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geometric

SYNONYMS OR RELATED TERMS: Geometric
CATEGORY: artifact
DEFINITION: A style of decoration with repeated geometric motifs -- circles, squares, triangles, lozenges, and running linear patterns -- flourishing in Greece c 900-700 BC. The term is also applied to such design on wall painting, for textiles. The style derived from the triangular, circular, meander, zigzags, rhomboids, and other linear decoration on Greek pottery of this period. In classical Greek art history, the term is used specifically of the early phases of vase-painting as, for example, Protogeometric (c 1050-900 BC), Geometric (c 900-750 BC), and Late Geometric (c 750-700 BC). When the term is applied to the period of Greek history in which the decoration flourished, it is often extended to 1100-700 BC, after the fall of Mycenaean civilization and marking transition from Bronze to Iron Age. The first phase, called Protogeometric (1100-900) corresponds to the dark ages" when Greek culture was inward looking and very poor. Its final phase Late Geometric (770-700) coincided with resumption of relations with Asian cultures and beginning of colonization of the northern southern and western shores of Mediterranean."

Geometric pottery

CATEGORY: ceramics
DEFINITION: The well-fired, stamp-impressed pottery characteristic of c 2000 BC-300 AD sites in south and southeastern China. The 'Geometric pottery cultures' seem to have grown out of local Neolithic predecessors and characterize the protohistoric Wucheng, Hushu, and Maqiao cultures of the region.

geometrics

CATEGORY: artifact
DEFINITION: A general category of artifacts that includes lunates (crescent-shaped), triangles (three sides), trapezes (four sizes, two approximately parallel), and rectangles (four sides) - generally very small tools, usually less than an inch long and with the shapes formed by backing and a sharp cutting edge

Proto-geometric

SYNONYMS OR RELATED TERMS: Protogeometric
CATEGORY: ceramics
DEFINITION: A type of Greek painted pottery and the period of its making, c 1050-900 BC, which succeeded the Mycenaean. The style emerged at Athens and then other regions. Decoration was severely geometric and included concentric circles and the use of zigzags and triangles.

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Abydos ware

CATEGORY: ceramics
DEFINITION: Pottery of Canaanite (Syro-Palestinian) origin found in the royal tombs of the First and Second Dynasties (The Old Kingdom) at Abydos, Saqqara, Abusir el-Melek, and other sites in Upper Egypt, dating to Early Bronze Age II (3300-2700 BCE). The pottery, often red-rose slipped and burnished or painted with geometric motifs, includes jugs, bottles, and jars. Most common are the red-slipped jugs, some of a hard-baked metallic" quality with handles attached to the rim and a typical stamped base. This pottery class took its name from Abydos the first site at which it was found in Upper Egypt."

Adena point

CATEGORY: artifact
DEFINITION: A widespread Native American culture of the Early Woodland period in the Ohio Valley (US) and named after the Adena Mounds of Ross County. It is known for its ceremonial and complex burial practices involving the construction of mounds and by a high level of craftwork and pottery. It is dated from as early as c. 1250 BC and flourished between c. 700-200 BC. It is ancestral to the Hopewell culture in that region. It was also remarkable for long-distance trading and the beginnings of agriculture. The mounds (e.g. Grave Creek Mound) are usually conical and they became most common around 500 BC. There was also cremation. Artifacts include birdstones, blocked-end smoking pipes, boatstones, cord-marked pottery, engraved stone tablets, and hammerstones. Artifacts distinctive of Adena include a tubular pipe style, mica cutouts, copper bracelets and cutouts, incised tablets, stemmed projectile points, oval bifaces, concave and reel-shaped gorgets, and thick ceramic vessels decorated with incised geometric designs.

albarello

SYNONYMS OR RELATED TERMS: plural albarelli
CATEGORY: ceramics
DEFINITION: A late medieval (15th-18th centuries) Near East, Spanish, and Italian apothecary pottery jar. It was made in the form known as majolica or with a fine tin glaze over typically blue designs imitating the forms of Arabic script. Its basic shape was cylindrical but incurved and wide-mouthed for holding, using, and shelving. They average 7 inches high (18 cm) and are free of handles, lips, and spouts. A piece of paper or parchment was tied around the rim as a cover for the jar. Drug jars from Persia, Syria, and Egypt were introduced into Italy by the 15th century and luster-decorated pots influenced by the Moors in Spain entered through Sicily. Spanish and Islamic influence is apparent in the colors used in the decoration of early 15th-century Italian albarellos, which are often blue on white. A conventional oakleaf and floral design, combining handsomely with heraldic shields or with scrollwork and an inscribed label, frequently occurs. Geometric patterns are also common. By the end of the 18th century, albarellos had yielded to other containers. Albarelli have occasionally been found in Britain and the Netherlands.

Alexandrinum

CATEGORY: artifact
DEFINITION: A type of mosaic used especially for Roman rooms, notably in the 9th century. It used tiny, geometrically shaped pieces of colored stone and glass paste that were arranged in intricate geometric patterns dotted with large disks of semiprecious stones. It often was of only two colors, red and black, on a white ground.

Alishar

SYNONYMS OR RELATED TERMS: Alisar, Alisar Huyuk
CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: A tell southeast of Boghazköy in central Turkey which yielded many occupation levels from Chalcolithic (late 4th millennium) to Phrygian (1st millennium BC). The lowest stratum had eight Chalcolithic levels. The Early Bronze Age levels are characterized by painted pottery with a buff or light red burnish and some geometric patterns in dark brown or buff. There was some trade with Assyria early in the 3rd millennium BC. A karum was built and some Cappadocian tablets recovered. There may have been a hiatus in occupation in the Hittite period (later 2nd millennium).

Amri

CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: A site in the Indus Valley in Pakistan, probably dating to the early 3rd millennium. It was the first site to be recognized as belonging to the Early Harappan Period when excavated by Majumdar in 1929. Its name has been given to a style of hand- and wheel-made painted pottery found in its Chalcolithic levels and on tells over much of Sind and up into the hills of Baluchistan. These tall globular beakers of fine buff ware are painted with geometric designs in black between red horizontal bands. Chert and some copper were used for tools and the architecture was in mud-brick. Fractional burial was the practice for the dead. Periods I and II represent the pre-Harappan settlement of agricultural farmers, who kept cattle, sheep, goat and donkey, but also hunted (or herded) gazelle. In the later part of Period II Harappan ceramics appear alongside Amri wares; Period III represents a full mature Harappan occupation. The culture was gradually succeeded by that of the Indus civilization. The uppermost levels contained Jhukar and Jhangar material.

Anau

CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: A tell site in the Kara Kum oasis of southern Turkestan, first excavated in the 1880s and again in 1904. Its name has been given to a Chalcolithic culture of the 5th and 4th millennium BC that parallels that of the sites of Sialk and Hissar (Hassuna) in Iran, especially with connections in pottery styles.. Characteristic finds include fine pottery with geometric painted decoration and simple copper tools. There was a farming subsistence economy and metal ores were probably imported from the south.

Andronovo culture

CATEGORY: culture
DEFINITION: A culture of southern Siberia, between the Don and Yenisei Rivers, dating to the 2nd millennium BC. The culture was relatively uniform in this large area and agriculture played a large role. Wheat and millet were cultivated and cattle, horses, and sheep bred. The metal-using culture (ores from the Altai), which succeeded the Afansievo, lived in settlements of up to ten large log cabin-like semisubterranean houses. Bowl- and flowerpot-shaped vessels were flat-bottomed, smoothed, and decorated with geometric patterns, triangles, rhombs, and meanders. Burial was in contracted position either in stone cists or enclosures with underground timber chambers. The wooden constructions in rich graves may have designated social differentiation. The Andronovo complex is related to the Timber-Grave (Russian Srubna) group in southern Russia and both are branches of the Indo-Iranian cultural block. The Andronovo were the ancestors of Karasuk nomads who later inhabited the Central Asiatic and Siberian steppes.

Arauqinoid or Araquinoid

SYNONYMS OR RELATED TERMS: Arauqin
CATEGORY: culture
DEFINITION: A ceramic series created to compare the cultures of the Venezuela / Antilles area which flourished in the Middle Orinoco River region from c 500-1500 AD. Soft-textured gray vessels tempered with spicules of freshwater sponge and geometric incised designs on the interior beveled rims of bowls were characteristic. Collared jars with appliquéd human faces and coffee-bean eyes were also common and pieces of griddles have been found at most sites. The series replaces the Saladoid and Barrancoid in some areas.

arc style

CATEGORY: artifact
DEFINITION: An early style of Celtic art, an eastern subgroup in Bavaria, Bohemia, and Austria in which compass-drawn geometric motifs predominate.

archaic maiolica

CATEGORY: ceramics
DEFINITION: A series of jugs and bowls of the early 13th to late 16th centuries in Tuscan and Italian towns. They were decorated with geometric motifs, leaves, and other forms outlined in brown and set into green or brown backgrounds. They were sold as far as Spain, North Africa, and northern Europe. There seems to be a connection to earlier Byzantine and Persian products.

Argonne ware

SYNONYMS OR RELATED TERMS: Marne ware
CATEGORY: artifact
DEFINITION: Pottery type of the 4th century AD, usually with a red color-coat. Vessels are decorated with horizontal bands of impressed geometric patterns, executed with a roller stamp. The ware was made in the Argonne in northeast Gaul. Its distribution in Britain is mainly confined to the south and southeast band.

Argos

SYNONYMS OR RELATED TERMS: Argos (meaning agricultural plain)"
CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: City in the northeastern Peloponnese of Greece, just north of the head of the Gulf of Argolis. The name was applied to several districts of ancient Greece but it is most often used to describe the easternmost part of the Peloponnesian peninsula and the city of Argos was its capital. Homer described it as the fertile plain inhabited by Agamemnon, Diomedes, and other heroes in the Iliad". The site was probably occupied since the Neolithic / Early Bronze Age and was very prominent in Mycenaean times (c 1300-1200 BC). Argos was probably the base of Dorian operations in the Peloponnese c 1100-1000 BC and from then on the dominant city-state of Argolis until it allied itself with Sparta after the Peloponnesian War in 420 BC. In 392 it broke with Sparta to unite with Corinth in the Corinthian War. Argos later joined the Achaean League (229) and Argos became its center after the Roman conquest and destruction of Corinth (146). The city flourished in Byzantine times and did not decline until around 1204 AD. One tyrant Pheidon is thought to have introduced primitive coinage and a weights and measures system. Archaeological excavations began in 1854 on the Argive Heraeum and Argos was famed for its connection with the goddess Hera. There was a natural sanctuary there long before the Dorians came c 1100-1000 BC. The shrine is reported to be of extreme antiquity. The statue of Hera for a new 5th-century temple was done by the celebrated sculptor Polycleitus whose work was said to rival that of Pheidias the sculptor of the Parthenon. There is material evidence of Neolithic Early and Middle Bronze Age a Mycenaean cemetery with chamber tombs Geometric and Archaic features and ruins of the classical and Roman city. The Larisa hill was evidently the Mycenaean acropolis and citadel holding a classical temple. There was also a Roman theater and small odeum. The site is mostly covered by the modern city."

