Archaeology Wordsmith

Results for core:

Australian Core Tool and Scraper Tradition: CATEGORY: culture
DEFINITION: A late Pleistocene and Holocene stone tool industry of mainland Australia and Tasmania with artifacts dating from 30,000 BC (at Lake Mungo). The industry was characterized by high-domed chunky cores (called 'horsehoof cores') and steep-edge flake scrapers. The industry has close parallels in the islands of Southeast Asia.
bifacial core: CATEGORY: lithics
DEFINITION: A core that has had flakes removed from multiple faces; may be mistaken for a large biface blank.
blade core: CATEGORY: artifact
DEFINITION: A flint or stone core from which blades have been struck. Such cores are typically conical or pyramidal in shape; to produce regular even blades a certain degree of preparation is needed as well as periodic rejuvenation. Both these activities produce their own distinctive debitage.
bore sample: SYNONYMS OR RELATED TERMS: core sample
CATEGORY: term
DEFINITION: In dendrochronology, a straw-sized core removed from the bark to the pith of a tree to note and count each tree ring.
Boscoreale: CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: The site of two villas that were suburbs of Rome, near Pompeii, with important and sumptuous artifacts and painted rooms dating c 40 BC. These include possessions of the great patrician families of Rome, such as paintings illustrating Dionysiac mysteries, jewels, and magnificent gold and silver household furnishings. The cubiculum of one villa at Boscoreale is preserved in the Metropolitan Museum of New York City and other items are kept at the Louvre. Many of the rich hoards were accidentally saved by the volcanic catastrophe of 79 AD.
core: SYNONYMS OR RELATED TERMS: coring
CATEGORY: artifact
DEFINITION: A black or gray zone in the interior cross-section of a vessel wall, usually associated with incomplete removal of carbonaceous matter from the clay during relatively low-temperature firing; not to be confused with black coring at high temperatures, which results from trapped gases and may lead to bloating
core: SYNONYMS OR RELATED TERMS: nucleus
CATEGORY: lithics
DEFINITION: A piece of stone used as a blank from which flakes or blades were removed by prehistoric toolmakers. Usually it was the by-product of toolmaking, but it may also have been shaped and modified to serve as an implement in its own right. An object, such as a hand-ax, chopper, or scraper made in this way is a core tool. Cores were most often produced when hit by a pebble, antler, or bone hammer.
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.
core rejuvenation flake: SYNONYMS OR RELATED TERMS: core tablet
CATEGORY: artifact
DEFINITION: A roughly round slightly wedge-shaped flake of flint with the remains of flake beds around the outside edge. Such flakes are the product of extending the life of a core that has become uneven or difficult to work but which still has the potential to yield further blades.
core sampling: SYNONYMS OR RELATED TERMS: coring
CATEGORY: technique
DEFINITION: A subsurface detection technique using a hollow metal tube driven into the ground to lift a column of earth for stratigraphic study. This technique is used in underground or undersea exploration. A core sample is a roughly cylindrical piece of subsurface material removed by a special drill and brought to the surface for examination. Such a sample reveals the properties of underground rock, such as its porosity and permeability and allows investigation of the features of a given strata.
core tool: SYNONYMS OR RELATED TERMS: core, core-tool
CATEGORY: lithics
DEFINITION: A stone tool, such as a hand-ax, chopper, or scraper, formed by chipping away flakes from a core. These tools, often large and relatively heavy, were characteristic of Paleolithic the culture. They were made by using a pebble, antler, or bone hammer.
core-formed glass: CATEGORY: artifact
DEFINITION: A type of glass made by twisting melted glass around a core, often with different colors. This technique was used especially in the Classical and Hellenistic periods of the eastern Mediterranean.
coregency: CATEGORY: term
DEFINITION: A term applied to the periods during which two rulers were simultaneously in power, usually with an overlap of several years.
culture core: CATEGORY: term
DEFINITION: Technological, organizational, and ideological features most directly related to meeting the most important material needs of a society.
deep sea cores: SYNONYMS OR RELATED TERMS: deep sea core dating, deep-sea cores
CATEGORY: technique
DEFINITION: A technique used in the analysis of data from oceanic sediments in which the material retrieved by the core yields information on temperature changes in the ocean through time. These changes, suggestive of climatic variation, help to chart the progress of glaciation and, since they can be dated, the technique assists in the establishment of a chronology for the Quaternary. The cores, some 5 cm. in diameter and up to 25 m. deep, are extracted from the ocean floor. The sediments they contain have a high percentage of calcium carbonate content made up of the shells of small marine organisms and these sediments build up very slowly, from 10-50 mm per 1000 years, but their sequence is uninterrupted. Since these organisms have different temperature preferences depending on species, the relative abundance of the various species changes as the temperature alters. Variations in the ratio of two oxygen isotopes in the calcium carbonate of these shells give a sensitive indicator of sea temperature at the time the organisms were alive. Through the identification of the species, and by the use of oxygen isotope analysis, a picture can be built up of variations in temperature over the millennia. Since various forms of dating (radiocarbon dating, ionium dating, uranium series dating, palaeomagnetism, protactinium/ionium dating) can be used on the carbonate in the shells, absolute dates can be given to the different levels in the core. Thus dates emerge for glaciations and interglacial periods, which can assist in the age determination of archaeological material found in association with these glacial phases. Problems with the technique are the difficulty of correlating oceanic temperature changes with continental glacial and interglacial phases, and the disturbance by animals living on the ocean bottom. The piston corer was developed in 1947.
disk-core method: CATEGORY: lithics
DEFINITION: A technique in the making of stone tools in which a core is trimmed to a distinctive disk shape and flakes are then chipped off for tools.
horncore: SYNONYMS OR RELATED TERMS: horn core
CATEGORY: fauna
DEFINITION: The hard, bony inner portion of animal horn; the bony projections from the skull which support horns. The horn itself forms a tight sheath around the core, which is removed for horn working. Some archaeological sites have large accumulations of horn cores related to a horn-working industry.
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.
ice cores: CATEGORY: technique
DEFINITION: Borings taken from the Arctic and Antarctic polar ice caps, containing layers of compacted ice, useful for the reconstruction of paleoenvironments and paleoclimatology and as a method of absolute dating. Continuous cores, sometimes taken to the bedrock below, allow the sampling of an ice sheet through its entire history of accumulation. Because there is no melting, the layered structure of the ice preserves a continuous record of snow accumulation and chemistry, air temperature and chemistry, and fallout from volcanic, terrestrial, marine, cosmic, and man-made sources. Actual samples of ancient atmospheres are trapped in air bubbles within the ice. This record extends back more than 300,000 years.
Levallois core: CATEGORY: artifact
DEFINITION: A prepared core from which a single flake or blade has been produced. The technique was primarily used in the Palaeolithic and Neolithic.
microblade core: CATEGORY: artifact
DEFINITION: The nucleus from which micro-blades were manufactured. Usually a small barrel or conical shaped stone artifact with a flat top and one or more fluted surfaces left as scars from the removal of the microblades.
multidirectional core: CATEGORY: lithics
DEFINITION: A core that has had flakes removed from two or more directions.
nucleus: SYNONYMS OR RELATED TERMS: core
CATEGORY: lithics
DEFINITION: The block of primary material from which flakes have been removed by percussion for use in tools. The nucleus is what is left after the stone has been worked on and often bears characteristic signs of the method used.
piston corer: CATEGORY: tool
DEFINITION: A device for extracting columns of sediment from the ocean floor. Deeper cores are taken by the piston corer, which can take samples as long as 20 meters. In a piston corer, a closely fitted piston attached to the end of the lowering cable is installed inside the coring tube. When the coring tube is driven into the ocean floor, friction exerts a downward pull on the core sample. The hydrostatic pressure on the ocean bottom, however, exerts an upward pressure on the core that will work against a vacuum being created between the piston and the top of the core. The piston, in effect, provides a suction that overcomes the frictional forces acting between the sediment sample and the inside of the coring tube. The hydraulic piston corer is used by deep-sea drilling ships and can take undisturbed cores of lengths up to 200 meters. Dates for the different layers are obtained by radiocarbon, paleomagnetism, or uranium series methods.
pollen core: CATEGORY: technique
DEFINITION: A stratified sample of soil or sediment that is taken to recover the plant pollen, and hence to discover changes in the local vegetation over time. A column of soil or peat is extracted from the ground containing a continuous record of pollen grains representative of changing vegetation over a period of time -- and the deeper the core, the older the pollen.
prepared core: CATEGORY: lithics
DEFINITION: A nodule of chert, flint, or obsidian which has been shaped to easily produce blades.
prepared-core technique: CATEGORY: lithics
DEFINITION: A method of stone-tool production whereby cores themselves are shaped in order to produce flakes of a desired form, instead of the flakes being shaped after their removal from the core.
prismatic core: CATEGORY: artifact
DEFINITION: A roughly rectangular block of flint prepared for the effective removal of long narrow blades by creating a striking platform at either end so that blades could be removed in alternate directions.
pyramidal core: CATEGORY: lithics
DEFINITION: A single-platform core that tapers away from the platform as a result of flake removals.
rejuvenated core: CATEGORY: lithics
DEFINITION: A core that has been given a new platform once it has become difficult or impossible to remove flakes or blades from the previous one.
tortoise core: CATEGORY: lithics
DEFINITION: In stone toolmaking, a distinctive core having the shape of a tortoise shell and characteristic of the Levalloisian culture. A nodule of flint is prepared to form a core resembling a tortoise, from which flakes are struck.
unidirectional core: CATEGORY: lithics
DEFINITION: A core that has had flakes removed from only one direction.
wedge-shaped microcore: CATEGORY: lithics
DEFINITION: A core that is small and keel- or wedge-shaped and used to make microblades. They have been found in East Europe, Siberia, Mongolia, northern China, Alaska, northwestern North America, and Japan on Upper Palaeolithic sites from the close of the Pleistocene.
Afontova: CATEGORY: site; culture
DEFINITION: Upper Palaeolithic sites of a culture located in south-central Siberia of c 20,000-10,000 BP. Artifacts include wedge-shaped microcores, microblades, and scrapers. Reindeer, woolly mammoth, and arctic fox were common.
Anyathian: CATEGORY: culture
DEFINITION: A Pleistocene industry of stone tools in terrace deposits of the upper Irrawaddy River in Burma. The culture was characterized by primitive pebble tools (choppers, chopping tools) and a poor flakes made of silicifed tuff and fossil wood. The earliest assemblages may be of Middle Pleistocene date and the industry may have continued into the early Holocene. The Early Anyathian had single-edged core implements associated with crude flake implements. In the Late Anyathian, smaller and better made core and flake artifacts are found.
applied anthropology: CATEGORY: branch
DEFINITION: The use of data and information from the four core subfields of anthropology to provide practical solutions to problems in society.
