Archaeology Wordsmith

Results for linear:

Bandkeramik: SYNONYMS OR RELATED TERMS: Linearbandkeramik, LBK, Linienbandkeramik (German)
CATEGORY: ceramics; culture
DEFINITION: A pottery of the Danubian I culture, a Neolithic culture that existed over large areas of Europe north and west of the Danube River c 5th millennium BC. It consists of hemispherical bowls and globular jars, usually round-based and strongly suggesting copies of gourds. The name refers specifically to the standard incised linear decoration which was pairs of parallel lines forming spirals, meanders, chevrons, etc. There was farming of emmer wheat and barley and the keeping of domestic animals such as cattle. The most common stone tool was a polished stone adze. The people lived in large rectangular houses in medium-sized village communities or as small, dispersed clusters.
curvilinear: CATEGORY: artifact
DEFINITION: Contained by or consisting of a curved line or lines: these designs employ flowing, curvilinear forms
linear: CATEGORY: language
DEFINITION: A term describing a script composed of simply drawn lines with little attempt at pictorial representation, especially a form of cursive in which the hieroglyphs were sketched by outline only.
Linear A: CATEGORY: language
DEFINITION: A syllabic script created by the Minoans and used in Crete and on other Aegean islands of Greece during the Neopalatial (early palace) period, c 1700-1450 BC (also c 2000/1900-1400 BC). The script has never been deciphered. It was inscribed on clay tablets as administrative records, as well as on stone (religious) vases and bronze double axes. Sir Arthur Evans named the Linear A and B scripts such to distinguish them from the hieroglyphic which preceded them; Linear A is the earlier of the two. Each is a syllabary, and was written with a sharp point on clay tablets. Linear A is of the Middle Minoan III-Late Minoan I. It is in some ways similar to Linear B and has pictograms reduced to formal outline patterns. Linear A tablets have been found in the palaces of Crete itself and also on the Cycladic islands of Melos, Keos, Kythera, Naxos and Thera.
Linear B: CATEGORY: language
DEFINITION: A syllabic script used in Minoan Crete and Mycenaean Greece from c 1450-1200 (also c 1500-1100) BC. Michael Ventris deciphered it in 1952 as an early form of Greek. It was created at Knossos when the Mycenaeans took control and spread to mainland Greece. It was mainly used at the palace sites of Mycenae, Pylos, Thebes, and Tiryns. Most of the Linear B writings are on clay tablets but also on terra-cotta jars that were traded throughout the Aegean region. The writings are administrative / economic in nature and its decipherment has thrown much light on the continuity between Bronze Age and classical Greece. They are from the Late Minoan II in Crete and Mycenaean III A-B on the mainland. It is probable that when the Mycenaeans overran the Minoans they adopted the script used on Crete, Linear A and adapted it for writing the Greek language; many signs were added to the existing Linear A signs.
linear earthwork: SYNONYMS OR RELATED TERMS: dyke, dike
CATEGORY: feature
DEFINITION: An earthwork, dike, ditch, or bank that is created in a straight line, not curving around to form an enclosure. Such earthworks were of various lengths and created for various purposes. Some Bronze and Iron Age examples may be ranch boundaries with no defensive value, but later Iron Age and the post-Roman Dark Age may be either boundary markers or defense works. Many of these later dikes cut across communication route or lines of easy access, and would have been an effective obstacle against chariots or wheeled vehicles.
Linear Elamite script: CATEGORY: language
DEFINITION: A syllabic script used in Elam for inscriptions c. 2200 BC. The earliest Elamite writings are in a figurative or pictographic script and date from the middle of the 3rd millennium BC. Documents from the second period, which lasted from the 16th to the 8th century BC, are written in cuneiform; the stage of the language found in these documents is sometimes called Old Elamite. The last period of Elamite texts is that of the reign of the Achaemenid kings of Persia (6th to 4th century BC), who used Elamite, along with Akkadian and Old Persian, in their inscriptions. The language of this period, also written in the cuneiform script, is often called New Elamite.
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.
linear regression analysis: CATEGORY: technique
DEFINITION: A statistical procedure for determining the relationship between two variables. It has many applications in archaeology, as in the study of variations in population or the size of clay-pipe stems through time, or the relationship between the quantity of an item and the distance from its source. One variable (e.g. time or distance) is regarded as independent, while the second is dependent on it; from a set of know observations, it is possible to estimate the relationship between the two. Thus, given the population figures for different times in a region, it would be possible to predict the population for any other date. The method assumes that there is a linear relationship between the variables, and uses only one variable to explain all the variation in the other; these can be serious limitations.
multilinear cultural evolution: CATEGORY: term
DEFINITION: A theory of cultural evolution that sees each human culture evolving in its own way by adaptation to diverse environments. It is sometimes divided into four broad stages of evolving of social organization: band, tribe, chiefdom, and state-organized society. It is often defined by these four general levels of complexity rather than seeing all societies as pursuing a single course.
unilinear cultural evolution: SYNONYMS OR RELATED TERMS: unilinear evolution
CATEGORY: term
DEFINITION: A 19th-century evolutionary theory holding that all human cultures pass through the same sequence of evolutionary changes or stages, from simple hunting and gathering to literate civilization. Lewis H. Morgan described seven stages, or ethnical periods, from lower savagery, barbarism, to civilization.
Ayia Triadha: CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: A Minoan palace in southern Crete, built c 2200 BC and inhabited until its destruction c 1450 BC. Connected by road to the palace at Phaestus, one room contained numerous clay tablets with Linear A inscriptions.
Ban Chiang: SYNONYMS OR RELATED TERMS: Ban Chiang Hian
CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: A settlement site in northeast Thailand with burial deposits from 3600 BC-1600 AD and which was occupied from c 4500 BC. Rice was grown and bronze cast according to the earliest records. Iron and rice paddy field cultivation began in the 2nd millennium. The basal burials are associated with incised and cord-marked pottery, copper and bronze artifacts. Levels dated to the late 2nd and 1st millennia BC have produced a variety of curvilinear painted red-on-buff pottery, together with iron, and bones of water buffalo. However, there is disagreement over the dating of Ban Chiang,, especially for the bronze, iron, and painted pottery.
Barlovento: CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: A site on the Gulf coast of Colombia, dating to 1500-1000 BC, with distinctive pottery with wide-lined incised curvilinear designs.
Bigo: CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: A great earthwork site in western Uganda associated with the Chwezi people. The massive linear earthworks, over 6 1/2 miles long (10 km), is a ditch system, some of it cut out of rock, enclosing a large grazing area on a riverbank. It may have comprised both a royal capital and a cattle enclosure. Its construction would have required considerable labor and supports a distinction between cultivators and a pastoral aristocracy, which later became typical of this area. Radioactive carbon dating suggests Bigo was occupied from the mid-14th to the early 16th century. The site has also yielded early 13th-15th century AD roulette-decorated pottery, characteristic of the later Iron Age over much of East Africa.
Bodrogkeresztur: CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: The site of a Middle Copper Age cemetery and culture in eastern Hungary, c 3900-3500 BC. It is the type site for an occupation that made Linear Pottery and used metal battle-axes and ax-adzes of shaft-hole type. The cemetery has at least fifty inhumation graves. The Bodrogkeresztur culture represents the first peak of metallurgical development in Hungarian prehistory, defined by large-scale production of gold ornaments and heavy shaft-hole copper tools. The occurrence of Transylvanian gold, Slovakian copper, and flint from Poland suggests long-distance exchanges.
