In this work he attempts to demonstrate according to Communist doctrine the "slave society" nature of ancient China. His research work on bronzes from the Chou period carried out at the same time as B. Karlgren's consisted of making a chronological classification of the bronzes based on their inscriptions and used their typology as a secondary procedure. He reconstructed the development of these bronzes and defined the basis on which research being carried out today still rests. After 1949 Guo held many important positions in the People's Republic of China including the presidency of the Chinese Academy of Sciences."
Gwisho: CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: A series of mounds and hot springs in western Zambia with evidence of intense Late Stone Age (Zambian Wilton) occupation from about 5000-3500 years ago. The sites are of particular importance because of the preservation of organic materials in the spring deposits. Grass-lined hollows have been interpreted as sleeping places. Among the wooden artifacts in the assemblage were bows, arrowheads, fire-drills, and digging sticks. The microlithic chipped stone industry is of the Zambian Wilton type. Graves at the sites yielded some 35 Khoisan skeletons. The economy was based on hunting game but also on a variety of vegetables.
Haithabu: SYNONYMS OR RELATED TERMS: Hedeby
CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: A medieval Danish trading settlement on the Jutland Peninsula in northwest Germany of the 7th century AD, important in the southeast Baltic region. Its trade included slaves, furs, textiles, iron, and weapons; it was one of the earliest Scandinavian urban centers. In the early 9th century King Godfred of Denmark built the Danewirk, an earthwork barrier, along the base of the peninsula south of Hedeby to protect it from Frankish incursions.
Hanging Grimston: CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: A long barrow on Yorkshire Wolds, England of the British Earlier Neolithic of the 4th millennium BC. It gave its name to the Grimston-Lyles Hill pottery whose characteristic vessel was the round-based carinated bowl with everted rim.
Harappan civilization: SYNONYMS OR RELATED TERMS: Indus Valley civilization
CATEGORY: culture
DEFINITION: One of the great civilizations of antiquity, located in Pakistan and northwest India in the 3rd millennium BC. Nearly 300 settlements of the civilization are known: two large cities (Mohenjo-Daro and Harappa), and a number of smaller towns and villages (Chanhu-Daro, Judeirjo-Daro, Kalibangan, and Lothal). The Harappan civilization was characterized by a high level of architectural, craft, and technical achievement. We know little of the political, social, and economic structure of the civilization because, although it was literate, the script remains undeciphered. Like other early civilizations in Mesopotamia and Egypt, the Harappan civilization was based on the cultivation of cereal crops (plus rice and cotton), probably with irrigation. Among the most distinctive achievements of this civilization are the architecture and town planning, with the use of true baked brick for building, and cities and towns laid out on a grid-iron street plan, perhaps the earliest examples of town planning in the world. Among crafts, the most outstanding were the seals, mostly made of steatite and decorated with carefully executed incised designs. The Harappan civilization came to an end early in the 2nd millennium, either as a result of environmental factors (excessive flooding) or as a result of invasions by Aryan intruders. It is divided into three phases -- Early, Mature (Urban), and Late (Post-Urban) and emerged from Punjab and Baluchistan regions.
Hardaway point: CATEGORY: artifact
DEFINITION: Bifacially worked chipped stone projectile point with a triangular outline, a slightly hollow base, and a side notch towards the base on either side. Named after the construction company that used the site on which many examples were found by Joffre Coe in the 1950s, Hardaway points are thought to represent a stylistic variation within the larger DALTON TRADITION dating to the period c.8500-7000 BC.
Harifian: CATEGORY: culture
DEFINITION: A hunter-gatherer culture of Negev and Sinai who lived in the desert and in seasonal camps and had a Late Natufian lithic industry. The Harif point was an obliquely truncated bladelet with pointed base formed by microburin technique and a steep retouch.
Hassi Mouilah: CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: An Algerian Capsian Neolithic site of c 5300 BP with point-based pots with impressed decoration, projectile points, geometric microliths, ostrich eggshell and amazonite beads.
Haua Fteah: CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: A large cave site in Cyrenaica, Libya, with the most complete sequence, back to c 78,000 BC, of Upper Pleistocene and Holocene industries known from a single site in North Africa. The oldest flint industry is a Libyan variant of the pre-Aurignacian (Libyan Amudian), and is followed successively by Levalloiso-Mousterian (60,000 years ago), Dabban (40,000 years ago), Oranian (18-16,000 years ago), Libyco-Capsian, and finally (from c 6800-6400) by Neolithic with pottery and domesticated animals. Based upon the striking of parallel-sided blades from prismatic cores, the earliest stage has clear affinities with broadly contemporary industries in Syria, Lebanon, and Israel. Its makers exploited both large game animals and seafood resources. There was a return to blade technology with the Dabban industry and the beginning of the Dabban occupation of Crenaica seems to have coincided with the onset of very arid conditions in the Saharan regions to the south. The Oranian had small backed bladelets.
Hell Gap point: CATEGORY: artifact
DEFINITION: Bifacially worked chipped stone projectile points of the Plano Tradition with a broad pointed top set on a straight-sided trapezoidal body. The base is narrow and straight. Used by later Palaeo-Indian cultures of the North America Plains in the period around 7500 BC. Experiments show that these points were probably spearheads and fully capable of penetrating the hide and rib cage of large beasts such as bison.
Hellenistic period: SYNONYMS OR RELATED TERMS: Hellenistic and Roman period; hellenistic
CATEGORY: chronology; culture
DEFINITION: Period of widest Greek influence, the era between the death of Alexander the Great (323 BC) and the rise of the Roman Empire (27/30 BC), when a single, uniform civilization, based on Greek traditions, prevailed all over the ancient world, from India, in the east, to Spain, in the west. During these three centuries, Greek culture crossed many political frontiers and spread through many cities founded at that time, especially the new capitals of Alexandria, Antioch, and Pergamum. A common civilization became established throughout the known world for the first time, one which integrated the cultural heritage of each region and subsequently left a deep impression on the institutions, thought, religions, and art of the Roman, Parthian, and Kushan empires. Hellenistic cultural influence continued to be a powerful force in the Roman and Parthian empires during the early centuries AD. A common form of the Greek language, Koine [Greek: 'common'] developed, which was largely indebted to Attic Greek. The term 'hellenistic art' is applied to the post-classical material outside this geographic area, such as in Etruria or southern Italy.
Hermeneutics: CATEGORY: term
DEFINITION: An epistemological theory with roots in the study of biblical texts that understanding is based on the dialectical (back-and-forth) relationship between the whole and its parts (the hermeneutic circle). Understanding of the parts should be coherent with each other and the whole.
historical particularism: CATEGORY: term
DEFINITION: A school of anthropological thought associated with the work of Franz Boas and his students (including Ruth Benedict, Margaret Mead, and A.L. Kroeber), whose studies of culture emphasized the integrated way of life distinctive of a people. It is a detailed descriptive approach to anthropology designed as an alternative to the broad generalizing approach favored by other anthropologists and the research is based on particular cultural traits and elements.
historiographic approach: CATEGORY: technique
DEFINITION: A form of explanation based primarily on traditional descriptive historical frameworks.
historiography: CATEGORY: related field
DEFINITION: The writing of history, with particular reference to the examination and evaluation of primary source material. Historiography is also the study of the development of historical method. The study is based on the critical examination of sources, the selection of facts from the authentic materials, and the synthesis of facts into a narrative.
homology: CATEGORY: technique
DEFINITION: A type of reasoning by analogy, where two phenomena separated in time are similar because of an historic or genetic connection. In biology, similarity of the structure, physiology, or development of different species of organisms based upon their descent from a common evolutionary ancestor. Homology is contrasted with analogy, which is a functional similarity of structure based not upon common evolutionary origins but upon mere similarity of use.
horizontal stratigraphy: CATEGORY: technique
DEFINITION: Chronological sequences based on successive horizontal displacements, such as sequential beach terraces. Stratigraphy is by definition obtained from superposed deposits, but other circumstances can be treated in the same way. For example, the oldest burials are likely to be those nearest the settlement, the top of a hill, or some other favored position. The later ones will be progressively further out as the cemetery expands. The concept can be a helpful tool in the interpretation of a site.
horns of consecration: SYNONYMS OR RELATED TERMS: sacral horns
CATEGORY: artifact
DEFINITION: A common religious symbol of the Minoans, based on the horns of a sacrificed bull. It frequently topped walls or shrines in the palace of Knossos, or was found in sanctuaries and other buildings, and was made of alabaster or other stone. Horns of consecration also appear in artistic depictions.
horsehoof core: CATEGORY: artifact
DEFINITION: A steep-edged, often large, domed core with flat based striking platforms, heavily step-flanked around their margins. Both very large and smaller varieties are found commonly on Pleistocene sites in most areas of Australia and on some mid-Holocene sites and they are considered characteristic of the Australian Core Tool and Scraper tradition. They were chopping tools mainly used in wood-working. The step-flaking could have resulted from repeated striking to remove flakes.
horsehoof cores: CATEGORY: lithics
DEFINITION: A steep-edged, often large, domed core with flat based striking platforms, heavily step-flanked around their margins. Both very large and smaller varieties are found commonly on Pleistocene sites in most areas of Australia and on some mid-Holocene sites and they are considered characteristic of the Australian Core Tool and Scraper tradition. They were chopping tools mainly used in wood-working. The step-flaking could have resulted from repeated striking to remove flakes.
horseshoe: CATEGORY: artifact
DEFINITION: A covering for the base of a horse's foot consisting of a narrow band of iron in the form of an extended circular arc
Horsham: CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: A site in southern England where a number of Mesolithic flints have been found, including a hollow-based point which is sometimes called a Horsham point. It was once considered characteristic of a Horsham culture or group.
Howiesonspoort: SYNONYMS OR RELATED TERMS: Howiesons Poort
CATEGORY: culture
DEFINITION: A Middle Stone Age industry of southern Africa's Cape Province. It is characterized by the appearance of small blades, standardized backed tools (e.g. segments), and some unifacial and bifacial points at a time when most stone industries were still based upon the production of flakes struck from discoidal cores. The radiocarbon dates are greater than 40,000 years old. In addition to the type site, the industry has been investigated at Klasies River Mouth, Epi-Pietersburg, and Montagu Cave.
Hsin-tien culture: CATEGORY: culture
DEFINITION: A culture of northwest China in c 1500 BC based on farming and using handmade pottery and copper tools. The pottery was often painted with rudimentary scrolls.
Humbolt Series point: CATEGORY: artifact
DEFINITION: Bifacially worked chipped stone points of lanceolate outline manufactured by Archaic Stage communities on the Great Plains and western interior of North America in the period c.3000 BC to AD 700. There are numerous variations in style and in size, but most have a hollow base and none have side notches.
hunter-gatherer: CATEGORY: culture
DEFINITION: A way of life in which subsistence is based on the hunting of animals and the collection of wild plants rather than settled agriculture. It is a collective term for the members of small-scale mobile (to be near seasonally available wild foods) or semi-sedentary societies and the organizational structure is based on bands with strong kinship ties. This way of life is believed to have lasted for over 3 million years during the Palaeolithic and Mesolithic periods. It survived down to recent times over considerable areas: Australia until the Europeans, South Africa until the Portuguese and Bantu, America until the Europeans settled, and Siberia.
