Archaeology Wordsmith

archaeology editor/writer providing solutions for busy archaeologists

Results for burnish:

black-burnished ware: SYNONYM: black burnished ware
CATEGORY: artifact
DEFINITION: A standard range of culinary vessel-forms manufactured in two different fabrics and widely imitated. BB1 (black-burnished ware Category 1), was black, gritty, hand-made, mainly in Dorset, and widely distributed from c. AD 120 to the late 4th century AD. BB2 (black-burnished ware Category 2) was greyer and finer, with a silvery finish, wheel-thrown in the Thames Estuary area, and widely exported from c. AD 140 to the mid 3rd century AD.
burnish: CATEGORY: artifact; lithics
DEFINITION: A polish given to the surface of an artifact, either to improve its appearance and make it more valuable or to compact it (as with clay) to make it less porous. A pot is polished, often using a spatula of wood or bone, while it is still in a leathery 'green' state, i.e. before firing. After firing the surface is extremely shiny. Often the whole outer surface of the pot is thus decorated, but in certain ceramic traditions there is 'pattern burnishing' where the outside and, in the case of open bowls, the inside are decorated with burnished patterns in which some areas are left matte. In stroke burnish, the surface is completely polished, but the marks of the burnisher, a pebble or bone slip, remain distinct. On bronze it was done to improve the appearance; even mirrors could be produced in this way. A burnisher is a metal instrument used by engravers to soften lines or efface them.
burnisher: CATEGORY: artifact
DEFINITION: A tool used to polish the surface of an artifact.
East Midland burnished ware: CATEGORY: artifact
DEFINITION: Type of Roman pottery dating to the 3rd and 4th centuries AD and found mainly in the northeast midlands of England. The pots produced were grey-brown in color and were dominated by bowls and jars
Abu Hureyra, Tell: CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: A small tell on the Euphrates River, 120 km east of Aleppo in Syria. The site was excavated in 1972-73 prior to flooding by the Tabqua/Tabqa Dam. Two major phases of occupation were found: Mesolithic or Epi-Palaeolithic (early 9th millennium BC) to a Pre-Pottery Neolithic B Culture in the 6th millennium. There was a long period of abandonment in the 7th millennium and then a final abandonment c 5800 BC. The site depicted a transition from gathering to cultivation, including large quantities of einkorn wheat, and from hunting to herding (sheep and goats, also gazelle and onager). The Neolithic settlement was of enormous size, larger than any other recorded site of this period -- even Çatal Hüyük. In the uppermost levels, a dark burnished pottery appeared.
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."
achzib ware: CATEGORY: ceramics
DEFINITION: A Phoenician, Iron Age II, red slip pottery type consisting primarily of jugs with trefoil mouth of mushroom" rims red slipped and highly burnished."
Alishar: SYNONYM: Alisar, Alisar Huyuk
CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: A tell southeast of Boghazköy in central Turkey which yielded many occupation levels from Chalcolithic (late 4th millennium) to Phrygian (1st millennium BC). The lowest stratum had eight Chalcolithic levels. The Early Bronze Age levels are characterized by painted pottery with a buff or light red burnish and some geometric patterns in dark brown or buff. There was some trade with Assyria early in the 3rd millennium BC. A karum was built and some Cappadocian tablets recovered. There may have been a hiatus in occupation in the Hittite period (later 2nd millennium).
Apennine culture: SYNONYM: Apennine Bronze Age
CATEGORY: culture
DEFINITION: The Bronze Age culture of the Italian peninsula, lasting from c 2000-800 BC. The culture's pottery was distinctively dark and highly burnished, and decorated with incised and punctuated bands filled with white inlay. The handles, often single, were elaborate and included crested, horned, and tongue types. The people seemed to depend on pastoral economy and stock breeding in the mountains which give the culture its name. Trade and a more mixed economy has evidence at some sites -- Ariano, Liparis, Luni, Narce, and Taranto -- and the culture had some influence from the Balkans. Some inhumation cemeteries are known, but burials are rare. Bronze tools, though in use, are rarely found until very late in the period.
Argar, El: CATEGORY: site; culture
DEFINITION: An Early Bronze Age settlement near Almeria in southeast Spain that is the type site of a culture of the 2nd millennium BC. The settlement was fortified and contained rectangular stone houses, though little has been recovered as they are not as well-preserved as the Argaric sites Ifre and El Oficio. The settlement also contained 950 interments, with the earliest in cists and later switching to jar burial. Grave goods in the cist burial phase included daggers, halberds, and wristguards. In the jar burials, there was also faience, and swords and axes of copper or bronze and gold and silver ornaments. Silver was more common in this area than anywhere else in Europe at the time. The pottery of this culture was plain burnished in simple shapes. The Agaric culture, which developed trading with eastern Mediterranean centers, reached its peak between 1700-1000 BC and spread through the central, southern, and Levantine regions and to the Balearic Islands. The area may owe its origin to immigration from western Greece.