Asprochaliko

SYNONYMS OR RELATED TERMS: Asprochalico
CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: A large Palaeolithic rock shelter near Ioánnina, in Epirus, northwest Greece. There are Mousterian phases, an earlier one with carefully retouched tools and use of the Levallois technique, and a later phase with small tools. The Upper Palaeolithic levels of backed blades include one radiocarbon-dated to c 26,000 BC (24,000 ? 1000 BC). In the final stage (11,7000 ? 260 BC), geometric microliths and microburins appeared alongside the backed blades. Occupation ended around 9000 BC.

Athenian pottery

CATEGORY: ceramics
DEFINITION: Pottery produced in Athens from the Late Geometric period of monumental craters and amphorae through the Hellenistic period. The best known is the figure-decorated pottery of the Archaic and Classical periods that was widely exported along with plain wares.

Australian Small Tool Tradition

CATEGORY: culture
DEFINITION: A mid-Holocene tool industry of the Australian Aborigines that appeared some 3000-4000 years ago when those peoples began to use a new ensemble of small, flaked stone tools (although adze flakes first appeared possibly 2000 years earlier). The types consisted of backed blades and flakes, unifacial and bifacial points, and small adze flakes. There are some regional distributions of tools, including Bondi points, geometric microliths, Pirri points, and Tula adzes. All except the Bondi points and geometric microliths were still in use as parts of wooden weapons and tools at the time of European contact. The industry has close parallels in the islands of Southeast Asia, especially in the microliths of southwestern Sulawesi from 4000 BC.

Aztec

SYNONYMS OR RELATED TERMS: Mexica, Tenochcas
CATEGORY: culture
DEFINITION: The last pre-Columbian civilization to enter the Valley of Mexico after the collapse of the Toltec civilization in c 12 AD, who built a magnificent capital at Tenochtitlán and were later conquered by the Spaniards (1521). They called themselves the Mexica or Tenochca and were the dominant political group of the Late Post-Classic Period. The people spoke Nahuatl. Their origin is obscure, partly because of the deliberate destruction of their own records, but tradition says that in 1193 AD the last of seven Chichimec tribes left Aztlan , a mythical birthplace somewhere north or west of Mexico, and filtered south. For a while they lived around Lake Texococo, but in 1345 they were allowed to found Tenochtitlán (under present-day Mexico City) on some unoccupied islands. By 1428 Tenochtitlán, Texococo, and Tlacopan formed an independent state which controlled most of present-day Mexico from the desert zone in the north to Oaxaca in the south, with extensions as far as the Guatemalan border -- all through military expansion. By inclination and training the Aztecs were militaristic, and a person's status depended on his success as a warrior. The chief god of the Aztecs, Huitzilopochtli, was a war god who required the blood of sacrificial victims, and only constant warfare supplied the altar of the god. Human sacrifice was necessary also to ensure the daily rising of the sun. Other major deities were Huitzilpotchtli (the warrior god and chief deity of Tenochtitlan), Texcatlipoca (god of night, death and destruction), Xipe Totec (god of spring and renewal), and Quetzacoatl, the plumed serpent (god of self-sacrifice and inventor of agriculture and the calendar). Tenochtitlán became a great imperial city, so large that it could not be self-sufficient but had to rely on tributes from its provinces. Luxury goods and necessities were brought to the city, and craftsmen produced jewelry, turquoise mosaics, featherwork, and carved stone. Mold-made clay figurines were common, and the black-on-orange pottery was decorated with geometrical designs and stylized creatures. Little architecture or painting survived the Spanish conquest of 1521. Copies of several books have been preserved (as the Dresden Codex). Aztec society was set in a clearly defined hierarchical class system. At the top was the ruling class (pipil) from whom and by whom the emperors were chosen. The mass of the population were freeman (machuale) and under them were the serfs (mayeques) and then at the bottom the slaves. Most people were of the landholding group called the calpulli, which had its own internal hierarchy. Change of social class was possible through state service in the military and sometimes through merchant activity. The merchants (pochteca) served as early-reconnaissance and espionage groups. The arrival of the Spaniards and the fall of Tenochtitlán after a 90-day siege marked the end of Aztec dominance.

Bakun, Tall-e

SYNONYMS OR RELATED TERMS: Bakun, Tall-I
CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: A prehistoric tell site near Persepolis in south-central Iran, occupied continuous from c 4200 to c 3000 BC. The site, the oldest yet discovered in that area of Iran, was first excavated in 1928. It consisted of 12 mud-brick buildings with 1-7 rooms each. Bakun was occupied by an agricultural community that made fine painted pottery related to Susa A wares. Vessels included conical bowls and goblets with a large variety of geometric patterns and animal motifs. Other finds include flint implements, stamp and button seals, vessels of calcite and many animal and human figurines. The pottery is especially important for the study of early Iranian art.

Banpo

CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: The site of an early Yangshao Neolithic village, now a museum at Xi'an, China, in the basin of the confluence of the Yellow River (Huang Ho), the Fen Ho, and Kuei Shui. Radiocarbon dates range from c 4800-4300 BC. The settlement was about 50,000 sq. meters and included a cemetery and pottery kilns outside a ditch that surrounded the residences. Dogs, cattle, sheep, chicken and pigs were domesticated and millet, rice, kaoling, and possibly soybeans grown. The horse and silkworm may also have been raised. Unpainted pottery was cord-marked or stamped, and fine ceremonial" pottery vessels were painted in black or red with some simple geometric patterns and drawings of fish turtles deer and faces. There were some elaborately worked objects in jade as well as everyday objects made from flint bone and groundstone. Sites with similar remains have been excavated at nearby Jiangzhai Baoji Beishouling and Hua Xian Yuanjunmiao. These sites all exhibit the first evidence of food production in China."

Banshan

SYNONYMS OR RELATED TERMS: Pan-shan
CATEGORY: site; culture; artifact
DEFINITION: Site of a Neolithic cemetery in the Tao River valley of China, the type site of the Banshan (or Pan-shan) culture which belongs to the western or Gansu branch of the Yangshao Neolithic. Banshan is best known for its painted pottery first found in a grave in 1923. Pan-shan ware is generally considered to date from between 2500-2000 BC, but it may extend as far back as 3000 BC or be as late as c 1500 BC (the Shang dynasty). Most are unglazed pottery urns or reddish brown with painted designs in black and brown, probably applied with a brush, consisting of geometric patterns or stylized figures of people, fish, or birds. The wares probably shaped on a slow or hand-turned wheel. The handles are set low on the body of the urns, and the lower part of the body is left undecorated -- much like Greek Proto-Geometric funerary ware. It was an important find because of the lack of Neolithic Chinese pottery up to 1923. A late stage of Banshan is named after the site of Machang.

Banshan pottery

CATEGORY: artifact
DEFINITION: site of a Neolithic cemetery in the Tao River valley of china, the type site of the Banshan (or Pan-shan) culture which belongs to the western or Gansu branch of the Yangshao Neolithic. Banshan is best known for its painted pottery first found in a grave in 1923. Pan-shan ware is generally considered to date from between 2500-2000 BC, but it may extend as far back as 3000 BC or be as late as c 1500 BC (the Shang dynasty). Most are unglazed pottery urns or reddish brown with painted designs in black and brown, probably applied with a brush, consisting of geometric patterns or stylized figures of people, fish, or birds. The wares probably shaped on a slow or hand-turned wheel. The handles are set low on the body of the urns, and the lower part of the body is left undecorated -- much like Greek Proto-geometric funerary ware. It was an important find because of the lack of Neolithic Chinese pottery up to 1923. A late stage of Banshan is named after the site of Machang.

Bocca Quadrata

SYNONYMS OR RELATED TERMS: Square Mouth
CATEGORY: culture
DEFINITION: A Middle Neolithic culture of northern Italy characterized by pottery vessels with rounded bodies and square mouths, decorated with incised geometric motifs.

bucchero

CATEGORY: ceramics
DEFINITION: A fine gray pottery, with a black or gray shiny surface, which was produced principally in Greek-speaking or Etruscan areas between the 8th and 5th centuries BC. Shapes and decoration styles varied greatly -- incised, stamped and applied were employed. This earthenware pottery was common in pre-Roman Italy between the 7th and early 5th century BC. The shiny surface was produced by polishing and the color achieved by firing in an atmosphere charged with carbon monoxide instead of oxygen ('reducing firing'). The light, thin-walled bucchero sottile, considered the finest, was made in the 7th and early 6th centuries and the shapes were derived largely from Oriental models. In the 6th century the Greek influence changed the forms to alabastrums, amphorae, kraters, kylikes with incised, modeled, or applied birds and animals in friezes or geometric schemes appear. Greek black pigment was used and human and animal figures were painted on the surface of bucchero in black, red, and white. Technique and workmanship declined from about the mid-6th century onward, when bucchero sottile was replaced by bucchero pasantë, a heavy, complex thick-walled ware that was decorated with elaborate reliefs.

Burrup Peninsula

CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: A rich archaeological area on the northwest coast of Western Australia with 10,000+ engravings on rocks, including geometric figures of humans and animals. Artifacts and features are quarries, shell middens, standing stones, and dry-stone walls and terraces. The site dates range from 6700-200 bp.

Capsian and Capsian Neolithic

SYNONYMS OR RELATED TERMS: Capsian industry
CATEGORY: culture
DEFINITION: A Mesolithic/Stone Age (8000 BC-2700 BC) cultural complex prominent in inland northern Africa near the present border between Tunisia and Algeria. Its shell midden sites are in the area of the great salt lakes of what is now southern Tunisia, the type site being Jabal al-Maqta'. The tool kit of the Capsian is a classic example of the industries of the late Würm Glacial Period and it is apparently related to the Gravettian stage of Europe's Perigordian industry (which dates from about 17,000 years ago). However, it occurs in Neothermal (postglacial) times and, like its predecessor, the Ibero-Maurusian industry (Oranian industry), the Capsian was a microlithic tool complex. It differed from the Ibero-Maurusian, however, in having a far more varied tool kit with large backed blades, scrapers, backed bladelets, microburins, and burins in its earlier phase and a gradual development of geometric microliths later. These became its leading feature by the 6th millennium BC. Shortly after 5000 BC, pottery and domesticated animals were introduced. Some North African rock paintings are attributed to people of the Capsian industry. The Capsian Neolithic, with pointed-base pottery and a stone industry, lasted from c 6200-5300 BP, in the Atlas Mountains of Algeria and the northern Sahara. The name derives from Capsa, the Latin form of Gafsa, a town in south central Tunisia where such artifacts were first discovered. Hunting and snail-collecting seem to have formed the basis of the economy. Human remains from Capsian sites are mostly of Mechta-Afalou type.

carved tree

SYNONYMS OR RELATED TERMS: dendroglyph
CATEGORY: feature
DEFINITION: A tree with designs, often geometric, cut into the bark. Carved trees occur in Australia and in the Chatham Islands.