Hvar: SYNONYMS OR RELATED TERMS: Dimos
CATEGORY: site; culture
DEFINITION: An island with a large number of Late Neolithic and Copper Age sites, off the Dalmatian coast and part of present-day Croatia. The caves have yielded striking Late Neolithic pottery -- dark burnished ware with red crusted decoration. Hvar has been continuously inhabited since early Neolithic times, and an ancient wall surrounds the old city of Hvar. Since the vast majority of Hvar sites are caves, the economy was likely based on fishing and shell-collecting. In 385 BC Greek colonists founded Dimos (presently Hvar) and Pharos (Stari Grad), and in 219 BC the island became Roman. Slavs fleeing the mainland in the 7th century AD settled on the island. The pottery is found in neighboring areas of the mainland, where it is known as the Lisicice style. The island's occupation probably began in the 4th millennium BC.
hypothesis: SYNONYMS OR RELATED TERMS: pl. hypotheses
CATEGORY: technique
DEFINITION: A proposition or theory, often derived from a broader generalization or law, that postulates relationships between two or more variables, based on assumptions but not yet proven. It must be tested on independent evidence; discarded hypotheses are signs of growth and advance.
ideological systems: SYNONYMS OR RELATED TERMS: (also ideology)
CATEGORY: term
DEFINITION: A component of culture based on the use of ideas or beliefs as part of their cultural adaptation; the knowledge or beliefs used by human societies to understand and cope with their existence.
Inca: CATEGORY: culture
DEFINITION: South American Indians who, at the time of the Spanish conquest in 1532, ruled an empire that extended along the Pacific coast and Andean highlands from the northern border of modern Ecuador to the Maule River in central Chile. The Inca established their capital at Cuzco (Peru) in the 12th century. They began their conquests in the early 15th century and within 100 years had gained control of an Andean population of about 12,000,000 people. These Quechua-speaking tribes' origins are uncertain. Their vast empire had a centralized organization and at its head was the ruler, 'Son of the Sun', worshipped as a god in his own lifetime. As a divine king he was above the law, and as a despotic ruler he was very much the political head of the state. Administration was in the hands of officials drawn from the Inca nobility and from the chiefs of conquered tribes. An efficient road system, along which relays of messengers could travel 250 km in a day, ensured that Cuzco was kept informed of developments all over the empire. These same roads allowed Inca forces to be quickly moved into any province which showed signs of rebellion. This centralization was both the strength and the weakness of the Inca state. The unifying force was the ruler in person, and the death of Huayna Capac precipitated a crisis. Civil war broke out when two of his sons, Huascar and Atahuallpa, disputed the succession. Atahuallpa won the war, but before he could consolidate his position he was seized and murdered by Francisco Pizarro's Spaniards in 1532. Without a leader the Inca system could not function. Most of the empire was quickly brought under Spanish control, but an independent Inca group held out in the Urubamba valley until 1572. Viracocha Inca was the creator, culture hero, and supreme deity of the Inca, but the religion embraced a pantheon of gods of nature. The most actively worshipped were the sun and, by extension, the emperor, who was considered the son of the sun. The Temple of the Sun, built at the pre-Incan ceremonial center of Pachacamac suggests some incorporation of earlier religions. Archaeologically, the Inca culture is characterized by fine quality stone masonry, agricultural terraces, mass-produced and standardized pottery forms (aryballus), and metal objects. The considerable architectural skill of the Inca is reflected in Cyclopean masonry, although many buildings were constructed using rectangular dressed stone blocks as well as adobe. The basic dwelling-unit was a cluster of single rooms arranged around a rectangular courtyard and was most often enclosed by a wall. Writing was unknown, but the quipu was used for keeping records. Agriculture was based on plant foods, especially potato, manioc, quinoa, and maize. Domesticated animals included dog, llama, cava (guinea pig), and alpaca. Fine textiles were woven using a simple backstrap loom. The civilization was the largest and most powerful political unit in all the prehistoric America. It has been argued that the whole of Inca achievement relied heavily on a variety of political, societal and religious infrastructures already in place before their ascendancy.
incurvate: CATEGORY: artifact
DEFINITION: A term to describe the outline or shape that is indented or convex. A form of Basal edge or Stem Base outline.
inductively coupled plasma emission spectrometry: SYNONYMS OR RELATED TERMS: 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.
Indus civilization: SYNONYMS OR RELATED TERMS: Indus Valley civilization, Harrapan civilization
CATEGORY: culture
DEFINITION: The earliest known urban culture of the Indian subcontinent, identified in 1921-1992 by its two capitals -- Harappa and Mohenjo-Daro -- both in modern Pakistan. It was also the most extensive of the three earliest civilizations, the other two being Mesopotamia and Egypt. It was one of the greatest civilizations of antiquity, but its origins are obscure. By around 2300 BC, the Indus civilization was fully developed and in trading contact with Sargonid Sumer. Radiocarbon dates from several sites support an origin c 2600 BC, and suggest that by 2000 BC the civilization was in marked decline. The Indus River seems to have played a significant part, as many sites show deposits left by frequent catastrophic floods. Exploitation of the vegetation, particularly for the baking of enormous quantities of brick, caused the decline of the countryside. The final collapse seems to have been due to hostile attack. A few inhumation cemeteries have been found associated with the gridiron-plan cities and there were elaborate drainage systems, also. The site of Mohenjo-Daro had a great bath, assembly hall, and other monumental buildings. There was widespread use of an undeciphered hieroglyphic script and standard weights and measures. The economy was based on mixed agriculture and humped cattle were the most important domestic animals. The pottery was mass-produced and plain. Artistically the finest products were square steatite seals, carved with local or mythical animals and brief inscriptions. The civilization's effect on the later culture and religion of India seems to have been considerable.
information language: CATEGORY: database design
DEFINITION: A language artificially created in databases to ensure unambiguous communication of information.
Initial Period: CATEGORY: chronology
DEFINITION: The period of 1800-900 BC marking the introduction of pottery in Andean South America. It was also the time when agriculture and animal husbandry began to be the subsistence base for most cultures in the area. It is one of a seven-period chronological construction used in Peruvian archaeology. Its close is marked by the occurrence of Chavin materials and the abandonment of many of the coastal centers. Many of the traits that make up the Peruvian cultural tradition such as intensive agriculture, the widespread use of textiles, monumental ceremonial architecture, and larger and more numerous population centers, occurred during this period.
Inuit: SYNONYMS OR RELATED TERMS: Eskimo
CATEGORY: culture
DEFINITION: The eastern Arctic peoples descending from the Thule culture, a prehistoric maritime society, whose subsistence was based on hunting. The origins of the Inuit living in the territories, largely in the coastal areas, are obscure. They now constitute about one-third of the territorial population.
Iona: CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: An island of the Inner Hebrides off the coast of Scotland. In 563, it was granted by Connal of Dálriada to St. Columba for the founding of a monastery. It was the base from which the Celtic church, under Columba, Aidan, and their successors, converted northern Britain to Christianity. Lindisfarne was its most important daughter house. The remains of the monastery are earthworks that include a distinctive rectangular vallum or ditched enclosure surrounding the complex. The standing buildings belong to the later medieval Benedictine abbey. The island also has a fine collection of 8th-century standing crosses. In the early 9th century, the Vikings caused the Columban monks to abandon their monastery, and many returned to Ireland.
Ipiutak: CATEGORY: culture
DEFINITION: An Eskimo/Inuit culture of northwestern Alaska, probably dating from the 2nd to the 6th century AD. The type site at Point Hope is the largest Eskimo/Inuit village ever discovered in Alaska. The village had about 600 houses and many burials accompanied by finely carved bone and ivory objects. The art style includes animal forms which show links with Siberia and northern Eurasia. The people were sea and land hunters and expert stoneworkers with no pottery. A Siberian origin has been suggested, based on similarities in burial practices and ceremonialism, animal carvings and designs, and some use of iron; there seem to be links with the Kachemak culture. It has also been suggested that the culture developed from the Choris-Norton-Near Ipiutak subtradition, intermingled with Northern Maritime and Siberian influences. Ipiutak is particularly important for its demonstration of the continuing influence of Siberian cultures on the Eskimo/Inuit tradition. It is the most recent variation of the Norton tradition, a series of Arctic Alaska cultures dating from 1000 BC-1000 AD. Projectile points and other stone implements are similar to those of the preceding Norton culture.
Irish bowl: SYNONYMS OR RELATED TERMS: Irish food vessel
CATEGORY: artifact
DEFINITION: Type of early Bronze Age ceramic vessel found in Ireland and the west of Scotland, mainly accompanying inhumation burials. These vessels have a small flat base, and a biconical form to the body with elaborated and sometimes perforated lugs on the carination, and an internally beveled rim. The upper part of the body, neck, and rim is usually decorated with impressed cord or other motifs. The bowls date to the early 2nd millennium BC.
Istállóskö: CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: An Upper Palaeolithic cave site in the Bükk Mountains of northern Hungary. The lower Aurignacian assemblage with split-base bone points but few stone tools had a radiocarbon date of 42,350 bp, one of the oldest Aurignacian occupations in Europe. The upper layer is Aurignacian of c 31,000 bp with a bone flute, burins, endscrapers, and bone points.
Izapa: CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: Large, important ceremonial site and type site of a culture in Chiapas, Mexico, built about 3500 years ago (Middle-Late Preclassic). Izapa is famous for its art style, which is distributed in Chiapas and parts of Guatemala. The relief art, carved on altar stones and stelae, was influenced by the Olmec and Maya traditions. The style falls mainly within the Late Pre-Classic period (300 BC-300 AD), intermediate in time between Olmec and Maya. Dates were written in the long count system; a pure Izapan stele from El Baul, Guatemala, carries a figure equivalent to 36 AD. Most of its 80 temple-pyramids, courts, and plazas were built in the Late Preclassic. The center's economic base may have been cacao, which is featured in Izapan iconography.
Jam: CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: A remote valley in western Afghanistan where a spectacular tower, inscribed with the name of the Ghorid ruler Ghiyath al-Din Muhammad b. Sam (1153-1203) was discovered. The tower is 65 meters high and built of brick, with an octagonal base and four cylindrical tiers, each narrower and shorter than the one below. The fourth tier is a circular arcade supporting a dome. It is usually identified as a minaret (one of the tallest in existence) and may have belonged to the 'lost' Ghorid capital, Firuzkuh.
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.
Kenniff Cave: CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: A sandstone rock shelter in south central Queensland, Australia, one of the oldest sites yet discovered in the continent and containing one of the longest and most complete technological sequences for any Australian site. The basal strata contain an industry of core and flake scrapers dated by radiocarbon to c 14,000-13,000 BC. These tools were later joined by small blades, microliths, delicate points, woodworking flakes, and (around 2400 BC) by backed blades. Stone tools from the base to the 3000 BC levels also included steep-edge flake scrapers and cores, including horsehoof cores. Between 3000-500 BC, there occurred an unusually wide range of Australian Small Tools, including Pirri points, geometric microliths, Bondi points, and Tula adze flakes, as well as grinding stones. Ochre pellets, some use-striated, were scattered through all levels. There is stenciled art going back 19,000 years. It was the first evidence of Pleistocene occupation in Australia, establishing the two-phase sequence in current use for the continent.
Khasekhemwy (fl. 27th century BC): SYNONYMS OR RELATED TERMS: 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.
kick: CATEGORY: artifact
DEFINITION: The raised centre of a base which rises to a hollow peak.
kinship: CATEGORY: term
DEFINITION: Socially recognized relationships based on real or imagined descent and marriage patterns. Kinship ties impose mutual obligations on all members of a kin group.
