Archaeology Wordsmith

archaeology editor/writer providing solutions for busy archaeologists

Results for manufacture:

manufacture: CATEGORY: term
DEFINITION: The second stage of behavioral processes, in which raw materials are modified to produce artifacts.
acquisition: CATEGORY: term
DEFINITION: The first stage of the behavioral processes (followed by manufacture, use, deposition), in which raw materials are procured.
Anglo-Saxons: CATEGORY: culture
DEFINITION: The name of the combined cultures, the Angles and the Saxons, who left their North Sea coastal homelands in the 5th century AD and moved to eastern England after the breakdown of Roman Rule. The name derives from two specific groups --- the Angles of Jutland and the Saxons from northern Germany. Some other Germanic peoples took part in the migrations, such as the Jutes and the Frisians, and they are sometimes included under this name. The language, culture, and settlement pattern of medieval and later England can be traced directly to the Anglo-Saxons. The movement to the area probably began in the 4th century when barbarian Foederati went to serve in the Roman army in Britain. The main immigration began in the middle of the 5th century. Bede, writing in the early 8th century, gives the only reliable historical record for this period, though incidental information can be found in the Old English literature, particularly the poem of Beowulf. The English kingdoms took shape by the late 6th century. Archaeologically, there are three periods: the Early or Pagan Saxon period went until the general acceptance of Christianity in the mid-7th century; the Middle Saxon period until the 9th century, and the Late Saxon period which went up till the Norman invasion of 1066. The earliest period's remains are mainly burial deposits, often cremation in urns or by inhumation in cemeteries of trench graves or under barrows. Grave goods often include knives, sword or spear, shield boss, and brooches, buckles, beads, girdle-hangers, and pottery -- depending on the gender. Most archaeological evidence comes from the cemeteries, including the exceptional ship burial at Sutton Hoo. Churches were built and in the Middle and Late Saxon periods, including Bradford-Upon-Avon and Deerhurst. Important monuments of the Middle and Late Saxon periods are the royal palaces at Yeavering and Cheddar. The Late Saxon period, after the Viking invasions, saw the growth of the first towns in Britain since the Roman period, following the establishment of Burhs in response to the Scandinavian threat. There was wide-ranging trade, developed coinage, and improved pottery manufacture and metal-working. The separate British kingdoms (most important: Mercia, Northumbria and Wessex) eventually became a unified England with a capital at Winchester in Wessex. The Anglo-Saxons were responsible for the introduction of the English language and for the establishment of the settlement patterns of medieval England.
archaeological site: SYNONYM: site; archeological site
CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: Any concentration of artifacts, ecofacts, features, and structures manufactured or modified by humans.
Ardagh Chalice: CATEGORY: artifact
DEFINITION: A large, two-handled silver cup decorated with gold, gilt bronze, and enamel, that is one of the finest examples of early Christian art from the British Isles. Discovered in 1868 along with a small bronze cup and four brooches in a potato field in Ardagh, Ireland, the chalice may have been part of the buried loot form a monastery after an Irish or Viking raid. The outside of the bowl is engraved with the Latin names of some of the Apostles. There are similarities between the letters of the inscription and some of the large initials in the Lindisfarne Gospels, which probably dates from about 710-720 AD. Thus, the Ardagh Chalice is thought to date from the first half of the 8th century. The chalice displays exceptional artistic and technical skills applied to a variety of precious materials. So far, its manufacture has not been attributed to a particular workshop but the chalice does have similarities to the celebrated Tara brooch and the Moylough belt-reliquary. It is now housed in the National Museum of Ireland at Dublin.
Asiab, Tepe: CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: A semi-permanent settlement in the Zagros region of western Iran, dated between 7100-6750 BC, belonging to the Karim Shahir culture. There is evidence of tool manufacture, settlement patterns, and subsistence methods, including the crude beginnings of the domestication of both plants and animals in this site as well as nearby sites at Guran, Ganj-e Dareh, and Ali Kosh. Burials have been excavated, covered in red ochre.
Attic black-figure ware: CATEGORY: artifact
DEFINITION: Type of pottery manufactured in the Attica region of southern Greece from about 720 BC. Vase-painters in Athens and Corinth developed a characteristic style of decoration in which one or more friezes of human and animal figures are presented in silhouette in black against a red ground. The delineation of the figures is sometimes heightened by the use of incised lines and the addition of white or purple coloring agents. Around 530 BC the style was replaced by its inverse:
behavioral processes: CATEGORY: term
DEFINITION: Human activities, including acquisition, manufacture, use, and deposition behavior, that produce tangible archaeological remains.
Beringian tradition: SYNONYM: American Paleo-Arctic
CATEGORY: culture
DEFINITION: A culture in existence approximately 12,000 years ago between Siberia and temperate Alaska. The term was used by H. West to cover various Alaskan and Siberian archaeological formations which had developed from the Siberian Upper Paleolithic period, an area now largely submerged under the Bering Strait. Chronologically these formations lie between the middle of the Holocene period (c 35,000-9/10,000 BP), depending on the area. West's categorization includes the Bel'kachi, Diuktai, and Lake Ushki cultures in Siberia, the Denalian culture and American Paleo-Arctic formations in Alaska and the Yukon. Although Alaska is generally thought to be the gateway through which humans entered the New World, the earliest undisputed evidence for people there dates later than 12,000 years ago, well after the climax of the last major glacial advance but while glaciers still covered much of Arctic Canada. Artifacts of 11,500 to 9,000 years ago are known from a number of Alaskan sites, where hunters of caribou (and, in one case, of an extinct form of bison) manufactured blades.
bifacial flaking: CATEGORY: artifact
DEFINITION: The manufacture of a stone artifact by removing flakes from both faces.
black-burnished ware: SYNONYM: black burnished ware
CATEGORY: artifact
DEFINITION: A standard range of culinary vessel-forms manufactured in two different fabrics and widely imitated. BB1 (black-burnished ware Category 1), was black, gritty, hand-made, mainly in Dorset, and widely distributed from c. AD 120 to the late 4th century AD. BB2 (black-burnished ware Category 2) was greyer and finer, with a silvery finish, wheel-thrown in the Thames Estuary area, and widely exported from c. AD 140 to the mid 3rd century AD.
blade: SYNONYM: 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."
briquetage: CATEGORY: artifact
DEFINITION: Thick-walled very coarse ceramic material used for the manufacture of evaporation vessels in saltmaking from the mid 2nd millennium BC through to medieval times in northern Europe. The forms and fabrics of briquetage vessels are fairly distinctive and allow trade patterns and distribution networks to be established, especially for Iron Age times. Also known as very coarse pottery (VCP)
casting flash: SYNONYM: casting jet, casting seam
CATEGORY: artifact
DEFINITION: A thin irregular ridge of metal on the outer face of a casting, resulting from seepage of the molten metal into the joint between the separate components of the mould used in its manufacture. A casting jet is similar but is a small plug of metal that originally filled the gate or aperture used to fill the mould. During the final cleaning and finishing of a cast object the jet and flash are usually knocked off and filed smooth.
ceramic analysis: CATEGORY: technique
DEFINITION: Any of various techniques used to study artifacts made from fired clay to obtain archaeological data. Color is objectively described by reference to the Munsell soil color charts. Examination under the microscope may reveal the technique of manufacture and allow the identification of mineral grains in the tempering, which will identify the area of manufacture. Refiring experiments often show how the original baking was done.
ceramic petrology: CATEGORY: technique
DEFINITION: The study of the composition, texture, and structure of the minerals in the clay from which pottery is manufactured. The purpose of ceramic petrology is to locate the source of the clay from which the pot was made. Ceramic petrology involves either heavy mineral analysis or petrologic microscopy, both of which require samples to be removed from the pot. Neutron activation analysis is also used. Results from these studies have far-reaching consequences for the study of early economic systems. Not only has it been shown that pottery and its contents were transported over long distances in antiquity, but also that the specialized manufacture and marketing of pottery started as far back as the first agriculture in Europe.
ceramics: SYNONYM: pottery
CATEGORY: artifact; ceramics
DEFINITION: The art or process of making useful and ornamental articles from clay by shaping and then hardening them by firing at high temperatures. Ceramics are generally known as pottery, but the term also refers to the manufacture of any product from a nonmetallic mineral by firing at high temperatures. The exceptional porcelain and stonewares of China are very well known, from as early as the Yang-Shao Neolithic culture, c 4500 BC.
