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Results for glacial:

Eemian: SYNONYM: Eemian Interglacial
CATEGORY: chronology
DEFINITION: The last Interglacial of northern Europe, after the Saalian and before the Weichsel Glaciation, from c 125,000-115,000 BP. This group of Quarternary Interglacial deposits are found right across Europe from the Netherlands to Russia and contain fossils that indicate warm conditions. In the Netherlands and northern Germany, the rising sea level caused the deposition of Eemian marine sediments. Evidence from bore holes indicates that the Eemian may represent two or even three interglacial stages. Levalloisian and Mousterian artifacts are found in Eemina deposits. The Riss-Würm in Alpine regions, the Sangamon in North America, and the Ipswichian in Britain are its equivalents.
Günz glaciation: SYNONYM: Günz Glacial Stage
CATEGORY: chronology
DEFINITION: The first major Alpine glacial advance and first major Pleistocene glaciation (ice age), which started c 590,000 years ago and lasted until the end of the Mindel glaciation. The Günz preceded the Günz-Mindel Interglacial and followed the Donau-Günz Interglacial, both periods of relatively moderate climatic conditions. The Günz is correlated with the Baventian Stage of marine deposits of Great Britain and the Menapian Glacial Stage of northern Europe. It is broadly equivalent to the Nebraskan Glacial Stage of North America.
glacial: CATEGORY: chronology; geography
DEFINITION: Any of a number of cold climatic periods in which there was widespread ice and cold climate flora and fauna.
glacial eustacy: CATEGORY: geology
DEFINITION: The theory that the adjustments in sea levels and the earth's crust result from expansion and contraction of Pleistocene ice sheets. It has been suggested based on observed patterns of Cretaceous rocks and physical calculations that, as the Earth's continents move about, the oceans bulge out at some places to compensate, and thus sea-level rise is different from ocean basin to ocean basin.
glacial maximum: CATEGORY: geology
DEFINITION: The peak of an Ice Age, when the ice sheets are at their greatest extent and temperatures at their lowest. The last glacial maximum occurred between 20,000-15,000 years ago. At the maximum of the last ice age, more than 30 percent of the Earth's land surface was covered by ice.
glacial till: CATEGORY: geology
DEFINITION: The heterogeneous and unconsolidated mixture of boulders, gravel, clay, and sand caused by glacial action.
glaciation: SYNONYM: glacial
CATEGORY: chronology; geography
DEFINITION: The process by which land is covered by continental and alpine glacier ice sheets or the period of time during which such covering occurred; several glaciations are required to make up an Ice Age (as the Pleistocene). The land is subject to erosion and deposition by this process, which occurred repeatedly during the Quaternary; the process modifies landscapes and affects the level of ocean basins. These periods of colder weather are also called glacials, and the warmer periods between them interglacials. At the onset of colder weather, water is taken up into the ice-sheets and glaciers, causing a drop in sea level. Landscapes covered by ice can be recognized by the smooth rock surfaces and the U-shaped valleys formed by the ice-sheets and glaciers and the rock rubble carried along in them. As the climate warmed, the glaciers retreated, the ice melted, and the sea-level rose. The ice also deposited various forms of boulder clays, and banks of debris at the sides and ends of glaciers, known as moraines. Beyond the limits of glaciers and ice-sheets, extensive layers of outwash sands and gravels were deposited; where these deposits occur in lakes they are called varves. The periglacial zone around the margin of an ice sheet has permanently frozen subsoil, and is occupied by cold-loving plants and animals. Erosion was mainly brought about by solifluxion. The low temperatures and the constant freezing and thawing also affect the soil; these frost effects are called cryoturbation. Particularly characteristic are ice-wedges, polygonal cracks in the ground frequently recognizable in air photographs. They were caused by the shrinking of the ground at low temperatures and the filling of the cracks with water, which subsequently expanded on freezing to open the crack still further. The last two million years have been marked by a series of such glaciations. Broad correlations between the glaciation schemes in different parts of Europe and North America exist. Four Ice Ages have been figured; in Europe, the First Glaciation was at a climax 550,000 years ago. This gradually gave way to the First Interglacial (Gunz-Mindel) Period lasting about 60,000 years in which warm conditions again prevailed. The Second Glaciation came along with its climax 450,000 years ago, and the Second Interglacial Period (Mindel-Riss) followed, lasting 200,000 years. The Third Glacial Period (Riss) climax 185,000 years ago was relieved by 60,000 years of interglacial warmth. The Fourth (Wurm) and last Ice Age was at its height 72,000 years ago. The term has also commonly been used to describe the periods of generally cold climate which occurred at intervals during the Quaternary period. It is, however, now clear that ice-sheets grew only during parts of these so-called 'glacials' (e.g., the Devensian). For this reason, the term 'cold stage' is preferable.
Great Interglacial: SYNONYM: Hoxnian, Mindel-Riss
CATEGORY: chronology
DEFINITION: A major division of the Pleistocene epoch, the warm interval between the Mindel and the Riss glaciations c 400,000-200,000 years ago.
Holocene: SYNONYM: Recent, Postglacial
CATEGORY: chronology
DEFINITION: The present geological epoch, which began some 10,000 (bp) years ago (8300 BC). It falls within the Quaternary period (one of the four main divisions of the earth's history) and followed the Pleistocene Ice Age. The Holocene is marked by rising temperatures throughout the world and the retreat of the ice sheets. During this epoch, agriculture became the common human subsistence practice. During the Holocene, Homo sapiens diversified his tool technology, organized his habitat more efficiently, and adapted his way of life. The Holocene stage/series includes all deposits younger than the top of either the Wisconsinian stage of the Pleistocene Series in North America and the Würm/Weichsel in Europe.
Holstein: SYNONYM: Holsteinian Interglacial
CATEGORY: chronology
DEFINITION: North European Middle Pleistocene warm phase occurring between the Elsterian and Saalian cold stages, c 300,000-200,000 BP. These deposits are stratified above Elster Glacial deposits and are overlain by Saale glacial deposits. The Alpine equivalent is the Mindel-Riss and the North American equivalent is the Yarmouth. In Britain, it was the Hoxnian.
Ice Age/ice age: SYNONYM: glaciation; glacial age
CATEGORY: chronology
DEFINITION: A period of intense cold and the expansion of glaciers, resulting in a lower sea level. Such periods of large-scale glaciation may last several million years and drastically reshape surface features of entire continents. In the past, there were many ice ages; the earliest known took place during Precambrian time dating back more than 570 million years. The most recent periods of widespread glaciation occurred during the Pleistocene Epoch (1,600,000 to 10,000 years ago). A lesser, recent glacial stage called the Little Ice Age began in the 16th century and advanced and receded intermittently over three centuries. Its maximum development was reached about 1750, at which time glaciers were more widespread on Earth than at any time since the principal Quaternary Ice Ages. The idea of an ice age in the geological sequence is usually credited to Jean Louis Agassiz, a Swiss naturalist, who suggested it c 1837. Agassiz conceived a worldwide cold period when areas as far apart as North America and Germany had been glaciated.
interglacial: SYNONYM: adj interglacial
CATEGORY: chronology
DEFINITION: A warm period between two glaciations during with little or no glacial ice, warm climate processes, deposits, flora and fauna, and increased soil formation. The ice sheets diminish in area, and the improved climate allows the growth of temperate types of vegetation. The last 10,000 years (the Holocene) is probably an interglacial. During the Quaternary, interglacials have been considerably shorter than glacials.
Last Glacial Maximum: SYNONYM: Late Pleniglacial
CATEGORY: chronology
DEFINITION: The geological period dating between 25,000-14,000 bp, during which global temperatures reached the lowest levels of the Upper Pleistocene (127,000-10,000 bp). Massive continental ice sheets formed in the northern hemisphere and sea levels fell worldwide. The people were anatomically modern and conducted industries of the Upper Palaeolithic in unglaciated parts of the Old World.
Late Glacial period: CATEGORY: chronology
DEFINITION: The closing stages of the Pleistocene Ice Age, when the glaciers had begun their final retreat and when much of northern Europe was tundra. This period lasted from c 13,000-8500 BC. The substages in northern Europe are the Oldest Dryas (13,000-10,450), the Bølling oscillation (10,450-10,050), the Older Dryas (10,050-9850), the Allerød oscillation (9850-8850), and the Younger Dryas (8850-8300). Cultures of the Late Glacial period include Ahrensburgian, Creswellian, Federmesser, and Hamburgian.
Mindel glaciation: SYNONYM: Mindel Glacial; Mindel Glacial Stage
CATEGORY: chronology
DEFINITION: The second major Pleistocene glaciation of Alpine Europe which ended with the onset of the Holsteinian Interglacial. It was the second major Ice Age in the Pleistocene period, shown in Quaternary deposits in the Alps and the valleys of south German rivers. The Mindel consists of moraine and related river terraces of proglacial deposits. The Mindel Glacial Stage is part of the early geologic scheme (c. 1900) that first recognized the importance of multiple episodes of Pleistocene glaciation. The stage, a period of relatively severe climatic conditions and glacial advance, preceded the Mindel-Riss Interglacial and followed the Günz-Mindel Interglacial, both periods of relatively moderate climatic conditions. The Mindel Glacial Stage lasted from about 750,000 to 675,000 years ago. At least two periods of glacial advance, separated by a moderate period, are recognized in the Mindel.
periglacial: CATEGORY: chronology
DEFINITION: A term describing cold-climate processes and landforms, an environment with severe frost in non-glacial conditions and have much ground ice, mass movements, and strong winds. It applies to the region surrounding a glacial area and regions immediately beyond the ice-front during a glaciation. In a periglacial zone, part of the ground is perennially frozen. This so-called permafrost layer is covered by a layer which thaws and freezes seasonally, the active layer. Such seasonal changes give rise to several processes, some of which sort the constituents of the active layer and are collectively known as cryoturbation. A variety of landforms, including involutions, ice wedges, and pingos, are formed in the active layer and permafrost. Hillslopes become mantled with frost-shattered rubble that move downslope during cycles of freezing and thawing. Rivers are usually seasonal in the periglacial zone, and erosion by frost action is dominant. Wind erosion and deposition is often an important factor, and caused the formation of the huge deposits of loess and cover-sands in Europe and Asia. The periglacial zone is of interest because it would have been the environment in which man lived for long periods of time during the Devensian/Weichselian cold stage. During the coldest periods of the Quaternary (the last 1,600,000 years), the periglacial zone was enlarged to approximately twice its present size.
Postglacial period: SYNONYM: postglacial
CATEGORY: chronology
DEFINITION: A period occurring following a glacial episode, especially that from the end of the Pleistocene Ice Age c 8300 BC to the present. The substages in northern Europe are: Pre-Boreal (c 8300-7700 BC), Boreal (7700-5550 BC), Atlantic (5550-3800 BC), Sub-Boreal (3800-1200 BC), and Sub-Atlantic (1200 BC to present).
proglacial: CATEGORY: geology
DEFINITION: Landforms and deposits just beyond the margin of glacial ice; the deposition or environments at the edge of an ice sheet or glacier. This includes lakes, streams, loess, and periglacial features. Melt water released from the glacial mass carries loads of material eroded by the ice and this material is deposited in the proglacial area.
Riss glaciation: SYNONYM: Riss Glacial Stage
CATEGORY: chronology
DEFINITION: The third major glaciation of the Pleistocene in Alpine Europe; the penultimate Alpine glacial advance. It started 250,000 years ago and lasted over 100,000 years. The Riss, during which mountain glaciers descended from the highlands, followed the Mindel-Riss Interglacial Stage and preceded the Riss-Würm Interglacial Stage, both periods of relatively moderate climatic conditions. The Riss is correlated with the Gipping Glacial Stage of Great Britain and the Saale Glacial Stage of northern Europe. Like the Saale, the Riss Glacial Stage included two major phases of ice advance separated by a period of more moderate conditions. The Riss Glacial Stage is roughly contemporaneous with the Illinoian Glacial Stage of North America.
Riss-Würm Interglacial Stage: CATEGORY: chronology
DEFINITION: Major division of the Pleistocene in Alpine Europe, a period of relatively moderate climatic conditions, followed the Riss Glacial Stage and preceded the Würm Glacial Stage, both periods of deteriorating conditions. The Riss-Würm is correlated with the Eemian Interglacial Stage of northern Europe and the Ipswichian Interglacial Stage of Great Britain. It is broadly equivalent to the Sangamon Interglacial Stage of North America.
