Archaeology Wordsmith

Results for material:

aging of skeletal material: CATEGORY: technique
DEFINITION: The age at death may be estimated from ancient skeletal material in a number of ways. (1) Epiphyseal fusion. A growing bone consists of a central part (diaphysis) and the ends (ephiyses). At adulthood, the epiphyses fuse to the diaphysis and the average at which this occurs is known for man and most domestic animals. The stage of epiphyseal fusion may therefore be used as a guide to the age at death. (2) Dental eruption. The average age for each stage of the eruption of teeth in man and most domestic animals is well-established. The state of dental eruption may therefore be used to estimate the age at death. (3) Dental attrition. Given a standard diet, teeth wear roughly at the same rate and tables of rate of wear have been established for man. For other animals, this method must be calibrated by dental eruption. (4) Dental microstructure. The counting of incremental structures in teeth may allow estimation of age at death. (5) Pubic symphysis. In man, the joint surfaces of the pubic symphysis change progressively with age and can be used to determine the age of men at death. (6) Antlers. In deer, the development of antlers is roughly related to age.
closing material: CATEGORY: structure
DEFINITION: Vegetal material used in roof construction, resting on beams and/or shakes, beneath mud, daub, or loose dirt.
cultural materialism: CATEGORY: technique
DEFINITION: A research strategy that assumes that technological, economic, and ecological processes are the components of every sociocultural system. Developed by Marvin Harris, an anthropological historian, who saw functionalism in the social sciences as being similar to adaptation" in biology. His work on the surplus controversy and ethnoenergetic exchange in primitive cultures led him to comparisons with medieval European economies in which he saw two distinct types feudalism and manorialism."
inorganic material: CATEGORY: artifact
DEFINITION: Material that is neither animal or plant; inanimate or artificial material.
inorganic materials: CATEGORY: term
DEFINITION: Material that is neither animal or plant; inanimate or artificial material.
material: CATEGORY: artifact
DEFINITION: Substance of which an artifact is made, such as bone, obsidian, jade, etc.
material culture: CATEGORY: term
DEFINITION: The artifacts and ecofacts used by a group to cope with their physical and social environment. Material culture includes the buildings, tools, and other artifacts that constitute the material remains of a former society -- its technology and artifacts combined. Material culture thus embraces folk architecture, folk arts, and folk crafts. For example, the construction of houses, the design and decoration of buildings and utensils, and the performance of home industries, according to traditional styles and methods, make up material culture. The distinction is made between those aspects of culture that appear as physical objects, and those aspects which are nonmaterial. It is the major source of evidence for archaeology.
materialist theory: CATEGORY: term
DEFINITION: Any theory that posits that the way humans organize labor and technology to get resources out of the material world is the primary force shaping culture.
organic artifact: SYNONYMS OR RELATED TERMS: organic material
CATEGORY: artifact
DEFINITION: Artifact made of organic materials -- living organisms, including wood, bone, horn, fiber, ivory, or hide.
utilized material: CATEGORY: artifact
DEFINITION: Pieces of stone that have been used without modification.
WHMIS: SYNONYMS OR RELATED TERMS: Workplace Hazardous Materials Information System
CATEGORY: geology
DEFINITION: A specification of health hazards involving laboratory chemicals, safety precautions, cleanup procedures, and treatments for burns or poisoning.
A Group: SYNONYMS OR RELATED TERMS: A Horizon, A-Group
CATEGORY: culture
DEFINITION: A term created by American archaeologist George Reisner to refer to a semi-nomadic Nubian Neolithic culture of the mid-fourth to early third millennium BC. The term has evolved into a horizon" because there was also a C Group and the term was misleading that there were two separate ethnic groups rather than two phases of Nubian material culture. Traces of the A group which may have evolved from the Abkan culture survive throughout Lower Nubia. An important site is Afyeh near Aswan Sayala and Qustul. There is evidence among the grave goods that the A Group was engaged in regular trade with the Egyptians of the Predynastic and Early Dynastic periods. The A Group was eventually replaced by the C Group during the Old Kingdom. The existence of a B Group has now been rejected."
accelerator mass spectrometric technique: SYNONYMS OR RELATED TERMS: AMS technique; AMS radiocarbon dating
CATEGORY: technique
DEFINITION: A relatively new method of radiocarbon dating in which the proportion of carbon isotopes is counted directly (as contrasted with the indirect Geiger counter method) using an accelerator mass spectrometer. The method drastically reduces the quantity of datable material required.
accession catalog: CATEGORY: technique
DEFINITION: An accounting used in the lab after artifacts and ecofacts are initially processed and providing the numbers with which artifacts and ecofacts are marked for storage. Its records describe and record what was found during an archaeological investigation and it is the primary record for all materials after excavation.
Achenheim: CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: A French site with Lower Palaeolithic artifacts, Mousterian-type tools from the Riss glaciation, and Upper Palaeolithic materials.
Acheulian: SYNONYMS OR RELATED TERMS: Acheulean, Acheulian industry
CATEGORY: chronology; culture
DEFINITION: A European culture of the Lower Palaeolithic period named for Saint-Acheul, a town in northern France, the site of numerous stone artifacts from the period. The conventional borderline between Abbevillian and Acheulian is marked by a technological innovation in the working of stone implements, the use of a flaking tool of soft material (wood, bone, antler) in place of a hammerstone. This culture is noted for its hefty multipurpose, pointed (or almond-shaped) hand axes, flat-edged cleaving tools, and other bifacial stone tools with multiple cutting edges. The Acheulian flourished in Africa, western Europe, and southern Asia from over a million years ago until less than 100,000 and is commonly associated with Homo erectus. This progressive tool industry was the first to use regular bifacial flaking. The term Epoque de St Acheul was introduced by Gabriel de Mortillet in 1872 and is still used occasionally, but after 1925 the idea of epochs began to be supplanted by that of cultures and traditions and it is in this sense that the term Acheulian is more often used today. The earliest assemblages are often rather similar to the Oldowan at such sites as Olduvai Gorge. Subsequent hand-ax assemblages are found over most of Africa, southern Asia and western and southern Europe. The earliest appearance of hand axes in Europe is still refereed to by some workers as Abbevillian, denoting a stage when hand axes were still made with crude, irregular devices. The type site, near Amiens in the Somme Valley contained large hand ax assemblages from around the time of the penultimate interglacial and the succeeding glacial period (Riss), perhaps some 200,000 to 300,000 years ago. Acheulian hand axes are still found around the time of the last interglacial period, and hand axes are common in one part of the succeeding Mousterian period (the Mousterian of Acheulian tradition) down to as recently as 40,000 years ago. Acheulian is also used to describe the period when this culture existed. In African terminology, the entire series of hand ax industries is called Acheulian, and the earlier phases of the African Acheulian equate with the Abbevillian of Europe.
acquisition: CATEGORY: term
DEFINITION: The first stage of the behavioral processes (followed by manufacture, use, deposition), in which raw materials are procured.
activation analysis: CATEGORY: technique
DEFINITION: Method to determine the elements of a material by inducing radioactive reactions to produce radiation characteristic of material composition.
additive: SYNONYMS OR RELATED TERMS: temper
CATEGORY: artifact
DEFINITION: An organic or mineral material mixed with a clay by the potter to modify its properties in forming, drying, and firing
additive technology: CATEGORY: artifact; term
DEFINITION: The manufacturing processes in which material is added to an original mass to form an artifact. Ceramic production and basketmaking are additive technologies.
adobe: SYNONYMS OR RELATED TERMS: uh'-doh-bee
CATEGORY: structure
DEFINITION: Spanish term for sun-dried mud brick; also the name for a structure built out of this material. These claylike buff or brown mud bricks were not fired, but hardened and dried in the sun. The material was also used as mortar, plaster, and amorphous building for walls. Adobe structures are found in the southwestern US and Mexico where there is heavy-textured clay soil and a sunny climate. These structures were often houses, temples, and large solid platforms in the shape of truncated pyramids.
adsorption: CATEGORY: artifact
DEFINITION: The capacity of a material to accept and retain another substance, such as moisture, on its surface
Adulis: CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: A seaport on the Red Sea coast of Ethiopia, near modern Massawa. It was the principal port of Axum on an important trade route. It may have been established in Ptolemaic times during the Pre-Axumite period, though excavations have yielded material belonging to the 3rd century AD or later.
aeolian: SYNONYMS OR RELATED TERMS: eolian
CATEGORY: term
DEFINITION: Of or pertaining to the wind. This adjective is used to describe deposits or materials moved or affected by the wind or processes related to the wind. Aeolian deposits can bury archaeological materials intact or with little disturbance. Aeolian erosion can collapse and displace archaeological materials. Aeolian particle movement can alter archaeological material through abrasion.
aerobic: CATEGORY: term
DEFINITION: An environmental state requiring or using free oxygen in the air for metabolic purposes and which, therefore, causes decay in organic structures. Many materials, including plants, leather, flesh, food remains, and clothing will disintegrate in aerobic conditions.
agger: CATEGORY: feature
DEFINITION: A technical term of ancient Roman roadwork for an earthen mound, embankment, or rampart of a camp, formed by the earth dug out of a ditch. Most Roman roads were built on a slightly raised causeway, mainly to provide drainage. This bank of earth was used for protection from flooding, as the foundation for a road, or for warfare purposes. Agger is also a general term for a mound formed by a dike, quay, roadwork, or earthwork. An agger can often be traced even if the surfacing material has been covered or laid bare.
aging: CATEGORY: artifact
DEFINITION: Storing prepared ceramic material (as a wet plastic clay body) to improve its working properties by thorough wetting of particles, slow compression, bacterial action (souring), and other processes
Al Mina: CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: A site on the coast of Syria near the mouth of the Orontes River that was a Greek settlement before the end of the 9th century BC and may have been Poseideion. Material from the 8th-4th centuries BC has been found, indicating further links between Greece and the Near East. Al Mina was sacked and destroyed by Ptolemy of Egypt in 413 BC.
alabaster: SYNONYMS OR RELATED TERMS: Egyptian alabaster
CATEGORY: geology
DEFINITION: A term used by Egyptologists for a type of white, semi-transparent or translucent, stone used in statuary, vases, sarcophagi, and architecture. It is a form of limestone (calcium carbonate), sometimes described as travertine. It was used increasingly from the Early Dynastic period for funerary vessels as well as statuary and altars. Alabaster is found in Middle Egypt, a main source being Hatnub, southeast of el-Amarna. The sarcophagi of Seti I (British Museum) is a fine example. An alabaster (also alabastron or alabastrum) is also the name of a small vase or jar for precious perfumes or oils made of this material. It was often globular with a narrow mouth and often without handles.
alleles: CATEGORY: flora, fauna
DEFINITION: Different sequences of genetic material occupying the same locus on the DNA molecule.
alluvium: SYNONYMS OR RELATED TERMS: alluvial deposit, alluvion
CATEGORY: geology
DEFINITION: The detrital material (clay, gravel, organic material, sand, silt, soil) eroded, transported, and deposited by rivers and streams. It is very fertile and was used by early farmers. Though the largest areas of alluvium are flood plains and deltas, it may also occur where a river overflows its banks and is an important constituent of shelf deposits.
Altin-Depe: SYNONYMS OR RELATED TERMS: Altin-depe
CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: A large Chalcolithic and Bronze Age site in southern Turkmenistan which is similar to Namazga-Depe. The urban phase of the early 2nd millennium BC has a large artisans' quarter where there is evidence for specialized pottery production. The residential quarter has rich grave goods, including jewelry of precious and semi-precious stones and metals and imported materials. There is a complex of monumental structures which are similar to the ziggurats of Mesopotamia, with three main periods of construction. The settlement declined early in the 2nd millennium BC and was abandoned mid-millennium.
Altyn-depe: CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: A Bronze Age site dating from the late 6th till the late third millennium BC in southern Turkmenistan. City walls, a ceremonial center, elite residences, cemeteries, and burials have been found as well as a massive multi-stage platform and artifacts of Harappan materials.
amber: CATEGORY: artifact
DEFINITION: Fossilized pine resin, a transparent yellow, orange, or reddish-brown material from coniferous trees. It is amorphous, having a specific gravity of 1.05-1.10 and hardness of 2-2.5 on the Mohs scale, and has two varieties -- gray and yellow. Amber was appreciated and popular in antiquity for its beauty and its supposed magical properties. The southeast coast of the Baltic Sea is its major source in Europe, with lesser sources near the North Sea and in the Mediterranean. Amber is washed up by the sea. There is evidence of a strong trade in amber up the Elbe, Vistula, Danube, and into the Adriatic Sea area. The trade began in the Early Bronze Age and expanded greatly with the Mycenaeans and again with the Iron Age peoples of Italy. The Phoenicians were also specialist traders in amber. The soft material was sometimes carved for beads and necklaces.
amino acid dating: SYNONYMS OR RELATED TERMS: amino-acid dating; aminostratigraphy; amino-acid racemization, amino acid racemization
CATEGORY: technique
DEFINITION: A method of absolute (chronometric) dating which is hoped to fill the gap between radiocarbon dates and potassium-argon dates. It is used for human and animal bone and other organic material. Specific changes in its amino acid structure (racemization or epimerization) which occur at a slow, relatively uniform rate, are measured after the organism's death. The basis for the technique is the fact that almost all amino acids change from optically active to optically passive compounds (racemize) over a period of time. Aspartic acid is the compound most often used because it has a half-life of 15,000-20,000 years and allows dates from 5,000-100,000 years to be calculated. However, racemization is very much affected by environmental factors such as temperature change. If there has been significant change in the temperature during the time in which the object is buried, the result is flawed. Other problems of contamination have occurred, so the technique is not fully established. It is fairly reliable for deep-sea sediments as the temperature is generally more stable.