Chaine opératoire: CATEGORY: lithics
DEFINITION: A perspective for studying lithic technology that emphasizes the sequence of decisions and behaviors from raw material selection and acquisition, through manufacture, use, recycling, and discard.
Cheddar ware: CATEGORY: artifact
DEFINITION: A regional type of late Saxon pottery (Saxo-Norman pottery) dating to the period AD 850 to AD 1150 manufactured in central Somerset, England.
chert: SYNONYM: hornstone, phthanite
CATEGORY: geology
DEFINITION: A coarse type of siliceous (silica) rock, a form of quartz, used for the manufacture of stone tools where flint was not available. It is of poorer quality than flint, formed from ancient ocean sediments and often has a semi-glassy finish. It is pinkish, white, brown, gray, or blue-gray in color. Flint, chert, and other siliceous rocks like obsidian are very hard, and produce a razor-sharp edge when properly flaked into tools. This crystalline form of the mineral silica is found as nodules in limestones. Varieties of chert are jasper, chalcedony, agate, flint, and novaculite. Chert and flint provided the main source of tools and weapons for Stone Age man.
Chester-type ware: CATEGORY: artifact
DEFINITION: A regional type of late Saxon pottery (Saxo-Norman pottery) dating to the period AD 850 to AD 1150 manufactured in northwest England.
Chifumbaze: CATEGORY: site; culture
DEFINITION: An Early Iron Age complex found over a wide area of eastern/southeastern Africa, dating from 2500 years ago till the 11th century AD. The sites have evidence of metallurgy and manufacture of pottery. The complex is divided into the Urewe or Eastern Stream tradition and Kalundu or Western Stream tradition.
chipping floor: CATEGORY: feature
DEFINITION: A workshop area characterized by of debris from the manufacture of chipped stone tools. In the process of flaking stone tools, large quantities of waste chips are produced. Stone Age chipping floors are often found with finished tools and indications of other activities.
chipping-floor: CATEGORY: artifact
DEFINITION: A workshop area used for the manufacture or maintenance of flint or stone tools, recognized archaeologically by a spread of working waste, broken or part-made implements, and discarded raw material.
Cologne: SYNONYM: (Roman) Colonia Agrippinensis, Colonia Claudia Ara Agrippinensium, Colonia
CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: A site on the left bank of the Rhine, West Germany, that was colonized by the Roman general Agrippa in 53 BC. A fortified settlement was established c 38 BC and it became a Roman colony in 50 AD. It was named Colonia Claudia Ara Agrippinensium, shortened to Colonia. It became the capital of the province of Lower Germania, which was an important commercial center. After 258 AD it was, for a time, the capital of an empire comprising Gaul, Britain, and Spain. In 310, Constantine the Great built a castle and a permanent bridge to it across the Rhine. About 456 it was conquered by the Franks, and it soon became the residence of the kings of the Ripuarian part of the Frankish kingdom. Ceramics and glass were manufactured in Cologne in Roman times. Traces of the Roman period survive including the principal elements of the street plan, town walls and gates, Roman and Gallo-Roman temples, water installations, Rhine port, bridges and fort, pottery and glass factories, and villas and cemeteries. In the 5th century, the Roman town was overrun by the Franks. During the Frankish and Carolingian periods and much of the Middle Ages, Cologne was a major bishopric and a leading commercial and cultural center. Spectacular Frankish royal graves dating to the mid-6th century have been uncovered.
combing: CATEGORY: ceramics
DEFINITION: A finishing technique in ceramics manufacture whereby a tool with multiple teeth or prongs is dragged along the surface of the fabric to leave multiple, nearly parallel incisions, either straight or wavy.
conchoidal flake: CATEGORY: artifact
DEFINITION: A type of spall resulting from the fracture of fine-grained, or glassy rocks. Characterized by a bulb of percussion, striking platform remnant, and extremely sharp edges. A predictable fracture pattern that allows the manufacture of Pre-determined tools from these materials.
conjoining: SYNONYM: refitting; rejoining
CATEGORY: technique
DEFINITION: The refitting or rejoining of artifact or ecofact fragments, especially those of struck stone flakes to recreate the original core. Such studies allow definition of cumulative features, such as the lithic artifact and debitage scatters. The technique allow may allow reconstruction of ancient manufacture and use behavior.
context: SYNONYM: archaeological context
CATEGORY: term; technique
DEFINITION: The time and space setting of an artifact, feature, or culture. The context of a find is its position on a site, its relationship through association with other artifacts, and its chronological position as revealed through stratigraphy. Certain features or artifacts may be normally associated with particular contexts, for example a pottery type may be found in the context of certain burials. If such an artifact is found out of context, it may suggest the previous presence of a burial, the robbery of a burial, or a place of manufacture of the pots that accompanied burials. An artifact's context usually consists of its immediate matrix (the material surrounding it e.g. gravel, clay, or sand), its provenience (horizontal and vertical position within the matrix), and its association with other artifacts (occurrence together with other archeological remains, usually in the same matrix). The assessment of context includes study of what has happened to the find since it was buried in the ground.
Creswell Crags: CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: The type site of the Creswellian culture, a gorge about 1500 feet long near Creswell, England, which has caves that have yielded one of the most important British series of extinct vertebrate remains, accompanied by implements of Paleolithic hunters. The Creswellian culture is regarded as a variant of the Magdalenian culture of southwestern France and occurred during the final stages of the Würm glaciation. Finds include flint tools of Mousterian, 'proto-Solutrean', Creswellian, and Mesolithic types, as well as harpoons and a bone fragment with an engraved horse's head in Late Magdalenian style. Mammal remains include reindeer, woolly rhinoceros, mammoth, and wild horse. The Creswellian culture never used the stone ax but their tools were Gravettian-type of blunted-back blades showing development in manufacture over a long period. Creswell Crags was first excavated in 1875.
cross-dating: SYNONYM: cross dating
CATEGORY: technique
DEFINITION: A correlation dating technique that can yield a relative or absolute age or chronology. The basis of cross-dating is the occurrence of finds in association. The assumption is that a particular type of artifact, for example a type of sword, when found in an undated context will bear a similar date to one found in a dated context, thus enabling the whole of the undated context to be given a chronological value. The method is based on the assumption that typologies evolved at the same rate and in the same way over a wide area or alternatively on assumptions of diffusion. Many of the chronologies constructed before the advent of chronometric dating techniques were based on cross-dating. New techniques such as radiocarbon dating showed some of the links established by cross-dating to be invalid, so the method has become somewhat discredited. However, its use is still helpful where recognizable products of dateable manufacture are found in undated contexts with no possibility of using a chronometric dating technique. So in the absence of geochronology, two cultural groups can only be proved contemporary by the discovery of links between them. If in culture A an object produced by culture B is found, A must be contemporary with, or later than, B. The term cross-dating ought strictly to be used only when an object of culture A is also found in proved association with culture B, when overlap of at least part of the time span of each is proved. Items having an established date, such as dated coins or buildings, or ceramics of known manufacture are most often used. By itself, a cross-dated chronology does not give absolute dates, but it may be calibrated by reference to other dating methods. A type of cross-dating has always been used in geology and stratigraphical sequences are often correlated by the assemblages of fossils they contain; this is known as biostratigraphy. The archaeological versions of cross-dating may have been developed directly out of the geological method and may have been based on a false analogy between biological fossils and archaeological artifacts.