Chassey

SYNONYMS OR RELATED TERMS: Chasséen culture
CATEGORY: culture
DEFINITION: A Middle Neolithic culture found over most of France, named for the Camp de Chassey, which appeared c 4300 BC. By this time, Chassey pottery had superseded impressed ware in the south and the new style is found in caves, village sites, cists, pit graves, and megalithic chamber tombs. The earliest Chassey pottery is often decorated with scratched geometric patterns, whereas the later wares are more plain and have pan-pipe (flûte de pan) lugs. In north and central France, the culture appeared c 3800. In many areas the Chassey people were the first Neolithic farmers. The pottery and flintwork of the Paris basin differ in many ways from those of the Midi. One distinctive form of vessel, the vase support with scratched decoration, is confined to the Paris basin and western France. Both cave and open settlements were occupied.

Chiripa

CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: An early village site on the southern end of Lake Titicaca in Bolivia, dating to the Early and Middle Horizon. Late Chiripa pottery of the Early Horizon Period (1800-200 BC) is decorated with cream on red color zones, separated by incised lines. Early pottery is a cream-on-white ware, decorated with geometric designs. The common form is a flat-bottomed, vertical-sided open bowl. The artistic style is linked to Pucara and Tiahuanaco. There is a series of rectangular rooms, some with underfloor stone-lined graves, arranged around a rectangular plaza. An unusual feature is the storage space between the double walls of some structures.

Coclé

CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: A region in Panama where the type site of Sitio Conte has yielded deep rectangular tombs with grave goods of a rich ceramic and metallurgical tradition of c 500-1000 AD. The Coclé region was strongly influenced by the Quimbaya style. It is particularly known for its striking gold pieces set with precious stones, including emeralds, quartzes, jaspers, opals, agates, and green serpentines. The extremely fine polychrome pottery is characterized by decoration of intricate geometric patterns and by stylized biomorphic forms. Gold- and tumbaga-working techniques, probably imported from Columbia, include cire perdue casting. Some association with Tairona is recognized in some artifacts especially in the wing-shaped pendants. In addition to the grave goods, there are indications that wife and servant sacrifice took place at the death of an important person.

compartmented seal

CATEGORY: artifact
DEFINITION: The typical, usually metal, seal of the Bronze Age in western Central Asia and northern Afghanistan. Most often round, the seals' motifs were geometric or of objects of nature.

cone mosaic

CATEGORY: artifact
DEFINITION: A type of wall decoration used in the Uruk (VI-IV) and Jemdet Nasr periods of southern Mesopotamia. Stone or baked clay cones were stuck into the surface of building facades to produce a colored mosaic geometric pattern. Examples have been found in the Eanna section of Warka.

Curacchiaghiu

CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: A rock shelter in southern Corsica, France, with a sequence of deposits from Mesolithic and Neolithic occupation levels dating to the 7th millennium BC -- the earliest evidence of man in Corsica. The Early Neolithic levels (6th millennium BC) had pottery with punctated and incised decoration, and a lithic industry with geometric trapezes on hard rock and obsidian imported from Sardinia.

Danilo

CATEGORY: site; culture
DEFINITION: A Neolithic culture of the Dalmatian coast of Croatia and parts of Bosnia, dating to 4700-3900 BC. The site consists of large numbers of pits and post holes, whose associated material has been subdivided typologically into five phases. There are two associated pottery styles, painted in black and broad red bands on buff ware, and incised on dark burnished ware, belong in the Middle Neolithic. The geometric designs suggest connections with contemporary wares in Italy, particularly Ripoli and Serra D'Alto. There was also a long blade and tanged point stone industry closely related to fishing.

Dapengeng

SYNONYMS OR RELATED TERMS: Ta-p'en-keng
CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: A Neolithic site in Taiwan, near Taipei City, of a 6th-5th millennia BC postglacial culture. It is typified by coarse cord-marked pottery, sometimes called the Yue Coastal Neolithic, with the use of plant cordage for decorating the vessels. A later stage had geometric pottery.

emblema

SYNONYMS OR RELATED TERMS: plural emblemata
CATEGORY: artifact
DEFINITION: A center panel with figure representations of people, animals, or scene in relief in a Hellenistic or Roman mosaic. Emblemata were usually executed in opus vermiculatum, very fine work with tiny tesserae (stone, ceramic glass, or other hard cubes), and surrounded by floral or geometric designs in coarser mosaic work. Although some emblemata were large scenes with several figures, most were small and portable. They were also used to decorate the inside of bowls, attached by solder. The first known emblema dates from about 200 BC.

Ferrières

SYNONYMS OR RELATED TERMS: Ferrières-les-Verreries
CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: A Late Neolithic dolmen (passage grave) in Hérault, southern France, and the type site of the culture which existed c 3200-2800 BC. Its pottery is characterized by incised-line and geometric motif decoration. The earlier variety belongs to the Neolithic period and the later style is contemporary with the Copper Age pottery of Fontbouïsse. Ferrières pottery has been found in caves, village sites, passage graves, and cremation cemeteries.

Franchthi Cave

CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: A prehistoric cave site on the Bay of Argos in the Peloponnese of Greece with dates to c 22,000-10,300 BP. An Epipalaeolithic occupation (c 10,000 BC) was succeeded after an interval by a Mesolithic (c 7500-6000 BC) with dozens of burials and some possible cremations. Excavations at the Franchthi Cave showed that boats already sailed to the island of Melos north of Crete for obsidian by about 13,000-11,000 BC and that the cultivation of hybrid grains, the domestication of animals, and organized community tuna hunts had already begun, marking the transition from hunting and gathering. A little later, the first pottery appeared. Late Upper Palaeolithic artifacts included small backed blades and geometric microliths.

Fukui

CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: A deep stratified rock shelter in Nagasaki Prefecture, Japan, of the Late Palaeolithic and yielding Initial Jomon pottery (with geometric designs) together with obsidian microliths. The stone tools from the oldest layer, dated older than 31,900 years, are among the earliest evidence of human occupation of Japan. Microblades continue into the two early ceramic layers, suggesting a continuity in stone tools when potterymaking began in Japan. The older ceramic layer, dated to 10,650 bc, contained linear-relief pottery, while the younger one, dated to 10,450 bc, included fingernail-impressed ware. The ceramics have been dated by radiocarbon to 12,700 bp, the earliest occurrence in the world of ceramic vessels.

geoglyph

SYNONYMS OR RELATED TERMS: Nasca lines; Nazca Lines
CATEGORY: artifact; lithics
DEFINITION: Any ground-constructed example of rock art, such as intaglios or rock alignments; straight lines, geometric shapes, and other representative designs found on the desert plain. Geoglyphs can be formed by piling up materials on the ground surface or by removing surface materials and most suggest a largely ceremonial function.

Geoksyur

CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: An oasis in the ancient delta of the Tedjen River in southeast Turkmenia, first settled in the early Chalcolithic period, designated Anau I or Namazga I. The earliest sequence of 10 levels span the later 5th and 4th millennia BC. Typical settlements were small villages of mud-brick houses, though the central settlement of Geoksyur itself seems to have been much larger. The exploitation of this oasis indicates the existence of a developed agricultural economy involving the cultivation of both wheat and barley with the help of irrigation. The area gives its name to a style of painted pottery of the Namazga III period (late 4th millennium BC), with densely packed, repeated geometrics.

Gerzean

SYNONYMS OR RELATED TERMS: Nagada II
CATEGORY: culture
DEFINITION: A late predynastic culture of Upper Egypt, successor of the Amratian, c 4000-3500 BC. It is named after the site of El Gerza or Gerzeh in the Fayum and is well represented at the cemetery of Naqada in Upper Egypt; another important site is Hierakonpolis. Flintwork included ripple-flaked knives and their was metalworking as copper was coming into use for axes, daggers, etc. Faience was introduced and ground stone vessels were popular and very finely worked. Typical pottery is a light-colored fabric in shapes imitating the stone vessels, decorated with red painted designs. These include imitations of stone markings, geometrical patterns and designs taken from nature. Ships were common, especially the papyrus-bundle craft used on the Nile. There is much evidence of contacts with southwestern Asia (in wavy-ledged handles on the jars, in cylinder seals, representations of mythical animals, the use of mudbrick in architecture, and possibly writing). These seem to have led to the advances which brought Egypt to the level of unified civilization at the start of the Dynastic period c 3200 BC.

Graman

CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: A series of rock shelters in a valley of the Northern Tablelands of New South Wales, Australia with human occupation dated between c 3000-1000 BC. Stone artifacts included some of the earliest Bondi points and geometric microliths, grinding slabs, adze flakes, awls, perforated pendant fragments, and bone points.

Gravettian

CATEGORY: culture
DEFINITION: An Upper Palaeolithic industry named after the site La Gravette in the Dordogne of southwest France and characterized by well-developed blade tools of flint and female figurines of ivory. This advanced industry succeeded the Aurignacian and preceded the Solutrean, c 28,000-20,000BP. In France it is known as the Upper Périgordian (Périgordian IV) and the Gravettian appears to have developed in central Europe, expanding to the east and west. The small, pointed blades with straight blunted backs are called Gravette points. Most of the French sites are caves, but possibly related industries, known as Eastern Gravettian, are distributed through the loess lands of central Europe and Russia at the camp sites of mammoth-hunters; other sites are in Spain, Belgium, Czechoslovakia, and Italy. The Gravettians invented the bow and arrow, blunted-back knives of flint, and the tanged arrowheads. They are famous, too, for their cave paintings. Other artifacts include bone or ivory spears and, in eastern Europe, numerous other bone tools incised with an elaborate geometric pattern.

Haguenau

CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: A Bronze Age and Iron Age cemetery of burial mounds in Bas-Rhin, France. The richest mounds date to c 1500-1350 BC when the area was under the influence of the Tumulus culture of southern Germany. There were heavy palstaves and pottery with geometric excised decoration.