Kofun: SYNONYMS OR RELATED TERMS: Great Burial Period, Tumulus Period
CATEGORY: chronology; culture
DEFINITION: The name of the protohistoric tomb period of Japan, 300-710 AD, and the type of tumulus used for the burials. . Large tombs were built which were covered with artificial hillocks about 8 meters high, with burial chambers about 2 meters underneath the top surface. The burial chamber, enclosed with stones, contained coffins and various funerary offerings. The period when tombs of this kind were built in abundance was characterized by Haji ware and Sue ware. It is divided into Early, 4th century; Middle, 5th century; and Late, late 5th-7th centuries. The Kofun period falls between the Yayoi period and the fully historic Nara period and partially overlaps the Asuka and Hakuho periods of art historians. In their writings, the Kojiki and Nihon Shoki texts, the culture was explained. Early kofun were built by modifying natural hills, as were Late Yayoi burial mounds. Haji pottery, used throughout the Kofun period, is very similar to Yayoi pottery and farmers lived in the same kinds of houses, using very similar tools. Technical advances over the yayoi period include irrigation canals and dams. There were also silversmiths who made the ornaments deposited in kofun and professional potters began making Sue pottery in the 5th century. Those in the fertile and well-protected Yamato Basin actively sought new technical and administrative skills on the continent and thus artisans came to make new kinds of pottery, ornaments, and weapons. Yamato leaders gained control over much of Japan in the 7th century and moved the capital to Heijo in 710. The magnificent kofun tombs indicate that the Yamato court based in the Yamato area (the present Nara prefecture) succeeded in bringing almost the whole of Japan under its control.
Kostenki-Willendorf culture: CATEGORY: culture
DEFINITION: Upper Palaeolithic culture of central Europe and the Russian plain dating to c 30,000-20,000 bp. This culture is based on assemblages containing backed blades, shouldered points, and Venus figurines among the art objects. It is generally equated with the Eastern Gravettian industry.
krater: SYNONYMS OR RELATED TERMS: crater; bell krater; volute krater; calyx krater; column krater
CATEGORY: artifact; ceramics
DEFINITION: Ancient Greek vessel used for diluting wine with water. It usually stood on a tripod in the dining room, where wine was mixed. Kraters were made of metal or pottery and were often painted or elaborately ornamented. In Homer's Iliad" the prize offered by Achilles for the foot race at Patroclus' funeral games was a silver krater. The Greek historian Herodotus describes many enormous and costly kraters dedicated at temples or used in religious ceremonies. Kraters are large with a broad body and base and usually a wide mouth. They may have horizontal handles placed near the base or vertical handles rising from the shoulder. Among the many variations are the bell krater confined to red-figure pottery shaped like an inverted bell with loop handles and a disk foot; the volute krater with an egg-shaped body and handles that rise from the shoulder and curl in a volute (scroll-shaped form) well above the rim; the calyx krater the shape of which spreads out like the cup or calyx of a flower; and the column krater with columnar handles rising from the shoulder to a flat projecting lip rim. Some were fitted with a strainer."
krepidoma: CATEGORY: structure
DEFINITION: The term for the base or foundation of a Classical building, often stepped.
Ku Bua: CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: Settlement of the Dvaravati period in south-central Thailand near the mouth of the Mae Klong River. Remains of Dvaravati architecture include stupa bases at Ku Bua, some of which have elephants supporting their bases, following a pattern that originated in Ceylon. A moat dates to the Khmer period, c 1000 AD.
kula ring: CATEGORY: term
DEFINITION: A system of ceremonial, non-competitive, exchange practiced in Melanesia to establish and reinforce alliances. This exchange system began among the people of the Trobriand Islands of southeast Melanesia, in which permanent contractual partners trade traditional valuables following an established ceremonial pattern and trade route. In this system, described by the British anthropologist Bronislaw Malinowski, only two kinds of articles, traveling in opposite directions around a rough geographical 'ring' several hundred miles in circumference, were exchanged. These were red shell necklaces and white shell bracelets. Kula objects, which sometimes had names and histories attached, were not owned in order to be used but rather to acquire prestige and rank. Malinowski's study of this system was influential in shaping the anthropological concept of reciprocal exchange. The partnerships between men, involving mutual duties and obligations, were permanent and lifelong. The network of relationships based on the kula served to link many tribes by providing allies and communication of material and nonmaterial cultural elements to distant areas.
lanceolate: CATEGORY: lithics
DEFINITION: Shaped like a lance head, referring to projectile points tapering to a point at the apex and sometimes at the base. The term is often applied to flaked stone blades of laurel-leaf form and is much like spearheads.
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.
Lartet, Edouard (1801-1871): CATEGORY: person
DEFINITION: A French scholar, one of the pioneers of Palaeolithic archaeology, known as the founder of the science of palaeontology. He proposed a classification scheme for the Palaeolithic period based on animal bones: the Cave Bear period; the Woolly Mammoth and Rhinoceros period; the Reindeer period and the Aurochs or Bison period. He collaborated with Henry Christy in excavating many of the well-known rock shelter sites of southern France and was one of the first to recognize in situ mobiliary art; the publication of these objects from well-excavated contexts made it easier for scholars to accept the authenticity of cave art. With Christy, he carried out the first systematic study of south French caves, and excavated many of the most famous sites in the Dordogne (Laugerie-Haute, Le Moustier, La Madeleine). Their results appeared in several important articles, and also, during the decade 1865-1875, in the volumes of Reliquiae Aquitanicae"."
lateral section: CATEGORY: artifact
DEFINITION: A cross section in which the cut is made perpendicular to the base line of the artifact drawing and the outline of the section is oriented like a profile view but in horizontal alignment with the points through which the cut was made
Latin script: CATEGORY: language
DEFINITION: Writing using a-z. Based on older forms, it developed during the Roman Empire and is used today in most countries of Europe, the Americas, Africa, Oceania, and some Asian nations.
lead isotope analysis: CATEGORY: technique
DEFINITION: A technique based on the relative abundance of lead isotopes, which differ according to the origin of the lead, allowing scientists to pinpoint the source of a piece of lead once the ratios of the isotopes have been determined. A mass spectrometer is used on a small sample to determine the ratio of the isotopic concentrations, which are similar in different regions if the geological time scale is similar. The method can be used to identify sources of lead impurities in other metals as well as in glass and glaze.
legion: CATEGORY: term
DEFINITION: A military unit forming the backbone of the Roman army, nominally composed of 6,000 soldiers, and divided up into 10 cohorts, with each cohort containing 6 centuria. The centurion thus nominally commanded about 100 men, and there were 60 centurions in a legion. Each was based at a legionary fortress, a larger and more permanent version of the Roman military camp. Numbers within a legion changed again under the Empire, and from Diocletian onwards (284-316 AD), the legions were increased in number but reduced in size. Each legion was given the standard of the eagle, an identifying number, and an honorific title, often based upon the name of the founder.
lekythos: SYNONYMS OR RELATED TERMS: lecythus; plural lecythi or lekythoi
CATEGORY: artifact
DEFINITION: In ancient Greece, a pottery oil flask used at baths and gymnasiums and for funerary offerings. The flask has a long, cylindrical body gracefully tapered to the base, and a narrow neck with a single loop-shaped handle. The body was often covered with white slip and then painted in polychrome.
Levanna projectile point: CATEGORY: artifact
DEFINITION: Levanna projectile points are usually associated with Late Woodland and Contact Period occupations in southern New England (ca. 700-300 Years B.P.). Common material types associated with this point include quartz, quartzite, hornfels, and basalt. Non-local cherts were also used in the manufacture of this point type. The Levanna point type is characterized by the equilateral triangular form and concave base.
level: CATEGORY: tool; term
DEFINITION: An instrument used in surveying which takes vertical measurements and which is much used in excavation for the recording of site contours and accurate depths of features, especially for making maps and identifying the location of artifacts. There are several types of leveling instrument, the Y or dumpy level, the tilting level, and the self-leveling level. Each consists of a telescope fitted with a spirit level and, generally, mounted on a tripod. It is used in conjunction with a graduated rod placed at the point to be measured and sighted through the telescope. The theodolite (q.v.), or transit, is used to measure horizontal and vertical angles; it may be used also for leveling. The differences between the types are in the ease of leveling: the first has a single spirit level for the whole instrument, the second a separate spirit level for spindle and telescope with a tilting mechanism and adjustable screw on the telescope, and the third an optical part operated by a pendulum so that the line of sight is always horizontal. Having established a datum point, the instrument is sighted on a leveling staff or rod which is marked in a graduated scale, metric, or imperial. The difference in level between the telescope and the base of the rod can be read off on this scale, and the result subtracted from the height of the level itself above ground; the final figure gives the real height, or depth, of the feature above or below the ground at instrument point. Subtracting the stadia rod reading from the height of the level above the ground surface gives the difference in height between ground surface at the instrument station and the ground surface at the datum point. A series of levels taken across a site will give contours, while excavated features and small finds can be leveled in with greater accuracy than with tapes from a hypothetical ground surface. The term is also used to refer to the actual height measurements taken with such an instrument. More generally, archaeologists often use the term 'level' interchangeably with layer. In excavations the remains are divided into levels that contain the buildings and objects belonging to a phase.
lexicostatistics: SYNONYMS OR RELATED TERMS: glottochronology
CATEGORY: related field
DEFINITION: A method for estimating the approximate date when two or more languages separated from a common parent language, using statistics to compare similarities and differences in vocabulary. The study of linguistic divergence between two languages, based on changes in a list of common vocabulary terms and the sharing of common root words. This science comparatively studies the vocabularies of languages and measures linguistic change through absolute time. By studying the rate of change, the length of time (time depth) during which two related languages developed independently may be calculated. Lexicostatistics relies on statistical comparison of the basic vocabulary shared by two or more related languages and on the assumption that the rate of vocabulary replacement is constant over sufficiently long periods of time. It is a way of arriving at a date of separation between two languages that have a common origin by studying the extent to which they have diverged from each other and provides archaeologists with approximate dates for the origination of subcultures diverging from each other. For instance, in Alaska the great difference between the Aleut language and the other Eskimo languages is thought to have been the result of the cultural isolation of the Aleuts from the 3rd millennium BC onwards. It is a controversial method.