Cuicuilco: CATEGORY: site; culture
DEFINITION: A Late Pre-Classic ceremonial site, at the southern end of ancient Lake Texcoco near Mexico City, that has the first stone monument (pyramid) on the Mexican plateau. Cuicuilco was one of the largest and most important centers of the period -- possibly an early rival of Teotihuacan. Early large-scale construction in the form of adobe and stone-faced platforms took place around 600-200 BC. The pyramid is a truncated cone, with a clay-and-rubble core; the rest is made of sun-dried brick with a stone facing. Rising up in four tiers, the Cuicuilco pyramid is faced with broken lava blocks and the summit was reached by ramps on two sides. The site was covered by volcano lava around 300-400 AD, forcing total abandonment. Lava from the volcano covers all of Cuicuilco, including the lower part of the round pyramid. The Cuicuilco-Ticomán culture succeeded the Middle Formative villages of the valley but retained many of their traits, such as the manufacture of solid handmade figurines.
curation: SYNONYM: curated technology
CATEGORY: term
DEFINITION: Deliberate attempts by prehistoric peoples to preserve key artifacts and structures for posterity. These artifacts that are reused and transported so often that they are rarely deposited in contexts that their original locations of manufacture and use are no longer known.
damascening: SYNONYM: damaskeening
CATEGORY: artifact
DEFINITION: The art of incrusting one metal on another, in the form of wire, which by undercutting and hammering is completely attached to the metal it ornaments. The process of etching slight ornaments on polished steel wares is also called damascening. Although related to pattern-welding, this technique used in the manufacture of sword blades probably developed independently. First a high-carbon steel is produced by firing wrought iron and wood together in a sealed crucible; the resulting steel, or wootz, consists of light cementations in a darker matrix, and this, together with a series of complicated forging techniques at relatively low temperatures produced the delicate 'watered silk' pattern with the alternating high- and low-carbon areas. Damascene steel was very strong and highly elastic.
debitage: CATEGORY: lithics
DEFINITION: The waste by-products -- chips or debris -- resulting from the manufacture of stone tools, found in large quantities in a tool-making area. Study of debitage can reveal a good deal about techniques used by knappers. Certain waste flakes have a characteristic appearance and indicate the tools that were made or prepared at a site even when the tools themselves are absent.
debitage analysis: CATEGORY: technique
DEFINITION: The study of waste products resulting from tool manufacture to reconstruct stone technology.
direct percussion: SYNONYM: free-hand percussion
CATEGORY: lithics
DEFINITION: A technique used in the manufacture of chipped-stone artifacts in which flakes are produced by striking a core with another stone, a hammerstone, or by striking the core against a fixed stone or anvil in order to dislodge a flake. The method is less precise in its results than indirect percussion.
Dong-son: SYNONYM: Dong Son
CATEGORY: culture; site
DEFINITION: A classic Bronze Age site in north Vietnam and its culture, dating c 500 BC to 100 AD. It was preceded by the Go Bong (c 2000-1500 BC), Dong-Dau (c 1500-100 BC), and Go Mun (c 1000-500 BC) phases of the Vietnamese Bronze Age. The Dong-son culture thus overlaps the Chinese conquest of northern Vietnam in 111 BC. Characteristic are large incised cast-bronze drums, bronze situlae (buckets), bells, tools, and weapons from elaborate boat burials and assemblages in lacquered wood coffins. Dong-son drums of presumed Vietnamese manufacture were traded through wide areas of Southeast Asia and southern China to as far as New Guinea, and the Dong-son bronze-working tradition was by far the richest and most advanced ever to develop in Southeast Asia. Iron was used for tools. There is evidence for developing urbanism in defensive earthworks and wet rice cultivation. Major sites include Chao Can, Viet Khe, Lang Ca, and Co Loa.
early-stage biface: CATEGORY: lithics
DEFINITION: A biface in the initial step of manufacture, usually with sinuous edges and simple surface topography.
ethnoarchaeology: SYNONYM: ethnoarchaeological studies
CATEGORY: branch
DEFINITION: The study of contemporary cultures with a view to understanding the behavioral relationships which underlie the production of material culture. It is the use of archaeological techniques and data to study these living cultures and the use of ethnographic data to inform the examination of the archaeological record. It is a relatively new branch of the discipline, followed particularly in America. It seeks to compare the patterns recognized in the material culture from archaeological contexts with patterns yielded through the study of living societies. The ethnoarchaeologist is particularly concerned with the manufacture, distribution, and use of artifacts, the remains of various processes that might be expected to survive, and the interpretation of archaeological material in the light of the ethnographic information. Less materially oriented questions such as technological development, subsistence strategies, and social evolution are also compared in archaeology and ethnology under the general heading of ethnographic analogy. Lewis Binford's study of the Nunamiut Eskimo is one of the best known studies in ethnoarchaeology.
fabricator: CATEGORY: artifact
DEFINITION: A flint implement or piece of stone or bone used in the manufacture of other flint tools. Often rod-shaped and worn heavily on one end, it is used to chip flakes from a stone core.
flagon: CATEGORY: artifact
DEFINITION: A vessel with a narrow neck, globular body, one or more handles and often a footring, used for holding liquids. Its production was usually confined to specialist manufacturers.
flake: SYNONYM: flake tool
CATEGORY: lithics
DEFINITION: A thin broad piece of stone detached from a larger mass for use as a tool; a piece of stone removed from a larger piece (core or nucleus) during knapping (percussion or pressure) and used in prehistoric times as a cutting instrument. Flakes often served as blanks" from which more complex artifacts -- burins scrapers gravers arrowheads etc. -- could be made. Waste flakes (débitage) are those discarded during the manufacture of a tool. Flakes may be retouched to make a flake tool or used unmodified. The process leaves characteristic marks on both the core and flake. This makes it comparatively easy to distinguish human workmanship from natural accident."
flaking tool: SYNONYM: flaker
CATEGORY: artifact
DEFINITION: A tool, such as an antler billet, or antler drift, which was used in removing flakes during the manufacture of a flaked stone projectile, tool, blade or artifact.