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."
auger: SYNONYMS OR RELATED TERMS: augering (n)
CATEGORY: tool
DEFINITION: A tool used to probe into the ground and extract a small sample of a deposit without performing actual excavation. Its applications in archaeology are as a means of sampling and understanding the geological environment of a site and also for extracting peat for pollen analysis. There are various types of augers and they can be manual- or power-driven. Simple augers bring up samples on the thread of a drill bit. More elaborate ones open a chamber to collect a core after the drill has bored to an appropriate depth. Augering is generally restricted to the earliest stages of archaeological reconnaissance to determine the depth and characteristics of deposits.
axis of detachment: CATEGORY: artifact
DEFINITION: The path of the force that removed a piece from the core of a stone tool, running from the point of impact on the platform of the artifact toward the distal end
Ayacucho complex: CATEGORY: culture; site
DEFINITION: A valley in southern Peru, north of the city of Ayacucho, with a series of caves -- notably Pikimachay (Flea) Cave and Jayamachay (Pepper) Cave -- which were the site of a complex of unifacial chipped tools (basalt and chert core tools, choppers, unifacial projectile points) and bone artifacts (horse, camel, giant sloth) dating between 15,000-11,000 BC. A human presence has been suggested in the Ayacucho Basin at that time, which would correspond with the first wave" of immigrants to the New World. Succeeding levels contain burins blades fishtail points and manos and metates. Gourds squash cotton lucuma and seed plants such as quinoa and amaranth were cultivated in the Ayacucho Basin before 3000 BC; corn and beans within the next millennium. There were also ground stone implements for milling seeds. It has been claimed that llamas and guinea pigs were domesticated within the complex. "
Bambata Cave: CATEGORY: site; culture
DEFINITION: A large cave of southwestern Zimbabwe, where excavations have revealed a long sequence of occupation over the past 50,000 years. The site gives its name to a stone industry and pottery type, but they are widely separated periods. There are rock paintings on the cave walls and sheep bones, found in the same archaeological levels as pottery, have been dated to 150 BC. The Bambata industry, dated between the 50th-20th millennia BC, used prepared cores to produce (unretouched) flakes for scrapers and slender unifacial or bifacial lances or spear points. Its distribution extended north to Zambia and south to the Orange Free State and perhaps the Cape. Bambata pottery ware is known only from contexts of the 1st millennium ad in Zimbabwe. It is elaborately decorated with stamped designs.
bar hammer technique: SYNONYMS OR RELATED TERMS: soft hammer technique, cylinder hammer technique
CATEGORY: artifact
DEFINITION: A stone-flaking technique using a bone, antler, wood, or other relatively soft material as a hammer to remove small, flat flakes from a core during flint knapping. These flakes have a characteristically long, thin form with a diffuse bulb of percussion.
baton: SYNONYMS OR RELATED TERMS: billet, percussor
CATEGORY: lithics
DEFINITION: A soft" hammer used to strike flakes from a stone core often made of antler bone or wood."
bifacial blank: CATEGORY: lithics
DEFINITION: A biface in the early stages of production displaying only percussion flaking and no evidence of pressure flaking. In many cases, blanks were traded and/or transported from their area of origin and subsequently used as bifacial cores from which flake blanks were detached for production of dart or arrow points.
billet: SYNONYMS OR RELATED TERMS: baton, percussor
CATEGORY: lithics
DEFINITION: A soft" hammer used to strike flakes from a stone core often made of antler bone or wood."
bipolar reduction: CATEGORY: artifact
DEFINITION: Producing lithic flakes and debris by placing a core on an anvil and striking it from above with a large hammer to shatter it
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."
blade tool: CATEGORY: artifact
DEFINITION: A tool made from a single thin narrow flake detached from a core. The controlled flaking technique is characteristic of the Upper Palaeolithic but it is also known from earlier cultures.
Bluefish Caves: CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: Caves discovered in 1975 in the northern Yukon, Canada, which may be the oldest archaeological site in North America. There are deposits of the late glacial period and some artifacts associated with woolly mammoth, Dall sheep, reindeer, and other vertebrates. The radiocarbon dates of bone fragments range from 25,000-12,000 bp. Evidence of human occupation is from at least 13,000-10,000 bp. There was a wedge-shaped microcore, microblades, and burins similar to those from Siberia of the same time. The lowest levels of 20,000 bp have debitage flakes and large numbers of cut and butchered animal bones.
bone hammer: CATEGORY: artifact
DEFINITION: A bone that is used as a hammer in the removal of flakes from a core in the manufacturing of stone tools.
bulb of percussion: SYNONYMS OR RELATED TERMS: bulb of force
CATEGORY: lithics
DEFINITION: In flint-making, a swelling or bulb left on the surface of a blade or flake directly below the point of impact on the striking platform. In other words, a swelling on a flake or blade at the point where it has been struck to detach it from a core. On the flake or blade struck off there is a rounded, slightly convex shape around this point called the bulb of percussion and on the core there is a corresponding concave bulb. The point and the bulb of percussion are rarely present if a flake has been struck off naturally, as by heat or frost. Thus the presence of a bulb of percussion makes it possible to distinguish human workmanship from natural breakage.
bulbar depression: CATEGORY: artifact
DEFINITION: A depression left from the bulb of percussion when a blade or flake is struck from a core.
Cabenge: CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: A site in southwest Sulawesi with late Pliocene fauna. Stone tools are found in association with bones. Toalian tools in the area include large core tools of the chopper/chopping tool tradition.
centripetal: CATEGORY: artifact
DEFINITION: Describing core - moving or tending to move toward a center
chariot: CATEGORY: artifact
DEFINITION: A light vehicle of war, usually carrying two people, a warrior, and a driver. Examples have been found from the Uruk period in Mesopotamia and the chariot was on the standard of Ur. It first appeared in the Near East in the 17 century BC, associated with the immigrant peoples who became the Hyksos, Kassites, and Hurri. Its arrival in Egypt can be fairly reliably dated to the Second Intermediate Period (1650-1550 BC). The Aryans carried it to India, and in China it formed the core of the Shang army. The Mycenaeans introduced it to Europe, where it spread widely and rapidly. It revolutionized warfare by allowing warriors to be transferred rapidly from one part of a battlefield to another. It was mainly for aristocrats, which explains its popularity as a funeral offering. Burials of complete chariots with horses and charioteers have been excavated in Shang China (1200 BC), in Cyprus from the 7th century BC, and among the La Tène Celts. The earliest Celt chariot burials are in the Rhineland and eastern France with dates around 500 BC, and later burials are in east Yorkshire and Europe as far east as Hungary, Bulgaria, and southern Russia. The chariot was replaced by the mounted warrior or knight when horses of sufficient strength had been bred in the late and post-Roman periods.
Chicanel: CATEGORY: culture
DEFINITION: A phase of the Lowland Maya Pre-Classic, the Late Formative culture of Petén, dating from 300 BC to 150 AD. It was characterized by architectural and ceramic traits which convey the rise of the Classic Maya civilization: temple-pyramids, corbelled arches, and painted murals. Their sites are quite uniform and there was a variety of ceramic forms. Chicanel pottery includes dishes with wide, grooved rims, bowls, and vessels resembling ice buckets. Figurines are absent. Temple platforms (e.g. Uaxactún) were built by facing a cemented-rubble core with thick layers of plaster. At Tikal, a huge Maya ceremonial center, the Acropolis was begun in Chicanel times, and white-stuccoed platforms and stairways with polychromed masks were much like Uaxactún. There is also a huge site, El Mirador, in the northern part of Petén. The El Mirador construction dwarfs even that of Tikal, although El Mirador only flourished through the Chicanel phase. Chicanel-like civilization is also known in Yucatán, where some temple pyramids of enormous size are datable to the Late Formative. Another important site is the cave of Loltún in Yucatán.
chippable: SYNONYMS OR RELATED TERMS: chipped-stone
CATEGORY: lithics
DEFINITION: Of a stone, capable of being worked to produce a tool or other such artifact. Chipped-stone artifacts are the class of lithic artifacts produced by fracturing flakes from a core.
chipped stone tool: CATEGORY: lithics
DEFINITION: Any tool produced by flaking or chipping of pieces from a stone core to produce an implement.
Choukoutien: SYNONYMS OR RELATED TERMS: adj. Choukoutienian
CATEGORY: site; culture
DEFINITION: A type site near Peking, China, for an Upper and Middle Paleolithic culture. It is the place where 40 of the first skeletons of Homo erectus was found -- in limestone fissures of Middle Pleistocene deposits, probably of Mindel date, some 500,000 years old. The find also yielded extinct animals; flake, core, and chopping tools of quartz and sandstone; and traces of fire. From another area came skeletons of Homo sapiens with stone and bone tools of the Upper Palaeolithic.
cire perdue: SYNONYMS OR RELATED TERMS: lost wax process
CATEGORY: artifact
DEFINITION: A metalworking technique used to cast figurines and statues. A model of the object to be cast is made in wax, solid if the object is to be of solid metal, or made around a clay core if it is to be hollow. The wax model is covered with clay, and the whole is heated to allow the wax to melt and run off; this leaves a space into which molten metal is poured. After it has cooled the outside clay is knocked off, the inner core may be removed, and remaining is a metal version of the original wax model. The technique is common on every continent except Australia and dates from the 3rd millennium BC, having gone through few changes since then. Since the 'mold' cannot be used again, each version of an object made using this technique is unique, and the process is more time consuming than making a complex mold and re-using it. However, more detail can be accomplished with the cire perdue process.
cleaver: CATEGORY: lithics
DEFINITION: A heavy, large core or flake tool of the Palaeolithic period, typically having a wide, straight cutting edge at one end, like a modern ax head. Technologically it is related to the handax, and is often found as a component of Acheulian (esp. Upper Acheulian) handax industries. The sharp transverse cutting edge was almost always notched by use but never sharpened. Along with bifacial tools, it was one of the main instruments of Homo erectus. It is found mainly in Africa, where much of the flake surface is left unretouched. The axlike knife was used since the Middle Pleistocene era to cut through animal bone and meat.
Cloggs Cave: CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: A limestone cave in northeastern Victoria, Australia, with human occupation deposits dating from c 16,000-7000 BC. Ochre and hearths as well as stone tools of the Australian Core Tool and Scraper Tradition have been found and the tools resemble similar Tasmanian artifacts. Bones of extinct animals found in deposits which are more than 20,000 years old and are separate from the human deposits. Australian Small Tool Tradition artifacts were excavated from late Holocene deposits in a rock shelter outside the main cave.
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."
