Archaeology Wordsmith

Results for industry:

Acheulian: SYNONYMS OR RELATED TERMS: 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.
Albany industry: CATEGORY: culture
DEFINITION: A stone industry of southernmost Africa, dated between the 11th and 6th millennia BC. It precedes the appearance of backed-microlith Wilton industry and its assemblages, Boomplass and Robberg being the most notable, contain flake scrapers. Some archaeologists have grouped this industry under the name Oakhurst Complex as there are possible related and contemporary industries as far as southern Namibia and Zimbabwe. The appearance of the Albany industry coincides with the post-Pleistocene rise in sea level and there is evidence that marine food was increasingly exploited by the culture.
Buda industry: CATEGORY: culture
DEFINITION: A Lower Palaeolithic industry of Hungary characterized by the production of chopping tools on pebbles and flake tools.
Cabalwanian industry: CATEGORY: culture
DEFINITION: A stone industry of flakes in Luzon, Philippines, thought to be early Holocene.
Capsian and Capsian Neolithic: SYNONYMS OR RELATED TERMS: Capsian industry
CATEGORY: culture
DEFINITION: A Mesolithic/Stone Age (8000 BC-2700 BC) cultural complex prominent in inland northern Africa near the present border between Tunisia and Algeria. Its shell midden sites are in the area of the great salt lakes of what is now southern Tunisia, the type site being Jabal al-Maqta'. The tool kit of the Capsian is a classic example of the industries of the late Würm Glacial Period and it is apparently related to the Gravettian stage of Europe's Perigordian industry (which dates from about 17,000 years ago). However, it occurs in Neothermal (postglacial) times and, like its predecessor, the Ibero-Maurusian industry (Oranian industry), the Capsian was a microlithic tool complex. It differed from the Ibero-Maurusian, however, in having a far more varied tool kit with large backed blades, scrapers, backed bladelets, microburins, and burins in its earlier phase and a gradual development of geometric microliths later. These became its leading feature by the 6th millennium BC. Shortly after 5000 BC, pottery and domesticated animals were introduced. Some North African rock paintings are attributed to people of the Capsian industry. The Capsian Neolithic, with pointed-base pottery and a stone industry, lasted from c 6200-5300 BP, in the Atlas Mountains of Algeria and the northern Sahara. The name derives from Capsa, the Latin form of Gafsa, a town in south central Tunisia where such artifacts were first discovered. Hunting and snail-collecting seem to have formed the basis of the economy. Human remains from Capsian sites are mostly of Mechta-Afalou type.
industry: CATEGORY: term
DEFINITION: A frequently repeated assemblage of a particular material or function, i.e. flake industry, flint industry. Such an assemblage of artifacts including the same types so consistently suggests that it is the product of a single society. The term also describes a large grouping of artifacts that is considered to represent or identify a particular people or culture, e.g. the Acheulian industry. If more than one class of objects (e.g. flint tools or bronze weapons) is found, it is a culture"."
Khami: SYNONYMS OR RELATED TERMS: Matopo industry
CATEGORY: site; culture
DEFINITION: A microlithic Later Stone Age industry of the Matobo Hills of southwest Zimbabwe, dating back 8000 years. It is also the name of the capital of the Torwa state, built in the 15th century AD after the decline of Great Zimbabwe, and occupied until the mid-17th century when the capital was moved. It is also the term for the third phase of the Zimbabwe tradition, which continued to the early 19th century.
Matopo: SYNONYMS OR RELATED TERMS: Southern Rhodesian Wilton; Khami industry
CATEGORY: culture
DEFINITION: Microlithic Later Stone Age industry of the Matopo Hills, southwestern Zimbabwe, dated to 6000 BC. The hills are associated with folklore and tradition, some being venerated as dwelling places of the spirits of departed Ndebele chiefs. The hills contain gigantic caves with Khoisan paintings, and there are Stone and Iron Age archaeological sites.
Mousterian: SYNONYMS OR RELATED TERMS: Mousterian industry
CATEGORY: culture; chronology; artifact
DEFINITION: A Middle Paleolithic culture that is defined by the development of a wide variety of specialized tools made with prepared-core knapping techniques, such as spear points. It is named for the first such artifacts recovered from the lower rock shelter at Le Moustier, Dordogne, France. Stone tools, scrapers, and points found in the cave came to be recognized as the flint industry present throughout Europe during first half of last glaciation (Würm) and associated with Neanderthal. The earliest Mousterian goes back to the Riss glaciation, but most of it comes into the late middle Würm glaciation, giving a total lifespan from 180,000 BC until c 30,000 BP. Flintwork of Mousterian type (with racloirs, triangular points made on flakes, and -- in some variants -- well-made handaxes) has been found over most of the unglaciated parts of Eurasia, as well as in the Near East and North Africa (in the latter two areas, it constitutes the Middle Palaeolithic). Three major regional variants have been identified -- West, East, and Levalloiso-Mousterian, each with sub-groups. In certain industries, called Levalloiso-Mousterian, the tools were made on flakes produced by the Levallois technique. It was a progressive stage in the manufacture of stone tools. Mousterian peoples mainly lived in cave mouths and rock shelters.
Oldowan: SYNONYMS OR RELATED TERMS: Oldowan industry
CATEGORY: culture
DEFINITION: An Earlier Stone Age industry and complex seen at Olduvai Gorge in Tanzania and other African sites, dating from c 2.5 million to about 1.6 million years ago (and later). It is comprised of the earliest toolkits, flake and pebble tools, used by hominids (Homo habilis). Robust australopithecines were present at the same time and at the same sites, however. These simple stone tools were flaked in one or two directions and is characterized by the production of small flakes removed from alternate faces along the edge of a cobble. In its pure form, hand axes are absent. Oldowan tools were made for nearly 1 million years before gradual improvement in technique resulted in a standardized industry known as the Acheulian.
Toalian industry: CATEGORY: culture
DEFINITION: Mid-Holocene stone flake and blade industry of a number of caves in southern Sulawesi, Indonesia, c 6000 BC and later. The industry developed out of preceding flake industries and is characterized by small backed flakes and microliths, and well-made Maros points. The Toalian industry may have continued into the 1st millennium AD and overlapped with pottery from the late 3rd millennium BC. The earliest traces of human habitation on Celebes are stone implements of the Toalian culture.
Abbevillian: SYNONYMS OR RELATED TERMS: Abbevillean, Chellean, Abbeville
CATEGORY: chronology; culture
DEFINITION: The name for the period of the earliest handax industries of Europe, taken from Abbeville, the type site near the mouth of the River Somme in northern France. The site is a gravel pit in which crudely chipped oval or pear-shaped handaxes were discovered, probably dating to the Mindel Glaciation. This was one of the key places which showed that man was of great antiquity. Starting in 1836, Boucher de Perthes excavated the pits and the significance of these discoveries was recognized around 1859. These pits became one of the richest sources of Palaeolithic tools in Europe. In 1939, Abbé Breuil proposed the name Abbevillian for both the handax and the industry, which preceded the Acheulian in Europe.
Abkan: CATEGORY: culture
DEFINITION: A stone industry of southern Nubia that was probably the work of indigenous peoples who were ancestral to the Nubian A Group. These peoples maintained trade contact with southerly regions of the Nile Valley during the 4th millennium BC.
Adlun: SYNONYMS OR RELATED TERMS: Abri Zumoffen
CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: A Palaeolithic site between Sidon and Tyre on the Lebanese coast with evidence of Amudian industry and Jabrudian occupation.
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.
Amudian: SYNONYMS OR RELATED TERMS: Amud
CATEGORY: culture
DEFINITION: A culture and industry close to the Sea of Galilee near Tiberias, Israel. There are several important caves, including Emireh, the type site of the Emiran, and Zuttiyeh, the type site of the Amudian. These demonstrate the early occurrence of Upper Palaeolithic blades and burins even earlier than the Mousterian and its flake tools. The Amud cave is Mousterian or Emiran and in 1961 the skeletal remains were found of two adults and two children estimated to have lived about 50,000-60,000 years ago (remains held in the Rockefeller Archaeological Museum, Jerusalem). They consist of a skeleton of an adult male about 25 years old, a fragment of an adult jaw, and skull fragments of infants. The skeleton has an exceptionally large brain (1800 cc). The remains suggest that they are part of a group known as Near Eastern Neanderthal man. This group represents a mixture of West Asian features similar to those of fossils found in 1957 in Iraq that were estimated to date from about 46,000 years ago and those of the Upper Paleolithic people who lived in southwestern France and the Middle East from about 10,000 to 35,000 years ago. These findings provide more evidence that Neanderthal man was a highly varied species who lived in much of the Northern Hemisphere, except the New World. Amudian material has been recognized at the cave of et-Tabun (Mount Carmel) and at sites like Jabrud, Adlun, and the Abri Zumoffen in the Levant. It has been suggested that the Amudian may have been ancestral to subsequent Upper Palaeolithic industries of the Middle East, hence the name 'pre-Aurignacian' which has sometimes been given to industries of Amudian type.
Anyathian: CATEGORY: culture
DEFINITION: A Pleistocene industry of stone tools in terrace deposits of the upper Irrawaddy River in Burma. The culture was characterized by primitive pebble tools (choppers, chopping tools) and a poor flakes made of silicifed tuff and fossil wood. The earliest assemblages may be of Middle Pleistocene date and the industry may have continued into the early Holocene. The Early Anyathian had single-edged core implements associated with crude flake implements. In the Late Anyathian, smaller and better made core and flake artifacts are found.
Apollo 11 Cave: CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: A cave in southern Namibia near the confluence of the Orange and Great Fish Rivers which has a long sequence of industries dating from the Middle Stone Age. There is a series of detached rock slabs with rock paintings dating between 28,450-26,350 years old, among the oldest dated paintings in the world and the oldest dated rock art of southern Africa. Later horizons in the Apollo 11 Cave show a scraper-based industry in the 13th-8th millennia BC that is related to the Albany industry of southern Cape Province. Microlithic findings begin in the 8th millennium.
Aq Kupruk: CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: A rock shelter (Aq Kupruk II) and open site (Aq Kupruk III) on the Balkh River in northern Afghanistan. It is one of the richest Palaeolithic sites in that area. Aq Kupruk II had a single late Palaeolithic deposit with a blade industry (including microliths) with a radiocarbon date of c 14,600 BC. Aq Kupruk III had two deposits, one with artifacts similar to II and a lower one without microlithics. The presence of domesticated sheep and goats at Aq Kupruk has been dated to 8000 BC and that of cattle to about 6000 BC. Sickle blades, peaked stone hoes, chisels, hand mills, and pounders suggest the collection and preparation of wild grains, if not cultivation.
assemblage: CATEGORY: artifact; term
DEFINITION: A group of objects of different or similar types found in close association with each other and thus considered to be the product of one people from one period of time. Where the assemblage is frequently repeated and covers a reasonably full range of human activity, it is described as a culture; where it is repeated but limited in content, e.g. flint tools only (a set of objects in one medium), it is called an industry. When a group of industries are found together in a single archaeological context, it is called an assemblage. Such a group characterizes a certain culture, era, site, or phase and it is the sum of all subassemblages. Assemblage examples are artifacts from a site or feature.
Asturian: CATEGORY: culture
DEFINITION: A macrolithic industry of the Mesolithic in northern Spain, discovered from shell mounds at cave mouths. It followed the Azilian and is characterized by a long pointed unifacial quartzite pick. It dates to the 9th and 8th millennia BP.
Atlantic Bronze Age: SYNONYMS OR RELATED TERMS: carp's tongue sword complex
CATEGORY: culture
DEFINITION: A late Bronze Age metalworking industry which developed on the west coast of France (Brittany to Gironde) c 1000-500 BC and spread to southern England and Iberia. The unifying factor of these areas was very active trading along the Atlantic seaways. It is known from a large number of hoards with typical products being the carp's tongue sword, end-winged ax, hog-backed razor, and bugle-shaped object of uncertain function. The tradition flourished west of the area dominated by the central European Urnfield cultures.
Australian Core Tool and Scraper Tradition: CATEGORY: culture
DEFINITION: A late Pleistocene and Holocene stone tool industry of mainland Australia and Tasmania with artifacts dating from 30,000 BC (at Lake Mungo). The industry was characterized by high-domed chunky cores (called 'horsehoof cores') and steep-edge flake scrapers. The industry has close parallels in the islands of Southeast Asia.
Australian Small Tool Tradition: CATEGORY: culture
DEFINITION: A mid-Holocene tool industry of the Australian Aborigines that appeared some 3000-4000 years ago when those peoples began to use a new ensemble of small, flaked stone tools (although adze flakes first appeared possibly 2000 years earlier). The types consisted of backed blades and flakes, unifacial and bifacial points, and small adze flakes. There are some regional distributions of tools, including Bondi points, geometric microliths, Pirri points, and Tula adzes. All except the Bondi points and geometric microliths were still in use as parts of wooden weapons and tools at the time of European contact. The industry has close parallels in the islands of Southeast Asia, especially in the microliths of southwestern Sulawesi from 4000 BC.
Aveline's Hole: CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: A cave site in Somerset, England, with a Creswellian Epipalaeolithic industry and a Magdalenian-style harpoon.
ax factory: SYNONYMS OR RELATED TERMS: axe factory
CATEGORY: feature
DEFINITION: An often isolated outcrop of high-quality rock in Europe during the Neolithic period. These sources were exploited for the production of polished stone axes and this became an important industry of the time. The tools were roughly flaked at the factory sites and traded, either as blanks or as finished axes. There were many ax factories in Britain's highlands, northern Ireland, and northwest France. Microscopic analysis is used to identify the rocks by their distinctive crystalline structure, which has enabled the trading networks to be reconstructed.
Azykh Cave: CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: A Palaeolithic site in Azerbajdzhan with a unique pebble-tool industry and some faunal remains. There are upper layers with large bifaces and sidescrapers of the Acheulian, associated with Middle Pleistocene fauna. A Middle Palaeolithic / Late Pleistocene assemblage contains a Merck's rhinoceros and cave bear remains overlies Lower Palaeolithic industry remains.
Bacsonian: CATEGORY: culture
DEFINITION: An early Holocene stone tool industry (c 8000-4000 BC) of Indochina (esp. northern Vietnam). It is often regarded as a variant of the Hoabinhian industry of Southeast Asia. The Bacsonian industry is characterized by edge-ground pebble tools, ground-stone axes and adzes, and some sites have cord- or basket-marked pottery.
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."
Baile Herculane: CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: A large cave site in Rumania where flint implements from the Paleolithic Period (about 2,500,000 years ago) and Neolithic objects were found. There is important Palaeolithic, Mesolithic, Neolithic and Copper Age stratigraphy comprising three main occupation horizons: Upper Palaeolithic levels corresponding to the Würm II phase and defined by a quartzite industry with end scrapers; a late Mesolithic level with microlithic flints, crude quartzite tools, and Danube fish bones; and levels of Late Copper Age occupation.
Balof Cave: CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: A rock shelter in New Ireland, Oceania, dating to c 5000 BC with a preceramic industry of obsidian and bone points. The site has one of the earliest dates for human settlement in Oceania east of New Guinea.
Bambata Cave: CATEGORY: site; culture
DEFINITION: A large cave of southwestern Zimbabwe, where excavations have revealed a long sequence of occupation over the past 50,000 years. The site gives its name to a stone industry and pottery type, but they are widely separated periods. There are rock paintings on the cave walls and sheep bones, found in the same archaeological levels as pottery, have been dated to 150 BC. The Bambata industry, dated between the 50th-20th millennia BC, used prepared cores to produce (unretouched) flakes for scrapers and slender unifacial or bifacial lances or spear points. Its distribution extended north to Zambia and south to the Orange Free State and perhaps the Cape. Bambata pottery ware is known only from contexts of the 1st millennium ad in Zimbabwe. It is elaborately decorated with stamped designs.
Bandung microliths: CATEGORY: culture
DEFINITION: A mid-Holocene obsidian industry of west Java's Bandung Plateau. It was characterized by small backed flakes and other tools.
Baradostian: CATEGORY: culture
DEFINITION: An Upper Palaeolithic flint industry following the Mousterian in northern Iraq and Iran, with the type site in a cave at Shanidar. It has radiocarbon dates c 30,000 BC and may have begun as early as 36,000 BC. The Baradostian was replaced by a local Upper Palaeolithic industry called the Zarzian (12,000-10,000 BC), probably caused by the extreme cold of the last phase of the Würm glaciation. The Zarzian marks the end of the Iranian Paleolithic sequence that preceded various Mesolithic developments in the Middle East.
