Archaeology Wordsmith

Results for borer:

borer: CATEGORY: artifact
DEFINITION: A flint tool for piercing holes.
core borer: CATEGORY: tool
DEFINITION: A hollow tubelike instrument used to collect samples of soils, pollens, and other materials from below the surface. The cylinder of soil etc. that is collected is called the core. The core is undisturbed and the sediment contacts, soil boundaries, and structures are intact and can be described accurately.
copper: CATEGORY: geology
DEFINITION: A ductile, malleable metallic element used in many functional and decorative artifacts. It was one of the first metals to be exploited by man because, like gold, it can be found in the native form, pure and requiring no smelting. It is most frequently obtained from a variety of ores: the carbonate (malachite), oxides, and sulphides. Shaping could be done by simple hammering, which served also to harden the metal. 'Pure' copper may contain up to one per cent of impurities and the concentrations of these impurities may indicate the source of the ore. Arsenical copper alloys (2-3% arsenic) have some advantages over pure copper in ease of casting and in the hardness of a hammered edge. In the New World, cire perdue casting of copper is first recorded in the Paracas culture of Peru and by the European conquest, the technique was practiced from the southwest U.S. to Argentina. Copper occurs fairly widely in the Old World, and was first used in Western Asia before 8000 BC as a substitute for stone, though it did not come into common use until after 4000 BC. Metallurgy dawned in Egypt as copper was cast to shape in molds (c 4000 BC), was reduced to metal from ores with fire and charcoal, and was intentionally alloyed with tin as bronze (c 3500 BC). The earliest surviving examples from Egypt are small artifacts such as beads and borers of the Badarian period, c 5500-4000 BC. Great copper hoards occur in the Ganges-Yamuna alluvial plain and just south of the lower Ganges, and elsewhere in India and Pakistan.
Hamburgian: CATEGORY: culture
DEFINITION: A Late Upper Palaeolithic culture of north Germany and the Low Countries, contemporary with the Magdalenian of France, c 13,000-11,750 BP. It was the culture of the first people to colonize north Germany and the Low Countries after the final retreat of the Pleistocene ice sheets had made the area available for settlement. The Hamburgians may have been the descendants of Eastern Gravettian or peripheral Magdalenian groups. They were reindeer hunters whose tools are small, single-shouldered points, harpoons, endscrapers, microburins, and 'zinken' (small beaked borers used for working antler).
Kesslerloch: CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: Magdalenian reindeer-hunting cave site in Switzerland that was occupied during a cold phase of the final Glaciation. There are bone harpoons and spearthrowers, art objects such as an engraving of a rutting reindeer, and a stone tool kit of borers.
Kniegrotte: CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: Upper Palaeolithic cave site on the Orla River of eastern Germany, radiocarbon dated to 13,582-10,175 bp. Artifacts include burins, borers, and harpoon from the late Magdalenian.
Magdalenian: SYNONYMS OR RELATED TERMS: Age of the Reindeer
CATEGORY: culture
DEFINITION: The final major European culture of the Upper Paleolithic period, from about 15,000-10,000 years ago; characterized by composite or specialized tools, tailored clothing, and especially geometric and representational cave art (e.g. Altamira) and for beautiful decorative work in bone and ivory (mobiliary art). The people were chiefly fishermen and reindeer hunters; they were the first known people to have used a spear thrower (of reindeer bone and antler) to increase the range, strength, and accuracy. Magdalenian stone tools include small geometrically shaped implements (e.g., triangles, semilunar blades) probably set into bone or antler handles for use, burins (a sort of chisel), scrapers, borers, backed bladelets, and shouldered and leaf-shaped projectile points. Bone was used extensively to make wedges, adzes, hammers, spearheads with link shafts, barbed points and harpoons, eyed needles, jewelry, and hooked rods probably used as spear throwers. They killed animals with spears, snares, and traps and lived in caves, rock shelters, or substantial dwellings in winter and in tents in summer. The name is derived from La Madeleine or Magdalene, the type site in the Dordogne of southwest France. Its center of origin was southwest France and the adjacent parts of Spain, but elements characteristic of the later stages are represented in Britain (Creswell Crags), and eastwards to southwest Germany and Poland. The Magdalenian culture, like that of earlier Upper Palaeolithic communities, was adapted to the cold conditions of the last (Würm) glaciation. The Magdalenian has been divided into six phases; it followed the Solutrean industry and was succeeded by the simplified Azilian. Magdalenian culture disappeared as the cool, near-glacial climate warmed at the end of the Fourth (Würm) Glacial Period (c 10,000 BC), and herd animals became scarce.