Amlash: CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: A site in northwest Iran, southwest of the Caspian Sea, dating to the late 2nd millennium BC. Rich burials in tombs have produced gold and silver vessels, pottery figurines, animal-shaped pottery rhytons (ritual vessels) -- material similar to that at Marlik Tepe.
Amri: CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: A site in the Indus Valley in Pakistan, probably dating to the early 3rd millennium. It was the first site to be recognized as belonging to the Early Harappan Period when excavated by Majumdar in 1929. Its name has been given to a style of hand- and wheel-made painted pottery found in its Chalcolithic levels and on tells over much of Sind and up into the hills of Baluchistan. These tall globular beakers of fine buff ware are painted with geometric designs in black between red horizontal bands. Chert and some copper were used for tools and the architecture was in mud-brick. Fractional burial was the practice for the dead. Periods I and II represent the pre-Harappan settlement of agricultural farmers, who kept cattle, sheep, goat and donkey, but also hunted (or herded) gazelle. In the later part of Period II Harappan ceramics appear alongside Amri wares; Period III represents a full mature Harappan occupation. The culture was gradually succeeded by that of the Indus civilization. The uppermost levels contained Jhukar and Jhangar material.
Amudian: SYNONYMS OR RELATED TERMS: Amud
CATEGORY: culture
DEFINITION: A culture and industry close to the Sea of Galilee near Tiberias, Israel. There are several important caves, including Emireh, the type site of the Emiran, and Zuttiyeh, the type site of the Amudian. These demonstrate the early occurrence of Upper Palaeolithic blades and burins even earlier than the Mousterian and its flake tools. The Amud cave is Mousterian or Emiran and in 1961 the skeletal remains were found of two adults and two children estimated to have lived about 50,000-60,000 years ago (remains held in the Rockefeller Archaeological Museum, Jerusalem). They consist of a skeleton of an adult male about 25 years old, a fragment of an adult jaw, and skull fragments of infants. The skeleton has an exceptionally large brain (1800 cc). The remains suggest that they are part of a group known as Near Eastern Neanderthal man. This group represents a mixture of West Asian features similar to those of fossils found in 1957 in Iraq that were estimated to date from about 46,000 years ago and those of the Upper Paleolithic people who lived in southwestern France and the Middle East from about 10,000 to 35,000 years ago. These findings provide more evidence that Neanderthal man was a highly varied species who lived in much of the Northern Hemisphere, except the New World. Amudian material has been recognized at the cave of et-Tabun (Mount Carmel) and at sites like Jabrud, Adlun, and the Abri Zumoffen in the Levant. It has been suggested that the Amudian may have been ancestral to subsequent Upper Palaeolithic industries of the Middle East, hence the name 'pre-Aurignacian' which has sometimes been given to industries of Amudian type.
anaerobic: CATEGORY: term
DEFINITION: Without air; the opposite of aerobic. This term is used to describe environmental conditions where oxygen is not present and where decay of organic material is partially or completely stopped. Anaerobic conditions are usually waterlogged but may also occur when a layer or clay, plant, or animal remains is sealed. The remains survive much better than under normal conditions because there is insufficient oxygen for bacterial or fungal growth. The organic materials reach a state of equilibrium beyond which they do not decay.
anaglyph: CATEGORY: artifact; language
DEFINITION: A term describing any work of art that is carved, chased, embossed, or sculptured -- such as bas-reliefs, cameos, or other raised working of a material. Materials which are incised or sunken are called intaglios or diaglyphs. The Egyptians also used the term anaglyphs for a kind of secret writing.
ancient DNA: CATEGORY: culture
DEFINITION: Genetic material preserved in the archaeological remains of bones and plants that can be studied for past genetic relationships
Andersson, Johan Gunnar (1874-1960): CATEGORY: person
DEFINITION: Swedish geologist who laid the foundation for the study of prehistoric China. In 1921, at a cave near Peking, he demonstrated the presence of prehistoric material in that country. He is remembered for his work on the Yang Shao Neolithic culture (dating between 5000-3000 BC) on the middle Yellow River and the Pan Shan cemeteries further west in Kansu. He also carried out the first excavations (1921-1926) at the Palaeolithic cave site at Choukoutien (Zhoukoudian). Andersson started Sweden's Museum of Far Eastern Antiquities.
Anghelu Ruju: CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: A Copper Age necropolis in Alghero, northwest Sardinia. It contained 36 rock-cut tombs, some very elaborate in plan and decorated with carved bulls' heads. The tombs were used for multiple burials and contained material of the Ozieri culture (copper and silver objects) as well as Ozieri and Beaker pottery.
antico rosso: CATEGORY: geology
DEFINITION: Ancient marble of a deep red or green tint. It is the material of many ancient Egyptian and early Greek sculptures. These green and red marbles (antico rosso and lapis lacedaemonius) were obtained from the southern Peloponnese.
antler: CATEGORY: fauna
DEFINITION: The lowest, forward branch of the horn of a deer -- bonelike material which is grown and shed annually. Antlers indicate the sex of the species, for example only male red deer, fallow deer, and elk (moose) have antlers. They may also indicate whether a site is occupied seasonally as they are naturally shed in the winter, except for female reindeer who shed the antlers in spring. Antlers were a valuable material for making many tools.
antler sleeve: CATEGORY: artifact
DEFINITION: A section of deer antler carved into a cavity or hole at one end to hold a stone ax head. The piece was either set into a socket in a haft or perforated to attach to the haft. This material was used for its resilience and shock-absorbing value in tool-making. Roughly trimmed antler picks" have been used in construction and flint mining."
anvil stone: CATEGORY: lithics
DEFINITION: A stone on which other stones or materials (such as food) are placed and crushed with a stone tool.
appliqué: CATEGORY: artifact
DEFINITION: Decoration or ornament applied to or laid on another material, as metal on wood or as embroidery on cloth.
apron: CATEGORY: feature
DEFINITION: The lip or exposed portion of a prehistoric cave or rock shelter, the soil of which typically contains durable cultural materials such as flaked stone and ceramic artifacts.
Aquatic Civilization: SYNONYMS OR RELATED TERMS: Aqualithic
CATEGORY: culture
DEFINITION: This term has been used to describe a widespread series of cultures in the high lake and river areas of the southern Sahara and Sahal between the 8th and 3rd millennia BC (also 10,000-8000 BP). There are barbed bone harpoon heads and pottery with parallel wavy lines that reveal some similarities between the regions. First investigated at Early Khartoum, sites of this type are now known as far to the southeast as the Lake Turkana basin in Kenya. To the west, related material is found as far as Kourounkorokale in Mali. The greatest significance of the aquatic civilization" lies in the settled lifestyle of its people for this led up to the subsequent adoption of food production. Artifacts include bone harpoons."
archaeological chemistry: SYNONYMS OR RELATED TERMS: archeological chemistry
CATEGORY: branch
DEFINITION: The application of chemical theories, processes, and experimental procedures to obtaining archaeological data and to solutions of problems in archaeology. This field includes laboratory analysis of artifacts and materials found in archaeological context.
archaeological data: SYNONYMS OR RELATED TERMS: archeological data
CATEGORY: term; technique
DEFINITION: Material collected and recorded as significant evidence by an archaeologist. Archaeological data falls into four classes: artifacts, ecofacts, features, and structures.
archaeological layers: CATEGORY: term
DEFINITION: Sedimentary and architectural units defined by a combination of lithological, pedological, and material cultural criteria.
archaeology: SYNONYMS OR RELATED TERMS: archeology (from archaia"
CATEGORY: and "logos"
DEFINITION: science knowledge or theory)" branch The scientific study and reconstruction of the human past through the systematic recovery of the physical remains of man's life and cultures. Artifacts, structures, settlements, materials, and features of prehistoric or ancient peoples are surveyed and / or excavated to uncover history in times before written records. Archaeology also supplements the study of recorded history. From the end of the 18th century onwards, archaeology has come to mean the branch of learning which studies the material remains of man's past. Its scope is, therefore, enormous, ranging from the first stone tools made and fashioned by man over 3 million years ago in Africa, to the garbage thrown into our trash cans and taken to city dumps and incinerators yesterday. The objectives of archaeology are to construct cultural history by ordering and describing the events of the past, study cultural process to explain the meaning of those events and what underlies and conditions human behavior, and reconstruct past lifeways. Among the specialties in the field are: archaeobiology, archaeobotany, archaeozoology, and social archaeology. Modern archaeology, often considered a subdiscipline of anthropology, has become increasingly scientific and relies on a wide variety of experts such as biologists, geologists, physicists, sociologists, anthropologists, and historians. The methods appropriate to different periods vary, leading to specialized branches of the subject, e.g. classical, medieval, industrial, etc., archaeology.
archaeology of cult: CATEGORY: branch
DEFINITION: The study of the materials for changes in patterns in response to religious beliefs.
archaeomagnetic dating: SYNONYMS OR RELATED TERMS: archaeomagnetic intensity dating, archaeomagnetism, palaeointensity dating, archaeomagnetic age determination
CATEGORY: technique
DEFINITION: A chronometric method used to date objects containing magnetic materials -- especially for buried undisturbed features such as pottery kilns, earthen fireplaces, and brick walls -- which can be compared to known schedules of past magnetic alignments within a region and fluctuations in the earth's magnetic field. Clay and rocks contain magnetic minerals and when heated above a certain temperature, the magnetism is destroyed. Upon cooling, the magnetism returns, taking on the direction and strength of the magnetic field in which the object is lying. Therefore, pottery which is baked in effect fossilizes" the Earth's magnetic field as it was the moment of their last cooling (their archaeomagnetism or remanent magnetism). In areas where variations in the Earth's magnetic field are known it is possible to date a pottery sample on a curve. This method yields an absolute date within about 50 years."
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.
Argos: SYNONYMS OR RELATED TERMS: Argos (meaning agricultural plain)"
CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: City in the northeastern Peloponnese of Greece, just north of the head of the Gulf of Argolis. The name was applied to several districts of ancient Greece but it is most often used to describe the easternmost part of the Peloponnesian peninsula and the city of Argos was its capital. Homer described it as the fertile plain inhabited by Agamemnon, Diomedes, and other heroes in the Iliad". The site was probably occupied since the Neolithic / Early Bronze Age and was very prominent in Mycenaean times (c 1300-1200 BC). Argos was probably the base of Dorian operations in the Peloponnese c 1100-1000 BC and from then on the dominant city-state of Argolis until it allied itself with Sparta after the Peloponnesian War in 420 BC. In 392 it broke with Sparta to unite with Corinth in the Corinthian War. Argos later joined the Achaean League (229) and Argos became its center after the Roman conquest and destruction of Corinth (146). The city flourished in Byzantine times and did not decline until around 1204 AD. One tyrant Pheidon is thought to have introduced primitive coinage and a weights and measures system. Archaeological excavations began in 1854 on the Argive Heraeum and Argos was famed for its connection with the goddess Hera. There was a natural sanctuary there long before the Dorians came c 1100-1000 BC. The shrine is reported to be of extreme antiquity. The statue of Hera for a new 5th-century temple was done by the celebrated sculptor Polycleitus whose work was said to rival that of Pheidias the sculptor of the Parthenon. There is material evidence of Neolithic Early and Middle Bronze Age a Mycenaean cemetery with chamber tombs Geometric and Archaic features and ruins of the classical and Roman city. The Larisa hill was evidently the Mycenaean acropolis and citadel holding a classical temple. There was also a Roman theater and small odeum. The site is mostly covered by the modern city."
armor: SYNONYMS OR RELATED TERMS: arms, armour, body armor
CATEGORY: artifact
DEFINITION: Protective clothing with the ability to deflect or absorb arrows, bullets, lances, swords, or other weapons during combat. There are three main types: 1) armor made of leather, fabric, or mixed materials reinforced by quilting or felt, 2) mail, of interwoven rings or iron or steel, and 3) rigid armor of metal, plastic, horn, wood, or other tough material, including plate armor of the Middle Ages' knights. Armor was used well before historical records were kept by primitive warriors. The first was likely made of leather hides and included helmets. It was found that in the 11th century BC, Chinese warriors wore 5-7 layers of rhinoceros skin. Greek heavy infantry wore thick, multilayered linen cuirasses in the 5th century BC. Armor is found along with arrows, clubs, hammers, hatchets, and other weaponry and is often ornamented. The defensive armor, the shield, and thorax, were called hopla, and people wearing them were called hoplites.