Baturong Caves: CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: Rock shelter sites in north Borneo dating to c 17,000-12,000 BP with a stone industry characterized by long knives. It succeeded the Tinkayu industry and preceded the Madai Caves.
Bhimbetka: CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: A large series of Palaeolithic-to-present rock shelters with rich deposits and rock art, close to Bhopal, India. A succession of Acheulian handaxes, cleavers, and Levallois tools are preceded by Middle Palaeolithic blades, Upper Palaeolithic bladelets, and then a Mesolithic bladelet and grinding lithic assemblage, and finally by copper tools and Chalcolithic pottery. The Mesolithic industry has dates of 6000-1000 BC and the rock art is of the Mesolithic and later. The rock art is painted in a range of colors and there are human and animal figures, some in hunting, warfare, or ceremony scenes. Petroglyphs have been found in a shelter.
blade: SYNONYMS OR RELATED TERMS: blade tool; blade-~ (used attributively)
CATEGORY: lithics
DEFINITION: A long, narrow, sharp-edged, thin flake of stone, used especially as a tool in prehistoric times. This flake is detached by striking from a prepared core, often with a hammer. Its length is usually at least twice the width. The blade may be a tool in itself, or may be the blank from which a two-edged knife, burin, or spokeshave is manufactured. This term, then, is used by archaeologists in several ways: (1) It can refer to a fragment of stone removed from a parent core. The blade is used to manufacture artifacts in what is known as the blade and core industry". (2) That portion of an artifact usually a projectile point or a knife beyond the base or tang. (3) In certain cultures small artifacts are called microblades. It was a great technological advance when it was discovered that a knapper could make more than one tool from a chunk of stone. The Châtelperronian and Aurignacian were the earliest of the known blade cultures -- associated with the arrival of modern humans. Industries in which many of the tools are made from blades became prominent at the start of the Upper Palaeolithic period. A typical blade has parallel sides and regular scars running down its back parallel with the sides. A 'backed blade' is a blade with one edge blunted by the removal of tiny flakes. Blades led to another invention -- the handle. A handle made it easier and much safer to manipulate a sharp two-edged blade."
Bosumpra: CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: A cave site near Abetifi, Ghana, which yielded one of the first scientifically excavated assemblages of a West African Neolithic industry. Radiocarbon dating has shown that occupation began around the middle 4th millennium BC and continued for at least 3000 years. Throughout the sequence, a microlithic chipped-stone industry was associated with simple pottery and with ground-stone ax- or hoe-like implements.
Brahmagiri: CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: A settlement site and cemetery dating from at least the 2nd millennium BC in southern India. Wheeler found a Chalcolithic level (c 2800-1250 BC) with abundant microliths, polished stone axes, and crude burnished gray pottery, an Iron Age level (1st millennium BC) with black-and-red ware, 300 tombs, stone circles, and ossuaries for bones, and a level from the 1st century AD with rouletted ware and traces of Roman contact. Bone points and some evidence of a stone-blade industry have also been found. There are many cattle bones, but also sheep and goats. The culture seemed to continue with little change for many centuries.
Broken Hill: CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: A cave and mine site in central Zambia in which a complete skull was found which is attributed to Rhodesian Man (Homo sapiens rhodesiensis) and has characteristics similar to Neanderthals. The skull was found on a ledge in 1922, and has no definite evidence for a date, but the artifacts in the Bone Cave were of the Middle Stone Age (Charaman industry). Dating by amino-acid racemization indicates an age of more than 100,000 years. Mining operations have exposed a long series of stone industries extending from the Acheulian to the Charman. Over 25 percent of the species represented by the associated faunal remains are now extinct.
Cagayan Valley: CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: A broad valley in northern Luzon, Philippines, with several sites from which some association has been found between a pebble and flake industry with a Middle Pleistocene fauna including elephants, Stegodon, rhinoceros, and bovids.
Cave of Hearths: CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: A cave in northern Transvaal which yielded the right side of a Homo sapiens child's jaw, of Rhodesioid type, dating from about 50,000 years ago. It is located close to the Makapansgat site, the oldest cave site known in Africa. Both offer extremely early evidence of the use of fire by man in Africa and tools of the transitional Acheulian-Fauresmith type. The earliest deposits of the Cave of Hearths are Acheulian, followed by a long period of abandonment. There was a long succession of Pietersburg industries and some signs of typological continuity between the Acheulian and the Pietersburg assemblages. The Pietersburg industry was succeeded by an assemblage of subtriangular points and flake scrapers similar to the Bambata industry of Zimbabwe.
Ch'ü-chia-ling culture: CATEGORY: culture
DEFINITION: Neolithic culture of central China in the middle and lower Yangtze River valley in the 4th and 3rd millennia. It followed the Yang-Shao culture and preceded the Lung-Shan culture and shared a significant number of traits with the Ta-hsi culture. There was cultivation of rice, flat polished axes, ring-footed vessels, goblets with sharply angled profiles, ceramic whorls, and black pottery with designs painted in red after firing. Characteristic Ch'ü-chia-ling ceramic objects include eggshell-thin goblets and bowls painted with black or orange designs; double-waisted bowls; tall, ring-footed goblets and serving stands; and many styles of tripods. The whorls suggest a thriving textile industry. The chronological distribution of ceramic features suggests a transmission from Ta-hsi to Ch'ü-chia-ling, but the precise relationship between the two cultures is not known.
Charaman: SYNONYMS OR RELATED TERMS: Proto-Stillbay, Charama
CATEGORY: culture
DEFINITION: A stone industry of Zimbabwe and parts of southern and central Zambia where it was the local successor of the Sangoan. Many Charaman assemblages come from surface or river-gravel occurrences, as at Victoria Falls. There are many scrapers, sub-triangular points, and other flake tools. Charaman deposits have been found in cave sites, such as Broken Hill, which yielded the remains of Homo sapiens rhodesiensis.
Chellean: SYNONYMS OR RELATED TERMS: Chellian
CATEGORY: culture
DEFINITION: An early Stone Age industry (Lower Palaeolithic) characterized by crudely worked hand axes. The implements from the type site Chelles-sur-Marne, near Paris, France, that gave the industry its name are now grouped with the Acheulian industry. The term Chellean, in the sense of earliest hand-ax culture, has been replaced by Abbevillian industry. The industry was so-named in the 1880s, replacing the term Acheulian, which was eventually reinstated.
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.
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.
Cody complex: CATEGORY: culture
DEFINITION: A North American flint industry with a late Plato tool assemblage representing the last of the plains-based hunting groups. First identified in Cody, Wyoming, it dates to c 7500-5000 BC. There are Eden and Scotsbluff varieties of finely worked lanceolate blades and projectile points and a unique asymmetrical knife with a shoulder on one side (the Cody knife), usually found with bison remains.
Combe-Grenal: SYNONYMS OR RELATED TERMS: Combe Grenal
CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: A rock shelter site on the Dordogne River in southwest France, near the town of Domme. There are 64 archaeological levels, including nine bottom levels of the Acheulian industry dating from the end of the Riss glaciation, followed by a series of 55 Mousterian levels. Occupation ended just before the end of the Mousterian period, and there is a radiocarbon date of just over 37,000 BC from Level 12, near the top of the deposit. The site has the largest number of cultural levels of any Palaeolithic site known to date. The 55 Mousterian levels have formed the basis for the analysis of the Mousterian into five main types. A burial pit has been recognized in the Mousterian levels with some human bones. The site has fauna and pollen evidence from all levels.
Coppa Nevigata: CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: A small mound prehistoric site on the coast of southeast Italy, first occupied in the Early Neolithic. The first occupants were shellfish gatherers who used impressed cardial ware pottery and had a microlithic flint industry as early as the 6th millennium BC. A later occupation belongs to the Apennine Bronze Age.
Crvena Stijena: CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: A prehistoric cave site near the Adriatic coast in Montenegro. Artifacts and faunal remains date back to the last glaciation and deposits include the Palaeolithic, Mousterian, Upper Palaeolithic (Aurignacian), Early and Late Mesolithic (with microlithic flint industries and a large faunal sample of red deer and chamois), Early Neolithic (with Impressed Ware and Danilo-Kakanj pottery, also macrolithic flint industry), Late Neolithic (Danilo culture), and a Late Bronze Age level (with Hallstatt A-B metalwork).
Curacchiaghiu: CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: A rock shelter in southern Corsica, France, with a sequence of deposits from Mesolithic and Neolithic occupation levels dating to the 7th millennium BC -- the earliest evidence of man in Corsica. The Early Neolithic levels (6th millennium BC) had pottery with punctated and incised decoration, and a lithic industry with geometric trapezes on hard rock and obsidian imported from Sardinia.
Da But: CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: A marine shell midden near Thanh-hoa in northern Vietnam, which has produced a mixed Bacsonian and Neolithic stone industry together with ochre-stained burials and pottery. It has been dated to c 4000 BC.
Dabban: CATEGORY: culture
DEFINITION: An early blade-and-burin industry of Cyrenaica, Libya, dating to 40,000-14,000 years ago. It is thought to be the oldest dated blade-and-burin industry of Upper Palaeolithic type and is recorded from only two sites: Hagfed ed-Dabba and the Haua Fteah. The Dabban is clearly related in some way to the broadly contemporary Upper Palaeolithic complex of Europe and the Near East with backed blades, burins, and endscrapers being its most characteristic artifacts. Its origins are still unknown. Dabban occupation of Haua Fteah continued until c12,000 BC.
Damous el Ahmar: CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: A cave site with Capsian Neolithic industry in Algeria.
Danilo: CATEGORY: site; culture
DEFINITION: A Neolithic culture of the Dalmatian coast of Croatia and parts of Bosnia, dating to 4700-3900 BC. The site consists of large numbers of pits and post holes, whose associated material has been subdivided typologically into five phases. There are two associated pottery styles, painted in black and broad red bands on buff ware, and incised on dark burnished ware, belong in the Middle Neolithic. The geometric designs suggest connections with contemporary wares in Italy, particularly Ripoli and Serra D'Alto. There was also a long blade and tanged point stone industry closely related to fishing.
Dar es-Soltan: CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: A cave site on the Atlantic coast of Morocco with a long sequence of late Aterian industry, followed by Iberomaurusian and Capsian Neolithic remains. The site is associated with human remains of Mechta-Afalou type.
Denbigh Flint complex: CATEGORY: culture
DEFINITION: An Arctic Small Tool Tradition flint industry found at Cape Denbigh, Iyatayet, Cape Krusenstern, Onion Portage, and other Alaskan sites. The typical artifacts are finely worked microblade tools (bladelets, small crescents), burins, and bifacially pressure-flaked points. The Denbigh complex had developed by c 3200 BC. The Arctic Small tool tradition spread eastwards over the whole Arctic zone from Alaska to Greenland and contributed to the earliest Eskimo cultures. Land mammals seem to have been the primary focus of subsistence activity.
Developed Oldowan: SYNONYMS OR RELATED TERMS: Developed Oldowan A, Developed Oldowan B, Developed Oldowan C
CATEGORY: culture
DEFINITION: A series of Early Stone Age industries of the Oldowan Industrial Complex seen at Olduvai Gorge and other African sites, dating c 1.6-0.6 million years ago. They differ from the classic Oldowan industry in the types of stone artifacts.
Diaguita: CATEGORY: culture
DEFINITION: Indian peoples of South America, formerly inhabiting northwestern Argentina and the Chilean provinces of Atacama and Coquimbo. They are characterized by distinctive ceramic complexes. Two principal subgroups have been defined -- the Argentinian, on the eastern side of the Andes and the Chilean, on the western side -- which have some cultural traits in common: funerary practices, use of bronze, and probably language. The Calchaquí, the Argentinian subgroup, farmed terraced fields, built irrigation canals, and kept herds of llama. They did loom weaving of llama-wool textiles, which they dyed; basket making; and had a rather elaborate ceramic industry. Metallurgy was also known. Religious beliefs involved shamanistic practices for the cure of illness felt to be caused by witchcraft. Polychrome funerary urns were used for burial for children; adult burials were stone-lined pit inhumations. The Chilean Diaguita ceramics are, on the whole, smaller and more delicately decorated. Influence from the north (Tiahuanaco in the early stages and Inca later) is also apparent. Petroglyphs are common throughout the Diaguita area. The earliest date for Diaguita is c 900 AD and it continued till the Spanish Conquest.
distribution: SYNONYMS OR RELATED TERMS: distributional archaeology; distribution patterns
CATEGORY: term; technique
DEFINITION: Simply, the spatial location of archaeological sites or artifacts. More specifically, a definition of the spatial location of artifacts, structures, or settlement types over a landscape. Analysis of the distribution of a particular artifact type may lead to conclusions about the nature of the industry or culture which produced or used it. The distribution of objects is studied by the plotting of an artifact's find-places on a distribution map. This is the visual representation of the distribution of some archaeologically significant trait or traits. The relationship of the find-spot symbols to the natural environment may reveal something about communication networks, economic subsystem, cultural or technological entities. The distribution map should show the extent of a culture of which the traits are distinctive, outlying occurrences being explained by diffusion, especially if spread along natural routes. The origin of more localized traits may be defined. The overlaying of one trait on another may suggest association or sequence, while mutually exclusive distributions can imply contemporaneity. The emphasis is on individual parts of archaeological deposits rather than on the site as a unit.
Djeitun: CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: A Neolithic site of a 6th millennium BC (and possibly late 7th) culture of Turkmenia characterized by mud-brick architecture of one-roomed houses with lime-plastered floors. Both floors and walls were sometimes painted. The subsistence economy was based on cereal agriculture (barley, wheat), accompanied by the rearing of sheep, cattle, and goats and the hunting of gazelle, onager, wild pig, and smaller animals. The Djeitun culture had a microlithic flint industry and chaff-tempered pottery, decorated with simple painted designs. The culture was the earliest Neolithic of central Asia.
Doian: SYNONYMS OR RELATED TERMS: Eibian
CATEGORY: culture
DEFINITION: A stone industry found exclusively in the southern and eastern areas of Somalia and northeastern Kenya in East Africa. Doian assemblages contain pressure-flaked small points, backed microliths, and flake scrapers. A post-Pleistocene age is possible but not yet determined.
Dyuktai: SYNONYMS OR RELATED TERMS: Diuktai, Dyuktai Cave
CATEGORY: culture; site
DEFINITION: An Upper Palaeolithic culture of northeast Siberia with the type site being the Dyuktai Cave at the confluence of the Dyuktai and Aldan rivers. It is characterized by bifacial tools of various shapes, burins on flakes and blades, blades, and microblades. The industry was associated with mammoth, bison, and horse bones and is similar to the Denali complex of Alaska. The cave's earliest occupation dates to c 33,000 BC and the culture seems to have ceased c 10,000 BC. The people who first migrated into North America may have been from this cultural group and it may be ancestral to the earliest lithic technologies, in particular the bifacially flaked points, of North America.
Early Later Stone Age: SYNONYMS OR RELATED TERMS: ESLA
CATEGORY: chronology
DEFINITION: An informal designation for the microlithic late Pleistocene Stone Age industry of some sites in South Africa. One such site is Border Cave, characterized by small backed pieces, bone points, ostrich eggshell beads, and incised bone and wood.
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.
Eburran: SYNONYMS OR RELATED TERMS: Kenya Capsian, Kenya Aurignacian
CATEGORY: culture
DEFINITION: An East African obsidian industry of the central Rift Valley, Kenya, previously known as the 'Kenya Capsian' and before that as the 'Kenya Aurignacian'. Its time span is the 13th-8th millennia BC. The assemblages, as recovered from Gamble's Cave and Nderit Drift, comprise large backed blades, crescentric microliths, burins, and end-scrapers.
Eibian: SYNONYMS OR RELATED TERMS: Doian
CATEGORY: culture
DEFINITION: A microlithic Later Stone Age industry in East Africa, characterized by pressure-flaked points and other tools and dating to the late Pleistocene.