Saale: SYNONYM: Saale Glacial Stage, Saalian cold stage
CATEGORY: chronology
DEFINITION: A division of Pleistocene deposits and time in northern Europe which followed the Holstein Interglacial Stage and preceded the Eemian Interglacial Stage. It was the penultimate cold stage in northern Europe, c 200,000-125,000 BP. The extensive and complex Saale deposits are correlated with the Wolstonian (or Gipping) Glacial Stage of Britain and the Riss Glacial Stage of the European Alpine region. The Saale is roughly contemporaneous with the Illinoian Glacial Stage of North America. The Saale has three complex phases: the Drente, Treene, and Warthe substages. The Drente and Warthe represent periods of glacial advance, or maxima, whereas the Treene represents an interstadial period of glacial retreat between the early Drente and the late Warthe. In the region of central Europe, the Saale is represented by three glacial maxima separated by two periods, or interstadials, of moderating climatic conditions. One of the main features is a complex series of end-moraines, demarcating the maximum extent of ice sheets. These ice sheets flowed out from centers in Scandinavia, across the Baltic Sea and into northern Europe and Russia. The end-moraines are split into two sets: one called the Drenthe moraines (or Dnieper), and the Warthe moraines (Moscow in the USSR). These formations are complex and each seems to represent several 'pulses' of the ice-sheet edge. The Saale Glacial Stage was named for the German river, a tributary of the Elbe.
Weichselian: SYNONYM: Weichsel Glaciation; Vistula Glacial Stage
CATEGORY: chronology
DEFINITION: The final glacial advance, c 115,000-10,000 bp, corresponding to the Alpine Würm, American Wisconsinan, and British Devensian. The Weichsel Glacial Stage followed the Eemian Interglacial Stage and marks the last major incursion of Pleistocene continental ice sheets. It is named for the ice sheet of north Germany and other Quaternary glacial deposits in northwest Europe. Most of the Weichselian is within the range of radiocarbon dating. The ice sheets were probably at their maximum size for only a short period, between 30,000-13,000 bp; eight interstadials have been recognized in the Weichselian of northwest Europe. The late Weichsel expansion of the Scandinavian continental ice sheet began about 25,000 years ago; most of the Weichselian sediments over northern Europe are part of this late Weichselian cold period.
Yarmouth: SYNONYM: Yarmouth Interglacial Stage
CATEGORY: chronology
DEFINITION: A major division of Pleistocene deposits and time in North America, named for deposits in Yarmouth, Iowa, and equivalent to the Mindel-Riss Interglacial Stage of Alpine Europe. In some places, fossil vertebrates are well represented. It was at least as warm as modern times and, in some regions, the deposits indicate that Yarmouth climates may have been semiarid. The dates are c 300,000-200,000 BP; the British equivalent is the Hoxnian and the Holsteinian Interglacial in northern Europe.
Acheulian: SYNONYM: Acheulean, Acheulian industry
CATEGORY: chronology; culture
DEFINITION: A European culture of the Lower Palaeolithic period named for Saint-Acheul, a town in northern France, the site of numerous stone artifacts from the period. The conventional borderline between Abbevillian and Acheulian is marked by a technological innovation in the working of stone implements, the use of a flaking tool of soft material (wood, bone, antler) in place of a hammerstone. This culture is noted for its hefty multipurpose, pointed (or almond-shaped) hand axes, flat-edged cleaving tools, and other bifacial stone tools with multiple cutting edges. The Acheulian flourished in Africa, western Europe, and southern Asia from over a million years ago until less than 100,000 and is commonly associated with Homo erectus. This progressive tool industry was the first to use regular bifacial flaking. The term Epoque de St Acheul was introduced by Gabriel de Mortillet in 1872 and is still used occasionally, but after 1925 the idea of epochs began to be supplanted by that of cultures and traditions and it is in this sense that the term Acheulian is more often used today. The earliest assemblages are often rather similar to the Oldowan at such sites as Olduvai Gorge. Subsequent hand-ax assemblages are found over most of Africa, southern Asia and western and southern Europe. The earliest appearance of hand axes in Europe is still refereed to by some workers as Abbevillian, denoting a stage when hand axes were still made with crude, irregular devices. The type site, near Amiens in the Somme Valley contained large hand ax assemblages from around the time of the penultimate interglacial and the succeeding glacial period (Riss), perhaps some 200,000 to 300,000 years ago. Acheulian hand axes are still found around the time of the last interglacial period, and hand axes are common in one part of the succeeding Mousterian period (the Mousterian of Acheulian tradition) down to as recently as 40,000 years ago. Acheulian is also used to describe the period when this culture existed. In African terminology, the entire series of hand ax industries is called Acheulian, and the earlier phases of the African Acheulian equate with the Abbevillian of Europe.
Ahrensburgian: CATEGORY: culture
DEFINITION: An Epipalaeolithic culture of the Late Glacial Period in northern Germany and the Low Countries, c. 8850-8300 BC. The small tanged points, pine arrow shafts, abundant reindeer bones, barbed harpoons, and antler adzes of Stellmoor characterize the culture.
Allerød oscillation: SYNONYM: Allerod interstadial
CATEGORY: chronology
DEFINITION: An interstadial (transient) period of glacial retreat at the close of the Würm Glacial Stage in Europe, dated to c 12,000-11,000 years ago. This temporary increase in warmth allowed forests to establish themselves for a time in the ice-free zones. Radiocarbon dates show similar conditions prevailed in North America at about the same time. It was followed by another cold, glacial advance.
Altai: CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: The mountain range and region of southern Siberia which has yielded important prehistoric remains. Rising above 4000 meters, this area has Palaeolithic deposits (Ulalinka Creek) and a late glacial occupation (Ust' Kanskaia Cave). Some food-producing cultures appeared c 3rd millennium BC and metallurgy entered c 2nd millennium, when copper ore was exploited. Pastoral nomadism and horseback riding were introduced in the 1st millennium BC. There are rich burials which indicate a society of social differentiation and a warrior elite which acquired precious goods from far-flung regions. In the 4th-2nd centuries BC, iron gradually replaced bronze. Altai groups are also characterized by animal art styles, similar to the Scythians who occupied the steppes of southern Russia to the west.
Altithermal: SYNONYM: Climatic Optimum, Thermal Maximum, Long Drought; altithermal; Great Drought; Holocene climatic optimum.
CATEGORY: chronology
DEFINITION: A warm, dry postglacial period in the western United States approximately 5600-2500 BC. Coined by Ernst Antev in 1948, the term describes a time during which temperatures were warmer than at present. Other terms, like Long drought, are used.
Altmühlian: CATEGORY: culture
DEFINITION: A late Middle Palaeolithic industry of central Europe dating to the middle of the last glacial period. It is characterized by Blattspitzen, sidescrapers, and retouched blades.
Ambrona: CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: A Lower Palaeolithic site in Soria, central Spain, first discovered before World War II. Ambrona probably dates 300,000-400,000 years ago, from the end of the Mindel glacial period. Its occupants hunted elephants, deer, and bovines though the horse was the most common animal in the area. There are stone hand axes, scrapers, and cleavers of the Acheulian type and similar to some African sites were made from chalcedony, quartzite, quartz, and limestone. Points were fashioned from young elephant tusks. Pieces of charcoal show that fire was used.
Anglian: SYNONYM: Anglian-Elsterian
CATEGORY: chronology
DEFINITION: Quaternary glacial deposits found in East Anglia, England. Other possibly related and isolated patches exist elsewhere in Britain, but they are older than the extreme range of radiocarbon dating and palaeomagnetism shows them to be younger than 700,000 bp. This period is sometimes equates with the Elster glacial maximum and dated to c 300,000-400,000 years ago. During the Anglian-Elsterian glaciation in Europe a large ice-dammed lake formed in the North Sea, and large overflows from it initiated the cutting of the Dover Straits. In East Anglia, the deposits are stratified below Hoxnian and above Cromerian interglacial deposits and Acheulian and Clactonian artifacts are found in the sediments. Most of the evidence of human activity in Britain and Europe is later than this time. Anglian is more often used to describe the group of deposits or the one glaciation (antepenultimate) of that time.
archaic: SYNONYM: Archaic, Archaic period, Archaic tradition
CATEGORY: chronology; culture
DEFINITION: A term used to describe an early stage in the development of civilization. In New World chronology, the period just before the shift from hunting, gathering, and fishing to agricultural cultivation, pottery development, and village settlement. Initially, the term was used to designate a non-ceramic-using, nonagricultural, and nonsedentary way of life. Archaeologists now realize, however, that ceramics, agriculture, and sedentism are all found, in specific settings, within contexts that are clearly Archaic but that these activities are subsidiary to the collection of wild foods. In Old World chronology, the term is applied to certain early periods in the history of some civilizations. In Greece, it describes the rise of civilization from c 750 BC to the Persian invasion in 480 BC. In Egypt, it covers the first two dynasties, c 3200-2800 BC. In Classical archaeology, the term is often used to refer to the period of the 8th-6th centuries BC. The term was coined for certain cultures of the eastern North America woodlands dating from c 8000-1000 BC, but usage has been extended to various unrelated cultures which show a similar level of development but at widely different times. For example, it describes a group of cultures in the Eastern US and Canada which developed from the original migration of man from Asia during the Pleistocene, between 40,000-20,000 BC, whose economy was based on hunting and fishing, shell and plant gathering. Between 8000-1000 BC, a series of technical achievements characterized the tradition, which can be broken into periods: Early Archaic 8000-5000 BC, mixture of Big Game Hunting tradition with early Archaic cultures, also marked by post-glacial climatic change in association with the disappearance of Late Pleistocene big game animals; then Middle Archaic tradition cultures from 5000-2000 BC, and a Late Archaic period 2000-1000 BC. In the New World, the lifestyle lacked horticulture, domesticated animals, and permanent villages.
Atlantic period: SYNONYM: Atlantic phase, Atlantic climatic period
CATEGORY: chronology
DEFINITION: In Europe, a climatic optimum following the last Ice Age. This period was represented as a maximum of temperature and evidence from beetles suggests it being warmer than average for the interglacial. It seems to have begun about 6000 BC, when the average temperature rose. Melting ice sheets ultimately submerged nearly half of western Europe, creating the bays and inlets along the Atlantic coast that provided a new, rich ecosystem for human subsistence. The Atlantic period was followed by the subboreal period. The Atlantic period, which succeeded the Boreal, was probably wetter and certainly somewhat warmer, and mixed forests of oak, elm, common lime (linden), and elder spread northward. Only in the late Atlantic period did the beech and hornbeam spread into western and central Europe from the southeast.
Azilian: CATEGORY: culture
DEFINITION: A Mesolithic (or Epi-Palaeolithic) culture of southwest France and northern Spain, which seems to follow the Late Magdalenian of the area. It falls within the Late Glacial Period and may be correlated with the Allerod oscillation of the 10th millennium BC (c 9000 to 8000 BC). The culture was characterized by flint microliths, pebbles painted with schematic designs, small thumb-scrapers, fish hooks, and flat bone antler harpoons. It is named for Le Mas d'Zail, a massive cave region in southern France where such artifacts were first discovered in 1889. The Azilians were food gatherers who had domesticated the dog. The Oban and Oransay cultures are degenerated Azilian.
Baikal Neolithic: CATEGORY: chronology; culture
DEFINITION: The Neolithic period of the Lake Baikal region in eastern Siberia. Stratified sites in the area show a long, gradual move from the Palaeolithic to Neolithic stage, starting in the 4th millennium BC. The Postglacial culture was not true" Neolithic in that it farmed but Neolithic in the sense of using pottery. It was actually a Mongoloid hunting-and-fishing culture (except in southern Siberia around the Aral Sea) with a microlithic flint industry with polished-stone blade tools together with antler bone and ivory artifacts; pointed- or round-based pottery and the bow and arrow. Points and scrapers made on flakes of Mousterian aspect and pebble tools showing a survival of the ancient chopper-chopping tool tradition of eastern Asia have also been found. There was a woodworking and quartzite industry and some cattle breeding. The first bronzes of the region are related to the Shang period of northern China and the earliest Ordos bronzes. The area covers the mountainous regions from Lake Baikal to the Pacific Ocean and the taiga (coniferous forest) and tundra of northern Siberia. A first stage is name for the site Isakovo and is known only from a small number of burials in cemeteries. The succeeding Serovo stage is also known mainly from burials with the addition of the compound bow backed with bone plates. The third phase named Kitoi has burials with red ochre and composite fish hooks possibly indicate more fishing. The succeeding Glazkovo phase of the 2nd millennium BC saw the beginnings of metal-using but generally showed continuity in artifact and burial types. Some remains of semi-subterranean dwellings with centrally located hearths occur together with female statuettes in bone."
Bering Land Bridge: CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: The present-day floor of the Chukchi and Bering Seas, which emerged as dry land during Late Pleistocene glacial advances. It is the only route for faunal exchange between Eurasia and North America as it united Siberia and Alaska. It seems to have been breached only in the past 2.5 million years, with the earliest immigrants crossing it about 40,000-15,000 years ago. They were part of a migratory wave that later reached as far south as South America (about 10,000 years ago). During the Ice Age the sea level fell by several hundred feet, making the strait into a land bridge between Asia and North America, over which a considerable migration of plants and animals, as well as man, occurred. That period also allowed the transit of cold water currents from the Pacific into the Atlantic.