Arras: SYNONYMS OR RELATED TERMS: Aras
CATEGORY: site; culture
DEFINITION: The site of an Iron Age cemetery in Yorkshire, England, with at least 90 burials, some barrows covering the burials and some with chariots. There are several related sites (Danes' Graves) in east Yorkshire with similar grave goods which define the Arras culture along with the burials. Material dates the Arras culture to c 5-1 BC and the Arras people seem to have been intruders from the continent. Their artifacts suggest links with the migrations of the Parisii from eastern France and the Rhineland. The chariot gear includes a distinctive three-link horse bit.
Arretine Ware: SYNONYMS OR RELATED TERMS: terra sigillata ware; Samian ware
CATEGORY: ceramics
DEFINITION: A type of bright-red, polished pottery originally made at Arretium (modern Arezzo) in Tuscany from the 1st century BC to the 3rd century AD. The term means literally ware made of clay impressed with designs. The ware was produced to be traded, especially throughout the Roman Empire. It is clearly based on metal prototypes and the body of the ware was generally cast in a mold. Relief designs were also cast in molds which had been impressed with stamps in the desired patterns and then applied to the vessels. The quality of the pottery was high, considering its mass production. However, there was a gradual roughness to the forms and decoration over the four centuries of production. After the decline of Arretium production, terra sigillata was made in Gaul from the 1st century AD at La Graufesenque (now Millau) and later at other centers in Gaul. Examples having come from Belgic tombs in pre-Roman Britain and from the port of Arikamedu in southern India. The style changes and the potter's marks stamped on the vessels made these wares a valuable means of dating the other archaeological material found with them.
artifact typology: CATEGORY: artifact
DEFINITION: The placement of materials in a geographic, temporal, etc. context with other similar artifacts; the study of artifact classes with common characteristics; classification according to artifact type.
ash: CATEGORY: geology
DEFINITION: Volcanic material of less than 4 mm in diameter that falls quickly and can bury sites, preserving the stratigraphy, people, and artifacts. Ash is also the soft, solid remains of burned organic material as from cremation.
Ashkelon: CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: A Palestinian site of the Late Bronze Age with artifacts of Egyptian and Cypriote origin. There was an Iron Age Philistine city and material from the Roman period.
Asikli Hüyük: CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: An Aceramic Neolithic site in central Anatolia, near an obsidian source (Ciftlik) and probably involved in extracting and trading the material. Radiocarbon dates of unstratified contexts at the site are c 7000-6650 BC. It may have been contemporary with Hacilar.
Aspero: CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: A Late Preceramic site on the north-central coast of Peru, dating to 4360-3950 BP. It is one of the largest Preceramic settlements known in the Andes and it had a complex social hierarchy. Six platform mounds and other structures include rooms with artifacts, textiles, plant material, clay figurines, and feathers.
assessment: SYNONYMS OR RELATED TERMS: archaeological assessment
CATEGORY: technique
DEFINITION: An aspect of cultural resource management in which the surface of a project area is systematically covered by pedestrian survey in order to locate, document, and evaluate archaeological materials therein.
association: SYNONYMS OR RELATED TERMS: associated
CATEGORY: term; technique
DEFINITION: The co-occurrence of two or more objects sharing the same general location and stratigraphic level and that are thought to have been deposited at approximately the same time (being in or on the same matrix). Objects are said to be in association with each other when they are found together in a context which suggests simultaneous deposition. Associations between objects are the basis for relative dating or chronology and the concept of cross-dating as well as in interpretation -- cultural connections, original function, etc. Pottery and flint tools associated in a closed context would be grounds for linking them into an assemblage, possibly making the full material culture of a group available. The association of undated objects with artifacts of known date allows the one to be dated by the other. When two or more objects are found together and it can be proved that they were deposited together, they are said to be in genuine or closed association. Examples of closed associations are those within a single interment grave, the material within a destruction level, or a hoard. An open association is one in which this can only be assumed, not proved. Artifacts may be found next to each other and still not be associated; one of the artifacts may be intrusive.
Aszód: CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: A Late Neolithic site (4th millennium BC) in the Zagyva Valley, 30 km east of Budapest, Hungary. There are remains of a settlement with 40 rectangular houses containing rich assemblages and a cemetery with rows of graves. There are varying degrees of wealth in the grave goods. Aszód is a rare example of a site east of the Danube River with a western Hungarian material culture.
Aubrey, John (1626-97): CATEGORY: person
DEFINITION: An antiquarian and writer who studied and wrote detailed accounts of the monuments at Avebury and Stonehenge. He was the first to recognize the circle of 56 pits now known as the Aubrey holes within the bank at Stonehenge. His literary and scientific interests won him a fellowship of the Royal Society in 1663. . After his death, some of his antiquarian materials were included in The Natural History and Antiquities of . . . Surrey" (1719) and "The Natural History of Wiltshire" (1847)."
Auvernier: CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: A Neolithic and Late Bronze Age lake dwelling on the northern edge of Lake Neuchâtel, Switzerland with Cortaillod, Horgen, and Corded Ware materials as well as Hallstatt (c 1100-750 BC).
ax: SYNONYMS OR RELATED TERMS: axe
CATEGORY: lithics
DEFINITION: One of the last major categories of stone tool to be invented, around the end of the last Ice Age in the Palaeolithic. A flat, heavy cutting tool of stone or metal (bronze) in which the cutting edge is parallel to the haft and which might have the head and handle in one piece. Its main function was for woodworking (hewing, cleaving, or chopping trees) but it was also used as a weapon of war, as the battle-ax. There are many forms of ax, depending on the different materials and methods of hafting. The word ax" is now used instead of celt. "Hand-ax" is used to denote the earlier implement which was not hafted. In Mesolithic times stone axes were usually chipped from a block of flint and could be resharpened by the removal of a flake from the end. In the Neolithic axes were polished and often perforated to aid hafting. Axes are now usually iron with a steel edge or blade and fixed by means of a socket in the handle. Smaller lighter ones are called hatchets."
Bactrian Bronze Age: CATEGORY: culture
DEFINITION: A culture of northwest Afghanistan with range of pottery, seals, metal work, ornamented stone vessels, stone statuettes, etc. It was identified from materials looted from graves and appeared in Baluchistan and the Iranian plateau as far west as Susa.
Badarian: CATEGORY: culture
DEFINITION: An Upper Egyptian, Predynastic culture of the later 5th millennium BC, named for the type site of el-Badari, on the east bank of the Nile River. It extended over much of Middle Egypt also. Excavations during the 1920s revealed settlements and cemeteries dating to about 4000 BC (Neolithic). Their fine pottery, black-topped brown ware (later red), was very thin-walled, well-baked, and often decorated with a burnished ripple. This effect was apparently produced by firing it inverted to prevent the air from circulating inside and over the upper rim, keeping these areas black whereas the base and lower wall externally were oxidized to brown or a good red color. Other remains include combs and spoons of ivory, slate palettes, female figurines; and copper, shell, and stone beads. Badarian materials have also been found at Jazirat Armant, al-Hammamiyah, Hierakonpolis (modern Kawm al-Ahmar), al-Matmar, and Tall al-Kawm al-Kabir. Flinders Petrie and other found large numbers of graves with artifacts in 1893-1894 and divided it into two phases: Naqada Culture I and Naqada Culture II.
balustrade: CATEGORY: structure
DEFINITION: A row of ornamental supports for a railing or low colonnade. The term also applies to an enclosure or parapet composed of ballisters or other materials designed to prevent falls from elevated architectural elements such as roofs and balconies.
bar hammer technique: SYNONYMS OR RELATED TERMS: soft hammer technique, cylinder hammer technique
CATEGORY: artifact
DEFINITION: A stone-flaking technique using a bone, antler, wood, or other relatively soft material as a hammer to remove small, flat flakes from a core during flint knapping. These flakes have a characteristically long, thin form with a diffuse bulb of percussion.
bark beater: CATEGORY: artifact
DEFINITION: a stone, wood, or other hard material which was used in the Precolumbian period to soften bark for making clothing or architecture
Bat Cave: CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: A cave in southern New Mexico's Carlsbad Caverns National Park, notable for its evidence of prehistoric plant cultivation. The site of Bat Cave has produced specimens of a type of primitive corn that is also known from the Flacco phase in Tamaulipas at 2000 BC but that is here in association with a Chiricahua assemblage from which Cochise materials (maize and squash) have been dated at about 1000 BC. Evidence of beans (dated to 1000-400 BC) was found in association with San Pedro materials. Early levels indicate the use of primitive pod corn (dated c 3500 BC), but a cultivated form of maize was in use by 2500 BC, the earliest date for cultigens in the American Southwest. During the summer a colony of several million bats inhabits the cave.
behavioral archaeology: CATEGORY: branch
DEFINITION: The study of the relationship between material culture and human behavior and the impact of humans and nature on material culture by interpreting its original use.
Beidha: SYNONYMS OR RELATED TERMS: Bayda', Al-, Beida
CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: A site in south-central Yemen near Petra that was first occupied in the Early Natufian and Aceramic Neolithic. It is situated on a high plateau and, until the unification of the two Yemen states in 1990, was part of North Yemen (San'a'), though it lay near the disputed frontier with South Yemen. At first it was a semi-permanent camp which lived off goat and ibex. Beidha was reoccupied c 7000 BC by a Pre-Pottery Neolithic A [PPNA} group, who lived in a planned community of roughly circular semi-subterranean houses. They domesticated goats and cultivated emmer, wheat, and barley. There was a succeeding PPNB phase in which the buildings changed to complexes of large rectangular rooms, each with small workshops attached and with plastered floors and walls. Burials without skulls were found and there was also a separate ritual area away from the village. Finds from the site include materials from great distances, including obsidian from Anatolia and cowries and mother-of-pearl from the Red Sea.
belt: CATEGORY: artifact
DEFINITION: A strip of leather or other material worn round the waist to support or hold in clothes or to carry weapons
beta-ray backscattering: CATEGORY: technique
DEFINITION: A non-destructive physical method of chemical analysis which, though limited in its application, has been used successfully to determine the lead content of glass and glaze. A specimen is subjected to a beam of electrons from a weak radioactive beta source and some electrons are absorbed while others are backscattered" from the surface of the sample and can be counted with a Geiger counter. The percentage of electrons backscattered depends on the atomic number of the elements making up the surface layer of the artifact. Therefore if an element with a high atomic number is known to be present (e.g. lead) an estimate can be made of its concentration. The equipment cannot distinguish between high concentration of elements with medium atomic numbers and low concentrations of elements with high atomic numbers. The equipment cannot sense very small amounts of an element. Factors such as the thickness of a glaze affect the amount of backscattering. The technique carries advantages in its cheapness and portability of the equipment and is considered a useful technique for analyzing material like glass."
bin: CATEGORY: feature
DEFINITION: An above-ground compartment formed by walling off a portion of a structure or courtyard other than a corner. Common construction materials and methods include vertical slabs and adobe, jacal, and coursed masonry.
bipolar percussion: CATEGORY: lithics
DEFINITION: A type of percussion that involves the placement of raw material (usually small rounded or oval cobbles) on an anvil stone and striking it from the top.
birch-bark manuscript: SYNONYMS OR RELATED TERMS: birch-bark beresty
CATEGORY: artifact
DEFINITION: Early Russian letters and documents scratched onto thin pieces of birch-bark, dating to the 11th-15th centuries AD. They were first found in 1951 in Novgorod by A. Artsikhovski and form a very important source of information as no other documents earlier than the 13th century had survived because of frequent fires in the wooden cities of Old Russia. The manuscripts are quite well preserved from layers of organic materials.
blanket peat: CATEGORY: geography
DEFINITION: Peat that forms in areas of high rainfall that is not dependent on groundwater but receives all its moisture from the atmosphere. It can form on higher ground like plateaus. In periods of climatic change, blanket peat alters its nature, such as by developing tree cover in drier periods and then recurring as a bog when rainfall increases. In a peat bog of this type there may be well-preserved evidence of human activity and organic material in the drier times which is later covered by renewed peat growth.
bloom: CATEGORY: geology
DEFINITION: The spongy mass of material made up of iron and slag, produced from the initial smelting of iron ore. The slag and impurities are mostly driven off in preliminary forging. To produce useful iron, bloom must be hammered at red heat to expel the stone and add a proportion of carbon to the metal. The term also refers to a mass of iron after having undergone the first hammering or an ingot of iron or steel, or a pile of puddled bars, which has been passed through one set of 'rolls', made into a thick bar, and left for further rolling when required for use.
bog iron: SYNONYMS OR RELATED TERMS: lake ore, limnite, marsh ore, meadow ore, morass ore, swamp ore, bog iron ore
CATEGORY: geology
DEFINITION: A workable, porous type of brown hematite (impure hydrous oxides) found in bogs (and also in marshes, swamps, peat mosses, and shallow lake beds). This deposit is formed when iron-bearing surface waters come into contact with organic material and iron oxides are precipitated through oxidation of algae, iron bacteria, or the atmosphere. It is frequently found in areas with subarctic or arctic climatic conditions.
bone: CATEGORY: fauna
DEFINITION: The connective tissues of the body, consisting of crystallite minerals and collagen. After death, the proteins slowly decompose and the remaining mineral is subject to solution in acid soil conditions. Bones are preserved on a wide variety of archaeological sites. From early prehistory, the bones, horns, or antlers of animals man hunted or kept provided him with a vital source of raw material for constructing artifacts. There are many types of bone. There are a variety of relative age determination techniques applicable to bone material, including measurements of the depletion of nitrogen (bone dating) and the accumulation of fluorine and uranium.
borrow pit: CATEGORY: feature
DEFINITION: A prehistoric pit from which mud, clay, or earth was taken for building purposes. The term also refers to an excavated area where material has been dug for use as fill at another location.