El Guettar: CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: Aterian site in southern Tunisia associated with a Mousterian-type industry of scrapers and other stone tools. Its climate has preserved many animal fossils.
el Khiam: CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: A site in Palestine with a distinctive point of the PPNA lithic industry. The point is a truncated and symmetrically notched bladelet with a tip formed by marginal retouching.
el-Wad: CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: Cave site on Mount Carmel, Israel, with an industry of the Middle-Upper Palaeolithic containing Mousterian tools and Emiran points. That level was followed by Aurignacian-like Upper Palaeolithic levels, Atlitian layers, and Natufian levels.
Ele Bor: CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: A rock shelter site which was first occupied in the Middle Stone Age. There was a backed-microlith industry used by them and the following group of the Aquatic Civilization. Domestic sheep/goats and camel were present in small numbers from about the 3rd millennium BC, at which time pottery also came into use. The climate at the time was somewhat moister than that of the present. With the subsequent drier climate, cereal use was abandoned, but both hunting and small-scale pastoralism continued into the present millennium.
Elkab: SYNONYMS OR RELATED TERMS: Nekheb, El-Kab
CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: Upper Egyptian site on the east bank of the Nile, consisting of prehistoric and Pharaonic settlements, rock-cut tombs of the earth 18th Dynasty (1550-1295 BC), and remains of temples dating from the Early Dynastic period (3100-2686 BC) to the Ptolemaic period (332-30 BC). The most substantial remains are the massive mud-brick enclosure walls of the towns and the temple of Nekhbet. It is the type site of El-Kabian, a microlithic Epipalaeolithic industry dated to c 6000 BC.
Elmenteitan: CATEGORY: culture
DEFINITION: A Pastoral Neolithic stone industry of early East Africa in a restricted area on the west side of the central Rift Valley in Kenya. Typical artifact assemblages include large double-edged obsidian blades, plain pottery bowls, and shallow stone vessels. Domestic cattle and small stock were herded. The dead were cremated, as at the mass-burial site at Njoro River Cave (c 1000 BC), one of the earliest Elmenteitan sites. The industry continued into the 1st millennium AD. The name also applies to the Pastoral Neolithic and Iron Age pottery tradition associated with the stone artifacts.
Emirean: SYNONYMS OR RELATED TERMS: Emiran
CATEGORY: culture
DEFINITION: An early Upper Palaeolithic industry of the Levant region, named for the Emireh cave at the north end of the Sea of Galilee (Israel) which yielded tools and triangular arrowheads with a base tapered by means of bifacial retouches (Emireh points). It is the earliest stage of the Upper Palaeolithic recognized in the eastern Mediterranean region. The Emiran is believed to date from about 30,000 bc and may be transitional from the Mousterian.
Epi-Pietersburg: CATEGORY: culture
DEFINITION: A Middle Stone Age industry of southern Africa which succeeded the Pietersburg and has radiocarbon dates of 80,000-49,000 years ago.
Erligang phase: SYNONYMS OR RELATED TERMS: Erh-li-kang
CATEGORY: culture
DEFINITION: A stage of the early Bronze Age in North China seen in two strata at Zhengzhou Erligang, classified archaeologically as Middle Shang. The phase preceded the Anyang period (c 1300-1030 BC) and radiocarbon dates have been c 1600-1550 bc. The massive rammed-earth fortification, 118 feet wide at its base and enclosing an area of 1.2 square miles, would have taken 10,000 men more than 12 years to build. Also found were ritual bronzes, including four monumental tetrapods, palace foundations; workshops for bronze casting, pot making, and bone working; burials; and two inscribed fragments of oracle bones. The Erligang phase may correspond to the widest sway of the Shang empire and is known for its highly developed bronze-casting industry. Some Chinese archaeologists call the phase Early Shang.
Esh Shaheinab: CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: The type site for the Khartoum Neolithic in the Sudan, dated to the second half of the 4th millennium BC. Fishing was evidently of major importance and was conducted both by means of shell fish-hooks and with harpoons whose barbed bone points were pierced for attaching a line. Edge-ground axes and adzes were made of bone and stone. The microlithic stone industry and the pottery were very similar to those from Early Khartoum. Domestic stock has radiocarbon dates of 5300 bp.
experimental archaeology: SYNONYMS OR RELATED TERMS: experimental studies
CATEGORY: branch
DEFINITION: The reconstruction and reproduction of past behavior and processes to obtain or evaluate archaeological data and test hypotheses about the way man dealt with subsistence and technology. The experiments involve such activities as creating and using stone tools, duplicating prehistoric methods of farming, building, and travel, etc. The term is normally used only for those experiments which deal with material culture, such as industry, the building of structures, mining, and crop processing. The more theoretical aspects, such as ideas about the development and organization of society, are generally thought of a part of processual archaeology rather than experimental. Reconstructions can be based on excavated ground plans, and some of these have been deliberately burned or left to decay so that an idea can be gained of what the archaeologist might expect to find later. Boats have been built and sailed, food has been cooked in earth ovens and eaten, stone monuments have been laboriously erected, and trumpets and stringed instruments have been made and played. Although past events are not exactly repeatable, experimental simulation can prove very instructive and is being increasingly used. One of the earliest examples was General Pitt-Rivers' observations of the rate and duration of ditch silting on his excavations at Cranbourne Chase in the 19th century.
Eynan (Ain Mallaha): SYNONYMS OR RELATED TERMS: Ein Mallaha
CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: An early Natufian village beside Lake Huleh in northern Palestine. Excavations revealed three occupations starting with the 10th millennium bc. There were 50 semi-subterranean stone-lined circular huts, some with hearths and storage bins. Large storage pits and burials were outside the structures. Among the burials, one was more elaborately equipped and might have been a village headman. Eynan had a bone tool industry, bone and stone artwork, and stone vessels.
Ezero: CATEGORY: site; culture
DEFINITION: An Eneolithic and Early Bronze Age site in central Bulgaria which lends its name to a culture of the lower Danube basin and the Black Sea coast of Bulgaria. There were two building phases of the Veselinovo culture (Karanovo III) dated c 4320 BC, a level with Karanovo IV pottery, eight building levels of the Copper Age (Karanovo V-VII) dated c 3630 BC, and nine building levels of the Early Bronze Age. The Bronze Age levels have radiocarbon dates of c 2500-2200 BC and the pottery has affinities with the Early Bronze Age of Troy. Ezero had a very rich bone, antler, and stone industry and provides the most detailed chronology for southeastern Europe for the time period.
facie: CATEGORY: culture; term
DEFINITION: Any subgroup of elements within an industry or main culture tradition that is distinguished from the whole on the basis of some aspect of appearance or composition. A major division of a cultural sequence, such as the Mousterian culture of the European Palaeolithic, is often described as having different facies -- for example, the Quina Mousterian or the Mousterian of Acheulian tradition -- though these may reflect different industries or cultures. It is also a geological term used to describe the characters of any part of a formation which is differentiated by its appearance or composition, especially by the fossils it contains, its constituent rocks, or its texture. The term has also been applied to pedology (soil).
facies: CATEGORY: culture; term
DEFINITION: Any subgroup of elements within an industry or main culture tradition that is distinguished from the whole on the basis of some aspect of appearance or composition. A major division of a cultural sequence, such as the Mousterian culture of the European Palaeolithic, is often described as having different facies -- for example, the Quina Mousterian or the Mousterian of Acheulian tradition -- though these may reflect different industries or cultures. It is also a geological term used to describe the characters of any part of a formation which is differentiated by its appearance or composition, especially by the fossils it contains, its constituent rocks, or its texture. The term has also been applied to pedology (soil).
faience: SYNONYMS OR RELATED TERMS: faïence, fayence; frit, paste
CATEGORY: ceramics
DEFINITION: A name used for the medieval pottery of Faenza in northern Italy, one of the chief seats of the ceramics industry in the 16th century; it was an early majolica. It is also used for the tin-glazed earthenware made in France, Germany, Spain, and Scandinavia as distinguished from Faenza majolica, and that made in The Netherlands and England, which is called delft. But most accurately, it is the primitive form of glass developed in Mesopotamia in the 3rd millennium BC and then, almost as early, in Egypt; it is sometimes called Egyptian faience. It is a substance composed of a sand and clay mixture baked to a temperature at which the surface begins to fuse to a bluish or greenish glass. It was colored with copper salts to produce a blue-green finish and used especially for beads and figurines, particularly in the second millennium BC. Its main use in the Bronze Age was for beads, seals, figurines, and similar small objects. The glazed material could be comprised of a base of either carved steatite (soapstone) or molded clay with a core of crushed quartz (or quartz and soda-lime) fired so that the surface fuses into a glassy coating. Examples occur also in Bronze Age contexts in Europe, including the Wessex Culture.
Farnham pottery: SYNONYMS OR RELATED TERMS: Alice Holt ware
CATEGORY: artifact
DEFINITION: Major Romano-British pottery industry based around Farnham in Surrey, England, producing a wide range of wares between the mid 1st century AD and the 4th century AD. Grey and cream-colored fabrics predominate.
Fauresmith: CATEGORY: culture
DEFINITION: An older term used to refer to the final Acheulian phase in the southern African interior. It was a Stone Age industry with tools representing a development from the final Acheulian handax tradition; the handaxes were small, were well-finished, and pointed. At Saldanha, Fauresmith artifacts were likely contemporary with a Neanderthal-like skull similar to the one from Broken Hill.
Florisbad: CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: A spring deposit in the Orange Free State, South Africa, which preserved a human cranium of Homo sapiens sapiens. Its brow ridges, while pronounced, are markedly less prominent than those of the (presumably earlier) skull from Broken Hill in Zambia. The Florisbad specimen is dated to c 50,000 bc (late Middle Pleistocene) and appears to be associated with a Middle Stone Age industry of Pietersburg type.
Gamberian: CATEGORY: culture
DEFINITION: A distinctive Early Holocene industry of coastal southeast South Australia and southwest Victoria with retouched flint flake tools.
Gamble's Cave: CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: A cave in the central Rift Valley of Kenya with a long sequence attributed to the Eburran industry (formerly known as the Upper Kenya Capsian), followed by Elmenteitan assemblages.
Ganj Dareh, Tepe: SYNONYMS OR RELATED TERMS: Ganj Dareh
CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: A small mound in the Kermanshah region of western Iran, which has yielded five occupation levels with radiocarbon dates ranging from 8400-6800 BC. The lowest level had no permanent architecture, only shallow pits and hollows. The next level had mud-brick structures, mostly very small adjoining cubicles, perhaps used for storage. Subsequent phases include wattle-and-daub rectilinear structures and a wide range of unfired clay objects. Animal and human figurines suggest that the stone industry remained largely the same throughout.
Ghar-i Khar: SYNONYMS OR RELATED TERMS: Dopnkey Cave
CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: Cave site in the mountains of western Iran, occupied from the Middle Palaeolithic onwards. The Upper Palaeolithic industry is similar to the Baradostian at Shanidar Cave. The cave has also yielded a Neolithic level with pottery, probably associated with a food producing community.
Gi: CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: A site in northwest Botswana with Middle and Later Stone Age remains, including a microlithic industry associated with game trap pits.
Gobedra: CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: A small rock shelter near Axum in northern Ethiopia which has yielded a stratified sequence covering the last 12,000 years. The earliest occurrence was of large blades, followed c 8000 BC by an industry dominated by backed microliths. Pottery first appeared at a level tentatively dated to the 3rd millennium BC. The seeds of cultivated finger millet (Eleusine coracana) are dated to between 7000-5000 years ago. This find, if correctly associated with these dates, would be the earliest-known evidence for an indigenous African crop. The latest stone industry was a specialized one of small steep scrapers.
Godin Tepe: CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: A site in the Kangavar valley of Luristan, western Iran, with continuous occupation from the early 5th millennium to c 1600 BC (late Iron Age) when it was abandoned following an earthquake and not reoccupied for around 800 years. The cultural sequence provides the framework for the cultural history of this section of the Zagros Mountains. The earliest two building levels are associated with straw-tempered, poorly fired pottery and a stone industry. Most interesting is Godin V of the late 4th millennium BC in which Late Uruk materials (bevel-rimmed bowls, pottery, seal styles, tablets) are found. In Godin II, c 750 BC, the site was a fortified town of the Medes, and an important building with three colonnaded halls and a throne room has been excavated. A stain on an amphora has revealed the world's earliest wine c 3500 BC.
Gokomere: CATEGORY: site; culture
DEFINITION: An Early Iron Age site in south-central Zimbabwe, occupied between the 5th-7th centuries AD, which is also the name of an Early Iron Age industry. Its characteristic pottery is accompanied by copper and iron fragments.
Gravettian: CATEGORY: culture
DEFINITION: An Upper Palaeolithic industry named after the site La Gravette in the Dordogne of southwest France and characterized by well-developed blade tools of flint and female figurines of ivory. This advanced industry succeeded the Aurignacian and preceded the Solutrean, c 28,000-20,000BP. In France it is known as the Upper Périgordian (Périgordian IV) and the Gravettian appears to have developed in central Europe, expanding to the east and west. The small, pointed blades with straight blunted backs are called Gravette points. Most of the French sites are caves, but possibly related industries, known as Eastern Gravettian, are distributed through the loess lands of central Europe and Russia at the camp sites of mammoth-hunters; other sites are in Spain, Belgium, Czechoslovakia, and Italy. The Gravettians invented the bow and arrow, blunted-back knives of flint, and the tanged arrowheads. They are famous, too, for their cave paintings. Other artifacts include bone or ivory spears and, in eastern Europe, numerous other bone tools incised with an elaborate geometric pattern.
Gwisho: CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: A series of mounds and hot springs in western Zambia with evidence of intense Late Stone Age (Zambian Wilton) occupation from about 5000-3500 years ago. The sites are of particular importance because of the preservation of organic materials in the spring deposits. Grass-lined hollows have been interpreted as sleeping places. Among the wooden artifacts in the assemblage were bows, arrowheads, fire-drills, and digging sticks. The microlithic chipped stone industry is of the Zambian Wilton type. Graves at the sites yielded some 35 Khoisan skeletons. The economy was based on hunting game but also on a variety of vegetables.
Halfan: CATEGORY: culture
DEFINITION: A Nubian stone industry and culture, named after the settlement of the Wadi Halfa, dating from c 23,000-17,000 BC. Its sites, characterized by tools made on small blades, appear to have been camps of hunters and fishermen.
Hallur: CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: A prehistoric site in southern southern India, which has produced evidence of a Neolithic-Chalcolithic culture of the 2nd millennium BC, characterized by one-roomed circular houses, burnished gray ware, an abundant ground stone industry, and a few copper objects. A later level has Black and Red Ware, iron objects, and a radiocarbon date of c 1100-1400 BC. Three periods have been define: Hallur IA, IB, and II.
Hargeisan: CATEGORY: culture
DEFINITION: A stone industry of northern Somalia with production of large blades from prismatic cores and which appears to predate the local appearance of microlith industries. It may be related to the Eburran occupation of the central Kenyan Rift Valley between the 11th and 8th millennia BC.
Harifian: CATEGORY: culture
DEFINITION: A hunter-gatherer culture of Negev and Sinai who lived in the desert and in seasonal camps and had a Late Natufian lithic industry. The Harif point was an obliquely truncated bladelet with pointed base formed by microburin technique and a steep retouch.
Haua Fteah: CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: A large cave site in Cyrenaica, Libya, with the most complete sequence, back to c 78,000 BC, of Upper Pleistocene and Holocene industries known from a single site in North Africa. The oldest flint industry is a Libyan variant of the pre-Aurignacian (Libyan Amudian), and is followed successively by Levalloiso-Mousterian (60,000 years ago), Dabban (40,000 years ago), Oranian (18-16,000 years ago), Libyco-Capsian, and finally (from c 6800-6400) by Neolithic with pottery and domesticated animals. Based upon the striking of parallel-sided blades from prismatic cores, the earliest stage has clear affinities with broadly contemporary industries in Syria, Lebanon, and Israel. Its makers exploited both large game animals and seafood resources. There was a return to blade technology with the Dabban industry and the beginning of the Dabban occupation of Crenaica seems to have coincided with the onset of very arid conditions in the Saharan regions to the south. The Oranian had small backed bladelets.
High Lodge: CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: A British Palaeolithic site in Suffolk, where distinctive tools were found including classic Quina type scrapers similar to those of the Charentian culture of France. At first it was believed to have had three industries: Acheulian ovate biface, a crude flake industry, and a Mousterian. Dates of 450,000-500,000 years ago now suggest that the assemblage may be similar to material from Clacton and Swanscombe.