Hajji Muhammed

SYNONYMS OR RELATED TERMS: Hajjii Mohammad
CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: A small early 5th-millennium BC site near Uruk in southern Mesopotamia which has given its name to a type of painted pottery and an early phase of the Ubaid culture (Ubaid 2). The pottery is painted in dark brown or purplish black in a geometric style. Hajji Muhammed pottery is found also at Eridu in layers stratified between the earliest Eridu pottery and the fully developed Ubaid culture. It is found over southern Mesopotamia, as far north as Ras Al-Amiya. The architecture was wattle-and-daub.

Halaf culture complex

CATEGORY: culture
DEFINITION: A material culture with a distinctive painted pottery style, centered at Tell Halaf. It is divided into Early, Middle, and Late phases from the late 6th to early 5th millennia BC (5050-4300). The pottery is decorated with geometric, floral, and some nature motifs. The Late Halaf pottery includes a polychrome painted ware. Well-known sites include Tell Aqab, Arpachiyah, and Yarim Tepe.

Hassi Mouilah

CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: An Algerian Capsian Neolithic site of c 5300 BP with point-based pots with impressed decoration, projectile points, geometric microliths, ostrich eggshell and amazonite beads.

Hassuna

SYNONYMS OR RELATED TERMS: Tell Hassuna
CATEGORY: site; culture
DEFINITION: A prehistoric tell site near Mosul in northern Iraq with a sequence of a pre-Samarran culture in northern Mesopotamia. The site has given its name to the pottery ware present in its lowest levels, dated to the 6th millennium BC, and a culture complex. This pottery may be related to that of the upper levels at Jarmo and is widely distributed. It was usually a buff ware in simple shapes, sometimes burnished, sometimes painted or incised with simple geometric patterns. In higher levels it was replaced by Samarra ware. Evidence from Yarim Tepe, another important Hassuna site, indicates that they were already experimenting with metallurgy and that pottery-making was a specialist activity (with true pottery kilns). The appearance of stamp seals suggests the importance of private ownership. There were several Halaf levels and 'Ubaid levels. Subsistence was cereal cultivation and herding cattle, goat, and sheep. The material culture used copper, turquoise, and carnelian beads.

hieroglyphics

SYNONYMS OR RELATED TERMS: hieroglyphic; hieroglyph
CATEGORY: language
DEFINITION: A pictorial script used by ancient Egyptians from the beginning of the 3rd millennium BC until the end of the 4th century AD. A hieroglyph was a single character or pictorial element used in hieroglyphics. Literally, in Greek, it means 'sacred carved letters'. The script consisted of three basic types of sign: phonograms, logograms, and 'determinatives' arranged in horizontal and vertical lines. The script was used for funerary and monumental inscriptions as well as more strictly religious ones. The script's development seems to have been so rapid that it may have been in some sense an imitation of the earliest writing of Mesopotamia in its Uruk phase. In both scripts three classes of symbol were used, each a single picture or geometric figure. Pictograms or ideograms represented whole words in pictorial form. Phonograms represented the sounds of words, the picture of an object pronounced in the same way as the desired word being used in its place (this was made easier by the fact that the vowels were disregarded). Determinatives told the reader the class of word spelt by the phonograms, necessary where these were ambiguous. Often all three classes of symbol were used in conjunction. No attempt was made in its long history to simplify the system, even when the more cursive forms of it, hieratic and demotic, were introduced. More loosely the term has been applied to other pictographic writing systems, particularly those of Minoan Crete, the Hittites and the Maya. Many of the symbols consist of a conventionalized picture of the idea or object they represent. Egyptian hieroglyphs were deciphered by Jean-François Champollion in 1822, through his study of the bilingual inscriptions on the Rosetta Stone and an obelisk from Philae. Some 700 signs were employed.

Hong Kong

CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: An island country with evidence of human habitation from Neolithic times. The excavated artifacts suggest an influence from northern Chinese Stone Age cultures, most notably the Lung-shan. Before the British occupation, Hong Kong Island was inhabited only by a small fishing population. Hong Kong was firmly incorporated in the Chinese cultural sphere in the late Chou and Han Dynasties (late 1st millennium BC). The earliest sites in Hong Kong date from about 3500 BC and belong to Yueh coastal Neolithic. There was geometric-stamped pottery during the 2nd millennium BC.

Huari

SYNONYMS OR RELATED TERMS: Wari
CATEGORY: site; culture
DEFINITION: An empire and large city in the central Peruvian Andes near Ayacucho, dating from 600-1000 AD (Middle Horizon). The local culture first came under Tiahuanaco influence, and Huari acted as a secondary center from which a modified version of the Tiahuanaco art style was spread to the Pacific coast and into the northern Andes. As many as 100,000 people lived in the capital and the empire included most of Peru. There was polychrome pottery; early ceramics (Chakipampa A) date to the Early Intermediate Period and are seen as a blend of Huarpa (a black-on-white geometric style) and Nasca styles. The later Chakipampa B style shows a strong Tiahuanacan influence. Structures include huge rectangular compounds with multi-story and subterranean masonry. Unlike Tiahuanaco, there are no megalithic structures and although there is some dressed stone work, cobbles of unformed stone are also widely used. The Huari empire collapsed and was abandoned c 800 (Early Intermediate Period), after which the regional traditions began to reassert themselves in art and politics, with the eventual emergence of new states (Chimú, Cuismancu, Chincha). The Huari were also skilled in metalwork. The well-to-do were buried in stone tombs.

Hushu

CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: A site and culture of the Jiangsu Province in China, characterized by geometric pottery and bronze implements, tools, and vessels and contemporary with the Shang and early Chou bronze cultures.

interlace

CATEGORY: artifact
DEFINITION: A pattern of ornamentation that consists of twisted and plaited ribbons making geometric patterns, or of intertwined strands extending from animal and plant motifs. In the 7th and 8th centuries, interlace ornament was refined and used to great effect by Celtic and Anglo-Saxon metalworkers, sculptors, and manuscript illuminators. This artistic tradition was also prominent during the Viking period.

Kapovaya

SYNONYMS OR RELATED TERMS: Kapovo, Shul'gantash
CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: A painted cave in southern Urals of European Russia, important for cave art that is otherwise unknown in central and eastern Europe. The rare examples of east European Palaeolithic cave art include representations of woolly mammoth and woolly rhinoceros and geometric figures. A cultural layer with stone artifacts and ornaments is dated to the Upper Palaeolithic.

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.

kero

CATEGORY: artifact
DEFINITION: A large wooden flared beaker, painted with black, white, and light red designs of pumas, condors, and other creatures on a dark red ground color. Keros decorated with incised geometric patterns were used in Inca times, but examples with scenes painted in lacquer are of post-Conquest date. In pottery the shape started earlier and was especially popular in the Tiahuanaco culture.

Killke

CATEGORY: culture
DEFINITION: A culture and ceramic pottery style of the Cuzco basin of Peru, from the Late Intermediate Period, c 1000-1438 AD. It immediately preceded the Inca style ceramics. Killke pots have globular bodies, white or buff slip, and simple black (or black and red) geometric patterns.

Kongemose

CATEGORY: culture
DEFINITION: Mesolithic culture of southern Scandinavia centered on the type site lake settlement of Kongemosen in Zealand. It dates to the late Boreal and early Atlantic, c 5600-5000 bc, between the Maglemosian and Ertebolle. Artifacts include geometric art, large blades, axes, and bone points.

Koszider

SYNONYMS OR RELATED TERMS: Kosziderpadlás
CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: Three large hoards found at Dunapentele-Kosziderpadlá, on the Danube south of Budapest, Hungary. The contents were characteristic of an early phase of the Tumulus culture of the (Early) Bronze Age and serve to document the expansion of that culture (Rumania, Czechoslovakia, Poland, Germany) c 1400 BC. Similar hoards with ivy-leaf pendants, spiral anklets with rolled ends, shaft-hole battle-axes decorated with spiral and geometric patterns, belt plates, flanged axes, palstaves, solid-hilted daggers, socketed axes, and tanged sickles have been found in east-central Europe from the Baltic to the Sea of Azov, and mark the Koszider horizon throughout the region.

Kulli

CATEGORY: culture; ceramics
DEFINITION: An important Chalcolithic culture and pottery style of south Baluchistan. The pottery is mainly buff and wheelmade, painted in black with friezes of elongated humped bulls, cats, or goats and spiky trees between zones of geometric ornament. Clay figurines of women and bulls are found in this culture, as are copper tools and ornaments of lapis lzauli, bone and other materials. The culture is further distinguished from those of Amri-Nal in the same area by the practice of cremation burial; an important cemetery was excavated at Mehi. Mud-brick architecture and small tell sites are common to the two cultures. There are signs of Indus civilization influence on later Kulli material with carved stone vessels identical with examples from Early Dynastic Mesopotamia, dating to the early 3rd millennium BC.

Kunda culture

CATEGORY: culture
DEFINITION: The eastern Baltic variant of the Baltic Boreal and Atlantic climatic periods, c 7000-5000 BC, a Mesolithic culture named after the site of Kunda-Lammasmagi in Estonia. Most Kunda settlements are located at the edge of the forest, near rivers, lakes, and marshes. There was hunting of elk, seal, and fishing. Bone and antler tools were decorated with simple geometric motifs. The Kunda culture was followed by the Narva culture, with the appearance of pottery and food production.

Lapita

CATEGORY: artifact; culture
DEFINITION: A major Oceanic culture complex, named after the type site of Lapita, New Caledonia. It is defined by a distinctive type of pottery with dentate-stamped banded decoration in geometric patterns, appearing c 3500 bp and which appeared throughout much of the western Pacific, including Fiji and Samoa. Most Lapita sites are on offshore islands and assemblages include elaborate shell tools and ornaments, the use of obsidian, and stone adzes. The obsidian and pottery style suggest long-distance trade. The culture is almost certainly associated with ancestral Polynesians moving eastwards from island Southeast Asia (perhaps from the Philippines), through previously inhabited Melanesia, to the hitherto empty islands of Tonga and Samoa in Western Polynesia. The culture therefore represents the origin of the Polynesians prior to their settlement of geographical Polynesia. It is thought to be associated with the spread of Austronesian speakers into the Western Pacific.