Li Chi (1896-1979): SYNONYMS OR RELATED TERMS: [Li Ch'i]
CATEGORY: person
DEFINITION: Chinese archaeologist responsible for establishing the historical authenticity of the semilegendary Shang dynasty of China (c 1766-1122 BC). He supervised numerous excavations at Anyang (An-yang), working to identify the features distinguishing the Shang civilization from previous Neolithic cultures. More than 300 tombs, including four important royal burial sites, were uncovered and carefully studied. Some 1,100 skeletons and oracle bones, unquestionably linked with the Shang period, were recovered. Li Chi created a typology of bronzes based on their shapes, of ceramic sherds, and bone hairpins. Following the Japanese invasion of China and the expulsion of the Chinese Nationalists from the mainland, many of Li's Anyang remains and notes were lost. After escaping to Taiwan, he established the first archaeology and anthropology department at a Chinese university (National University in Taipei). He published a number of books, including The Beginnings of Chinese Civilization" (1957). "
Linear Pottery culture: SYNONYMS OR RELATED TERMS: Linearbandkeramik; LBK; Danubian I
CATEGORY: culture
DEFINITION: The earliest Neolithic culture of central Europe, western Ukraine to eastern France, between c 4500-3900 BC. It is so named after curvilinear incised patterns which make its pottery so recognizable. This was the first farming culture in central Europe, based on grain cultivation and domesticated livestock, lasting to 3200 BC on its periphery. The Linear Pottery core area stretches from eastern Hungary to the Netherlands, including settlement concentrations in the Pannonian Basin, Bohemia, Moravia, central Germany and the Rhineland. A second rapid expansion occurred eastwards round the northern rim of the Carpathians, from Poland to the Dnieper. Linear Pottery is characterized by incised and sometimes painted pottery (3/4 spherical bowl) with linear designs (curvilinear, zigzag, spiral, and meander patterns), polished stone shoe-last adzes, and a microlithic stone industry. Small cemeteries of individual inhumations are common as are longhouses with rectangular ground plans. The remarkable uniformity that characterized the Linear Pottery culture in its core area broke down after c 4000 BC and the cultures that emerged -- Tisza, Lengyel, Stroke-Ornamented Ware, Rossen etc. -- were more divergent in characteristics. It is most possible that it derived from the Körös culture of the northern Balkans.
lip: CATEGORY: ceramics
DEFINITION: The part of a vessel most distant from its base as measured along the center of the vessel walls, or the portion of the vessel that would touch the surface on which the vessel rested upside-down (or orifice down).
lobbed: CATEGORY: artifact
DEFINITION: A term used to describe the base portion of a point or blade that is eared. The ears are rounded and are formed by the meeting of two circles creating a lobbed effect. An object with a oval shaped base or stem.
loess: CATEGORY: geology
DEFINITION: A wind-borne rock dust (very fine sediments, silt) carried from outwash deposits and moraines and laid down as a thick stratum during periglacial conditions in the steppe country surrounding the ice sheets. Wind erosion was widespread in the periglacial zone that surrounded the large Quaternary ice sheets. Material was picked up by the wind from the large expanses of proglacial deposits at the ice sheet margins. Because of its exceptional fertility, areas of loess were chosen for settlement by early agriculturists. In central and eastern Europe, as well as Asia and North America, there are notable concentrations of sites on loess. It provided good grazing for the animals on which Palaeolithic man fed, was rich in nutrients for plants, and was later settled by Neolithic farmers who found it easy to till with primitive equipment. It is an essentially unconsolidated, unstratified calcareous silt; commonly it is homogeneous, permeable, and buff to gray in color, and contains calcareous concretions and fossils. Loess is important archaeologically as soil erosion in these regions during the Holocene caused substantial redeposition of this silt, often burying (deeply) and preserving archaeological sites. In semiarid regions people such as the Pueblo Indians made houses and fortresslike closed edifices from loess-based adobe.
longphort: SYNONYMS OR RELATED TERMS: longfort
CATEGORY: structure
DEFINITION: A term used in 9th-century Ireland for the first winter base camps of the Vikings, forts along the shore for the protection of their ships.
looped spearhead: CATEGORY: artifact
DEFINITION: A type of bronze spearhead common in the middle Bronze Age of Europe which has a pair of small loops cast into the outside of the hafting socket near the base. It is assumed that these loops were to assist in securing the shaft to the spearhead itself.
Los Millares: CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: Important Chalcolithic settlement and cemetery in Almeria, southeast Spain, of c 2400 BC and located on a spur between the River Andarax and a stream. Within the settlement are circular houses, outside there are forts, megalithic walls, and a cemetery with 80+ passage graves (circular tholos type). The rich grave goods included bone idol figurines, copper axes and daggers, pottery with double-eye motifs, and ivory and ostrich-eggshell artifacts. The site typifies Millaran culture" of mid-3rd millennium BC in southern Spain and Portugal with the emergence of ranked societies whose power may have been based on the control of water supplies and sources of metal ores."
low side notched: CATEGORY: artifact
DEFINITION: A flaking technique applied to accommodate hafting which involved the flaking of notches into the side of a preform near its base.
Lower Palaeolithic: SYNONYMS OR RELATED TERMS: Lower Paleolithic
CATEGORY: chronology
DEFINITION: The earliest part of the Palaeolithic period, beginning about 2.5 million years ago and lasting to about 100,000 years ago. It was characterized by the first use of crude stone tools, the practice of hunting and gathering; and the development of social units, settlements, and structures. It was the era of the earliest forms of humans. The phases of the Palaeolithic have been subdivided based on artifact typology; the Lower Palaeolithic is the period of early hominid pebble tool and core tool manufacture. In China, the Early Palaeolithic ran from 1,000,000-73,000 BC.
Lubaantun: CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: A site in the Maya Mountains southeastern periphery, which was a small Classic and Late Classic Maya center in southern Belize. It was built in the early 8th century and consists largely of ceremonial buildings. There was a sizable population and flourishing market system. Its proximity to one of the few areas where cacao grows suggests that control of this much sought-after commodity was its major economic base, and may be the reason why such a considerable investment of labor was made in building the site. It was fairly short-lived, abandoned some time between 850-900, probably as part of the general Maya collapse.
magnetic surveying: SYNONYMS OR RELATED TERMS: electromagnetic surveying
CATEGORY: technique
DEFINITION: A technique for the location of archaeological features adapted from techniques used in geological surveying. It is based on the fact that features with thermo-remanent magnetism, like hearths or kilns, or features with a high humus content, like pits or ditches, and iron objects, distort the earth's magnetic field from the normal. Instruments such as the proton magnetometer or the differential fluxgate gradiometer are used to measure those disturbances, and by plotting the results, a map of the features can be built. The ways in which the different types of feature distort the magnetic field vary, though they can all be picked up on the same instrument. Hematite or magnetic, present in most clays, have a small magnetic effect when unburnt, since the grains point in random directions and cancel each other out. Once heated to about 700? C or more, the grains line up, increasing the magnetic effect and causing an anomaly in the magnetic field. This thermo-remanent magnetism is also the basis for magnetic dating. The presence of modern iron as in wire fences can cause problems with this technique of location; if the area to be surveyed is clearly crossed with power lines or fenced with iron posts, a resistivity survey may be more suitable. The method of surveying used requires a grid to be measured out on the site and readings to be taken at regular intervals. The nature of the site may prevent such a grid being laid out, for instance if it is heavily wooded, and magnetic survey may not be possible on these sites. It is one of the most commonly used geophysical surveying methods.
Mainz: SYNONYMS OR RELATED TERMS: Roman Mogontiacum
CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: An imperial Roman legion base and settlement in west-central Germany, a port on the left bank of the Rhine opposite Wiesbaden and the mouth of the Main River. It was the site of a Celtic settlement where the Romans established (14-9 BC) the military camp, known as Mogontiacum (Moguntiacum) after the Celtic god Mogo. A fort was built of timber, then renewed in stone somewhere between 50-100 AD. Between the fort and the river grew up a civilian settlement with a port, which, under Domitan, was to become capital of Germania Superior (Upper Germany). Surviving remains include a great column of the god Jupiter with reliefs of 28 deities, evidence for a Flavian aqueduct, portions of late Roman wall, and some civil and military cemeteries.
Majapahit: CATEGORY: culture
DEFINITION: The last Indianized kingdom in Indonesia; based in eastern Java, it existed between the 13th and 16th centuries. The founder of the empire was Vijaya, a prince of Singhasari, who escaped when Jayakatwang, the ruler of Kadiri, seized the palace. From 1292, it developed into the most powerful empire of the archipelago for two centuries until its decline in the face of the advance of Islam. The apogee of Majapahit was reached by King Hayam Wuruk and his prime minister, Gajah Mada.(1350-89, when the kingdom's suzerainty was extended to its farthest limits.
Malvernian ware: CATEGORY: artifact
DEFINITION: A pottery industry based around the Malvern Hills in west central England. The earliest production dates to the middle Bronze Age, but from the mid 1st millennium BC onwards the industry produced a range of very coarse, handmade, simple jars. They were distributed over considerable distances, particularly in the Marches, South Wales, and Gloucestershire.
mano: SYNONYMS OR RELATED TERMS: handstone
CATEGORY: lithics
DEFINITION: A one- or two-handled small and flat ground stone tool used with a metate (quern) for grinding vegetable material such as maize, seeds, nuts, pigments, etc. Manos date dates to the Archaic Indian period, the word coming from Spanish mano de piedra, hand stone" -- referring to the upper stone which is usually cylindrical or ovoid in shape. The underlying smooth stone slab is the metate. It is a hallmark artifact defining the economic or subsistence base of prehistoric societies. Its forms vary considerably from a barely modified cobble to a long cylinder similar to a rolling pin."
Maros point: CATEGORY: lithics
DEFINITION: Small hollow-based stone projectile points, often with serrated edge-retouch, characteristic of a mature phase of the Toalian industry of southwestern Sulawesi, India, c 6000 BC into the 1st millennium BC. They were part of a mid-Holocene stone flake and blade industry.
Matt-painted pottery: CATEGORY: ceramics
DEFINITION: Middle Helladic pottery with simple decoration in manganese-based purple-black paint on a pale ground. Matt-painted pottery has been found in the nearer islands and even as far as Crete and the Anatolian coast.
McKean point: CATEGORY: artifact
DEFINITION: Bifacially worked chipped stone projectile points characteristic of the McKean Complex of the middle Archaic Stage in the Great Plains of North America during the period c.2900-1000 BC. Lanceolate in outline with curved sides and a hollow base these points were probably spearheads used in bison hunting.
meadowood point: CATEGORY: lithics
DEFINITION: A triangular side-notched point -- with notches chipped into each side of the base to form a stem below the main part of the point, generally 2 1/2 inches long.
mean square error: CATEGORY: measure
DEFINITION: A measure of the efficiency of a possibly biased statistic or estimate, based on squared deviations from the parameter.
Medicine Lodge Creek: CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: A deeply stratified site located in the Big Horn Mountains of Wyoming, with a date range of c 8000 BC to historic times. Evidence of a diversified subsistence base of small game hunting and gathering occurs at a time when the Big Game Hunting Tradition was still widely practiced in the Great Plains. Manos, metates, and remains of fish, gopher, and rabbit were found at levels dated from 7500-6500 BC. Lanceolate projectile points, similar to those found at Mummy Cave, also fall within this date range, but stemmed points typical of the Archaic fall slightly later at c 6300 BC.
megalith: SYNONYMS OR RELATED TERMS: megalithic; megalithic tomb; megalithic monument
CATEGORY: feature; structure
DEFINITION: From the Greek megas 'large' and lithos 'stone', the term for a large stone and also for structures or arrangements of large stones (menhirs, stone circles, and alignments). The term is especially used for the monuments of northern and western Europe from the Mesolithic period, such as Stonehenge and Carnac in France of the late Neolithic culture of western Europe. Such a stone was sometimes free-standing, sometimes part of a structure. The term could also refer to a large tomb which used megaliths to create passages and chambers in which burials of one or more people could be placed, such as the passage graves of Brittany. Some authorities have used the term in a still wider sense to cover monuments built of Cyclopean masonry such as the Maltese Temples, the Nuraghi of Sardinia and the Navetas of Minorca. Various types of megalithic monuments have also been found in parts of Asia, Oceania, and Africa. The migration theories based on megalithic monuments are now discounted. It is now accepted that the practice of erecting these monuments arose independently in different times and places and for different reasons.
Meipin: SYNONYMS OR RELATED TERMS: Meiping (Chinese)
CATEGORY: artifact
DEFINITION: The Japanese name for type of bottle with narrow neck, high shoulders, and pinched-in base. Meipin were originally a Chinese creation, popular in the Sung, Yuan, Ming periods and beginning of T'sing. The shape spread to Korea (Koryo celadons) and to Japan. Some were made in the kilns.