Hoabinhian: SYNONYMS OR RELATED TERMS: Hoabinh
CATEGORY: culture
DEFINITION: A little-known Mesolithic or Neolithic culture (early-to-mid-Holocene stone tool industry) of southeast Asia (type site is Hoa Binh, Vietnam) dating from 10,000-2000 BC. There are many chipped, pecked, and polished stone axes found in piles of shells. Its importance lies in its position between the earliest centers of rice growing in India and China, and in the part it most have played in diffusing the knowledge of agriculture into Indonesia and the Pacific. The Neolithic assemblages have pottery and ground stone tools for several millennia after 6000 BC. It is best described as a techno-complex with successive cultural accretions, the Hoabinhian cannot be regarded as an archaeological culture of chronological horizon. The majority of Hoabinhian sites found to date are in rock shelters and coastal shell middens. The three recognized phases are: archaic with unifacially worked pebble tools, intermediate with smaller pebble tools and bifacial working and edge-grinding, and late characterized by some pottery, smaller scrapers, grinding stones, knives, piercers, polished stone tools, and shell artifacts.
horncore: SYNONYMS OR RELATED TERMS: horn core
CATEGORY: fauna
DEFINITION: The hard, bony inner portion of animal horn; the bony projections from the skull which support horns. The horn itself forms a tight sheath around the core, which is removed for horn working. Some archaeological sites have large accumulations of horn cores related to a horn-working industry.
Howiesonspoort: SYNONYMS OR RELATED TERMS: Howiesons Poort
CATEGORY: culture
DEFINITION: A Middle Stone Age industry of southern Africa's Cape Province. It is characterized by the appearance of small blades, standardized backed tools (e.g. segments), and some unifacial and bifacial points at a time when most stone industries were still based upon the production of flakes struck from discoidal cores. The radiocarbon dates are greater than 40,000 years old. In addition to the type site, the industry has been investigated at Klasies River Mouth, Epi-Pietersburg, and Montagu Cave.
Ibero-Maurusian: SYNONYMS OR RELATED TERMS: 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.
Ishango: CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: A Stone Age midden on the shore of Lake Edward in eastern Zaire, dated to 20,000 BP. It has a long sequence of occupation and represents the southernmost known manifestation of the so-called African Aquatic Civilization. A crude stone industry with rare backed microliths was accompanied by bone harpoon heads. There was no pottery.
Iwo Eleru: CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: A rock shelter in the forest zone of southwestern Nigeria which has yielded the longest dated sequence of microlithic artifacts found in West Africa. Occupation was established by 12,000 years ago and the chipped stone industry continued for as long as 8000 years with only minor changes. From the lowest horizon a human burial, described as showing Negroid physical features, was recovered and it is the oldest Nigerian skeleton yet uncovered. In about the mid-4th millennium ground stone artifacts and pottery came into use. There is some evidence for the beginning of agriculture around that time.
Jabrud: SYNONYMS OR RELATED TERMS: 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.
Jerzmanowician: SYNONYMS OR RELATED TERMS: Jermanovician
CATEGORY: culture
DEFINITION: An early Upper Palaeolithic industry of Poland characterized by foliated bifacial points, retouched blades, and denticulates. The type site is Nietoperzowa Cave at Jermanovice near Cracow in Poland.
Jiangling: SYNONYMS OR RELATED TERMS: Chiang-ling
CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: A county seat of the Ch'in dynasty (221-206 BC) in third century BC China. Western Chou, Eastern Zhou, and Han remains as well as burials containing painted lacquers are of interest. Chiang-ling was also a center of a handicraft-textile industry, which was developed on a large scale by the Ch'ing dynasty in the 18th century, Chiang-ling satins being especially famous.
Jorwe: CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: A small Chalcolithic site in southern India, consisting of several mounds and representing a single period material culture in the second half of the 2nd millennium BC. There was a wheel-made red ware painted in black, including distinctive long-spouted vessels. Jorwe had a rich copper tool industry in addition to stone toolmaking and it seems to be related to the Malwa complex further north.
Kabambian: CATEGORY: culture
DEFINITION: Iron Age industry of southeastern Zaire which succeeds the Kisalian and is best known from numerous graves, especially at Sanga. The industry is dated between the 14th-18th centuries AD and is marked by an abundance of copper cross-shaped ingots (croisettes), of standardized weights, which may have served as a medium of exchange.
Kalambo: SYNONYMS OR RELATED TERMS: Kalemba
CATEGORY: culture
DEFINITION: An Early Iron Age group in northern Zambia, taking its name from the 4th century AD village at Kalambo Falls. It is of the Chifumbaze complex. A prepared-core industry existed by c 36,000 BC and a true backed microlith assemblage appeared by 20,000 BC. The shift to a microlithic industry was accompanied by a change in faunal remains indicating a new preference for hunting small solitary creatures. The site also contains a large series of rock paintings, probably of later Iron Age date.
Kalomo: CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: A Late Iron Age industry in southern Zambia, dating from the end of the 9th till the 13th century AD. The industry probably developed from an Early Iron Age ancestor in the valley and spread to the plateau. The people were subsistence farmers, herding cattle and small stock, cultivating a variety of food crops, making pottery and a few metal tools, and occupying villages beside river valleys or on artificially built mounds.
Kandanda: CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: A site on the upper Zambezi River in Zambia, with a prepared-core industry that included rare bifacial hand axes which continued to a remarkably late date. It was replaced by a microlithic industry probably around 1000 BC.
Kansyore ware: CATEGORY: ceramics
DEFINITION: A comb-stamped pottery found at several pre-Iron Age sites around Lake Victoria in East Africa in the first millennium BC. The makers of Kansyore ware appear to have been hunter-gatherers, makers of a backed microlith industry.
Kaposwa: CATEGORY: culture
DEFINITION: A late Holocene microlithic Later Stone Age industry at Kalambo Falls in northern Zambia.
Kapwirimbwe: CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: An Early Iron Age village site near modern Lusaka, Zambia, dated to about the 5th century AD, that gives its name to a tradition of the Chifumbaze complex. The elaborately decorated pottery is similar to that from contemporary Copperbelt sites. Iron-working was a major industry. A late phase, 9th-11th centuries AD, is represented at the Twickenham Road site.
Karari: CATEGORY: culture
DEFINITION: Earlier Stone Age industry of the Oldowan Complex at Koobi Fora in Kenya, dating to 1.5-1.25 million years ago. There are many artifact types, including bifaces.
Kartan culture: CATEGORY: culture
DEFINITION: A group of stone assemblages with heavy core tools found on Kangaroo Island and the nearby peninsulas of South Australia, a variant of the Australian Core Tool and Scraper Tradition. Kangaroo Island, now separated from Australia by a 15-km strait, was joined to the mainland during the Pleistocene. There were no Aboriginal inhabitants at the time of European contact. Radiocarbon estimates of 14,000 BC have been obtained for a possibly subsequent small scraper industry in Seton rock shelter on Kangaroo Island. Kartan tools include unifacially flaked pebble choppers, large steep-edged flake scrapers, waisted ax blades, and large horsehoof cores (mean weights of 500 grams), sometimes associated with small quartz flakes. The proportion of core tools in the assemblage is much higher than in other Pleistocene sites.
KBS: CATEGORY: culture
DEFINITION: An Earlier Stone Age industry (and site) of the Oldowan industrial complex at Koobi Fora, Kenya, dating to 1.8 million years ago. The site has stone artifacts and animal bones that are an important source of information on early Hominids.
Kebarian: SYNONYMS OR RELATED TERMS: Kebaran
CATEGORY: culture
DEFINITION: A stone-tool culture in Kebara (Kebareh) Cave of Mount Carmel, Israel. It is from the early Levantine Epipalaeolithic (c 20,000-14,500 BP, after the local Upper Palaeolithic. The nomadic hunter-gatherers worked with wild cereals and the flint industry was characterized by bladelets and microliths modified to form backed and pointed pieces and by mortars and pestles.
Kenniff Cave: CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: A sandstone rock shelter in south central Queensland, Australia, one of the oldest sites yet discovered in the continent and containing one of the longest and most complete technological sequences for any Australian site. The basal strata contain an industry of core and flake scrapers dated by radiocarbon to c 14,000-13,000 BC. These tools were later joined by small blades, microliths, delicate points, woodworking flakes, and (around 2400 BC) by backed blades. Stone tools from the base to the 3000 BC levels also included steep-edge flake scrapers and cores, including horsehoof cores. Between 3000-500 BC, there occurred an unusually wide range of Australian Small Tools, including Pirri points, geometric microliths, Bondi points, and Tula adze flakes, as well as grinding stones. Ochre pellets, some use-striated, were scattered through all levels. There is stenciled art going back 19,000 years. It was the first evidence of Pleistocene occupation in Australia, establishing the two-phase sequence in current use for the continent.
Khartoum Neolithic: CATEGORY: culture
DEFINITION: Industry of Sudan dating to c 5200 BP and characterized by domesticated animals, pottery, and a special adze.
Khirokitia: CATEGORY: site; culture
DEFINITION: An Early Neolithic settlement in southern Cyprus, first occupied in the aceramic Neolithic I of the 7th millennium BC. It was abandoned and reoccupied in Neolithic II, later 5th millennium BC. The settlement, surrounded by a massive wall, consisted of round houses of mudbrick on stone footings. Hearths and benches were found inside and some houses had burials with grave goods (especially stone bowls) underneath the floors. There was a fine stone industry, using Anatolian obsidian and flint for tools, local andesite for both tools and containers, and Levantine carnelian for beads. The site has given its name to the Early Neolithic culture of the island.
Khor Musa: SYNONYMS OR RELATED TERMS: Khor-Musa
CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: A site of Middle Palaeolithic occupation in the southern Nile Valley of Egypt in the Second Cataract. It has given its name to the final phase of the Nubian 'Middle Stone Age' for other sites close to the River Nile and contemporary with, or following, the Aterian. The site had Levallois flakes, denticulates, and burins. It seems probable that the Khormusan industry was broadly contemporary with the Dabban of Cyrenaica, belonging to the period following c 40,000 BC when increased aridity rendered the Sahara uninhabitable. Faunal remains from Khormusan sites indicate fishing and the hunting of land animals.
kiln: CATEGORY: structure
DEFINITION: A chamber built for the firing (baking) of pottery, used from prehistoric times. These, usually dome-shaped, structures are designed to produce the high temperatures needed for the industry. In a pottery kiln, the pots were often stacked upside-down on a shelf. An opening for draft was left at the top, and a flue provided at the side. Fuel was piled within and around the kiln, and when the heat was at its greatest, the openings were shut to preserve the temperatures and fire the pots inside with temperatures of 800-1000 C achieved. Other versions were used glassmaking or the parching of corn. The kiln, like the potter's wheel, implies craft specialization, and appears only at advanced stages of economic development.
Kimberley point: CATEGORY: lithics
DEFINITION: A pressure-flaked bifacial point with serrated margins and long shallow surface scar beds, found in the Kimberley region of Western Australia and neighboring areas of the Northern Territory and northwest Queensland. South of the Kimberleys the point was a trade item and was used as a surgical knife. The points were made at the time of European contact, when bottle glass and porcelain were adapted for the industry.
Kintampo Neolithic: SYNONYMS OR RELATED TERMS: Kintampo
CATEGORY: culture
DEFINITION: An industry of Ghana in West Africa with the first evidence of animal husbandry and food production, and dated to 3600 BP. This savanna woodland and forest margin in the basin of Black Volta River also had ceramics, flaked stone tools, and scored stone rasps that may have been used for grating or grinding.
Kisalian: CATEGORY: culture
DEFINITION: An Iron Age industry of southeastern Zaire which succeeded the Kamilambian c 8th century AD. There is a large cemetery site at Sanga on the shore of Lake Kisale, with numerous objects in ceramics, iron, copper, and ivory and items suggesting East African coastal trade. The industry reached its full development in the 10th-14th centuries. The funerary practices indicate the beginning of a hierarchical society in central Africa.
Koongine: CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: Limestone cave in southeast South Australia, occupied from 9000 bp that lasted 1000-2000 years. The stone assemblage gives an Early Holocene date for the Gambieran industry. It was only reoccupied within the last 1000 years.
Kostenki-Willendorf culture: CATEGORY: culture
DEFINITION: Upper Palaeolithic culture of central Europe and the Russian plain dating to c 30,000-20,000 bp. This culture is based on assemblages containing backed blades, shouldered points, and Venus figurines among the art objects. It is generally equated with the Eastern Gravettian industry.
Kota Tampan: CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: Site in peninsular Malaysia with a pebble and flake industry dating to 31,000 BP in the Upper Palaeolithic. . In northern Malaya a large series of choppers and chopping tools made on quartzite pebbles and found in Middle Pleistocene tin-bearing gravels have been referred to collectively as the Tampanian, since they come from Kota Tampan in Perak.
Kouroukorokale: CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: Rock shelter near Bamako in Mali, West Africa, containing a microlithic and harpoon industry. The crude stone industry was accompanied in the second phase by barbed bone harpoon heads. The site may indicate a westerly representative of the heterogeneous complex of harpoon-fishing adaptations which is attested in the southern Sahara between the 8th-3rd millennia BC. Economy for the first phase was fishing, mollusks, and hunting; for the second it was mainly hunting and gathering.
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.
Kuala Selinsing: SYNONYMS OR RELATED TERMS: Tanjong Rawa
CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: A coastal site in northern Perak, peninsular Malaysia, which has produced remains of pile dwellings probably built over a mangrove swamp, burials in canoe-like coffins, pottery similar to Pontian, Indian seals, Chinese stonewares, and remains of a bead industry from the 1st millennium AD. The site may have been a small trade station between 600-1100 AD.
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.
Kush: SYNONYMS OR RELATED TERMS: Cush
CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: An Egyptian term for Upper Nubia and the independent states of the region during periods of Egyptian weakness. It is the name applied to the area which, during and after the pharaonic period, was subject to Egyptian cultural and /or political influence. Kush's main period of independence began c 9th century BC. In the 8th century, the kings of Kush conquered Egypt and ruled briefly there as the 25th Dynasty, being expelled southwards after the Assyrian invasion of Egypt in 671 BC. In their homeland, the Kushites' capital was established first at Napata near the fourth Nile cataract, then move to Meroe about 600 BC. There the capital was better situated to exploit trade-routes eastward to the Red Sea and Ethiopia as well as those of the Nile Valley. Timber was also more plentiful and was used to fuel the Meroitic iron industry, which probably began on a small scale in about the 6th century BC. The kingdom of Kush survived till 350 AD, when the final collapse of Meroe was probably due to an invasion from Axum (Aksum).
Kwale: CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: Site in southeast Kenya which has given its name to the Early Iron Age industry of that area and northern Tanzania. It was a branch of the Eastern Stream or Urewe tradition of the Chifumbaze Early Iron Age complex, starting in the 2nd century AD. The highly characteristic pottery, Kwale ware, occurs far down the East African coast in Mozambique and eastern Transvaal, where it is dated to the 4th century AD.
La Madeleine: CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: A Dordogne rock shelter in France, extremely rich in mobiliary art, which is the type site for the Magdalenian -- the final West European Upper Palaeolithic industry. First excavated by Edouard Lartet and Henry Christy, the Magdalenian dated from approximately 16,000-10,000 BC. Very numerous carved art pieces have been found with the stone and bone tools.
La Micoque: CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: A rock shelter near Les Eyzies in the Dordogne, southwest France, with a series of the Lower-Middle Palaeolithic levels. The uppermost contained hand axes in the type assemblage of the Micoquian industry, while the five lower levels are the type series of the Tayacian.
La Quina: CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: Middle and Upper Palaeolithic rock shelter complex in Charente, southwest France, and the name of a subdivision of the Charentian Mousterian tradition. The stone tool industry produced thick scrapers with a very curved cutting edge and stepped, splintered retouches. Another industry had many thin scrapers produced by Levallois technique. Human remains include 27 of Neanderthal type.
Laga Oda: CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: A rock shelter near Harar in southeastern Ethiopia with occupation beginning around the 14th millennium BC. The industry of small blades and numerous backed elements continued into the 2nd millennium AD. The site also contains rock paintings depicting humans, cattle, and fat-tailed sheep.