Bouärd, Michel de (1909-?): CATEGORY: person
DEFINITION: A French archaeologist who worked in medieval studies, especially on earthworks as fortifications. Bouärd also investigated ceramics and other aspects of medieval material culture and made advances in archaeological laboratory research.
bow: CATEGORY: artifact
DEFINITION: An offensive weapon for shooting arrows or missiles and used in hunting and war. It generally consists of a strip of bendable wood or other material with a string stretched between its two ends. The arrow or missile is shot by the recoil after retraction of the string. The weapon was first used in the Upper Paleolithic by the Gravettians. Some Mesolithic examples have been preserved in peat bogs, but often all that remains is an arrowhead or wrist guard.
bow and arrow: CATEGORY: artifact
DEFINITION: Weapon consisting of two parts; the bow is made of a strip of flexible material, such as wood, with a cord linking the two ends of the strip to form a tension from which is propelled the arrow; the arrow is a straight shaft with a sharp point on one end and usually with feathers attached to the other end
Boyne: SYNONYMS OR RELATED TERMS: Boyne Valley tombs
CATEGORY: site; culture
DEFINITION: The site of prehistoric ritual monuments and Neolithic passage graves in the valley of the River Boyne, Ireland, dating to the 4th millennium BC. The complex includes five henges, a number of mounds, and the three great passage graves of Newgrange, Dowth, and Knowth. These megalithic tombs are set in round mounds and usually set on hilltops or grouped in cemeteries. These structures are notable for their size, their decoration, and the architectural expertise involved. The term 'Boyne culture' is sometimes used to describe the material found inside passage graves all over Ireland. Its characteristics are highly decorated Carrowkeel style of pottery, bone pins with poppy- or mushroom-shaped heads, pendants, and beads.
bradawl: CATEGORY: artifact
DEFINITION: A small tool which pierces material. It has a flat cutting edge.
Branc: CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: A cemetery site in southeastern Czechoslovakia of the Early Bronze Age where the burials were differentiated according to sex and the orientation was reversed from contemporary sites. At Branc, 81 percent of females were on their left side and 61 percent of males on their right. These mostly simple rectangular pits, sometimes with a wooden lining, of 308 inhumation graves spanning 200-400 years of the early Unetician culture were also analyzed for their grave goods. Within the graves there was clear evidence of community differentiation, with some individuals having more elaborate grave goods than others (on the basis of the rarity of the raw materials used and the time needed to produce the goods). This suggests that there would be leading families, and that wealth and status would tend to be inherited (ascribed) and there is evidence that each member of the community was placed according to lineage, sex, and age.
Brandberg: CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: A mountain massif in central Namibia with Stone Age and Iron Age material, including 43,000 important cave art paintings. The White Lady of the Brandberg" romanticized by Abbé Breuil is the most celebrated."
brick: CATEGORY: artifact
DEFINITION: An important building material of individual blocks of clay or mud, some with tempering of sand or straw. Bricks, which are not always rectangular, may be baked in a kiln to terra cotta or sun-dried -- which is referred to as mud-brick or adobe. The chief building material throughout the Near East has always been mud-brick. Bricks can be used as dating criteria, especially when they bear stamped inscriptions. Decorative glazed bricks first appeared in Assyrian times, as at Ishtar Gate in Babylon.
bridge: CATEGORY: structure
DEFINITION: A structure forming a road over a river, etc. or allowing passage between two points above the ground. A bridge can be a simple plank or single arch or an elaborate architectural structure supported by arches, chains, girders, piers, etc. They are made of many different materials. The first bridges were natural, such as arches of rock. The first manmade bridges were flat stones or tree trunks laid across a stream to make a girder bridge. Three types of bridge -- beam or girder, arch, and suspension -- have been known and built from the earliest times.
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)
bronze: CATEGORY: geology
DEFINITION: An alloy of copper and tin that is harder than copper. Bronze was made before 3000 BC, though it was not used in tools and weapons for some time. Tin added to copper made casting easier and the edges of tools and weapons harder. The proportions of copper and tin varied widely (67-95 percent copper in surviving artifacts) and the addition of zinc, nickel, lead, arsenic, or antimony is also known. Adding tin to copper makes casting easier and the edges of tools and weapons harder. The main disadvantage was the comparative scarcity of tin. A higher percentage of tin produces potin or speculum. The Bronze Age of the Three Age System began in Eurasia when it replaced copper as the main material for tools and weapons. It was then replaced by the more common and efficient iron, but was still used for decorative purposes. Modern bronze also contains zinc and lead.
brown earth: SYNONYMS OR RELATED TERMS: brown forest soil, brown earths
CATEGORY: geology
DEFINITION: Brown forest soils that result from prolonged forestal conditions and which develops under mature deciduous woodland. Brown earths are thought to have covered most of the British Isles and temperate Europe under the great forests which existed during the middle of the present Interglacial. The soil type is penetrated by tree roots and actively worked by earthworms to a considerable depth. The top is well-mixed mineral material and humus. As a result of woodland cover being removed repeatedly, these soils are rare today.
bulk provenience: CATEGORY: technique
DEFINITION: The location (provenience) of a group of similar objects by type of material and by level or surface.
burin: SYNONYMS OR RELATED TERMS: graver
CATEGORY: lithics
DEFINITION: A specialized engraving tool with a chipped flint or stone shaft that is cut or ground diagonally downward to form a diamond-shaped point at the tip. The angle of the point affected the width and depth of the engraved lines. The shaft of the tool was fixed in a flat handle that could be held close to the working surface. A burin had a wide rounded end for bracing against the palm of the hand and the point was guided by thumb and forefinger. A blade or flake could be formed into any one of about 20 varieties of the tool. In its most characteristic form, the working tip is a narrow transverse edge formed by the intersection of two flake scars produced by striking at an angle to the main axis of the blade. Sometimes one facet is made by simply snapping the blade, or by truncating it with a steep retouch. Burins were used to carve or engrave softer materials such as antler, bone, ivory, metal, or wood. This tool was characteristic of the Upper Paleolithic (especially Magdalenian) in the Old World and of some Early Lithic and Mesolithic cultures of the New World.
button: CATEGORY: artifact
DEFINITION: Small, usually disklike, pieces of bone, metal, stone, or other solid material that have holes or a shank through which they are sewn on to garments. Buttons are used to fasten or close a garment and are sometimes purely decoration. They are known from the Copper Age onwards in Europe, developing in the Mediterranean area and being spread along with beakers. The ancient Greeks and Etruscans fastened their tunics at the shoulders with buttons and loops. The presence of buttons implies a tailored garment as draped ones were better fastened with a pin or fibula.
C-transforms: CATEGORY: culture
DEFINITION: The movement and redistribution of material culture by human agencies.
Calendar Stone: CATEGORY: artifact
DEFINITION: A 20-ton, 4-meter wide carved monolith commissioned by the emperor Axayacatl in 1479, which symbolizes the Aztec universe. The populations of central Mexico believed that they were living in the fifth epoch of a series of worlds (or suns) marked by cyclical generation and destruction. The central figure of the stone is this fifth sun, Tonatuih. Surrounding this are four rectangular cartouches containing dates and symbols for the gods Ehecatl, Texcatlipoca, Tlaloc and Chilchihuitlicue who represent the four worlds previously destroyed and the dates of the previous holocausts -- 4 Tiger, 4 Wind, 4 Rain, and 4 Water. The central panel contains the date 4 Ollin (movement) on which the Aztecs showed that they anticipated that their current world would be destroyed by an earthquake. In a series of increasingly larger concentric bands, symbols for the 20 days of the month, precious materials, and certain stars are represented. The outermost band depicts two massive serpents whose heads meet at the stone's base. The Calendar Stone" is in the Museo Nacional de Antropología (National Museum of Anthropology) in Mexico City."
caliche or caliché: CATEGORY: artifact; geology
DEFINITION: An encrustation or deposit of hard, calcareous cement made up of nitrates, sulfates, halides, and sand. It appears on the surface of materials such as bone, ceramic, or stone after they have been buried or exposed to moisture for an extended time. These layers of calcium carbonate (lime accumulation) are often present in semiarid or arid areas, either on top of or within the soil -- as in the desert basins of southern Arizona.
campanulate bowl: CATEGORY: artifact
DEFINITION: A bowl or other kind of vessel, whether of pottery, metal, or some other material, shaped to the form of an inverted bell.
carbon-14: SYNONYMS OR RELATED TERMS: radiocarbon, C14
CATEGORY: geology
DEFINITION: A naturally occurring radioactive isotope of carbon with a half-life of 5,730-year (+/- 40 years) years and a mass number of 14, commonly used in radiocarbon dating archaeological materials and in demonstrating the metabolic path of carbon in photosynthesis. Its known rate of decay is the basis of radiocarbon dating. Willard Libby discovered natural carbon-14. Libby showed the essential uniformity of carbon-14 in living material and went on to measure the radiocarbon level in organic samples dated historically -- materials as old as 5,000 years from sources such as Egyptian tombs. Libby's conclusion, with allowance for radioactive decay, was that over the past 5,000 years the carbon-14 level in living materials has remained constant within 5 percent precision of measurement. His work made this dating method available to scientists.
carbon-14 dating: SYNONYMS OR RELATED TERMS: radiocarbon dating
CATEGORY: technique
DEFINITION: The occurrence of natural radioactive carbon in the atmosphere allows archaeologists the ability to date organic materials as old as 50,000 years. Carbon-14 is continuously produced in the atmosphere and decays with a half-life of 5,730-year (+/- 40 years). Unlike most isotopic dating methods, the carbon-14 dating technique relies on the progressive decay or disappearance of the radioactive parent with time. This is now a common method for estimating the age of a carbonaceous archaeological artifacts. The radioactivity of an artifact's carbon-14 content determines how long ago the specimen was separated from equilibrium with the atmosphere-plant-animal cycle. The method is based on the principle that all plants and animals, while they are alive, take in small amounts of carbon-14 and when they die, the intake ends. By measuring the loss rate of the carbon 14, the age of the object can be established. Measurement of the carbon-14 activity in a cypress beam in the tomb of the Egyptian Pharaoh Snefru, for example, established the date of the tomb as c 2600 BC.
carbonization: SYNONYMS OR RELATED TERMS: adj. carbonized, charring
CATEGORY: term
DEFINITION: The burning or scorching of organic materials, such as plants, seeds, or grains, in conditions of insufficient oxygen which results in their preservation. Charcoal is a widely-known example.
Carrowkeel ware: CATEGORY: artifact
DEFINITION: A type of later Neolithic pottery found in Ireland during the 3rd millennium BC, named after material recovered from the passage graves at Carrowkeel in Co. Sligo, Ireland. The fabric of Carrowkeel ware is generally rather thick, coarse, and heavily gritted. The forms comprise mainly open round-bottomed bowls and hemispherical cups. Decoration is extensively applied, often all over the outer surface of the vessel and over the rim, and is typically ?stab and drag' or impressed. Some of motifs used resemble PASSAGE GRAVE ART.
cartonnage: SYNONYMS OR RELATED TERMS: cartonage
CATEGORY: artifact
DEFINITION: An Egyptian mummy case made of layers of papyrus or linen soaked in gesso plaster and shaped around an embalmed body, much like papier maché, and then decorated with paint or gilding when dry. The term also refers to the material thus used and for mummy masks, anthropoid coffins, and other funerary items made in the same manner.
carve: SYNONYMS OR RELATED TERMS: carving
CATEGORY: artifact
DEFINITION: To cut into or shape (a hard material) in order to produce an object or design
carving: CATEGORY: term
DEFINITION: A finishing or decorative technique that involves selective removal of material with a sharp tool in a pattern.
Catal Huyuk: SYNONYMS OR RELATED TERMS: Çatal Hüyük
CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: One of the world's earliest towns, a huge Neolithic site in south central Turkey's Konya plain. At least 14 levels have been excavated so far with radiocarbon dates from 6500 BC to 5400 BC, without undisturbed deposits being reached. Cereals were cultivated, cattle and sheep were bred, and hunting took place. Pottery had apparently only just been introduced. Trade in such materials as obsidian and seashells was extensive. There were flaked stone tools and polished obsidian mirrors. The mud-brick buildings were rectangular with access only possible through the roofs. Built-in furniture included benches and platforms. The earliest evidence of religious beliefs have been found at the mound of Çatal Hüyük. Shrines were very frequent, with huge figures of goddesses in the posture of giving birth, leopards, and the heads of bulls and rams modeled in high relief on the walls. Other shrines contain elaborate frescoes of the hunting of deer and aurochs, or vultures devouring headless human corpses. Stone and terra-cotta statuettes found in these shrines represent a female figure, sometimes accompanied by leopards and, from the earlier levels of excavation, a male either bearded and seated on a bull or youthful and riding a leopard. The main deity of these people was evidently a goddess. The dead were buried beneath plastered platforms within the shrines or under the floors of the buildings. Evidence suggests both craft specialization and social stratification.
catena: CATEGORY: geology
DEFINITION: A sequence of soils formed by the same parent material but from different landscape positions have taken on differing characteristics. Seeing these difference may assist interpretation of archaeological sites.