Lapita pottery

CATEGORY: artifact
DEFINITION: Very extensive horizon or a long enduring tradition and as a major intrusive culture within western island Melanesia from Southeast Asia.) elaborate decorated pottery, especially characteristic of the early assemblages in each region. Historically, the pottery is best described as comprising a ceramic series, which begins with complex vessel shapes decorated by dentate stamping, incising, and appliqué techniques that everywhere form an easily recognizable design style, whose common geometric motifs can be analyzed and coded according to a limited set of rules. Over time the ceramic assemblages within the various island sequences change, usually independently of one another. Frequently this is by the loss of the more complex vessel shapes bearing the most elaborate decorations, until simpler vessels of largely plain ware predominate. These ceramic changes, traceable over spans of up to a thousand and more years, have caused some to speak of a Lapita tradition, as they provide a deep but variable set of time depths to the horizon concept. Thus terminal Lapita assemblages in the ceramic series end in different regions at various intervals from 500 B.C. to A.D. 200 or 300.

lunula

SYNONYMS OR RELATED TERMS: pl. lunulae
CATEGORY: artifact
DEFINITION: A crescent-shaped sheet of gold, probably worn as a collar or chest ornament in the Early Bronze Age, possibly for rituals. Their incised geometric decoration suggests is similar to that on bell beakers. They originated with the food vessel people of Ireland, Scotland, and perhaps Wales in the Early Bronze Age, and traded not only to southern England but also across to northern Europe. The decoration has led to the suggestion that it imitates the multiple-strand necklaces of jet and amber that are also found during the Early Bronze Age.

Magdalenian

SYNONYMS OR RELATED TERMS: Age of the Reindeer
CATEGORY: culture
DEFINITION: The final major European culture of the Upper Paleolithic period, from about 15,000-10,000 years ago; characterized by composite or specialized tools, tailored clothing, and especially geometric and representational cave art (e.g. Altamira) and for beautiful decorative work in bone and ivory (mobiliary art). The people were chiefly fishermen and reindeer hunters; they were the first known people to have used a spear thrower (of reindeer bone and antler) to increase the range, strength, and accuracy. Magdalenian stone tools include small geometrically shaped implements (e.g., triangles, semilunar blades) probably set into bone or antler handles for use, burins (a sort of chisel), scrapers, borers, backed bladelets, and shouldered and leaf-shaped projectile points. Bone was used extensively to make wedges, adzes, hammers, spearheads with link shafts, barbed points and harpoons, eyed needles, jewelry, and hooked rods probably used as spear throwers. They killed animals with spears, snares, and traps and lived in caves, rock shelters, or substantial dwellings in winter and in tents in summer. The name is derived from La Madeleine or Magdalene, the type site in the Dordogne of southwest France. Its center of origin was southwest France and the adjacent parts of Spain, but elements characteristic of the later stages are represented in Britain (Creswell Crags), and eastwards to southwest Germany and Poland. The Magdalenian culture, like that of earlier Upper Palaeolithic communities, was adapted to the cold conditions of the last (Würm) glaciation. The Magdalenian has been divided into six phases; it followed the Solutrean industry and was succeeded by the simplified Azilian. Magdalenian culture disappeared as the cool, near-glacial climate warmed at the end of the Fourth (Würm) Glacial Period (c 10,000 BC), and herd animals became scarce.

Malwa

CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: A plateau of northwestern Madhya Pradesh in India which is also the name of a Chalcolithic culture of the early 2nd millennium BC. Important sites include Navdatoli, Nagda, and Kayatha (Ujjain). The characteristic pottery (Malwa ware) is a red-slipped, black painted ware on a red or cream ground in geometric, plant, and animal motifs. There was also black-painted cream-slipped, black-and-red painted, Jorwe, and Lustrous Red wares. The people cultivated crops, kept animals, and made objects of copper and stone.

marae

SYNONYMS OR RELATED TERMS: malae
CATEGORY: structure
DEFINITION: A stone temple of Eastern Polynesia, comprised of courtyards and stone platform or ahu, where ceremonies took place. The court was walled, paved, or terraced. Marae are among the important remains on Easter Island, the Hawaiian Islands (especially Heiau), and the Tuamoto, Society, Cook, Austral, and Marquesas Islands. Ancestral forms probably go back to Early Eastern Polynesian settlement, c 500 AD. Figures of the gods were kept at the marae, often in special wooden containers housed in portable shelters. Large numbers of thin, tall wooden slabs were set up on the marae; they were carved with openwork geometric designs and topped with figures of birds, human beings, or spiked projections. Marae are especially characteristic of 1200-1800 AD. The term 'marae' also refers to an open space within a village in Tonga, Samoa, or New Zealand.

Marchiori

CATEGORY: culture
DEFINITION: A ceramic complex from mouth of Amazon with unusual geometric incised and painted motifs on white background, dating from 2500 BC.

Mari

SYNONYMS OR RELATED TERMS: modern Tell Hariri
CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: A city and kingdom of Mesopotamia, on the right bank of the Euphrates near the Syrian-Iraqi border. It was the chief city of the middle Euphrates until its destruction by Hammurabi c 1759 BC. It was founded in the early 3rd millennium BC and was occupied until the late 1st millennium BC. Major temple and palace complexes and major archives belong to the third quarter of the 3rd millennium and to the early 2nd millennium. The Great Palace was repeatedly enlarged during its 400-year period of use; during the reign of Zimri-Lim, its last king, it had 300 rooms and its archives contain about 25,000 cuneiform tablets informative about international politics of the period and the administrative and economic organization of the kingdom. A room near the archive has been interpreted as a school -- the only one known from Mesopotamia. The Palace is famous also for its mural decorations: both representational pictures and geometric designs were painted directly on a thin layer of mud plaster representing a new and impressive school of decoration. Among the important Early Dynastic buildings are six temples dedicated to Ishtar, goddess of love. Mari stood on the Euphrates River at a point where three trade routes met; tin, copper, silver, lapis lazuli, timber, and textiles were traded.

Matera

CATEGORY: site; artifact
DEFINITION: A small city in southern Italy, northwest of Taranto, which formed part of the duchy of Benevento and of the principality of Salerno. It was occupied successively by the Normans, the Aragonese, and the Orsini. In the old part of the city, people inhabit cavelike houses cut into the rock with only an opening for the door, a system dating from prehistoric times. The name is also applied to a Middle Neolithic ware from many sites in its neighborhood, notably the ditched villages of Murgecchia and Murgia Timone and a cave site, the Grotta dei Pipistrelli. A dark burnished ware with curved bowls and straight-necked jars, it is characterized by rectilinear geometric designs scratched after firing and filled with an inlay of red ochre. A quite different ware, thin, buff-colored, and painted with broad bands of scarlet, is sometimes included in the term.

Matera ware

CATEGORY: artifact
DEFINITION: A Middle Neolithic ware from many sites Matera of southern Italy and its neighborhood, notably the ditched villages of Murgecchia and Murgia Timone and a cave site, the Grotta dei Pipistrelli. A dark burnished ware with curved bowls and straight-necked jars, it is characterized by rectilinear geometric designs scratched after firing and filled with an inlay of red ochre. A quite different ware, thin, buff-colored, and painted with broad bands of scarlet, is sometimes included in the term.

Merovingian

CATEGORY: culture
DEFINITION: A dynasty of Frankish rulers and their kingdom, from c 476-750 AD, recognized as the first race" of the kings of France. Named after its founder Merovech the Merovingians ruled France from time of Childeric I to that of Charles Martel. Merovingian is a term used to describe Frankish archaeology of 6th to mid-8th century AD. The area was that of western Rhineland to the Atlantic coat of France and embraces a number of kingdoms such as Austria Neustria and Burgundia. The Merovingian kings consolidated power and brought Christianity to the Frankish kingdom (modern France and the Rhineland) after the fall of the Roman Empire in Gaul and laid the political and artistic foundation for the Carolingian Empire that followed. Merovingian art is characterized by a mixture of the Roman classical style with native Germanic-Frankish artistic traditions which favored abstraction and geometric patterning. The Merovingian script is the writing of the pre-Carolingian hands of France that were derived from Latin cursive script in the 7th and 8th centuries."

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.

Mildenhall

SYNONYMS OR RELATED TERMS: Mildenhall Treasure
CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: A town in Suffolk, England, famous for the treasure of silver comprising the household silver of a wealthy Roman family near the remains of a 4th-century Roman building. The silver was richly decorated with figured reliefs and the 34 pieces include a large dish depicting the head of Oceanus, ringed by friezes of sea and other deities reveling; two smaller platters with Bacchic scenes; a niello dish with geometric design; a covered bowl with centaurs; goblets; ladles and eight spoons, five with Christian inscriptions. Possibly the owners buried their family plate in the troubled days of the Anglo-Saxon invasions. The collection is now in the British Museum in London.

Mindelheim

CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: A Hallstatt C cemetery west of Munich in West Germany, dated to the 7th century BC. The grave goods include distinctive melon-shaped urns and wide open bowls, heavily decorated with incised geometric designs, as well as the long sword type to which the site has given its name. Mindelheim swords are made of bronze or iron, are around 90 cm long, with a leaf-shaped blade and a pommel on the hilt.

model

CATEGORY: technique
DEFINITION: A devices used by archaeologists to aid the interpretation of data; models consist of hypothetical reconstructions of dynamic processes partly based on material remains and partly testing the validity of interpretations of material culture. They are idealized representations of the real world, used to demonstrate a simplified version of some of its characteristics. Models vary in complexity and can be physical representations or literary descriptions. It might be a physical model of a site or landscape to explain some feature of its function or organization; such models at full scale are well known in experimental archaeology. A simple model might be a map showing, for example, the distribution of sites in a region or a scatter diagram showing the relationship between two measured variables. Models need not be based on specific archaeological data, but can be derived from a number of sources: invented data can be generated by computer simulation; geometrical and mathematical models can also be used, such as central place theory or the rank-size rule in the study of regional settlement, or catastrophe theory in the study of cultural collapse. General systems theory can also be a source of systems models designed to show a simplified version of the working of a complex social or economic organization. The term model can also be used in a less specific sense for any general mode of thought in which archaeological research is conducted, for example descriptive, historical, or ecological. Models may also be diachronic or synchronic. The concept of formulating a model, testing it and refining it, is frequently applied in a non-mathematical way and this is the way in which it is most often used in archaeology. In this sense it is either synonymous with 'hypothesis' or refers to a number of interlocking hypotheses.

mound

SYNONYMS OR RELATED TERMS: tuft
CATEGORY: feature
DEFINITION: A gradual accumulation of debris upon which a continuously occupied settlement is built, or which is the by-product or remains of some activity. The term can mean (1) a constructed earthwork or fortification, especially one with a geometric or animal form (also called effigy mound), (2) a low, isolated, rounded natural hill, usually of earth, (3) a structure built by fossil colonial organisms, (4) prehistoric refuse heap consisting chiefly of the shells of edible mollusks (also called shell mound), or (5) an artificial construction commonly used for human burial (also called burial mound) or as a foundation for a temple or dwelling.