Lagoa Santa caves: CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: A system of caves in Minas Gerais, Brazil, occupied from the late Pleistocene, with human remains, stone tools, and remains of extinct mastodon and sloth. Dated to 15,300 bp is an industry of quartz flakes. The Cerca Grande complex of 10,000-8000 bp had small rock-crystal flakes, axes, bone projectile points, hammerstones, and a cemetery of 50 flexed inhumations. There are hundreds of rock paintings from the Planalto Tradition of 7000-3000 bp.
Lake Sentani: CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: A lake in northeastern Irian Jaya, northern New Guinea, known for a range of tools and weapons of bronze and brass found in burial mounds. These artifacts are undated, but could represent a metallurgical industry established by Indonesian traders in recent centuries. New Guinea has no other ancient metallurgical traditions. The items included socketed axes and spearheads.
Lalla: CATEGORY: site; culture
DEFINITION: A pre-Capsian bladelet industry and site in Tunisia, possibly earlier than Iberomaurusian.
Lamoka culture: CATEGORY: culture; site
DEFINITION: An inland site of the late Archaic period located in the Finger Lakes region of central New York dating c 2500-1800 BC. It is characterized by narrow-stemmed points of a type usually associated with coastal areas and by a well-developed industry in worked bone. Other traits include houses framed with upright poles, beveled adzes, atlatl weights, manos and metates, and fishing gear.
Lan Na: CATEGORY: culture
DEFINITION: An ancient northern Thai principality, centered around present Chiang Mai. Founded in the late 13th century, it was also called Yonaratha or Yonakarattha or Bingarattha in the Pali chronicles. Recently the name has also been used to designate a Palaeolithic industry discovered in northern Thailand (the 'Lannathian'). Lan Na -- with Chiang Mai as its capital -- became not only powerful but also a center for the spread of Theravada Buddhism to Tai peoples in what are now northeastern Myanmar, southern China, and northern Laos. Under Tilokaracha (ruled 1441-87), Lan Na became famous for its Buddhist scholarship and literature.
Larnian culture: CATEGORY: culture
DEFINITION: A Mesolithic culture, named after Larne, Ireland, and found only on sites close to coasts and estuaries in western Scotland and eastern Ireland. It is characterized by shell middens and the early toolkits include leaf-shaped points made on a flake, the oldest unambiguous implement in Ireland, and scrapers. Some are dated to 6000 BC. Later assemblages contain more flakes than blades and include tranchet axes and very small scrapers. . More recent work casts doubt on the antiquity of the people who were responsible for the Larnian industry; association with Neolithic remains suggests that they should be considered not as Mesolithic but rather as contemporary with the Neolithic farmers. The Larnian could then be interpreted as a specialized aspect of contemporary Neolithic culture. Lake and riverside finds, especially along the River Bann, show a comparable tradition. A single radioactive carbon date of 5725 +/- 110 BC from Toome Bay, north of Lough Neagh, for woodworking and flint has been cited in support of a Mesolithic phase in Ireland.
Lausitz: SYNONYMS OR RELATED TERMS: Lusatia, Lusatian
CATEGORY: culture
DEFINITION: A northeasterly group of the European Urnfield cultures, occurring in East Germany, Poland, and parts of Czechoslovakia, which emerged c 1500 BC and survived well into the Iron Age c 300 BC. Fortified settlements occur, seen in the well-preserved site at Biskupin. The dead were cremated and placed in urns and buried either in urnfields or under barrows. The good-quality pottery was often decorated with graphite painted designs and plastic ornament. The bronze industry, of general Urnfield type, flourished; iron was introduced from the Hallstatt Iron Age culture from the later 7th century BC. Historic Lusatia was centered on the Neisse and upper Spree rivers, in what is now eastern Germany, between the present-day cities of Cottbus (north) and Dresden (south).
Le Placard: CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: Cave site in the Charente region of France with Solutrean and Magdalenian levels with much industry and art material. Included in the artifacts were well-carved batons-de-commandement and other decorated, carved objects as well as engravings on the walls.
Leang Tuwo Mane'e: CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: Rock shelter on the coast of Karakellang, Talaud Islands, northeastern Indonesia, which has produced a preceramic small blade industry, c 3000 BC, followed by the appearance of a Neolithic assemblage by about 2000 BC, probably introduced from the Philippines.
Leopard's Kopje: SYNONYMS OR RELATED TERMS: Nthabazingwe
CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: A site near Khami, southwestern Zimbabwe, and the name of a later Iron Age industry which developed in c 10th-11th century AD. At the type site, large circular houses were excavated. During later phases, from about the 14th century, gold mining and building with stone occurred. The complex covered adjacent areas of the northern Transvaal, South Africa. There was trade with the East African coast, class distinction, and the development of sacred leadership leading up to the Zimbabwe culture.
Levalloisian: SYNONYMS OR RELATED TERMS: Levallois; Levalloisian flake technique
CATEGORY: culture; lithics
DEFINITION: Pertaining to the Levallois technique or describing tools made by this method of producing flint flakes from a prepared core. It is also the name of the middle Paleolithic culture or industry of the second Interglacial in France, characterized by the introduction and refinement of flake tools. The name is derived from Levallois-Perret, a town near Paris, where such artifacts were first discovered.
Liang-chu: SYNONYMS OR RELATED TERMS: Liangzhu
CATEGORY: culture; site
DEFINITION: A Middle and Late Neolithic culture in central southern China, with its type site in Jiangsu Province, originating c 3000 BC. Its painted pottery succeeded Yang-Shao culture and preceded or was contemporary with the Longshan culture; Liangzhu is a continuation of the Majibang culture of the same region and is of Hemudu lineage. The jade industry was very advanced with intricate incising and relief carvings of the taotie motif. It was a rice-growing culture.
Linear Pottery culture: SYNONYMS OR RELATED TERMS: Linearbandkeramik; LBK; Danubian I
CATEGORY: culture
DEFINITION: The earliest Neolithic culture of central Europe, western Ukraine to eastern France, between c 4500-3900 BC. It is so named after curvilinear incised patterns which make its pottery so recognizable. This was the first farming culture in central Europe, based on grain cultivation and domesticated livestock, lasting to 3200 BC on its periphery. The Linear Pottery core area stretches from eastern Hungary to the Netherlands, including settlement concentrations in the Pannonian Basin, Bohemia, Moravia, central Germany and the Rhineland. A second rapid expansion occurred eastwards round the northern rim of the Carpathians, from Poland to the Dnieper. Linear Pottery is characterized by incised and sometimes painted pottery (3/4 spherical bowl) with linear designs (curvilinear, zigzag, spiral, and meander patterns), polished stone shoe-last adzes, and a microlithic stone industry. Small cemeteries of individual inhumations are common as are longhouses with rectangular ground plans. The remarkable uniformity that characterized the Linear Pottery culture in its core area broke down after c 4000 BC and the cultures that emerged -- Tisza, Lengyel, Stroke-Ornamented Ware, Rossen etc. -- were more divergent in characteristics. It is most possible that it derived from the Körös culture of the northern Balkans.
lithic: SYNONYMS OR RELATED TERMS: Lithic, -lithic, lithics
CATEGORY: artifact
DEFINITION: Pertaining to or describing a stone tool or artifact. The capitalized term describes the first developmental period in New World chronology, preceding the Archaic period and characterized by the use of flaked stone tools and hunting and gathering subsistence. The combining form means relating to or characteristic of a (specified) stage in humankind's use of stone as a cultural tool and to form the names of cultural phases, e.g. Neolithic, Mesolithic. Lithics is the process or industry of making stone tools and artifacts.
lithic / Lithic / -lithic: SYNONYMS OR RELATED TERMS: lithics
CATEGORY: lithics
DEFINITION: Pertaining to or describing a stone tool or artifact. The capitalized term describes the first developmental period in New World chronology, preceding the Archaic period and characterized by the use of flaked stone tools and hunting and gathering subsistence. The combining form means relating to or characteristic of a (specified) stage in humankind\'s use of stone as a cultural tool and to form the names of cultural phases, e.g. Neolithic, Mesolithic. Lithics is the process or industry of making stone tools and artifacts.
Lockshoek: SYNONYMS OR RELATED TERMS: formerly Smithfield A
CATEGORY: culture
DEFINITION: A non-microlithic Later Stone Age industry of the Oakhurtst complex in interior South Africa, c 12,000-8000 BP. It was contemporary with the Albany industry of Cape Province.
Luangwa pottery: CATEGORY: artifact
DEFINITION: A Late Iron Age complex of central, eastern, and northern Zambia in the 2nd millennium AD with a distinctive pottery style. It appeared a s a break from the Chifumbaze complex in the 11th century, originated in Zaire, and has continued into Recent times. The term (also Luangwa variant) is also used for Earlier Stone Age Sangoan collections from eastern Zambia. This facies of the Sangoan industry is found in gravel deposits of the Luangwa and tributary valleys of eastern Zambia, and is marked by large picks and other core tools made from water-rounded cobbles.
Luangwa tradition: CATEGORY: culture
DEFINITION: A Late Iron Age complex of central, eastern, and northern Zambia in the 2nd millennium AD with a distinctive pottery style. It appeared a s a break from the Chifumbaze complex in the 11th century, originated in Zaire, and has continued into recent times. The term (also Luangwa variant) is also used for Earlier Stone Age Sangoan collections from eastern Zambia. This facies of the Sangoan industry is found in gravel deposits of the Luangwa and tributary valleys of eastern Zambia, and is marked by large picks and other core tools made from water-rounded cobbles.
Lukenya Hill: CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: An inselberg (boulder-hill) in southern Kenya, southeast of Nairobi, with material from the Middle Stone Age to the Late Iron Age. Numerous rock shelters and other sites have preserved this long sequence of prehistoric occupation. A backed microlith industry was established by the 16th millennium BC and probably long before. A fragment of human skull associated with this industry displays modern Negroid features.
Lupemban: SYNONYMS OR RELATED TERMS: Lupembian
CATEGORY: artifact
DEFINITION: A stone industry of the Lower Palaeolithic of west-central Africa, developed from a Sangoan predecessor and characterized by tools appropriate for rough woodwork. Lupemban is found in northern Angola and southern Zaire and an important dated site is at Kalambo Falls on the Zambia/Tanzania border. In contrast with the Sangoan, Lupermban assemblages are marked by the fine quality of their bifacial stoneworking technique on elongated double-ended points, large sidescrapers, and thick core-axes. The industry spans from before 30,000 BC until c15,000 BC.
Lupembian / Lupemban: CATEGORY: culture
DEFINITION: A stone industry of the Lower Palaeolithic of west-central Africa, developed from a Sangoan predecessor and characterized by tools appropriate for rough woodwork. Lupemban is found in northern Angola and southern Zaire and an important dated site is at Kalambo Falls on the Zambia/Tanzania border. In contrast with the Sangoan, Lupermban assemblages are marked by the fine quality of their bifacial stoneworking technique on elongated double-ended points, large sidescrapers, and thick core-axes. The industry spans from before 30,000 BC until c15,000 BC.
Luristan: CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: A region of the central Zagros mountains on the border of west-central Iran, where a distinctive bronze-working industry flourished 2600-600 BC. It is characterized by horse trappings, utensils, weapons, jewelry, belt buckles, and ritual and votive objects of bronze -- which became most distinctive around 1000 BC. Scholars believe that they were created either by the Cimmerians, a nomadic people from southern Russia who may have invaded Iran in the 8th century BC, or by such related Indo-European peoples as the early Medes and Persians. The immigrants grafted onto a population of Kassites who had already developed a bronze industry around 2000 BC. Important Luristan sites are Tepe Giyan and Tepe Djamshidi, Tepe Ganj Dareh, Tepe Asiab, Tepe Sarab, Tepe Guran, and especially Tepe Sialk. Many bronzes were placed into museum collections as a result of persistent looting of tombs from the 10th-7th centuries BC. Iron also appears at an early date in the Luristan tombs.
Madai Caves: CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: A series of caves in eastern Sabah, northern Borneo, Malaysia, which form a large complex like those of Niah, Sarawak. The largest cave is Agop Atas, and it has produced an industry of early Australian type dated to 8000 years ago, with a pottery sequence dated from 500 BC to the present. It, along with Agop Sarapad, were inhabited from c 9000-5000 BC by hunters using pebble and flake tools. After a 4000-year gap, the caves were reused between c 2000-500 BC by people using stone flake tools and pottery. The caves were abandoned again and later reused in the early 1st millennium AD.
Magdalenian: SYNONYMS OR RELATED TERMS: Age of the Reindeer
CATEGORY: culture
DEFINITION: The final major European culture of the Upper Paleolithic period, from about 15,000-10,000 years ago; characterized by composite or specialized tools, tailored clothing, and especially geometric and representational cave art (e.g. Altamira) and for beautiful decorative work in bone and ivory (mobiliary art). The people were chiefly fishermen and reindeer hunters; they were the first known people to have used a spear thrower (of reindeer bone and antler) to increase the range, strength, and accuracy. Magdalenian stone tools include small geometrically shaped implements (e.g., triangles, semilunar blades) probably set into bone or antler handles for use, burins (a sort of chisel), scrapers, borers, backed bladelets, and shouldered and leaf-shaped projectile points. Bone was used extensively to make wedges, adzes, hammers, spearheads with link shafts, barbed points and harpoons, eyed needles, jewelry, and hooked rods probably used as spear throwers. They killed animals with spears, snares, and traps and lived in caves, rock shelters, or substantial dwellings in winter and in tents in summer. The name is derived from La Madeleine or Magdalene, the type site in the Dordogne of southwest France. Its center of origin was southwest France and the adjacent parts of Spain, but elements characteristic of the later stages are represented in Britain (Creswell Crags), and eastwards to southwest Germany and Poland. The Magdalenian culture, like that of earlier Upper Palaeolithic communities, was adapted to the cold conditions of the last (Würm) glaciation. The Magdalenian has been divided into six phases; it followed the Solutrean industry and was succeeded by the simplified Azilian. Magdalenian culture disappeared as the cool, near-glacial climate warmed at the end of the Fourth (Würm) Glacial Period (c 10,000 BC), and herd animals became scarce.
Maghzalia, Tell: SYNONYMS OR RELATED TERMS: Maghzaliyah
CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: Aceramic Neolithic site in northern Iraq's Sinjar region. It provides evidence of the introduction of sedentary communities and farming in northern Mesopotamia. There were rectilinear structures with stone foundations and a lithic industry similar to other sites in the Zagros and Syro-Palestine.
Maglemosian: SYNONYMS OR RELATED TERMS: Maglemosan
CATEGORY: culture
DEFINITION: The first Mesolithic culture of the north European plain, found in Scandinavia, the northern Balkans, northern Scotland, and northern England, and lasting from c 9000/8000-5000 BC. The way of life was adapted to a forest and river/lakeside environment. Much has been preserved in waterlogged deposits. Thus more is known about the Maglemosian industry than about other tool industries of the same period. The tool kit included microliths, woodworking tools such as chipped axes and adzes, picks, barbed points, spearheads of bone or antler, and fishing gear. Wooden bows, paddles, and dugout canoes have been found, and the dog was already domesticated. The Maglemosian industry was named after the bog (magle mose, big bog in Danish) at Mullerup, Denmark, where evidence of the industry was first recognized. The Maglemosian industry was also highly artistic, with decorative designs on tools and decorative objects, such as pendants and amulets.
Magosian: CATEGORY: culture
DEFINITION: A stone industry found in eastern and southern Africa, dated to c 10,000-6000 BC. The diagnostic tools include small points, microliths, and small blades, as well as Middle Stone Age artifacts. An advanced Levallois technique was employed for the production of flakes for the manufacture of other tools, together with a punch technique for the production of microlithic artifacts. Projectile points were produced by pressure flaking. The culture may have been transitional between the Middle and Later Stone Ages. The type site is Magosi in Uganda. Other sites in central and southern Africa that are dated to the Pleistocene epoch (1,600,000-10,000 years ago) are often considered to represent the same material culture and hunting-and-gathering adaptation.
Makwe: CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: A rock shelter in eastern Zambia, near Mozambique, with occupation during the last four millennia BC by a stone industry of backed microliths. Traces of mastic provided evidence of the way these implements had been hafted.