Beringia: CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: The part of the continental shelf that connects Northeast Asia with present-day Alaska. These were the polar continental shelves that escaped glaciation during the ice ages but which were exposed during periods of low sea level, which facilitated migration of people to North America from Asia, and in the Laptev and East Siberian seas. When exposed at the time of the last glacial maximum, it was a large, flat, vegetated landmass. In 1993, investigations on the climatic interstadial of 11,000-12,000 years ago in Beringia (now submerged under the Bering Strait) and the way it provided for the peopling of the New World from Asia were reported. Traces of starch from an apparently domesticated variety of the taro plant on flint tools from the Solomon Islands suggested that conscious planting was being done in the Pacific as long ago as 28,000 years before the present.
Beringian tradition: SYNONYM: American Paleo-Arctic
CATEGORY: culture
DEFINITION: A culture in existence approximately 12,000 years ago between Siberia and temperate Alaska. The term was used by H. West to cover various Alaskan and Siberian archaeological formations which had developed from the Siberian Upper Paleolithic period, an area now largely submerged under the Bering Strait. Chronologically these formations lie between the middle of the Holocene period (c 35,000-9/10,000 BP), depending on the area. West's categorization includes the Bel'kachi, Diuktai, and Lake Ushki cultures in Siberia, the Denalian culture and American Paleo-Arctic formations in Alaska and the Yukon. Although Alaska is generally thought to be the gateway through which humans entered the New World, the earliest undisputed evidence for people there dates later than 12,000 years ago, well after the climax of the last major glacial advance but while glaciers still covered much of Arctic Canada. Artifacts of 11,500 to 9,000 years ago are known from a number of Alaskan sites, where hunters of caribou (and, in one case, of an extinct form of bison) manufactured blades.
Betovo: CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: A Middle Palaeolithic site near Bryansk, Russia with artifacts (denticulates) and faunal remains (snow lemming) that indicate a cold interval such as early in the last glacial.
Bilzingsleben: CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: A travertine site in Germany at which Middle Pleistocene specimens of skull fragments and teeth show resemblances to Homo erectus. Excavations have turned up thousands of stone tools of a Lower Palaeolithic Clactonian-type culture. An interglacial environment is indicated with a date in the penultimate or Holstein interglacial, perhaps some 250,000-350,000 years ago.
Birrigai: CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: A rock shelter in the highlands of the Australian Capital Territory with occupation in the last glacial maximum, starting c 2100 bp.
bison: CATEGORY: fauna
DEFINITION: The name of two species of wild oxen, the European bison or wisent and the American bison or buffalo. Only a small number of European bison now exist, bred from zoo specimens, and in a protected state in forest of Lithuania. Two further species, now extinct, inhabited Europe and Great Britain for much of the Quaternary period. The great steppe wisent was present during both interglacials and cold period. The smaller wood wisent, was only present in Europe during interglacials. Sometimes these animals are called aurochs. In North America, a number of species preceded today's bison. One species, popularly called 'buffalo', formerly roamed in vast herds over the interior of the continent, mainly in the Rocky Mountains.
Bluefish Caves: CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: Caves discovered in 1975 in the northern Yukon, Canada, which may be the oldest archaeological site in North America. There are deposits of the late glacial period and some artifacts associated with woolly mammoth, Dall sheep, reindeer, and other vertebrates. The radiocarbon dates of bone fragments range from 25,000-12,000 bp. Evidence of human occupation is from at least 13,000-10,000 bp. There was a wedge-shaped microcore, microblades, and burins similar to those from Siberia of the same time. The lowest levels of 20,000 bp have debitage flakes and large numbers of cut and butchered animal bones.
Bockstein: CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: A series of cave sites in Germany with artifacts and faunal remains of the Middle and Upper Palaeolithic. Many Micoquian-style chert bifaces dated to the end of the last interglacial, plus Bockstein knives.
Bohunice: CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: A Middle Palaeolithic site in Moravia, Czechoslovakia. There are artifacts -- sidescrapers, denticulates, burins, and laurel-leaf points -- and some faunal remains that date to the early cold maximum of the last glacial.
boulder clay: CATEGORY: geology
DEFINITION: A clayey deposit of the Ice Age which contains boulders. Also, the clay of the Glacial or Drift period.
brown earth: SYNONYM: brown forest soil, brown earths
CATEGORY: geology
DEFINITION: Brown forest soils that result from prolonged forestal conditions and which develops under mature deciduous woodland. Brown earths are thought to have covered most of the British Isles and temperate Europe under the great forests which existed during the middle of the present Interglacial. The soil type is penetrated by tree roots and actively worked by earthworms to a considerable depth. The top is well-mixed mineral material and humus. As a result of woodland cover being removed repeatedly, these soils are rare today.
Byzovaya: CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: An Upper Palaeolithic site in Russia, the northernmost Palaeolithic site in Europe (65?) and probably occupied before the last glacial maximum (before 25,000 bp).
Capsian and Capsian Neolithic: SYNONYM: 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.
Charentian: CATEGORY: culture
DEFINITION: A Mousterian (Middle Palaeolithic) culture of at least two types, Quina and Ferrassie, of the Charente region of France. Dominance racloirs (side scrapers), Quina retouch, and handaxes have been found. The Charentian seems to originate in the penultimate glacial period, and has a distribution across Europe and Russia.
Chivateros: CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: A stratified, ancient quarry/workshop site just north of Lima, Peru -- an area of coastal lomas (areas of fog vegetation). Excavations revealed a lithic flake industry as early as the Late Pleistocene, dating between 9,000 to 11,000 years ago. Wood fragments helped define a Chivateros I period of c 9500-8000 BC. There is also a red zone with some flint chips which, by comparison of artifacts of the nearby Oquendo workshop date to pre-10,500 BC. The whole industry is characterized by burins and bifaces with the upper-level (Chinateros II) containing long, keeled, leaf-shaped projectile points which resemble points from both Lauricocha II and El Jobo. Dating has been aided by the deposition of both loess and salt crust layers which suggest alternating dryness and humidity and which can be synchronized with glacial activity in the Northern Hemisphere.
Chulmun: CATEGORY: culture
DEFINITION: A post-glacial hunter-gatherer and agricultural culture of the Korean peninsula, from the 7th-2nd millennia BC, who produced a Neolithic textured-surface pottery (Chulmun 'comb-patterned'). They began to cultivate millet by the end of the period and the pottery was succeeded by Mumun pottery. Shortly thereafter, rice was introduced. Chulmun sites are Amsadong, Tongsamdong, and Osan-Ri.
Clactonian: CATEGORY: culture
DEFINITION: An early flake-tool culture of Europe, dating from the early Mindel-Riss (Great Interglacial) of the Pleistocene epoch, which occurred from 1,600,000 to 10,000 years ago. It was named after discoveries at Clacton-on-Sea, Essex, England. A kind of concave scraper, perhaps used to smooth and shape wooden spears, is typical of the Clactonian industry. Apart from the tip of a wooden spear, the artifacts consisted of trimmed flint flakes and chipped pebbles, some of which can be classified as chopper tools. Handaxes were absent. The Clactonian seems therefore to have coexisted with Early Acheulian. Some believe that the two industries are quite distinct, while others maintain that both assemblages might have been made by the same people, and that the Clactonian could in theory be an Acheulian industry from which handaxes were absent because such tools were not needed for the jobs carried out at a particular site. Clactonian and related industries are distributed throughout the north European plain, and Clactonian tools are similar in appearance to those produced in the Soan industry of Pakistan and in several sites in eastern and southern Africa. The Tayacian industry of France and Israel is believed to be a smaller edition of the Clactonian.
clay: CATEGORY: geology
DEFINITION: Soil particles of less than 0.005 millimeters in diameter or rock composed mainly of clay particles. There are ceramic clays, clay shales, mudstones, glacial clays, deep-sea clays, and soils -- which are plastic when wet and hard when dry. No other natural material has so wide an importance or such extended uses as does clay. The use of clay in potterymaking antedates recorded human history, and pottery remains provide a record of past civilizations. As building materials, bricks (baked and as adobe) have been used in construction since earliest time.
correlation: CATEGORY: technique
DEFINITION: The use of various methods, often multiple methods, to demonstrate the equivalency of stratigraphic units. This term refers to the relation of one stratigraphical unit to another, by petrological, osteological, lithographic, cultural, chronological, or palaeontological means. For example, stratigraphic units may be correlated using palaeontological criteria, absolute dating methods, relative dating methods, cross-dating methods, and position relative to the glacial-interglacial cycle by examining physical and biological attributes. Correlation of fossil inclusions is a principle of stratigraphy: that strata may be correlated based on the sequence and uniqueness of their floral and faunal content.
cover sand: SYNONYM: coversand, blow sand
CATEGORY: geology
DEFINITION: A deposit or sediment of wind-blown sand which is formed by the carrying of sand grains from glacial outwash deposits or from the shore by wind gusts. In areas where this occurs, the deposits may wipe out evidence of previous occupation -- but they may also preserve artifact associations if the deposition is thick and rapid. If it happens slowly, the archaeological material may eventually end up several kilometers from its source.
Cromerian: CATEGORY: chronology
DEFINITION: An Interglacial Stage of northern Europe correlated with the Günz-Mindel Interglacial, part of the series of interglacials recognized in Britain: the Pastonian (oldest), Beestonian, and Cromerian. The Cromerian stage is a group of Interglacial deposits of the Quaternary system which are stratified under Anglian glacial deposits and above an extensive sequence of earlier Quaternary deposits. The type site of the stage is at West Runton, Norfolk. In northwest Europe, a group of deposits representing several interglacials and intervening cold stages, and these deposits are stratified below Elster glacial deposits and above a sequence extending back into the Pliocene.
Dapengeng: SYNONYM: 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.
deep sea cores: SYNONYM: deep sea core dating, deep-sea cores
CATEGORY: technique
DEFINITION: A technique used in the analysis of data from oceanic sediments in which the material retrieved by the core yields information on temperature changes in the ocean through time. These changes, suggestive of climatic variation, help to chart the progress of glaciation and, since they can be dated, the technique assists in the establishment of a chronology for the Quaternary. The cores, some 5 cm. in diameter and up to 25 m. deep, are extracted from the ocean floor. The sediments they contain have a high percentage of calcium carbonate content made up of the shells of small marine organisms and these sediments build up very slowly, from 10-50 mm per 1000 years, but their sequence is uninterrupted. Since these organisms have different temperature preferences depending on species, the relative abundance of the various species changes as the temperature alters. Variations in the ratio of two oxygen isotopes in the calcium carbonate of these shells give a sensitive indicator of sea temperature at the time the organisms were alive. Through the identification of the species, and by the use of oxygen isotope analysis, a picture can be built up of variations in temperature over the millennia. Since various forms of dating (radiocarbon dating, ionium dating, uranium series dating, palaeomagnetism, protactinium/ionium dating) can be used on the carbonate in the shells, absolute dates can be given to the different levels in the core. Thus dates emerge for glaciations and interglacial periods, which can assist in the age determination of archaeological material found in association with these glacial phases. Problems with the technique are the difficulty of correlating oceanic temperature changes with continental glacial and interglacial phases, and the disturbance by animals living on the ocean bottom. The piston corer was developed in 1947.
Denekamp Interstadial: CATEGORY: chronology
DEFINITION: A warm period during the Middle pleniglacial phase of the last (Weichselian) glaciation (cold stage) in Europe. It is dated to around 28,000 BC (30,000 bp).
Devensian: SYNONYM: Weichselian, Devensian glaciation, Weichsel glaciation
CATEGORY: geology
DEFINITION: The final continental glacial advance, dating to c 115,000-10,000 BP, especially referring to a group of British deposits, stratified above Ipswichian Interglacial deposits. Much of northern England, Scotland, and Wales is covered by a blanket of Devensian tills, sands, and gravels and these sediments were deposited by the ice-sheet. South of the ice-sheet margin is a series of related pro-glacial and periglacial deposits. Most of the Devensian stage can be dated using radiocarbon, and by this means it has been correlated with the Weichselian in northwest Europe and the Wisconsin in North America. All these formations represent one cold stage and directly preceded our present period of predominantly warm climate (the Flandrian or Holocene). Not all of the Devensian deposits are strictly glacial; some contain abundant fossils which indicate warmer interstadial periods. Three interstadials have been defined in Britain: the Chelford Interstadial (c 61,000 bp); the Upton Warren Interstadial complex (45-25,000 bp), and the Windermere Interstadial (13-11,000 bp). Levallosian, Mousterian, and Upper Palaeolithic artifacts are found in Devensian deposits and bones of Homo Sapiens have been found in Devensian cave sediments.
diamicton: SYNONYM: diamict
CATEGORY: geology
DEFINITION: A sediment or soil texture larger than sand-sized clasts. It is a matrix of sand, silt, and clay and are glacial debris-flow and colluvial deposits.