Boian: CATEGORY: culture
DEFINITION: A Neolithic culture (c 7000-3500 BC, some say Middle Neolithic c 4200-3700 BC) in lower Danube valley of southern Romania and characterized by terrace-floodplain settlements, consisting at first of mud huts and later of fortified promontory settlements of small tells. The Boian phase was marked by the introduction of copper axes, the extension of agriculture, and the breeding of domestic animals. The distinctive Boian pottery was decorated by rippling, painting, and excised or incised linear designs with white paste. Intramural burial is most common, but occasional large inhumation cemeteries are known. By spreading northward into Transylvania and northeastward to Moldavia, the Boian culture gradually assimilated earlier cultures of those areas. Flourishing exchange networks are known to involve Prut Valley flint, Spondylus shells from the Black Sea, and copper.
Bylany: CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: A large village settlement of the Danubian culture in the loess lands of the Bohemian plain of Czechoslovakia. This large site had many phases of occupation, including by people who made stroke-ornamented pottery. There were timber-framed long houses in the three main phases of the Linear Pottery sequence. Subsistence was based on emmer wheat cultivation and cattle husbandry.
Cajamarca: SYNONYMS OR RELATED TERMS: Cajamarquilla
CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: An ancient Inca city, the site of the capture, ransom, and execution of the Inca chief Atahuallpa by conquistador Francisco Pizarro in 1532. In the north Peruvian highlands, Cajamarca developed a strong regional civilization and was a provincial capital, flourishing between 200-1476 AD. Cajamarca pottery is slip-painted with linear running patterns (cursive) or with stylized creatures and animal heads in brownish black over a cream background. The Spanish capture ended the Inca period and Andean prehistory. It was a cultural center during the Early Intermediate period. The cemetery, Nievería has Huari-related artifacts.
Chania: SYNONYMS OR RELATED TERMS: Khania, Kydonia
CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: The site of a Minoan administrative center, Kydonia, in western Crete. No palace has been found at the Bronze Age settlement, but Linear A and Linear B inscriptions have been discovered.
chip-carving: SYNONYMS OR RELATED TERMS: chip carving
CATEGORY: lithics
DEFINITION: A technique of decoration with the use of an ax, hatchet, mallet, and/or chisel, which probably originated in the Roman and Celtic world. The technique was adapted by Germanic wood-carvers to make animal ornaments and by metalsmiths of the Migration Period. This excised decoration was done by cutting from the surface triangular and rectilinear small chips. The end result was a pattern of combined V-shaped incisions, with a glittering faceted appearance. It is found in woodwork and pottery, when it has to be done before the clay is fired. False relief is a special version of this technique. Examples are the Tassilo Chalice (Kremsmünster Abbey, Austria) and the Lindau Gospels book cover (Pierpont Morgan Library, New York City).
Ciumesti: CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: A small number of Mesolithic and Neolithic settlement sites in northwest Rumania. Late Mesolithic, Early Neolithic Cris, and later Neolithic Linear Pottery sites have been found. The chipped stone assemblages are distinguished by a high percentage of obsidian, procured from the Tokaj Mountains some 180 km away in northeastern Hungary.
coevolution: SYNONYMS OR RELATED TERMS: coevolutionary perspective
CATEGORY: term
DEFINITION: The recent theory that life and climate interact and that they have mutually altered each other over geologic history. The term was coined by the American biologists Paul R. Ehrlich and Peter H. Raven to describe the process whereby two or more species depend on the interactions between them. The coevolution of life and climate during the past 4,000,000,000 years of the Earth's history is an expression for the complex mixture of forces causing climatic change. The theory suggests that changes in social systems are best understood as mutual selection among components rather than a linear cause-and-effect sequence. For example, it has been argued that the origins of agriculture can best be understood by exploring the evolutionary forces affecting the development of domestication systems. Viewed this way, domestication is not seen as an evolutionary stage, but rather as a process and is the result of coevolutionary interactions between humans and plants.
Cordilleran: SYNONYMS OR RELATED TERMS: Cordilleran ice sheet; Laurentide
CATEGORY: chronology; culture
DEFINITION: The ice mass that covered the coastal mountains along the Pacific Ocean coast of North America from northern Washington state into southern Alaska. At its maximum extent, about 20,000 years ago, it connected with the Laurentide ice sheet to the east and with the Pacific Ocean to the west, and reached a thickness of some 3 kilometers (1 mile). The Cordilleran Geosyncline is a linear trough in the Earth's crust in which rocks of Late Precambrian to Mesozoic age (roughly 600 million to 66 million years ago) were deposited along the western coast of North America, from southern Alaska through western Canada and the United States, probably to western Mexico. The eastern boundary of the geosyncline extends from southeastern Alaska along the eastern edge of the Northern Cordillera and Northern Rocky Mountains of Canada and Montana, along the eastern edge of the Great Basin of Utah and Nevada, and into southeastern California and Mexico. The Old Cordilleran culture appeared in the Pacific Northwest about 9000 or 10,000 BC and persisted until about 5000 BC in some areas. Subsistence was based on hunting, fishing, and gathering. Simple willow-leaf-shaped, bipointed projectile points are characteristic artifacts.
Cucuteni-Tripolye: CATEGORY: culture
DEFINITION: A Neolithic culture of southeastern Europe, distributed throughout the Ukraine (Tripolye culture) and Moldova and Romania (Cucuteni culture), which arose about 3000 BC. The type site of the Cucuteni is in the Siret valley of Romania and the type site of the Tripolye is near Kiev in Ukraine. The Cucuteni is divided into stages: Pre-Cucuteni, Cucuteni A, AB and B, dating c 4200-3000 BC. Tripolye is divided into five phases -- A, B1, B2, C1 and C2 -- the latest dating to the full Early Bronze Age in the 3rd millennium BC. The late Cucuteni-Tripolye phase is regarded as the local climax of Neolithic cultural development. They produced fine wares (red or orange and was decorated with curvilinear designs painted or grooved on the surface) on a large scale and long chipped stone blades. They also mastered metallurgical techniques such as alloying, casting, and welding. There was a subsistence economy depending on fruits and the earliest recorded domestication in Europe of the horse. The villages consisted of long, rectangular houses, though the Tripolye people practiced shifting agriculture and frequently moved.
Cuiry-lès-Chaudardes: CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: An Early Neolithic site of the Paris Basin's Linear Pottery culture that was occupied c 4800 BC. There were timber longhouses, pits, potsherds decorated in Bandkeramik, grindstones, flint tools, and waste flakes.
cultural processual approach: SYNONYMS OR RELATED TERMS: cultural process
CATEGORY: technique
DEFINITION: A deductive approach to archaeological research that is designed to study the changes and interactions in cultural systems and the processes by which human cultures change throughout time. A cultural process is the cumulative cause-and-effect of the mechanisms and interactions within a culture that produce stability and/or change. The delineation of cultural process is one of the goals of archaeological research. Processual archaeologists use both descriptive and explanatory models based on functional, ecological, or multilinear cultural evolutionary concepts of culture.
Cypro-Minoan: CATEGORY: language
DEFINITION: The syllabic script used in Cyprus from the 15th century BC, falling into disuse before being revived in the 8th century BC. It was used to write Greek until the 3rd century BC. It has similarities to Minoan Linear A and may have come from Crete. Inscriptions appear on baked clay tablets, bronze votives, ivories, and seals. It has not been deciphered.