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.
beaker: SYNONYM: bell beaker (see also funnel beaker, protruding foot beaker)
CATEGORY: ceramics
DEFINITION: A simple pottery drinking vessel without handles, more deep than wide, much used in prehistoric Europe. The pottery was usually red or brown burnished ware, decorated with horizontal panels of comb- or cord-impressed designs. It was distributed in Europe from Spain to Poland, and from Italy to Scotland in the years after 2500 BC and the international bell-beaker is particularly widespread, though uncommon in Britain. In Britain there are local variants, the long-necked (formerly A) beakers of eastern England and the short-necked (formerly C) beakers of Scotland. There are local developments elsewhere, such as the Veluwe beakers in Holland. Beaker vessels are commonly found in graves, which were often single inhumations under round barrows; commonly associated finds include copper or bronze daggers and ornaments, flint arrowheads, stone wristguards, and stone battle-axes. In many northern and western areas its users were the first to start copper metallurgy. The widespread distribution of beaker finds has led to the frequent identification of a Beaker people and speculations about their origins.
Brahmagiri: CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: A settlement site and cemetery dating from at least the 2nd millennium BC in southern India. Wheeler found a Chalcolithic level (c 2800-1250 BC) with abundant microliths, polished stone axes, and crude burnished gray pottery, an Iron Age level (1st millennium BC) with black-and-red ware, 300 tombs, stone circles, and ossuaries for bones, and a level from the 1st century AD with rouletted ware and traces of Roman contact. Bone points and some evidence of a stone-blade industry have also been found. There are many cattle bones, but also sheep and goats. The culture seemed to continue with little change for many centuries.
Bubanj: SYNONYM: Bubanj-Hum
CATEGORY: culture
DEFINITION: A Late Neolithic culture of late 4th to early 3rd millennia BC in the Morava valley of eastern Yugoslavia, close to Nis. The site, on a gravel terrace of a river, was first excavated in the 1950s and the culture is derived from the Vinca and closely related to Salcuta in Romania. The main periods recognized include the early Neolithic Starcevo with graphite painted ware and Vinca-like dark burnished ware; a phase of Baden pottery; and an Early Bronze Age occupation.
Burzahom: CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: A Neolithic site in the Vale of Kashmir with phases of occupation dating from c 3050 BC to the 3rd-4th centuries AD. Deep pit dwellings are associated with ground stone axes, bone tools, and coarse gray burnished pottery. These characteristics plus the absence of blades, use of pierced rectangular knives, and association of dog skeletons with human burials, all seem to point to connections with central and northern Asia, as Mongolia, rather than with the rest of the Indian subcontinent. Hunting seems to have been the main basis of the economy. Phase II has houses of mud and mudbrick and Phase III has a group of large stones arranged in a rough semicircle.
Can Hasan: CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: The site of a number of tells in southern Turkey. Can Hasan III was an aceramic Neolithic settlement c 6500 BC. There were at least seven structural phases, with dark burnished pottery in several levels and painted pottery in one. The villagers were agriculturists, growing einkorn and emmer, lentil, and vetch in the earlier phases. The main Can Hasan mound was occupied in the late Neolithic and Chalcolithic periods.
cavetto rim: CATEGORY: artifact
DEFINITION: A rim, found especially on black-burnished cooking pots, which curves outwards from the vessel to form a concave, quarter-round profile.
Chanapata: CATEGORY: culture
DEFINITION: A culture of the Cuzco area in the Peruvian Andes, c 1000-200 BC. The type site has dark-hued or red pottery with incised, punctated, relief-modeled decoration, and a burnished or brushed finish.
Ciempozuelos: CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: A Copper Age cemetery site near Madrid, Spain, which has given its name to a late variety of Spanish beaker of the 2nd millennium BC. Artifacts come mainly from pit tombs or cistburials. The Ciempozuelos beakers and other pottery are of high quality with a red or brown burnished slip and complex incised decoration. Most of the burials were flexed inhumations in cists.
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.
Danilo: CATEGORY: site; culture
DEFINITION: A Neolithic culture of the Dalmatian coast of Croatia and parts of Bosnia, dating to 4700-3900 BC. The site consists of large numbers of pits and post holes, whose associated material has been subdivided typologically into five phases. There are two associated pottery styles, painted in black and broad red bands on buff ware, and incised on dark burnished ware, belong in the Middle Neolithic. The geometric designs suggest connections with contemporary wares in Italy, particularly Ripoli and Serra D'Alto. There was also a long blade and tanged point stone industry closely related to fishing.