Cayla de Mailhac: CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: A site in southwestern France with a settlement and a series of cemeteries of Late Bronze Age and Early Iron Age c 700-100 BC. Occupation began with an urnfield culture. Iron became common in a second phase and a cart burial from La Redorte shows similarities to the Hallstatt Iron Age cultures. Phase III is dated to the second half of the 6th century BC by imports of Greek black figure ware and Etruscan pottery. The settlement of Phase IV was enclosed by a rampart and had houses of sun-dried brick. Datable material included Greek red figure pottery and fibula brooches of Hallstatt/early La Tène types. The last phase was of the La Tène culture.
Celts: SYNONYMS OR RELATED TERMS: adj Celtic; Gaels; Goidels; Galatians; Gauls
CATEGORY: culture; language
DEFINITION: An important people of central and western Europe. Greek and Roman writers recorded them as having lived in the final centuries BC and their existence is first attested c 500 BC, but they were around long before that. They were a fierce, warrior race distinguished by three factors: their language, their beliefs, and their material culture. They are known to have invaded Italy and sacked Rome itself in the early 4th century bc, while in the following century groups of Celts invaded Greece, sacking Delphi, and others invaded Anatolia. Their language belonged to the Indo-European family and divided into two branches at an early date (2nd-3rd millennium BC), respectively represented by the Welsh and Irish Gaelic languages. Original homelands appear to have been on the western and central mainland of Europe: France, Germany, Bohemia, Austria, and Switzerland. By mid-1st millennium BC, they also lived in Iberia (Spain and Portugal), Britain, Ireland, Low Countries south of the Rhine delta, and Italy north of River Po. In Britain, they were defeated by the Romans in AD 43. Archaeologically, in central Europe there were aristocratic burials of the Hallstatt culture, often containing wagons or horses. Archaeological cultures do not necessarily coincide with ethnic or linguistic groups and it is preferable to use the cultural terms Hallstatt and La Tene when describing archaeological remains.
ceramic: CATEGORY: artifact
DEFINITION: An artifact made of hard brittle material produced from nonmetallic minerals by firing at high temperatures; a solid made of compounds of metallic elements and inorganic nonmetallic elements: earthenwares, porcelains, stonewares, terracottas, and other materials made of fired clay
ceramique oncteuse: CATEGORY: ceramics
DEFINITION: A type of medieval pottery of western Brittany, made from the 10th-18th centuries. It is typically very soft and uses talc as the tempering material. This unusual pottery was a distinctive product of the Breton culture.
Cerro de las Mesas: CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: A site in southern Veracruz, Mexico, in the plains of the Papaloápan River that is a hybrid site of Pre-Classic and Classic periods. Dozens of earthen mounds are scattered over the surface in a seemingly haphazard manner, and the archaeological sequence is long and complex. The site reached its apogee in the Early Classic, when the stone monuments for which it is best known were carved. Most important are a number of stelae, some of which are carved in a low-relief style recalling Late Formative Tres Zapotes, early lowland Maya, and Cotzumalhuapa. Cerro de las Mesas pottery, deposited in rich burial offerings of the Early Classic, is much like that of Teotihuacan, with slab-legged tripods. Potters made large, hollow, handmade figures of the gods and the most spectacular discovery on the site was a cache of 782 jade objects, many of Olmec workmanship. Cerro de las Mesas is famous for Remojadas-style pottery figurines, found in great quantity as burial goods. Because the Classic occupation contains abundant Teotihuacan materials and two Maya Long Count dates (ad 468 and ad 533), it is usually interpreted as a redistribution point for materials from both Mexico and the Maya lowlands.
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.
Champ Durand: CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: A Neolithic fortification in Vendée, France and associated material of the Late Neolithic, including Peu-Richardien decorated pottery of c 3300-3000 BC.
characterization: SYNONYMS OR RELATED TERMS: characterization studies
CATEGORY: technique
DEFINITION: Methods of examining and identifying characteristic properties of the constituent material of traded goods for identifying their source of origin. This study is mostly done on clay, metal, and stone and involves petrographic thin-section analysis.
charge-coupled device: SYNONYMS OR RELATED TERMS: CCD
CATEGORY: tool
DEFINITION: A device using a light-sensitive material on a silicon microchip to electronically detect light to produce an electronic image.
charred, charring: CATEGORY: term
DEFINITION: Converted to charcoal or carbon usually by heat, organic materials may be preserved. Partial burning reduces the materials to a carbon-rich residue. In the case of wood, this residue is charcoal. Many organic materials may not retain their structure and become an amorphous residue. Charred remains are preserved on archaeological sites because carbon is relatively inert in the soil and the microorganisms which would normally break down organic material are unable to make use of this form of carbon. Charred remains are a particularly good material for radiocarbon dating.
chemical analysis: CATEGORY: technique
DEFINITION: The main use of chemical analysis in archaeology has been the identification of trace, major, and minor elements characteristic of particular sources of raw materials such as obsidian. The methods include X-ray fluorescence spectrometry, optical emission spectrometry, atomic absorption spectrometry, spectrographic X-ray diffraction, and neutron activation analysis. This information can be useful in the study of technology, trade, and distribution.
Chicoid: SYNONYMS OR RELATED TERMS: Boca Chica
CATEGORY: ceramics
DEFINITION: One of the two ceramic series (the other, Meillacod) that seem to have developed out of the Ostinoid series. They originated near the type-site of Boca Chica, Dominican Republic, and then influenced much of the eastern Antilles. The Chicoid materials represent the ball game, Zemis, a variety of wood and stone carvings, and a strong Barrancoid influence is evident in the ceramics (modeled ornamentation and incision). The series first appears in c 1000 AD and continues till European contact.
Chimú: CATEGORY: culture
DEFINITION: South American Indians who created the largest and most important political system in Peru before the Inca, and who developed large-scale irrigation systems. The distinctive pottery of the Chimú aids in dating Andean civilization in the late periods along the north coast of Peru. The black pottery had molded reliefs with some vessels in the shape of people, animals, houses, and everyday items. The stirrup-spout and spout-and-bridge vessels are the most common forms. There were also objects of silver and gold. The Chimú expanded by conquest and the state began to form, according to legend, as a political entity was the creation of Ñançen-pinco (reigned c 1370 AD), but archaeology shows that Chimú material culture developed out of the terminal Moche (Mochica) culture of the north coast from c 850/900 onwards. Chanchan was capital, a vast settlement of giant rectangular enclosures. In 1465-70, however, they were conquered by the Inca, who absorbed much of the culture, including their political organization, irrigation systems, and road engineering.
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.
Chou: SYNONYMS OR RELATED TERMS: Chou Dynasty, Zhou
CATEGORY: culture
DEFINITION: The dynasty that ruled ancient China from 1122-256/255 BC), establishing the political and cultural characteristics that would be identified with China for the next 2,000 years. Some date the dynasty to 1027-1050 BC. The Chou coexisted with the Shang for many years, living just west of the Shang territory in what is now Shensi province. At various times they were a friendly tributary state to the Shang, alternatively warring with them. The Chou overthrew that of Shang in 1027 BC and was itself destroyed by the Ch'in in 256. Its capital in the Western Chou period was at Tsung Chou in Shensi, moving to Loyang in Honan in 771, to begin the Eastern Chou period. The archaeological evidence comes mainly from the excavation of tombs. Iron came into use c 500 BC, both forged and cast. Bronze remained the material for weapons and the Chou bronzes are the most famous of their artworks. The sword, crossbow, and use of roof tiles were other technological innovations of the dynasty.
Christy, Henry (1810-1865): CATEGORY: person
DEFINITION: English archaeologist and ethnologist who journeyed from Mexico Toltec remains to Hudson's Bay to the caves of southern France and who supported other excavations after a successful banking career. He assisted French archaeologist Edouard Lartet in his investigations of the series of Palaeolithic caves in southwest France, including Laugerie Haute, La Madeleine, Les Eyzies, and Le Moustier. With Christy, Lartet went on to show that the Stone Age comprised successive phases of human culture. Their research was published as Reliquiae Aquitanicae" ("Aquitanian Remains") in 1865-1875 with money left by Christy in his will. Christy left Palaeolithic material to be divided between France and Britain and his trustees presented the rest of the ethnological collection to the British Museum together with money for future acquisitions. The Christy Collection now contains about 30 000 specimens."
chromatography: CATEGORY: technique
DEFINITION: A technique of separating colored substances and analyzing their chemical structure by chromotographic adsorption. Differences in the rate of movement along a liquid or solid column are noted and used for the identification of organic substances. Archaeologically this can be useful for identifying sources, as for amber. There are several methods of chromatography, but particularly used in archaeology are paper and gas. In the former, a solution of the substance to be examined is placed at the end of a piece of filter paper; the end is then dipped into a solvent which moves the constituents of the sample along the paper by capillary action. Different substances reach different points on the filter paper and, by comparison with reference substances, can be identified. Gas chromatography is done by introducing the mixture into a column of material. The mixture is carried through by gases and measurements of the gas coming through over time are made by a gas detector. The use of gas chromatography in the study of amber has shown that different sources produce different chromatograms.
Chumash: CATEGORY: culture
DEFINITION: A late prehistoric and historic Native American culture originally living along the coast of southern California and speaking a Hokan language. Chumash also occupied the three northern channel islands off Santa Barbara. The major Chumash groups were the Obispeño, Purismeño, Ynezeño, Barbareño, and Ventureño, Emigdiano, and Cuyama. The Chumash were skilled artisans, made wooden-plank canoes and vessels of soapstone, as well as a variety of tools out of wood, whalebone, and other materials. They produced basketry, did rock painting, and started of clamshell-bead currency in the area. The Chumash were among the first native Californians to be encountered by the Spanish explorer Juan Rodríguez Cabrillo, who visited the islands in 1542-1543.
classification: CATEGORY: technique
DEFINITION: The ordering of archaeological data that share certain attributes or characteristics into groups and classes; the divisions arrived at by such a process. Classification is the first step in the analysis of archaeological data -- when particles or objects are sorted or categorized by established criteria, such as size, function, material, or color.
clay: CATEGORY: geology
DEFINITION: Soil particles of less than 0.005 millimeters in diameter or rock composed mainly of clay particles. There are ceramic clays, clay shales, mudstones, glacial clays, deep-sea clays, and soils -- which are plastic when wet and hard when dry. No other natural material has so wide an importance or such extended uses as does clay. The use of clay in potterymaking antedates recorded human history, and pottery remains provide a record of past civilizations. As building materials, bricks (baked and as adobe) have been used in construction since earliest time.
clay loam: CATEGORY: geology
DEFINITION: Roughly equal parts sand and clay; a fine-grained material that is plastic and cohesive when wet but makes hard clods when dry.
clay tablet: CATEGORY: artifact
DEFINITION: The main writing material used by the scribes of early civilizations. Signs were impressed or inscribed on the soft clay, which was then dried in the sun. The ancient Sumerians, Babylonians, Assyrians, and Hittites wrote on tablets made from water-cleaned clay. A common form was a thin quadrilateral tile about five inches long which, while still wet, was inscribed by a stylus with cuneiform characters. By writing on the surface in small characters, a scribe could copy a substantial text on a single tablet. For longer texts, several tablets were used and then linked by numbers or catchwords. Book production on clay tablets probably continued for 2,000 years in Mesopotamia and Asia Minor. Either dried in the sun or baked in a kiln, clay tablets were almost indestructible. The latter process was used for texts of special value, legal codes, royal annals, and epics to ensure greater preservation. Buried for thousands of years in the mounds of forgotten cities, they have been removed intact or almost so in modern archaeological excavations. The number of clay tablets recovered is nearly half a million, but there are constantly new finds. The largest surviving category consists of private commercial documents and government archives. When the Aramaic language and alphabet arose in the 6th century BC, the clay tablet book declined because clay was less suited than papyrus to the Aramaic characters.
coal: CATEGORY: geology
DEFINITION: One of the most important of the primary fossil fuels, a dark-colored, carbon-rich material that occurs in stratified, sedimentary deposits. Two major periods of coal formation are known in geologic history. The older includes the Carboniferous and Permian periods (from about 350,000,000-250,000,000 years ago). Much of the bituminous coal of eastern North America and Europe is Carboniferous in age. Most coals in Siberia, eastern Asia, and Australia are of Permian origin. The younger era began in the Cretaceous Period (about 135,000,000 years ago) and culminated during the Tertiary Period (about 65,000,000-2,500,000 years ago). From this era came nearly all of the world's lignites and subbituminous (brown) coals.
coffin: SYNONYMS OR RELATED TERMS: sarcophagus
CATEGORY: artifact
DEFINITION: Any box or chest, usually rectangular or anthropoid in shape, in which a corpse or mummy is enclosed for burial. Clay, stone, metal, and wood are among the materials used. Primitive wooden coffins, formed of a tree trunk split down and hollowed out, are still in use among some aboriginal peoples. The term 'sarcophagus' is used only for the stone outer container which encases one or more coffins. From the Latin word for basket" 'cophinus'."