Cmielów: CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: A Funnel Beaker culture settlement site in the Holy Cross Mountains of Poland. There were mines of banded flint, which were used to make cores and axes, and evidence of copper metallurgy.
cobble: CATEGORY: geology; lithics
DEFINITION: A rounded stone worn smooth by the action of water and used as a core for a stone tool; thus 'cobble tool'.
cone of force: CATEGORY: lithics
DEFINITION: A cone-shaped area on a stone core and its associated flake, which results when force is applied to separate the flake.
conjoining: SYNONYMS OR RELATED TERMS: refitting; rejoining
CATEGORY: technique
DEFINITION: The refitting or rejoining of artifact or ecofact fragments, especially those of struck stone flakes to recreate the original core. Such studies allow definition of cumulative features, such as the lithic artifact and debitage scatters. The technique allow may allow reconstruction of ancient manufacture and use behavior.
crested blade: CATEGORY: artifact
DEFINITION: A flint blade with negative impressions of removals on one side of the dorsal surface, creating a crest. These constitute part of a previously worked striking platform or result from preparing the flaked surface on a core before detaching flakes or blades.
cross section: SYNONYMS OR RELATED TERMS: cross-section
CATEGORY: structure
DEFINITION: In masony, the configuration of a wall through its thickness. It can be compound (combination of single stone and double stone), compound with core (areas separated by rubble core), double bonded (double stone with overlap in interior), double stone with core (two stones wide with rubble core but no overlap in interior), double stone (two adjacent stones wide, no overlap), or single stone.
Cuicuilco: CATEGORY: site; culture
DEFINITION: A Late Pre-Classic ceremonial site, at the southern end of ancient Lake Texcoco near Mexico City, that has the first stone monument (pyramid) on the Mexican plateau. Cuicuilco was one of the largest and most important centers of the period -- possibly an early rival of Teotihuacan. Early large-scale construction in the form of adobe and stone-faced platforms took place around 600-200 BC. The pyramid is a truncated cone, with a clay-and-rubble core; the rest is made of sun-dried brick with a stone facing. Rising up in four tiers, the Cuicuilco pyramid is faced with broken lava blocks and the summit was reached by ramps on two sides. The site was covered by volcano lava around 300-400 AD, forcing total abandonment. Lava from the volcano covers all of Cuicuilco, including the lower part of the round pyramid. The Cuicuilco-Ticomán culture succeeded the Middle Formative villages of the valley but retained many of their traits, such as the manufacture of solid handmade figurines.
cylinder hammer technique: SYNONYMS OR RELATED TERMS: soft hammer technique, bar hammer technique
CATEGORY: lithics
DEFINITION: A stone-flaking technique using a bone, antler, wood, or other relatively soft material as a hammer to remove small, flat flakes from a core during flint knapping. These flakes have a characteristically long, thin form with a diffuse bulb of percussion.
debris: CATEGORY: lithics
DEFINITION: Chips and chunks of lithic material removed from a core but that do not fit the criteria for a flake or blade -- having no identifiable platform and not being able to distinguish between dorsal and ventral surfaces.
Denalian culture: SYNONYMS OR RELATED TERMS: Denali complex
CATEGORY: culture
DEFINITION: A prehistoric culture or complex of central Alaska (the Tangle Lakes) dating to c 10,500-7000 BC. Similar to the Siberian Dyuktai (Diuktai) culture and defined by H. West in 1967, it is characterized by wedge-shaped microcores, microblades, burins, and bifacial points, scrapers on flakes, and large blades.
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.
Devil's Lair: CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: A limestone cave near the southwest coast of Western Australia, containing deep, well-preserved organic and stone deposits dating from 27,000-10,000 BC. It is one of the longest occupation sequences in Australia, with well-defined hearths and occupation floors and a rich faunal assemblage. The stone assemblage included cores, scrapers, denticulate flakes, retouched flakes, and adze flakes of chert or quartz. Undersea-drill cores from the nearby continental shelf have produced the same Eocene chert from a zone which would have been exposed during Pleistocene low sea-levels. Three unifacially incised limestone plaques (10,000-18,400 BC) and a piece of artificially perforated marl have been interpreted as ritual items or adornments. Bone tool artifacts included points dating to c 27,000 BC and beads of macropod (kangaroo/wallaby) fibulae between 13,000-10,000 BC, claimed to be the oldest known ornaments in Australia.
diatom: CATEGORY: fauna
DEFINITION: A microscopic, unicellular algae which grow in marine or fresh water and secrete silica skeletons (microfossils) that distinct by species. Their chances of survival are enhanced due to the silica and their deposition in anaerobic conditions. Diatoms can be sampled through deep sea or lake cores. Different species are associated with different habitats, so examples in archaeological deposits can yield information on the changing environment, particularly at coastal sites.
direct percussion: SYNONYMS OR RELATED TERMS: free-hand percussion
CATEGORY: lithics
DEFINITION: A technique used in the manufacture of chipped-stone artifacts in which flakes are produced by striking a core with another stone, a hammerstone, or by striking the core against a fixed stone or anvil in order to dislodge a flake. The method is less precise in its results than indirect percussion.
Diring: CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: A Neolithic site in northeast Siberia with burials of the Ymyakhtakh culture and an assemblage of quartzite cores, pebble tools, and flakes.
discoidal nucleus technique: CATEGORY: lithics
DEFINITION: A method of core knapping used during the Middle Palaeolithic by which flaking was done until the core was too small to use. The Beaker People, in particular, made circular, oval, or oblong, thin flakes of stone with this technique, which is very similar to the Levallois technique.
dorsal: CATEGORY: lithics
DEFINITION: On the side of a lithic flake or blade that would have been on the outside of the core (during striking) which shows cortex or scars from previous flake removals.
Dvuglazka Cave: CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: A Palaeolithic and Mesolithic site on the Tolchei River in south-central Siberia. Artifacts -- Levallois cores, denticulates, and scrapers -- are found with sheep and other mammal remains. It was the northernmost Middle Palaeolithic site in Asia.
El Beyed: CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: Late Acheulian site in Mauretania, Africa, with handaxes, Levallois cores, and angular blades.
eolith: SYNONYMS OR RELATED TERMS: dawn stone
CATEGORY: lithics
DEFINITION: Any naturally shaped or broken stone, once considered to be the oldest artifacts of early man. They consist of crudely chipped flakes and cores from pre-Pleistocene or very early Pleistocene deposits. It is now accepted that eoliths were not made by humans but chipped by natural agencies as far back as 500,000 years BC. Most eoliths were frost-split chunks with irregular chipping round the edge. Eolithic is a term sometimes used by archaeologists for the earliest stage of human culture before the Paleolithic, characterized by very primitive stone tools, especially of flint. It means Dawn of the Stone Age"."
fabricator: CATEGORY: artifact
DEFINITION: A flint implement or piece of stone or bone used in the manufacture of other flint tools. Often rod-shaped and worn heavily on one end, it is used to chip flakes from a stone core.
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.
flake: SYNONYMS OR RELATED TERMS: flake tool
CATEGORY: lithics
DEFINITION: A thin broad piece of stone detached from a larger mass for use as a tool; a piece of stone removed from a larger piece (core or nucleus) during knapping (percussion or pressure) and used in prehistoric times as a cutting instrument. Flakes often served as blanks" from which more complex artifacts -- burins scrapers gravers arrowheads etc. -- could be made. Waste flakes (débitage) are those discarded during the manufacture of a tool. Flakes may be retouched to make a flake tool or used unmodified. The process leaves characteristic marks on both the core and flake. This makes it comparatively easy to distinguish human workmanship from natural accident."
flake blade: SYNONYMS OR RELATED TERMS: flake-blade
CATEGORY: artifact
DEFINITION: An imprecisely defined elongated flaked stone artifact with dorsal ridges associated with sub-Saharan African Middle Stone Age collections. Unlike true blades, flake-blades do not necessarily have parallel sides, nor are they necessarily at least twice as long as they are wide. They were usually end-struck off cores, frequently taper to a point to form artifacts termed convergent or pointed flake-blades, and often have faceted platforms. Some examples were retouched to form knives or denticulate or notched tools.
flaked stone: SYNONYMS OR RELATED TERMS: chipped stone, flaked stone tool, flaked stone artifacts
CATEGORY: lithics
DEFINITION: Any object made by one of the various percussion or pressure techniques of stone tool technology. Tools produced by the removal of flakes (or chips, commonly referred to as debitage) from the stone to create a sharp surface. Projectile points, bifaces, unifaces, and cores are common flaked stone artifact types.
flintknapping: SYNONYMS OR RELATED TERMS: flint-knapping, knapping
CATEGORY: lithics
DEFINITION: The technique of striking flakes or blades from a large flint stone (core or nucleus) and the shaping of cores and flakes into tools. The most commonly used stone was flint (chert), a hard, brittle stone, commonly found as nodules in limestone areas, that breaks with a conchoidal fracture. Flintknapping began with the simple striking of one stone against another. Later methods include the use of antler and wooden strikers for both direct and indirect percussion, and bone and antler pressure-flaking tools.
genome: CATEGORY: term
DEFINITION: The collection of genes in the nucleic-acid core of a virus or the complete set of genetic material -- the chromosomes and the genes they contain -- that makes up any organism and determines hereditary features.
Geographical Society Cave: CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: An Upper Palaeolithic site in eastern Siberian with faunal remains dating to 32,570 bp. The artifacts include pebble cores, flakes, and a scraping tool.
Gogoshiis Qabe: SYNONYMS OR RELATED TERMS: Gure Makeke
CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: A rock shelter of southern Somaia with Middle and Later Stone Age sequences and early Holocene burials. These graves, associated with lesser kudu horn cores, represent the earliest evidence of intentional grave goods in East Africa.
graver: SYNONYMS OR RELATED TERMS: burin
CATEGORY: lithics
DEFINITION: A stone tool manufactured from a flake by chipping (pressure-flaking) it on two edges at one end so as to leave a sharp point. Gravers were to cut or score soft materials such as bone, shell, wood, and antler; perhaps for punching leather and other purposes. The term also refers to a type of metalworking tool which comprises a number of subtypes, though all are hand-held, hard, and sharp and are used to cut or engrave metal. Such a graver has a metal shaft that is cut or ground diagonally downward to form a diamond-shaped point at the tip. The angle of the point affects the width and depth of the engraved lines; the point is guided by thumb and forefinger.
Green Gully: CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: A Pleistocene site in southern Victoria, Australia, occupied between 15,000 and 4000 BC. Stone tools include large side-trimmed and concave flakes similar to those in Tasmania and at Kenniff Cave of the same period, and bipolar cores. Bones of two individuals, one male and one female, were found combined in a grave and were dated by radiocarbon on collagen to 4500 BC.
hand ax: SYNONYMS OR RELATED TERMS: hand ax, hand-ax, handaxe; biface
CATEGORY: lithics
DEFINITION: A large bifacially worked core tool, normally oval, pointed, or pear-shaped, and one of the most typical stone tools of the Lower Palaeolithic. It is the diagnostic implement of certain Lower Palaeolithic industries (Abbevillian, Chellean, Acheulian), and one variety of the Mousterian. In spite of the name it was not an ax at all and probably served as an all-purpose tool. The oldest and crudest hand axes have been found in Africa; the finer, Acheulian, tools are known from most of Africa, Europe, southwest Asia and India. It was used for chopping, chipping, flaking, cutting, digging, and scraping. Hand axes first appear between one and two million years ago and they were common in assemblages for about a million years.