Munyama Cave

CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: A cave on Buvuma Island in Lake Victoria, Uganda, with a backed microlith industry extending back to c 15,000 BC. Small backed bladelets were the most common implements, with endscrapers and some geometrical backed microliths. Backed microliths industries of comparable antiquity are known in East Africa at Nasera, Lukenya Hill, and Matupi.

Nal

CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: A cultural group named after the site of Sohr Damb (Red Mound), near the village of Nal in central Baluchistan, Pakistan. It is related to the Kulli culture further south and is dated to the first half of the 3rd millennium BC. Both settlements are associated with water-control systems which allowed exploitation of alluvial plains for agriculture. The Chalcolithic population used copper for many tools and weapons, as well as ground stone. They made beads from agate and perhaps also lapis lazuli. The fine buff pottery, some wheelmade, is decorated with geometric patterns in black paint; red, blue, green, and yellow pigments were often applied after firing. Some traits in the pottery, a glazed steatite seal and many faience beads point to contact with the Indus Civilization. Many burials were excavated on the type site, belonging to a period later than the settlement. The rite employed was fractional burial, the graves containing fragmentary skeletons together with quantities of distinctive pottery.

Nasca

SYNONYMS OR RELATED TERMS: Nazca
CATEGORY: culture
DEFINITION: Major culture of the southern coast of Peru during the Early Intermediate Period, c 200 BC-600 AD, developed out of Paracas. The principal Nasca site is at Cahuachi on the Nasca River, with a great adobe temple atop a mound, some walled courts and large rooms, and a number of smaller constructions. The earliest pottery, of roughly the 2nd century BC, still shows Paracas influence in the iconography and the use of up to 16 colors, but the paint was not put on before firing. Typical Nasca pottery with designs of fish, birds, severed heads, human figures and demons, shows a long internal development. The final Nasca substyle incorporates patterns taken from the art of Huari, and this contact was soon followed by invasion. Stylistically, the Nasca ceramics have been divided into nine phases. With the expansion of the Huari empire to the coast around the 7th century AD, Nasca culture came to an end and was replaced by a local version of Huari. To the Nasca period belong some (or all) of the desert markings, the so-called 'Nasca lines', made by scraping away the weathered surface of the desert to expose the lighter material beneath. Motifs include lines, geometrical patterns, and a few animal or bird forms. The dead were buried in large cemeteries, mainly near Cahuachi. Nasca survived into the Middle Horizon, when it became fused with the more dominant Huari and Tiahuanaco styles.

Nasca lines

SYNONYMS OR RELATED TERMS: geoglyphs; Nazca lines
CATEGORY: feature
DEFINITION: In the Peruvian desert or Nasca region of the southern coast, geometric and geomorphic patterns created by the removal of surface stones to reveal the pale earth beneath. The lines were made by clearing the surface of small red/brown stones and exposing the lighter-colored soil underneath. The straight lines radiate to points in small hills and suggest a ceremonial function. The straight lines date to the Early Intermediate as well as to later periods. Maria Reiche, a researcher, believes that the figures represent constellations and the straight lines have astronomical significance. Others believe the lines pointed toward sacred places. The Nasca lines are virtually indecipherable from ground level, but are plainly visible from the air. The lines have been preserved by the extreme dryness of the climate of the region.

Natufian

CATEGORY: culture
DEFINITION: The final Epipalaeolithic (Mesolithic) culture complex of the Levant, dated to c 12,500-10,000 BP, with its type site at Wadi an-Natuf in Palestine. Hunting and gathering were still the basis of subsistence, but some Natufian communities had adopted a settled mode of life and the period saw the development of cereal grain exploitation. They built first permanent village settlements in pre-agricultural times in Palestine (Mallaha) and on middle Euphrates in Syria (Mureybet, Abu Hureyra). A series of burials was excavated at Mount Carmel; one important site is Wad Cave with a large cemetery, querns, sickles. The shrine at the base of the tell at Jericho was built during the Early Natufian phase, and the descendants of the Natufians built the earliest Neolithic town at the site. The characteristic toolkit includes geometric microliths, sickles, pestles, mortars, fishing gear, and ornaments of bone and shell. Generally, Natufian sites demonstrate greater diversity in economy and more permanent settlement than earlier cultures.

Naxos (Greece)

CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: The largest of the Greek Cyclades islands in the Aegean Sea and an important center for the so-called Cycladic culture of the Aegean Early Bronze Age, late 4th-2nd millennium BC. Mycenaean, Protogeometric, and Geometric periods are also well represented. In the period of classical Greece, Naxos has a relatively insignificant political history, and is better known for its wines and was a center of worship of the god Dionysus. Naxos marble was used for the sculpture of monumental figures and the island also supplied the emery with which to polish the marble. The Cycladic period has left numerous graves and examples of the characteristic Cycladic idols. An isolated marble door frame on the Palatia hill is the cella door of a 6th-century BC temple, while near Sangri lies the site of a square temple. For the ancient quarries there is no lack of evidence, particularly for the practice of cutting large statues in situ. There are several unfinished figures, notably a colossal archaic statue, male and with beard -- possibly a representation of Dionysius. During the 6th century BC the tyrant Lygdamis ruled Náxos in alliance with the tyrant Peisistratus of Athens. In 490 the island was captured by the Persians and treated with severity; Náxos deserted Persia in 480, joining the Greeks at the Battle of Salamis and then joining the Delian League. After revolting from the league in 471, Náxos was immediately captured by Athens, which controlled it until 404. In the 8th century, Naxos is said to have combined forces with Chalcis in a colonizing initiative to Sicily, where a colony of the same name was founded. In 1207 AD, a Venetian captured Náxos, initiating the duchy of Náxos.

opus sectile

CATEGORY: structure
DEFINITION: A Roman construction technique using thin pieces marble of different colors in geometric, floral, or figured designs as part of floors or wall surfaces. Latin for sectioned work" this technical term was used by Vitruvius c 30 BC. Shell or mother-of-pearl was sometimes used instead of marble. Opus sectile began in the Hellenistic world perhaps first in Italy and continued as a European decorative tradition. Opus sectile first appeared in Rome in Republican times as pavement in simple geometrical and floral designs. From the 1st century AD there was also a regular production of small pictures of the opus sectile type. The technique was most popular in Rome c 200 BC-400 AD. Geometrical opus sectile continued to be the major form of floor decoration in Italian churches throughout the Middle Ages and Renaissance. "

opus vermiculatum

CATEGORY: structure
DEFINITION: Mosaic technique used in Hellenistic and Roman times, in which part or all of a figural mosaic is made up of small, closely set tesserae (cubes of stone, ceramic, glass, or other hard material) that permit fine gradations of color and an exact following of figure contours and outlines. The word vermiculatum (wormlike") refers to the undulating rows of tesserae in this work. Opus vermiculatum was generally used for emblemata or central figural panels which were surrounded by geometrical or floral designs in opus tessellatum a coarser mosaic technique with larger tesserae; occasionally opus vermiculatum was used only for faces and other details in an opus tessellatum mosaic. The earliest known example of opus vermiculatum c 200 BC is an emblema showing a personification of the city of Alexandria. By the 1st century BC Romans had adopted the technique or imported Greek artists to do it; a number of fine opus vermiculatum pieces from this period have been found at Pompeii."

Pan Shan

SYNONYMS OR RELATED TERMS: Pan-shan, Banshan
CATEGORY: culture
DEFINITION: A branch of the Yang-Shao culture of Neolithic China with a distinctive painted pottery, c 2500-2000 BC. There are extensive cemeteries in the hills of the upper Yellow River basin in Kansu province which yielded great quantities of the pottery with inhumation burials. The most common were large globular urns painted with bold spiral or other curvilinear designs or lozenges in red, black, purple, or brown. The 'death pattern' consists of a red band between two black ones internally fringed. The geometric patterns or stylized figures are of men, fish, and birds; there is no glaze. Coiling was common, but some of the wares were probably shaped on a slow, or hand-turned, wheel. The handles are set low on the body of the urns, and the lower part of the body is left undecorated -- as with most Greek Proto-Geometric funerary ware, to which there is a certain likeness. Striking parallels have been found in Turkestan, the Caucasus, and the Ukraine.

perspective drawing

CATEGORY: technique
DEFINITION: A three-dimensional rendering, usually of a feature or a site, used to record and reconstruct the results of archaeological research. . Geometric perspective is a drawing method by which it is possible to depict a three-dimensional form as a two-dimensional image that closely resembles the scene as visualized by the human eye. Perspective drawings and photographs are easily interpreted because they closely resemble visual images.

Pictish symbol stones

CATEGORY: language; artifact
DEFINITION: Pictish symbol stones are a unique class of sculptured monument of the Pictish people in the Post-Roman period. The Picts occupied Scotland north of the Forth and possessed a distinctive culture, seen particularly in their carved symbol stones. The stones are roughly divided into three chronological categories. The Class I stones (5th-7th century) are rough-hewn, undressed blocks or pillars, inscribed with pictorial symbols of spiral creatures, such as fishes and birds. They are also decorated with strange geometric shapes as well as inanimate objects like mirrors and combs, grouped together in various combinations. Class II (8th-10th century) stones are regularly dressed slabs which the same range of carvings but with the addition of new Christian elements and humans in animated scenes. Class III stones (from 9th century) are, in most cases, free-standing crosses decorated with a combination of a distinctive form of interlace as well as some elements of the older motifs. Some bear Ogham inscriptions from which it has recently been shown that three languages were in use, two Celtic and one pre-Indo-European. From these memorial stones, we know something of the Pictish royal succession.

Pirak

CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: Prehistoric site of the Kacchi Plain, Baluchistan, Pakistan where a post-Harappan cultural sequence has at least seven phases over the 2nd millennium and early 1st millennium BC. The sequence is characterized by a painted pottery with a geometric style with earlier monochrome painted decoration becoming bichrome in later times. There is evidence of intensified agricultural production and the horse and camel appear. Between 1200-1100 BC, iron came into use, the earliest occurrence in India.

Qaluyu

CATEGORY: site; culture
DEFINITION: A site and cultural phase of the Early Horizon Period in northern Titicaca area of Peru. The pottery had incisions or simple painted geometric motifs in red on cream.