Dudesti: CATEGORY: site; culture
DEFINITION: The type site of a Middle Neolithic culture of southeastern Romania, of the late 5th millennium BC. Contemporaneous with the Vadastra, Vinca A/B, and Karanovo III, Dudesti sites are typically short-lived occupations, defined by storage pits and post-holes. Most sites are limited to the first terraces of major river valleys. The largely undecorated pottery is a derivative of the dark burnished ware tradition of the south Balkans.
fumed: CATEGORY: artifact
DEFINITION: A term which has been somewhat misleadingly used to describe the dark surface of vessels, in particular black-burnished ware, which has been exposed to a reducing atmosphere during the later stages of manufacture.
Gandhara: SYNONYM: Gandhara grave culture complex
CATEGORY: site; culture
DEFINITION: A culture of the 2nd and 1st millennia BC in the valleys of northwestern Pakistan -- and the Achaemenid (Persian) satrapy of this name. This culture was important in passing Persian ideas on to the civilizations of the Ganges valley. It also introduced Hellenistic art styles to India. Western influence is also apparent in the grid town planning found at the Gandharan cities of Charsada and Taxila. Characteristic burials are in tombs consisting of two small chambers, one on top of the other; the lower chamber contained both the burial (inhumed or cremated) and the grave goods, while the upper chamber was empty. The population, which bred livestock and carried out agriculture, were accomplished metalworkers, producing tools, weapons, and ornaments of copper, bronze, gold, silver, and iron. The pottery within the grave goods was mostly a red or gray plain burnished type.
Gaudo: CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: A Chalcolithic cemetery site in Campania, Italy, with 3rd millennium BC rock-cut tombs; the type site of the Campanian Gaudo culture. The tombs produced up to 25 disarticulated skeletons each, and great quantities of highly burnished unusual pots, especially asymmetric straight-necked flasks (sometimes called askoi as they approximate the form of an askos). There were also cups, open dishes, lids, and double vessels. This group has with parallels with Central Italian Rinaldone. There are flint arrowheads and daggers; metalwork is rare, but some copper daggers and awls occur and a few small silver objects.
Glevum ware: SYNONYM: Severn Valley ware
CATEGORY: artifact
DEFINITION: Burnished wares mainly in the form of bowls, jars, and tankards in a color range from creamy-buff to orange-red made at various centers along the Severn. Kiln sites are known at Malvern and Shepton Mallet, Somerset. It was at one time known as Glevum ware, since it was first recognized at Gloucester. It is found all over the Severn Valley and small quantities reached the western part of Hadrian's Wall.
Hallur: CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: A prehistoric site in southern southern India, which has produced evidence of a Neolithic-Chalcolithic culture of the 2nd millennium BC, characterized by one-roomed circular houses, burnished gray ware, an abundant ground stone industry, and a few copper objects. A later level has Black and Red Ware, iron objects, and a radiocarbon date of c 1100-1400 BC. Three periods have been define: Hallur IA, IB, and II.
Hassuna: SYNONYM: Tell Hassuna
CATEGORY: site; culture
DEFINITION: A prehistoric tell site near Mosul in northern Iraq with a sequence of a pre-Samarran culture in northern Mesopotamia. The site has given its name to the pottery ware present in its lowest levels, dated to the 6th millennium BC, and a culture complex. This pottery may be related to that of the upper levels at Jarmo and is widely distributed. It was usually a buff ware in simple shapes, sometimes burnished, sometimes painted or incised with simple geometric patterns. In higher levels it was replaced by Samarra ware. Evidence from Yarim Tepe, another important Hassuna site, indicates that they were already experimenting with metallurgy and that pottery-making was a specialist activity (with true pottery kilns). The appearance of stamp seals suggests the importance of private ownership. There were several Halaf levels and 'Ubaid levels. Subsistence was cereal cultivation and herding cattle, goat, and sheep. The material culture used copper, turquoise, and carnelian beads.
Hvar: SYNONYM: Dimos
CATEGORY: site; culture
DEFINITION: An island with a large number of Late Neolithic and Copper Age sites, off the Dalmatian coast and part of present-day Croatia. The caves have yielded striking Late Neolithic pottery -- dark burnished ware with red crusted decoration. Hvar has been continuously inhabited since early Neolithic times, and an ancient wall surrounds the old city of Hvar. Since the vast majority of Hvar sites are caves, the economy was likely based on fishing and shell-collecting. In 385 BC Greek colonists founded Dimos (presently Hvar) and Pharos (Stari Grad), and in 219 BC the island became Roman. Slavs fleeing the mainland in the 7th century AD settled on the island. The pottery is found in neighboring areas of the mainland, where it is known as the Lisicice style. The island's occupation probably began in the 4th millennium BC.