Dolní Vestonice: CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: An Upper Palaeolithic camping site in southern Moravia of the mammoth hunters of loess country. Excavation has revealed various phases of occupation, represented by houses, hearths, flint tools (burins, scrapers, backed blades), ornaments of mammoth ivory, animal figurines of baked clay, Venus figurines, faunal and human remains. The main occupation level dates from 25,000 BP, the beginning of the last glacial maximum (the end of an interstadial period). The culture has been called Pavlovian or eastern Gravettian.
drift: CATEGORY: geology
DEFINITION: Any debris transported or deposited by or from glacial ice and meltwater; a glacial deposit laid down by ice or water in glacial streams, lakes, or arctic oceans. The term 'drift' remains in common usage and includes alluvium, pro-glacial deposits, till, and ice-contact stratified drift.
Dryas: CATEGORY: chronology
DEFINITION: A series of cold climatic phases in northwestern Europe, during a time when the North Atlantic was in almost full glacial condition. Dryas I was c 16,000/14,000 BP, Dryas II (Older Dryas) was c 12,300-11,800 bp, and Dryas III (Younger Dryas) was c 11,000-10,000 bp. It is named after a tundra plant. . The increasing temperature after the late Dryas period during the Pre-Boreal and the Boreal (c 8000-5500 BC, according to radiocarbon dating) caused a remarkable change in late glacial flora and fauna.
Dzierzyslaw: CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: An Upper Palaeolithic site in Poland with an assemblage of scrapers and laurel-leaf points of the Szeletian and probably dating to the middle of the last glacial period.
Eastern Gravettian: CATEGORY: culture
DEFINITION: An Upper Palaeolithic industry across central and eastern Europe during the last glacial maximum, c 30,000-20,000 BP. Assemblages include shouldered points, backed blades, and some Venus figurines.
Ebbsfleet: CATEGORY: site; artifact
DEFINITION: A small valley in southern England with an important series of loams and gravels spanning the last two glacial periods and intervening interglacial. Stone tools included Levallois flakes, but only a few hand axes and other tool types were found. The area has also given its name to a decorated pottery style of the Neolithic period. The first Jutes, Hengist and Horsa, landed at Ebbsfleet in the Isle of Thanet in 449 AD.
Ehringsdorf: CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: A Middle Pleistocene site in eastern Germany near Weimar. A badly broken skull and other human remains have been found with stone tools resembling the Mousterian. The fossil man is of generalized Neanderthal type and the artifacts include scrapers, points, and bifaces which were typical of the Middle Palaeolithic. Often ascribed to the last interglacial (about 120,000 years ago), the remains have also been dated by the uranium series method to about 225,000 years ago.
elephant: CATEGORY: fauna
DEFINITION: Either of two species of the family Elephantidae, characterized by their large size, huge head, columnar legs, and large ears. The Indian elephant was regularly employed for show and war as early as the Bronze Age in China. Wild herds survived in the Near East into the 1st millennium BC, when they were hunted to extinction for their ivory, and in North Africa, where they supplied Hannibal with his war elephants. Forms now extinct, especially the mammoth, were an important source of food in the Palaeolithic period, and are portrayed in cave art. Living elephants are now confined to Africa. The African elephant formerly occupied a far larger area, as is attested by skeletal evidence and cave paintings in North Africa. The reduction in its range is probably due to the combined effects of climatic change, human hunting, and cattle-grazing. The straight-tusked elephant, Elephas antiquus, apparently adapted to the open deciduous woodlands of interglacials in Europe, but became extinct at the end of the Ipswichian interglacial. Dwarf forms of the straight-tusked elephant evolved on islands of the Mediterranean.
Elster/Elsterian: CATEGORY: chronology
DEFINITION: A North European Middle Pleistocene cold stage with at least one glacial advance. It began c 450,000-400,000 BP and ended c 300,000 BP with the Holsteinian Interglacial. The British equivalent is the Anglian cold stage; the Alpine is the Mindel and the North American equivalent is the Kansas.
Epigravettian: SYNONYM: Epi-Gravettian
CATEGORY: culture
DEFINITION: The late glacial industries of Italy from 20,000-8000 bp, which evolved into the Mesolithic. It is divided into early (20,000-16,000 bp), evolved (16,000-14,000 bp), and final (14,000-8,000 bp) phases. Epigravettian was followed by the Sauveterrian and Castelnovian in the 7th millennium BC. Epigravettian cultures developed contemporaneously in various parts of Europe, notably the Creswellian in Britain.
Erd: CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: A Middle Palaeolithic Mousterian site in Hungary. The faunal remains suggest that it was occupied prior to the last glacial and the tools are mainly scrapers.
eustasy: SYNONYM: adj. eustatic
CATEGORY: geology
DEFINITION: Changes in sea level on a global basis, usually as the result of a major event such as the end of a glaciation. In such a case a eustatic rise due to the melting of the glaciers can be expected in a post-glacial period. These sea-level movements can be independent of any change in the height of the land, but isostasy can happen contemporaneously as a result of the same phenomenon. This worldwide alteration in sea level is independent of any isostatic movement of the land. At the end of a glaciation melting of the water previously held in the ice sheets raises sea levels (eustatic rise), and a high level can often be correlated with an interglacial period or with the postglacial phase. Such fluctuations have occurred throughout the Quaternary, due to changes in the extent of ice sheets and thus in the volume of water locked up as ice. The larger the ice sheets, the less water available to the sea, and so sea level is lower during glacials than during interglacials. Evidence exists for a whole series of eustatic sea level fluctuations, but the most widespread is the 'high stand' in c 120,000 bp, just before the start of the last cold stage, when sea levels were between 2-10 meters higher than at the present day. During the maximum extent of the ice-sheets of the last cold stage, eustatic sea level was much lower than that of today. Large areas of continental shelf were exposed, some being occupied by the ice sheets themselves. Recovery of sea level at the end of the last cold stage is relatively well known from deposits in the Netherlands, Scandinavia, and Scotland, but is complicated by isostatic changes. The North Sea and English Channel flooded, separating Britain from the Continent, by about 7000 bp. Ireland became a separate island at about the same time. Scandinavia had a complicated series of different seas and lakes, until a sea similar to today's Baltic became established around 7000 bp. The main factors that influence sea level are global ice volumes, plate tectonics, changes in ocean volumes and dimensions, and the movement of mantle material.
Federmesser: CATEGORY: lithics
DEFINITION: A small backed blade, about the size and shape of penknife blades, which were the most distinctive artifacts of the Final Glacial peoples of the north European plain during the Allerød Oscillation (c 9850-8850 BC). Similar bladelets occur in the related Creswellian culture of Britain and the blades are very similar to the Azilian point. They are backed blades tapering to a point, and were probably used as arrowheads. They tend to have curved or angled backs unlike the earlier Gravette points.
fire: CATEGORY: term
DEFINITION: The natural product of combustion, seen in the form of flame and smoke. The use of fire was a major landmark in man's adaptation to the cooler environment of the earth; it is often considered the single most important discovery by early man. Man probably knew how to make fire between 500,000-800,000 years ago in Europe or Asia. The ability to make fire efficiently and at will rather than merely catching it from natural sources may date from less than 200,000 years ago. Fire is first found on occupation sites of the Lower Palaeolithic period, approximately half a million years ago, although true hearths do not become typical until the penultimate glacial period, perhaps 200,000 years ago. Hearths and thick deposits of burnt material are typical of the last glacial period, by which time it is likely that the two main methods of making fire (the friction method of rubbing or rotating sticks to generate heat and the percussion method of striking sparks with iron and flint) were both in use.
Flandrian: CATEGORY: chronology
DEFINITION: Of or pertaining to the period since the retreat of the ice sheet and the rise of sea-level at the end of the last glaciation in northwestern Europe. The Flandrian can be dated by radiocarbon and ranges from 10,000 bp (the end of the Devensian) up to the present day. These deposits represent the latest Quaternary interglacial stage, equivalent to the Holocene epoch. The Flandrian includes sediments similar to those of previous interglacials, deposits on archaeological sites which contain Mesolithic, Neolithic, Bronze Age, Iron Age, Roman, Dark Age, medieval, and more recent artifacts.
Fontéchevade: CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: A French cave site in the Charente region, dated to the Riss glaciation. It has fragments of a human skull in association with chopping tools of Tayacian or Clactonian character dating from the Riss or Riss-Würm Interglacial period. The Fontéchevade skull has been classified as pre- or early Neanderthal. The upper levels are Middle and Upper Palaeolithic material.
Günz/Mindel: CATEGORY: chronology
DEFINITION: A major division of Pleistocene time and deposits in the Alpine region of Europe and one of the divisions of the geological system that recognized the number of Pleistocene glaciations. The Günz-Mindel Interglacial preceded the Mindel Glacial Stage and followed the Günz Glacial Stage and was a time of relatively moderate climatic conditions between two periods of glacial advance. The Günz-Mindel Interglacial is correlated with the Cromerian Interglacial Stage of northern Europe and the series of interglacials recognized in Britain: the Pastonian (oldest), Beestonian, and Cromerian. The Günz-Mindel Interglacial is also broadly equivalent to the Aftonian Interglacial Stage of North America.
geochronology: SYNONYM: geological dating
CATEGORY: technique; related field
DEFINITION: The study of earth history by correlating archaeological events to the timing and sequencing of geological events. Specifically, it is the dating of archaeological data in association with a geological deposit or formation, such as the dating of Pleistocene human remains in the context of glacial advances and retreats. The term is applied to all absolute and relative dating methods that involve the earth's physical changes, like radiocarbon dating, dendrochronology, archaeomagnetism, fluorine testing, obsidian dating, potassium-argon dating, thermoluminescence, and varve dating.
Gubs Shelter: CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: A Palaeolithic rock shelter in the northern Caucasus of European Russia. A Middle Palaeolithic assemblage contained sidescrapers. Upper Palaeolithic layers have end scrapers and backed blades. The sequence probably dates to the last glacial.
Hengelo interstadial: CATEGORY: chronology
DEFINITION: A Continental Middle Pleniglacial interstadial of the Weichselian cold stage, starting around 39,000 BP. It occurred during the final glaciation between the Moershooft and Denekamp interstadials.
Hoxnian: CATEGORY: chronology
DEFINITION: An interglacial stage of Great Britain that is correlated with the Needian Interglacial of the Netherlands, the Holstein Interglacial of northern Europe, the Mindel-Riss Interglacial of classical Alpine Europe, and is also considered to be approximately contemporaneous with the Yarmouth Interglacial of North America. It is named after the site of Hoxne where deposits are older than the extreme range of radiocarbon dating (70,000 bp). Some Hoxnian deposits are stratified above Anglian Glacial deposits, others below Wolstonian glacial deposits. Acheulian and Clactonian artifacts are found in Hoxnian deposits. In addition, parts of hominid skull have been found in Hoxnian gravels at Swanscombe.
Ibero-Maurusian: SYNONYM: Iberomaurusian; Mouillian; Oranian
CATEGORY: culture
DEFINITION: A stone tool culture characterized by small backed bladelets and found across the North African coast from at least 22,000-10,000 years ago (the late Würm (last) glacial period). It followed the Aterian in the Epipalaeolithic of Maghreb in North Africa and preceded the Capsian. The culture was related to Cro-Magnon, a group of people known as the Mechta-el-Arbi race, living along the Mediterranean from Tunisia to Morocco and also Libya. Linked to the sea, there are huge shell mounds of mussels, oysters, and arca. Associated with these are pottery and limited stone tool industry, in conjunction with hearths, sometimes still marked by supporting stones. Extensive cemeteries have been investigated, as at Taforalt, and also at Afalou bou Rhummel and Columnata in Algeria. Burials were sometimes decorated with ochre or accompanied by food remains or by horns of wild cattle. The industry does bear a close resemblance to the late Magdalenian culture in Spain, which is broadly contemporary (c 15,000 BC). There is evidence suggesting that the Ibero-Maurusian industry is derived from a Nile River valley culture known as Halfan, which dates from c 17,000 BC.
ice wedge: SYNONYM: ice-wedge; foliated ground ice
CATEGORY: geology
DEFINITION: Large masses of ice growing in thermal contraction cracks in permafrost. In periglacial conditions, alternating freeze and thaw can lead to the formation of vertical, narrow, and deep wedges of ice in gravels. After melting, these tend to fill with sediment, forming a cast of the ice wedge seen as dark bands, easily confused with manmade features, in aerial photographs. Casts of fossil ice wedges are one of the few true indicators of former permafrost conditions. Fossil ice-wedges of this kind are seen in many sections of sand and gravel deposits in Europe. They have been used to reconstruct the extent of the periglacial zone which developed around the Devensian and Weichselian ice-sheets.
ice-free corridor: CATEGORY: geology
DEFINITION: An area that was never glaciated, located between the Cordilleran and Laurentide glacial systems in North America. The corridor runs down the eastern slope of the Rockies. It provided access to the continent's interior at the end of the Pleistocene.