Hargeisan: CATEGORY: culture
DEFINITION: A stone industry of northern Somalia with production of large blades from prismatic cores and which appears to predate the local appearance of microlith industries. It may be related to the Eburran occupation of the central Kenyan Rift Valley between the 11th and 8th millennia BC.
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.
hinge termination: CATEGORY: lithics
DEFINITION: A fracture at the distal end of a lithic flake somewhat like a step termination, but more curvilinear in cross-section, indicating that the shock wave of flake removal curved outwards from the core, toward the distal side of the flake.
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.
indirect percussion: CATEGORY: lithics
DEFINITION: A technique of stone-tool manufacture in which flakes are removed from a flint core in a way which causes less wasteful shatter of the material than direct percussion. The hammer or hammerstone does not strike the flint but rather a wood, antler, or bone punch, usually with a prepared edge, so that the manufacture of flakes is more controlled.
Ingaladdi: CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: A sandstone rock shelter in the Australian Northern Territory known for two well-separated stone industries and for art. The upper levels date 3000 bp and contained a Australian Core Tool assemblage with points and tula adze flakes. The unifacial points included some with denticulated margins and others classed as Pirri points. Rock paintings include Wandjina style mythical beings, animals, men on horseback, and revolvers. Fragments of Panaramitee-style engravings were found in layers dated 5000-3000 BC. Following a sterile layer, the lower layers contained large flake scrapers, horsehoof cores, and engraved sandstone fragments of 7000-5000 bp.
Kalambo: SYNONYMS OR RELATED TERMS: Kalemba
CATEGORY: culture
DEFINITION: An Early Iron Age group in northern Zambia, taking its name from the 4th century AD village at Kalambo Falls. It is of the Chifumbaze complex. A prepared-core industry existed by c 36,000 BC and a true backed microlith assemblage appeared by 20,000 BC. The shift to a microlithic industry was accompanied by a change in faunal remains indicating a new preference for hunting small solitary creatures. The site also contains a large series of rock paintings, probably of later Iron Age date.
Kandanda: CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: A site on the upper Zambezi River in Zambia, with a prepared-core industry that included rare bifacial hand axes which continued to a remarkably late date. It was replaced by a microlithic industry probably around 1000 BC.
Kara-Bom: CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: Palaeolithic site in the Altai region of Siberia with artifacts including Levallois cores, retouched blades, denticulates, and endscrapers probably dating to the early Upper Palaeolithic.
Kartan culture: CATEGORY: culture
DEFINITION: A group of stone assemblages with heavy core tools found on Kangaroo Island and the nearby peninsulas of South Australia, a variant of the Australian Core Tool and Scraper Tradition. Kangaroo Island, now separated from Australia by a 15-km strait, was joined to the mainland during the Pleistocene. There were no Aboriginal inhabitants at the time of European contact. Radiocarbon estimates of 14,000 BC have been obtained for a possibly subsequent small scraper industry in Seton rock shelter on Kangaroo Island. Kartan tools include unifacially flaked pebble choppers, large steep-edged flake scrapers, waisted ax blades, and large horsehoof cores (mean weights of 500 grams), sometimes associated with small quartz flakes. The proportion of core tools in the assemblage is much higher than in other Pleistocene sites.
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.
Khotylevo: CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: Palaeolithic sites on the Desna River in the Ukraine. In the Middle Palaeolithic level, there are Levallois cores and bifaces. In the Upper Palaeolithic level, there are Venus figurines.
Khryashchi: CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: Palaeolithic site on the Northern Donets River in Russia dating to the late Middle Pleistocene. The artifacts include flake and core tools.
Kinai: CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: Core region of Honshu island, Japan, consisting of Yamato, Kawachi, Izumi, Settsu, and Yamashiro -- which now make up parts of Nara, Osaka, and Kyoto prefectures.
Kintampo Neolithic: SYNONYMS OR RELATED TERMS: Kintampo
CATEGORY: culture
DEFINITION: An industry of Ghana in West Africa with the first evidence of animal husbandry and food production, and dated to 3600 BP. This savanna woodland and forest margin in the basin of Black Volta River also had ceramics, flaked stone tools, and scored stone rasps that may have been used for grating or grinding.
Kokkinopilos: CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: A series of Palaeolithic sites on the Louros River in northern Greece. There are artifacts dating to the early Last Glacial, Middle Palaeolithic artifacts including Levallois cores, sidescrapers, and bifacial foliates. A surface collection of Mousterian types has also been found.
Kokorevo: CATEGORY: site; culture
DEFINITION: Six Upper Palaeolithic sites on the Yenisei River in southern Siberia. Radiocarbon dates put Kokorevo I-IV between 15,900-12940 bp. There are wedge-shaped microcores, microblades, sidescrapers, and retouched blades. Level I is Kokorevo culture, II and III are Afontova culture. The Kokorevo culture is dated to c 20,000-10,000 BP and included endscrapers.
Kow Swamp: CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: Large cemetery site in Murray Valley, Victoria, Southern Australia, dated to between 15,000-9000 bp. More than 40 crania and mandibles show marked robusticity of the fronto-facial regions combined with more modern, but still thick-boned, posterior areas of the crania. There is evidence of artificial deformation. Kow Swamp stone tools consisted of a few small quartz flakes and bipolar cores, similar to finds of the same age at Green Gully. Kow Swamp had the large single Late Pleistocene population in the world.
Krasnyj Yar: CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: Upper Palaeolithic site in south-central Siberia, occupied from around the Last Glacial Maximum of 25,000-14,000 bp. The artifacts include wedge-shaped microcores, microblades, points, and endscrapers.
lacquer: SYNONYMS OR RELATED TERMS: lacquer ware
CATEGORY: artifact; ceramics
DEFINITION: The resin of the sumac tree, used as a coating to harden and strengthen manufactured items. This varnishing substance was used from prehistoric times and was indigenous to southern and central China. Applied in many coats to a core made of wood, fabric, paper, baskets, leather, ceramics, etc., it forms a tough and durable protective surface, resistant to water and capable of a high polish. In China lacquered vessels were made as early as the Shang dynasty. Lacquer is often colored red or black.
Lake Mungo: SYNONYMS OR RELATED TERMS: Mungo
CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: A dry lake with an associated lunette in the Willandra Lakes, a complex of former Pleistocene lakes in western New South Wales, Australia. Excavation of the lunette has produced the best authenticated series of radiocarbon dates for the earliest evidence of man's occupation of Australia, and the remains of a cremated human female date to c 26,000 bp, the oldest evidence of cremation in the world. The remains of a man in an extended inhumation covered with red ochre is dated to c 30,000 bp. Stone tools belong to the Australian Core Tool and Scraper Tradition and there are artifact scatters, freshwater shell middens, and hearths dated by thermoluminescence to 31,400-36,400 years ago. The Willandra Lakes started to dry up c 13,000 BC. The appearance of grinding stones in this period suggest adaptation to wild grain exploitation. Intensive occupation ceased with increasing aridity, although sporadic visits occurred during the Holocene.
Lantian: SYNONYMS OR RELATED TERMS: [Lan-t'ien]
CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: Early Palaeolithic site in Shensi Province, China, with Homo Erectus remains at Gongwangling and Chenjiawo dated to c 700,000 bp (Middle Pleistocene). Lantian Man is the hominid species identified by Chinese archaeologists, the remains (both female) are as old as Java man, an early form of Homo erectus, and older than Peking man, another form. It was named Sinanthropus lantianensis, classified by most scholars as Homo erectus. The core tools are of the heavy-tool tradition of Palaeolithic China and stone implements from a third site in Lan-t'ien may be contemporary with the human fossils.
Levallois flake: SYNONYMS OR RELATED TERMS: Levallois point
CATEGORY: artifact
DEFINITION: A flake produced from a carefully prepared core.
Levallois technique: SYNONYMS OR RELATED TERMS: Levallois facies, Levallois
CATEGORY: lithics
DEFINITION: A distinctive method of stone tool-making in which flakes are removed by percussion from a preshaped core, with little other modification. This prepared-core knapping technique allows the removal of large flakes of predetermined size and shape. The face of the core is trimmed to shape in order to control the form and size of the intended flake. Characteristically the preparatory flaking is directed from the periphery of the core towards the center. The residual core is shaped rather like a tortoise, with one face plane and the other domed, while the flake shows the scars of the preparatory work on one face and is plane on the other. It is named for Levallois-Perret, a suburb of Paris, where such artifacts were first discovered. The Levallois technique was known from the Acheulian period and employed by certain late Lower Palaeolithic handax makers, and throughout the Middle Palaeolithic by some Mousterian communities. It lasted into the Upper Palaeolithic of the Levant, and in the Epi-Levalloisian industries of Egypt.
Levalloisian: SYNONYMS OR RELATED TERMS: Levallois; Levalloisian flake technique
CATEGORY: culture; lithics
DEFINITION: Pertaining to the Levallois technique or describing tools made by this method of producing flint flakes from a prepared core. It is also the name of the middle Paleolithic culture or industry of the second Interglacial in France, characterized by the introduction and refinement of flake tools. The name is derived from Levallois-Perret, a town near Paris, where such artifacts were first discovered.
Lindner Site, Nauwalabila: CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: Painted sandstone shelter in Arnhem Land, northern Australia, dating to 20,000 years ago. The lowest levels have Australian Core Tool and Scraper tradition artifacts of older than 18,000 bp. There are edge-ground tools dating c 14,000 bp, Australian Small Tool tradition points of about 6000 bp, and then adzes about 3500 bp.
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.
livre de beurre: CATEGORY: lithics
DEFINITION: Distinctive blade cores of Grand Pressigny (France) flint which are yellow and resemble slabs of butter.
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.
Luangwa pottery: CATEGORY: artifact
DEFINITION: A Late Iron Age complex of central, eastern, and northern Zambia in the 2nd millennium AD with a distinctive pottery style. It appeared a s a break from the Chifumbaze complex in the 11th century, originated in Zaire, and has continued into Recent times. The term (also Luangwa variant) is also used for Earlier Stone Age Sangoan collections from eastern Zambia. This facies of the Sangoan industry is found in gravel deposits of the Luangwa and tributary valleys of eastern Zambia, and is marked by large picks and other core tools made from water-rounded cobbles.