Iblis, Tal-i: CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: A prehistoric mound of Kirman, Iran, occupied off and on in the 5th through 1st millennia BC. The earliest occupation, dating to the early 5th millennium BC (Tal-i Iblis O), is characterized by coarse-tempered red burnished ware made into a variety of simple forms. In the next phase, dated to the late 5th millennium BC (Tal-i Iblis I), small quantities of painted ware, in maroon or black on a buff ground, appear in a settlement of mud-brick houses, each consisting of a central area of storerooms, surrounded by living rooms with red plaster floors. This layer also produced abundant evidence of copper-working and smelting. The finds suggest that the communities of Iran were at least as developed as those of Mesopotamia, if not more so, in the practice of metallurgy. The exploitation of copper and steatite and trade in these commodities to the civilizations of southern Mesopotamia and Susiana in the 4th and early 3rd millennia BC allowed Tal-i Iblis to grow to urban or proto-urban status. Clay tablets inscribed in the Proto-Elamite script demonstrate the connections that linked Iran to western countries by the early 3rd millennium BC.
Jemdet Nasr: SYNONYM: Jamdat Nasr
CATEGORY: site; artifact; chronology
DEFINITION: A small site between Baghdad and Babylon, near Kish, Iraq, which has given its name to a period of Mesopotamian chronology and its black-and-red painted pottery ware. The period of 3100-2900 BC was characterized by writing in pictographs, pottery with painted designs or plum red burnished slip, and plain pottery with beveled rims. Cylinder seals are squat and plain and drill used in designs. The period is characterized by increasing populations, the development of more extensive irrigation systems, towns dominated by temples, increased use of writing and cylinder seals, more trade and craft specialization. The period -- equivalent to Uruk III of the Eanna Sounding sequence -- was followed immediately by the Early Dynastic period of Sumer. A building of Jemdet Nasr date may be the oldest palace discovered in southern Mesopotamia.
Karanovo: CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: A tell site in eastern Bulgaria which has given the basic chronological sequence from the Early Neolithic, and much of the Eneolithic, to the Bronze Age, 7th to mid 2nd millennium BC, of the eastern Balkans. There were seven major phases of occupation. Karanovo I is the earliest Neolithic and forms part of the complex of cultures that include Starcevo, Cris, and Körös. The architecture was wattle-and-daub and eventually the 50-60 early, scattered, square huts were replaced by rectangular, larger, plastered, and painted ones. Karanovo II also represents the First Temperate Neolithic level. Karanovo III has Middle Neolithic Veselinovo levels, with dark burnished and carinated pottery. Level IV is the Kalojanoven level and V represents Marica levels, with graphite painted wares and excised pottery -- both are contemporaneous with the Late Neolithic Vinca culture of the western Balkans. Level VI is the main Eneolithic Gumelnita occupation with graphite painted wares and copper metallurgy. Level VII is the Early Bronze Age level. Almost all the period designations have become known as cultures in their own right (e.g. the Karanovo III culture).
Kephala: CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: A Late (Final) Neolithic settlement and cist grave cemetery on the Cycladic island of Kea, dated to the mid-4th millennium BC. The cemetery of graves made of small flat stones in circular or rectangular constructions each had a number of burials. Children were commonly buried in pottery jars (pithoi). The typical pottery was covered with a red slip and decorated by patter burnishing. Evidence for copper-smelting was found, one of the earliest occurrences in the Aegean. There is evidence of close links between Kephala and sites in Attica (Athens, Thorikos).
Khirbet Kerak: SYNONYM: ancient Beth-yerah; Tell Beth Yerah
CATEGORY: site; artifact
DEFINITION: A Palestinian site on the southwest shore of the Sea of Galilee, settled from the Early-Middle Bronze Age and occupied again from the Hellenistic to the Byzantine periods. In the 4th-3rd millennia BC, it was a small walled town which lent its name to a distinctive pottery ware (Khirbet Kerak ware, c 3400) which has been found on many sites throughout the Near East, from Judeidah in the Amuq to Lachish in the south. This highly burnished ware with red or black slip is often incised or ribbed in decoration. Its origins lie up in the southern Caucasus (it was related to Early Transcaucasian wares), from which it was likely carried south by an emigration of the ancestors of the Hittites. The pottery belongs to the EB III phase and has a wide distribution in Syria and Palestine. It is usually thought to have originated in northeast Anatolia and may have been distributed either by emigration or by trade. The town of the mid-3rd millennium BC contains a massive public building, probably a religious structure, that comprises eight circular stone structures all enclosed by a massive outer rectangular wall.
Kura-Araxes culture: SYNONYM: Eastern Anatolian Bronze Age, Transcaucasian Early Bronze Age
CATEGORY: culture
DEFINITION: Culture complex of Early Bronze Age sites of Transcaucasia, eastern Anatolia, and northwest Iran, probably of the later 4th through later 3rd millennia BC. The complex is characterized by black or red highly burnished pottery. There were portable hearths and some circular houses.