Illinoian: CATEGORY: chronology
DEFINITION: A glacial stage of the Quaternary in North America, followed by the Sangamon Interglacial and following the Yarmouth. The Illinoian ice sheet covered a small area of southeastern and extreme eastern Iowa, and in so doing it diverted the Mississippi River and created a valley along its western front that can still be seen. It consists mainly of tills, the products of large ice-sheets, and has been split up into three sub-stages, the Liman, Monican, and Jubileean. It is unclear how many cold stages the Illinoian deposits represent, but it may be more than one. The Illinoian Glacial Stage ended with a cool, moist period that gradually became drier and then warmer. The Illinoian has never been dated satisfactorily but it is roughly contemporary with the Riss and Saale Glacial Periods.
interstadial: CATEGORY: chronology
DEFINITION: A brief period of milder climate within a longer, cooler glacial period (between two cold periods during a major glaciation). Although it is similar to an interglacial period, it is too cold or too short to allow for growth of vegetation. Examples are the Devensian, Weichselian, and Wisconsin.
involution: CATEGORY: geology
DEFINITION: A structure that develops within the active layer of the Periglacial (permafrost) zone. Cryoturbation (seasonal freezing) causes movement within the layer and sorting of its component materials. Involutions help to define the area of ancient periglacial zones but their action can cause disturbance or mixing of archaeological deposits. Involutions may also be confused with archaeological features.
Ipswichian: SYNONYM: Eemian
CATEGORY: chronology
DEFINITION: The last interglacial of Britain, equivalent to the Eemian Interglacial of North Europe, with its type site at Bobbit's Hole, Ipswich. The Alpine equivalent is the Riss-Würm and the Sangamon in the North America equivalent. The deposits indicate warm conditions with evidence of vertebrate fossils. One radiocarbon date of 174,000 @ 30,000 bp has been found. Levalloisian and Mousterian artifacts are found in Ipswichian deposits.
Jabrud: SYNONYM: Yabrud
CATEGORY: site; culture
DEFINITION: A site of three rock shelters in Syria, each with long series of Palaeolithic industries, as well as some Natufian and Neolithic material. Jabrud is the type site of the Jabrudian industry, which is broadly contemporary with the Amudian and Late Acheulian of the Middle East. The Jabrudian is distinguished by well-made, thick side scrapers of Mousterian type and some bifacial blades similar to those of the Amudian as well as hand axes. At Jabrud the industry bears a strong resemblance to some Mousterian industries from France. The dating probably falls within the Riss-Würm interglacial or the first Würm interstadial. It marks one of the ways in which the transition from Lower Palaeolithic to Middle Palaeolithic cultures occurred in the Levant, about 150,000 BP, a kind of final Acheulian.
Jomon: SYNONYM: Jomon Period
CATEGORY: culture; chronology
DEFINITION: The earliest major postglacial culture of hunting and gathering in Japan, 10,000-300 BC, divided into six phases. This early culture, its relics surviving in shell mounds of kitchen midden type around the coasts of the Japanese islands, had pottery but no metal. The pottery was heavy but elaborate, especially in the modeling of its castellated rims. The term Jomon means 'cord marked', indicating the characteristic decoration of the pottery with cord-pattern impressions or reliefs. One of the earliest dates in the world for pottery making has been established as c 12,700 BC in Fukin Cave, Kyshu. Other artifacts, of stone and bone, were simple. Light huts, round or rectangular, have been identified. Burials were by inhumation, crouched or extended. The Jomon was succeeded by the Yayoi period. There are over 10,000 Jomon sites divided into the six phases: Incipient (10,000-7500 BC), Earliest (7500-5000 BC), Early (5000-3500 BC), Middle (3500-2500/2000 BC), Late (2500/2000-1000 BC), and Final (1000-300 BC). Widespread trading networks and ritual development took place in the Middle Jomon. Rice agriculture was adopted during the last millennium BC. The origins of Jomon culture remain uncertain, although similarities with early cultures of northeast Asia and even America are often cited.
Königsaue: CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: Middle Palaeolithic site by Halle, Germany, dating to the Early Glacial. There were sidescrapers and small handaxes.
Ketrosy: CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: Middle Palaeolithic site on the Dnestr River, Ukraine, dating to an interstadial preceding the early cold maximum of the last Glacial. There are sidescrapers and denticulates among the tools.
Kiskevély: CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: Cave site near Budapest, Hungary, with Middle Palaeolithic tools of the Last Glacial Gravettian as well as Neolithic remains.
Kokkinopilos: CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: A series of Palaeolithic sites on the Louros River in northern Greece. There are artifacts dating to the early Last Glacial, Middle Palaeolithic artifacts including Levallois cores, sidescrapers, and bifacial foliates. A surface collection of Mousterian types has also been found.
Korman' IV: CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: Palaeolithic and Mesolithic site on the Dnestr River in the Ukraine with 16 occupation levels. The Middle Palaeolithic levels seem to date to warm intervals during the Last Glacial. Upper Palaeolithic levels are radiocarbon-dated to 30,000-10,000 bp.
Kraków-Zwierzyniec: CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: Palaeolithic site in Kraków, Poland including Middle Palaeolithic assemblages of the Last Interglacial and subsequent cooler periods. The Upper Palaeolithic assemblages of the Aurignacian date to the Interstadial preceding the Last Glacial Maximum.
Krapina Cave: CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: Middle Palaeolithic site north of Zagreb, Croatia, dating to around the Last Interglacial. The industry was dominated by sidescrapers. Over 650 skeletal fragments of archaic Homo sapiens have been found. These comprise the skeletal fossils of at least 13 adults and children and are estimated to derive from the early last glacial period, about 40,000 to 75,000 years ago. They are identified as being transitional from Neanderthal to modern man. The evidence suggests cannibalism or funerary ritual.
Krasnyj Yar: CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: Upper Palaeolithic site in south-central Siberia, occupied from around the Last Glacial Maximum of 25,000-14,000 bp. The artifacts include wedge-shaped microcores, microblades, points, and endscrapers.
Kulichivka: CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: Upper Palaeolithic site near Kremenets, western Ukraine, the lowest level dating to the Interstadial before the Last Glacial Maximum with tools of the Middle and Upper Palaeolithic. The Upper Palaeolithic Level dates to 25,000-10,000 bp.
Kulna Cave: CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: Cave site in Moravia, Czechoslovakia with lower levels of the Last Interglacial and Early Glacial with a Middle Palaeolithic industry. The Middle Palaeolithic industry probably dates to the early Last Glacial. There are also Late Upper Palaeolithic / Magdalenian, Neolithic, Iron Age, and newer remains.
Langmannersdorf: CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: Upper Palaeolithic site in Austria with layers dating to the Last Glacial Maximum, c 20,580-20,260 bp. The Aurignacian assemblage has burins and endscrapers.
Laurentide: SYNONYM: Laurentide ice sheet
CATEGORY: chronology
DEFINITION: The ice mass that covered most of Canada and parts of the United States, including the Great Lakes area and northern New England, during the Pleistocene Epoch. It originated in northeastern Canada during the Wisconsin Glacial and then spread south and west. At its maximum extent, about 20,000 years ago, it was connected with the Cordilleran ice sheet to the west and covered an area of more than 13,000,000 square km (5,000,000 sq. MI). In some areas its thickness reached 2,400-3,000 m (8,000-10,000 ft). The system began to recede about 14,000 BP.
Le Lazaret: SYNONYM: Lazaret
CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: A cave site on the coast close to Nice, France, with deposits from before the last Interglacial, with Acheulian tools and interspersed beach deposits. Human remains of two children and one adult are known, and it has been claimed that large huts were constructed inside the cave. The assemblage is dated to Riss III and includes pointed bifaces and choppers.
Lehringen: CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: A Middle Palaeolithic site near Bremen in north Germany (Lower Saxony), where organic muds revealed a pollen diagram of the last Interglacial. In these muds, a yew wood spear broken into several pieces was found. It passed between the ribs of the skeleton of an Elephant of Elephas antiquus type. The tip was finely shaved to a point and fire-hardened; the spear was evidently used for thrusting.
Levalloisian: SYNONYM: Levallois; Levalloisian flake technique
CATEGORY: culture; lithics
DEFINITION: Pertaining to the Levallois technique or describing tools made by this method of producing flint flakes from a prepared core. It is also the name of the middle Paleolithic culture or industry of the second Interglacial in France, characterized by the introduction and refinement of flake tools. The name is derived from Levallois-Perret, a town near Paris, where such artifacts were first discovered.
Loch Lomond stadial: SYNONYM: Younger Dryas
CATEGORY: chronology
DEFINITION: A widespread but short interval of renewed glacial activity and cold climatic conditions in the British Isles. This event occurred about 11,000 years ago, some 2,000 years before the dissipation of the ice sheet. It is a stadial of the Devensian cold stage during which small glaciers were formed in the high mountains of Wales and the Lake District and an icecap was formed over the highlands of Scotland. The Loch Lomond stadial may be correlated with Godwin's Pollen Zone III and the Younger Dryas (Scandinavia).
loess: CATEGORY: geology
DEFINITION: A wind-borne rock dust (very fine sediments, silt) carried from outwash deposits and moraines and laid down as a thick stratum during periglacial conditions in the steppe country surrounding the ice sheets. Wind erosion was widespread in the periglacial zone that surrounded the large Quaternary ice sheets. Material was picked up by the wind from the large expanses of proglacial deposits at the ice sheet margins. Because of its exceptional fertility, areas of loess were chosen for settlement by early agriculturists. In central and eastern Europe, as well as Asia and North America, there are notable concentrations of sites on loess. It provided good grazing for the animals on which Palaeolithic man fed, was rich in nutrients for plants, and was later settled by Neolithic farmers who found it easy to till with primitive equipment. It is an essentially unconsolidated, unstratified calcareous silt; commonly it is homogeneous, permeable, and buff to gray in color, and contains calcareous concretions and fossils. Loess is important archaeologically as soil erosion in these regions during the Holocene caused substantial redeposition of this silt, often burying (deeply) and preserving archaeological sites. In semiarid regions people such as the Pueblo Indians made houses and fortresslike closed edifices from loess-based adobe.
Magdalenian: SYNONYM: 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.
Makarovo: CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: Four Upper Palaeolithic sites on the Lena River in south-central Siberia. Makarovo II dates between c 11,400-11,950 bp and contains microblades. Makarovo III's assemblage includes sidescrapers, endscrapers, and choppers. Makarovo IV has points, sidescrapers, and endscrapers believed to predate the Last Glacial Maximum.
Mal'ta: CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: Upper Palaeolithic and Mesolithic site in south-central Siberia. There are traces of a dwelling and a burial of a young person of possibly mongoloid affinities, as well as several art objects. The Upper Palaeolithic level is dated to the beginning of the last glacial maximum, c 24,000-23,000 bp. The artifacts include prismatic cores, retouched blades, and end scrapers.
Malaya Sya: CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: Upper Palaeolithic site in western Siberia on the Belyj Iyus River with artifacts and faunal remains dating from 34,500-20,370 bp, predating the Last Glacial Maximum. Artifacts include large retouched blades and endscrapers.
Mamutowa: CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: Palaeolithic cave site in southern Poland on the Kluczwoda River. Middle Palaeolithic artifacts include sidescrapers and the early Upper Palaeolithic industries were Aurignacian and Jerzmanowician, probably dating to the interstadial before the Last Glacial Maximum. In the upper layers are Gravettian artifacts from the Last Glacial Maximum.
Markleeberg: CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: Lower Palaeolithic site outside Leipzig, Germany, where gravel pits have gravels earlier than the Saale ice maximum advance in the region. They contain a cold-indicating fauna of early penultimate glacial date and numerous stone artifacts, especially Levallois flakes, sidescrapers, and handaxes. Artifacts and faunal remains are buried in the riverine gravels, probably deposited during the late Middle Pleistocene.
Mauer jaw: SYNONYM: Heidelberg jaw
CATEGORY: fauna
DEFINITION: A large broken lower jaw of Homo erectus or pre-Neanderthaler type found in the Mauer sands near Heidelberg, Germany. It is dated to either the Mindel Glaciation or the Günz-Mindel Interglacial -- probably the latter. No tools were recovered from the stratum, but there was associated fauna (elephant, rhinoceros, bear, horse, saber-toothed cat). Although it dates from perhaps 400,000 years ago, it is not very different from the Neanderthals of c 50,000 years ago.
medithermal: CATEGORY: chronology
DEFINITION: The last of the divisions of the Neothermal (postglacial) period, dating from about 4,000 years ago to present.
Meiendorf: CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: A site close to Hamburg, northern Germany, in a glacial 'tunnel valley', with late glacial occupation in peat deposits, with numerous remains of reindeer and stone and bone tools of Hamburgian type. The Hamburgian was Late Upper Palaeolithic, c 13,000-11,750 BP.