Rössen culture

SYNONYMS OR RELATED TERMS: Röessen culture
CATEGORY: culture
DEFINITION: The successor of western branch of the Neolithic Linear Pottery Culture, with which is has many features in common. Its main distribution was in Rhineland and central and southern Germany, parallel to Lengyel culture in Czechoslovakia and mid-Danube. It is characterized by pottery with complex incised geometric motifs and by sites with trapezoidal longhouses. Radiocarbon dates indicate early 4th millennium BC. It is named after a cemetery site in Halle with 70 burials accompanied by bone and jet necklaces, shaft-hole-stone axes, and some long trapezoidal ones.

reticulated work

SYNONYMS OR RELATED TERMS: reticulated porcelain; opus reticulatum
CATEGORY: structure; artifact
DEFINITION: In masonry, it is a type of facing used on ancient Roman concrete or mortared rubblework walls. It appeared during the late Roman Republic and succeeded the earliest type of facing, an irregular patchwork called opus incertum. Reticulated work looks like a diagonal checkerboard with its square stones set lozenge fashion, separated by relatively fine joints. In porcelain production, it is a technique in which the outer side is entirely cut out in geometric patterns, honeycomb, circles intercrossed and superimposed to a second vase of similar or of cylindrical form.

Ripoli

CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: A village of Middle to Late Neolithic hut foundations (fondi di capanne) and some crouched burials in Abruzzi, Italy. It has given its name to the Ripoli Trichrome Painted Ware of the central Italian Middle Neolithic, c 4500-3500 BC. Ripoli Ware has a buff fabric painted with geometric designs in black, separated from areas painted red by a pair of lines enclosing a row of dots. The usual shape is a round-based cup with straight vertical wall and single handle, this sometimes with a pair of curious projections from the top. The Ripoli pottery is one of a series of Italian trichrome painted wares, including the Capri style and the Scaloria style. There are connections with Danilo across the Adriatic. Notable among the flintwork are tanged and single-barbed arrowheads.

Romanelli

CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: A large coastal cave in Apulia, Italy, occupied in the Palaeolithic period. Over a beach of last Interglacial date came some Mousterian deposits and a series of Upper Palaeolithic (c 12,000 BP) deposits of 'Romanellian' type. There are engraved art objects in these layers and on the walls, and skeletal material is also found in the Romanellian levels. These include geometric microliths, 200+ plaques with engravings, and meanders and abstract designs engraved on the walls.

Sabz, Tepe

CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: Tell site in Khuzestan in southwest Iran which has given its name to a cultural phase succeeding the Muhammad Jafar phase, c 5500-5250 BC. It is characterized by the appearance of painted pottery, buff-colored with geometric designs executed in black paint. Evidence suggests that irrigation agriculture was practiced, and flax, emmer, barley, and pulses cultivated. By approximately 6000 BC, patterns of village farming were widely spread over much of the Iranian Plateau and in lowland Khuzestan. It has yielded evidence of fairly sophisticated patterns of agricultural life and general cultural connections with the beginnings of settled village life in neighboring areas such as Afghanistan, Baluchistan, Soviet Central Asia, and Mesopotamia.

Salamis (Cyprus)

CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: A principal city of prehistoric and classic Cyprus, located on the east coast of the island, north of modern Famagusta. According to the Homeric epics, Salamis was founded after the Trojan War by the archer Teucer, who came from the island of Salamis, off Attica. This literary tradition probably reflects the Sea Peoples' occupation of Cyprus (c 1193 BC). Later, the city grew because of its harbor; it became the chief Cypriot outlet for trade with Phoenicia, Egypt, and Cilicia. Salamis came under Persian control in 525 BC. In 306 BC, Demetrius I Poliorcetes of Macedonia won a great naval victory there over Ptolemy I of Egypt. Salamis was sacked in the Jewish revolt of 115-117 AD and suffered repeatedly from earthquakes. It was completely rebuilt by the Christian emperor Constantius II (reigned 337-361 AD) and given the name Constantia. Under Christian rule, Salamis was the metropolitan see of Cyprus. Destroyed again by the Arabs under Mu'awiyah (c 648), the city was then abandoned. There is a large area of surviving ruins, and an extensive necropolis to the west. The Mycenaean settlement was probably at Enkomi. Most remarkable are the so-called 'Royal Tombs', perhaps dating from the Late Geometric period, featuring large dromoi. The burial chambers are constructed of large rectangular blocks and have gable roofs, but were robbed in antiquity. There is an association with horse-and-chariot funerary rites, and horse skeletons still complete with bit in mouth have been discovered. There are also bronze horse accouterments, and cauldron and tripod, and ivory furniture. One tomb shows evidence for an original upper beehive structure or tholos; other tombs are rock-cut and show evidence for rites involving pyres and clay figurines.

Samarra

CATEGORY: site; culture
DEFINITION: Islamic city of the Abbasid dynasty, mid-8th to mid-10th century AD, founded as the new capital in 836 AD on the Tigris River in central Iraq. Its Neolithic culture, 6th millennium BC, was remarkable for its elaborate painted pottery with geometric or naturalistic patterns. At that time, it was characterized by large villages with complex, multi-room buildings, and introduction of irrigated agriculture and cattle rearing. The pottery, found mainly in the Samarra cemetery, replaced Hassuna ware, on which it marked a considerable advance. It was absorbed by the Halaf tradition c 5000 BC. It is a rich source of information on early Islamic architecture, public monuments, and town planning.

Samarran culture complex

CATEGORY: culture
DEFINITION: Cultural phase of east-central Irqu along the Tigris River which dates to the second half of the 6th and early 5th millennium BC, with sites such as Tell es Sawwan and Choga Mami. There are three phases of the complex: Early Samarran with coarse ware decorated by incision, Middle Samarran with painted pottery using naturalistic scenes and geometric designs; and Last Samarran with more geometric painted pottery and no naturalistic scenes. The Samarrans used irrigation agriculture and herding of animals, both important to the developing Mesopotamian civilizations.

Sarmatian

CATEGORY: culture
DEFINITION: A people originally of Iranian stock who migrated from Central Asia to the Ural Mountains between the 6th-4th century BC and eventually settled in most of southern European Russia and the eastern Balkans. These nomadic tribes were related to Scythians and became a political and cultural force whose influence extended into central Asia and Transcaucasia, as well as into western Europe where the Sarmatians challenged the Romans before themselves being driven back by the Huns c 370 AD. Sarmatian art was strongly geometric, floral, and richly colored. They made jewelry in the form of rings, bracelets, diadems, brooches, gold plaques, buckles, buttons, and mounts and exceptional metalwork was found in the tombs, including gold openwork plaques, bronze bracelets, spears, swords, gold-handled knives, and gold jewelry and cups. The Sarmatians were also very experienced in horsemanship and warfare.

Sauveterrian

SYNONYMS OR RELATED TERMS: Sauveterre-la-Lemance
CATEGORY: culture
DEFINITION: An Early Mesolithic culture of France and neighboring parts of Europe, following the Azilian in c 9000 bp. It later spread to Britain and was contemporary with the Later Maglemosian. It is characterized by the lack of woodworking tools and by an abundance of geometric microliths. It is named after rock shelters in Sauveterre-la-Lémance, France. Sauveterrian related to 8000-4500 BC in southern half of France and it preceded the Tardenoisian.

Scarlet Ware

CATEGORY: ceramics
DEFINITION: A type of red-and-black painted pottery used in the early 3rd millennium BC in the plains of eastern Mesopotamia, of the Early Dynastic period. It was derived from Jemdet Nasr Ware. Geometrical designs in black on buff, separated by large areas of red paint, became progressively more elaborate, in later stages including animal and human figures in red outlined in black. There are hints of connections with the wares of Baluchistan, especially in the elongated bulls.

Sered'-Macanské vrsky

CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: Mesolithic dune site near Nitra, Slovakia, which is the type site of the Sered' group. The group is distinguished by geometric microlithic tools.

Serra d'Alto

CATEGORY: site; artifact
DEFINITION: Neolithic village in Basilicata, Italy, on a hill defended by three concentric ditches. It has yielded a distinctive painted pottery of the same name, c 4500-3500 BC. Geometric designs with diagonal meanders and solid triangles are painted in black or purple-brown on a buff surface. A frequent motif is a zigzag line between parallels (linea a tremolo marginato"). Jars and handled cups are the standard forms and the elaborate handles are horizontal tubular with zoomorphic additions on the top. In the later phase a thin and markedly splayed trumpet lug was adopted from the Diana Ware of Lipari. The high quality of the ware and the fact that it most often occurs in graves and other ritual contexts suggests that it was produced for special purposes. It was traded over a wide area occurring in Sicily Lipari Lake Garda Malta and in central Italy."

Serra d'Alto pottery

CATEGORY: artifact
DEFINITION: Neolithic village in Basilicata, Italy, on a hill defended by three concentric ditches. It has yielded a distinctive painted pottery of the same name, c 4500-3500 BC. geometric designs with diagonal meanders and solid triangles are painted in black or purple-brown on a buff surface. A frequent motif is a zigzag line between parallels (linea a tremolo marginato"). Jars and handled cups are the standard forms and the elaborate handles are horizontal tubular with zoomorphic additions on the top. In the later phase a thin and markedly splayed trumpet lug was adopted from the Diana ware of Lipari. The high quality of the ware and the fact that it most often occurs in graves and other ritual contexts suggests that it was produced for special purposes. It was traded over a wide area occurring in Sicily Lipari Lake Garda Malta and in central Italy."

Serraferlicchio

CATEGORY: site; artifact
DEFINITION: A site near Agrigento in southern Sicily which has given its name to style of pottery of the Copper Age (3rd millennium BC). It is found mainly in rock-cut tombs and consists of a bright-red slipped ware decorated with black paint in geometric designs. Characteristic forms are open bowls and a variety of jug and cup shapes.

Serraferlicchio pottery

CATEGORY: artifact
DEFINITION: A site near Agrigento in southern Sicily which has given its name to style of pottery of the Copper Age (3rd millennium BC). It is found mainly in rock-cut tombs and consists of a bright-red slipped ware decorated with black paint in geometric designs. Characteristic forms are open bowls and a variety of jug and cup shapes.

Sesklo

CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: Neolithic tell settlement site near Volos in Thessaly, Greece, first occupied in the 7th millennium BC (Aceramic Neolithic). It has given its name to a pottery ware known over much of continental Greece in the Middle Neolithic, 6th millennium BC. The pottery's most distinctive feature is a fine white slip painted in red with geometric designs, often in zigzag patterns. The pre-Sesklo which it succeeds was a local branch of the widespread Starcevo culture. The settlement has closely grouped mud-brick houses set on stone foundations, each with a domed oven. There was a large megaron complex on the acropolis and it was an important settlement through the Bronze Age.