Lagozza: SYNONYM: Lagozza di Besnate
CATEGORY: site; culture
DEFINITION: Late Neolithic lake village settlement in Lombardy, Italy, dated to c 3600 BC. Remains of wooden pile dwellings exist in the type site of the Lagozza culture, characterized by finely made black-burnished carinated bowls. Decoration is rare, consisting of radiating lines on the lower walls or scratched cross-hatched triangles. Instead of proper handles, simple and multiple perforated lugs were used, including the flûte de pan. The culture is related to, and possibly derived from, Chassey (France) and Cortaillod (Switzerland). Spindle whorls and loom-weights show textile production. The culture was established in the north and spread slowly down the Adriatic side of Italy to the Marche and Ripoli in the Late Neolithic, and to Ariano by the Copper Age, surviving there to give rise to the Apennine culture of the Bronze Age. Copper axes are among the earliest copper items of northern Italy.
London ware: CATEGORY: artifact
DEFINITION: A type of pottery with a relatively fine burnished grey or black fabric, often imitating various forms of Samian bowls, and often decorated with inscribed lines, impressed stamps, rouletting and compass-scribed circles. Made in the Thames Estuary area, Suffolk, Hertfordshire, and the Nene Valley in the late 1st and 2nd centuries AD, and widely distributed during this period.
Longshan: SYNONYM: Lung Shan; Lung-shan; lungshanoid
CATEGORY: culture
DEFINITION: Collective name of the regional cultures of the Late Neolithic in northern China of the 3rd to mid-2nd millennia BC. The term refers to the culture of the Chengziyai type site, often distinguished as the Classic Longshan or Shandong Longshan, which may have survived to a time contemporary with the bronze-using Shang civilization. The Longshan period encompasses first metal use, warfare, compressed earth walled sites of Hangtu construction, abundant gray pottery, rectangular polished stone axes, and the delicate wheelturned black-burnished pottery of intricate shapes. A method of divination involving the heating of cattle bones and interpreting the cracks began here. In Honan, where its distribution overlaps that of the Yang Shao culture, Longshan is stratified above the former and below Shang material. Lungshanoid is another term used to describe these Neolithic cultures.
Lusatian culture: SYNONYM: Lausitz culture; Lusatia
CATEGORY: culture
DEFINITION: A Late Bronze Age and Early Iron Age (Hallstatt period) culture of Poland and eastern Germany, an urnfield culture which had formed by c 1500 BC. Larger settlements, such as Biskupin, Senftenberg, and Sobiejuchy, are fortified. The culture is noted for its bronzework and its fine dark pottery, sometimes graphite-burnished and generally decorated with bosses and fluted ornament. Iron tools were adopted in the north throughout the earlier Iron Age. In some classifications, the Middle Bronze Age 'pre-Lausitz' phase is considered the first stage of the Lusatian culture proper.
Mad'arovce: CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: Early Bronze Age regional group of the central Danube basin in western Slovakia and dated to the mid-2nd millennium BC. A large number of sites are hilltop settlements fortified by earthen banks or ditches. Tell-like multi-phase settlements are also known from lowland valleys, often with rich assemblages of dark burnished pottery. Mixed burial rites, sometimes inhumation, sometimes cremation, are known from the medium-sized lowland cemeteries. The culture emerged towards the end of the neighboring Unetice culture and may have been a late sub-group of that culture.
Matera: CATEGORY: site; artifact
DEFINITION: A small city in southern Italy, northwest of Taranto, which formed part of the duchy of Benevento and of the principality of Salerno. It was occupied successively by the Normans, the Aragonese, and the Orsini. In the old part of the city, people inhabit cavelike houses cut into the rock with only an opening for the door, a system dating from prehistoric times. The name is also applied to a Middle Neolithic ware from many sites in its neighborhood, notably the ditched villages of Murgecchia and Murgia Timone and a cave site, the Grotta dei Pipistrelli. A dark burnished ware with curved bowls and straight-necked jars, it is characterized by rectilinear geometric designs scratched after firing and filled with an inlay of red ochre. A quite different ware, thin, buff-colored, and painted with broad bands of scarlet, is sometimes included in the term.
Matera ware: CATEGORY: artifact
DEFINITION: A Middle Neolithic ware from many sites Matera of southern Italy and its neighborhood, notably the ditched villages of Murgecchia and Murgia Timone and a cave site, the Grotta dei Pipistrelli. A dark burnished ware with curved bowls and straight-necked jars, it is characterized by rectilinear geometric designs scratched after firing and filled with an inlay of red ochre. A quite different ware, thin, buff-colored, and painted with broad bands of scarlet, is sometimes included in the term.
megalithic culture: CATEGORY: term
DEFINITION: In India, an Iron Age culture of the south from the 1st millennium BC or earlier which lasted into the early 1st millennium AD. The grave forms include urn burials and various cist, pit, and rock-cut graves. Stone alignments are also associated and graves generally contain burnished black-and-red ware, iron tools, weapons, horse and household equipment.
Mississippian: SYNONYM: 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.