Mesolithic: SYNONYM: mesolithic, Epipaleolithic, Middle Stone Age
CATEGORY: chronology
DEFINITION: A time period in human history beginning with the retreat of glacial ice c 8500 BC and the changing climatic conditions following it; a development in northwestern Europe that lasted until about 2700 BC. This Middle Stone Age followed the Upper Paleolithic and preceded the Neolithic. It was a period of transition in the early Holocene between the hunter-gatherer existence and the development of farming and pottery production. Glacial flora and fauna were replaced by modern forms and the flint industries are often distinguished by an abundance of microliths. The equipment was designed for fishing and fowling as well as hunting and often included many tiny flints, or microliths, that were set in wooden shafts and hafts, and stone axes or adzes used for woodworking. Forests grew in Europe and people modified their lives accordingly. In the Near East, which remained free of ice sheets, climatic change was less significant than in northern Europe and agriculture was practiced soon after the close of the Pleistocene. In this area the Mesolithic period was short and poorly differentiated. In Britain the Mesolithic-Neolithic transition did not come until around 4000 BC. The dog was domesticated during the Mesolithic. The term is used widely only in European prehistory.
Middle Paleolithic: CATEGORY: chronology
DEFINITION: The intermediate part of the Paleolithic period, from about 100,000 years ago to about 35,000 years ago. It was characterized by the development of a variety of stone tools and the first symbolic use of artifacts and sites. It ended with the extinction of the Neanderthals. The Middle Paleolithic is equivalent to the Middle Stone Age in sub-Saharan Africa. The Middle Paleolithic comprises the Mousterian, a portion of the Levalloisian, and the Tayacian, all of which are complexes based on the production of flakes, although the hand-ax tradition survived in many instances. Middle Paleolithic assemblages first appear in deposits of the third interglacial and persist during the first major oscillation of the Fourth Glacial (Würm) stage. Associated with the Tayacian, in which the artifacts consist of very crude flakes, remains of modern man (Homo sapiens) have been found. Mousterian man, on the other hand, is of the Neanderthal race. It is in the Mousterian levels of the caves and rock shelters of central and southern France that the earliest evidence of the use of fire and the first definite burials have been discovered in western Europe. The artifacts consist of (1) the prepared striking-platform-tortoise-core (Levalloisian) tradition; (2) the plain striking-platform-discoidal-core technique of Clactonian tradition; and (3) a persistence of the bifacial core tool, or Acheulean tradition.
Mindel-Riss: SYNONYM: Mindel/Riss
CATEGORY: chronology
DEFINITION: The interglacial stage that followed the Mindel Glacial Stage, a separation between the Mindel and Riss glacials in Alpine Europe.
Molodova: CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: A group of Palaeolithic and Mesolithic sites on the Dnestr River in western Ukraine -- with Moldova V consisting of 12+ archaeological levels spanning from c 45,000-7000 BC according to radiocarbon evidence. The occupation was not continuous. There are many Middle Palaeolithic artifacts and associated faunal remains and most of the levels date to the interstadials before the beginning of the Last Glacial. Upper Palaeolithic assemblages have a large number of burins. The sites provide a complete dated sequence of Upper Palaeolithic occupation in the Ukraine.
Mullerup: CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: The type site in Denmark for the Maglemosian tool culture of northern Europe, situated in the Magle Mose (or big bog") in Zealand. The Maglemosian in one of the Mesolithic cultures characterized by stone microliths (tiny stone blades edges and points) used as arrowheads or set into the cutting edges of mattocks axes and adzes and many bone and wood tools are known. It belongs to the early post-glacial period or Boreal time c 9000-5000 BC."
Muselievo: CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: Palaeolithic site on the Osm River near its confluence with the Danube in Bulgaria. Artifacts include bifacial foliates and sidescrapers; the layer is estimated to date to the early cold maximum of the Last Glacial.
Neanderthal man: SYNONYM: Neandertal, Homo neanderthalensis, Homo sapiens neanderthalensis, Neanderthals
CATEGORY: culture
DEFINITION: An early form of Homo sapiens that inhabited much of Europe and the Mediterranean area during the late Pleistocene Epoch, about 100,000 to 35,000 years ago. Neanderthal remains have also been found in the Middle East, North Africa, and western Central Asia. This type of fossil human that is a subspecies of Homo sapiens and is distinguished by a low broad braincase, continuous arched brow ridges, projecting occipital region, short limbs, and large joints; his brain was as large as modern man's. His flintwork, which in North Africa and Eurasia was of Middle Palaeolithic (Mousterian) type, was technically more advanced than anything which had gone before (scrapers and points), and the careful burial of dead with funerary offerings provides the oldest surviving evidence for religious beliefs. Neanderthals mainly lived in caves. They used fire and hunted small and medium-sized animals (e.g. goats, deer) and scavenged from the kills of large carnivores. The oldest skeletal remains belong to the Riss-Würm interglacial period, but Neanderthal man persisted through the earlier stage of the succeeding Würm glaciation until he was replaced by modern man. This replacement probably took place between 40,000-35,000 BC, but the scarcity of skeletal evidence from the period makes it impossible to give a more precise date. The manner of this replacement is also in doubt. Neanderthal man is sometimes classified as a distinct species of the genus Homo, but has also been considered as falling within the same species as Homo sapiens, whose ancestor he may have been. The species is named after its type area in Neanderthal, a valley near Düsseldorf in Germany, where skeletal remains of this type of human were first found in 1856.
Neothermal: CATEGORY: chronology
DEFINITION: Postglacial times, a period of time from about 11,000 years ago to the present.
Nietoperzowa Cave: SYNONYM: Jerzmanowice
CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: Prehistoric cave site northwest of Kraków, southern Poland. There are Middle Palaeolithic assemblages of sidescrapers correlating to the end of the Middle Pleistocene, Last Interglacial, and Early Glacial. Upper Palaeolithic levels contain laurel-leaf points of the Jerzmanowician industry, with one radiocarbon date of 38,500 bp. There are Neolithic and later remains in the top layer.
Obanian culture: CATEGORY: culture
DEFINITION: A group of kitchen midden settlements of the western Scottish coast, a Late Mesolithic culture (c 3065-3900 BC) named from Oban in Argyll. The sites are rock shelters and shell middens on post-glacial raised beaches. Diagnostic tools include barbed spears, some limpet-picks scoops), and antler harpoon heads.
oxygen isotope analysis: SYNONYM: oxygen isotope examination
CATEGORY: technique
DEFINITION: Isotope analysis looking at the O18/O16 ratio in materials. The method can be used to classify glass types and to analyze mollusk shells in order to try and reconstruct their original environment and thus the source. It is also used to interpret deep sea cores. The basis for this technique is the fact that the ratio of two of the stable isotopes of oxygen varies according to the material in which it is found. The oxygen is released from the sample, and is converted to carbon dioxide; the oxygen isotopic ratio is determined after ionization in a mass spectrometer. Variations in the isotopic ratios for the raw materials can lead to a classification of types and even, in some cases, the suggestion of a source for the raw materials. The technique is also used to analyze mollusk shells in an attempt to reconstruct the original aquatic environment. Because temperature variations are correlated with changes in atmospheric O18/O16 ratios, oxygen isotope analysis has also been used to identify seasonal changes in ice cores, interpret temperature variations during speleothem precipitation, and examine isotopic variations in tree ring climates. Foraminifera sampled from deep sea cores have revealed fluctuations in the O18/O16 ratio. These present evidence for glacial-interglacial cycles in the form of continental ice volume change.
Palaeoasiatic: CATEGORY: culture; language
DEFINITION: A theoretical early 'race' of Homo sapiens sapiens in northeastern Asia. This race included the postglacial Chulmun and Jomon inhabitants of Korea and Japan and the modern Ainu. The far northeastern region of Siberia is the home of the so-called Paleoasiatic peoples, including the Chukchi, Koryak, Itelmen, and Yukaghir. The term also refers to a language group; the languages of the indigenous peoples of the Eurasian Arctic and subarctic can be grouped into four classes: Uralic, Tungusic, Turkic, and Paleoasiatic.
palaeosol: SYNONYM: paleosol
CATEGORY: geology
DEFINITION: A fossil soil preserved within a sequence of deposits. They come from a period when cold conditions had improved enough for vegetation to colonize and for a soil to be formed. Palaeosols are widespread within the Pleistocene loess sequences of the Netherlands, Germany, and Denmark. The Interstadials of the Weichselian have been reconstructed from the northern European palaeosol and loess succession; extensive palaeosols also characterize interglacials and interstadials of North America. It is a source of much palaeoenvironmental information.
paleobotany: SYNONYM: palaeobotany; prehistoric botany
CATEGORY: related field
DEFINITION: The study of ancient plant life and the remains of ancient or extinct plants. This includes material which has no direct connection with man and his activities, and is thus less specific to archaeology than palaeoethnobotany or archaeobotany. Much of man's material equipment came, however, from vegetable matter. This material is occasionally preserved by desiccation, waterlogging, or charring -- or by fossilization. From these sources various useful results have been obtained, notably in ascertaining the early history of cultivated crops. Paleobotany provides information about the climate and environment and about materials available for food, fuel, tools, and shelter. Paleobotany is a branch of paleontology and it includes pollen analysis, palynology, reconstruction of climatic sequences for interglacial periods, study of seeds, and study of plant remains.
Paleolithic: SYNONYM: Palaeolithic
CATEGORY: artifact
DEFINITION: The more technical name for the Old Stone Age, a division of prehistory covering the time from the first use of stone tools by humans, c 2.5 million years ago, to the retreat of the glacial ice in the northern hemisphere c 10,000-8500 BC. It began in the Pliocene epoch and was followed by the Mesolithic. It is the Old World equivalent, although with a much greater extension back in time, of the paleo-Indian or Early Lithic stage of New World development. The Paleolithic was characterized by the making of chipped or flaked stone tools and weapons and by a hunting and food-gathering way of life. It is usually divided into Lower, Middle, and Upper (or Late) Paleolithic -- mainly based on artifact typology. The subdivisions are characterized this way: Lower Palaeolithic, c 2.5 million - 200,000 BC, the earliest forms of humans (Australopithecus and Homo erectus), and the predominance of core tools of pebble tool, handax, and chopper type; Middle Palaeolithic, c 150,000-40,000 BC, the era of the Neanderthal and the predominance of flake-tool industries (e.g. Mousterian) over most of Eurasia; and Upper Palaeolithic (starting perhaps as early as 38,000 BC-c 10,000 BC), with Homo sapiens sapiens, blade-and-burin industries, and the development of cave art in western Europe. During this stage, man colonized the New World and Australia. The main Palaeolithic cultures of Europe were, in chronological order: 1. Pre-Abbevillian, 2. Abbevillian, 3. Clactonian, 4. Acheulian, 5. Levalloisian, 6. Mousterian, 7. Aurignacian, 8. Solutrean, and 9. Magdalenian. The term was introduced in 1865 by John Lubbock in Prehistoric Times". The Palaeolithic was originally defined by the use of chipped stone tools but later an economic criterion was added and the practice of hunting and gathering is now regarded as a defining characteristic."
Paleolithic or Palaeolithic: SYNONYM: Old Stone Age, paleolithic
CATEGORY: chronology
DEFINITION: The more technical name for the Old Stone Age, a division of prehistory covering the time from the first use of stone tools by humans, c 2.5 million years ago, to the retreat of the glacial ice in the northern hemisphere c 10,000-8500 BC. It began in the Pliocene epoch and was followed by the Mesolithic. It is the Old World equivalent, although with a much greater extension back in time, of the Paleo-Indian or Early Lithic stage of New World development. The Paleolithic was characterized by the making of chipped or flaked stone tools and weapons and by a hunting and food-gathering way of life. It is usually divided into Lower, Middle, and Upper (or Late) Paleolithic -- mainly based on artifact typology. The subdivisions are characterized this way: Lower Palaeolithic, c 2.5 million - 200,000 BC, the earliest forms of man (Australopithecus and Homo erectus), and the predominance of core tools of pebble tool, handax, and chopper type; Middle Palaeolithic, c 150,000-40,000 BC, the era of Neanderthal man and the predominance of flake-tool industries (e.g. Mousterian) over most of Eurasia; and Upper Palaeolithic (starting perhaps as early as 38,000 BC-c 10,000 BC), with Homo sapiens sapiens, blade-and-burin industries, and the development of cave art in western Europe. During this stage, man colonized the New World and Australia. The main Palaeolithic cultures of Europe were, in chronological order: 1. Pre-Abbevillian, 2. Abbevillian, 3. Clactonian, 4. Acheulian, 5. Levalloisian, 6. Mousterian, 7. Aurignacian, 8. Solutrean, and 9. Magdalenian. The term was introduced in 1865 by John Lubbock in Prehistoric Times". The Palaeolithic was originally defined by the use of chipped stone tools but later an economic criterion was added and the practice of hunting and gathering is now regarded as a defining characteristic."