Luangwa tradition: CATEGORY: culture
DEFINITION: A Late Iron Age complex of central, eastern, and northern Zambia in the 2nd millennium AD with a distinctive pottery style. It appeared a s a break from the Chifumbaze complex in the 11th century, originated in Zaire, and has continued into recent times. The term (also Luangwa variant) is also used for Earlier Stone Age Sangoan collections from eastern Zambia. This facies of the Sangoan industry is found in gravel deposits of the Luangwa and tributary valleys of eastern Zambia, and is marked by large picks and other core tools made from water-rounded cobbles.
Lupemban: SYNONYMS OR RELATED TERMS: Lupembian
CATEGORY: artifact
DEFINITION: A stone industry of the Lower Palaeolithic of west-central Africa, developed from a Sangoan predecessor and characterized by tools appropriate for rough woodwork. Lupemban is found in northern Angola and southern Zaire and an important dated site is at Kalambo Falls on the Zambia/Tanzania border. In contrast with the Sangoan, Lupermban assemblages are marked by the fine quality of their bifacial stoneworking technique on elongated double-ended points, large sidescrapers, and thick core-axes. The industry spans from before 30,000 BC until c15,000 BC.
Lupembian / Lupemban: CATEGORY: culture
DEFINITION: A stone industry of the Lower Palaeolithic of west-central Africa, developed from a Sangoan predecessor and characterized by tools appropriate for rough woodwork. Lupemban is found in northern Angola and southern Zaire and an important dated site is at Kalambo Falls on the Zambia/Tanzania border. In contrast with the Sangoan, Lupermban assemblages are marked by the fine quality of their bifacial stoneworking technique on elongated double-ended points, large sidescrapers, and thick core-axes. The industry spans from before 30,000 BC until c15,000 BC.
maize: SYNONYMS OR RELATED TERMS: corn
CATEGORY: flora
DEFINITION: A tall cereal grass widely grown in Mexico, South America, and the US which originated as a staple food in Mexico about 9000 years ago. A field of maize is a milpa. No wild maize appears to exist today. The plant originated in the Central Mexican Highlands, where pollen belonging to maize, or one of its near relatives, has been found in cores from Mexico City, dated to between 60,000-80,000 bp. The earliest macrofossils of maize appear in the Tehuacan Valley in Mexico between 7000-5000 BC. These early finds have very small cobs and kernels and it has been suggested that they come from wild maize. Archaeologically, the oldest cultivated maize in Mexico is from the Coxcatlan period in the Tehuacan Valley (4800-3500 BC), and maize appears in the caves of Tamaulipas, northeast Mexico, around 3200 BC. In South America, the oldest direct evidence comes from the Valdivia culture of Ecuador, around 3000, though maize phytoliths were found in the preceding Vegas period, c 6000 BC. It was in fairly general use in the southwestern US by 1000 BC, though it did not reach the eastern Woodlands until about the time of Christ. It was an important early domesticated food plant in the New World and one of the trio which provided a balanced diet for early American farmers (the other two being beans and squash).
Majninskaya: CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: Upper Palaeolithic site on the Uj River near its confluence with the Yenisei in Siberia. The occupations dated from c 19,000-9000 bp. Artifacts include wedge-shaped microcores, sidescrapers, endscrapers, bone points, and an anthropomorphous figurine.
Mal'ta: CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: Upper Palaeolithic and Mesolithic site in south-central Siberia. There are traces of a dwelling and a burial of a young person of possibly mongoloid affinities, as well as several art objects. The Upper Palaeolithic level is dated to the beginning of the last glacial maximum, c 24,000-23,000 bp. The artifacts include prismatic cores, retouched blades, and end scrapers.
microblade: CATEGORY: lithics
DEFINITION: A small, narrow stone blade, ranging from less than 5-11 millimeters wide and about 15-45 mm long. They were often made from a conical or wedge-shaped microcore, often punch-struck or pressure-flaked. Microblades were often retouched into various forms of microliths. Microblades are found in the Upper Palaeolithic industries of Eurasia and in the Upper Palaeolithic of Siberia, but are also characteristic of the Mesolithic and later industries of the circumpolar regions. Examples are the Eastern Gravettian, Dyuktai culture, and the Arctic Small Tool Tradition.
microlith: SYNONYMS OR RELATED TERMS: pigmy stone
CATEGORY: lithics
DEFINITION: Any of various very small stone tools varying in size from 1-5 cm -- mainly thin blade or blade fragments with sharp cutting edges, usually geometric in shape and set into a wooden handle or shaft or the tip of a bone or antler as an arrow point. They were shaped by abrupt retouch into various shapes like triangles and crescents. Microliths were produced during the Later Upper Palaeolithic and Mesolithic and were either struck as blades from very small cores or were made from fractured blades using the microburin technique. They are characteristic, for example, of Azilian culture of the Mesolithic. Microliths represent both a versatile and an economic use of raw material: just as blades yield more cutting edge than flakes per unit weight of raw material, so bladelets improve yet further this advantage, by a factor of something over 100 compared to core tools.
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 Stone Age: CATEGORY: chronology
DEFINITION: The second part of the Stone Age in sub-Saharan Africa, dating from c 150,000-30,000 years ago and roughly equivalent to the Middle Palaeolithic elsewhere in the Old World. Assemblages are characterized by flakes made by preparing the core; there were many shapes and sizes of these artifacts. The characteristic tools are made on flakes produced by a developed Levalloisian technique, including slender unifacial and bifacial lances or spear points for stabbing or throwing. In the final stages of the Middle Stone Age, known as the South African Magosian, microlithic elements appear. Middle Stone Age assemblages are associated with anatomically modern Homo sapiens in southern Africa. People continued to live in open camps, while rock overhangs also were used for shelter. Middle Stone Age bands hunted medium-size and large prey. Sometimes they collected tortoises and ostrich eggs in large quantities, as well as seabirds and marine mammals that could be found along the shore. The rich archaeological deposits of Klasies River Mouth Cave preserve the earliest evidence in the world for the use of shellfish as a food source.
Miriwun: CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: A rock shelter in the Ord River valley, Kimberley, Western Australia, now inundated by the Argyle Dam and submerged by Lake Argyle. Occupation deposits date from 16,000 BC. Artifacts from t he early phase include adze flakes, small denticulated flakes, thick notched flakes, pebble tools, irregular blade cores, and amorphous cores. Late phase tools, c 1000 BC, included unifacial and bifacial points, many denticulated, with the earlier tool types continued alongside.
mold: SYNONYMS OR RELATED TERMS: mould
CATEGORY: geology
DEFINITION: A matrix for casting metal. Molten metal poured into a concavity will solidify into a corresponding shape. The concavity has only to be given the shape of the required artifact. Such molds can be made of stone, pottery, or metal with a melting point higher than that of the alloy being cast. Molds were also used for making figurines and relief-decorated pottery. The simplest type of mold is a one-piece or open one, from which the casting emerges with one flat face, requiring further hammering to give it a symmetrical form. Two-piece molds allowed bifacial tools and weapons to be cast -- a third piece, or core, being added if a socket was required. These technical advances had been made before the end of the Early Bronze Age. Multi-piece molds were used in Shang China. Molds were used to produce the elaborate asymmetrical vessels of the Mochica and Chimú styles. The earliest molds for casting metal were made of stone. During the Late Bronze Age, piece molds began to be formed of clay.
Mousterian: SYNONYMS OR RELATED TERMS: Mousterian industry
CATEGORY: culture; chronology; artifact
DEFINITION: A Middle Paleolithic culture that is defined by the development of a wide variety of specialized tools made with prepared-core knapping techniques, such as spear points. It is named for the first such artifacts recovered from the lower rock shelter at Le Moustier, Dordogne, France. Stone tools, scrapers, and points found in the cave came to be recognized as the flint industry present throughout Europe during first half of last glaciation (Würm) and associated with Neanderthal. The earliest Mousterian goes back to the Riss glaciation, but most of it comes into the late middle Würm glaciation, giving a total lifespan from 180,000 BC until c 30,000 BP. Flintwork of Mousterian type (with racloirs, triangular points made on flakes, and -- in some variants -- well-made handaxes) has been found over most of the unglaciated parts of Eurasia, as well as in the Near East and North Africa (in the latter two areas, it constitutes the Middle Palaeolithic). Three major regional variants have been identified -- West, East, and Levalloiso-Mousterian, each with sub-groups. In certain industries, called Levalloiso-Mousterian, the tools were made on flakes produced by the Levallois technique. It was a progressive stage in the manufacture of stone tools. Mousterian peoples mainly lived in cave mouths and rock shelters.
Mu'a: CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: The main ceremonial and residential center of the ruling dynasties of Tongatapu, Tonga, held by tradition to have been in use from the 11th century AD. The site has a core area of 400 x 500 meters defended by an earthwork, and contains numerous house platforms and tombs (Langi). According to tradition, it became the residence of the Tui Tonga dynasty about 1200 AD and the defenses were built about 1400 AD.
multifaceted platform: CATEGORY: lithics
DEFINITION: A platform with more than one plane of detachment, such as on the margins of some bifaces or multidirectional cores.
Mushroom Rock: CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: Painted sandstone shelter in Cape York, Australia, first occupied in the Late Pleistocene. There is the earlier Australian Core Tool and Scraper Tradition and the later Australian Small Tool Tradition.
Mwanganda: CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: An elephant butchery site in northern Malawi, undated, but containing scrapers and core axes. The site is of interest as preserving in situ the debris of a single, clearly defined, activity. It has been attributed to the Lupemban industry.
Nabonidus (d. 538 BC): SYNONYMS OR RELATED TERMS: Nabu-na'id
CATEGORY: person
DEFINITION: The king of Babylonia from 556-539 BC, when Babylon fell to Cyrus, king of Persia. After a popular rising led by the priests of Marduk, chief god of the city, abonidus, who favored the moon god Sin, made his son Belshazzar coregent and spent much of his reign in Arabia. Returning to Babylon in 539 BC, he was captured by Cyrus' general Gobryas and exiled. He was the last king of the Neo-Babylonian Empire and is often considered to be the first archaeologist because he searched the ruined temples of ancient Babylon to answer questions about the remote past.
naos: SYNONYMS OR RELATED TERMS: temple sanctuary; naoi = plural
CATEGORY: structure
DEFINITION: A shrine, usually monolithic, in which the image of an Egyptian deity was kept, especially in temple sanctuaries. A small wooden naos was normally placed inside a monolithic one in hard stone; the latter are typical of the Late Period, and sometimes elaborately decorated. The largest naoi are those where a temple's main cult statue was kept, in the sanctuary. A naos generally took the form of a rectangular chest or box hewn from a single block of wood or stone, and could also be used as a container for a funerary statue or mummified animal. Egyptian 'naophorous statues/ portrayed the subject holding a shrine, sometimes containing a divine image. The term is also used for the interior apartment of a Greek temple (a Greek temple placed within a temenos) or the cella of the Roman temple. In Classical architecture, it is the body of a temple (as distinct from the portico) in which the image of the deity is housed. In early Greek and Roman architecture it was a simple room, usually rectangular, with the entrance at one end and with the side walls often being extended to form a porch. In larger temples, where the cella is open to the sky, a small temple was sometimes placed within. In the Byzantine architectural tradition the naos was preserved as the area of a centrally planned church, including the core and the sanctuary, where the liturgy is performed.