flint: SYNONYM: chert, firestone
CATEGORY: geology
DEFINITION: A type of hard stone, often gray in color, found in rounded nodules and usually covered with a white incrustation. A member of the chalcedony group of water-bearing silica minerals, it was found from early use to fracture conchoidally and was ideal for making stone tools with sharp edges. It is chemically a quartz, but has a different microcrystalline structure. It can therefore be flaked readily in any direction and so shaped to many useful forms. It occurs widely, and where available was the basic material for man's tools until the advent of metal; it is commonest 'stone' of the Stone Age. The only types of stone preferred to it were obsidian and the tougher rocks used for ground tools in the Neolithic. The term is often used interchangeably with chert and also as a generic term denoting stone tools in the Old World. Nodules of flint occur commonly as seams in the upper and middle chalk of northwest Europe. During the Neolithic and Copper Age of Europe, flint workers recognized that flint from beds below ground were of superior quality to surface flint, especially for the manufacture of large tools such as axes. These beds were exploited by sinking shafts and then excavating galleries outwards. Flint mines are known from many areas of Europe and good examples occur in Poland (Krzemionki), Holland, Belgium (Spiennes) and England (Grimes Graves).
fossil ivory: CATEGORY: fauna; artifact
DEFINITION: Ivory furnished by the tusks of the mammoth preserved in great quantity in Siberian ice. It is the material of which nearly all ivory-turner's work in Russia is made. The ivory has not undergone any petrifying change like other fossils and it can be used for artifact manufacture as easily as tusks from living animals.
frit: CATEGORY: ceramics
DEFINITION: The vitreous compound from which soft porcelain is made; the fusible ceramic mixture used to make glazes and enamels for dinnerware and metallic surfaces. In the manufacture of glaze, the oxides are normally suspended in water for application but some compounds (e.g. potassium and sodium) are very water soluble and if applied directly would be absorbed into the pot. Therefore, the raw materials are fused together under heat to form an insoluble glass known as frit. The frit is powdered, suspended in water and applied to the pot.
fumed: CATEGORY: artifact
DEFINITION: A term which has been somewhat misleadingly used to describe the dark surface of vessels, in particular black-burnished ware, which has been exposed to a reducing atmosphere during the later stages of manufacture.
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
graver: SYNONYM: burin
CATEGORY: lithics
DEFINITION: A stone tool manufactured from a flake by chipping (pressure-flaking) it on two edges at one end so as to leave a sharp point. Gravers were to cut or score soft materials such as bone, shell, wood, and antler; perhaps for punching leather and other purposes. The term also refers to a type of metalworking tool which comprises a number of subtypes, though all are hand-held, hard, and sharp and are used to cut or engrave metal. Such a graver has a metal shaft that is cut or ground diagonally downward to form a diamond-shaped point at the tip. The angle of the point affects the width and depth of the engraved lines; the point is guided by thumb and forefinger.
grog: CATEGORY: artifact
DEFINITION: Fragments of old or wasted pottery or firebricks which are ground up and added to clay as filler material to help reduce plasticity. Grog is used in the manufacture of refractory products (as crucibles) to reduce shrinkage in drying and firing.
Guinea Neolithic: CATEGORY: culture
DEFINITION: A series of industries in the coastal regions of West Africa during the last 10,000 years. Backed microliths akin to those manufactured in earlier times are associated with pottery and with ground stone ax- and hoe-like implements. One of the few well-described and dated occurrences is at Bosumpra near Abetifi in Ghana, where the occupation is dated between the 4th-2nd millennia BC. Because most of these peoples were nonliterate, there are few records up to c 1000 AD, when Arab historians began describing the western African region. By that time, it already had centralized states, agriculture, and long-distance trading routes.
Gundestrup: CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: The find spot of a great silver cauldron of late pre-Roman Iron Age in a bog in northern Jutland, Denmark, that was clearly a votive offering. On the 12 plaques which decorate both the inside and outside of the bowl are scenes from Celtic mythology. The cauldron was probably manufactured in Romania or Bulgaria or possibly Thrace during the 1st or 2nd century BC.
gypsum: CATEGORY: geology
DEFINITION: A soft white stone, hydrated calcium sulfate mineral, which was a primary or secondary mineral of limestone, shale, marl, and clay. Combined with sand, water, and organic materials, it was used to make plasterlike materials used in cements, coatings, casts, molds, and sculptures. The dense, fine-grained variety is alabaster and was used in architecture. The fibrous massive variety is used for ornaments and jewelry. Nowadays, gypsum is used in the manufacture of plaster of Paris.
hand maul: CATEGORY: artifact
DEFINITION: A carefully manufactured unhafted stone hammer.
heavy mineral analysis: CATEGORY: technique
DEFINITION: A method of analysis carried out on artifacts such as potsherds to identify the materials used; the shard is crushed and put into a viscous fluid in which the heavier minerals sink to the bottom. It is used to determine the geological source of the sand inclusions in the clay of the pot, and therefore the probable area of manufacture. The method involves the crushing of 10-30 g. of pottery and the floating of the resulting powder on a heavy liquid such as bromoform with a specific gravity of 2.85. Heavy minerals like zircon, garnet, epidote, and tourmaline sink, while quartz sand and clay float: it is the heavy minerals (separated, identified, and counted under a low-power microscope) which characterize the parent formation, and which enable the source of the sand to be identified.
Hokuriku: CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: An industrial region of Japan on northern Honshu Island, consisting of Niigata, Toyama, Ishikawa, and Fukui prefectures. Hokuriku's traditional industries included the manufacture of silk, timber products, lacquer ware, and agricultural tools.
horizontal loom: CATEGORY: artifact
DEFINITION: A structure on which woven cloth is manufactured, comprising a frame set horizontally across vertical supports. The warp threads were tied across the frame from front to back so that they could be wound out as weaving proceeded. The warp was usually arranged so that alternate threads could be raised and lowered, thus allowing the weaver to pass a shuttle containing the weft thread from side to side across the warp. The horizontal loom was developed later than the UPRIGHT LOOM and provided the basis for the development of mechanical looms during later medieval and post-medieval times.
Humbolt Series point: CATEGORY: artifact
DEFINITION: Bifacially worked chipped stone points of lanceolate outline manufactured by Archaic Stage communities on the Great Plains and western interior of North America in the period c.3000 BC to AD 700. There are numerous variations in style and in size, but most have a hollow base and none have side notches.
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.
indirect percussion: CATEGORY: lithics
DEFINITION: A technique of stone-tool manufacture in which flakes are removed from a flint core in a way which causes less wasteful shatter of the material than direct percussion. The hammer or hammerstone does not strike the flint but rather a wood, antler, or bone punch, usually with a prepared edge, so that the manufacture of flakes is more controlled.
intensification: CATEGORY: term
DEFINITION: Increase of production, usually applied to food but can describe extraction or manufacture.
iron: CATEGORY: geology
DEFINITION: A ductile, malleable, magnetic metallic element, used to make artifacts of both practical and decorative function. Its oxide form, hematite, is found naturally and the technique of ironworking was mastered around 1500 BC by the Hittites. Iron began to spread and replace bronze for man's basic tools and weapons -- the start of the Iron Age. Early in the 1st millennium BC, iron industries were established in Greece and Italy, and by 500 BC, iron had replaced bronze for the manufacture of tools and weapons throughout Europe. The pre-Columbian New World, however, did not develop iron technology. Iron smelting is more complicated than for copper or tin, since the first smelt gives only slaggy lumps, the bloom. Hammering at red heat is then required to expel stone fragments and combine carbon with the iron to make in effect a steel; the resulting metal is far superior to copper or tin. The two basic methods of working it are by forging -- hammering into shape at red heat -- and casting. The Chinese used the latter method as early as the 5th century BC, but it was not employed in Europe until the Middle Ages. The first evidence of iron smelting in Egypt dates to the 6th century BC. Large-scale steel manufacture depends on the production of cast iron, which in Europe dates only from the 14th century AD. The West did not enter the 'Age of Steel' until the 19th century with the invention of the Bessemer and Siemens processes, which are industrial processes for obtaining liquid metal of any desired carbon content by the decarburization of cast iron. Steel was made in China within a few centuries of the first known use of smelted iron. In principle, modern techniques descended from China's casting techniques.