Melka Kontoure: CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: A site in Ethiopia some 50 km south of Addis Ababa, with many archaeological levels dating from over 1.5 million years old at the base to late Pleistocene times. Its long stone artifact sequence included Oldowan, Acheulian, Middle Stone Age, and Microlithic Later Stone Age. A few hominid fragments have been found, but it is the long succession of artifact assemblages and living floors which make the site important.
mensuration: CATEGORY: term
DEFINITION: Any act of measuring; measurement. The earliest standard measurements appeared in the ancient Mediterranean cultures and were based on parts of the body, or on calculations of what man or beast could haul, or on the volume of containers or the area of fields in common use. The Egyptian cubit is generally recognized to have been the most widespread unit of linear measurement in the ancient world. It came into use around 3000 BC and was based on the length of the arm from the elbow to the extended finger tips. It was standardized by a royal master cubit of black granite, against which all cubit sticks in Egypt were regularly checked. One of the earliest known weight measures was the Babylonian mina, though the two surviving examples vary widely -- 640 grams (about 1.4 pounds) and 978 grams (about 2.15 pounds).
Merimde Beni Salama: SYNONYMS OR RELATED TERMS: Merinde, Merimda Beni Salama
CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: Site on the west bank of the Nile Delta, Egypt, representing one of the earliest cultures of Egypt, similar to that of the Fayyum (Faiyum). It yielded a radiocarbon date of 5060 BC and was occupied for about 600 years, probably c 4900-4300 BC, by a population up to 16,000. Three occupation phases showed progressively more substantial shelters, beneath which the dead were buried in a crouched position. Barley and emmer, cattle, sheep, and pigs are attested. Sickle flints and hollow-based arrowheads, pyriform and spherical maceheads, sling stones, fishhooks, spindle whorls, and simple stone axheads have been found. The pottery was poor, plain, straw-tempered and often covered with a slip. It is the earliest evidence for fully sedentary village life in the Nile valley. The Merimda phase of the Lower Egyptian Predynastic Period appears to have been roughly contemporary with the late Badarian and Amratian phases in Upper Egypt.
Mesopotamia: CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: Term meaning land between the (two) rivers" the area between the Tigris and Euphrates rivers in western Asia (modern Iraq) which encompasses various ancient kingdoms. This land was the home of the world's earliest civilization that of the Sumerians and of the later Babylonian Akkadian and Assyrian civilizations. The chronology of the prehistoric periods is based on radiocarbon dates; the historical periods' chronology is based on a combination of documentary sources and calendrical information. The area was the focus of the development of complex societies until the collapse of Mesopotamia at the end of the 1st millennium BC. The geography of the area allowed the development of husbandry agriculture and permanent settlements. Trade with other regions also flourished irrigation techniques were created as well as pottery and other crafts building methods based on clay bricks were developed and elaborate religious cults evolved. The birth of the city took place in the 4th millennium BC and the invention of writing occurred about 3000 BC -- both in Sumer. Excavations of Sumerian cities (Eridu Kish Uruk Isin Lagash Ur) have yielded thousands of clay tablets inscribed with cuneiform writing. Sargon the king of Akkad fought wars of conquest from the Mediterranean to the Zagros and ruled over history's first empire. The Akkadians were a Semitic people and their Akkadian language became the common vocabulary. The Akkadian rule only about two centuries. After that Ur (c 2112-2004 BC) the parallel dynasties of Isin and Larsa (to c 1763 BC) and then Babylon were the powers. The outstanding ruler of Babylon was Hammurabi (c 1792-1750 BC) who is best known for the code of laws he had inscribed on a great stela. From about 1600-1450 BC Babylonian culture declined as the Hurrians and the Kassites migrated into Mesopotamia and established themselves as rulers. Some time after 1500 BC the Mitanni kingdom extended its rule over much of northern Mesopotamia. The language of the kingdom was Hurrian but its rulers may have been of Aryan origin. Toward the end of the 15th century BC the city of Ashur in northern Mesopotamia a region that came to be known as Assyria began its rise. By 1350 BC the Assyrian empire was well-established and its kings conquered large areas from the Mitanni kingdom the Kassites and the Hittites. Another Babylonian dynasty known as the 2nd dynasty of Isin revived the greatness of the Old Empire under Nebuchadrezzar I (c 1119-1098). Assyria reached new heights of power under Tiglath-pileser I (c 1115-1077) and Ashurnasirpal II (883-859). Between 746-727 BC the Neo-Assyrian empire formed and subdued the Aramaeans who had settled much of Babylonia and then conquered Urartu Syria Israel and other areas. The empire reached its after conquering Egypt in 671 and then the reign of Ashurbanipal (668-627) but its rapid decline came soon after attacks by the Medes Scythians and Babylonians. The Assyrian empire was crushed in 609. Babylon's Nebuchadrezzar II (605-561) is best known for his destruction of Jerusalem in 588/587 and his forcing of thousands of Jews into the "Babylonian exile." The Neo-Babylonian empire ended in 539 when Nabonidus surrendered to Cyrus II of Persia. Under the Persians and Alexander the Great Babylon was a rich capital. The Seleucid kings ruled Mesopotamia from about 312 BC until the middle of the 2nd century BC. In the 2nd century BC Mesopotamia became part of the Parthian empire. Human occupation of Mesopotamia began some time around 6000 BC. The prehistoric cultural stages of Hassuna-Samarra' and Halaf succeeded each other here before there is evidence of settlement in the south (Sumer). There the earliest settlements such as Eridu appear to have been founded around 5000 BC in the late Halaf period. From then on the cultures of the north and south move through a succession of major archaeological periods that in their southern forms are known as Ubaid Warka Protoliterate and Early Dynastic at the end of which -- shortly after 3000 BC -- recorded history begins. The historical periods of the 3rd millennium are in order: Akkad Gutium 3rd dynasty of Ur; those of the 2nd millennium: Isin-Larsa Old Babylonian Kassite and Middle Babylonian; and those of the 1st millennium: Assyrian Neo-Babylonian Achaemenian Seleucid and Parthian."
Michelsberg: CATEGORY: culture
DEFINITION: A Middle Neolithic culture of Belgium, northeastern France, the Rhineland and parts of Switzerland from c 4500-4000 BC. It occupies a frontier zone on the borders of the Danubian culture, TRB culture, and western Neolithic complex, and shares traits with all three. The type site is a hilltop enclosure in Baden-Württemberg, Germany. There are many regional subgroups. The Belgian one has leaf-shaped arrowheads, antler combs, flint mines, and enclosures similar in construction to causewayed camps, and may have had links with the Windmill Hill culture of Britain. In the Rhineland and Low Countries, the culture was closely related to Funnel-Necked Beaker Culture and a succession to the Röessen Culture. Pottery forms include pointed- and round-based vessels with flaring rims and flat pottery disks (plats à pain) which were probably lids. One of innovations was use of deep mines for flint (Spiennes in Belgium, Rijckholt in Netherlands) where axes were made. Contacts by the Michelsberg with late Mesolithic hunter-gatherers north of the loess zone gave rise to semiagricultural communities, as evidenced by relics from about 4000 BC found in the Netherlands delta at Swifterbant in Flevoland and Hazendonkborn and Bergschenhoekborn in Zuid-Holland.
Middle Bronze Age: SYNONYMS OR RELATED TERMS: MBA
CATEGORY: chronology
DEFINITION: In the Levant, the period of sophisticated urban civilization of the Canaanites, MBA I c 1950-1800 BC and MBA II c 1800-1550 BC. The Middle Bronze Age provides the background for the beginning of the story of the Old Testament. The archaeological evidence for the period shows new types of pottery, weapons, and burial practices. It was an urban civilization based on agriculture. There was much contact with the Phoenicians and the Egyptians during this time. The destruction of Megiddo, Jericho, and Tell Beit Mirsim that followed the Egyptians' expulsion of the Hyksos into Palestine occurred at the end of the Middle Bronze Age.
Middle Paleolithic: CATEGORY: chronology
DEFINITION: The intermediate part of the Paleolithic period, from about 100,000 years ago to about 35,000 years ago. It was characterized by the development of a variety of stone tools and the first symbolic use of artifacts and sites. It ended with the extinction of the Neanderthals. The Middle Paleolithic is equivalent to the Middle Stone Age in sub-Saharan Africa. The Middle Paleolithic comprises the Mousterian, a portion of the Levalloisian, and the Tayacian, all of which are complexes based on the production of flakes, although the hand-ax tradition survived in many instances. Middle Paleolithic assemblages first appear in deposits of the third interglacial and persist during the first major oscillation of the Fourth Glacial (Würm) stage. Associated with the Tayacian, in which the artifacts consist of very crude flakes, remains of modern man (Homo sapiens) have been found. Mousterian man, on the other hand, is of the Neanderthal race. It is in the Mousterian levels of the caves and rock shelters of central and southern France that the earliest evidence of the use of fire and the first definite burials have been discovered in western Europe. The artifacts consist of (1) the prepared striking-platform-tortoise-core (Levalloisian) tradition; (2) the plain striking-platform-discoidal-core technique of Clactonian tradition; and (3) a persistence of the bifacial core tool, or Acheulean tradition.
middle-range research: SYNONYMS OR RELATED TERMS: Middle Range Theory, middle-range theory
CATEGORY: technique
DEFINITION: A set of frameworks or theories that allow the construction of accurate statements of past behavior based on the analysis of the contemporary archaeological record. It applies to any investigation aimed at linking the static data from the archaeological record with the dynamic processes that formed it. The frameworks link the archaeological record and the original activities that produced that record, allowing archaeologists to make inferences about past human behavior. It is considered by some to be the key to a scientific understanding of the archaeological record.
Midwestern Taxonomic System: SYNONYMS OR RELATED TERMS: midwestern taxonomic system; McKern taxonomic system
CATEGORY: term; technique
DEFINITION: A hierarchical framework devised by William McKern in 1939 to systematize historical sequences in the Great Plains area of the United States, using the general principle of similarities between artifact assemblages. It was used to organize artifacts and sites in North America before World War II and is still in widespread use in modified form. One occupational unit of a particular culture was called a component. Related components were grouped into a focus, representing a culture unit approximating a tribe. Related foci constituted a pattern, and related patterns constituted a base, the highest level in the system. Classification was based strictly on similarities between compared units without regard to their respective ages. Many of the names of cultures are still called foci and the standard definition of a component is a single unit of occupation. Most units formerly called foci are now called phases, which have temporal as well as descriptive meaning.
minimum number of individuals: SYNONYMS OR RELATED TERMS: MNI
CATEGORY: technique
DEFINITION: The minimum number of individuals represented in a given faunal or human bone collection; determined from the number in the largest category of skeletal elements recovered. It is a method of assessing species abundance in faunal assemblages based on a calculation of the smallest number of animals necessary to account for all the identified bones. It is usually calculated from the most abundant bone or tooth from either the left or right side of the animal.
Miraflores: CATEGORY: culture
DEFINITION: A complex of cultural materials which define a phase from 100 BC to 200 AD of Highland Mayan sites in the Late Pre-Classic period. It is the Late Formative period of the Valley of Guatemala. Characteristic artifacts include engraved soft stone and monochrome ceramic vessels, as well as 'mushroom stones' (hollow stones set in an annular base and capped with mushroom-shaped covers, which may have been used in rites with hallucinogenic mushrooms). A strong Izapan influence is evident. The huge Miraflores mounds located at Kaminaljuyú contained log tombs of incredible richness. In one, the deceased was accompanied by sacrificed followers or captives. As many as 340 objects were placed with him, including jade mosaic masks, jade ear spools and necklaces, bowls of chlorite schist, and pottery vessels of great beauty.