Nagyrév: CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: The type site for a regional group of the Hungarian Early Bronze Age; the initial culture in the tripartite sequence distributed in the lowlands of northern Hungary, dated to c 2300-1500 BC. This first phase shows connections with the Beaker and Vucedol cultures, while the later phase is contemporary with early Unetice. The Nagyrév precedes the Hatvan and Füzesabony. Most known settlement sites are tells surrounded by enclosing banks and ditches. Timber-framed houses are common, though some clay houses are found at Tószeg. Rich grave goods are rare, occurring predominantly in the Budapest area. A universal pottery form is the one- or two-handled cup with tall funnel neck in black burnished ware.
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.
Otomani: CATEGORY: culture
DEFINITION: An Early Bronze Age culture of eastern Hungary, northwestern Romania, and eastern Slovakia, dating to the period 2000-1600 BC, and shows connections with Unetice. It is the equivalent of the Hungarian Füzesabony group in the central Hungarian sequence. A high proportion of Otomani settlements are artificially or naturally fortified (Barca, Spissky Stvrtok), often by the use of water, and tells are frequent. The type site, near Marghita, is a citadel overlooking the eastern edge of the Hungarian plain. Black burnished ware with bossed decoration on one-handled cups is the most frequent pottery type. The ceramics feature large, pointed bosses. Bronze artifacts are elaborately ornamented.
Pantalica: CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: A Late Bronze Age to Early Iron Age site inland from Syracuse in southeast Sicily, occupied c 13th-8th centuries BC. The 5,000 rock-cut tombs which honeycomb the hillside around have yielded great quantities of material. Pottery and metal goods from the tombs indicate trading contacts with both mainland Italy and the Aegean. The characteristic local pottery is wheelmade, red-slipped, and burnished. Four phases run from contemporary with Late Mycenaean c 1200 BC to well after the first Greek colonies formed in the 8th century BC. At least one public building has been exposed: a large stone built structure described as an anaktoron or palace.
Parisian ware: CATEGORY: artifact
DEFINITION: A thin, dark grey, highly burnished ware decorated with impressed stamps and found mainly in Yorkshire and Lincolnshire, dating to the late 1st and the 2nd centuries AD
pie dish: CATEGORY: artifact
DEFINITION: A term sometimes used for a dish with a flat rim, usually in Romano-British black-burnished ware, and often decorated with a lattice pattern on the side and loops on the outside of the base. There is no evidence that it was used as the name suggests.
polisher: CATEGORY: artifact
DEFINITION: Polished bone used to burnish objects e.g. pottery.
pottery: CATEGORY: ceramics
DEFINITION: One of the oldest of the decorative arts, consisting of objects made of clay and hardened with heat. The objects are commonly useful. Earthenware is the oldest and simplest form of pottery; stoneware is a pottery compound that is fired at a sufficiently high temperature to cause it to vitrify and become extremely hard; and porcelain, finer than stoneware and generally translucent, is made by adding feldspar to kaolin and then firing at a high temperature. Its raw material is common, shaping and baking it are simple, and it can be given an infinite variety of forms and decorations. Pottery sherds, almost indestructible, are one of the commonest finds and are very important to archaeologists. It is often one of the clearest indicators of cultural differences, relationships, and developments, and its techniques of manufacture can be comparatively easily recovered by ceramic analysis. It can be shown whether it was modeled, coil-built, or wheel-made. The nature of its fabric, ware, or body can be identified, as can any surface treatment such as slip, paint, or burnish. The wide range of methods of decoration can also be studied. As the date of manufacture can usually be fixed, pieces of pottery give clues to archaeologists as to the date of other finds at the site. Petrological analysis of inclusions has been used to trace the source of pot clays and thus reconstruct ancient trade in pottery. Archaeologists usually call fired pot clay the 'fabric' of a piece of pottery. Texture, mineralogy, and color of fabric may be used to describe and classify pottery.
red polished ware: CATEGORY: ceramics
DEFINITION: A fine red ware with red or orange slip that is highly burnished. It was made in southern Asia in the first three centuries AD. It is often thought to be an imitation of the Roman Arrentine ware. The characteristic and most widely dispersed type of pottery of the Roman Empire was the red, polished Arretine ware. Most Inca pottery is also red polished ware.
Rinaldone: CATEGORY: site; culture
DEFINITION: A cemetery in Lazio, Italy, the type site of a Copper Age culture lying between those of Remedello and Gaudo, and showing some connections with both. There are collective burials in rock-cut tombs or single or collective burials in trench graves -- with crouched skeletons, pottery; flat copper axes, halberds, and daggers; stone battleaxes, fine flint daggers, and numerous barbed-and-tanged arrowheads. The dark burnished ware has bottle shapes with lug and tunnel handles. It dates from c 3000-2200 BC.
rippled decoration: CATEGORY: ceramics
DEFINITION: A technique of pottery burnish in which the whole surface is worked into ripples, in extreme examples approaching fluting.