jasper: CATEGORY: geology
DEFINITION: A high-quality chert or agate often used as raw material for the manufacture of stone tools. It is an opaque, fine-grained or dense variety of the silica mineral that is mainly brick red to brownish red. Jasper has long been used for jewelry and ornamentation, has a dull luster but takes a fine polish. Its hardness and other physical properties are those of quartz.
joining: CATEGORY: ceramics
DEFINITION: In large ceramics manufacture, several primary components may be joined with the seam removed or hidden.
kabal: CATEGORY: artifact
DEFINITION: A simple turntable used in pottery manufacture in the New World.
kaolin: SYNONYM: china clay
CATEGORY: ceramics
DEFINITION: A fine white porcelain clay formed by the weathering of volcanic rocks. Kaolin is named after the hill in China (Kao-ling) that yielded the first clay of this type sent to Europe. This soft white clay is an essential ingredient in the manufacture of china and porcelain and is widely used in the making of paper, rubber, paint, and many other products.
Kilwa: CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: A major trading city of the East African coast, on an island off Tanzania. For three centuries before the arrival of the Portuguese in 1500 it was the leading entrepot on the East African coast. It was first occupied in the 9th century AD, with the earliest settlement being a village of thatched, timber-framed houses. The only industries were iron-working and the manufacture of shell beads. Small quantities of pottery from western Asia and, towards the end of the period, chlorite-schist from Madagascar indicate commercial activity on a modest scale. Prosperity began c 1200, marked by the introduction of coins, widespread use of masonry, and the construction of the mosque. In the 14th century the sultan built a spectacular palace, known as Husuni Kubwa, just outside the town. The establishment of a wealthy Islamic community is identified with the arrival of the so-called Shirazi dynasty which, according to tradition, came from the Persian Gulf. In the 14th and 15th centuries, Kilwa controlled the coast far to the south and grew even more wealthy through its control of the trade in Zimbabwean gold. The arrival of the Portuguese in the Indian Ocean at the end of the 15th century heralded Kilwa's decline.
knapper: CATEGORY: artifact
DEFINITION: One who manufactures stone artifacts
knapping: CATEGORY: lithics
DEFINITION: The working of stone by applying force to its surface -- by percussion or pressure -- to produce a tool. A knapper is one who manufactures stone artifacts, especially by chipping. This technique of striking flakes or blades from a hard, brittle rock, such as flint or obsidian, id done by means of short, sharp blows delivered with a hammer of stone, bone, or wood. Knapping was used to fashion stone tools and weapons, such as blades and arrowheads, in the Harappan culture of the Indus Valley and was also applied to making beads from agate and carnelian.
Knapton ware: CATEGORY: artifact
DEFINITION: Type of crude hand-made pottery dating to the 4th century AD. Manufactured and circulated in the Humberside area of northeastern England.
lacquer: SYNONYM: lacquer ware
CATEGORY: artifact; ceramics
DEFINITION: The resin of the sumac tree, used as a coating to harden and strengthen manufactured items. This varnishing substance was used from prehistoric times and was indigenous to southern and central China. Applied in many coats to a core made of wood, fabric, paper, baskets, leather, ceramics, etc., it forms a tough and durable protective surface, resistant to water and capable of a high polish. In China lacquered vessels were made as early as the Shang dynasty. Lacquer is often colored red or black.
lacquer ware: CATEGORY: artifact
DEFINITION: Ornate wooden domestic and funerary vessels common in China from the Shang Dynasty (14th century BC) onwards, manufactured by repeatedly coating a wooden or fabric pre-form with lacquer in order to build up a rich shiny surface.
late-stage biface: CATEGORY: lithics
DEFINITION: A biface in the final step of manufacture, usually with relatively straight edges and complex surface topography.
leather-hard: CATEGORY: ceramics
DEFINITION: A stage in the manufacture of ceramic artifacts between forming and firing when the clay is sufficiently dry to lose plasticity but still can be polished to compact its surface.
Levanna projectile point: CATEGORY: artifact
DEFINITION: Levanna projectile points are usually associated with Late Woodland and Contact Period occupations in southern New England (ca. 700-300 Years B.P.). Common material types associated with this point include quartz, quartzite, hornfels, and basalt. Non-local cherts were also used in the manufacture of this point type. The Levanna point type is characterized by the equilateral triangular form and concave base.
lithic experimentation: CATEGORY: lithics
DEFINITION: Experimenting with the manufacture of stone tools, a useful analytical approach to the interpretation of prehistoric artifacts.
Lower Palaeolithic: SYNONYM: Lower Paleolithic
CATEGORY: chronology
DEFINITION: The earliest part of the Palaeolithic period, beginning about 2.5 million years ago and lasting to about 100,000 years ago. It was characterized by the first use of crude stone tools, the practice of hunting and gathering; and the development of social units, settlements, and structures. It was the era of the earliest forms of humans. The phases of the Palaeolithic have been subdivided based on artifact typology; the Lower Palaeolithic is the period of early hominid pebble tool and core tool manufacture. In China, the Early Palaeolithic ran from 1,000,000-73,000 BC.
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.
matchlock: CATEGORY: artifact
DEFINITION: A device for igniting gunpowder in firearms, developed in the 15th century, a major advance in the manufacture of small arms. The matchlock was the first mechanical firing device. It consisted of a type of musket which used an attached burning taper to light the gunpowder. A match would fire the priming powder in the pan attached to the side of the barrel. The flash in the pan penetrated a small port in the breech of the gun and ignited the main charge.
mean ceramic date: SYNONYM: mean ceramic dating; mean ceramic dating formula
CATEGORY: technique
DEFINITION: A statistical technique devised by Stanley South for pooling the median age of manufacture for temporally significant pottery types at American Colonial sites. It is especially applicable to 18th-century sites, where many distinctive ceramic types may be expected to occur in large numbers. The mean ceramic date is found by multiplying the sum of the median dates for the manufacture of each ceramic type of the frequency of each ceramic type and dividing this figure by the total frequency of all ceramic types. The median date for each type is arrived at from documentary evidence. One shortcomings is that the supposition that the median date coincides with the period of maximum use; another is the use of a count of sherds rather than whole vessels.
mean ceramic dating formula: CATEGORY: artifact
DEFINITION: A statistical technique devised for pooling the median age of manufacture for temporally significant pottery types
median ridge: CATEGORY: artifact
DEFINITION: A ridge that usually runs from the tip of a blade to the hafting area which was formed by collateral flaking techniques in the manufacture of the artifact. The median ridge can be the thickest part of the blade
merchant's hoard: CATEGORY: artifact
DEFINITION: A collection of Bronze Age metalwork deposited together, possibly either for ceremonial reasons or to hide it in times of danger, comprising mainly new or recently manufactured objects ready to be traded.