Mississippian: SYNONYMS OR RELATED TERMS: Mississippi tradition
CATEGORY: chronology; culture
DEFINITION: A group of cultures which arose in southeastern North America -- especially the central and lower Mississippi Valley -- after 700 AD into the historic period. It spread over a great area of the Southeast and the mid-continent, in the river valleys of what are now the states of Mississippi, Alabama, Georgia, Arkansas, Missouri, Kentucky, Illinois, Indiana, and Ohio, with scattered extensions northward into Wisconsin and Minnesota and westward into the Great Plains. It stands in contrast to the Woodland Tradition with three new traits -- building of rectangular, flat-topped mounds as bases for temples; burial mounds becoming less prominent; and radical pottery changes (pulverized shell rather than grit used for temper). New pottery shapes and forms, such as olla, and new types of decoration (burnishing, painting) appeared. Maize became the predominant crop, accompanied by beans and squash, which supplemented hunting and gathering. The largest of the earthworks is Monks Mound, in the Cahokia Mounds near Collinsville, Illinois. The Mississippian is divided into the periods Temple Mound I (700-1200 AD) and Temple Mound II (1200-1700 AD). It was the last major cultural tradition in prehistoric North America. By the late 17th century, all the major centers had been abandoned.
MNI: SYNONYMS OR RELATED TERMS: minimum number of individuals
CATEGORY: technique
DEFINITION: The minimum number of individuals represented in a given faunal or human bone collection; determined from the number in the largest category of skeletal elements recovered. It is a method of assessing species abundance in faunal assemblages based on a calculation of the smallest number of animals necessary to account for all the identified bones. It is usually calculated from the most abundant bone or tooth from either the left or right side of the animal.
model: CATEGORY: technique
DEFINITION: A devices used by archaeologists to aid the interpretation of data; models consist of hypothetical reconstructions of dynamic processes partly based on material remains and partly testing the validity of interpretations of material culture. They are idealized representations of the real world, used to demonstrate a simplified version of some of its characteristics. Models vary in complexity and can be physical representations or literary descriptions. It might be a physical model of a site or landscape to explain some feature of its function or organization; such models at full scale are well known in experimental archaeology. A simple model might be a map showing, for example, the distribution of sites in a region or a scatter diagram showing the relationship between two measured variables. Models need not be based on specific archaeological data, but can be derived from a number of sources: invented data can be generated by computer simulation; geometrical and mathematical models can also be used, such as central place theory or the rank-size rule in the study of regional settlement, or catastrophe theory in the study of cultural collapse. General systems theory can also be a source of systems models designed to show a simplified version of the working of a complex social or economic organization. The term model can also be used in a less specific sense for any general mode of thought in which archaeological research is conducted, for example descriptive, historical, or ecological. Models may also be diachronic or synchronic. The concept of formulating a model, testing it and refining it, is frequently applied in a non-mathematical way and this is the way in which it is most often used in archaeology. In this sense it is either synonymous with 'hypothesis' or refers to a number of interlocking hypotheses.
Mogollon: CATEGORY: culture
DEFINITION: A prehistoric civilization that existed from before 500 BC to approximately 1400 AD in southeastern Arizona and southwestern New Mexico in the Mogollon Highlands. Its roots lie in the Cochise version of the Desert Culture in this area, but the Mogollon folk were settled agriculturists who lived in villages of pit houses; they were also strongly influenced by the Anasazi and Hohokam. Evidence of maize and bean horticulture found at Bat Cave dates to earlier than 2000 BC, but unequivocally characteristic traits, such as plain brown pottery, do not appear until 300 BC. Although the tradition was agriculturally based, hunting and gathering continued to play some part in subsistence activities. Before c 1000 AD, typical communities were small villages of pit houses, located in easily defensible positions such as high mesas. Larger villages often included a communal assembly building (possibly early kiva) and sometimes fortifications. From c 1000 AD, the Mogollon people came under the influence of their northern neighbors, the Anasazi, and began to build pueblos. To this late period belongs some of the finest pottery of the American southwest, Mimbres ware, painted with stylized black animals on a white background. The culture is chronologically divided on the basis of architectural and pottery changes (Pine Lawn period, about 200 BC-AD 500; Georgetown period, 500-700; San Francisco period, 700-900; Three Circle period, 900-1050; and Mimbres period, 1050-1200). Unlike the Anasazi culture, the Mogollon culture did not survive as a recognizable group of modern Native Americans. Remnants of the Mogollon may have merged with Anasazi peoples to become what is known as the Western Pueblo people. The tradition has a number of regional variants: Mimbres, Pine Lawn, Upper Little Colorado, Forestdale, and Point of Pines.
molecular clock: CATEGORY: technique
DEFINITION: A method of tracing evolutionary lines based on the changes in the protein structure and DNA of living organisms that take place over long periods of time. By establishing the degree of difference between the proteins of two species, it is possible to calculate how long ago they shared a common ancestor. Studies of molecular evolution rates have led to the proposition that macromolecules may serve as evolutionary clocks. If the rate of evolution of a protein or gene were approximately the same in the evolutionary lineages leading to different species, proteins and DNA sequences would provide a molecular clock of evolution. The sequences could then be used not only to reconstruct the topology of a phylogeny (the sequence of branching events) but also the time when the various events occurred.
monetized economy: CATEGORY: term
DEFINITION: Any prehistoric economy based on money; the use of money to purchase goods and services.
Morrow Mountain point: CATEGORY: artifact
DEFINITION: Middle Archaic bifacially worked chipped stone projectile points found in eastern parts of North America and dating to the period c.6000-4000 BC. Characteristically, the points are triangular in outline with slightly flared sides towards the base, and a small rounded tang on the base.
Mortillet, Gabriel de (1821-1898): SYNONYMS OR RELATED TERMS: Mortillet, (Louis-Laurent-Marie) Gabriel de
CATEGORY: person
DEFINITION: French prehistorian who, after being a student of Edouard Lartet, proposed an alternative to Lartet's Palaeolithic classification scheme. For the palaeontological criteria of Lartet he substituted archaeological ones based on tool forms rather than faunal remains. He extended into prehistory the geological system of periods, or epochs, each characterized by a limited range of type fossils. Each period had 'type names' after a 'type site' where the diagnostic material was well represented -- such as Mousterian, Aurignacian, and Solutrean. By 1869, de Mortillet's scheme for the Stone Age had the following subdivisions: Thenaisian (for the now discredited eoliths), followed by Chellean, Mousterian, Solutrean, Aurignacian, Magdalenian, and (for the Neolithic) Robenhausian, named after a lake village -- though alterations and additions (Acheulian) were made later. With further modifications, this classification was widely adopted and remained the standard terminology for European archaeology until well into the 20th century. De Mortillet saw his epochs as periods of time or as stages of development with a universal validity, and his scheme was basically a refinement of the Three Age System. He did not allow for purely local variants within a single epoch; he divided the Palaeolithic into time periods, not cultures or traditions. This is no longer accepted and de Mortillet's epochs are now thought to represent cultures and to have local validity only. The practice of using type site names, however, proved so useful that it became standard practice. He founded, in 1864, one of the earliest archaeological journals, Matériaux pour l'Histoire positive et philosophique de l'Homme". His classifications were published in "Le Préhistorique: antiquité de l'homme" (1882; "The Prehistoric: Man's Antiquity") and in subsequent revisions."
Mortlake ware: SYNONYMS OR RELATED TERMS: Peterborough ware
CATEGORY: artifact
DEFINITION: A family of elaborately decorated Neolithic ceramics found in southern and eastern parts of the British Isles. Dating to the period 3000 to 2000 BC, Isobel Smith divided Peterborough wares into three successive styles-Ebbsfleet, Mortlake, and Fengate-on the basis of their occurrence in the ditch fills at Windmill Hill. It is now recognized that these three groups overlap rather more than originally thought, and that they are best seen as part of the broad group of impressed wares found over much of northern Europe in the 3rd millennium BC. The decoration on Peterborough ware consists of pits, ?maggot impressions' made by impressing tightly rolled cord, and the impressions made by pressing the ends of bird bones into the soft clay before firing. Some of the later vessels are the first in Britain to be made with flat bases.
mtDNA: SYNONYMS OR RELATED TERMS: mitochondrial DNA
CATEGORY: flora; fauna
DEFINITION: A type of DNA present in the mitochondria, the organelles in cells engaged in energy production. It has a circular structure with 16,000+ base pairs and is not formed by recombination but passed on only in the female line. It is distinct from nuclear DNA.
Mummy Cave: CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: A deeply stratified site in northwest Wyoming, containing 38 distinct cultural levels from which a series of radiocarbon dates was taken. There is evidence of intermittent occupation from at least 7300 BC-1580 AD. Subsistence activities were not based on the Big Game Hunting Tradition normally associated with the Plains area, but was a general hunting and gathering lifestyle. The cave is named for the desiccated body of an adult male who died there some 1200 years ago.
Mundigak: CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: Tell site near Kandahar in Afghanistan with an important cultural sequence from the 5th-2nd millennia BC. By the later 3rd millennium BC, it was a major urban center with a large colonnaded 'palace' and other monumental structures within a walled citadel. Pottery and other artifacts of that time indicate interaction with Turkmenistan, Baluchistan, and the Early Harappan Indus region. It was closed related to the city of Shahr-I Sikhta, also on the Helmand River but in Iran. It is likely that the wealth of Mundigak, as of Shahr-I Sokhta, was based largely on trade in lapis lazuli and perhaps also copper. The Chalcolithic levels contained mudbrick and black-on-buff painted pottery and had a radiocarbon date of 3400 +/- 300 BC.
Myrtos: CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: An Early Minoan settlement in southern Crete, occupied c 2600-2200 BC. It was a village of irregularly grouped buildings on a sloping hillside. There is evidence of relatively complex economic organization, attested by seals and sealings and by evidence of craft specialization. The economy may have been based in part on cultivation of the olive. A Neopalatial country house, built c 1550 BC, was destroyed by fire c 1450 BC.
Nabta Playa: CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: A low-lying lake basin near the Egypt/Sudan border in the desert west of the Nile. Extensive scattered prehistoric occupation is attested from c 8100 bp, with assemblages of wild plant foods and ceramics. Settlement later concentrated in larger sites adjacent to the lakeshore. Pottery and concave-based arrowheads show affinities to those from Early Khartoum and the Fayyum, respectively. Cattle, probably domestic, were in the faunal remains. Sheep and goats were present by 6700 bp. Seeds were well-preserved and include two kinds of barley, doum palm, date palm, possible sorghum and several weed species indicative of the presence of cultivation. The degree of continuity from earlier times illustrated by this Neolithic phase is noteworthy, as is the early documentation of food production. A large aggregation site of 7000-6000 BP has associated megaliths.
Narva: SYNONYMS OR RELATED TERMS: Narva culture
CATEGORY: site; culture
DEFINITION: A Neolithic culture and its type site in the eastern Baltic coast region (Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania; parts of Poland, Belarus) and dated to the 4th-3rd millennium BC. Similar in type to the ancestral Kunda culture, the Narva economy was based on hunting and fishing, with more tools of bone and antler than stone. Simple pointed-based pottery (with straight or S-profiles) and oval bowls was made. Important sites are Osa, Sarnate, Sventoji, and Narva-town.