Danubian culture(s): CATEGORY: culture
DEFINITION: Early farming culture(s) of the Danube basin of central and eastern Europe, of the Neolithic and Eneolithic, starting c 5300 BC. The stages, named by Gordon Childe, were Danubian I (Linear Pottery culture), Danubian II (later Neolithic cultures, such as Tisza, Lengyel, Rossen, and stroke-ornamented pottery cultures), and Danubian III (late Lengyel, Brzesc, Kujawski, Jordanow). The first stage was based on slash and burn cultivation and the shoe-last celt, objects of spondylus shell, and the use of bandkeramik. There were substantial timber longhouses during occupations and after abandonment, sites were later reoccupied and villages rebuilt. By the mid-5th millennium, the Danubian II cultures (Rössen, stroke-ornamented ware, Lengyel, Tisza) arose. The term is now outdated.
directional filter: CATEGORY: geography
DEFINITION: A type of image filter used in digital image processing to identify linear features that possess a particular orientation. It allows a data surface" of any chosen vertical scale to be "illuminated" from various directions and elevations to make subtle anomalies visible mimicking the effects of low sunlight on earthworks with the flexibility of computer manipulation."
distance-decay function: SYNONYMS OR RELATED TERMS: distance decay
CATEGORY: technique
DEFINITION: A mathematical expression of the inverse ratio between the quantity of a substance and the distance from its source; the rate at which interaction declines as the distance from the source increases. This function is a specific example of linear regression analysis and can be used to describe the relationship between the amount of a given commodity found at any point and the place from which it was exported. The patterns and mathematical expressions help to distinguish different forms of trade and exchange. In general, distance-decay varies with the value of the object traded, with the richer items spreading further from the source.
Domica: CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: A cave site in eastern Slovakia with linear pottery culture of the Bükk group.
Eilsleben: CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: A settlement site of the Linear Pottery culture in eastern Germany. The fortified area was surrounded by a rampart and ditch system.
Elsloo: CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: A settlement and cemetery of the Neolithic Linear Pottery culture of southern Netherlands. Long houses of various types have been found, as in the other Dutch sites of this culture (Geleen, Sittard, Stein). Elsloo has been organized into six main chronological phases. The grave goods have provided information about the Linear Pottery social stratification.
engraving: SYNONYMS OR RELATED TERMS: incising
CATEGORY: ceramics
DEFINITION: A technique for decorating ceramics that involve cutting linear designs into the surface of an object.
Entremont: CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: An important oppidum near Aix-en-Provence, France, a Celto-Ligurian structure built in the third century BC (middle La Tène culture). It was the capital of the Salyes until destroyed by the Romans in the year c 125 BC. Entremont had a sanctuary with sculptured figures and finds include heads and torsos carved in the round, and four-sided limestone pillars with severed human heads and skulls carved in relief. It had ramparts built of large stone blocks, with watch towers, and inside were streets, houses of dry stone, drainage and water systems, all laid out on a rectilinear system.
Evans, Sir Arthur (1851-1941): CATEGORY: person
DEFINITION: A British scholar and archaeologist who contributed much to the study of Greek archaeology with his excavations at the Minoan palace of Knossos. His first interest was in coins and hieroglyphic seals, and it was the latter which drew his attention to Crete. He began excavations at Knossos in 1899 at his own expense, and in the next 35 years laid bare not only this Bronze Age palace of the Minoans, but in effect their whole civilization. Careful cross-dating with Egypt allowed him to put dates to his sequence, making it a vitally important link in the dating of prehistoric Europe before the discovery of radiocarbon. Though he was unable to decipher the Minoans' three written scripts, his detailed study of them gave the necessary basis for later work, culminating in the reading of Linear B by Michael Ventris in 1952. He was largely responsible for demonstrating the existence of a pre-Mycenaean Aegean civilization, for naming it Minoan (after the legendary King Minos of Crete), and for revealing most of its characteristics. He was the son of Sir John Evans.
fission track dating: SYNONYMS OR RELATED TERMS: fission-track dating; fission track age determination
CATEGORY: technique
DEFINITION: A chronometric dating technique based on the natural, spontaneous nuclear fission of Uranium 238 and its byproduct, linear atomic displacements/tracks. The basis for this technique is that a uranium isotope, U 238, as well as decaying to a stable lead isotope, also undergoes spontaneous fission. One in every two million atoms decays in this way. Fission is accompanied by an energy release which sends the resulting two nuclei into the surrounding material, the tracks causing damage to the crystal lattice. These tracks can be counted under a microscope after the polished surface of the sample has been etched with acid. The concentration of uranium can be determined by the induced fission of U 235 by neutron irradiation of the sample. Since the ratio of U 235 to U 238 is known, and is constant, a comparison of the number of tracks from natural fission and the number from induced fission will give the age of the sample. Though the method has been limited in its archaeological use so far, it has already proved a useful check method for potassium-argon dating for volcanic deposits at Olduvai Gorge, Tanzania, and obsidian, tephra beds, mineral inclusions in pottery, and some man-made glasses have also been dated. A further use of the method is based on the fact that fission tracks disappear if the substance is heated about 500? or so: thus a date achieved for clay (like a hearth), pottery, or obsidian that had been burnt gives the date of burning or firing, since previous fission tracks would have disappeared.
Fukui: CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: A deep stratified rock shelter in Nagasaki Prefecture, Japan, of the Late Palaeolithic and yielding Initial Jomon pottery (with geometric designs) together with obsidian microliths. The stone tools from the oldest layer, dated older than 31,900 years, are among the earliest evidence of human occupation of Japan. Microblades continue into the two early ceramic layers, suggesting a continuity in stone tools when potterymaking began in Japan. The older ceramic layer, dated to 10,650 bc, contained linear-relief pottery, while the younger one, dated to 10,450 bc, included fingernail-impressed ware. The ceramics have been dated by radiocarbon to 12,700 bp, the earliest occurrence in the world of ceramic vessels.
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.
Geleen: CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: A settlement of the Neolithic Linear Pottery culture in southern Holland, c 6500 BP, which has produced house types similar to those of other Dutch sites of this culture, including Elsloo, Sittard, and Stein.
geometric: SYNONYMS OR RELATED TERMS: Geometric
CATEGORY: artifact
DEFINITION: A style of decoration with repeated geometric motifs -- circles, squares, triangles, lozenges, and running linear patterns -- flourishing in Greece c 900-700 BC. The term is also applied to such design on wall painting, for textiles. The style derived from the triangular, circular, meander, zigzags, rhomboids, and other linear decoration on Greek pottery of this period. In classical Greek art history, the term is used specifically of the early phases of vase-painting as, for example, Protogeometric (c 1050-900 BC), Geometric (c 900-750 BC), and Late Geometric (c 750-700 BC). When the term is applied to the period of Greek history in which the decoration flourished, it is often extended to 1100-700 BC, after the fall of Mycenaean civilization and marking transition from Bronze to Iron Age. The first phase, called Protogeometric (1100-900) corresponds to the dark ages" when Greek culture was inward looking and very poor. Its final phase Late Geometric (770-700) coincided with resumption of relations with Asian cultures and beginning of colonization of the northern southern and western shores of Mediterranean."
Glastonbury ware: CATEGORY: artifact
DEFINITION: A type of middle Iron Age pottery manufactured at a number of centers in the southwest of England. A wide range of forms are known, principal amongst which are globular bowls, jars, and shouldered bowls. Incised decoration in curvilinear motifs and so-called tram-line pattern is common
grid: SYNONYMS OR RELATED TERMS: grid unit
CATEGORY: technique
DEFINITION: A system of perpendicular lines and equally spaced points to form a rectangle which is used as a frame of locational reference on an archaeological sites. A grid is usually defined by its distance and direction in reference to a datum point. Excavations units are often planned and recorded by grid. Grids are often aligned with either the anticipated site layout or with a landform upon which the site sits. Many archaeological sites are surveyed by measuring from a grid enclosing the site. It is a rectilinear system of X, Y coordinates which is established over the area to be excavated so that spatial control can be maintained.