Pekárna: CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: Cave site in Brno, Moravia, Czechoslovakia with assemblages of the Eastern Gravettian, Middle Palaeolithic, Magdalenian, and Neolithic. The Magdalenian layers contained endscrapers, borers, bone and antler points, a harpoon, and art objects.
robber trench: SYNONYMS OR RELATED TERMS: ghost wall
CATEGORY: feature
DEFINITION: A term used to describe a feature created by the robbing of its original filling material. In areas where stone or other building materials are scarce, or where a new structure is being built near one which is out of use, a monument's building materials may be plundered. The trench left is usually backfilled by the laborers who have 'robbed' out a wall either completely or of its facing stone. The trenches where the walls once stood and where the stone has been removed are called robber trenches or ghost walls. Archaeologists should be able to reconstruct a plan of the original structure from careful examination and recording of the robber trenches.
San: SYNONYMS OR RELATED TERMS: Bushmen
CATEGORY: culture
DEFINITION: The hunter-gatherer people of southern Africa who once lived throughout the region and spoke a number of languages before becoming absorbed into agricultural societies. They were a nomadic egalitarian society with small bands of about 20 people. Men hunted with bow-and-arrow and women gathered plant foods. Their record provides insights into Later Stone Age remains and rock art. By late 20th century, many San had become laborers and trackers in settled areas. They are part of the Capoid local race, a subgroup, of the Negroid (African) geographic race (also comprised of the Khoikhoin (Hottentots)). The most striking feature of the San languages is their extensive use of click sounds.
Solutrean: SYNONYMS OR RELATED TERMS: Solutrian
CATEGORY: culture
DEFINITION: A culture of the Upper Paleolithic period in western Europe, from about 19,000 BC, following the Perigordian and Aurignacian; characterized by the use of projectile points, especially the laurel-leaf blade. From Solutré, a site in central France, it was a short-lived style of toolmaking with particularly fine workmanship. The Solutrean industry, like those of other late Paleolithic big-game hunters, contained a variety of tools such as burins, scrapers, and borers; but blades that were formed in the shape of laurel or willow leaves and shouldered points are the implements that distinguish the Solutrean. It preceded the Magdalenian in parts of France and Spain. At Laugerie-Haute, unifacially chipped leaf-shaped points in the Early Solutrean show the gradual development of bifacial working, a stage dated c 19,000-18,000 BC. The Middle phase is characterized by fine large bifacial points and by the introduction of pressure flaking. In the Later Solutrean, this technique was used to produce slim leaf-shaped projectiles and small single-shouldered points. In southeast Spain this final stage also has barbed and tanged arrowheads. The laurel leaves" were typical of Middle Solutrean and "willow leaves" (shouldered points) were from the Later Solutrean. The bone needle with an eye was invented in this period. Many decorated caves in France can be assigned to this period."
tool: CATEGORY: artifact
DEFINITION: Any existing physical object that is in some way fashioned or altered by humans and employed for a specific task or purpose. Tools made of stone included of axes, adzes, arrowheads, spearheads, daggers, knife blades, scrapers, borers, burins, picks, etc. The first tools date back to c 2,600,000 years ago, the beginning of the Paleolithic Age, and are different-sized pebble tools called choppers. The chopper was the only tool used by man for almost 2,000,000 years, until the appearance of the hand ax, a superior (and sharper) version of the chopper.

Another Dictionary Search