Natufian: CATEGORY: culture
DEFINITION: The final Epipalaeolithic (Mesolithic) culture complex of the Levant, dated to c 12,500-10,000 BP, with its type site at Wadi an-Natuf in Palestine. Hunting and gathering were still the basis of subsistence, but some Natufian communities had adopted a settled mode of life and the period saw the development of cereal grain exploitation. They built first permanent village settlements in pre-agricultural times in Palestine (Mallaha) and on middle Euphrates in Syria (Mureybet, Abu Hureyra). A series of burials was excavated at Mount Carmel; one important site is Wad Cave with a large cemetery, querns, sickles. The shrine at the base of the tell at Jericho was built during the Early Natufian phase, and the descendants of the Natufians built the earliest Neolithic town at the site. The characteristic toolkit includes geometric microliths, sickles, pestles, mortars, fishing gear, and ornaments of bone and shell. Generally, Natufian sites demonstrate greater diversity in economy and more permanent settlement than earlier cultures.
nearest-neighbor analysis: SYNONYMS OR RELATED TERMS: nearest-neighbor statistic
CATEGORY: technique
DEFINITION: A method of analyzing the extent to which two-dimensionally located points are randomly distributed; a measure of the relationship between a cluster of points in a pattern based on the expected value and the observed value. The statistic equals observed value divided by expected value. This method of analyzing the degree of dispersion in a distribution pattern was first developed by plant ecologists studying the concentration of certain species. A nearest-neighbor index (usually denoted by the symbol R), is calculated from the ratio of the average observed distance from each point in the pattern to its nearest neighbor, to the average distance expected if the pattern were randomly distributed, which depends solely on the density of the pattern being studied. The index R varies from 0.00 for a totally clustered pattern through 1.00 for a random distribution to a maximum of 2.15 for a completely regularly spaced pattern. The index is influenced by the size of the study area chosen; it is therefore essential to select a relevant framework for the distribution being studied. With any boundary, however, it is possible for the index to be distorted by the 'boundary effect' to give a figure closer to the maximum than would be justified; this arises because the nearest neighbors of points near to the boundary may in fact lie beyond the boundary and hence not be properly counted, thus increasing the figure for the observed mean distance. It is also essential that the points in the pattern being analyzed are of the same date and similar function, and that the pattern should be complete. The index R describes only a part of the total pattern and can serve as a useful basis for asking more detailed questions about the factors that underlie the observed pattern. The technique has been useful to archaeologists studying the distribution of sites over a landscape and their relation to each other.
Neolithic: SYNONYMS OR RELATED TERMS: neolithic, New Stone Age
CATEGORY: chronology
DEFINITION: The period of prehistory when people began to use ground stone tools, cultivate plants, and domesticate livestock but before the use of metal for tools. It is the technical name for the New Stone Age in the Old World following the Mesolithic. In the Neolithic, villages were established, pottery and weaving appeared, and farming began. The Neolithic began about 8000-7000 BC in the Middle East and about 4000-3000 BC in Europe. It was followed by the Bronze Age, which began about 3500-3000 BC in the Middle East and about 2000-1500 BC in Europe. The criteria for defining" the Neolithic has become progressively more difficult to apply as both food production and metalworking took a long time to develop. In Britain the Neolithic has other more specific characteristics: the use of pottery and of ground stone (beside the long-employed flaked stone) and the appearance of construction works like the long barrow causewayed camp and megalithic tomb. Elsewhere however some Mesolithic cultures made use of pottery in Japan for example; and certain so-called pre-pottery Neolithic groups had none as at Jericho. If the term Neolithic is to be retained at all it must be based on the appearance of food production (especially cereal grains) sometimes called the Neolithic revolution commencing in southwest Asia 9000-6000 BC. This might be considered the most important single advance ever made by man since it allowed him to settle permanently in one spot. This in turn encouraged the accumulation of material possessions stimulated trade and by giving a storable surplus of food allowed a larger population and craft specialization. All these were prerequisite to further human progress. The Neolithic was followed by the Mesolithic period the Chalcolithic or the Bronze Age depending on the terminology used in different areas and the nature of the archaeological sequence itself. The Neolithic followed the Paleolithic Period."
Neolithic Revolution: SYNONYMS OR RELATED TERMS: Neolithization
CATEGORY: term
DEFINITION: A term coined by V.G. Childe to describe the origin and consequences of farming -- the development of stock raising and agriculture -- allowing the widespread development of settled village life (c 9000-6000 BC in Asia). This group of cultural processes marked the transition from an economy based on hunting and gathering to an agricultural economy. These processes were linked with development of village life, the beginning of firing techniques, and production of artifacts such as pottery and weaving.
new archaeology: SYNONYMS OR RELATED TERMS: New Archaeology; processual archaeology
CATEGORY: branch
DEFINITION: A movement which began in America in the 1960s, aimed at making archaeology more scientific, now more often called processual archaeology. It was suggested that explanations be based on carefully designed models of human behavior and emphasized the importance of understanding underlying cultural processes. This new approach was controversial and is commonly associated with Lewis R. Binford and his students. Binford's New Perspectives in Archaeology" in 1968 stressed the following ideas: the use of new techniques such as the computer for statistical and matrix analyses of data and concept of the ecosystem for the understanding of the economic and subsistence bases of prehistoric societies; an evolutionary view of culture; the use of models of cultures viewed as systems incorporating the evolutionary view of culture and a close relationship between archaeology and anthropology. Although the proponents of the new archaeology have been criticized by more traditionally minded scholars their basic principles are now widely accepted."
Newgrange: SYNONYMS OR RELATED TERMS: New Grange
CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: The most famous and splendidly decorated of the Irish passage graves, part of the Boyne Valley cemetery, in Meath County. The kidney-shaped mound, dated to c 3100 BC, is over 100 meters in diameter and 13 meters high. The cairn itself was carefully made of alternate layers of stones and turf. A kerb of large stones carved with wavy lines, lozenges, triangles, etc. encloses the base of the mound. On either side of the entrance the green kerbstones were topped by a retaining wall of white quartz. Some distance from the original base of the mound is a surrounding circle of free-standing stones. The burial chamber, cruciform in plan, is roofed by corbelling and has three subsidiary cells; the tomb has a very long passage, 19 meters in length, and built of orthostats. Midwinter sunrise shines through an opening above the door to illuminate the central chamber, the clearest example of an astronomical orientation recorded from a European prehistoric monument. Many stones of both chamber and passage carry pecked designs including an unusual triple spiral. Excavation has shown that the upper surfaces of the capstones had drainage channels, as well as art which would have been invisible once the overlying cairn had been built. Traces of cremation burials were found in the cells of the chamber, and soil from a habitation site, possibly close to the tomb, had been used to pack the interstices of the passage roof. There are two radiocarbon dates around 3200 BC and the site was reoccupied after the tomb-builders had left it and the cairn had begun to slump by a group which used Late Neolithic and Beaker pottery.
Newstead: SYNONYMS OR RELATED TERMS: ancient Trimontium
CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: A Roman fort on the Tweed near Melrose, it was first built by Agricola c 81 AD. There were rebuildings in c 86, 145, and 158, enlarging and strengthening it to hold a garrison of a thousand men. It remained the main base for the Roman army of occupation in the Scottish lowlands as long as this region was held.
nitrogen dating: SYNONYMS OR RELATED TERMS: nitrogen test
CATEGORY: technique
DEFINITION: A relative dating technique used on bone, based on the gradual reduction of nitrogen in bone as collagen is broken down into amino acids and leached away. Bone collagen decomposes, releasing nitrogen, at a fairly uniform slow rate. Nitrogen is present in bone in a proportion of approximately 4 percent. The relative ages of bones in similar burial environments can be compared by looking at the remaining nitrogen content; it is relative since the rate of decline is affected by local environmental factors such as temperature or chemical constituents in the find deposit. Nitrogen concentrations are determined by chemical analysis.
non-probabilistic sampling: SYNONYMS OR RELATED TERMS: nonprobabilistic sampling
CATEGORY: technique
DEFINITION: A non-statistical sampling strategy (in contrast to probabilistic sampling) which concentrates on sampling areas on the basis of intuition, historical documentation, or long field experience in the area. It is the acquisition of sample data based on informal criteria or personal judgment. It does not allow evaluation of how representative the sample is with respect to the data population.
nonprobabilistic sampling: SYNONYMS OR RELATED TERMS: non-probabilistic sampling
CATEGORY: technique
DEFINITION: A non-statistical sampling strategy (in contrast to probabilistic sampling) which concentrates on sampling areas on the basis of intuition, historical documentation, or long field experience in the area. It is the acquisition of sample data based on informal criteria or personal judgment. It does not allow evaluation of how representative the sample is with respect to the data population.
nonrandom sampling: CATEGORY: technique
DEFINITION: Any method in which cases are not chosen by random sampling, such as snowball sampling in which cases are selected based on previous cases or opportunistic sampling in which cases are selected because they are readily available.
Northumbria: CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: One of the most important kingdoms of Anglo-Saxon England, lying north of the Humber River. During its peak period it extended from the Irish Sea to the North Sea, between two west-east lines formed in the north by the Ayrshire coast and the Firth of Forth and in the south by the Ribble/Mersey River and the Humber. It resulted from the union of Deira, with its capital at York, and Bernicia, based on Bamburgh, under Edwin in 622 AD. After the conversion of King Edwin in 626 and the establishment of many major monasteries within the region, Northumbria became a center of missionary activity and a leading center of missionary activity and a leading center for the production of Christian art. In the later 7th-8th centuries, despite political decline, it was the scene of a cultural renaissance, attested by the history of Bede, the illuminated manuscripts of Lindisfarne, etc. Schools of art and monumental architecture also flourished. Archaeologically its most important site is Yeavering, a series of palaces built by Edwin and his successors in northern Northumberland. The cultural life and the political unity of Northumbria were destroyed by the arrival of the Danes.
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.
notch: SYNONYMS OR RELATED TERMS: notched (adj.)
CATEGORY: artifact
DEFINITION: A flaked U- or V-shaped indentation; matching indentations in the point base area or corners or sides
notch width: CATEGORY: artifact
DEFINITION: In lithics, the measurement of the space between the notches across the narrowest point of the stem or base.
notching: CATEGORY: lithics
DEFINITION: The practice of chipping small, semicircular notches out of the base or side of a projectile point in order to aid in hafting.
numerical taxonomy: SYNONYMS OR RELATED TERMS: cluster analysis; taximetrics
CATEGORY: technique
DEFINITION: A set of mathematical procedures for grouping individual items into classes. The technique used is cluster analysis, which produces groupings of items based on their degree of similarity. There are different ways of measuring the similarity between items, and different techniques of producing clusters from such measurements. Agglomerative techniques start with the most similar items and repeatedly add new members to existing clusters as the standard of similarity is lowered; divisive methods, on the other hand, start with the entire collection to be classified and repeatedly subdivide into smaller groups on the basis of certain attributes. The results of the analyses can be shown in the form of a dendrogram, but the interpretation of the groupings produced will depend on a detailed assessment of the archaeological data itself. Numerical taxonomy is also the multivariate analysis of many measurable features (taxonomic characters) to produce a biological classification. Because of the complexity of the analysis, the use of a computer is virtually mandatory. No attempt is made, as in evolutionary taxonomy, to weight characters on the basis of their presumed roles in natural selection. For this reason, numerical taxonomy produces a classification that reflects phenetic distances i.e., degrees of similarity. Such classifications are rejected by many conventional taxonomists who feel that the relationships expressed in a classification should be strictly evolutionary. The numerical evaluation of the affinity or similarity between taxonomic units and the ordering of these units into taxa on the basis of their affinities is used often in archaeology.
object clustering: CATEGORY: technique
DEFINITION: An approach to typology based on clusters of human artifacts that are seen as specific classificatory types.
obsidian hydration dating: SYNONYMS OR RELATED TERMS: obsidian hydration layer dating, obsidian dating
CATEGORY: technique
DEFINITION: A method of dating in which the age of an obsidian artifact is established by measuring the thickness of its hydration rim (layer of water penetration) and comparing that to a known local hydration rate. The hydration layer is caused by absorption of water on exposed surfaces of the rock. The surface of obsidian starts to absorb water as soon as it is exposed by flaking during manufacture of an artifact. The layer of hydrated obsidian is visible when a slice of the artifact is examined under an optical microscope at a magnification of x 500. Hydration varies geographically, and several factors such as climate, chemical environment, and physical abrasion also affect the thickness of the layer, so that most studies are locally or regionally based. Obsidian may also be dated by the fission track dating technique. Dates have been obtained in Japan extending back as far as c 25,000 BC.