metallurgical analysis: CATEGORY: technique
DEFINITION: The study of metals. Metal artifacts and the tools or waste products of their manufacture are examined to reconstruct manufacturing processes, the source of raw materials, and the usage. This may be done by the various techniques of chemical analysis, or may involve metallographic examination under a microscope. In the case of copper, bronze, and other non-ferrous metals, such analysis may yield information about alloys, casting, cold-working, and annealing. For iron and steel, there may be information about forging, carburization, quenching, and tempering.
microblade core: CATEGORY: artifact
DEFINITION: The nucleus from which micro-blades were manufactured. Usually a small barrel or conical shaped stone artifact with a flat top and one or more fluted surfaces left as scars from the removal of the microblades.
microburin: SYNONYM: microburin technique
CATEGORY: lithics
DEFINITION: A microlith produced by notching and snapping a blade; a small piece of stone snapped off of a microlith that is a byproduct of the manufacture of microliths. A blade is notched and then snapped off where the chipping has narrowed and weakened it. One piece becomes a microlithic tool, while the residue (the microburin) still shows traces of the original notch and fracture. Certain trapeze-shaped microliths were made from the central part of a double-notched blade, in which case both ends have the appearance of microburins. This procedure allowed the maker to obtain a strong head with a sharp point by breaking up flint blades after making a notch in them -- a practice widespread in Mesolithic as means of manufacturing arrowheads. The name originates from the erroneous belief that these pieces were the same as burins.
Mondsee culture: CATEGORY: culture
DEFINITION: A Copper Age / Eneolithic culture of Upper Austria's Alpine foothills, noted for its villages of pile-dwellings and for its decorated pottery with white-inlaid circles and stellar designs. The Mondsee people were the first to smelt the local copper ores and manufacture copper artifacts on a large scale in the region.
Mousterian: SYNONYM: 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.
Nubian A Group: SYNONYM: Nubian A-Group culture
CATEGORY: culture
DEFINITION: The name conventionally given to the earliest fully food-producing society known in the archaeological record of Nubia, late in the 4th millennium BC. The 'A Group' people probably had an indigenous Nubian ancestry, but were evidently in regular trade contact. The A Group is known mainly from graves, as from the excavated cemetery at Qustul, and adopted symbols of kingship similar to those of contemporary kings of Egypt of the Naqadah II-III period. It was one of the earliest phases of state formation in the world. Some settlement sites have been investigated, as at Afyeh near the First Cataract where rectangular stone houses were built, as well other rural villages. Sheep and goats were herded, with some cattle, while both wheat and barley were cultivated. Luxury manufactured goods imported from Egypt included stone vessels, amulets, copper tools and linen cloth.
obsidian: SYNONYM: hyalopsite, Iceland agate, mountain mahogany
CATEGORY: geology
DEFINITION: A jet-black to gray, naturally occurring volcanic glass, formed by rapid cooling of viscous lava. It was often used as raw material for the manufacture of stone tools and was very popular as a superior form of flint for flaking or as it is easily chipped to form extremely sharp edges. Obsidian breaks with a conchoidal fracture and is easily chipped into precise and delicate forms. It was very widely traded from the anciently exploited sources in Hungary, Sardinia, Lipari of Sicily, Melos in the Aegean, central and eastern Anatolia, Mexico, etc. Chemical analysis of their trace elements now allows most of the sources to be distinguished (especially by neutron activation and x-ray fluorescence spectrometry), so that the pattern of trade spreading out from each can be traced. Two dating methods have been applied to obsidian: obsidian hydration dating and fission track dating. In Europe, obsidian was exploited extensively from c 6000-3000 BC; after 3000 BC it generally went out of favor for everyday purposes (perhaps as a result of competition from metal tools) but it continued to be used for prestige objects in some areas, especially by the Minoans and Mycenaeans. Obsidian has been quarried and traded by western Melanesians since at least 19,000 bp, with the earliest-used and most important source being that at Talasea on New Britain. Obsidian was also an important trade item in Mesoamerica.
obsidian hydration dating: SYNONYM: obsidian hydration layer dating, obsidian dating
CATEGORY: technique
DEFINITION: A method of dating in which the age of an obsidian artifact is established by measuring the thickness of its hydration rim (layer of water penetration) and comparing that to a known local hydration rate. The hydration layer is caused by absorption of water on exposed surfaces of the rock. The surface of obsidian starts to absorb water as soon as it is exposed by flaking during manufacture of an artifact. The layer of hydrated obsidian is visible when a slice of the artifact is examined under an optical microscope at a magnification of x 500. Hydration varies geographically, and several factors such as climate, chemical environment, and physical abrasion also affect the thickness of the layer, so that most studies are locally or regionally based. Obsidian may also be dated by the fission track dating technique. Dates have been obtained in Japan extending back as far as c 25,000 BC.
olivella: CATEGORY: fauna
DEFINITION: A genus of marine univalve shell commonly used as raw material for the manufacture of beads and ornaments. It is a small spiral shell.
opaline: SYNONYM: chalcedony, chert, agate
CATEGORY: artifact
DEFINITION: A fine-grained siliceous rock type widely used for stone artifact manufacture in the southern African Stone Age
open mold: SYNONYM: open mould
CATEGORY: artifact
DEFINITION: An early and simple mold developed for casting metal tools and weapons and, later, glass and brick. It consisted of a single block of stone, or occasionally clay, with the shape of the required artifact cut into it. Only very simple objects can be cast in this way, especially when one surface must be flat. The molds continued in use after more sophisticated versions had been developed, mainly for the manufacture of blanks for coins. The molds were probably not technically open, since this would result in oxidation of the surface of the metal, so probably a flat stone or other cover was placed over the mold during cooling. Glass was cast in open molds by the Egyptians as early as 5 BC.
order of blows: CATEGORY: artifact
DEFINITION: Evidence of the sequence in which flakes of stone were removed, explaining the artifact's pattern of manufacture; as each successive flake is removed from a piece of stone, its scar encroaches upon adjacent scars and obliterates portions of earlier ones
pattern welding: SYNONYM: pattern-welding
CATEGORY: geology
DEFINITION: A post-Roman period technique of ironworking used particularly in the manufacture of weapons, mainly swords, developed to overcome the problems of brittleness caused by trying to diffuse carbon into iron. It produced blades that were both strong and decorative. In the manufacture of a sword, for example, the central part would typically be a core of carbon steel, with soft iron welded to it. Wire and strip metal, sometimes in varying combinations of type and color, were welded together and hammered out to produce a blade with patterned effect. The pattern derives from the difference in the carbon content between the uncarburized cores and the carburized surfaces of the welded strips, which is exposed during the forging and grinding of the weapon. A sword of this quality could have taken some 75 hours to make. The finest examples have been attributed to Frankish workshops, although notable examples are also known from Anglo-Saxon and Viking contexts.
petrified wood: CATEGORY: artifact
DEFINITION: Agatized wood, sometimes used as a raw material for the manufacture of flaked stone artifacts. Often banded or laminated and of variable color
phyllite: CATEGORY: artifact
DEFINITION: A soft laminated shale-like rock used for the manufacture of decorative objects such as pendants and beads.
piece esquillee: SYNONYM: splintered piece
CATEGORY: artifact
DEFINITION: A type of flaked stone artifact manufactured by the bipolar percussion technique. Generally characterized by a lenticular or wedge-shaped cross-section; opposed bifacial crushing, battering and hinge-fracturing; and frequently relatively long columnar blade-like" flake scars."
pipestone: CATEGORY: artifact
DEFINITION: Any soft stone used in the manufacture of aboriginal smoking pipes
Plumbate Ware: CATEGORY: ceramics
DEFINITION: A fine pottery made on the Pacific coast of Mesoamerica, near the Mexico-Guatemala border, during early Post-Classic and Pre-Columbian times. It was traded over a wide area, from Nayarit in northwest Mexico to Costa Rica in the south, and was present in all but the lowest levels in the Toltec center at Tula. The glazed appearance of the surface of Plumbate Ware is due to the unusual composition of the clay from which it is made and to carefully controlled firing conditions. There was a high percentage of iron compounds and, upon firing, the ceramic surface acquired a hard, lustrous vitrified surface often with metallic shine. Its original point of manufacture was on the Pacific coast of Mesoamerica in the vicinity of Izapa
Portchester ware: CATEGORY: artifact
DEFINITION: Type of late Saxon pottery manufactured on the coast of central southern England.