Hagia Triada: SYNONYMS OR RELATED TERMS: Ayia Triadha
CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: DEFINITION: A Minoan palace in southern Crete, built c 2200 BC and inhabited until its destruction c 1450 BC. Connected by road to the palace at Phaestus, one room contained numerous clay tablets with Linear A inscriptions. The small town around it continued later, and it is to Late Minoan III that the site's most famous find belongs. This is a pottery coffin painted with scenes associated with funeral ritual, the pouring of libations, bringing of offerings, etc. Also well known is the Harvester Vase, a stone rhyton portraying in low relief a delightful and vigorous scene of a procession of celebrating harvesters.
hinge termination: CATEGORY: lithics
DEFINITION: A fracture at the distal end of a lithic flake somewhat like a step termination, but more curvilinear in cross-section, indicating that the shock wave of flake removal curved outwards from the core, toward the distal side of the flake.
incising: SYNONYMS OR RELATED TERMS: engraving
CATEGORY: ceramics
DEFINITION: A technique for decorating ceramics that involve cutting linear designs into the surface of an object.
incision: CATEGORY: ceramics
DEFINITION: A finishing technique in ceramics manufacture whereby a narrow tool cuts into the surface, displacing material to either side and drags along to deposit more material toward the end of a linear or curvilinear trough or valley.
Köln-Lindenthal: CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: A settlement site of the Linear Pottery Culture outside modern Cologne, Germany. Köln-Lindenthal is recognized as a typical Danubian site with seven widely separated phases of occupation covering the Danubian I and II periods. It was the site of one of the earliest attempts to uncover a settlement plan. Post structures were identified as longhouses made of mud plaster, but was unusual for by being encircled by a ditched enclosure.
Körös: CATEGORY: culture
DEFINITION: Early Neolithic culture of southern Hungary which belongs to the complex including Karanovo I, Cris, and Starcevo cultures. The Körös variant is distinguished by its footed vessels and relative lack of painted wares. It is believed to have been the precursor of the Linear Pottery culture that developed on the Hungarian Plain.
Kharosti script: CATEGORY: language
DEFINITION: A writing system used in northwestern India before about 500 AD; one of the two main early Indian scripts. The earliest extant inscription in Kharosti dates from 251 BC, and the latest from the 4th-5th century AD. The system probably derived from the Aramaic alphabet while northwestern India was under Persian rule in the 5th century BC. Aramaic, however, is a Semitic alphabet of 22 consonantal letters, while Kharosti is syllabic and has 252 separate signs for consonant and vowel combinations. A cursive script written from right to left, Kharosti was used for commercial and calligraphic purposes. It was influenced somewhat by Brahmi, the other Indian script of the period, which eventually superseded it. The name Karoshti literally means asses' lips, and is said to refer to the similarity of the highly curvilinear script to the movement of asses' lips.
Knossos: SYNONYMS OR RELATED TERMS: Cnossus
CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: A well-known palace site on the island of Crete that has been inhabited almost continuously from 6000 BC when the first Neolithic settlement was constructed. It was the location of the chief palace of the Minoans, near Herakleion at the center of the north coast of Crete. The Neolithic settlement was succeeded by an Early Minoan one, but little is known about this phase. The site was leveled for the palace at the beginning of the Middle Minoan period, c 2000 BC. Around the palace were the main buildings, the throne room, reception halls, shrines, magazines, and the domestic quarter of at least three stories. Large banks of rooms of various types were arranged around a central courtyard, giving rise to the story of the labyrinth. Unlike the other Cretan palaces, Knossos survived the violent eruption of Santorini/Thera c 1450 BC, but came under new rulers, Mycenaeans. The palace was opulent and the frescoes show the bull sports which took place in or near the palace, the courtiers who watched them, others in ceremonial procession carrying offerings, and the priest-king himself. Clay tablets with inscriptions in Linear A and B show the careful accounting which supported this show. From them, too, we learn that in the last phase of occupation the rulers of the palace were Greek. Knossos likely governed much of Crete. The palace site was finally destroyed probably c 1375 BC, though Knossos remained prosperous and powerful, emerging as one of the foremost Greek city-states on Crete.
La Tène: SYNONYMS OR RELATED TERMS: La Tene period
CATEGORY: site; culture
DEFINITION: The site of a great Iron Age votive deposit in the shallow water at the east end of Lake Neuchâtel, Switzerland. Excavations revealed wooden piles, two timber causeways, and a mass of tools and weapons of bronze, iron, and wood (swords, fibulae, spearheads, etc.). Some of these objects bore curvilinear patterns which are the hallmark of La Tène (Celtic) art everywhere from central Europe to Ireland and the Pyrenees. La Tène has given its name to the second major division of the European Iron Age, which followed the Hallstatt period over much of the continent and lasted from mid-5th century BC until the Celts were subdued by Roman conquest c 50 BC. Settlement was characteristically in hillforts and, from the 3rd and 2nd centuries BC, massive oppida occur. As in the Hallstatt culture, there is a notable distinction between the markedly wealthy burials of chieftains and their associates, and burials of other members of society. The highest development, and the birth of the art style, took place in west central Europe from the Rhineland to the Marne. Contact with the Greek and Etruscan worlds brought wine, metal flagons, and Attic drinking cups into lands north of the Alps, and La Tène art shows links with that of the Scythians to the east. In Britain, contact with the continental La Tène cultures is shown by chariot burials and the presence of La Tène art motifs on metalwork and pottery. British cultures showing La Tène influence are sometimes grouped within an Iron Age B complex. In Ireland, which the Romans never invaded, a Celtic culture and an art style with La Tène elements persisted into the Early Christian period. It is subdivided into La Tène I c 480-220 BC, La Tène II c 220-120 BC, and La Tène III c 120-Roman conquest(at different times in different areas).
Las Haldas: CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: Initial Period ceremonial site on the north-central coast of Peru. The earliest ceramics have yielded radiocarbon dates of about 1800 BC. There is a stepped pyramid, three plazas, smaller mounds, and sunken courts along a linear axis.
Lengyel: CATEGORY: culture
DEFINITION: A late Danubian culture with the type site in western Hungary and many regional variants in Hungary, parts of Austria, and much of Czechoslovakia and Poland. It is closely linked to the Tisza culture of the Hungarian plain, and it may have been from this area that the Lengyel people adopted painted pottery and the occasional use of copper (some of the earliest use in temperate Europe). With the Rössen and Tisza culture, it is a descendant of Linear Pottery culture. The Lengyel culture is divided into two main phases: the Painted Lengyel, defined by white, red, and yellow crusted wares and dated c 4000-3500 BC, and the Unpainted Lengyel, characterized by knobbed and incised pottery and dated c 3500-3000 BC. The type site was a settlement adjoining a cemetery of some 90 inhumation graves. Sites have trapezoidal longhouses and some defensive works.
longhouse / long house: CATEGORY: structure
DEFINITION: In Neolithic times, an elongated (oblong) wooden post house that appeared in central Europe with the first farming communities within the Early Neolithic Bandkeramik cultures, about 4500-3000 BC, as well as the later Iron Age, about 100 BC-500 AD, of north-central Europe. It also applies to the Late Woodland cultures of northeast North America, about 1300-1600 AD, especially the Iroquois and Huron. Life in the longhouse had ended by 1800, but the meeting room of the contemporary tribe continues to be called the longhouse. In North American antiquity, longhouses were divided into living quarters for a number of groups. In Europe, structures may have been multipurpose buildings for dwellings and livestock stables. Among the most famous are those of the Linear Pottery culture, which reach lengths of up to 40 meters. Archaeologically, the two halves of the long house are often distinguished by the existence of a hearth in the living quarters, a central drain, and sometimes stalls in the byre. The purpose of the European long house was to keep stock during the wet winter months, and at the same time to provide dwelling for the farmers. In Upper Palaeolithic times, the long house was an elongated above-ground structure of up to 100 meters in length, with a central series of hearths. The walls and roofing were probably supported by wooden poles and large mammal bones. Remains of these have been found in Kostenki, Pushkari, and Avdeevo.
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.
Matera: CATEGORY: site; artifact
DEFINITION: A small city in southern Italy, northwest of Taranto, which formed part of the duchy of Benevento and of the principality of Salerno. It was occupied successively by the Normans, the Aragonese, and the Orsini. In the old part of the city, people inhabit cavelike houses cut into the rock with only an opening for the door, a system dating from prehistoric times. The name is also applied to a Middle Neolithic ware from many sites in its neighborhood, notably the ditched villages of Murgecchia and Murgia Timone and a cave site, the Grotta dei Pipistrelli. A dark burnished ware with curved bowls and straight-necked jars, it is characterized by rectilinear geometric designs scratched after firing and filled with an inlay of red ochre. A quite different ware, thin, buff-colored, and painted with broad bands of scarlet, is sometimes included in the term.