Stanca Ripiceni Cave

CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: Upper Palaeolithic site in eastern Romania with four cultural layers starting c 25,000 bp. There are bifaces, scrapers, and burins in the lowest assemblage and geometric microliths in the uppermost assemblage.

stone circle

CATEGORY: feature; structure
DEFINITION: A ring of standing stones, either circular or near-circular, found in the British Isles from the Neolithic and Early Bronze Age. There are almost 1000 stone circles, some surrounded by a ditch, with the most famous examples being Stonehenge, Avebury, and Callanish. Two atypical examples are in Brittany. The standing stones which make up these circles are widely spaced; in many examples they are incorporated into a ring-bank of smaller piled stones which has one opening as the entrance. A local variant is the recumbent stone circle of Aberdeenshire in which the entrance is marked by a large horizontal stone flanked by tall portal stones. A recumbent stone is also a feature of circles in southwest Ireland, but here the two tallest stones are placed diametrically opposite the horizontal stone. Two of the Scottish recumbent stone circles have yielded Beaker pottery, while urn burials in various 'standard' circles were of Bronze Age type. Circles are often associated with cairns, menhirs, and alignments. Many have tried to interpret the complex geometric layouts and placement of the stones within an astronomical base. There has been much discussion about the validity of various theories and there is no agreement on the subject.

Submycenaean

CATEGORY: chronology
DEFINITION: A phase between the Late Helladic and the Protogeometric periods on mainland Greece, known from its pottery found in cemeteries in Attica and from sites in central Greece and the Peloponnese. It is dated c 1050-1020 BC. Pottery was the first art to recover its standards after the Dorian invasion and the overthrow of Mycenae. Athens escaped these disasters and in the ensuing dark age became the main source of ceramic ideas. For a short time Mycenaean motifs survived on new shapes -- the Submycenaean ware. It gave way to the Protogeometric (c 1020-900 BC) style by converting the decaying Mycenaean ornament into regular geometrical patterns.

Susa

SYNONYMS OR RELATED TERMS: Susiana, Shushan, Seleucia
CATEGORY: site; culture
DEFINITION: Major city of western Asia, in Khuzistan, Iran, with its first four phases paralleling those of Mesopotamia (Ubaid, Uruk, Jemdet Nasr, and Early Dynastic). It was the capital of Elam in Akkadian times (3rd, 2nd, 1st millennium BC) and again in the first as a capital of the Achaemenid empire. Susa controlled important east-west trade routes and was the end of the Achaemenid Royal Road from Lydian Sardis. Darius built the citadel c 500 BC. The tell is made up of four separate mounds: 1) the acropolis, which has produced most of the prehistoric material from the site; 2) the Royal City which has important Elamite remains of the 2nd millennium BC; 3) the Apadana, with a large, impressive Achaemenid palace; and 4) the Artisans' Town, of the Achaemenid period and later. It continued under the name of Seleucia after being captured by Alexander the Great in 331 BC; it later passed to the Parthians and Sassanians. Susa's characteristic fine ceramic ware had geometric motifs painted in dark colors onto a light background. Among the more important finds of Susa are the victory stela of Naram-Sin (Akkadian period), many Kassite kudurru, and the law code of Hammurabi (Old Babylonian period), which had been brought to Susa from Babylon after an Elamite raid. Susa was traditionally associated with Anshan (Tepe Malyan) in Fars.

symmetry

CATEGORY: artifact
DEFINITION: A property of design based on the spatial position of the geometric figure(s) constituting the fundamental part of the design, and on the movement of the figure(s) across a line or around a point axis

Tardenoisian

SYNONYMS OR RELATED TERMS: Tardenois
CATEGORY: culture
DEFINITION: A Mesolithic culture of southwest France that followed the Sauveterrian and which was characterized by the use of small stone tools with geometric shapes (trapeze-shaped chisel-ended arrowheads and small blades). Tardenoisian and similar industries are found from Iberia to central Europe and span the period from the early 6th millennium BC until the arrival of the first Neolithic farmers. Fère-en-Tardenois, in the Paris basin, is the type site of the Tardenoisian.

Tassili n'Ajjer

SYNONYMS OR RELATED TERMS: Tassili-n-Ajjer
CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: Site in southeast Algeria with famous but undated rock art covering most of the Saharan sequence. The art is in three styles -- archaic" paintings of large animal and human figures and geometric abstract symbols; a "naturalistic" style with humans and animals portrayed in great detail in scenes showing cattle running and herdsmen with bows; and a "cubist" style with dark shapes and light areas. Stone forms which were probably used as tomb sculpture have also been found at the Tassili site. There is much stone painting but not much stone carving or engraving. Scholars have been unable to decipher the hieroglyphic language that is engraved on the rocks."

Teleilat Ghassul

SYNONYMS OR RELATED TERMS: Tulaylat al-Ghassul
CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: Type site of the Ghassulian in the Jordan Valley (Palestine) near the Dead Sea, dated c 3800-3350 BC. It is known for polychrome geometric and figurative mural paintings in trapezoid-shaped mud-brick houses. The Ghassulian stage was characterized by small settlements of farming peoples whose pottery was elaborate in style, and included footed bowls and horn-shaped goblets. The Ghassulians also smelted copper.

Thule

CATEGORY: culture
DEFINITION: A prehistoric subculture of the Eskimos that began in Alaska about 900 AD and spread as far as Greenland by 1000 AD. The culture was distributed throughout the northern Arctic from Siberia to Greenland, and ancestral to most of the historic Eskimo cultures of that area. The latest phase in the west dates to c 1300. Thule people lived in circular houses partially dug into the ground and roofed with whalebones, turf, and stone. Tools are mainly bone, ivory, antler, and polished slate rather than chipped stone and they made coarse impressed pottery (later replaced by soapstone vessels). They hunted and fished with harpoon points, used skin-covered boats (open ones = umiaks, closed ones = kayaks), and dog sleds for travel across land and ice. Thule made ornaments of ivory, bone, and stone with simple geometric designs. It was the final Eskimo culture of the Northern Maritime tradition. It either absorbed or supplanted the Dorset Culture of the central and east Arctic. The Thule were the Skraelings discovered by the Vikings in the 10th century AD.

Tiahuanaco

SYNONYMS OR RELATED TERMS: Tiwanaku
CATEGORY: site; culture
DEFINITION: Large urban and ceremonial site which dominated the Titicaca Basin and the high Andes of Bolivia from c 100-1250 AD, a major Middle Horizon site and probably the capital of an empire. The central area has principal religious structures on a large rectangular plaza, a large U-shaped mound around a spring, and a monumental Gate of the Sun cut from a single block of stone. The Tiahuanaco people had trade links with the Amazon jungle and the Pacific coast, exporting potatoes, root crops, and llama products. In the 10th century, Tiahuanaco colonies were established on the coasts of southern Peru and northern Chile. Tiahuanaco's distinctive art and architectural styles influenced the central highlands and southern Peru, northern Chile, Bolivia, and Argentina. Tiahuanacan influence spread over a wide area of the Central Andes and is especially evident because of its unique ceramics. Typically, pottery was pointed black-on-white on a red polished surface, although later styles employed as many as six colors. Geometric designs were common as well as stylized pumas, condors, and serpents. The kero (a flared-rim beaker) is a characteristic form. Articles of bronze, copper and gold suggest that the city may also have been an important metallurgical center. Iconographic links with Huari to the north are such that a strong economic and cultural bond between the two is assumed. Tiahuanaco and Huari together constitute the Middle Horizon style of the Andes.

Tiemassas

CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: Site in Senegal, south of Dakar, with extensive undated microlithic industry. There may have been successive occupation phases, including a pre-pottery phase characterized by large backed tools, geometric microliths, and hollow-based and leaf-shaped bifacial projectile points.

trapeze

CATEGORY: artifact
DEFINITION: A geometric microlith whose outline has four sides - two lateral nearly parallel sides with the longer one being the cutting edge and the shorter opposite edge backed or not-backed; the remaining distal and proximal sides are backed obliquely at an angle to both the cutting edge and to each other

triangle

CATEGORY: artifact
DEFINITION: A geometric microlith that has one side with a sharp cutting edge and two other sides shaped by backing

Tripolye

CATEGORY: site; culture
DEFINITION: The type site, in the Balkans near Kiev, of a Neolithic-Copper Age culture which formed in the Western Ukraine and east Romania (Cucuteni culture) in the 4th millennium BC. It is best known for its villages of up to 100 timber longhouses, and for fine polychrome vessels painted with curvilinear and geometric designs. They also had copper and gold objects. Tripolye people practiced shifting agriculture, frequently moving their settlements. The Tripolye culture came to an end with the expansion westwards of steppe cultures of kurgan or single-grave type. The Cucuteni-Tripolye culture was a Neolithic European culture that arose in Ukraine between the Seret and Bug rivers, with an extension to the Dnieper River, about 3000 BC.

Waira-Jirca

SYNONYMS OR RELATED TERMS: Waira-jirca
CATEGORY: culture; site
DEFINITION: An Initial Period phase from the Kotosh site, eastern Andes, central Peru -- the earliest ceramic phase, c 1800-1150 BC. The well-made, dark brown pottery with incised geometric designs resembles early jungle pottery from Ucayali and was ancestral to Kotosh-Kotosh and Chavín. Its most widely occurring forms are the neckless jar and the open bowl, although some spouted forms do occur.

White pottery

CATEGORY: ceramics
DEFINITION: Soft white, fairly rare earthenware made only in the Shang period (dates given for the founding of the Shang dynasty vary from about 1760-1520 BC; dates for the dynasty's fall also vary from 1122-1030 BC). Found chiefly at Anyang, China, it was probably made for ritual or mortuary purposes and was decorated with incised geometric patterns. It is made of almost pure kaolin and is very brittle; few pots have survived unbroken.

Wucheng

SYNONYMS OR RELATED TERMS: Wu-ch'eng
CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: Bronze Age site of the mid-2nd millennium BC in Jiangxi Province, China, of the Shang Dynasty. Finds include stone-mold casted bronze weapons and ritual vessels, and geometric pottery and glazed stoneware. The incised marks on the pottery and molds are thought to be an indigenous writing system.

Yang Shao

SYNONYMS OR RELATED TERMS: Yang-shao, Yangshao
CATEGORY: culture
DEFINITION: The most important Neolithic culture of China, distributed along the middle course of the Yellow River in north-central China and dated to c 5000-2700 BC. Large open settlements of circular or rectangular houses slightly sunk into the ground cluster along the loess river terraces. It is distinguished by millet agriculture, coarse and painted pottery, sedentary villages, and clans. Some marks on the pottery are thought to be the beginnings of writing; pottery was handmade, painted in black and red on a yellowish slip. At first, the designs were zoomorphic, then later became abstract, geometric, or curvilinear. Coarser red and grey wares were also common.

Zarzian

SYNONYMS OR RELATED TERMS: Zarzi
CATEGORY: culture
DEFINITION: Cave in southern Kurdistan, western Iraq, which had an advanced Palaeolithic industry. The industry is based on geometric microliths, notched blades, and backed bladelets and is not widely known. It is dated c 10,500-6000 BC.