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.
pottery: CATEGORY: ceramics
DEFINITION: One of the oldest of the decorative arts, consisting of objects made of clay and hardened with heat. The objects are commonly useful. Earthenware is the oldest and simplest form of pottery; stoneware is a pottery compound that is fired at a sufficiently high temperature to cause it to vitrify and become extremely hard; and porcelain, finer than stoneware and generally translucent, is made by adding feldspar to kaolin and then firing at a high temperature. Its raw material is common, shaping and baking it are simple, and it can be given an infinite variety of forms and decorations. Pottery sherds, almost indestructible, are one of the commonest finds and are very important to archaeologists. It is often one of the clearest indicators of cultural differences, relationships, and developments, and its techniques of manufacture can be comparatively easily recovered by ceramic analysis. It can be shown whether it was modeled, coil-built, or wheel-made. The nature of its fabric, ware, or body can be identified, as can any surface treatment such as slip, paint, or burnish. The wide range of methods of decoration can also be studied. As the date of manufacture can usually be fixed, pieces of pottery give clues to archaeologists as to the date of other finds at the site. Petrological analysis of inclusions has been used to trace the source of pot clays and thus reconstruct ancient trade in pottery. Archaeologists usually call fired pot clay the 'fabric' of a piece of pottery. Texture, mineralogy, and color of fabric may be used to describe and classify pottery.
primary forming: CATEGORY: ceramics
DEFINITION: In ceramics manufacture, the technique used to build up the overall shape of vessel. Secondary forming techniques are used to refine this shape and thin the walls.
Proto-Neolithic: CATEGORY: chronology
DEFINITION: A transitional period between the hunting-and-gathering cultures of the Epipaleolithic and the farming cultures of the Aceramic Neolithic (c 9300-8500 BC). The term is used variously but here it includes the Pre-Pottery Neolithic A of the Levant and the early stages of the adoption of characteristic Neolithic traits such as animal and plant domestication and the manufacture of pottery.
quarry: CATEGORY: feature
DEFINITION: An open excavation usually for obtaining building stone, slate, or limestone. In archaeological terms, it is a cumulative feature resulting from the mining of mineral resources or a place where stone was removed from a larger source, e.g. to subsequently manufacture tools.
quartz: CATEGORY: geology
DEFINITION: A hard mineral of many varieties that consists primarily of silica or silicon dioxide. Quartz has been important from the earliest times; crystals of it were known to the ancient Greeks as 'krystallos'. It is typically colorless to white, with some minor impurities which make it into many different colors. Quartz has great economic importance. Many varieties are gemstones, including amethyst, citrine, smoky quartz, and rose quartz. Sandstone, composed mainly of quartz, is an important building stone. Large amounts of quartz sand are used in the manufacture of glass and porcelain and for foundry molds in metal casting. Quartz is the second most abundant mineral in the Earth's crust after feldspar.
quartz crystal: CATEGORY: artifact
DEFINITION: Pure silicate rock-crystal. Usually perfectly clear with six crystal surfaces. May be used as a raw material for lithic tool manufacture.
refitting: SYNONYM: conjoining, rejoining
CATEGORY: technique
DEFINITION: The reassembling of stone debitage and cores to reconstruct ancient lithic technologies. It is any attempt to put stone tools and flakes back together again, which provides important information on the processes involved in the knapper's craft. The refitting or conjoining of artifact or ecofact fragments, especially those of struck stone flakes to recreate the original core, allows definition of cumulative features, such as the lithic artifact and debitage scatters. The technique allow may allow reconstruction of ancient manufacture and use behavior.
ripple-flaking: CATEGORY: artifact
DEFINITION: A style of secondary flaking applied to flint and stone tools in which a series of small elongated flakes are removed from the surface of the tool being manufactured in such a way that each new flake scar cuts into the edge of the last one to produce a corrugated or rippled surface.
roughout: CATEGORY: lithics
DEFINITION: An early stage in the making of bifacially chipped stone tools. Roughouts were often manufactured in quarry areas and later reworked into finished artifacts elsewhere.
salt-glazed stoneware: CATEGORY: artifact
DEFINITION: In the 14th century AD it was found that the addition of salt to the kiln gases during the firing of stoneware meant that the salt volatilized and the resultant sodium chloride vapor fluxed with the silicas in the body of the vessels to form a soda-glass glaze. As a further refinement, a brown-colored surface could be achieved by coating the vessels in a thin iron wash before firing. A patent was granted for the manufacture of such salt-glazed wares in England in 1671.
Samoa: CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: A major island group in the south-central Pacific Ocean about 1,600 miles (2,600 km) northeast of New Zealand. American Samoa, a dependency of the United States, consists of the six islands. Western Samoa, an independent nation, consists of the nine islands. The islands were settled by Lapita colonists in the late 2nd millennium BC. There is a pottery sequence through the 1st millennium BC, after which pottery manufacture ceases. On the evidence of adze typology, Samoa may have been the source of the first settlers to penetrate eastern Polynesia, perhaps to the Marquesas, in the early 1st millennium AD. The last 1500 years of Samoan prehistory are associated with above-ground monuments, including earthwork forts, earth or stone houses, god-house platforms, and agricultural terraces.
sandwich glass: CATEGORY: artifact
DEFINITION: Any of various forms of glassware manufactured at Sandwich, Mass., from 1825 to c1890.
secondary forming techniques: CATEGORY: ceramics
DEFINITION: In ceramics manufacture, techniques used to complete or refine the shape of a vessel after primary forming either roughed out the vessel shape or produced the vessel's components.
Secondary Neolithic: CATEGORY: culture
DEFINITION: A term used to describe a number of Neolithic communities composed entirely of Mesolithic peoples who adopted Neolithic equipment. For example, in Britain this was a group characterized by the use of Peterborough Ware or Grooved Ware (Rinyo-Clacton Ware). Such groups of Mesolithic ancestry had acquired the arts of farming and associated crafts (like pottery manufacture) from Primary Neolithic groups, e.g. the Windmill Hill culture.
self-slip: CATEGORY: ceramics
DEFINITION: A thin slurry of clay left on the surface of a pottery vessel as a result of wetting the body during the vessel's manufacture.