Matera ware: CATEGORY: artifact
DEFINITION: A Middle Neolithic ware from many sites Matera of southern Italy and its neighborhood, notably the ditched villages of Murgecchia and Murgia Timone and a cave site, the Grotta dei Pipistrelli. A dark burnished ware with curved bowls and straight-necked jars, it is characterized by rectilinear geometric designs scratched after firing and filled with an inlay of red ochre. A quite different ware, thin, buff-colored, and painted with broad bands of scarlet, is sometimes included in the term.
meander: CATEGORY: artifact
DEFINITION: Any running design consisting of a single line or band twisting regularly. The spiral meander is a simple running spiral, the square meander a rectilinear form of the same thing. The earliest known examples of finger painting are the prehistoric decorative and figurative meanders" traced on walls of the Altamira caves in Spain."
mensuration: CATEGORY: term
DEFINITION: Any act of measuring; measurement. The earliest standard measurements appeared in the ancient Mediterranean cultures and were based on parts of the body, or on calculations of what man or beast could haul, or on the volume of containers or the area of fields in common use. The Egyptian cubit is generally recognized to have been the most widespread unit of linear measurement in the ancient world. It came into use around 3000 BC and was based on the length of the arm from the elbow to the extended finger tips. It was standardized by a royal master cubit of black granite, against which all cubit sticks in Egypt were regularly checked. One of the earliest known weight measures was the Babylonian mina, though the two surviving examples vary widely -- 640 grams (about 1.4 pounds) and 978 grams (about 2.15 pounds).
Minoan: CATEGORY: culture
DEFINITION: The Bronze Age civilization of Crete, a name coined by Sir Arthur Evans derived from the legendary ruler of Knossos, Minos. The civilization is divided into three phases: Early (c 3000-2000 BC), Middle (c 2000-1550 BC), and Late (c 1550-1050 BC). Each had three subdivisions marked with Roman numerals. They stand out as the first civilized Europeans, with a highly sophisticated way of life and material equipment, and were surprisingly modern. They probably represented a fusion between Anatolian immigrants and the native Neolithic population, with some trading contacts through the east Mediterranean. In the Middle Minoan period, urbanization became apparent, towns appeared and, a Minoan specialty, the first of the great palaces, Knossos, Mallia, and Phaestos. Overseas trade was greatly expanded, too. The height of its development was in the 18th-15th centuries BC. By about 1580 BC Minoan civilization began to spread across the Aegean to neighboring islands and to the mainland of Greece. Minoan cultural influence was reflected in the Mycenean culture of the mainland, which began to spread throughout the Aegean about 1500 BC. The palaces were destroyed c 1450, probably by the cataclysmic eruption of Santorini/Thera -- or by conquerors from the mainland. After that, Greek-speaking Mycenaeans gained control of Knossos and Crete; only Knossos was reoccupied on a significant scale. The final fall of Knossos, c 1400 BC, marked the end of Crete's period of greatness. Their Linear A script has not been deciphered, but Linear B has been successfully translated as an early form of Greek, written in a syllabary, but belongs only to the period of mainland domination, and is therefore more relevant to Mycenaeans than Minoans. Their pottery is among the most artistic of any place or time, using abstract curvilinear, floral, and marine designs. Craftsmen reached high levels of technical skill and aesthetic achievement in pottery, metal work, stonework, jewelry, and wall painting (the palaces are lavishly decorated with frescoes). Vessels, figurines, and magnificent seal stones were also carved in stone and bronze and gold objects made. There were many bull sporting events. Cult activities normally took place either in hilltop shrines, often in caves, or in small shrines within the palaces, and often involved animals, including goats and especially bulls. There is an alternative division of the Minoan civilization into Prepalatial (Early Minoan I-III), Protopalatial (Middle Minoan I-II), Neopalatial (Middle Minoan III-Late Minoan IIIA1), and Postpalatial (Late Minoan IIIA2-IIIC).
Mycenaeans: SYNONYMS OR RELATED TERMS: Mycenaean
CATEGORY: culture
DEFINITION: Inhabitants of Mycenae, the civilization of late Bronze Age Greece, set in the Argolid. Their name for themselves was Achaeans, and their achievements were remembered in the legends of the classical Greeks. Their forebears probably arrived in Greece around 2000 BC, bringing Minyan ware and an Indo-European language with them. Mycenaean civilization arose in the 16th century BC by the sudden influx of many features of material culture from the Minoans. Later traditions speak of the arrival of new rulers from the east. By c 1450 BC, the Mycenaeans were powerful enough to take over both Knossos and the profitable trade across the east Mediterranean, especially in Cypriote copper. Trade was extended also to the central Mediterranean and continental Europe, where Baltic amber was one of the commodities sought. The peak of their power lasted only a century and a half until natural and unnatural disaster struck. The Trojan War at the end of the 13th century points to unrest east of the Aegean. There is evidence of increasing depopulation of southern Greece about the same time, paving the way for invasion by the Dorians. At home, the Mycenaeans dwelt in strongly walled citadels containing palaces of the megaron type, exemplified at Mycenae, Tiryns, Thebes, and Pylos. To these were added the more Minoan features -- frescoes, painted pottery, skillfully carved seals, artistic metalwork, clay tablets, etc. Their writing, Linear B, was an adaptation of the Minoan script, presumably first made by the mainlanders who had occupied Knossos, for the writing of their own, Greek, language. (Linear B was deciphered by Michael Ventris.) The Mycenaeans contributed greatly to the economy and technology of Late Bronze Age Europe, and to the population of the east Mediterranean coasts after the Egyptian defeat of the Peoples of the Sea, and they also left a legacy in their language and literature to their descendants in Greece. The civilization collapsed in c 1200 BC.
Nan Madol: CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: Town and ceremonial center built in a shallow tidal lagoon off the shore of Ponape in the Caroline Islands; it is the largest single complex of ancient stonework in Oceania, comprising about 70 hectares with 92 rectilinear basalt and coral platforms. The most famous structure is the burial platform of Nan Douwas, which contains four pit-tombs with prismatic basalt enclosure walls up to 8.5 meters high. The whole complex is traditionally associated with the Sau Deleur rulers of Ponape, and was presumably constructed several centuries ago.
Nezwiska: CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: A site of the Linear Pottery Culture in the Ukraine.
Nitra: SYNONYMS OR RELATED TERMS: Neutra, Nyitra
CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: A fortified site where excavations have revealed traces of the 9th-century stronghold and a large cemetery of the Linear Pottery culture of southern Slovakia. Within Nitra's walls there were workshops producing relics and metalwork that were distributed to other Slavic sites. The cemetery's artifacts and remains have provided data on mortality, age, and sex during the Early Neolithic. Grave goods included spondylus shell ornaments and shoe-last axes.
Norton: SYNONYMS OR RELATED TERMS: Norton tradition phase
CATEGORY: culture
DEFINITION: A series of Arctic Alaska cultures, mainly coastal, dating from c 500 BC-1100 AD, with the first pottery of the region. The Choris culture, the earliest manifestation, has pottery that is Asiatic in origin, fiber-tempered with linear- and check-stamp decoration. Sometimes designated Paleo-Eskimo, the Norton tradition embraces the cultural continuum Choris-Norton-Ipiutak. The Norton aspect of this continuum is typically represented by the presence of poorly fired, check-stamped pottery and tools of crude appearance, made from basalt rather than chert. Polished slate implements and oil lamps appear as well as points, tips, side blades; discoidal scraper bits, broad flat labrets, and toggling harpoon heads. Cape Denbigh, Cape Krusenstern and Onion Portage for example, all have a Norton component. The extent to which the Norton tradition was ancestral to any of the Eskimos is open to interpretation, though the Yup'ik Eskimo are likely descendants of Norton people.