Malaysia: CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: A country of Southeast Asia, composed of two noncontiguous regions -- peninsular (West) Malaysia and East Malaysia. It has been inhabited for at least 6,000 to 8,000 years. There was a Pleistocene assemblage (Kota Tampan), but the first coherent and widespread industry is the Hoabinhian (Gua Cha, Gua Kechil). The Neolithic culture was well established by 2500-1500 BC. Neolithic assemblages of probable Thai origin appear in north and central Malaya after 2800 BC (Gua Cha, Gua Kechil). Small Malayan kingdoms existed in the 2nd or 3rd centuries AD, when adventurers from India arrived and initiated more than 1,000 years of Indian influence.
Malvernian ware: CATEGORY: artifact
DEFINITION: A pottery industry based around the Malvern Hills in west central England. The earliest production dates to the middle Bronze Age, but from the mid 1st millennium BC onwards the industry produced a range of very coarse, handmade, simple jars. They were distributed over considerable distances, particularly in the Marches, South Wales, and Gloucestershire.
Manda: CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: The site of a Swahili city-state apparently established in the 9th century and distinguished for its seawalls of coral blocks, each of which weighs up to a ton. Located in the Lamu Archipelago off the coast of Kenya, it had numerous stone-built (and wattle-and-daub) houses. Trade, which seems to have been by barter, was considerable, with the main export probably of ivory. Manda had close trading connections with the Persian Gulf -- Siraf in particular. It imported large quantities of Islamic pottery and, in the 9th and 10th centuries, Chinese porcelain. There is evidence of a considerable iron-smelting industry at Manda.
Maros point: CATEGORY: lithics
DEFINITION: Small hollow-based stone projectile points, often with serrated edge-retouch, characteristic of a mature phase of the Toalian industry of southwestern Sulawesi, India, c 6000 BC into the 1st millennium BC. They were part of a mid-Holocene stone flake and blade industry.
Mejiro: CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: A rock shelter near Old Oyo, southwestern Nigeria, where a microlithic industry occurs, without associated pottery. It is one of relatively few presumed pre-pottery 'Late Stone Age' occurrences yet known in Nigeria.
Meroe: CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: A site in Upper Nubia, a city-state in the Sudan which succeeded Napata (original capital of kingdom of Kush/Cush) as the capital of a vigorous state flourishing from 750 BC-350 AD. The 25th, or Ethiopian dynasty of ancient Egypt is believed to have retired to Kush after 656 BC and established itself at Meroe. After the sack of Napata in c 590 by the Egyptian pharaoh Psamtik II, Meroe became the capital of the kingdom. It is the type site of the Meroitic period (c 300 BC-350 AD) and located on the east bank of the Nile in the Butana region of Sudan. Dependent on Nile, kingdom lay in triangle of land at confluence of Nile and Atbara. It was the center of the Kushite kingdom in the fifth century BC. Meroe was able to exploit a region of considerable agricultural potential with fairly regular, if not abundant, rainfall. There was also a supply of timber adequate to fuel the smelting of the local iron deposits. By the beginning of the Christian era, if not before, the iron industry had been developed on a considerable scale. Meroitic architecture included temples in the Egyptian style and royal pyramid tombs (e.g. Musawwarat es-Sufra). Egyptian influence gradually diminished; Egyptian hieroglyphs were abandoned in about the 2nd century BC in favor of a local script. The Meroitic language thus recorded cannot at present be understood. The tenuous nature of the link with Egypt is to be appreciated by considering the trade route, which it appears did not follow the inhospitable Nile Valley, but ran along the Red Sea coast. From about the beginning of the Christian era, this route was increasingly endangered by local developments, notably the rise of the kingdom of Axum. By the 3rd century AD, Meroe was in decline; its final collapse came with the conquest by Axum early in the 4th century. The chief features are palaces and a great temple of Amon.
Montagu Cave: CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: An Early Stone Age rock shelter located in the Cape Province of South Africa, about 150 km east of Cape Town. This site is one of the very few African caves to have preserved traces of Acheulian material. Later horizons include one containing an industry which has been variously attributed to the Hoiesonspoort and to a Pietersburg variant.
Mount Carmel: CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: A group of Palaeolithic caves in Israel, on biblical Mount Carmel, which have between them yielded a long stratigraphy. The most important of these sites are el Wad, es Skhul, Tabun, and Nahal Oren. The sequence begins with coarse flake tools of Tayacian type, followed by Acheulian handax industries. Associated (and perhaps interstratified) with the final Acheulian were Jabrudian artifacts and eventually blade tools of Amudian type. The next industry, the Levalloiso-Mousterian, was represented at two caves, Tabun and es Skhul, and was associated with human remains whose evolutionary position is controversial. The sequence continues with the so-called Emiran industry, followed by the Palestine Aurignacian (also called Antelian), by a blade/scraper/burin industry (the Atlitian), and finally by Natufian. The el Wad has a sequence of Upper Palaeolithic deposits with important Natufian levels at the top and on the plateau outside and numerous associated burials.
Mount Do: SYNONYMS OR RELATED TERMS: Nui do
CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: A site near Thanh-hoa in northern Vietnam which has yielded a pebble and flake industry with a few bifaces. Chellean (early Acheulian) affinities have been suggested.
Mount Sandel: CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: Mesolithic site in Londonderry, Ireland, with circular wooden hut foundations with central hearths. There was a lithic industry of microliths, tranchet axes, and polished stone axes.
Muge: CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: Mesolithic shell mounds (concheiros) in Portugal, dated between 7350-5150 bp (Atlantic period). There was a microlithic industry, quartzite pebbles and grindstones, and bone points and axes of red deer antlers. There are more than 230 burials -- individuals with at least some Cro-Magnon characteristics, called Cro-Magnoids. It is an important European Mesolithic funerary assemblage.
Munyama Cave: CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: A cave on Buvuma Island in Lake Victoria, Uganda, with a backed microlith industry extending back to c 15,000 BC. Small backed bladelets were the most common implements, with endscrapers and some geometrical backed microliths. Backed microliths industries of comparable antiquity are known in East Africa at Nasera, Lukenya Hill, and Matupi.
Musang Cave: CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: Cave in northern Luzon, Philippines with an early flake industry c 12,000-9000 BC. There is also a Neolithic assemblage dated to c 3500 BC (or later).
Mwanganda: CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: An elephant butchery site in northern Malawi, undated, but containing scrapers and core axes. The site is of interest as preserving in situ the debris of a single, clearly defined, activity. It has been attributed to the Lupemban industry.
Nachikufan: CATEGORY: culture
DEFINITION: Backed microlith industries of northern Zambia of the Later Stone Age, named after Nachikufu Cave. The complex, once regarded as a single local tradition (Nachikufan Industrial Complex), was of long duration and divided into three successive phases. The first phase, Nachikufan I, is now seen as a widespread industry, characterized by the presence of large numbers of small pointed backed bladelets, of early date; it extends back as early as c 20,000 BP at such sites as Kalemba and Leopard's Hill, till 12,000 BP. There were also various scrapers and examples of bored stones. The later phases are more restricted geographically and form part of a general continuum of variation among the backed-microlith industries of south-central Africa during the last 7-8 millennia BC.
Narosura: CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: Important Pastoral Neolithic settlement site near Narok in southern Kenya, occupied between the 9th-5th centuries BC. Post-holes suggest the presence of semi-permanent structures of some kind, and the site appears to have covered an area of at least 8000 square meters. A backed microlith industry in obsidian was accompanied by ground stone axes, burins, stone bowls, and pottery with comb-stamped and incised decoration of a type also found on many other Pastoral Neolithic sites and known as Narosura ware. The animal bones recovered were of mainly domestic species; there is no conclusive evidence for the practice of agriculture.
Nderit Drift: CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: Site on the Nderit River south of Lake Nakuru, Kenya, which preserves a long sequence of archaeological deposits which illustrate the precursors of the Pastoral Neolithic complex. A blade industry of the 11th millennium BC is regarded as a probable ancestor of the Eburran (Gambles's Cave).
Nene Valley ware: SYNONYMS OR RELATED TERMS: Castor Ware
CATEGORY: ceramics
DEFINITION: A type of Roman pottery made by an organized industry on the banks of the River Nene west of Peterborough, by the Roman town of Water Newton (ancient Durobrivae), England, from the 2nd-4th centuries AD. (It was formerly known as Castor Ware.) The commonest shapes are drinking vessels and tumblers, made of a light clay with a dark slip, sometimes with a white decoration. Decoration was by applied scales, rouletting, or barbotine. Barbotine ornamentation is applied to pottery by squeezing a bag containing thin clay slip in the same way as a cake is iced today. It may be applied by brush or spatula as well. The best known are the Hunt Cups, showing dogs pursuing deer or hares, but human scenes also occur. It is a local ware, made in imitation of the dark, glossy Rhenish wares, and was perhaps the first fine ware to be produced locally in Roman Britain.
Nevasa: CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: Prehistoric site on the northern Deccan plateau in western central India with a Middle Palaeolithic industry, a regional Chalcolithic with Jorwe ware of the later 2nd millennium BC, and a settlement of the late 1st millennium BC with wares of late Iron Age southern India. Another phase shows trade with Rome by the early 1st millennium AD. Glass beads and bangles characteristic of the Hindu culture of about 200 BC have been discovered in Nevasa excavations.
New Britain: CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: The largest island of the Bismarck Archipelago, southwestern Pacific, in Papua New Guinea. Archaeological discoveries include stone pestles and mortars like those from the New Guinea Highlands, an undated industry of waisted flaked tools from Kandrian, and the first discovered Lapita site (Watom Island. The Talasea obsidian source, the most important in the southwestern Pacific and quarried since at least 9000 BC, is on New Britain. The island was probably settled by Papuan-speakers from New Guinea before 9000 BC.
Ngandong: CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: Terrace site in the Solo River valley in Java, Indonesia, which had remains of Pleistocene fauna and advanced Homo erectus (Solo Man) of c 200,000 years ago. Solo Man has features of earlier Java Man, and has also been regarded as a tropical Neanderthal. Faunal associations are Upper Pleistocene, and age estimates range from 60,000-300,000 years. There was a stone industry of choppers and retouched flakes, but it may not be associated with Solo Man.
Nietoperzowa Cave: SYNONYMS OR RELATED TERMS: 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.
Njoro River Cave: CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: One of the earliest well-documented Pastoral Neolithic sites in southern Kenya, of the Elmenteitan industry and dated to c 12th century BC. It was a cemetery for cremated burials, each interment being accompanied by a stone bowl, mortar, and pestle, as well as by numerous hard stone beads and pendants. A finely decorated wooden vessel and a gourd were also preserved.
Ntereso: CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: Site of a fishing settlement related to the Kintampo industry, located to the east of that industry's main area of distribution, in the valley of the White Volta, northern Ghana. Bifacially flaked arrowheads, small axes, bone harpoon heads and fish hooks may have affinities with sites far to the north, in the southern Sahara. The site dates to the late 2nd millennium BC.
nuraghe: SYNONYMS OR RELATED TERMS: plural nuraghi; nurhag; Nuraghic culture
CATEGORY: structure
DEFINITION: A type of tower built of cyclopean masonry and peculiar to Sardinia from c 1500 BC until the Roman conquest of the island c 800 BC. They are circular stone defensive towers with corbel-vaulted internal chambers of the Middle and Late Bronze Ages. The walls of the tower slope inwards towards the top, and there are commonly two or more stories. Each floor consists of a single round room roofed by corbelling and sometimes provided with lateral cells. The turrets were as high as 30-60 feet, and some nuraghi contain stones of 100 cubic feet each in their structure. The more complex examples consist of several towers, courtyards, and curtain walls, and many nuraghi (e.g. Barumini) are surrounded by substantial outer fortifications with further stone towers. Nuraghi continued to be built during the Phoenician and Carthaginian occupation of the island, right down to the Roman conquest. There are thousands of nuraghi in Sardinia and they remain a prominent feature of the island's landscape today. The Nuraghic culture is associated with a flourishing bronze industry which in its later stages produced a series of attractive figurines and votive models. The megalithic tombs known as 'tombe di giganti' belong to the monuments including sacred wells. The Corsican torre (torri) and Balearic Island talayots share many architectural features with the nuraghi of Sardinia.
Oakhurst: CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: Cave in the southern Cape Province of South Africa with Later Stone Age material, including a microlithic industry of Wilton type overlying material without backed microliths and where utilized large quadrilateral flakes and informal scrapers were used exclusively (c 12th-9th millennia BC). This material is ascribed to the Albany or Oakhurst industry (formerly Smithfield A). Some include this industry with the Lockshoek and Pomongwe industries in the Oakhurst Complex.
Olduvai: SYNONYMS OR RELATED TERMS: Olduvai Gorge
CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: A site in northern Tanzania which is one of the most important sites for the understanding of both human evolution and the development of the earliest tools. The gorge is 30 miles long, located on the volcanic belt of the Great Rift Valley. Louis and Mary Leakey uncovered numerous Hominid remains, animal bones, and stone artifacts from c 1.9 million years to less than 10,000 years ago. Living floors and camp sites with pebble tools, choppers, and a few artifacts made on flakes go back to the earliest date as do the bones of two primitive forms of hominid, Homo habilis and Australopithecus robustus (Zinjanthropus). Crude handaxes have been dated to c 1.2-0.5 million years ago and are accompanied by several hominid fossils of Homo erectus and Homo sapiens. Acheulian tools are found with Neanderthal remains and later beds contained a Kenya Capsian industry. No site in the world has produced a longer sequence of stone tool assemblages and of hominid fossils.
Oliviense: CATEGORY: culture
DEFINITION: A flake industry of the terraces in the Caleta Olivia and Bahia Solano region of southern Argentina. It was originally believed to be Late Pleistocene, but may actually be more recent.
Olorgesailie: CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: Important Lower Palaeolithic site south of Nairobi in southern Kenya; the area of Mount Olorgesailie was where the Rift Valley was first recognized. It had an informative Earlier Stone Age Acheulian industry with hand axes, cleavers, and other stone artifacts dating to 900,000-700,000 years ago. Baboons were hunted in large numbers.
Onion Portage: CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: Important site in northwest Alaska containing one of the continent's longest stratigraphies; occupied from at least 8500 BP by a number of Eskimo-Siberian-Indian subcultures (American Palaeoarctic, Northern Archaic, Arctic Small Tool Traditions, Inuit cultures). The oldest industries, called Akmak and Kobuk, are thought to last from c 9000 BC until the mid-7th millennium BC, and include chipped tools (blades, bifaces and associated cores) which are closer to Siberian types than to those of temperate America. The Kobuk (6200-6000 BC) contained similar tools but of limited variety. After a long hiatus in occupation, the Palisades II industry (4850-3350 BC, variously 4000-2000 BC) shows links with the archaic cultures of the forest zone to the southeast, as does the succeeding Portage complex (3350-3000 BC, variously 2600-2200 BC). Next came tools of the Denbigh Flint Complex (3200 BC, variously 2200-1800 BC), followed by Chloris (1500-500 BC) with the oldest pottery in the Arctic, then a local version (Norton) of Ipiutak (400-800 AD), by a forest-adapted Indian culture called Itkillik Complex (500-1000 AD), and finally by an Arctic Woodland Culture facies of the Thule Tradition. The excellent vertical stratigraphy of this site makes it the major reference for all western Arctic chronologies, especially when taken together with the horizontal stratigraphy of Cape Krusenstern.
oppidum: SYNONYMS OR RELATED TERMS: plural oppida
CATEGORY: term
DEFINITION: A Roman term, coined by Caesar, for the fortified Celtic towns he found in his campaigns in Gaul in 58-51 BC. The Roman oppidum was a town which served as administrative center for its surrounding area, or, in the provinces, was a community of Roman citizens, either Italian immigrants or enfranchised natives. The term is now used for comparable sites in Celtic territory, from Spain and Britain to the Carpathians. Celtic oppida of the 2nd and 1st centuries BC were large permanent settlements, usually of hillfort type, the first true towns in Europe north of the Alps. Oppida also served as centers for trade, industry, market, craft production, and religion.
Orangia: CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: Middle Stone Age site in the Orange River valley in the extreme south of the Orange Free State, South Africa. The artifacts are analogous to those of the Pietersburg complex to the north. It is the type site of an early Middle Stone Age Pietersburg-like flake-blade industry. It is now inundated by a dam.