Shahr-i Sokhta: CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: Tell site in the Seistan district of eastern Iran, close to the Afghan and Pakistan borders, which was the site of a vast urban center of the late 4th-early 2nd millennium BC. As well as abundant structural remains, enormous numbers of finds have been excavated -- thousands of potsherds and stone tools, clay figurines, and animal bones. The wealth of Shahr-i Sokhta was due at least in part to its role in the trade in lapis lazuli between its source in north Afghanistan and the markets of Mesopotamia and Egypt. An industrial area produced thousands of unfinished lapis lazuli beads, as well as flint drills and other tools used in their manufacture. Shahr-i Sokhta also has a huge cemetery, estimated to have contained 200,000 burials. In the early 2nd millennium BC, the course of the Helmand River, on which the city depended, changed; this led to the decline and abandonment of the settlement. The site is still important for understanding the urbanization, production and subsistence techniques, and complex societies of Bronze Age Iran and Afghanistan.
snap: CATEGORY: artifact
DEFINITION: A purposeful break that was a step in the manufacture of a stone tool
soft paste: CATEGORY: artifact
DEFINITION: Artificial porcelain, made in Europe before the discovery of kaolin, one of the ingredients necessary for true, or hard-paste, porcelain. It was manufactured from white clays, mixed with ground glass to give it translucency. It was first produced at the Medici factory in Florence between 1575 and 1587 and then in France in the early 18th century. The Sèvres factory made only soft-paste for its first thirty years and it was the main type of porcelain produced in England in the 18th century.
Somme Bionne: SYNONYM: Somme-Bionne
CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: A chariot burial of the Early La Tene Iron Age, in the Marne area of France, dated to c 450-420 BC. The burial, presumably of a chieftain, was under a large barrow and contained very rich grave goods, both imported objects and locally manufactured items. The imported items include an Attic Red-Figure Kylix and bronze Etruscan beaked wine flagons.
sphyrelaton: SYNONYM: sphyrelata
CATEGORY: artifact
DEFINITION: A type of bronze hammered statue, made by hammering bronze plates over a core, which were secured by nails. It is an early form of art manufacture in metal, the precursor to the lost wax (cire perdue) technique. The temple of Apollo on Crete (8th century BC) has three statues of this type. The technique was also used to produce colossal statues. Another definition is repoussé work in Minoan or Etruscan art.
St. Albans point: CATEGORY: artifact
DEFINITION: Bifacially worked chipped stone projectile points with corner notches, manufactured by early Archaic Stage communities in eastern parts of North America around 7500 BC.
systemic context: CATEGORY: technique
DEFINITION: Behavioral system wherein artifacts are part of an ongoing system of manufacture, use, reuse, and discard
temper: SYNONYM: grog
CATEGORY: ceramics
DEFINITION: Foreign material (sand, plant fibers, grit, shell, crushed rock, broken pottery) added to clay for potterymaking to improve its firing qualities and prevent a vessel from cracking during the drying process. Temper reduces plasticity, which would cause shrinkage or cracking upon drying and firing. The study of temper is important for the identification of the place of manufacture of a vessel.
tempering: CATEGORY: geology; ceramics
DEFINITION: One of the processes in the manufacture of steel and other metal artifacts, the heat treatment of hardened steels to improve toughness and reduce brittleness. The steel is reheated to a temperature of around 450? C and then rapidly cooled by quenching. Also, the material added to the paste of a ceramic to make it stronger and give it properties it does not naturally have.
Thetford ware: CATEGORY: artifact
DEFINITION: Mass-produced wheel-turned late Saxon pottery manufactured in workshops near Thetford in Norfolk, England, from the late 9th century through to the early 12th century. The fabric is hard and sandy, grey to buff in color. The products are mainly cooking pits and jars with limited rouletting and applied thumb-strip decoration.
Tonga: CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: An archipelago of 169 islands in the southwestern Pacific Ocean (western Polynesia) inhabited at least 3,000 years ago by Austronesian-speaking peoples who made elaborately decorated Lapita pottery similar to that found on Fiji. It was settled, like neighboring Samoa, by Lapita colonists in the late 2nd millennium BC. Tonga maintains a pottery sequence throughout the 1st millennium BC, after which pottery manufacture ceases. After 1000 AD, large monuments appear which are related to the growth of the powerful centralized chiefdoms.
tongue chape: CATEGORY: artifact
DEFINITION: Metal fitting of elongated form and roughly triangular outline manufactured in the Wilburton Tradition. The chape fitted on the end of a scabbard to prevent the tip of the sword cutting through the leather.
Torksey-type ware: CATEGORY: artifact
DEFINITION: Type of late Saxon pottery found in central England and dating to the period AD 850 to 1150. Manufactured using a fast wheel at workshops in the area around Torksey, Lincolnshire.
tournette: CATEGORY: ceramics
DEFINITION: A turntable that was rotated manually to assist in the manufacture of a pot. They were used in Mesopotamia from about 5000 BC. It was a forerunner of the potter's wheel (c 3400 BC).
tranchet: SYNONYM: tranchet ax; tranchet axe; tranchet technique; tranchet flake
CATEGORY: lithics
DEFINITION: A large Mesolithic or Neolithic chisel-ended flint artifact with a sharp straight cutting edge, produced by the removal of a thick flake at a right angle to the main axis of the tool. The technique was used for the manufacture of axes and adzes and allowed a blunted tool to be resharpened by removing another flake from across the edge. The tranchet technique has two definitions: 1) the removal of a large flat flake from the tip of a biface to form a straight cutting edge from the edge of the tranchet flake scar or, 2) the technique used to create or resharpen the ax or adze's cutting edge.
transitional: CATEGORY: artifact
DEFINITION: A term used to describe an artifact that was utilized and manufactured across two or more cultural periods.
Tudor green ware: CATEGORY: artifact
DEFINITION: Style of pottery manufactured in southeastern England (mainly in Surrey) in the 16th century AD which has a distinctive rather thick green or yellow glaze over a light colored body.
twist: CATEGORY: artifact
DEFINITION: The direction that cordage was rolled in its manufacture -- either S-twist or Z-twist.
upright loom: CATEGORY: artifact
DEFINITION: A structure on which woven cloth is manufactured comprising two more or less vertical supports (often set in the ground) with a horizontal beam across the top. The warp threads are tied to the cross-beam so that they hang down, thus allowing the weaver to move a horizontal shed rod between alternating sets of the warp in order that a shed is opened up for the weft to be threaded through. The warp threads were tensioned by loomweights. The upright loom was commonly used in antiquity, traces of them being known in Europe from the middle Bronze Age onwards.
use: CATEGORY: term
DEFINITION: The third stage of behavioral processes, in which artifacts are utilized (the others being acquisition, manufacture, and, later deposition).
Vulci: SYNONYM: Velch
CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: City of Etruria in Italy with ruins of Etruscan temple, Roman houses, Greek pottery, and a production center for bronzes. There are extensive cemeteries and a large network of streets and walls. Vulci grew out of a number of Villanovan villages and flourished chiefly in the 6th-4th century BC, largely as a result of trade, the extraction of minerals from nearby Monte Amiata, and the manufacture of bronze jugs and tripods, etc.
warp-weighted loom: CATEGORY: artifact
DEFINITION: An apparatus on which textiles are manufactured that is arranged in such a way that the warp threads running lengthwise through the material are tensioned by means of weights (usually clay or stone) attached to one end while the other ends are secured to the loom itself.
wheel-throwing: CATEGORY: ceramics
DEFINITION: In ceramics manufacture, a technique using centrifugal force to help force the body upwards and outwards from the center of a ball of tempered clay, while the potter's hands restrict outward motion and shape the vessel.
Wilton: SYNONYM: 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)."

Another Dictionary Search