Novye Ruseshty: SYNONYMS OR RELATED TERMS: Novi Rusesti
CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: Neolithic and Eneolithic site in Moldova, starting with the Linear Pottery culture and then the Cucuteni-Tripolye culture.
oblique striae: CATEGORY: artifact
DEFINITION: Slanting linear marks, ridges, or grooves, especially one of a number of similar features
Offa's Dyke: CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: A linear earthwork, some 270 km long, built by King Offa of Mercia (reigned 757-796) as a frontier between his Anglo-Saxon kingdom and the kingdom of Powys. It is a large earthen bank and quarry ditch, and runs almost continuously between Treuddy and Chepstow, close to the border of England and Wales. Offa's reign is also noteworthy for the close connections he established between Mercia and the Carolingian empire (his daughter married one of Charlemagne's sons) and the introduction of regular coinage based on pennies.
Olszanica: CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: Linear Pottery culture settlement in southern Poland near Kraków dating to the late 5th millennium BC. There were 13 longhouses, one of high status, and obsidian and Bürk pottery from Hungary.
Orchomenos: CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: Important Bronze Age site in Boeotia, central Greece, home of the legendary King Minyas. Extensive remains of the Early and Middle Helladic periods survive, though the Mycenaean levels are badly eroded. A large frescoed Late Helladic structure is probably a palace, and to the east lies the tholos tomb known as the Treasury of Minyas. About 20 km to the east is the huge Mycenaean fortress of Gla, defended by walls of cyclopean masonry 6 meters thick. This fortress and a number of subsidiary forts must have defended the eastern approaches to the Copais basin, which, according to ancient literary tradition, was drained and cultivated by the people of Orchomenos in Mycenaean times. There are impressive fortifications of the Classical city and a 4th century BC theater. Linear B has been found in inscriptions on pots and jars at Orchomenos.
Pampa de las Llamas or Moxeke: CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: Major Initial Period ceremonial center on the north-central coast of Peru. The site is on a linear axis with the large mound of Moxeke at one end and Huaca A at the other. There are small U-shaped structures parallel to the central axis.
Pan Shan: SYNONYMS OR RELATED TERMS: Pan-shan, Banshan
CATEGORY: culture
DEFINITION: A branch of the Yang-Shao culture of Neolithic China with a distinctive painted pottery, c 2500-2000 BC. There are extensive cemeteries in the hills of the upper Yellow River basin in Kansu province which yielded great quantities of the pottery with inhumation burials. The most common were large globular urns painted with bold spiral or other curvilinear designs or lozenges in red, black, purple, or brown. The 'death pattern' consists of a red band between two black ones internally fringed. The geometric patterns or stylized figures are of men, fish, and birds; there is no glaze. Coiling was common, but some of the wares were probably shaped on a slow, or hand-turned, wheel. The handles are set low on the body of the urns, and the lower part of the body is left undecorated -- as with most Greek Proto-Geometric funerary ware, to which there is a certain likeness. Striking parallels have been found in Turkestan, the Caucasus, and the Ukraine.
Phaistos: SYNONYMS OR RELATED TERMS: Phaestos, Phaestus
CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: The site of a Bronze Age palace of the Minoans in south-central Crete, constructed c 1900 BC, destroyed by an earthquake c 1700 BC, rebuilt, and succumbing to final destruction c 1450 BC from the eruption of Thera. Its plan follows closely the pattern of other Minoan palaces -- a large central court with large reception rooms, domestic quarters, and extensive magazines grouped around it. In the Late Minoan period, through occupation continued, power and wealth passed to Hagia (Ayia) Triada, just to the west. Finds include a series of Middle Minoan Kamares Ware vases and the intriguing Phaistos Disk, a unique clay disk with stamped inscriptions in a spiral on each face. It comes from a deposit dated c 1700 BC, which makes it contemporary with the different -- but equally undeciphered -- Linear A script. Phaistos is the second largest of the Minoan palaces, after Knossos, and has a rather similar early history.
Phaistos disk: SYNONYMS OR RELATED TERMS: Phaestos disk
CATEGORY: artifact; language
DEFINITION: A unique clay disk with stamped inscriptions in a spiral on each face of its 16 cm diameter, found in 1908 at Phaistos, Crete. It is made of baked clay and on either side is an inscription, which consists of signs impressed on the wet clay with a punch or stamp. The Phaistos disk is therefore the world's first typewritten" document" in the words of John Chadwick. There is a total of 242 signs arranged into 61 groups demarcated into boxes by lines. The signs appear to be written from the outer edge and spiral inwards in a clockwise direction. The disk come from a deposit dated c 1700 BC which makes it contemporary with the Linear A script. At this time however it appears to not be Linear A but may be an Anatolian script."
Pylos: CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: A palace and town of the Mycenaeans, traditionally ruled by Nestor, and overlooking Navarino Bay on the west coast of the Peloponnese in Greece. It is perhaps the best preserved of all mainland palaces, built in the 14th century BC. A megaron with frescoed walls and painted floor opened on to a courtyard, around which were the domestic quarters, storerooms, guard chamber, and the archives room. The 1200 tablets in the archive were baked by the fire which destroyed the palace in the 13th century BC and have been of enormous value in deciphering the Linear B script. The tablets indicate that the ruler of Pylos exercised control over much of Messenia.
Rössen culture: SYNONYMS OR RELATED TERMS: Röessen culture
CATEGORY: culture
DEFINITION: The successor of western branch of the Neolithic Linear Pottery Culture, with which is has many features in common. Its main distribution was in Rhineland and central and southern Germany, parallel to Lengyel culture in Czechoslovakia and mid-Danube. It is characterized by pottery with complex incised geometric motifs and by sites with trapezoidal longhouses. Radiocarbon dates indicate early 4th millennium BC. It is named after a cemetery site in Halle with 70 burials accompanied by bone and jet necklaces, shaft-hole-stone axes, and some long trapezoidal ones.
sample, transect: CATEGORY: technique
DEFINITION: An archaeological research design in which the sampling element is a fairly long linear unit.
Sarka style: CATEGORY: ceramics
DEFINITION: Variant of Linear Pottery of western Bohemia, c 3900 BC, parallel to the Zeliezovce in Slovakia and southern Poland. The vessels are painted in black spirals on buff before firing.
Sempukuji: CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: An early Jomon rock shelter site in Nagasaki prefecture on Kyushu, Japan. There is an association of microblades with linear-relief pottery found earlier at Fukui, and an older pottery with discontinuous relief (bean-pattern). Dating puts the sight to the late 11th millennium BC, slightly younger than the Fukui date.
shoe-last adze: SYNONYMS OR RELATED TERMS: shoe-last celt
CATEGORY: lithics
DEFINITION: A long thin stone adze (chisel-shaped ground-stone tool) employed by the Danubian farmers of the Early Neolithic, possibly as a hoe for cultivating their fields. It is a common stone tool found in Early Neolithic Linear Pottery contexts throughout Europe. It might also have been used as an adze for carpentry.
Sittard: CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: Settlement site of the Neolithic Linear Pottery culture in Limburg, the Netherlands. The settlement was surrounded by a palisade and contained a number of timber longhouses. Some of the larger houses were clearly divided into three parts for various purposes.
slab-building: CATEGORY: ceramics
DEFINITION: A primary forming technique for the construction of large or rectilinear pottery vessels from flat pieces of the body that are joined along seams.