cognitive archaeology: SYNONYMS OR RELATED TERMS: structural archaeology
CATEGORY: branch
DEFINITION: The study of past mental processes, ideological systems, and thought patterns from the archaeological record -- often through the symbols left behind on material remains.
coiled: SYNONYMS OR RELATED TERMS: coiled basketry
CATEGORY: artifact
DEFINITION: Concerning a method of basketry based on a spirally coiled foundation, esp. that made with a vertical stitch or weft. A basket is said to be coiled when a long bundle of fibrous material is laid up, spiral fashion. Each coil is sewn by a slender splint to the coil below it. The basketmaker would pierce the fiber bundle with a bone awl and pass the splint through the hole thus made. In ceramics, coiling is a construction technique where the vessel is formed from the base up with long coils or wedges of clay that were shaped and joined together.
coiling: SYNONYMS OR RELATED TERMS: coiled basketry, coil basket, coiled (adj)
CATEGORY: artifact
DEFINITION: A method of basketry based on a spirally coiled foundation, esp. that made with a vertical stitch or weft. A basket is said to be coiled when a long bundle of fibrous material is laid up, spiral fashion. Each coil is sewn by a slender splint to the coil below it. The basketmaker would pierce the fiber bundle with a bone awl and pass the splint through the hole thus made.
coin: CATEGORY: artifact
DEFINITION: A piece of metal or, rarely, of some other material (such as leather or porcelain) certified by a mark or marks upon it as being of a specific value. Coinage is considered to be any standardized series of metal tokens, their specific weights representing specific values, and usually stamped with designs and inscriptions. Coins or coinlike objects were first issued by the Lydians of Anatolia in the late 7th century BC, made of the gold-silver alloy electrum. Their use was then adopted in the Far East, then around the Mediterranean, and has since spread throughout the world. Early coins were used for specialized, prestigious purposes and not for everyday exchange. The early Greek coins were also made of electrum, silver, or gold; the first Roman coins were produced in the early 3rd century BC and were also made of precious metals. Later in that century the first bronze coin was introduced. These material remains are self-dating, though they do not always date" the materials they are found with as they may have been traded handed down through generations or displaced in the stratigraphy of a site."
collecting: CATEGORY: term
DEFINITION: Any nonscientific removal of archaeological materials from a site by non-residents. Although collectors were important to the origins of archaeology, they are now a major cause of the destruction of the world's cultural resources.
colluvial: SYNONYMS OR RELATED TERMS: colluvium
CATEGORY: geology
DEFINITION: A deposit resulting from soil erosion, usually at the foot of a slope and containing rock detritus or talus. At the bottom of slopes, soils lose their structure and become eroded due to clearance of forest, plowing, or cultivation. Colluvial material typically gathers in the dry valleys of chalklands and also at the foot of escarpments or valley sides.
colluvium: CATEGORY: geology
DEFINITION: Sediment deposited by the movement of material downslope by gravity.
Colosseum: CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: The original name and modern nickname for the giant Flavian Amphitheater in Rome, whose construction began during the reign of the emperor Vespasian (69-79 AD), between 70-72. The name apparently derived from an adjacent colossal statue. It was officially dedicated in 80 AD by Titus in a ceremony that included 100 days of games. In 82 AD, Domitian added the uppermost story. Unlike earlier amphitheaters, which were nearly all dug into hillsides for extra support, the Colosseum is a freestanding structure of stone and concrete, measuring 620 by 513 feet and seating 50,000 spectators. It was the scene of thousands of hand-to-hand combats between gladiators, of contests between men and animals, and of many larger combats, including mock naval engagements. It has been damaged by lightning and earthquakes, but especially by vandalism; all the marble seats and decorative materials have disappeared.
Colt Hoare, Sir Richard (1758-1838): CATEGORY: person
DEFINITION: British antiquary who established the techniques of archaeological excavation in Britain. He excavated a large number of barrows (mostly on Salisbury Plain), classified and published his findings. He also recorded many other monuments of the area. However, at the time there was no means of dating the material he found.
compilation: CATEGORY: term
DEFINITION: A set of interrelated propositions (data) describing material remains, usually through symbolic representation, that facilitates the study of ancient people. Examples are field notebooks, artifact catalogues, archaeological databases.
composite bow: CATEGORY: artifact
DEFINITION: An archer's bow made of more than one material -- as wood and fiberglass -- to combine properties of strength, durability, and power. In early times, a bow of wood was reinforced on one side by layers of animal sinew and on the other side by animal horn.
composite soil: SYNONYMS OR RELATED TERMS: welded soil, superimposed soil, polypedomorphic soil
CATEGORY: geology
DEFINITION: A soil profile that forces its features upon more than one parent material.
compound tool: SYNONYMS OR RELATED TERMS: composite tool
CATEGORY: artifact
DEFINITION: Any tool made of two or more different materials, such as a bone harpoon with stone points and barbs set in it, or a wooden arrow with a shaped stone point.
compression: CATEGORY: artifact
DEFINITION: The stress of a crushing force applied to a material
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.
cones: SYNONYMS OR RELATED TERMS: pyrometric cones
CATEGORY: artifact
DEFINITION: Small, elongated pyramids made of controlled mixtures of ceramic materials in a numbered sequence that soften and bend when heated under specific conditions. When cones are placed in a kiln during firing, their bending provides an index of heat treatment and proper firing.
constituent analysis: CATEGORY: technique
DEFINITION: Any technique used to reveal the composition of artifacts and other archaeological materials by examining their constituent parts. This type of analysis is useful in determining raw material sources for the reconstruction of ancient exchange systems.
contamination: CATEGORY: term
DEFINITION: Materials that are not part of a natural archaeological deposit or assemblage but which have intruded or altered the deposit or assemblage. The term is often applied to samples taken for radiocarbon dating which have been affected by their environment, for example by humus, which also contains carbon, and may be much younger than the sample, thus resulting in an inaccurate age determination.
context: SYNONYMS OR RELATED TERMS: 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.
Copper Age: SYNONYMS OR RELATED TERMS: Chalcolithic, Eneolithic
CATEGORY: chronology
DEFINITION: An intermediate period between the Neolithic and the Bronze Ages, characterized by the use of copper tools. According to the principles of the Three Age System, it should strictly mean the period when copper was the main material for man's basic tools and weapons. It is difficult to apply in this sense as copper at its first appearance was very scarce, and experimentation with alloying seems to have begun early on. The alternative names of Chalcolithic and Eneolithic imply the joint use of copper and stone. In many sequences, notably in Europe and Asia, there is a period between the Neolithic and Bronze Age, separated from each by breaks in the cultural development, within which copper was coming into use and Copper Age is the best term to use. In Asia, the age saw the origins of civilization, and in Europe the great folk movements of the beaker and corded ware cultures, and perhaps the introduction of the Indo-European languages. The period lasted for almost 1000 years in southeast Europe, from 3500 BC.
core borer: CATEGORY: tool
DEFINITION: A hollow tubelike instrument used to collect samples of soils, pollens, and other materials from below the surface. The cylinder of soil etc. that is collected is called the core. The core is undisturbed and the sediment contacts, soil boundaries, and structures are intact and can be described accurately.
core sampling: SYNONYMS OR RELATED TERMS: coring
CATEGORY: technique
DEFINITION: A subsurface detection technique using a hollow metal tube driven into the ground to lift a column of earth for stratigraphic study. This technique is used in underground or undersea exploration. A core sample is a roughly cylindrical piece of subsurface material removed by a special drill and brought to the surface for examination. Such a sample reveals the properties of underground rock, such as its porosity and permeability and allows investigation of the features of a given strata.
corner bin: CATEGORY: feature
DEFINITION: An above-ground compartment formed by walling off a portion of a structure or courtyard other than a corner. Common construction materials and methods include vertical slabs and adobe, jacal, and coursed masonry.
cover sand: SYNONYMS OR RELATED TERMS: coversand, blow sand
CATEGORY: geology
DEFINITION: A deposit or sediment of wind-blown sand which is formed by the carrying of sand grains from glacial outwash deposits or from the shore by wind gusts. In areas where this occurs, the deposits may wipe out evidence of previous occupation -- but they may also preserve artifact associations if the deposition is thick and rapid. If it happens slowly, the archaeological material may eventually end up several kilometers from its source.
crannog: CATEGORY: geography; feature
DEFINITION: An artificial island in a lake, bog, or march that forms the foundation for a small settlement and upon which a fortified structure is usually built. This structure was typical of prehistoric Ireland, Scotland, and the Isle of Man, especially during the first century AD. The island was constructed from brushwood, stones, peat, and timber, and usually surrounded by a wooden palisade. Most crannogs probably represent single homesteads. The oldest examples in Ireland have yielded early Neolithic material (Bann flakes) and others have Beaker pottery. Most of them, however, are of Late Bronze Age, Iron Age, Early Christian, or medieval. The most interesting is that in Lough Cur in Limerick.
crucible: CATEGORY: ceramics
DEFINITION: A small, coarse pottery (or other refractory material) vessel used for holding molten metal during smelting, testing, or casting. It is usually easily recognizable from the effects of the high temperatures to which it has been subjected, as well as from its shape and thickness. Crucibles were probably so named from the Latin word crux, cross" or "trial.""
crystal: CATEGORY: artifact
DEFINITION: A material with atoms distributed in an orderly array (lattice structure), having characteristic optical and physical properties
cultural chronology: CATEGORY: chronology
DEFINITION: The ordering of past material culture into a meaningful time sequence.
cultural formation process: CATEGORY: term
DEFINITION: The deliberate and accidental activities of humans that affect how archaeological materials are buried.
cultural layer: CATEGORY: feature; term
DEFINITION: The deposition of materials from settlements or other prehistoric areas of activity that accumulate over a relatively continuous time. Several such layers create a stratigraphic and chronological sequence.
culture: CATEGORY: term
DEFINITION: In a general sense, the whole way of life of man as a species. In a more specific usage, it is the learned behavior, social customs, ideas, and technology characteristic of a certain people or civilization at a particular time or over a period of time (such as Eskimo culture). In this sense, a culture is a group of people whose total activities define what they represent and are transmitted to others in the group by social (mainly linguistic) -- as opposed to genetic -- means. Culture includes the production of ideas, artifacts, and institutions. In a more restricted sense (as in the term 'blade culture') culture signifies the artifacts or tool- and implement-making tradition of a people or a stage of development. Similar or related assemblages found in several sites within a defined area during the same time period, considered to represent the activities of one specific group of people is a culture. Cultures are often named for a particular site or an artifact. The word 'culture' in archaeology means a collection of archaeologically observable data; it is defined as the regularly occurring assemblage of associated artifacts and practices, such as pottery, house-types, metalwork, and burial rites, and regarded in this sense as the physical expression of a particular social group. This usage is especially associated with Gordon Childe, who popularized this concept as a means of analyzing prehistoric material. Thus the Bandkeramik culture of Neolithic Europe is an hypothesized social group characterized by its use of a particular type of pottery, houses, etc. The term, in reference to the specific elements of material culture, is most often used in the Old World.
culture core: CATEGORY: term
DEFINITION: Technological, organizational, and ideological features most directly related to meeting the most important material needs of a society.
cylinder hammer technique: SYNONYMS OR RELATED TERMS: soft hammer technique, bar hammer technique
CATEGORY: lithics
DEFINITION: A stone-flaking technique using a bone, antler, wood, or other relatively soft material as a hammer to remove small, flat flakes from a core during flint knapping. These flakes have a characteristically long, thin form with a diffuse bulb of percussion.
Dabar Kot: CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: A large tell site in the Loralai Valley in north Baluchistan, Pakistan. It was a trading post of the Indus civilization, probably occupied first from the 5th millennium BC; later occupied by other cultures. The later levels have produced material of Harappan type associated with local artifacts such as figurines of Zhob type.
Danilo: CATEGORY: site; culture
DEFINITION: A Neolithic culture of the Dalmatian coast of Croatia and parts of Bosnia, dating to 4700-3900 BC. The site consists of large numbers of pits and post holes, whose associated material has been subdivided typologically into five phases. There are two associated pottery styles, painted in black and broad red bands on buff ware, and incised on dark burnished ware, belong in the Middle Neolithic. The geometric designs suggest connections with contemporary wares in Italy, particularly Ripoli and Serra D'Alto. There was also a long blade and tanged point stone industry closely related to fishing.
daub: CATEGORY: artifact
DEFINITION: Clay which is smeared onto a structure of timber or wattle (interwoven twigs) as a finish to the surface. It is normally added to both faces of a wall and is used to keep out drafts and give a smooth finish. The material usually survives only when baked or fire-hardened, as would be the case if a structure burned down. It can usually be recognized by the impressions of the wattle to be found on its inner face. It was used by both Indians and European settlers in North America to construct houses.