Petralona: CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: Middle Palaeolithic cave site near Thessalonika, Greece, with a series of occupations probably from the early Last Glacial to the early Middle Pleistocene. A virtually complete skull is now seen to be close to Homo sapiens, c 400,000 years old. Other artifacts include scrapers, chopping tools and spheres of the early Mousterian.
pingo: CATEGORY: geology
DEFINITION: An ice-cored mound that develops within the active layer and permafrost of the periglacial zone. These conical mounds can be up to 40 meters high and 600 meters wide. Layers of ice may separate out by percolation of water, or form by the injection of water-charged sediment from below. When a pingo melts, its center collapses, leaving behind a circular 'rampart' of material (a circular ridge with a central basin, often filled with peat). Pingo ramparts have been used to reconstruct the extent of the periglacial zone which developed around the Devesian/Weichselian ice-sheets.
Pit-Comb Ware: SYNONYM: Pit-Comb ware
CATEGORY: ceramics
DEFINITION: A coarse pottery with deep round-based bowls decorated with pits and comb impressions and used in the circumpolar cultures of the forest zone of northeast Europe. The area includes that around the southern Baltic and glacial outwash of central and eastern Poland. Its makers were probably hunters and fishers, making little use of the techniques of food production, although adopting such Neolithic traits as pot-making an ax-grinding. There are few sites and little data.
Pleistocene: SYNONYM: ice age, Ice Age, Oiluvium; Quaternary; Great Ice Age; Pleistocene Epoch
CATEGORY: chronology
DEFINITION: A geochronological division of geological time, an epoch of the Quaternary period following the Pliocene. During the Pleistocene, large areas of the northern hemisphere were covered with ice and there were successive glacial advances and retreats. The Lower Pleistocene began c 1.8 million years ago, the Middle Pleistocene c 730,000 years ago, and the Upper Pleistocene c 127,000 years ago; it ended about 10,000 years ago. Most present-day mammals appeared during the Pleistocene. The onset of the Pleistocene was marked by an increasingly cold climate, by the appearance of Calabrian mollusca and Villafranchian fauna with elephant, ox, and horse species, and by changes in foraminifera. The oldest form of man had evolved by the Early Pleistocene (Australopithecus), and in archaeological terms the cultures classed as Palaeolithic all fall within this period. By the mid-Pleistocene, Homo sapiens evolved in Africa and Europe. Homo sapiens spread to Asia and the Americas before the end of the epoch. There were mass extinctions of large and small fauna during the Pleistocene. In North America more than 30 genera of large mammals became extinct within a span of roughly 2,000 years during the late Pleistocene. Of the many causes that have been proposed by scientists for these faunal extinctions, the two most likely are changing environment with changing climate, and the disruption of the ecological pattern by early humans. The Pleistocene was succeeded by the Holocene or present epoch.
Pleistocene Series: CATEGORY: chronology
DEFINITION: A division of the Quaternary System defined by its deposits. It is a worldwide division of rocks deposited during the Pleistocene Epoch (1,600,000-10,000 years ago). It overlies rocks from the Pliocene Epoch (5.3-1.6 million years ago) and is itself overlain by rocks of the Holocene Series; together these two latter divisions make up the Quaternary System. These deposits contain evidence of humans and their development throughout glacial and interglacial conditions. . By international agreement, the global stratotype section/point for the base of the Pleistocene Series is in the Vrica section in Calabria, Italy. The Pleistocene's boundary with the Pliocene occurs just above the position of the magnetic reversal that marks the Olduvai Normal Polarity Subzone, thus allowing the worldwide correlation of Pleistocene rocks with reference to the magneto-stratigraphic timescale.
Pod Hradem: CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: Upper Palaeolithic cave site in Moravia, Czechoslovakia. There are laurel-leaf points of the Szeletian and an early Upper Palaeolithic industry of retouched blades, dated to the middle of the Last Glacial.
podsol: SYNONYM: podzol, podsol soil, podzol soil
CATEGORY: geology
DEFINITION: A soil type characteristic of coniferous woodland, heath, tundra or moorland -- leached, acid soils formed under conditions of very cold climate's forest vegetation cover. The fauna produce phenols which are washed into the horizons and disperse the clay/humus complexes. Minerals, humus, and nutrients are washed down the profile and become deposited as illuvial horizons of humus and iron oxides. The latter is often called the 'iron pan'. A bleached, sandy eluvial horizon is left at the top of the profile. Podsols develop naturally in areas of high annual rainfall, but most of the large areas of podsols in the uplands and lowland heaths of the British Isles were probably at least initiated by man's clearance of woodland during the present Interglacial.
pollen analysis: SYNONYM: palynology
CATEGORY: technique
DEFINITION: The study of pollen grains in soil samples from an archaeological site which provides information on ancient human use of plants and plant resources. This technique, which is used in establishing relative chronologies as well as in environmental archaeology, was developed primarily as a technique for the relative dating of natural horizons. Pollen grains are produced in vast quantities by all plants, especially the wind-pollinated tree species. The outer skin (exine) of these grains is remarkably resistant to decay, and on wet ground or on a buried surface, it will be preserved, locked in the humus content. The pollen grains of trees, shrubs, grasses, and flowers are preserved in either anaerobic conditions or in acid soils. Samples can be taken from the deposits by means of a core or from individual layers at frequent intervals in a section face on an archaeological site. The pollen is extracted and then concentrated and stained and examined under a microscope. Pollen grains are identifiable by their shape, and the percentages of the different species present in each sample are recorded on a pollen diagram. A comparison of the pollen diagrams for different levels within a deposit allows the identification of changes in the percentages of species and thus changes in the environment. As a dating technique, pollen has been used to identify different zones of arboreal vegetation which often correspond to climatic changes. The technique is invaluable for disclosing the environment of early man's sites and can even, over and series of samples, reveal man's influence on his environment by, for example, forest clearance. The sediments most frequently investigated are peat and lake deposits, but the more acid soils, such as podsols, are also analyzed. Radiocarbon dates may be taken at intervals in the sequence, and it is possible to reconstruct the history of vegetation in the area around the site where the samples were taken. Palynology plays an important role in the investigation of ancient climates, particularly through studies of deposits formed during glacial and interglacial stages of the Pleistocene epoch.
Potocka Cave: CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: Upper Palaeolithic site in Slovenia's mountains with artifacts and faunal remains of the Last Glacial. The assemblage includes sidescrapers, endscrapers, and retouched blades of the Aurignacian.
Pre-Boreal: SYNONYM: Pre-Boreal Climatic Interval
CATEGORY: chronology
DEFINITION: A division of Holocene chronology which began about 10,000 years ago and ended about 9,500 years ago. The Pre-Boreal Climatic Interval preceded the Boreal Climatic Interval and was a time of increasing climatic moderation. Birch-pine forests and tundra were dominant. It is a subdivision of the Flandrian Interglacial and represents the start of the Flandrian.
Predmostí: CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: Palaeolithic site near Prerov in northeastern Moravia, Czechoslovakia. Over 20 skeletons of males, females and children were found in a large communal grave, associated with an Eastern Gravettian layer. The age of the grave is probably around 26,870 BC. Some of the males had marked Neanderthaloid features but the overall morphology was Cro-Magnon. Middle Palaeolithic artifacts, probably of the Early Glacial, and Upper Palaeolithic (Aurignacian, Eastern Gravettian) levels have been found. There are ivory and bone tools, pendants, and portable art.
Prolom II: CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: Middle Palaeolithic cave site in the Crimea, Ukraine, occupied from possibly early in the Last Glacial. Artifacts include sidescrapers, bifacial foliates, and worked bone and are assigned to the Ak-Kaya culture.
Puritjarra: CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: Sandstone shelter in Cleland Hills, Australia, which was used by at least 22,000-18,000 bp. Other intensive occupation occurred c 15,000 and 12-13,000 bp. Stone assemblages include small elongated flakes and larger flakes. The findings demonstrate occupation of the arid zone prior to the Last Glacial Maximum.
Ranis Cave: SYNONYM: Ilsenhöhle
CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: Site near River Saale in eastern Germany starting with Middle Palaeolithic material, then Upper Palaeolithic dating to the middle of the Last Glacial Maximum. Late Upper Palaeolithic, Bronze Age, and historic remains also have been found at the site.
rhythmite: CATEGORY: geology
DEFINITION: A sedimentary structure of rhythmically paired laminations or beds. The flat-lying, fine-grained bottomset beds of many large former glacial lakes filled in and buried all of the pre-existing relief and are now exposed, forming perfectly flat lake plains. Cuts into these sediments often reveal rhythmically interbedded silts and clays. Some of these so-called rhythmites have been shown to be the result of seasonal changes in the proglacial environment. If such lacustrine deposits have annual silt and clay couplets" they are known as varves."
rolled: CATEGORY: artifact
DEFINITION: A term used to describe the battered and abraded condition of flint or stone tools that have been incorporated into terrace gravels or glacial tills after being moved about by fluvial or glacial action.
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.
Rozhok I: CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: Middle Palaeolithic site on the Sea of Azov in European Russia with six cultural levels, dated from the early Last Glacial. Artifacts include sidescrapers and typical Upper Palaeolithic tools.
Saccopastore: CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: Palaeolithic site in a quarry near Rome, Italy, which has yielded two human skulls. These are regarded as early or generalized Neanderthals (Neanderthaloid) and are believed to belong to the last Interglacial. The brain sizes of both skulls are smaller than classic Neanderthals. A few Mousterian stone tools were found associated with them.
Salzgitter-Lebenstedt: CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: Mousterian hunting site in northwest Germany near Hanover, dated to c 50,000 BP. It yielded reindeer and mammoth remains hunted by Middle Palaeolithic men and an eastern Mousterian assemblage with some western Mousterian artifact-forms. Human skull fragments were found, possibly dating from early in the last glacial period.
Samuilitsa II: CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: Middle Palaeolithic cave site on the Iskr River in Bulgaria. The layers date back to the early Last Glacial and the upper layers are estimated to 42,780 bp. Artifacts include scrapers and bifacial foliates.
Sangamonian: SYNONYM: Sangamon, Sangamonia Age, Sangamonian Stage
CATEGORY: chronology
DEFINITION: The term in reference to Age" is a major North American geochronological subdivision of the Pleistocene epoch from c 125 000-75 000 bp. The Sangamon comprises a range of sediments including organic sediment but is represented mainly by a warm climate palaesol the Sangamon geosol which overlies Illinoian Age tills and is covered by Wisconsinan Age loess and tills. It appears to represent one single interglacial. As a "stage" it is a chronostratigraphic subdivision of the Pleistocene."
sanukite: CATEGORY: geology
DEFINITION: Type of andesite produced by now-extinct volcanoes in the Inland Sea area of Japan. It was used extensively during the Palaeolithic and Postglacial (Jomon, Yayoi) for stone tools.
sedimentation: SYNONYM: sedimentary petrology, sedimentology
CATEGORY: geology
DEFINITION: The process of deposition of a solid material from a state of suspension or solution in a fluid (air, water, ice). It also includes deposits from glacial ice and those materials collected by gravity, or accumulations of rock debris at the base of cliffs. Depending on the conditions of sedimentation, archaeological deposits may be buried intact or with redistribution of the pre-existing material.
shengwen: SYNONYM: [sheng-wen]
CATEGORY: ceramics
DEFINITION: Pottery of early postglacial Cina, predating the Neolithic Cishan and Hemudu wares. It is coarse with a textured surface decoration.
Soan: CATEGORY: culture
DEFINITION: A Lower Palaeolithic pebble tool and chopper industry of the Punjab (Pakistan) and northwest India. After a pre-Soan phase, the Soan proper begins during the second Himalayan interglacial, and its final stage, with an increase in flake tools (including some made by the Levallois technique), is probably contemporary with the early part of the Würm glaciation of Alpine Europe. There were handaxes and chopper / chopping tools. Some of the material has been redated to the Middle Palaeolithic and has questionable archaeological validity.
solifluction: SYNONYM: solifluxion, sludging, soil flow, soil fluction, soil flowage
CATEGORY: geology
DEFINITION: The slippage of soil and rock particles due to the freezing and subsequent thawing of the earth; the process of mass movement of soil and sediment upon the thawing of water-laden ground. Many deposits in valleys and on the lower part of hills are due to the land having been glaciated, with the top level thawing in the spring and the water, unable to permeate the still-frozen subsoil, flowing downhill, taking with it chunks of loose material. Full glaciation is not necessary to cause solifluxion; hard winters with frozen earth and occasional thaws can cause minor solifluxion that may add to the accumulation of material. Solifluction can cause artifactual material to be moved from one deposit to another; sometimes whole areas of archaeological sites may be covered with solifluction material. When solifluction can be recognized geologically, it is a valuable indicator of glacial conditions in areas which remained free of ice.
Star Carr: CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: Important Earlier Maglemosian lakeside site in Yorkshire, England -- a postglacial hunting stand dating to c 8200 BC. Excavation revealed a small summer habitation site and because of the fine preservation by organic mud, Star Carr has produced the best collection of flint, bone, antler (barbed points), and wooden objects yet recovered from a British Mesolithic site.