Sondershausen: CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: Linear Pottery culture cemetery in eastern Germany with spondylus shell ornaments.
spatial analysis: CATEGORY: technique
DEFINITION: The statistical study of concentrations of human activity in a defined space; the systematic study of spatial patterning in archaeological data. Distribution maps showing artifacts or sites have long been used in archaeology, but spatial analysis adds rigorous mathematical and statistical techniques for examining such maps. Techniques adapted from modern geography include locational analysis for the study of settlement patterns, and the use of distance-decay functions, linear regression analysis, and trend-surface analysis for exploring the distribution of artifacts.
Spondylus gaederopus: SYNONYMS OR RELATED TERMS: spondylus
CATEGORY: fauna
DEFINITION: Mediterranean mussel shell from which ornaments (bracelets, beads, disks) were made, found all across the Balkans, up the Danube Valley, and even on the Saale and the Main. It was traded for this purpose into central Europe in the Early Neolithic. Spondylus shell ornaments occurred in contexts of the First Temperate Neolithic and Linear Pottery culture (Czechoslovakia, Germany, the Netherlands).
Steward, Julian Haynes (1902-1972): CATEGORY: person
DEFINITION: American anthropologist and archaeologist who influenced archaeological theory, emphasizing that the goals of both disciplines were the same: understanding of cultural change and the plotting of that change on spatial and temporal planes. His best-known book was Theory of Culture Change: the Methodology of Multilinear Evolution" (1955) and he also wrote "Handbook of South American Indians" (1946-1950) and "Irrigation Civilizations" (1955). He carried out fieldwork in the Great Basin British Columbia and the Andes planned and helped establish the Virú Valley project. He worked for the use of evolutionary and ecological thought in anthropology and archaeology; he is known as the as the founder of the theory of cultural ecology."
stria: SYNONYMS OR RELATED TERMS: striae (pl.)
CATEGORY: artifact
DEFINITION: A linear mark, ridge, or groove, especially one of a number of similar parallel features
Stroke-Ornamented Ware: SYNONYMS OR RELATED TERMS: Stroke-Ornamented Pottery culture; Stichbandkeramik
CATEGORY: ceramics; culture
DEFINITION: Early / Middle Neolithic culture of west-central Europe, developed directly out of the Linear Pottery culture, c 4000-3800 BC. The pottery has zigzag patterns made by a series of distinct jabs rather than continuous lines. Bohemia, southwest Poland, Bavaria, and central Germany were its locale. The culture had longhouses which were slightly trapezoidal.
syllabary: CATEGORY: language
DEFINITION: A system of written symbols used to represent the syllables of the words of a language. Writing systems that use syllabaries include modern Japanese, Cherokee, the ancient Cretan scripts (Linear A, Linear B), and various Indic and cuneiform writing systems. Some syllabaries have separate symbols for each possible syllable that may occur in the language; others use a system of consonant symbols that include an inherent vowel. Most languages would require about 80 symbols to cover all syllables in use. The unit of a syllabary is sometimes called syllabogram, which may be of these types: vowel, consonant-vowel, vowel-consonant, consonant-vowel-consonant, or consonant-vowel-consonant-vowel.
syllabic: CATEGORY: language
DEFINITION: A term describing scripts in which each of the signs represents a syllable, as in Linear A and B.
syllabogram: CATEGORY: language
DEFINITION: The unit of a syllabary which may be of these types: vowel, consonant-vowel, vowel-consonant, consonant-vowel-consonant, or consonant-vowel-consonant-vowel. In the Cretan scripts of the 2nd millennium BC, Linear A and B, a sign denoting by means of an arbitrary drawing an open syllable.
systems-ecological approach: CATEGORY: technique
DEFINITION: An approach to archaeology that involves three models of cultural change: systems models, cultural ecology, and multilinear evolution.
Szakalhát-Lebo group: CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: Middle Neolithic culture of the Tisza River valley in southeast Hungary, succeeding the Alföld Linear Pottery and preceding the Tisza culture, between c 4100-3800 BC. The occupation includes a level with late Alföld Linear pottery and a level with Szakalhát pottery. The two main pottery decorative styles are wide incised curvilinear and dark burnished. The settlements have small rectangular single-room structures.
Szegar-Tuzkoves: CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: A later Neolithic settlement near Szentes, southeast Hungary. There is an occupation of the Szakalhát (Alföld Linear Pottery) of the late 5th millennium BC and a Tisza culture level dated to the 4th millennium BC. Several complete Tisza culture house plans have been excavated, some with bucrania on the gable ends. Also found was the 'Sickle God', a complete, seated, fired-clay male figurine carrying a sickle.
Taxila: CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: One of the two main cities of the Achaemenid empire (satrapy of Gandhara), located in Pakistan and flourishing in the 5th-2nd centuries BC. It rose again as an Indo-Greek city from the 1st century BC through the 1st century AD. It was surrendered to Alexander the Great in 327 BC and then destroyed c 500 AD probably by White Huns. The extensive remains of Taxila include Bhir mound, which conceals the pre-Hellenistic town of the 6th century BC and later; Sirkap, an Indo-Greek 'new town' with a rectilinear grid of streets laid out in the 2nd century BC; and Sirsukh (Sirsuleh), another new town founded by the Kushans in the 1st century AD.
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.
tholos: SYNONYMS OR RELATED TERMS: pl. tholoi; tholos tomb; beehive tombs
CATEGORY: structure
DEFINITION: A beehive-shaped tomb built of stone and roofed by corbelling, sometimes royal, characteristic of the Mycenaean civilization. In Greek architecture, the term is generally used for the burial chambers of certain passage graves of similar plan and construction. The round chamber had an attached rectilinear entrance passage, the most famous examples being the Treasury of Atreus and Tomb of Clytemnestra at Mycenae. The corbelling is trimmed to form a smooth surface, and the ornamental doorway is approached by a masonry-lined, horizontal passage or dromos. Such a tomb is set partly underground or sometimes built into the side of a hill. In classical archaeology the term can be applied to either temples or tombs.
token: CATEGORY: artifact; language
DEFINITION: Small artifacts, generally of clay, made into one of sixteen types: cones, spheres, disks, cylinders, tetrahedrons, ovoids, rectangles, triangles, biconoids, paraboloids, bent coils, ovals, vessels, tools, animals, or miscellaneous. Such objects were used on early Neolithic sites in western Asia as counters to keep records of goods. A plain token was typical of the periods between 8000-4300 BC and after 3100 BC. The shapes are mostly restricted to cones, spheres, disks, cylinders, and tetrahedrons; the surface is usually plain. Complex tokens were typical of the 4th millennium BC temple administration and includes all 16 types of tokens. Complex tokens are characterized by an extensive use of markings -- linear, punctuated, or appliqué. Researchers (esp. Diane Schmandt-Besserat) suggest that tokens were the precursor of writing as they began to be placed within clay bullae (envelopes) that were marked with a cylinder seal representing the content of the bullae. This led to writing numbers on a tablet, and then to words.
transect: CATEGORY: technique
DEFINITION: An arbitrary sample unit which is a linear corridor of uniform specified width; a linear. A straight line or narrow sections through an archaeological site or feature, along which a series of observations or measurements is made.
transformation: CATEGORY: measure
DEFINITION: Expression of data in different units, typically nonlinear ones like the square root or logarithm of the measurements.
transverse striae: CATEGORY: artifact
DEFINITION: Linear mark, ridge, or groove situated or extending across something
TRB culture: SYNONYMS OR RELATED TERMS: Funnel Beaker culture
CATEGORY: culture
DEFINITION: Abbreviated name for the Danish Tragterbecker or German Trichterrandbecher culture, alternatively known in English as the Funnel Beaker Culture. It is the first Neolithic culture of northern Europe, found in southern Scandinavia, the Low Countries, northern Germany, and northern Poland, in the later 4th and early 3rd millennium BC. It is characterized by the use of a funnel-necked beaker with globular body. It is thought to represent the acculturation of local Mesolithic communities by contact with the Linear Pottery culture groups further south. Five regional groups have been determined: western group in the Netherlands, sometimes associated with hunebedden (megalithic burial monuments); southern group in Germany; southeastern group in Czechoslovakia; eastern group in Poland; and northern group in Denmark and Sweden. Settlement sites are not well known, but burials are abundant, especially Dysser in Scandinavia and in Kujavian Graves in Poland; passage graves were eventually used. Other artifacts include ground stone axes and battle-axes, and copper tools appear in later phases. The TRB culture is succeeded by -- and perhaps developed directly into -- the Single Grave culture.