Nderit ware: SYNONYMS OR RELATED TERMS: Gumban A
CATEGORY: ceramics
DEFINITION: First discovered at Stable's Drift on the Nderit River, south of Lake Nakuru in the central Rift Valley of Kenya, Nderit ware is a widespread variety of pottery which may predate the florescence of the Pastoral Neolithic in the area. It is one of several distinct pottery wares associated with the Pastoral Neolithic in Kenya and northern Tanzania. It is characterized by finely executed, wedge-shaped decoration, apparently made by means of repeated impressions of a pointed object such as obsidian; it is also often deeply scored on the inside surface of the vessel. In northern Kenya, the pottery occurs at least as early as the 3rd millennium BC. Further to the south, Nderit ware only occurs with other pottery traditions.
negative bulb of percussion: CATEGORY: lithics
DEFINITION: A small depression on a core below the striking platform, produced by the force that detached a flake.
Oenpelli Shelters: CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: A group of five sites in Arnhem Land, northern Australia (Padypadiy, Nawamoyn, Malangangerr, Tyimede I and II). Similar tool assemblages dating from 20,000-3000 BC show up at Malanganerr, Nawamoyn, Tyimede II -- thick flake scrapers with steep edges, horsehoof cores, stone hammers, grinders, and waisted or grooved ground-edge axes. The ground-edge axes found at Malangangerr and Nawamoyn in levels dated to 20,000-16,000 BC are the oldest examples of edge-grinding known in Australia. The sudden appearance of estuarine species in shell middens of 5000-4000 BC in the Malangangerr and Nawamoyn deposits reflect rising sea levels. About 2000 years later, at all five sites, small stone points and scrapers appeared and continued until the present. There is also much bark painting in the area.
Onion Portage: CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: Important site in northwest Alaska containing one of the continent's longest stratigraphies; occupied from at least 8500 BP by a number of Eskimo-Siberian-Indian subcultures (American Palaeoarctic, Northern Archaic, Arctic Small Tool Traditions, Inuit cultures). The oldest industries, called Akmak and Kobuk, are thought to last from c 9000 BC until the mid-7th millennium BC, and include chipped tools (blades, bifaces and associated cores) which are closer to Siberian types than to those of temperate America. The Kobuk (6200-6000 BC) contained similar tools but of limited variety. After a long hiatus in occupation, the Palisades II industry (4850-3350 BC, variously 4000-2000 BC) shows links with the archaic cultures of the forest zone to the southeast, as does the succeeding Portage complex (3350-3000 BC, variously 2600-2200 BC). Next came tools of the Denbigh Flint Complex (3200 BC, variously 2200-1800 BC), followed by Chloris (1500-500 BC) with the oldest pottery in the Arctic, then a local version (Norton) of Ipiutak (400-800 AD), by a forest-adapted Indian culture called Itkillik Complex (500-1000 AD), and finally by an Arctic Woodland Culture facies of the Thule Tradition. The excellent vertical stratigraphy of this site makes it the major reference for all western Arctic chronologies, especially when taken together with the horizontal stratigraphy of Cape Krusenstern.
opus incertum: CATEGORY: structure
DEFINITION: A Roman construction technique involving walls of very small rough stones, not laid in courses, but held together by the mortar or attached to a concrete core. This technical term was also used by Vitruvius c 30 BC to describe the irregular patchwork stone surface that was commonly applied to Republican-period walls, as a decorative facing for the concrete inner core. Opus incertum was the most common facing for ordinary concrete walls of the 2nd and 1st centuries BC. The face of the concrete was studded with three- to four-inch irregularly shaped pieces of stone, usually tuff.
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.
oxygen isotope analysis: SYNONYMS OR RELATED TERMS: oxygen isotope examination
CATEGORY: technique
DEFINITION: Isotope analysis looking at the O18/O16 ratio in materials. The method can be used to classify glass types and to analyze mollusk shells in order to try and reconstruct their original environment and thus the source. It is also used to interpret deep sea cores. The basis for this technique is the fact that the ratio of two of the stable isotopes of oxygen varies according to the material in which it is found. The oxygen is released from the sample, and is converted to carbon dioxide; the oxygen isotopic ratio is determined after ionization in a mass spectrometer. Variations in the isotopic ratios for the raw materials can lead to a classification of types and even, in some cases, the suggestion of a source for the raw materials. The technique is also used to analyze mollusk shells in an attempt to reconstruct the original aquatic environment. Because temperature variations are correlated with changes in atmospheric O18/O16 ratios, oxygen isotope analysis has also been used to identify seasonal changes in ice cores, interpret temperature variations during speleothem precipitation, and examine isotopic variations in tree ring climates. Foraminifera sampled from deep sea cores have revealed fluctuations in the O18/O16 ratio. These present evidence for glacial-interglacial cycles in the form of continental ice volume change.
Paleo-Arctic tradition: CATEGORY: culture
DEFINITION: A tradition grouping industries of the Early Holocene in the western Arctic, including American Paleo-Arctic and Siberian Paleo-Arctic which are derived from Siberian Upper Paleolithic. Common features are blades and microblades, small wedge-shaped cores of campus" type various kinds of bifaces in varying degrees foliated end scrapers side scrapers and often burins of thick flakes."
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 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 man (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 Neanderthal man 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."
paleomagnetism: SYNONYMS OR RELATED TERMS: palaeomagnetism, remanent magnetism; paleo-magnetism, palaeo-magnetism; archaeomagnetism
CATEGORY: technique
DEFINITION: The magnetic polarization acquired by the minerals in a rock at the time the rock was deposited or solidified. The permanent magnetism in rocks, resulting from the orientation of the Earth's magnetic field at the time of rock formation in a past geological age. It is the source of information for the paleomagnetic studies of polar wandering and continental drift. The field of paleomagnetism involves techniques for determining the age of rocks by analyzing the magnetic field polarity of certain minerals in the rock and its importance in archaeology lies in its use as a dating method. The ancient orientation and intensity of the earth's magnetic field is preserved by the magnetization of iron oxides in rocks and sediments and archaeological materials (archaeomagnetism). Ancient direction and intensity of the earth's magnetic field may be preserved in three ways: a) thermoremanet magnetism (T.R.M.) works through the alignment of the magnetic domains within iron minerals when heated to above the Curie point and subsequently cooling, b) detrital remanent magnetism works through the alignment of clay particles sinking down slowly through still lake or deep ocean water. A block of sediment is magnetized in the direction of the earth's field at the time when it was deposited., and c) sun-dried bricks as the bricks become magnetized in the current direction and intensity of the earth's field. Using igneous rocks, independently dated by potassium/argon, and kilns, hearths, pots etc. dated archaeologically, it has been possible to reconstruct something of the history of the earth's magnetic field. Palaeomagnetism proper is done by studying reversals in the magnetic field of the Earth, the youngest reversal dating to 700,000 bp. Measurement of the declination and inclination of the magnetic poles as it affects materials of different ages can be used to build regional chronologies. Palaeomagnetic dating has also been successfully applied to lacustrine deposits, deep sea cores, and volcanic rocks.
Patch Grove ware: CATEGORY: artifact
DEFINITION: Kind of pottery with a rough grey core and an orange or brown surface, found mainly in northwest Kent and Surrey, usually in the form of wide-mouthed storage jars and with notched decoration on the shoulder. It is in a native British tradition that lasted into the 2nd century AD.
pattern welding: SYNONYMS OR RELATED TERMS: pattern-welding
CATEGORY: geology
DEFINITION: A post-Roman period technique of ironworking used particularly in the manufacture of weapons, mainly swords, developed to overcome the problems of brittleness caused by trying to diffuse carbon into iron. It produced blades that were both strong and decorative. In the manufacture of a sword, for example, the central part would typically be a core of carbon steel, with soft iron welded to it. Wire and strip metal, sometimes in varying combinations of type and color, were welded together and hammered out to produce a blade with patterned effect. The pattern derives from the difference in the carbon content between the uncarburized cores and the carburized surfaces of the welded strips, which is exposed during the forging and grinding of the weapon. A sword of this quality could have taken some 75 hours to make. The finest examples have been attributed to Frankish workshops, although notable examples are also known from Anglo-Saxon and Viking contexts.
pebble tool: SYNONYMS OR RELATED TERMS: pebble chopper
CATEGORY: lithics
DEFINITION: A simple form of stone cutting tool, the oldest type of tool made by forerunners of modern humans. The tool consists of a rounded stone struck a number of blows with a similar stone used as a pounder, which created a serrated crest that served as a chopping blade. The core is only slightly altered by striking off a few small flakes. The most typical are choppers and chopping tools. These tools could be used as crude hunting knives, to grub roots, and for other purposes. The oldest examples are perhaps 2 to 2 1/2 million years old, from sites like the Omo Valley and Hadar in Ethiopia. Those found in large numbers in Olduvai Gorge, in Tanganyika, are universally accepted as eoliths, dating back man's history to 1,000,000 years ago. By a process of refinement these pebble tools developed into the handaxes of Africa, Europe, and southwest Asia, and into the chopping tools of the Far East.
percussion technique: SYNONYMS OR RELATED TERMS: percussion method, percussion flaking
CATEGORY: lithics
DEFINITION: Any of the methods used to strike a flake from a core in the making of stone tools; the reduction of a stone core by hitting it with a hammerstone or bone. Direct percussion is hitting a core with a hammer. Indirect percussion uses a punch between the core and the hammer. Anvil percussion (block on block) is the striking of a core against a fixed hardstone anvil. Bipolar percussion involves resting the core on an anvil and striking it with a hammer, making a flake with a bulb of percussion on each end.
pick: CATEGORY: artifact
DEFINITION: Long narrow core tool, sometimes slightly curved in profile, truncated at one end and pointed at the other. Typical of the Sangoan in Africa.