Ordos: SYNONYMS OR RELATED TERMS: Northern Zone
CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: The desert region in the northward loop of the Yellow River (Huang Ho) in northern China, the location of the Palaeolithic Ordos culture. From 8th century BC, the region was inhabited by seminomadic tribes, among them the Hsiung-Nu, threatening the Chou Dynasty and the Han Dynasty. Broad bronze daggers, curved knives, pole finials, harness ornaments, and animal-style bronze belt plaques are characteristic of the 1st millennium BC ('the Ordos bronzes'). The pictorial or narrative compositions common among these plaques, many including human figures, are typical also of Sarmatian metalwork. The distinctive metal culture of the Ordos reaches back as far as the latter part of the 2nd millennium BC, a date fixed by the discovery at Anyang of knives with animal-head pommels closely related to Ordos types. Owing to its position on the northern frontier of China, the Ordos was probably the main channel by which Chinese influences were transmitted to the steppes; it was also the route by which foreign elements reached China, especially during Eastern Chou and Han dynasties. An Upper Palaeolithic site (Sjara Osso Gol) yielded a microlithic industry. In the 1970s and '80s, Chinese scientists unearthed more than 20 human fossils from 30,000-60,000 years old at Hsiao-ch'iao-pan in the Sjara-Osso River valley. The terms Ordos man and Ordosian culture are applied to their findings. The area is now referred to as the Northern Zone.
Ornament Horizon: CATEGORY: culture
DEFINITION: A brief period in the Middle Bronze Age of southwest Britain marked by the occurrence, in hoards, of tools and bronze ornaments which owe their inspiration to types current in north Germany and Scandinavia from c 1400 BC. These 'foreign' objects include torcs, coiled finger rings, ribbed bracelets, knobbed sickles, and square-mouthed socketed axes. In Devon, Somerset, and Sussex, hoards of the Ornament Horizon also contain native spearheads, palstaves, and quoit-headed pins. This influx seems to have given a boost to the native bronze industry.
Osa: CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: Late Mesolithic and Early Neolithic settlement located in Latvia, Russia. The Mesolithic levels had a rich bone and antler industry with radiocarbon dates of c 5200-4800 BC. An Early Neolithic occupation contained Osa type pottery and similar bone tools, with radiocarbon dates of 3950-3800 BC. There was also a thin layer of the Pit-Comb Ware group, with a radiocarbon date of c 2050 BC.
Oxfordshire ware: CATEGORY: artifact
DEFINITION: Pottery made mostly in the vicinity of Oxford in a variety of fabrics. Vessels include distinctive types of mortaria, PARCHMENT WARE, and red color-coated ware in the Samian tradition. This centrally placed industry became one of the largest and most important in Britain during the 4th century AD.
Périgordian: SYNONYMS OR RELATED TERMS: Perigordian
CATEGORY: culture
DEFINITION: A French classification for the Upper Palaeolithic tradition of western Europe, from its identification with the Perigord region of southern France. The flint industry sequence begins with the Chatelperronian (or Early Périgordian) from which, according to some, developed the first of the 'Upper Périgordian' industries (Gravettian, or Périgordian IV). The later stages are represented by industries with Font Robert points and Noailles burins, and finally by the Proto-Magdalenian. The Périgordian tradition comes to an end in western Europe with the intrusion of a new Solutrean style of flintwork. No known site has a complete and unbroken 'Périgordian' sequence, and in many caves the Lower and Upper 'Périgordian' levels are separated by strata of the intrusive Aurignacian industry, which must represent a break of several thousand years. The French scheme requires the Périgordian and Aurignacian people to have lived side by side with each other for millennia without any apparent contact between them. In the 1930s, Denis Peyrony advocated the view that the Aurignacian or early Upper Palaeolithic in France consisted of a true Aurignacian and a separate line of cultures, the Perigordian, beginning before the Aurignacian but co-existing alongside it down the time of the Solutrean. It is not known what kind of man was responsible for the Perigordian, but it is usually assumed that it was Cro-Magnon man, at least in the latter part. A Neanderthal-like skull has been found with the early Perigordian, or Chatelperronian. Art is found in a few later Perigordian contexts. The Perigordian scheme is not now widely accepted as it is based on artifact typology rather than stratigraphic evidence.
Pacific Littoral tradition: CATEGORY: culture
DEFINITION: A tradition developed c 4000-1800 BC on Peruvian coast. Settled communities lived off maritime resources and cultivated cotton and gourds for materials for fishing industry. Bone, wood, shell, stone were worked. There were textiles, an early art style, and temple platforms in ceremonial centers.
Pacitanian: SYNONYMS OR RELATED TERMS: Patjitanian; Pacitan, Patjitan
CATEGORY: culture
DEFINITION: A pebble and flake tool industry with a small percentage of bifaces found in valleys in south-central Java, Indonesia. The region is known as Pacitan or Patjitan. The chopper and chopping tools were of a middle and late Pleistocene time. These tools were also a small part of a late Pleistocene and early Holocene industry.
Peninj: SYNONYMS OR RELATED TERMS: Peninj mandible, Natron mandible
CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: A site west of Lake Natron, 50 miles (80 km) north of Olduvai in Tanzania, were an almost perfectly preserved fossil hominid jaw with a complete set of adult teeth was found. The specimen was assigned to Australopithecus boisei, c 1.5 million years old. The artifacts belonged to the Acheulian industry, including stone cleavers and hand axes.
Peyrony, Denis (1869-1954): CATEGORY: person
DEFINITION: French prehistorian who discovered the cave art at Font de Gaume, Bernifal, and Teyjat and excavated at La Ferassie and Laugerie Haute. He proposed the Perigordian system and founded the prehistory museum of Les Eyzies. The La Ferassie skeletons are hominid fossils found in a rock shelter gravesite north of Bugue, Dordogne, Fr., by R. Capitan and D. Peyrony between 1909-1921, but not fully reported until 1934. The fossils of La Ferassie are estimated to date from about 60,000 years ago and are associated with the Mousterian stone tool industry.
Pietersburg: CATEGORY: culture
DEFINITION: A term for South African early Middle Stone Age artifact assemblages of the late Middle or early Late Pleistocene, occurring mainly in the Transvaal although related material is also found further south. It belongs to the general group of industries based upon the removal of flakes from prepared cores but is differentiated from other contemporary industries of this type by the presence of large numbers of long parallel-sided flake-blades (many of which have minimal retouch or use damage on the sides). The best sequence showing the development of the Pietersburg industry is at the Cave of Hearths in the northern Transvaal. The chronology is still poorly defined, but is roughly 60,000-20,000 BC or after.
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.
Pomongwe: CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: A cave in Matopo Hills near Bulawayo, Zimbabwe, with fine rock paintings, especially of giraffe. The cave has a long sequence of stone industries and the name Pomongwe also refers to a Later Stone Age industry of southwestern Zimbabwe dated between 10,800-9400 bp. At the very bottom of the deep archaeological deposits at Pomongwe are a few artifacts possibly of Sangoan type. Later occupations are attributed successively to the Charaman, Bambata, Tshangula, and Wilton industries. Interstratified between the last two is the Pomongwe culture's assemblage, containing utilized flakes and crude scrapers with virtually no other stone implements. Some see it as a regional industry within the Oakhurst Complex.
Pontnewydd Cave: CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: A cave site in north Wales occupied in the Lower Palaeolithic period by a stone industry of Upper Acheulian type, including artifacts made using the Levallois technique. Middle Pleistocene hominid remains are dated to 170,000-230,000 BP. The only other site in Britain to have produced hominid remains of this early period is Swanscombe.
porphyry: SYNONYMS OR RELATED TERMS: porphyrite
CATEGORY: geology
DEFINITION: A hard stone much used in Egyptian sculpture and for sarcophagi, quarried in the eastern Egyptian desert. The volcanic rock is red, green, and black and is capable of taking a fine polish. It was a constituent element in the river pebbles used in Hoabinhian industry.
potter's wheel: CATEGORY: ceramics
DEFINITION: A wheel rotating horizontally which assists a potter in shaping clay into vessels. The development of the slow, or hand-turned, wheel as an adjunct to pottery manufacture led to the kick wheel, rotated by foot, which became the potter's principal tool. The potter throws the clay onto a rapidly rotating disk and shapes his pot by manipulating it with both hands. By the Uruk phase in Mesopotamia, c 3400 BC, the fast wheel was already in use. It spread slowly, reaching Europe with the Minoans c 2400 BC, and Britain with the Belgae in the 1st century BC. Its presence can be taken to imply an organized pottery industry, often also using an advanced type of kiln.
pre-Neanderthal: CATEGORY: culture
DEFINITION: A term used to refer to the Acheulian industry people, who are believed to have developed into the Neanderthals.
Prosek, Frantisek (1922-1958): CATEGORY: person
DEFINITION: Czechoslovakian archaeologist who specialized in the Palaeolithic and was instrumental in establishing the stratigraphic position of the Szeletian industry in Central Europe.
Qadan: CATEGORY: culture
DEFINITION: Nubian stone industry belonging to the period of high water levels in the Nile Valley prior to 9000 BC. There are various local stone tool assemblages and Qadan people evidently fished, hunted and consumed large quantities of wild grains.
Qermez Dere: CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: Late Epipalaeolithic to early Aceramic Neolithic site in northern Iraq with seven phases of occupation defined. The lithic industry is similar to those west on the Euphrates River (Mureybet). It is the beginning of documented habitation on the north Mesopotamian plain. Views on the earliest Neolithic in Iraq have undergone radical revisions in the light of discoveries made at Qermez Dere, Nemrik, and Maghzaliyah.
Qujialing: SYNONYMS OR RELATED TERMS: [Ch'ü-chia-ling]
CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: Type site in Jingshan Xian, Hubei province, China, of a rice-growing Neolithic culture of the middle Yangtze region. Radiocarbon dates from various sites range from c 3100-2650 BC. Qujialing's closest affiliations seem to be with the east-coast Neolithic cultures of the lower Ynazi. During the 4th and 3rd millennia BC, the Ta-hsi and Ch'ü-chia-ling cultures shared a significant number of traits, including rice production, ring-footed vessels, goblets with sharply angled profiles, ceramic whorls, and black pottery with designs painted in red after firing. Characteristic Ch'ü-chia-ling ceramic objects not generally found in Ta-hsi sites include eggshell-thin goblets and bowls painted with black or orange designs; double-waisted bowls; tall, ring-footed goblets and serving stands; and many styles of tripods. There are indications of a thriving textile industry. The chronological distribution of ceramic features suggests a transmission from Ta-hsi to Ch'ü-chia-ling, but the precise relationship between the two cultures has been much debated.
Quyn-van: CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: Shell midden in northern Vietnam which has produced a flaked stone industry together with pottery, grindstones, and contracted burials dated c 3000 BC. It could be a late and specialized coastal variant of the Hoabinhian.
Rim: CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: A site in northern Burkino Faso, Africa, with three phases dating c 12,000-1000 years ago. The second phase, a backed microlith industry lacking pottery and ground stone artifacts is dated to 3600 bp. From the mid-2nd millennium BC both these elements are present. Stone tool technology continued until around 1,000 years ago, after the first local appearance of metal implements.
Robberg: SYNONYMS OR RELATED TERMS: Nelson Bay Cave
CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: Later Stone Age microlithic industry of southern and eastern Cape Province, South Africa, dated to c 18,000-12,000 BP. There are many diminutive artifacts with few retouched implements, including bladelet cores, bladelets, scrapers, and backed bladelets. Worked bone and ostrich eggshell beads have also been found.
Rop: CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: A rock shelter on the Jos Plateau of central Nigeria with two main artifact-bearing layers, the first containing large scrapers and backed crescent-shaped implements, but no pottery. The later horizon contained a backed microlithic industry and pottery, and dates to 2000 BP.
Sai Yok: CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: A rock-shelter site in western Thailand with a sequence from a possibly pre-Hoabinhian industry, Hoabinhian, and a Neolithic assemblage of Ban Kao type. The sequence could have the longest record of Hoabinhian development in southeast Asia. The pre-ceramic phase had pebble tools c 10,000-8000 BC. The term is also applied to the pebble tools.
Saintonge ware: CATEGORY: ceramics; culture
DEFINITION: Major pottery industry in the region of Saintes in western France from the 13th century until recent times. The best-known of these wares are the tall jugs with polychrome glazed decoration which appear to have been traded with western French wine to the English. The jugs exported were only one of the variety of wares made at centers like La Chapelle des Pots, where kilns and workshops have been excavated. Saintonge was originally the territory inhabited by the Santones, a Gallic tribe.
Sampung: CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: Area in east-central Java and name of a mid-Holocene industry characterized by stone points and bone tools. The sites include Gua Lawa, Gunung Cantalan, Petpuruh, Sodong, and Marjan.
Sangiran: CATEGORY: site; culture
DEFINITION: Important site for Indonesian finds of Homo erectus in the Solo River valley of Java. Rich fossil-bearing deposits of both Middle Pleistocene (Trini fauna) and Lower Pleistocene (Djetis fauna) have yielded fossils of more than four hominid individuals from each level, including five skulls from the later level of perhaps c 0.5-1 million years ago. The name was also used for a stone small-flake industry of the Middle Pleistocene. The human-made flakes are now mainly attributed to the High Terrace Gravels of the late Pleistocene or the Holocene.
Sangoan: CATEGORY: culture
DEFINITION: Stone tool industry or complex of Sango Bay in Uganda on Lake Victoria, a Mainly Middle Pleistocene series of assemblages containing heavy-duty picks (core axes), handaxes, scrapers, finely flaked lanceolate points, cleavers, and small specialized tools. The Sangoan may have developed from a late Acheulian basis, and which was roughly contemporary with the Mousterian of Europe, dating to 100,000-20,000 BP. The term is loosely applied to a rather heterogeneous group of industries in eastern and south-central Africa, and perhaps in West Africa, also. The most informative site for the composition and sequence of Sangoan industries is at Kalambo Falls, Zambia. In several regions of Zaire and neighboring countries, the Sangoan appears to mark the first human settlement of the low-lying country now occupied by the equatorial forest.
Sao: CATEGORY: culture
DEFINITION: Industry in Chari Basin, Chad, associated with mound sites and dating to the late 2nd millennium BC.
Savernake ware: CATEGORY: artifact
DEFINITION: Output from a substantial Roman pottery industry focused in northwest Wiltshire, especially the area now known as Savernake Forest. A number of kilns have been excavated and together suggest a nucleated industry comprising many separate workshops. The pottery itself is typically light grey in color, flint-tempered, with clay pellets and grog visible in the fabric. Typical products include jars, bowls, flagons, butt beakers, and platters. Output starts at about the time of the Roman conquest or a little before and continues through into the later 2nd century AD.
shaft straightener: CATEGORY: lithics
DEFINITION: An artifact made from a coarse, often volcanic, stone, with a groove used as a rasp to finish spears and arrowshafts. The Mousterian industry used denticulate (toothed) instruments produced by making notches in a flake, which were perhaps used as saws or shaft straighteners.
Shamarkian: CATEGORY: culture
DEFINITION: A Nubian microlithic industry of 8000-6000 years ago in the Sudanese Nile Valley. The typology of the industry shows certain Saharan affinities. By the 6th millennium BC, some of the tool makers had adopted a specialized fishing economy using harpoons with barbed bone heads, as seen at Catfish Cave near the Second Nile Cataract.
Shanidar: CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: A cave in the Zagros mountains of Iraq with a long Palaeolithic cultural sequence including the Mousterian, Baradostian, and Mesolithic. At the base was a Mousterian deposit with several Neanderthal burials (c 60,000-44,000 BP). The Mousterian was followed by a blade industry of Upper Palaeolithic type -- the Baradostian (c 33,000-27,000 BP), and then, after a hiatus, by the Zarzian (c 10,000 BC), a Late Palaeolithic industry with many small tools and some true microliths. By the 9th millennium BC, there is evidence for a shift away from hunting towards the gathering of wild plant foods.