Dead Sea Scrolls: CATEGORY: artifact; language
DEFINITION: Ancient Hebrew manuscripts recovered from five cave sites in which they had been hidden at the northwest corner of the Dead Sea. They are believed to be the religious writings of the Essenes, a sect who in the 1st century BC and 1st century AD dwelt in a monastery at Khirbet Qumran. This material, first found in 1947, is extremely relevant to the origins of Christianity. The library included all the Old Testament texts as well as sectarian works. The scrolls, together with the excavations at Qumran, have provided much information about the beliefs and way of life of the Essenes. It is thought that the library was hidden in the cave in anticipation of the destruction of Khirbet Qumran by the Romans, which occurred in 67-73 AD. The manuscripts of leather, papyrus, and copper are among the more important discoveries in the history of modern archaeology. Their recovery has enabled scholars to push back the date of the Hebrew Bible to no later than 70 AD and to reconstruct the history of Palestine from the 4th century BC to 135 AD.
debris: CATEGORY: lithics
DEFINITION: Chips and chunks of lithic material removed from a core but that do not fit the criteria for a flake or blade -- having no identifiable platform and not being able to distinguish between dorsal and ventral surfaces.
deep sea cores: SYNONYMS OR RELATED TERMS: deep sea core dating, deep-sea cores
CATEGORY: technique
DEFINITION: A technique used in the analysis of data from oceanic sediments in which the material retrieved by the core yields information on temperature changes in the ocean through time. These changes, suggestive of climatic variation, help to chart the progress of glaciation and, since they can be dated, the technique assists in the establishment of a chronology for the Quaternary. The cores, some 5 cm. in diameter and up to 25 m. deep, are extracted from the ocean floor. The sediments they contain have a high percentage of calcium carbonate content made up of the shells of small marine organisms and these sediments build up very slowly, from 10-50 mm per 1000 years, but their sequence is uninterrupted. Since these organisms have different temperature preferences depending on species, the relative abundance of the various species changes as the temperature alters. Variations in the ratio of two oxygen isotopes in the calcium carbonate of these shells give a sensitive indicator of sea temperature at the time the organisms were alive. Through the identification of the species, and by the use of oxygen isotope analysis, a picture can be built up of variations in temperature over the millennia. Since various forms of dating (radiocarbon dating, ionium dating, uranium series dating, palaeomagnetism, protactinium/ionium dating) can be used on the carbonate in the shells, absolute dates can be given to the different levels in the core. Thus dates emerge for glaciations and interglacial periods, which can assist in the age determination of archaeological material found in association with these glacial phases. Problems with the technique are the difficulty of correlating oceanic temperature changes with continental glacial and interglacial phases, and the disturbance by animals living on the ocean bottom. The piston corer was developed in 1947.
dendrochronology: SYNONYMS OR RELATED TERMS: tree-ring dating
CATEGORY: technique
DEFINITION: An absolute chronometric dating technique for measuring time intervals and dating events and environmental changes by reading and dating the pattern (number and condition) of annual rings formed in the trunks of trees. The results are compared to an established tree-ring sequence for a particular region with consideration to annual fluctuations in rainfall which result in variations in the size of the rings laid down by trees on the outside of their trunks. These variations, given favorable conditions, form a consistent pattern; and sections or cores taken from beams in ruins have been matched to provide a long chronology over large areas. The method is based on the principle that trees add a growth ring for each year of their lives, and that variations in climatic conditions will affect the width of these rings on suitable trees. In a very dry year growth will be restricted, and the ring narrow, while a wet and humid year will produce luxuriant growth and a thick ring. By comparing a complete series of rings from a tree of known date (for example, one still alive) with a series from an earlier, dead tree overlapping in age, ring patterns from the central layers of the recent tree and the outer of the old may show a correlation which allows the dating, in calendar years, of the older tree. The central rings of this older tree may then be compared with the outer rings or a yet older tree, and so on until the dates reach back into prehistory. Problems that arise are when climatic variation and suitable trees (sensitive trees react to climatic changes, complacent trees do not) are not be present to produce any significant and recognizable pattern of variation in the rings. Another problem is that there may be gaps in the sequences of available timber, so that the chronology 'floats', or is not tied in to a calendrical date or living trees: it can only be used for relative dating. Also, the tree-ring key can only go back a certain distance into the past, since the availability of sufficient amounts of timber to construct a sequence obviously decreases. Only in a few areas of the world are there species of trees so long-lived that long chronologies can be built up. This method is especially important in the southwestern United States, Alaska, and Scandinavia, dating back to several thousand years BC in some areas. Dendrochronology is of immense importance for archaeology, especially for its contribution to the refining of radiocarbon dating. Since timber can be dated by radiocarbon, dates may be obtained from dendrochronologically dated trees. It has been shown that the radiocarbon dates diverge increasingly from calendrical dates provided by tree-rings the further back into prehistory they go, the radiocarbon dates being younger than the tree-ring dates. This has allowed the questioning of one of the underlying assumptions of radiocarbon dating, the constancy of the concentration of C14 in the atmosphere. Fluctuations in this concentration have now been shown back as far as dendrochronological sequences go (to c 7000 BC), and thus dating technique is serving the further research on another. In 1929, A.E. Douglass first showed how this method could be used to date archaeological material. The long-living Bristlecone Pine (Pinus aristata) of California has yielded a sequence extending back to c 9000 bp. In Ireland, oak preserved in bogs has produced a floating chronology from c 2850-5950 bp.
deposition: SYNONYMS OR RELATED TERMS: depositional process
CATEGORY: geology; term
DEFINITION: Any of the various processes by which artifacts move from active use to an archaeological context, such as loss, disposal, abandonment, burial, etc. It is the laying, placing, or throwing down of any material. In geology, it is the constructive process of accumulation into beds, veins, or irregular masses of any kind of loose, solid rock material by any kind of natural agent (wind, water, ice). The transformation of materials from a systemic to an archaeological context are directly responsible for the accumulation of archaeological sites and they constitute the dominant factor in forming the archaeological record. Deposition is the last stage of behavioral processes, in which artifacts are discarded.
depositional environment: CATEGORY: term; geology
DEFINITION: Any stratum or unit making up a separate layer of material at an archaeological site; the total of sedimentary and biological conditions, factors, and processes that result in a deposit(s). A depositional history is the order in which objects are deposited at a site.
detritus: CATEGORY: lithics; geology
DEFINITION: Debris or droppings created by detrition. Matter produced by the wearing away of exposed surfaces, especially the gravel, sand, clay, or other materials eroded and washed away by water.
Devon Downs: CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: A limestone shelter in cliffs beside the lower Murray River in South Australia with a deposit rich in faunal material as well as stone and bone tools and dating to c 4000 BC. It was the first systematic archaeological excavation in Australia (1929). Interpretation of the stratigraphy and stone tool sequence at two sites introduced concepts of antiquity and cultural change in Aboriginal prehistory which had previously been denied in Australian anthropology.
diadem: CATEGORY: artifact
DEFINITION: A plain or decorated headband or crown of manmade or natural materials, usually as a badge of status or office.
diggings: CATEGORY: artifact; term
DEFINITION: Excavated materials or the site that has been or is being excavated.
direct acquisition: CATEGORY: term
DEFINITION: A form of trade in which a person or group procures raw material directly from a source area or trades for it or finished products
ditch: CATEGORY: feature
DEFINITION: A common feature of archaeological sites in association with defensive structures, as a means of drainage, or as a construction trench. A ditch was usually dug outside the walls of forts, fortresses and so on, as part of the defenses, and was often filled with water. Ditches which are allowed to erode, without much interference, go through three phases of infilling. Primary fill accumulates as the sides of the ditch collapse. Vegetation then begins at the bottom of the ditch and the secondary fill starts to build up. This material has a much finer texture than primary fill. The rate of secondary fill deposition is related to soil erosion in the surrounding area. If the land by the ditch is plowed, thick colluvial deposits, called tertiary fill, may bury the secondary fill.
DNA: SYNONYMS OR RELATED TERMS: deoxyribonucleic acid
CATEGORY: term
DEFINITION: The basic material of chromosomes, which carries the hereditary instructions (the blueprint") which determine the formation of all living organisms. Genes the organizers of inheritance are composed of DNA. Analysis of the DNA of different primate groups has been used to determine the evolutionary line of modern humans. DNA techniques have also been used to show how long various regional human populations have been separated from each other. DNA analysis of blood residue both human and animal on prehistoric tools and weapons may provide information on the evolutionary relationships of a range of animal species and between prehistoric and modern humans."
documentary archaeology: CATEGORY: branch
DEFINITION: The use of documentary sources to generate or enhance perspectives on the past, even in the absence of known archaeological materials.
Dorak: CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: A site of northwest Anatolia (western Turkey), south of the Sea of Marmora, reported to have two looted 'royal tombs' of the Copper Age comparable to, but far richer than, those of Alaca Hüyük. The material, which was photographed, drawn, and described by J. Mellaart, vanished immediately after his report -- creating controversy and doubt that the tombs even existed.
dowsing: CATEGORY: technique
DEFINITION: A technique for discovering buried features or materials by the use of a Y-shaped hazel wand or bimetal strip -- a practice similar to water divining. Supposedly the location of subsurface features may take place by employing a twig, copper rod, pendulum and observing the discontinuous movements of these instruments"."
Druids: CATEGORY: culture
DEFINITION: A powerful Celtic priesthood of the Gauls and Britons from the 1st century BC through the 1st century AD. They led the resistance to the Romans, and when they were finally defeated in 78 AD they were exterminated, partly due to human sacrifices that they carried out. The Druids believed in reincarnation, worshipped the moon and heavenly bodies, and built circular temples in forest groves. Archaeologically the only material definitely attributed to them is a hoard of bronze and iron at Llyn Cerrig Bach in Anglesey. It is no held that they built Stonehenge or Avebury.
Dublin: CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: The modern capital of Ireland (Eire) was founded by the Vikings, or Norsemen, in the 9th century (c 831) and built on the ridge above the south bank of the river, the same spot where Dublin Castle was built. Throughout much of the Middle Ages it remained one of the foremost sea ports in the British Isles. Viking Dublin was a prosperous settlement, and excavations begun in the 1960s revealed a wealth of archaeological evidence for that period. From prehistoric times people have dwelt in the area about Dublin Bay, and four of Ireland's five great roads converged near the spot called Baile Atha Cliath (The Town of the Ford of the Hurdle"). Remarkable waterlogged conditions have preserved organic material from levels dating to between the 9th-14th centuries. The footings of wattle-and-daub and timber-framed buildings have been recovered with door posts screens and hearths as well as timber streets. There is also abundant evidence of the crafts and industries from the Hiberno-Scandinavian and Anglo-Norman periods -- woodworking metalworking hooping combmaking leatherworking and cobbling."
dune: CATEGORY: geology; geography
DEFINITION: A landform (hill, mound, or ridge) of sand or other loose material that is formed by wind action. Dunes exist due to the ability of wind to transport unconsolidated material and are mainly associated with desert regions where windblown sand occupies extensive areas. In the recent geological past, desert areas may have been even larger during dry periods in the Pleistocene glaciation. At that time great areas of loess (windblown silt) were deposited across North America, Europe, and Asia. Dunes also form in coastal areas. Migration of active dunes can bury archaeological deposits.
Dunhuang: SYNONYMS OR RELATED TERMS: Tun-huang
CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: A site in northwestern China with many Buddhist sculptures, frescoes, and Mogao grottoes. It was a Chinese frontier outpost at a place where the Silk Route branched before crossing Central Asia. It was established as a Han military commandery in 111 BC and many documents and manuscripts dating from the Han dynasty have been found there. There is a complex of nearly 500 Buddhist cave temples with well-preserved paintings and sculptures. A Buddhist library walled up in a cave around 1035 and rediscovered in 1900 contained thousands of manuscripts written in Chinese and various Central Asian scripts, some with dates ranging from 406-996. Among the material in the British Museum is the oldest extant printed book in the world, a Chinese translation of the Diamond Sutra, a Buddhist text, dated 868 AD. Many other manuscripts and paintings obtained by Aurel Stein are kept at the British Museum.
dyad: SYNONYMS OR RELATED TERMS: pair-statue
CATEGORY: artifact
DEFINITION: A pair of statues, often carved from the same block of material, either representing a man and his wife or depicting two versions of the same person.
earth: CATEGORY: geology
DEFINITION: A general term used to describe mixed material which dug from an excavation. Earth is not really the same as soil, which has a more precise definition, although earth may include material from soils in addition to material from other sources.
earthworm: SYNONYMS OR RELATED TERMS: angleworm
CATEGORY: fauna
DEFINITION: Any of nearly 2000 species of terrestrial worms which act as one of the main agents by which plant litter, humus, and minerals are incorporated and mixed in soil. Earthworms are responsible for the maintenance and stability of various types of soil, especially the brown forest soils. The character of a soil may change markedly if the plant litter made by the vegetation changes to a kind which is unpalatable to earthworms. The effects of earthworm sorting may be seen on archaeological sites in the blurring of layers and the development of worm-sorted layers in the top of buried soils. Earthworms usually remain near the soil surface, but they are known to tunnel as deep as 6 feet during periods of dryness or in winter. Indirectly they provide food for man by aerating the soil, promoting drainage, and drawing organic material into their burrows where it decomposes faster, thus producing more nutritive materials for growing plants.
ecofact: CATEGORY: flora; fauna
DEFINITION: Any flora or fauna material found at an archaeological site; nonartifactual evidence that has not been technologically altered but that has cultural relevance, such as a shell carried from the ocean to an inland settlement. Seeds, pollen, animal bone, insects, fish bones, and mollusks are all ecofacts; the category includes both inorganic and organic ecofacts.
edge angle: SYNONYMS OR RELATED TERMS: edge-angle
CATEGORY: lithics
DEFINITION: The angle of the cutting edge of a stone (or other material) tool. The edge angle often indicates the purpose for which the tool was used. Edge-wear analysis is the microscopic examination of the working edges of tools.