Pietersburg: CATEGORY: culture
DEFINITION: A term for South African early Middle Stone Age artifact assemblages of the late Middle or early Late Pleistocene, occurring mainly in the Transvaal although related material is also found further south. It belongs to the general group of industries based upon the removal of flakes from prepared cores but is differentiated from other contemporary industries of this type by the presence of large numbers of long parallel-sided flake-blades (many of which have minimal retouch or use damage on the sides). The best sequence showing the development of the Pietersburg industry is at the Cave of Hearths in the northern Transvaal. The chronology is still poorly defined, but is roughly 60,000-20,000 BC or after.
pingo: CATEGORY: geology
DEFINITION: An ice-cored mound that develops within the active layer and permafrost of the periglacial zone. These conical mounds can be up to 40 meters high and 600 meters wide. Layers of ice may separate out by percolation of water, or form by the injection of water-charged sediment from below. When a pingo melts, its center collapses, leaving behind a circular 'rampart' of material (a circular ridge with a central basin, often filled with peat). Pingo ramparts have been used to reconstruct the extent of the periglacial zone which developed around the Devesian/Weichselian ice-sheets.
platform: CATEGORY: lithics
DEFINITION: The place on a core or flake where it was struck by a hammer.
platform angle: CATEGORY: lithics
DEFINITION: The angle between the plane of the platform and the exterior (dorsal) surface of a flake or core.
plunging termination: SYNONYMS OR RELATED TERMS: overshot
CATEGORY: lithics
DEFINITION: A distinct curvature of the distal end of a lithic flake towards the center of the core.
point of percussion: CATEGORY: lithics
DEFINITION: The point at which a core is struck with a hammerstone in order to remove a flake. The point of percussion is a visible excrescence on the core, a small scar on the struck flake. The bulb of percussion surrounds it.
polished stone adze: CATEGORY: artifact
DEFINITION: A chopping or cutting tool, beveled on one side and characteristic of the Neolithic in Southeast Asia. It appeared as early as 6000 BC in some places and continued in use into the 1st millennium AD in places with little metal. There were generally flaked to shape from a large core, then ground and polished. Traded forms were roughed-out blanks that would be polished later. The form was a simple quadrangle. By the Late Neolithic a decrease in the proportion of stone axes to adzes suggests the increasing dominance of permanent agriculture.
pollen analysis: SYNONYMS OR RELATED TERMS: palynology
CATEGORY: technique
DEFINITION: The study of pollen grains in soil samples from an archaeological site which provides information on ancient human use of plants and plant resources. This technique, which is used in establishing relative chronologies as well as in environmental archaeology, was developed primarily as a technique for the relative dating of natural horizons. Pollen grains are produced in vast quantities by all plants, especially the wind-pollinated tree species. The outer skin (exine) of these grains is remarkably resistant to decay, and on wet ground or on a buried surface, it will be preserved, locked in the humus content. The pollen grains of trees, shrubs, grasses, and flowers are preserved in either anaerobic conditions or in acid soils. Samples can be taken from the deposits by means of a core or from individual layers at frequent intervals in a section face on an archaeological site. The pollen is extracted and then concentrated and stained and examined under a microscope. Pollen grains are identifiable by their shape, and the percentages of the different species present in each sample are recorded on a pollen diagram. A comparison of the pollen diagrams for different levels within a deposit allows the identification of changes in the percentages of species and thus changes in the environment. As a dating technique, pollen has been used to identify different zones of arboreal vegetation which often correspond to climatic changes. The technique is invaluable for disclosing the environment of early man's sites and can even, over and series of samples, reveal man's influence on his environment by, for example, forest clearance. The sediments most frequently investigated are peat and lake deposits, but the more acid soils, such as podsols, are also analyzed. Radiocarbon dates may be taken at intervals in the sequence, and it is possible to reconstruct the history of vegetation in the area around the site where the samples were taken. Palynology plays an important role in the investigation of ancient climates, particularly through studies of deposits formed during glacial and interglacial stages of the Pleistocene epoch.
pot lid: CATEGORY: lithics
DEFINITION: A small portion (flake) of stone that may pop off" a core during heat treatment due to rapid heating or excessive temperature creating many small flake scars on the surface."
pressure flaking: SYNONYMS OR RELATED TERMS: pressure-flaking; pressure technique, pressure method
CATEGORY: artifact
DEFINITION: A method for the secondary working of flint tools involving the use of a hard object against a stone core or mass to remove flakes. The roughed-out form of the tool is sharpened and finished by exerting pressure with a bone, antler, stone, or stick on the edge in order to remove small thin chips. By using a short, pointed instrument to pry, not strike, the tiny flakes leave only the smallest scars. As the least violent and most advanced of the methods of working stone, it gave the craftsman the ultimate in control for the removal of materials in the shaping of an implement. Fine-edged weapons, such as daggers, arrowheads, and spear heads, can be produced using this technique. This technique was first widely used in the Solutrean c 18,000 BC and is associated with some New World points.
previous scar: CATEGORY: artifact
DEFINITION: A blade or flake scar seen on the face of a blade or flake resulting form the initial removal of a blade or a flake from a core or nodule.
prismatic blade: CATEGORY: lithics
DEFINITION: A flake struck from a polyhedral core, at least twice as long as it is wide, with steep, parallel sides, and trapezoidal (prismatic) in cross-section.
probe: SYNONYMS OR RELATED TERMS: soil probe
CATEGORY: tool
DEFINITION: A tool consisting of a metal rod or tube pushed into unexcavated deposits to locate as yet unexposed hard features such as walls, floors, or bed rock. It is also used for exploring subsurface stratigraphy and is less expensive than a core but works down only a few meters.
Puntutjarpa: CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: A rock shelter in the Warburton Ranges of the Western Desert, Western Australia with occupation from c 8000 BC. It is part of the 'Australian desert culture' with stone tools in the earliest levels consisting of small stone scrapers (micro-adze flakes or thumbnail scrapers), large flake scrapers, and horsehoof cores. Larger adze flakes and seed grinders appeared around 5000 BC. Microliths (Bondi points and crescents) were present from 2000 BC. The earlier tool types persisted until the present, with late addition of flake knives and hand axes. The preponderance of adze flakes showed the significance of woodworking in the desert culture.
recurrence surface: SYNONYMS OR RELATED TERMS: recurrence horizon
CATEGORY: geology
DEFINITION: A division in peat stratigraphy which separates well-humidified peat from unhumidified peat. Recurrence surfaces are found in raised bogs and blanket bogs which are nourished only by rainfall. It has therefore been suggested that recurrence surfaces are due to a change to damper climate. Recurrence surfaces of many dates have been found, often several in one bog, although not so many fitting into one age range. During the late prehistoric and early historic phases of the past 6,000 years, the peat bogs of northern Europe appear to have undergone a number of desiccations (warm, dry summers), revealed in the bog cores as dry, often wooded, surfaces. The dry phases were generally followed by wet conditions in which peat accumulation was rapid. These overlying layers of renewed peat growth are also known as recurrence horizons"."
refitting: SYNONYMS OR RELATED TERMS: conjoining, rejoining
CATEGORY: technique
DEFINITION: The reassembling of stone debitage and cores to reconstruct ancient lithic technologies. It is any attempt to put stone tools and flakes back together again, which provides important information on the processes involved in the knapper's craft. The refitting or conjoining of artifact or ecofact fragments, especially those of struck stone flakes to recreate the original core, allows definition of cumulative features, such as the lithic artifact and debitage scatters. The technique allow may allow reconstruction of ancient manufacture and use behavior.
rejuvenated plaform: CATEGORY: artifact
DEFINITION: Cores are 'rejuvenated' by removing the platform to decrease the platform angle to allow blade production to continue.core is struck on the platform and blades removed to create a new platform and increase the angle between the platform and the face of the core a 'core tablet' is struck off from the side of the core
rejuvenated platform: CATEGORY: artifact
DEFINITION: Cores are 'rejuvenated' by removing the platform to decrease the platform angle to allow blade production to continue. Core is struck on the platform and blades removed to create a new platform and increase the angle between the platform and the face of the core a 'core tablet' is struck off from the side of the core.
retouch: SYNONYMS OR RELATED TERMS: secondary working; secondary flaking
CATEGORY: lithics
DEFINITION: The working of a primary flake, usually by the removal of small fragments, to form a tool; to thin, sharpen, straighten, or otherwise refine an existing stone tool for further use. It is the work done to a flint implement after its preliminary roughing-out in order to make it into a functional tool. In the case of a core-tool, such as a hand-ax, retouch may consist of roughly trimming the edge by striking with a hammerstone, but on smaller, finer flake or blade tools it is usually carried out by pressure-flaking. It is done two ways, either by blows that knock small flakes off an edge (percussion retouch) or by pressure to force the flakes off (pressure retouch). The different types of retouch are also described as: backing or blunting retouch, and invasive or normal retouch. Invasive retouch can be steep or shallow, depending mainly on the kind of edge being retouched; this retouch can also be scaly in character. Backing is most often applied to blades and may have been done to blunt the back or to bring its end to a stout point. Evidence suggests that it may have been done to regularize the blade edge to facilitate fixing by resin 'mastic' to a bone or wood shaft. Such a strip of mastic was found in Lascaux, France. Notching or toothing is another form of retouch, and the removal of spalls or slivers as in the burin technique could be regarded as a further form of retouch or modification. Retouch is one of the most obvious features distinguishing a manmade from a naturally struck flint.
Robberg: SYNONYMS OR RELATED TERMS: Nelson Bay Cave
CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: Later Stone Age microlithic industry of southern and eastern Cape Province, South Africa, dated to c 18,000-12,000 BP. There are many diminutive artifacts with few retouched implements, including bladelet cores, bladelets, scrapers, and backed bladelets. Worked bone and ostrich eggshell beads have also been found.
Sangoan: CATEGORY: culture
DEFINITION: Stone tool industry or complex of Sango Bay in Uganda on Lake Victoria, a Mainly Middle Pleistocene series of assemblages containing heavy-duty picks (core axes), handaxes, scrapers, finely flaked lanceolate points, cleavers, and small specialized tools. The Sangoan may have developed from a late Acheulian basis, and which was roughly contemporary with the Mousterian of Europe, dating to 100,000-20,000 BP. The term is loosely applied to a rather heterogeneous group of industries in eastern and south-central Africa, and perhaps in West Africa, also. The most informative site for the composition and sequence of Sangoan industries is at Kalambo Falls, Zambia. In several regions of Zaire and neighboring countries, the Sangoan appears to mark the first human settlement of the low-lying country now occupied by the equatorial forest.
secondary flake: SYNONYMS OR RELATED TERMS: partially cortical flake, retouch, secondary flaking, secondary retouch, reduction flake
CATEGORY: lithics
DEFINITION: A stone flake removed from a larger flake, as in the process of refining for a new use; a flake possessing some cortex on its dorsal aspect. The flakes are removed from an existing stone tool in order to thin, sharpen, blunt, or otherwise modify it for a specific use. Secondary flaking is the trimming which gives a chipped stone tool its final shape after the primary flaking has produced a blank (blade, flake, or core) of roughly the required form.
sheep: CATEGORY: fauna
DEFINITION: A ruminant (cud-chewing) mammal of the genus Ovis, usually stockier than its relative the goat. Sheep were first domesticated from wild species of sheep by at least 5000 BC, and their remains have been found at numerous sites of early human habitation in the Middle East, Europe, and Central Asia. Domesticated sheep are raised for their fleece (wool), for milk, and for meat. The flesh of mature sheep is called mutton; that of immature animals is called lamb. The moufflon (Ovis orientalis) of Syria, Turkey, and Iraq, was the first food animal to be tamed, probably c 9000 BC. The urial (O. vignei) lived further east, between the Caspian and Tibet and its bones have been identified c 4900 BC, and it was introduced into Europe in the Neolithic. In practice, the bones of sheep and goats from archaeological sites are lumped together by many researchers who do not distinguish between them in archaeological site reports and refer instead to sheep/goat, ovicaprid, caprovine etc. as only a few of them, notably the horn cores, are firmly diagnostic. Goats are distinguished from sheep by differences in scent glands, lack of 'beard', the number of chromosomes, and the possession of tightly curled horns.