Shungurian: CATEGORY: culture
DEFINITION: An industry of the lower Omo Valley north of Lake Turkana, Ethiopia, known for its remains of animals and hominids. Several archaeological deposits have been discovered on the site, dating back two million years. The industry is based on very small quartz flakes made from a nucleus or from the accidental shattering of pebbles used as percussion tools.
silk: CATEGORY: term
DEFINITION: Thread that can be drawn off the cocoon spun by the grub of the moth Bombyx mori and used for weaving fine cloth, which originated in China in Neolithic period. The silk industry was established by the Anyang period, c 1300-1030 BC. The Anyang oracle bones include characters for silk, silk fabrics, silkworm, and mulberry tree, and traces of silk fabrics are occasionally found preserved. Silk fabric was used as a writing surface at least as early as the 5th century BC. Both manuscripts and paintings on silk have come from Chu tombs of the 5th century BC and later. Elaborate methods of weaving were developed by the Han Dynasty (206 BC-220 AD) and textiles exported in large numbers along Silk Route to Roman world and later to Byzantium. The route is the collective name for several overland and ocean routes for silk trade from the 1st-8th centuries AD. From Chang'an, capital of the Han Dynasty, the main route went west through the Gansu corridor.
Smithfield: CATEGORY: culture
DEFINITION: A Later Stone Age industry and hunting and gathering culture of southern Africa, originally thought contemporary with the Wilton, but technologically different from it, and now referring to a complex between 1300-1700 AD. The culture was on the same level as that of the Mesolithic people of Europe or the modern Kalahari bushmen. The unifying feature of this industry was the almost complete absence of backed microliths and tiny semicircular scrapers.
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.
Solutrean: SYNONYMS OR RELATED TERMS: Solutrian
CATEGORY: culture
DEFINITION: A culture of the Upper Paleolithic period in western Europe, from about 19,000 BC, following the Perigordian and Aurignacian; characterized by the use of projectile points, especially the laurel-leaf blade. From Solutré, a site in central France, it was a short-lived style of toolmaking with particularly fine workmanship. The Solutrean industry, like those of other late Paleolithic big-game hunters, contained a variety of tools such as burins, scrapers, and borers; but blades that were formed in the shape of laurel or willow leaves and shouldered points are the implements that distinguish the Solutrean. It preceded the Magdalenian in parts of France and Spain. At Laugerie-Haute, unifacially chipped leaf-shaped points in the Early Solutrean show the gradual development of bifacial working, a stage dated c 19,000-18,000 BC. The Middle phase is characterized by fine large bifacial points and by the introduction of pressure flaking. In the Later Solutrean, this technique was used to produce slim leaf-shaped projectiles and small single-shouldered points. In southeast Spain this final stage also has barbed and tanged arrowheads. The laurel leaves" were typical of Middle Solutrean and "willow leaves" (shouldered points) were from the Later Solutrean. The bone needle with an eye was invented in this period. Many decorated caves in France can be assigned to this period."
Sonviian: SYNONYMS OR RELATED TERMS: Son Vi
CATEGORY: culture
DEFINITION: Pre-Hoabinhian stone industry in Upper Palaeolithic cave sites around the Red River valley of northern Vietnam. It is regarded as the immediate predecessor (or an early stage) of the Hoabinhian and of late Pleistocene date c 18,000-9000 BC. It is characterized by unifacially flaked pebbles, some bifacially worked pebbles, choppers, side-scrapers, and 'round-edged' pebbles. Son Vi is the type site of this industry.
Stamford ware: CATEGORY: ceramics
DEFINITION: An Anglo-Saxon pottery industry centered around Stamford in Lincolnshire, England, that produced fine glazed ceramics in the 9th-13th centuries. The buff wares included characteristic spouted pitchers and jugs which were much in demand in England and were sometimes traded abroad.
Stillbay: CATEGORY: site; culture
DEFINITION: Site on Cape Province, South Africa, with an assemblage of Late Paleolithic stone tools and dating c 30,000-50,000 years ago. The stone flake culture reached from Ethiopia to South Africa along the eastern coast and produced a variety of stone tools that are similar to the Mousterian industry of North Africa and Europe. Tools were made generally by the Levallois stone-flaking technique and the Stillbay industry also included leaf-shaped bifacial points. Some archaeologists now use a series of more local designations, such as Bambata in Zimbabwe, to describe the culture of that time.
Strandloper: CATEGORY: culture
DEFINITION: A term, literally 'beachcomber', for people thought to have created shell middens along the southern Africa coast. It is also the name of a South African coastal Later Stone Age industry characterized by pottery, large flakes, flaked cobbles, and retouched stone artifacts. It has existed for the last 2000 years.
Succase: CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: Settlement site of the Rzucewo culture, a regional variant of the Corded Ware culture dated to the beginning of the 2nd millennium BC and located in Pomerania, Poland. Several occupation layers are represented by overlapping rectangular timber-framed house plans. Microlithic flintwork is found associated with an amber industry.
Sulawesi: CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: Largest island of eastern Indonesia, with a possible late Pleistocene industry from Cabenge and with many rock shelters having Toalian assemblages. The Paso shell midden in Minahasa and the Kalumpang Neolithic site are of archaeological interest.
Sumatra: CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: One of the Greater Sunda Islands and the second largest island of Indonesia with Tianko Panjang cave in Jambi Province yielding an obsidian flake industry dating from c 8000 BC. There is undated cord-marked pottery in the cave's upper layers. The Pasemah megaliths may date from the early 1st millennium AD.
Swiderian: CATEGORY: culture
DEFINITION: Late Upper Palaeolithic industry of Poland known from sites such as Calowanie and Swidry Wielkie. They are associated with dune deposits dating to the end of the Pleistocene c 11,000-9000 BP. They are characterized by elongated tanged points, burins, and scrapers.
Swiderian point: CATEGORY: lithics
DEFINITION: Type of stone point made on a blade and having a stemmed base flaked on both sides. It is characteristic of the Swiderian industry of Poland (Upper Palaeolithic, c 11,000-9000 BP).
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.
Tabon Caves: CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: Large complex of limestone caves in southwest Palawan, the Philippines, which have produced a sequence ranging from c 22,000 BC to the late metal age. Tabon Cave itself has a flake industry of early Australian type dating from 30,000-9000 years ago, in association with early Australoid skeletal remains which are dated c 22,000-20,000 BC. A simple blade technology appears in Duyong Cave c 5000 BC and other caves continue through the Neolithic (c 3800-500 BC) and into a rich jar-burial tradition elsewhere in the Philippines. There are also later deposits with Chinese ceramic imports.
Taforalt: CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: Large cave in eastern Morocco with a blade industry of c 22,000 bp (Mousterian) through Aterian to a long succession of Iberomaurusian phases. A large Iberomaurusian cemetery and shell midden have been excavated. The cemetery had 185 people and is of the Mechta-Afalou type (c 11,900 bp).
Tanagra: CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: Site in Boeotia, Greece, where a large cache of finely worked, cast terra-cotta figurines were found in Hellenistic period cemeteries spanning the period from c 340-150 BC. There are also Mycenaean chamber tombs in the area. The nearly circular hill of the ancient ruined city was first occupied by the Gephyreans, an Athenian clan. It became the chief town of the eastern Boeotians, with lands extending to the Gulf of Euboea. Tanagra probably assumed leadership of the Boeotian confederacy following the Greco-Persian Wars when it took over the clay-working industry of devastated Thebes.
Tautavel: SYNONYMS OR RELATED TERMS: Caune de l'Arago
CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: Cave site in the east Pyrenees-Orientales of southern France with Middle Pleistocene/Lower Palaeolithic deposits of pre-Mousterian date with little stratification. The front half of a skull with heavy brow ridges and robust facial features has been found, as well as two lower jaws, one much bigger toothed than the other. They are associated with an archaic Taycian quartz industry. Their date may be c 320,000-200,000 years ago.
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.
Tekkalakota: SYNONYMS OR RELATED TERMS: Tekkalkota
CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: Neolithic site in the south-central Deccan, India with two phases of settlement in the early 2nd millennium BC. There are mud/stone floors of circular or rectilinear huts and fractional burials early on, later replaced by extended burials in interconnected vessels for adults, while children were buried in urns. Artifacts include rare metal objects (copper, gold). Three gold ornaments were found, indicating exploitation of local gold deposits. The people produced distinctive burnished gray pottery, smaller quantities of black-on-red painted pottery, stone axes, and bone points, and there is some evidence of a stone-blade industry.
Temet: CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: Neolithic site in northeast Niger, Africa, dated c 9500 BP; its stone industry had blades, bladelets, and microliths.
Thunderbird: SYNONYMS OR RELATED TERMS: Thunderbird site
CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: Palaeoindian and Archaic campsites at Flint Run, Virginia, with a long-exploited jasper quarry. Core fragments, flakes, and broken or preformed tools show a large flint knapping industry. Occupations began in Clovis times through the Archaic. Postholes in association with living floors dated to c 9000 BC raises the possibility of this being the site of the earliest house structures in America.
Tianko Panjang: CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: Cave site in central Sumatra with an obsidian microlith industry of c 9000 BC (e.g. unretouched flakes).
Tiemassas: CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: Site in Senegal, south of Dakar, with extensive undated microlithic industry. There may have been successive occupation phases, including a pre-pottery phase characterized by large backed tools, geometric microliths, and hollow-based and leaf-shaped bifacial projectile points.
Tinkayu: SYNONYMS OR RELATED TERMS: Tinkayu
CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: Series of sites on the edge of a now-dry lake near the Madai Caves in eastern Sabah, Borneo. The pebble and flake industry produced many well-made bifacially flaked lanceolate knives and large tabular bifaces of chert -- of a kind previously unknown from Southeast Asia. They are dated c 28,000-17,000 BP.
tradition: CATEGORY: term
DEFINITION: A term describing the persistence in a given area over a period of time in individual attributes, artifact types, or technologies; a culture that exists for an extended period of time and usually over an extended area. An example is the chopping-tool tradition of South Asia. A tradition is also a series of archaeological phases or cultures that share cultural similarities. In American terminology, it is a sequence of cultures or pottery styles which develop out of each other and form a continuum in time. The term is used especially to designate specific New World cultures such as the Arctic Small Tool Tradition, Big Game (Hunting) Tradition, Mississippi(an) Tradition, Woodland Tradition, and Desert Tradition. The attributes, styles, traits, or technologies develop continuously, thus forming an easily accounted-for series of advancements. There are problems with the use of this term: where an industry is described as belonging to one culture with the tradition of another (e.g., Mousterian of Acheulian tradition for flint industries), it is unclear as to what is implied about the relationship of the two industries.
Trzciniec: CATEGORY: site; culture
DEFINITION: Early and Middle Bronze Age culture of eastern Poland, dating to the mid-2nd millennium BC. The type site near Lublin has a large number of houses with sunken foundations. Burial types are diverse, with inhumation and cremation, flat and barrow graves, occurring in varying combinations. It had ceramics and a flint industry, as well as imported bronze artifacts. The Trzciniec culture is closely related in material culture to the Komarow and Sosnicja groups further to the east, in the Ukraine.
Tshangula: SYNONYMS OR RELATED TERMS: Umguzan
CATEGORY: site; culture
DEFINITION: Cave site in the Matopo Hills of southwestern Zimbabwe with several layers of archaeological deposits preserving microlithic artifacts and sherds attributed to Bambata ware. The sequence includes Middle Stone Age and Later Stone Age assemblages and is also the name of a Middle Stone Age industry postdating 30,000 BP. This horizon contained backed microliths associated with diminutive implements and ostrich eggshell beads.
Tshitolian: CATEGORY: culture
DEFINITION: Later Stone Age Industry named after the Tshitolo Plateau in southern Zaire, the microlithic successor to the Lupemban and dated c 14,000-5000 BP. Tshitolian industries also occur in Angola, Gabon, and Cameroon in equatorial Africa. The characteristic backed microliths are of a flared triangular shape and may have been hafted for use as transverse arrowheads. Other tool types are small picks, small core axes, and foliate points.
U-Thong: SYNONYMS OR RELATED TERMS: U Thong; now Suphan Buri
CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: Large prehistoric and early historic moated settlement in central Thailand, the site of an ancient city that was for a time the capital of the Mon kingdom of Dvaravati (6th-11 centuries). There was a palace center and a bead-producing industry. U-Thong is also the name of a Buddhist art style of the 12th-15th centuries. It was later annexed by the state of Kambuja.
Ubeidiyah: CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: Site in the Jordan valley at Afikim, Israel, where there are a series of Pleistocene deposits with stone tools dated from potassium-argon dates between 1.7- 0.7 million years ago. The lower levels are of Oldowan type, while Acheulian types appear above and had a pebble tool and flake industry similar to Olduvai Gorge. Some fragments of Homo erectus have been found.
Ulalinka: CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: Palaeolithic site on the Ulalinka River in Siberia with artifacts that may represent a chopping tool industry of the early Pleistocene.
Ulu Leang: CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: Important rock shelter in the Maros region of southern Sulawesi, Indonesia, with a sequence c 8000-6000 BC in the early Holocene. It illustrates the development of the Toalian microlithic industry, with flake and bone tools.
Uluzzo, Uluzzian: CATEGORY: culture
DEFINITION: A lithic industry in Palaeolithic caves and open-air sites around the bay of Uluzzo, in Apulia, southern Italy. The most important is Grotta Cavallo, with a series of Mousterian and Upper Palaeolithic levels. The earliest Upper Palaeolithic levels are called the Uluzzian (c 33,000 bp) and include scrapers, denticulates, small curved backed points, and crescents. It occurred after the final Mousterian and was contemporary with early Aurignacian.
Upchurch ware: CATEGORY: artifact
DEFINITION: Romano-British pottery industry making polished and burnished black and grey wares (e.g. poppy head beakers) in the Upchurch Marshes of Kent in southeastern England.
Valdivia pottery: CATEGORY: artifact
DEFINITION: Formative period culture dating to the later 4th millennium BC on the coast of Ecuador, South America, named after a site of the same name excavated by B. Meggars and C. Evans in the early 1960s. The culture is important in being amongst the earliest in the region to have a developed ceramics industry which used a variety of plastic techniques for decorative motifs. Artifacts suggest a marine-orientated subsistence pattern.
Verwood ware: CATEGORY: artifact
DEFINITION: Products of a medieval and later pottery industry based in the New Forest of southern England.
Wilburton: CATEGORY: site; culture
DEFINITION: Late Bronze Age village in Cambridgeshire, England, with a metal hoard that gives its name to the Wilburton bronze industry of southern England c 10th-8th centuries BC. It is distinguished by the replacement of tin bronze by a copper-lead-tin alloy, by the increased use of metal (founders' hoards have broken tools and scrap), and by tools such as the leaf-shaped slashing sword with slotted hilt, socketed spearheads, horse bits, and socketed axes.
Wilton: SYNONYMS OR RELATED TERMS: Wiltonian
CATEGORY: culture
DEFINITION: Microlithic Later Stone Age industry with its type site in a rock shelter in Cape Province, South Africa and found in other parts of eastern and southern Africa. It is the African equivalent of the Mesolithic cultures of Europe, though of later date, and in its final stage shows contact with the Iron Age farmers of the 1st millennium AD. It occurred over the last 8000 years. In the rock shelter area, the characteristic tool is the tiny convex or 'thumbnail' scraper; crescent-shaped backed microliths, adzes, and backed blades are also present. There is rock painting, plant remains, and faunal remains of non-gregarious" browsing antelope as well as evidence of fishing. Around the beginning of the Christian era the descendants of the Wilton folk acquired domestic sheep and possibly cattle and learned the art of pottery manufacture (called post-climax Wilson or ceramic Wilton)."
Yubetsu: CATEGORY: culture
DEFINITION: Late Palaeolithic microlithic industry of Hokkaido, Japan, dated c 13,000 bp. Obsidian was worked in the Shirataki technique: a bifacial core has one lateral edge removed, producing a triangular spall. More edge removals make ski spalls of parallel surfaces. The technique was used from Mongolia to Alaska in the later Pleistocene.
Zambian Wilton: CATEGORY: culture
DEFINITION: Microlithic Later Stone Age industry of Zambia in the drainage of the Kafue and Zambezi Rivers, akin to the Wilton industry. It spans the last 6000 years.
Zarzian: SYNONYMS OR RELATED TERMS: Zarzi
CATEGORY: culture
DEFINITION: Cave in southern Kurdistan, western Iraq, which had an advanced Palaeolithic industry. The industry is based on geometric microliths, notched blades, and backed bladelets and is not widely known. It is dated c 10,500-6000 BC.

Another Dictionary Search