Steinheim: CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: Site near Stuttgart, Germany, where a human skull was discovered in gravels of the Holsteinian (penultimate) interglacial some 250,000 or 300,000 years ago. No artifacts were found, but the Steinheim skull is older than any Neanderthal or Homo sapiens skeleton, and is closer to the Swanscombe skull than to any other specimen. The Steinheim and Swanscombe skulls may belong to a distinct subspecies of Homo, but have also been classified as early Neanderthaloids or primitive Homo sapiens.
Stellmoor: CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: Site near Hamburg, north Germany of late glacial and post-glacial date and containing an older Hamburgian level c 13,000-11,750 BP and a later level of c 8500 BC, Ahrensburgian, with tanged points. The Ahrensburgian level also had a hoard of pine-wood arrow shafts. Both cultures were reindeer-hunters.
Strashnaya Cave: CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: Middle Palaeolithic site in the Altai region of Siberia with occupation probably prior to the Last Glacial. The artifacts are Levallois cores, scrapers, and denticulates.
Sub-Atlantic: SYNONYM: Sub-Atlantic Climatic period, Sub-Atlantic Climatic Interval
CATEGORY: chronology
DEFINITION: Last of the five postglacial climate and vegetation periods of northern Europe, beginning c 1500 BC (according to pollen analysis, though radiocarbon dating says c 225 BC). It is a division of Holocene chronology (10,000 years ago-present). The Sub-Atlantic Interval followed the Sub-Boreal Climatic Interval and continues today. It is a subdivision of the Flandrian, thought to be wet and cold, a trend started in the preceding Sub-Boreal period. There was a dominance of beech forests and the fauna were essentially modern. During the Iron Age, pollen analysis shows evidence of intensified forest clearance for mixed farming. Sea levels have been generally regressive during this time interval, though North America is an exception.
Sub-Boreal: SYNONYM: Sub-Boreal Climatic period, subboreal
CATEGORY: chronology
DEFINITION: One of the five postglacial climate and vegetation periods of northern Europe, occurring c 3000-1500 BC or, according to some, 0 AD, based on pollen analysis. The Sub-Boreal, dated by radiocarbon methods, began c 5,100 years ago and ended about 2,200 years ago. It is a division of Holocene chronology (10,000 years ago-present). The Sub-Boreal Climatic Interval followed the Atlantic and preceded the Sub-Atlantic Climatic Interval. It was characterized by a cooler and moister climate than that of the preceding Atlantic period. It is a subdivision of the Flandrian, starting with the Elm Decline. Frequencies of tree pollen fall and herbaceous pollen rises, representing man's invasion of the forest in the Neolithic and Bronze Age. It is correlated with pollen zone VIII, and the climate was warm and dry. The Sub-Boreal forests were dominated by oak and ash and show the first evidence of extensive burning and clearance by humans. Domesticated animals and natural fauna were abundant.
Subalyuk: CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: Middle Palaeolithic cave site in the Bükk Mountains, Hungary, predating the Last Glacial. Artifacts include scrapers and there are skeletal remains with Neanderthal characteristics.
Sukhaya Mechetka: CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: Middle Palaeolithic site at Volgograd on the Volga River (European Russia), occupied from the Last Interglacial; one of the few Last Interglacial sites on the Russian Plain. Artifacts are scrapers and bifacial foliates.
Swanscombe, Barnfield Pit: CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: British Lower Palaeolithic site on a terrace of the lower Thames Valley, North Kent, England, with a skull of possibly an archaic Homo sapiens with strong Neanderthal features. The skull bones are considerably thicker than those of modern European or Neanderthal skulls; the skull pieces may be the oldest of Homo sapiens found in Europe. More recent opinion holds that the skull is non-sapiens and has closer affinities with those of Neanderthal type. There is a succession of artifact-bearing strata of the Mindel-Riss interglacial period (400,000-200,000 years ago), with the earliest tools of Clactonian type. Middle Acheulian handaxes and a pointed biface assemblage were found in the Middle Gravel level and in the Upper Loam level, Middle Acheulian tools of a more evolved form and a refined ovate assemblage. The deposits contain useful environmental evidence, including abundant mollusk and mammal remains and large assemblages of stone tools.
Szeletian: CATEGORY: culture
DEFINITION: Early Upper Palaeolithic industry of central Europe with bifacial foliated points and sidescrapers, but it has also been applied to the industries with foliated points which mark the transition from the Middle Paleolithic to Upper Paleolithic periods throughout the eastern part of central Europe. It appears to have developed from the Middle Palaeolithic (Micoquian). The type site is Szeleta Cave in the Bükk Mountains in Hungary. The culture seems to date between 45,000-25,000 BC, the middle of the Last Glacial. Later assemblages contain endscrapers and retouched blades.
Szelim: CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: Cave site near the Danube River in central Hungary of the Middle Palaeolithic (beginning of Last Glacial), Late Upper Palaeolithic, and Neolithic.
tanged point cultures: CATEGORY: culture
DEFINITION: A term once used for the series of cultures of the Postglacial period whose tool kits include small tanged or shouldered points, e.g. the Ahrensburgian and Hamburgian.
Tanum: CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: Site of prehistoric rock art in Bohuslän, Sweden. The carved designs, hällristningar, are pecked on glacially smooth rock surfaces, especially oared ships. Tanum art is mainly from the later Bronze Age. Ancient burial grounds attest to the existence of Stone, Bronze, and Iron Age settlements in Bohuslän, which is also reputedly the scene of the second part of the Old English epic Beowulf"."
Tata: CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: Middle Palaeolithic site on the Danube River in Hungary with artifacts and fauna, including woolly mammoth, horse, and wild ass, and dated to the early Last Glacial. Tools are sidescrapers, bifaces, Upper Palaeolithic tools.
Tayacian: CATEGORY: culture
DEFINITION: A term sometimes used to describe Lower and Middle Palaeolithic flake industries which lack handaxes, bifaces, and carefully retouched implements. Originally the term was coined for the industries from the lower levels at La Micoque (Les Eyzies-de-Tayac, the Dordogne, France), but it has subsequently been applied to industries over a wide geographical and chronological range. The layers which probably belong to the penultimate glacial period were assigned to a Tayacian culture. The culture is also described as a primitive flake-tool tradition of Israel, also, believed to be essentially a smaller edition of the Clactonian industry.
Temnata Cave: CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: Palaeolithic cave site in central Bulgaria with artifacts and faunal remains, starting with a Middle Palaeolithic assemblage of the Last Glacial, then Aurignacian and Gravettian. Another Middle Palaeolithic assemblage with bifacial foliates was discovered outside the cave.
tephrochronology: SYNONYM: tephrachronology
CATEGORY: technique
DEFINITION: A method for the relative dating of horizons in volcanic regions by identification of different layers of ash (tephra). Tephra layers (beds) are ideal stratigraphic markers because they are deposited instantaneously. Also, the chemical content of tephra (volcanic ash) is unique for each eruption. If artifacts lie below tephra known to have come from a certain eruption, the artifacts predate the eruption. Tephra layers may be dated by potassium-argon dating and fission track dating and they can sometimes be tied in to absolute chronology where radiocarbon dates can be obtained from material contemporary with the deposit. To establish a chronology it is necessary to identify and correlate as many tephra units as possible over the widest possible area. In the Mediterranean, deep-sea coring produced evidence for the ash fall from the eruption of Thera, and its stratigraphic position provided important information in the construction of a relative chronology. The identification of multiple tephra beds may give bracketing ages for intervening strata. Tephrochronology has also been used to date glacial advances, sea level changes, and alluvial fans.
Ust'-Kan Cave: CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: Middle Palaeolithic site in the Altai region of Siberia with Levallois cores, sidescrapers, and points of probably just before the Last Glacial.
varve dating: CATEGORY: technique
DEFINITION: A technique for producing chronometric dates based on the annual formation of layers of sediment on lake and river beds in glacial regions. Seasonal fluctuations in particle size and speed of sedimentation take place. During the winter, ice melting is very slow, melt-water streams do not contain much water, and they flow slowly, carrying little material. During the summer, melting accelerates, melt-water streams flow faster and carry more material. The supply of sediment to the ice-marginal lake varies with the season. A varve chronology, similar to a tree-ring chronology may be set up. But as with tree rings (see dendrochronology) the varves will vary from year to year, depending on the rapidity of the thaw, quantity of summer rain, winter snow, etc., the variations showing some correlation with the sunspot cycle. Such varve chronologies have been built up for Scandinavia and are used to date the retreat of the Weichselian ice-sheet. Varve dating has a greater significance than just for local dating, since frequently there is enough organic material to allow radiocarbon dates to be calculated. There is therefore the possibility of using the calendrical varve chronology to calibrate radiocarbon dates. Its use for archaeological dating is rather limited in that sites have to be related to the geological changes (the ice-sheet moraines or changing Baltic sea-levels) before their dates can be determined. Swedish pioneer Baron Gerard de Geer discovered in the late 19th century that these could be counted and correlated or linked over long distances, which gave him a timescale of 12,000 years and fixed the end of the Ice Age at about 10,000 years ago.
Vindija Cave: CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: Palaeolithic site near Zagreb, Croatia, with occupation from the Middle Palaeolithic (last interglacial) c 115,000-60,000 bp. Neanderthal remains were in the upper Middle Palaeolithic level; anatomically modern remains in the Gravettian level.
Würm: SYNONYM: Würm Glaciation
CATEGORY: chronology
DEFINITION: The fourth and final Pleistocene glaciation in the European Alps, c 110,000/70,000-10,000 years ago, ending with the onset of the postglacial Holocene. The Würm glacial stage followed the Riss-Würm interglacial and is correlated with the Weichsel glacial stage of northern Europe and the Wisconsin glacial stage of North America. It is divided into early, middle, and late phases. The end of the Würm and the retreat of the final glaciers was a complex of minor retreats and advances.
Western Pluvial Lakes Tradition: CATEGORY: culture
DEFINITION: Culture unit found throughout western North America, characterized by the exploitation of marshes and lakes in the early postglacial period and distinctive artifacts -- large, stemmed, lanceolate projectile points and large, leaf-shaped bipoints. These point types immediately followed in time and perhaps derived from the Clovis culture of c 10,000-9000 BC.
Wisconsin glaciation: SYNONYM: Wisconsinan Age, Wisconsinan Stage
CATEGORY: chronology
DEFINITION: The age" is a major North American geochronological subdivision of the Pleistocene epoch c 75 000-10 000 bp. It was the final glaciation of North American the fourth and last glacial stage of the Pleistocene. It followed the Sangamon interglacial and is the North American equivalent of the Würm glaciation in the Old World; it is broadly correlated with the Weichselian of northwest Europe and the Devensian of Britain. At certain times during this glaciation enough water was locked up in the form of ice sheets to cause a drop in sea level and the creation of a land bridge between Siberia and Alaska. It was probably during one such period that man colonized America from Asia. As a "stage" it is a chronostratigraphic subdivision of the Pleistocene with deposits in the upper U.S. Midwest and adjacent areas of Canada. Most of the Wisconsin deposits can be dated by radiocarbon. The sequence has been divided into early Wisconsin (c 75 000-53 000 bp) Middle Wisconsin (53 000-23 000 bp) and Late Wisconsin (23 000-10 000 bp). The substages have been defined as: Altonian (c 75 000-25 000 bp) Farmdalian (c 25 000-22 500 bp) Woodfordian (c 22 500-12 500 bp) Twocreekan (c 12 500-11 800 bp) and Greatlakean (c 11 800-10 000 or 7000 bp). The latter replaced the Valderan substage."
Wolstonian: CATEGORY: chronology
DEFINITION: In Britain, a penultimate cold stage spanning c 200,000-125,000 BP. At the type site in the Midlands, Wolstonian deposits overlie interglacial deposits of the Hoxnian. The Wolstonian deposits have Acheulian and Levalloisian artifacts.
Wylotne: CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: Rock shelter near Krakow, Poland, with Middle Palaeolithic assemblages of the early Glacial, possibly of the Micoquian. Upper Palaeolithic and Neolithic remains were found in upper layers.
Younger Dryas: SYNONYM: Younger Dryas event
CATEGORY: chronology
DEFINITION: A stadial of the Weichselian cold stage, dated to between 11,000-10,000 bp. The last glacial recession (13,000-6,000 years ago) was interrupted by this sharp advance. It takes its name from a tundra plant called Dryas octopetala, fossil remains of which are common in deposits of the stadial. It was most evident around the North Atlantic and coincided with an apparent temporary diversion of glacial meltwater from the Mississippi River to the St. Lawrence drainage system. It has been postulated that this discharge of cold, fresh water disrupted the Atlantic Ocean circulation system that warms the North Atlantic.
Zaskal'naya: CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: Middle Palaeolithic rock shelters and caves in the Crimea, Ukraine, some with 6-7 occupation levels. Some are dated to an interstadial preceding the early cold maximum of the last glacial. Artifacts include bifacial foliates and Ak-Kaya culture sidescrapers. Neanderthal fossils have been found.

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