trend surface analysis: CATEGORY: technique
DEFINITION: A method used to make a generalized map from observed data and used to highlight the main features and important trends of a geographic distribution. Archaeological observations mapped are discontinuous and at isolated points and therefore must be used to give information over a wider area. This is done either by averaging the values at a number of points to produce a general value or by a form of linear regression analysis which finds the contours which best fit the observations plotted on the map. The map produced then shows a general trend of the distribution, along with localized fluctuations. The technique is most useful for displaying archaeological data in a simplified and generalized form, making it easier to examine and explain the broad regional trends and the local variations. It can be applied to several different artifact distributions at the regional level, and has also been used to describe the distribution of artifact types within a site.
Tripolye: CATEGORY: site; culture
DEFINITION: The type site, in the Balkans near Kiev, of a Neolithic-Copper Age culture which formed in the Western Ukraine and east Romania (Cucuteni culture) in the 4th millennium BC. It is best known for its villages of up to 100 timber longhouses, and for fine polychrome vessels painted with curvilinear and geometric designs. They also had copper and gold objects. Tripolye people practiced shifting agriculture, frequently moving their settlements. The Tripolye culture came to an end with the expansion westwards of steppe cultures of kurgan or single-grave type. The Cucuteni-Tripolye culture was a Neolithic European culture that arose in Ukraine between the Seret and Bug rivers, with an extension to the Dnieper River, about 3000 BC.
Valencia: SYNONYMS OR RELATED TERMS: Valencoid subtradition
CATEGORY: ceramics; culture
DEFINITION: Ceramic complex of red-colored jars, one of the best known in Venezuela and found on a number of mound sites in north central part of country. The shapes of huge human figurines with flat, wide heads are very distinctive. Typically the pottery is coarse and sand- or mica-tempered. Decoration may be appliqué work, rectilinear incision, or modeled human faces with coffee-bean eyes. It is c 1000-1500 AD and possibly derived from Arauquim complex or from the La Cabrera phase of the Barrancoid series.
Ventris, Michael (George Francis) (1922-1956): CATEGORY: person
DEFINITION: British scholar, architect, and linguist trained in code-breaking during war service, who in 1952 deciphered the Linear B script of Minoan and Mycenaean Greece. He showed them to be an early form of Greek, dating from about 1500 to 1200 BC, roughly the period of the Homeric epics. In 1953, he published a historic paper with John Chadwick, Evidence for Greek Dialect in the Mycenaean Archives." Their "Documents in Mycenaean Greek" (1956; rev. ed. 1973) was published a few weeks after Ventris' death in an auto accident and Chadwick's "The Decipherment of Linear B" (1958; 2nd ed. 1968) followed."
Vetulonia: SYNONYMS OR RELATED TERMS: Etruscan Vetluna
CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: Principal Etruscan city and, according to traditional sources, one of the confederation of twelve. The original settlement was probably early Iron Age (Villanovan) and it prospered between the 9th-6th centuries BC. There are Villanovan pits, biconical ossuaries (a type of circular tomb with a tumulus), and some monumental tholos-like vaulted examples. The grave goods are often rich, of gold, silver, and particularly bronze. From the Tomba della Pietrera have come the earliest examples of Etruscan stone statuary, which are flat, rectilinear figurines.
Waldalgesheim: SYNONYMS OR RELATED TERMS: (Kreis Kreuznach)
CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: Chariot burial of the La Tène Iron Age in Rhineland, Germany, depicting the 4th century BC decorative style of the same name. Funerary offerings included gold ornaments, bronze flagon, imported Italian bronze bucket, and bronze plaques with repoussé human figures. The native pieces (gold torcs, bracelets) are decorated in the Waldalgesheim curvilinear style of ornament based on tendril patterns. After c 350 BC metalwork decorated in this Waldalgesheim style made its appearance all over Celtic Europe from Britain to Romania and Bulgaria.
whirligig: CATEGORY: artifact
DEFINITION: In early Celtic art a motif comprising three or four conjoined spirals either radiating from, or swirling about, a common centre, of which one element may be eccentric, being larger or more complex than the others. The four-part version may appear as a curvilinear rendering of the swastika motif. As with similar motifs in Celtic art, it may be used in a series or as part of a larger design.
writing: CATEGORY: language
DEFINITION: Any system for symbolizing the symbols of a language. Writing was developed independently several times in different places and both the writing materials and the types of script show great variation. The earliest true writing developed in southern Mesopotamia in the 4th millennium BC Uruk culture. The writing material was clay; it was first inscribed and later impressed with a stylus to produce the wedge-shaped cuneiform signs. The earliest signs were pictograms ('picture writing', in which the signs represent stylized pictures of the objects in question), but these rapidly developed into ideograms (the signs indicated not only the original object, but also associated objects or concepts). The Egyptian hieroglyphic script, used for inscriptions on stone, painting on walls, and also writing on papyrus, appears well before 3000 BC. There is dispute as to whether the Egyptians developed writing independently or whether the art was diffused from Mesopotamia. The Harappan Civilization of the Indus Valley had a writing system of its own, dated to the second half of the 3rd millennium BC and is found almost exclusively on stamp seals and seal impressions. It has not been deciphered. The first true alphabet, with signs for individual letters, seems to have developed in the Levant, probably in the first half of the 2nd millennium BC. The first definite evidence comes from Ugarit in the mid-2nd millennium BC. The Phoenicians spread the alphabet throughout the Mediterranean and theirs is ancestral to most of the alphabets in use today. In China, writing developed independently, first appearing on oracle bones of the Shang dynasty. In Europe the only pre-Classical writing occurs in the Aegean in the 2nd millennium BC -- the hieroglyphic and Linear A scripts of the Minoans, as yet undeciphered, and the Linear B of the Mycenaeans, used to record an early form of Greek. The development of writing in the Americas occurred only in Mesoamerica -- the glyphic writing of the Maya and related groups, found in inscriptions carved on monuments, and the pictographic writing of Post-Classic groups such as the Mixtecs and Aztecs, found on manuscripts of bark or deerskin known as codices.
Yang Shao: SYNONYMS OR RELATED TERMS: Yang-shao, Yangshao
CATEGORY: culture
DEFINITION: The most important Neolithic culture of China, distributed along the middle course of the Yellow River in north-central China and dated to c 5000-2700 BC. Large open settlements of circular or rectangular houses slightly sunk into the ground cluster along the loess river terraces. It is distinguished by millet agriculture, coarse and painted pottery, sedentary villages, and clans. Some marks on the pottery are thought to be the beginnings of writing; pottery was handmade, painted in black and red on a yellowish slip. At first, the designs were zoomorphic, then later became abstract, geometric, or curvilinear. Coarser red and grey wares were also common.
Zakro: CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: Site of a Minoan palace in eastern Crete. Unlike many of the other Minoan palaces, Zakro did not have a Middle Minoan phase, but was constructed in the Late Minoan period after 1700 BC. The palace was relatively small but had the usual plan grouped around a central court. Among the finds were a collection of fine stone vessels and tablets in Linear A. Zakro was destroyed by fire c 1450 BC.
Zeliezovce style: CATEGORY: culture
DEFINITION: Regional variant of the Linear Pottery culture in Slovakia, Moravia and southern Poland. The pottery has angular incised lines and lozenge-shaped incisions and is dated c 4000 BC.

Another Dictionary Search