Salcuta: CATEGORY: culture; site
DEFINITION: A Late Neolithic culture and site of southwestern Romania c 3500-2500 BC. It derives from the Vinca culture, with further influence from the Aegean. By its end, copper was coming into use. There are four main occupation phases in the tell stratigraphy. The pottery is typically a dark burnished wares, contemporaneous to the Gumelnita and other Balkan cultures, and crusted painted wares. The Late Copper Age levels are characterized by unpainted pottery with 'Furstenstich' decoration and with affinities to Cotofeni and Baden pottery.
scratched decoration: CATEGORY: ceramics
DEFINITION: Pottery decoration in which lines are drawn with a hard point, probably of flint, on a burnished surface after the pot has been baked. A thin but characteristically ragged line results, providing for the inlay of ochre or plaster. The technique was used widely, notably in the Neolithic of Italy (Matera and Lagozza) and France (Chassey).
Severn Valley ware: CATEGORY: artifact
DEFINITION: Burnished wares mainly in the form of bowls, jars, and tankards in a color range from creamy-buff to orange-red made at various centers along the Severn. Kiln sites are known at Malvern and Shepton Mallet, Somerset. It was at one time known as Glevum ware, since it was first recognized at Gloucester. It is found all over the Severn Valley and small quantities reached the western part of Hadrian's Wall.
Sopot-Lengyel: SYNONYM: Sopot Lengyel
CATEGORY: culture
DEFINITION: Eneolithic culture of the northwest Balkans (north Bosnia and east Slavonia, Yugoslavia) of c 4300-3700 BC. The pottery of this group shares affinities with the dark burnished ware tradition of the south Balkans and the incised and monochrome tradition of the north Balkans. Few cemeteries are known, but there is plenty of settlement evidence (tells, open sites). It is viewed as a regional variant of either the Lengyel or the Vinca culture.
spatula: CATEGORY: artifact
DEFINITION: A tool, usually of bone, lime, wood, ebony, turtleshell, etc. consisting of a broad but thin blade. Its served many general purposes -- spreading, mixing, scooping, lifting -- including burnishing pottery, working pelts, spooning flour, etc.
sponge finger: CATEGORY: artifact
DEFINITION: A type of stone object found in later Neolithic and early Bronze Age graves in northern and western Europe, often associated with Beaker pots. Sponge fingers, shaped rather like the modern-day biscuits of the same name, are elongated stones with a D-shaped cross section and rounded ends that typically show signs of wear. They were perhaps used in pottery production or leatherworking as burnishers or spatulae.
Szakalhát-Lebo group: CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: Middle Neolithic culture of the Tisza River valley in southeast Hungary, succeeding the Alföld Linear Pottery and preceding the Tisza culture, between c 4100-3800 BC. The occupation includes a level with late Alföld Linear pottery and a level with Szakalhát pottery. The two main pottery decorative styles are wide incised curvilinear and dark burnished. The settlements have small rectangular single-room structures.
Tekkalakota: SYNONYM: Tekkalkota
CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: Neolithic site in the south-central Deccan, India with two phases of settlement in the early 2nd millennium BC. There are mud/stone floors of circular or rectilinear huts and fractional burials early on, later replaced by extended burials in interconnected vessels for adults, while children were buried in urns. Artifacts include rare metal objects (copper, gold). Three gold ornaments were found, indicating exploitation of local gold deposits. The people produced distinctive burnished gray pottery, smaller quantities of black-on-red painted pottery, stone axes, and bone points, and there is some evidence of a stone-blade industry.
terramara: SYNONYM: pl. terremare; Terramara or Terramare
CATEGORY: term
DEFINITION: A local name for Middle Bronze Age settlements in the Emilia region of northern Italy's Po Valley -- consisting of mounds of dark earth formed by the accumulated rubbish of a permanent settlement occupied for a long period. The habitations were built on pilings and protected by a vallum, or defensive wall, which screened them from floods in a flat countryside with violent seasonal rains. These villages, whose dead were cremated, lasted until the Early Iron Age. The people of the Terramara culture migrated to Italy from the Danubian region during the Middle Bronze Age (early 2nd millennium BC), and introduced the rite of urnfield burial into Italy. They were excellent bronzeworkers whose products were traded over much of Italy. The society was peasant and its art was limited to the construction of dwellings and to the production and ornamentation of weapons and vases. The pottery is a dark burnished ware with concentric groove decoration, bosses, and horned handles. The Terramara culture strongly influenced the Apennine culture in its last phase. The terramara is considered a forerunner of the Roman street and camp planning and also the medieval castle and village.
Toprakkale: SYNONYM: Topra Kaleh
CATEGORY: site; artifact
DEFINITION: Site on Lake Van, eastern Anatolia (Turkey), which was the center of the Urartian state, c 850-600 BC. There is a large temple complex which was a Urartian fortress, storerooms, and residential area, including bronze, carved ivory, and silk artifacts. There are other temples, storerooms, etc. in the area in which some wall paintings remain. The walls of Toprakkale, erected in the 8th century BC, were of cyclopean masonry and sloped slightly inward, perhaps as a defense against earthquakes. Artifacts show a high level of artistic achievement, in bronze, gold, silver, and ivory. Excavations have also uncovered a basalt floor inlaid with limestone and marble, parts of a decorated marble frieze, and brilliantly polished red pottery vessels. Toprakkale is also the name of a fine burnished red ware of the Urartian period.