Odmut: CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: Cave site on the Piva River, Montenegro, occupied during the Mesolithic, Neolithic, Copper Age, and Bronze Age. The first levels were dated c 8100-6650 BC with a hunting economy based on ibex exploitation. There was an Early Neolithic Impressed Ware level, dated c 5035-4950 BC. Undated levels contained pottery with Danilo and Kakanji affinities; Final Neolithic black burnished ware; and Late Copper Age pottery. A radiocarbon date of c 1710 BC accompanied Early Bronze Age pottery.
Offa's Dyke: CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: A linear earthwork, some 270 km long, built by King Offa of Mercia (reigned 757-796) as a frontier between his Anglo-Saxon kingdom and the kingdom of Powys. It is a large earthen bank and quarry ditch, and runs almost continuously between Treuddy and Chepstow, close to the border of England and Wales. Offa's reign is also noteworthy for the close connections he established between Mercia and the Carolingian empire (his daughter married one of Charlemagne's sons) and the introduction of regular coinage based on pennies.
offset planning: CATEGORY: technique
DEFINITION: A technique used in small-scale excavations to measure the plans of features. A point is measured with reference to a baseline, which is frequently the edge of an excavation trench. The measurement requires the formation of a right-angle at the point at which the tapes meet; this can be achieved by using a T-square, or by constructing a right-angled triangle with a tape using the Pythagoras theorem.
ogham: SYNONYMS OR RELATED TERMS: Ogam, ogam, Ogham, ogum; Pictish symbol stones
CATEGORY: language
DEFINITION: A Celtic script used for writing in northwest Europe, probably created in the 2nd-3rd centuries AD, and used for writing Irish and Pictish languages. The alphabet has 20 letters represented by tally marks on either side of or crossing a horizontal baseline. The script is better suited for carving on stone (or possibly wood) than for writing in ink. It is believed to have originated in Ireland or south Wales as a secret script and it spread throughout the Celtic areas for use on memorial stones. It is also found associated with the symbols and carvings of the Picts, who used it till the 9th century. Ogham is used on memorial pillar stones in the Celtic regions of Britain, usually consisting of no more than the name and descent of the dead man. It was often the custom, particularly in the south and west in Wales and Cornwall, to provide a translation in Latin minuscule and this has proved important for the translation and dating of ogham. Of the more than 375 ogham inscriptions known, about 300 are from Ireland.
Old Cordilleran Culture: SYNONYMS OR RELATED TERMS: Old Cordilleran
CATEGORY: culture
DEFINITION: A late Pleistocene cultural tradition based on the hunting of small game and the collection of wild foods in the mountain and plateau region of western North America, especially Oregon and Washington, between c 9000-5000 BC (or later). The diagnostic tool is the leaf-shaped Cascade point, a distinctive bipointed lanceolate point. It was usually accompanied by scraping tools (chopper tools, bolas) and occasionally by milling stones (burins). The type site is Five Mile Rapids, Oregon (9800 BP). They may have been contemporaneous with Big Game Hunting tradition. The tradition has a terminal date of c 7000 BP and it may have cultural ties to the San Dieguito.
operational model: CATEGORY: technique
DEFINITION: A representation of reality that is based on observation of how the component parts of the real situation operate.
optimal foraging theory: CATEGORY: term
DEFINITION: The theory that an animal's efficient foraging behavior should maximize an animal's net rate of food intake. It is a theoretical perspective used in evolutionary biology that attempts to develop a set of models to apply to a broad range of animal species based on theories of optimal net rates of energy gain.
opus reticulatum: CATEGORY: structure
DEFINITION: A Roman construction technique consisting of blocks which are laid on a concrete core so that the edges are placed on a diagonal and produce a crisscross pattern. It is a technical term used by Vitruvius c 30 BC to describe the diamond pattern of square stones that was often used as a decorative facing to an inner rough concrete core. Opus reticulatum came into vogue in the 1st century BC and remained until the time of Hadrian (AD 117). The construction was like that of opus incertum but the pieces of stone were pyramid-shaped with square bases set diagonally in rows and wedged into the concrete walls.
order: SYNONYMS OR RELATED TERMS: order of architecture
CATEGORY: structure
DEFINITION: Any of several styles of classical or Neoclassical architecture that are defined by the particular type of column and entablature they use as a 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. There are five major orders: Doric, Ionic, Corinthian, Tuscan, and Composite -- established by Vitruvius (1st century AD).
Oshara tradition: CATEGORY: culture
DEFINITION: A Southwestern Archaic tradition of the Four Corners region of southwestern U.S. It was an Archaic hunting and gathering culture from c 5500 BC to c 400 AD. There are five phases based on projectile point form, artifact assemblages, and socioeconomic organization. These phases are: Jay, c 5000-4800 BC, and Bajada, c 4800-3300 BC of the Early Archaic with nomadic bands of foragers and hunters; the San Jose Phase, c 3300-1800 BC; the Armijo Phase, c 1800-800 BC, with maize horticulture introduced; and the En Medio Phase, c 800 BC-400 AD, which encompassed the Basketmaker II Phase of the Anasazi culture.
osteodontokeratic: CATEGORY: culture
DEFINITION: Literally bone-tooth-horn" referring to the controversial tool "technology" of some early hominids. When there is no sign that a people used wood or stone for tools and when it is supposed that that people did make tools of bones teeth and horns their culture is said to be osteodontokeratic. The term is based on an assemblage of fossilized animal bones found at Taung by Raymond Arthur Dart in South Africa where the first specimen of Australopithecus africanus was found and at Makapansgat where other specimens of A. africanus were found. Dart proposed that these fossils were tools used by A.africanus an early hominid species. He postulated that teeth were used as saws and scrapers long bones as clubs and so on. He explained his theory on the basis of the fact that certain bones turned up regularly while others were rarely found. Later research however cast doubt on the general interpretation of altered bone-remains as tools. More likely the accumulation studied by Dart resulted from the natural breakdown of skeletons predators and damage to the bones by falling stones."
overburden: CATEGORY: geology
DEFINITION: Soil and rock overlying a bed of clay or other base to be dug, excavated, mined, or quarried.
Périgordian: SYNONYMS OR RELATED TERMS: Perigordian
CATEGORY: culture
DEFINITION: A French classification for the Upper Palaeolithic tradition of western Europe, from its identification with the Perigord region of southern France. The flint industry sequence begins with the Chatelperronian (or Early Périgordian) from which, according to some, developed the first of the 'Upper Périgordian' industries (Gravettian, or Périgordian IV). The later stages are represented by industries with Font Robert points and Noailles burins, and finally by the Proto-Magdalenian. The Périgordian tradition comes to an end in western Europe with the intrusion of a new Solutrean style of flintwork. No known site has a complete and unbroken 'Périgordian' sequence, and in many caves the Lower and Upper 'Périgordian' levels are separated by strata of the intrusive Aurignacian industry, which must represent a break of several thousand years. The French scheme requires the Périgordian and Aurignacian people to have lived side by side with each other for millennia without any apparent contact between them. In the 1930s, Denis Peyrony advocated the view that the Aurignacian or early Upper Palaeolithic in France consisted of a true Aurignacian and a separate line of cultures, the Perigordian, beginning before the Aurignacian but co-existing alongside it down the time of the Solutrean. It is not known what kind of man was responsible for the Perigordian, but it is usually assumed that it was Cro-Magnon man, at least in the latter part. A Neanderthal-like skull has been found with the early Perigordian, or Chatelperronian. Art is found in a few later Perigordian contexts. The Perigordian scheme is not now widely accepted as it is based on artifact typology rather than stratigraphic evidence.
Pachamachay: CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: Preceramic cave site in the central highlands of Peru, a base camp with a date of 11,800 bp. Occupation was highest between 9000-2000 bp.
Paijan point: CATEGORY: artifact
DEFINITION: Bifacially worked chipped stone points of triangular outline with a small stem or tang at the base. Characteristic of the Archaic Stage paiján Tradition of South America in the period 9000-7000 BC.
paleoethnology: CATEGORY: related field
DEFINITION: Ethnology is a science that deals with the division of human beings into races and their origin, distribution, relations, and characteristics. It is anthropology dealing chiefly with the comparative and analytical study of cultures -- more commonly called cultural anthropology. Paleoethnology is the study of the behavior of vanished peoples. Now renamed, it is the ethnological study of prehistoric peoples based solely on archaeological evidence.
Paleolithic: SYNONYMS OR RELATED TERMS: Palaeolithic
CATEGORY: artifact
DEFINITION: The more technical name for the Old Stone Age, a division of prehistory covering the time from the first use of stone tools by humans, c 2.5 million years ago, to the retreat of the glacial ice in the northern hemisphere c 10,000-8500 BC. It began in the Pliocene epoch and was followed by the Mesolithic. It is the Old World equivalent, although with a much greater extension back in time, of the paleo-Indian or Early Lithic stage of New World development. The Paleolithic was characterized by the making of chipped or flaked stone tools and weapons and by a hunting and food-gathering way of life. It is usually divided into Lower, Middle, and Upper (or Late) Paleolithic -- mainly based on artifact typology. The subdivisions are characterized this way: Lower Palaeolithic, c 2.5 million - 200,000 BC, the earliest forms of humans (Australopithecus and Homo erectus), and the predominance of core tools of pebble tool, handax, and chopper type; Middle Palaeolithic, c 150,000-40,000 BC, the era of the Neanderthal and the predominance of flake-tool industries (e.g. Mousterian) over most of Eurasia; and Upper Palaeolithic (starting perhaps as early as 38,000 BC-c 10,000 BC), with Homo sapiens sapiens, blade-and-burin industries, and the development of cave art in western Europe. During this stage, man colonized the New World and Australia. The main Palaeolithic cultures of Europe were, in chronological order: 1. Pre-Abbevillian, 2. Abbevillian, 3. Clactonian, 4. Acheulian, 5. Levalloisian, 6. Mousterian, 7. Aurignacian, 8. Solutrean, and 9. Magdalenian. The term was introduced in 1865 by John Lubbock in Prehistoric Times". The Palaeolithic was originally defined by the use of chipped stone tools but later an economic criterion was added and the practice of hunting and gathering is now regarded as a defining characteristic."
Paleolithic or Palaeolithic: SYNONYMS OR RELATED TERMS: Old Stone Age, paleolithic
CATEGORY: chronology
DEFINITION: The more technical name for the Old Stone Age, a division of prehistory covering the time from the first use of stone tools by humans, c 2.5 million years ago, to the retreat of the glacial ice in the northern hemisphere c 10,000-8500 BC. It began in the Pliocene epoch and was followed by the Mesolithic. It is the Old World equivalent, although with a much greater extension back in time, of the Paleo-Indian or Early Lithic stage of New World development. The Paleolithic was characterized by the making of chipped or flaked stone tools and weapons and by a hunting