Shinto: CATEGORY: term
DEFINITION: The native religion of Japan which is not recorded in literature until the 6th century. The core of belief seems to be that spirits reside in numerous natural phenomena, such as sun, water, fire and mountains, and that it is important to attain ritual purity from pollution. Shinto shrines often have a mirror as the embodiment of the deity.
Shirataki: SYNONYMS OR RELATED TERMS: Yubetsu
CATEGORY: site; culture
DEFINITION: Palaeolithic sites in Hokkaido, Japan, with a large number of obsidian artifacts dating from about 18,000-13,000 BC, and including large blades, burins, scrapers, and some bifacial points. There are more bifacial points and microblades in a younger group, which dates c13,000-10,000 BC. The microblades were made by a special technique, called the Yubetsu technique, where a large biface is made into a core which looks like a tall carinated scraper. The technology is also called Yubetsu, though the type site is Shirataki-Hattoridai.
Shiyu: SYNONYMS OR RELATED TERMS: [Shih-yu]
CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: Late Palaeolithic site in Shanxi Province, China, with a fossil human occipital bone and a radiocarbon date of c 28,000 bp. There are small scrapers, points, and microlithic blades and cores.
single-facet platform: CATEGORY: lithics
DEFINITION: A platform on a biface or core with a single plane of detachment.
Sokchang-ri: SYNONYMS OR RELATED TERMS: [Sokchangni]
CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: Palaeolithic site in southern Korea (South Ch'ungch'ong province) with 12 cultural layers starting with c 20,000 bp. That layer contained obsidian scrapers, rhyolite burins, and prismatic cores.
sphyrelaton: SYNONYMS OR RELATED TERMS: sphyrelata
CATEGORY: artifact
DEFINITION: A type of bronze hammered statue, made by hammering bronze plates over a core, which were secured by nails. It is an early form of art manufacture in metal, the precursor to the lost wax (cire perdue) technique. The temple of Apollo on Crete (8th century BC) has three statues of this type. The technique was also used to produce colossal statues. Another definition is repoussé work in Minoan or Etruscan art.
Strashnaya Cave: CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: Middle Palaeolithic site in the Altai region of Siberia with occupation probably prior to the Last Glacial. The artifacts are Levallois cores, scrapers, and denticulates.
striking platform: SYNONYMS OR RELATED TERMS: platform
CATEGORY: lithics
DEFINITION: The area on a store core which is struck to remove a flake or blade in toolmaking. Part of the original platform is removed with the detached flake. The platform itself is prepared by the removal of one or more flakes, and in the latter case is described as a faceted striking platform.
Sukhothai: CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: Early Buddhist Thai state in northern Thailand founded in the 13th century, independent of the declining Khmer empire of Angkor. Its core towns were Sukhothai and Si Satchanalai. Under its greatest king Ram Khamhaeng (c 1275-1317), the power of Sukhothai expanded over vast areas of the Indochinese and even the Malay Peninsula. In the 15th century, the center of Thai power shifted south to Ayuthya and Sukhothai ceased to exist as an independent kingdom. It is also known for its glazed stoneware vessels, of the same name, widely exported. The pottery had underglaze decoration in black / brown on a cream slip.
Swartkrans: CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: One of three neighboring South African sites where important fossil hominid remains have been found -- a short distance from Sterkfontein and Kromdraai. The valley is the richest hominid site in South Africa and Swarkrans dates between 1.8-1 million years ago, with remains of possibly over 60 individuals of Australopithecus robustus. The Swartkrans artifacts are mainly relatively crude stone chopper cores, flakes, and scrapers made of quartzite and quartz, and some bone tools. The stone tools, including rough hand axes, are attributed to the Developed Oldowan. A second hominid is present, probably Homo erectus or habilis. Fire-blackened bones of 1.5-1 million years ago may be the oldest known direct evidence for the use of fire.
talatat: SYNONYMS OR RELATED TERMS: talatate
CATEGORY: structure
DEFINITION: Typical small sandstone building blocks used in Egypt for the temples of Amenophis IV (Akhenaten) at Aten at el-Amarna and Karnak and other temples of the Amarna Period (c 1352-1336 BC). It is the Arabic word for three handbreadths, describing the length of these stones which were used for rapid construction. They are often decorated in relief. After return to orthodox worship of Amen, these monuments were dismantled and their components then used by Akhenaten's successors as rubble hardcore in later buildings.
Tartanga: CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: Site on the lower Murray River, South Australia, with small cores, scrapers, bone points, grinding stones, and tula adze flakes dated to c 4000 BC. Skeletons of two juveniles found have some cranial features similar to the robust Talgai skull.
Tasmania: CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: Island that was part of the Australian continent during the late Pleistocene, then separated by rising sea levels which formed Bass Strait about 9000 BC. Occupation of southwestern Tasmania by 30,000 bp is now well established. At the time of European contact, Tasmanian aborigines had a simple tool kit of stone flakes and core scrapers, pebble choppers, wooden pointed spears, digging sticks, clubs, and throwing sticks. They lacked all the post-Pleistocene tools known on the mainland. At sites on the northwestern tip, deposits are dated to c 6000 BC with bone points, stone scrapers, and pebble tools. Around 1000 BC, bone points disappeared and there is evidence of fish exploitation. Pecked engravings at Mount Cameron West resemble the Panaramitee style of central Australia. The arrival of Europeans was disastrous, with Tasmanians becoming almost extinct in the 19th century.
Thera: SYNONYMS OR RELATED TERMS: modern Santorini
CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: Volcanic island in the Cyclades and the site of a Mycenaean settlement and a flourishing Bronze Age Minoan town (Akrotiri) on its lower slopes. The inhabitants were driven out by an earthquake c 1500 BC and in c 1470 a catastrophic eruption buried the remains under 30 meters of ash. There were shock waves across the south Aegean Sea and extent to which the volcano's eruption contributed to the downfall of the Minoans on Crete is debated. There is, however, a chronological problem: the destruction of the Minoan palaces on Crete seems to have occurred c1450 BC, some 50 years after the abandonment of Akrotiri. Based on evidence from a Greenland ice-core and from tree-ring and radiocarbon dating, some scholars believe that it occurred earlier, during the 1620s BC. Some tie the events to the legend of Atlantis. Around the beginning of the first millennium BC, Dorian settlers came to Thera. From 308 to 145 the island, a member of the Cycladic League, was a Ptolemaic protectorate. Akrotiri's houses contain some of the finest Minoan frescoes found in the Mediterranean.
Thunderbird: SYNONYMS OR RELATED TERMS: Thunderbird site
CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: Palaeoindian and Archaic campsites at Flint Run, Virginia, with a long-exploited jasper quarry. Core fragments, flakes, and broken or preformed tools show a large flint knapping industry. Occupations began in Clovis times through the Archaic. Postholes in association with living floors dated to c 9000 BC raises the possibility of this being the site of the earliest house structures in America.
Tshitolian: CATEGORY: culture
DEFINITION: Later Stone Age Industry named after the Tshitolo Plateau in southern Zaire, the microlithic successor to the Lupemban and dated c 14,000-5000 BP. Tshitolian industries also occur in Angola, Gabon, and Cameroon in equatorial Africa. The characteristic backed microliths are of a flared triangular shape and may have been hafted for use as transverse arrowheads. Other tool types are small picks, small core axes, and foliate points.
Ushki Lake: SYNONYMS OR RELATED TERMS: Ushki
CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: Five sites in Kamchatka, Siberia, with Neolithic levels overlying Upper Palaeolithic. Wedge-shaped cores and sidescrapers have been dated to the early Holocene c 8790 bp. A Dyuktai culture assemblage is dated to c 10,760-10360 bp. The lowest layer is c 14,300-13,600 bp with stemmed bifacial points and perforated stone ornaments. Hearths and a burial were excavated in this level, with red ochre surviving. This is the only Palaeolithic site in Siberia to represent a tundra rather than a forest adaptation.
Ust'-Kan Cave: CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: Middle Palaeolithic site in the Altai region of Siberia with Levallois cores, sidescrapers, and points of probably just before the Last Glacial.
ventral: CATEGORY: lithics
DEFINITION: In flakes and blades, toward the side that was not exposed until after removal from the core.
Victoria West: CATEGORY: lithics
DEFINITION: A technique for preparing cores by removing a single flake, that is Levallois-like and associated with Earlier Stone Age assemblages of interior South Africa.
vitrified fort: CATEGORY: structure
DEFINITION: A type of Iron Age hillfort where the external walls of stone have become smooth by the heat of the sun or by burning, combined with windy conditions. The walls fuse into a slaggy or glassy mass, becoming vitrified. Dry-stone timber-laced ramparts, especially in Scotland, have timber-lacing that has been fired causing the stone core of the rampart to fuse. They are dated roughly in the last few centuries BC and early centuries AD.
Yasumiba: CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: Late Palaeolithic site in Shizuoka prefecture, Honshu, Japan, with hearths dated c 14,300 years ago. Over four hundred microblades made from conical cores were found.
Yiewsley: CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: Site of a number of gravel pits in West Middlesex, England, with Lower Palaeolithic artifacts -- from Clactonian tools to Acheulian bifaces and Levallois flakes and cores. It is dated to c 250,000-200,000 years ago. There are also Middle Palaeolithic / Mousterian levels with bout coupé-like bifaces. The sequence is one of the longest of its kind in Europe and in part closely parallels Swanscombe.
Yubetsu: CATEGORY: culture
DEFINITION: Late Palaeolithic microlithic industry of Hokkaido, Japan, dated c 13,000 bp. Obsidian was worked in the Shirataki technique: a bifacial core has one lateral edge removed, producing a triangular spall. More edge removals make ski spalls of parallel surfaces. The technique was used from Mongolia to Alaska in the later Pleistocene.

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