Toprakkale complex: CATEGORY: artifact
DEFINITION: site on Lake Van, eastern Anatolia (Turkey), which was the center of the Urartian state, c 850-600 BC. There is a large temple complex which was a Urartian fortress, storerooms, and residential area, including bronze, carved ivory, and silk artifacts. There are other temples, storerooms, etc. in the area in which some wall paintings remain. The walls of Toprakkale, erected in the 8th century BC, were of Cyclopean masonry and sloped slightly inward, perhaps as a defense against earthquakes. Artifacts show a high level of artistic achievement, in bronze, gold, silver, and ivory. Excavations have also uncovered a basalt floor inlaid with limestone and marble, parts of a decorated marble frieze, and brilliantly polished red pottery vessels. Toprakkale is also the name of a fine burnished red ware of the Urartian period.
Umm Dabaghiyah: CATEGORY: site; culture
DEFINITION: Early 6th-millennium BC type site of the Umm Dabaghiyah culture, the earliest-known culture of the northern Iraq plain, a pre-Hassuna occupation of Mesopotamia. The small site has long buildings with rows of small cell-like rooms arranged around a central space. Some wall paintings have been recorded with hunting scenes -- something relied upon heavily for the economy. Domesticated sheep, goats, cattle, and pigs were also kept and some domesticated cereals are present, possibly imported. Pottery is abundant in all the four main phases and includes incised, burnished, plain, and painted types similar to 'archaic' Hassuna pottery. Other sites of this culture are Yarim Tepe, Telul Thalathat, and Tell es-Sotto (Tell Soto).
Upchurch ware: CATEGORY: artifact
DEFINITION: Romano-British pottery industry making polished and burnished black and grey wares (e.g. poppy head beakers) in the Upchurch Marshes of Kent in southeastern England.
Urartu: SYNONYM: Urartian
CATEGORY: site; culture; language
DEFINITION: A kingdom of the 1st millennium BC in the mountains north of Assyria (northwest Iran, northeast Anatolia, Armenia, in the mountainous region southeast of the Black Sea and southwest of the Caspian Sea) which was the last important Hurrian-speaking state. Its people, relatives of the Hurri, established themselves around Lake Van during the 2nd millennium BC. Mentioned in Assyrian sources from the early 13th century BC, Urartu enjoyed considerable political power in the 9th-8th centuries BC. The citadel of their capital at Van could be entered only by a rock-cut passage, upon which are cuneiform inscriptions which supplement the records of the Assyrians, with whom the Urartians were usually at war over access to raw materials, such as metal. A promontory nearby had a temple. Urartu is famous for its metalwork, particularly the great bronze cauldrons on tripod stands which were traded as far as Etruscan Italy, and for fine, red burnished ware. They adapted a cuneiform script to their own language, a late dialect of Hurrian, which has been deciphered. The language is mainly known from rock-face inscriptions dating from 8th century BC in the eastern part of Asia Minor. Pressure from the Cimmerians, Phrygians, and Scythians led to disappearance of kingdom c 590 BC, and they were overcome by invading Armenians.
Villanovan: SYNONYM: Villanovan culture; Villanova period
CATEGORY: culture
DEFINITION: Early Iron Age people of the Po Valley, Etruria, and parts of Campania, Italy, c 900-700 BC. The culture is defined by artifacts from the type site of Villanova: metalwork in gold and bronze. The craftsmen played a major part in the development of the fibula and the technique of sheet metalwork, especially the situla. The cemeteries were urnfields with decorated biconical urns and bronze objects; subsidiary vessels, fibulae, ornaments, crescentic razors, etc., frequently accompanied the ashes. The pottery was handmade, dark burnished, decorated with meanders of grooved bands. The Villanovans were replaced culturally by the Etruscans in the south in the 8th century, in the north in the 6th century. This period laid the foundations for the Etruscan culture and city-states of the 8th century BC.
Vinca: SYNONYM: Vinca culture
CATEGORY: site; culture
DEFINITION: Large tell just outside Belgrade, Serbia, spanning c 5000-3500 BC. Its lowest level consisted of Starcevo material; the next of Middle and Late Neolithic are Vinca-Tordos and Vinca-Plocnik. The pottery is typically dark burnished with fluting, channeling, and simple incised decoration. It was a settled farming community that was also important in trade. Many anthropomorphous figurines are found on Vinca sites as well as copper artifacts and evidence of copper mining. It is one of a group of cultures important in development of copper metallurgy.

Another Dictionary Search