Egolzwil: CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: A series of Neolithic sites around former Lake Wauwil in Switzerland from the earliest phase of the Neolithic in that area. Most of them belong to the Cortaillod culture and have well-preserved organic material. The site of Egolzwil 4 had ten rectangular wooden houses placed close together. Food remains include cereals, lentils, beans, and flax, and wild strawberries and chestnuts; animal remains include both domesticated and wild animals, and duck, salmon, perch, and carp from the lake. The earliest settlement, Egolzwil 3 dated to the late 5th or early 4th millennium BC.
Egyptology: CATEGORY: branch
DEFINITION: A branch of archaeology specializing in the investigation of ancient Egyptian civilization, especially the study of pharaonic Egypt (c 4500 BC-641 AD) and its relics. Some scholars date the beginning of the discipline September 1822, when Jean-François Champollion wrote his Lettre a Dacier relative a l'alphabet des hierglyphes phonetiques" in which he demonstrated that he had deciphered the hieroglyphic script. Others say Egyptology began when the scholars accompanying Napoleon Bonaparte's invasion of Egypt (1798-1801) published the "Description de l'Égypte" (1809-28) which made large quantities of source material about ancient Egypt available to scholars."
Ekain: CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: A Magdalenian cave site in northern Spain with fine cave art. The material of the Aurignacian and early Magdalenian dates from 16,500-15,400 bp, but the art is assigned to around 12,050 bp.
El Castillo: CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: Cave site in northern Spain, spanning the entire Palaeolithic. Its earliest Aurignacian material has been dated to c 38,700 bp. There are engravings and paintings of the Upper Palaeolithic, c 20,000-10,000 BC, in the caves.
Elands Bay: CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: A cave site on the coast of Cape Province, South Africa, with Middle Stone Age material.
electron microscopy: CATEGORY: technique
DEFINITION: A technique used to study materials at extremely high magnification using electrons instead of light. It is useful for identifying a range of things, including bone diseases and residues on the edges of used stone tools.
eluvial horizon: CATEGORY: geology
DEFINITION: A soil horizon from which minerals, humus, or plant nutrients have been lost. It has lost the material in solution or suspension by pedogenesic processes. The most common eluvial horizon is E.
enamel: CATEGORY: artifact
DEFINITION: A comparatively soft glass, a compound of flint or sand, red lead, and soda or potash. The materials are melted together, producing an almost clear glass, with a slightly bluish or greenish tinge (flux or frit). The degree of hardness of the flux depends on the proportions of the components in the mix. Enamels are called hard when the temperature required to fuse them is very high and it will not decompose as soft enamel would. Soft enamels require less heat to fire them and consequently are more convenient to use, but they do not wear as well. Enamel was first used in the Bronze and Iron Ages. It was often melted and united with gold, silver, copper, bronze, and other metals in a furnace. Enamel is colored white by oxide of tin, blue by oxide of cobalt, red by gold, green by copper. Different kinds of enamel are: 1) inlaid or incrusted, 2) transparent, showing designs on the metal under it, 3) painted as a complete picture. The various techniques practiced by craftsmen in the past differ mainly in the methods employed in preparing the metal to receive the powdered enamel. Some of those methods are cloisonné, champlevé, encrusted enameling, and painted enamels.
engrave: CATEGORY: artifact
DEFINITION: To carve, cut, or etch into a material or surface
envelope: CATEGORY: artifact; language
DEFINITION: A hollow clay ball of spherical, ovoid, or oblong shape holding tokens and usually bearing seal impressions. Clay envelopes, dating from 3500 BC, have markings corresponding to the clay shapes inside. Moreover, these markings are more or less similar to the shapes drawn on clay tablets that date back to about 3100 BC. These markings are thought to constitute a logographic form of writing consisting of some 1,200 different characters representing numerals, names, and such material objects as cloth and cow. Tokens placed in an envelope might have constituted a sort of bill of lading" or a record of indebtedness. To serve as a reminder of the contents of the envelope so that every reader would not need to break open the envelope to read the contents corresponding shapes were impressed upon the envelope. But if the content was marked on the envelope there was no need to put the tokens in an envelope at all; the envelope could be flattened into a convenient surface and the shapes impressed on it. Now that there was no need for the tokens at all their message was simply inscribed into the clay. These shapes drawn in the wet clay with a reed stylus or pointed stick constituted the first writing."
eolian: SYNONYMS OR RELATED TERMS: aeolian
CATEGORY: geology
DEFINITION: Of or pertaining to the wind. This adjective is used to describe deposits or materials moved or affected by the wind or processes related to the wind. Aeolian deposits can bury archaeological materials intact or with little disturbance. Aeolian erosion can collapse and displace archaeological materials. Aeolian particle movement can alter archaeological material through abrasion.
epigraphy: SYNONYMS OR RELATED TERMS: epigrapher
CATEGORY: branch
DEFINITION: The study of ancient inscriptions and letter forms on buildings, statuary, tablets, and other durable materials and objects (such as wood, bone, pottery, stone). An expert in such studies is an epigrapher or epigraphist. Such texts are often the only surviving records of extinct cultures and chronicle ancient events, beliefs, and lists of kings. Epigraphy encompasses inscriptions from the earliest complex societies to those of modern states. Epigraphy sometimes does not include the study of texts painted on ceramics or written on papyrus or wood, which are regarded as within the studies of ceramics and papyrology, respectively. Epigraphy deals both with the form of the inscriptions, and with their content: study of the form enables assessment of the development of language and the alphabet; their content is, however, usually more important for the light thrown on the social, political, religious, and economic life of the ancient world. The science includes decipherment, translation, explanation, and evaluation of the inscriptions.
erosion: SYNONYMS OR RELATED TERMS: weathering
CATEGORY: geology
DEFINITION: The wearing away or loosening and transportation of soil or rock by water, wind, and ice. A group of processes are involved in the physical breakdown or chemical solution, removal, and transportation of the materials. Erosion can be accelerated by activities on the landscape. Three forms that can have significant impact on the archaeological record are soil erosion, gully erosion, and wind erosion.
ethnoarchaeology: SYNONYMS OR RELATED TERMS: 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.
ethnographic parallel: SYNONYMS OR RELATED TERMS: ethnological parallel; ethnographic analogy
CATEGORY: technique
DEFINITION: A contemporary culture or behavior that, by the use of analogy and homology, is considered to be similar to another in history and therefore shed light on the latter. It is the use of both material and nonmaterial aspects of a living culture to form models to test interpretations of archaeological remains.
eustasy: SYNONYMS OR RELATED TERMS: adj. eustatic
CATEGORY: geology
DEFINITION: Changes in sea level on a global basis, usually as the result of a major event such as the end of a glaciation. In such a case a eustatic rise due to the melting of the glaciers can be expected in a post-glacial period. These sea-level movements can be independent of any change in the height of the land, but isostasy can happen contemporaneously as a result of the same phenomenon. This worldwide alteration in sea level is independent of any isostatic movement of the land. At the end of a glaciation melting of the water previously held in the ice sheets raises sea levels (eustatic rise), and a high level can often be correlated with an interglacial period or with the postglacial phase. Such fluctuations have occurred throughout the Quaternary, due to changes in the extent of ice sheets and thus in the volume of water locked up as ice. The larger the ice sheets, the less water available to the sea, and so sea level is lower during glacials than during interglacials. Evidence exists for a whole series of eustatic sea level fluctuations, but the most widespread is the 'high stand' in c 120,000 bp, just before the start of the last cold stage, when sea levels were between 2-10 meters higher than at the present day. During the maximum extent of the ice-sheets of the last cold stage, eustatic sea level was much lower than that of today. Large areas of continental shelf were exposed, some being occupied by the ice sheets themselves. Recovery of sea level at the end of the last cold stage is relatively well known from deposits in the Netherlands, Scandinavia, and Scotland, but is complicated by isostatic changes. The North Sea and English Channel flooded, separating Britain from the Continent, by about 7000 bp. Ireland became a separate island at about the same time. Scandinavia had a complicated series of different seas and lakes, until a sea similar to today's Baltic became established around 7000 bp. The main factors that influence sea level are global ice volumes, plate tectonics, changes in ocean volumes and dimensions, and the movement of mantle material.
excavate: CATEGORY: technique
DEFINITION: To dig out and remove archaeological materials from a site; to carry out the process of excavation.
excavation: CATEGORY: technique
DEFINITION: The systematic and scientific recovery of cultural, material remains of people as a means of obtaining data about past human activity. Excavation is digging or related types of salvage work, scientifically controlled so as to yield the maximum amount of data. It is the main tool of the archaeologist. The excavation of a site, however, involves the destruction of the primary evidence, which can never be recovered. Excavation should therefore never be undertaken lightly or without an understanding of the obligations of the excavator to the evidence he destroys. The first decision is whether to excavate a site at all, a question of particular interest when sites are being rapidly destroyed by farming methods and road and town building. The nature and scale of the undertaking is the next decision. If time and/or money is short, sampling of the site may be all that is possible. If a large-scale excavation is to be undertaken, the approach will be either area (open) excavation, grid method, quadrant method, rabotage, sondage, etc. Removal of the topsoil will either be carried out by hand or machine. After an initial plan has been made of all visible features before excavation, digging proceeds according to the dictates of the site: sections may be taken across areas of feature intersection, or across individual features. A permanent record of the whole process should be kept: plans, drawings, notes, photographs. Excavation is only the first part of the process. For years, excavation was regarded as merely a method of collecting artifacts. Pitt Rivers in Britain and Petrie in the Near East first placed emphasis on evidence rather than artifacts, not what is found but where it was found relative to the layers of deposit (stratigraphy) and to other objects (association) -- the context. The excavator can only justify his destruction if it is done with meticulous care so that every artifact, be it an ax or a posthole, is discovered and if possible preserved; if it is recorded accurately enough for all information to remain available after the site has disappeared; and if this record is quickly made available by publication. In short, excavation is the digging of archaeological sites, removal of the matrix, and observance of the provenience and context of the finds therein, and the recording of them in a three-dimensional way.
experimental archaeology: SYNONYMS OR RELATED TERMS: experimental studies
CATEGORY: branch
DEFINITION: The reconstruction and reproduction of past behavior and processes to obtain or evaluate archaeological data and test hypotheses about the way man dealt with subsistence and technology. The experiments involve such activities as creating and using stone tools, duplicating prehistoric methods of farming, building, and travel, etc. The term is normally used only for those experiments which deal with material culture, such as industry, the building of structures, mining, and crop processing. The more theoretical aspects, such as ideas about the development and organization of society, are generally thought of a part of processual archaeology rather than experimental. Reconstructions can be based on excavated ground plans, and some of these have been deliberately burned or left to decay so that an idea can be gained of what the archaeologist might expect to find later. Boats have been built and sailed, food has been cooked in earth ovens and eaten, stone monuments have been laboriously erected, and trumpets and stringed instruments have been made and played. Although past events are not exactly repeatable, experimental simulation can prove very instructive and is being increasingly used. One of the earliest examples was General Pitt-Rivers' observations of the rate and duration of ditch silting on his excavations at Cranbourne Chase in the 19th century.
extensometer: CATEGORY: tool
DEFINITION: A device for measuring small increases in the length of metals and materials.
extraction locus: CATEGORY: term
DEFINITION: Any place where large amounts of material are extracted or processed, such as a quarry, clay pit, or kill site.
fabric: CATEGORY: ceramics
DEFINITION: The material of which pottery is composed; the body of processed clay and temper additives in ceramics.
faience: SYNONYMS OR RELATED TERMS: faïence, fayence; frit, paste
CATEGORY: ceramics
DEFINITION: A name used for the medieval pottery of Faenza in northern Italy, one of the chief seats of the ceramics industry in the 16th century; it was an early majolica. It is also used for the tin-glazed earthenware made in France, Germany, Spain, and Scandinavia as distinguished from Faenza majolica, and that made in The Netherlands and England, which is called delft. But most accurately, it is the primitive form of glass developed in Mesopotamia in the 3rd millennium BC and then, almost as early, in Egypt; it is sometimes called Egyptian faience. It is a substance composed of a sand and clay mixture baked to a temperature at which the surface begins to fuse to a bluish or greenish glass. It was colored with copper salts to produce a blue-green finish and used especially for beads and figurines, particularly in the second millennium BC. Its main use in the Bronze Age was for beads, seals, figurines, and similar small objects. The glazed material could be comprised of a base of either carved steatite (soapstone) or molded clay with a core of crushed quartz (or quartz and soda-lime) fired so that the surface fuses into a glassy coating. Examples occur also in Bronze Age contexts in Europe, including the Wessex Culture.
fall-off analysis: CATEGORY: technique
DEFINITION: The study of regularities in the way in which quantities of traded items found in the archaeological record decline as the distance from the source increases. This may be plotted as a fall-off curve, with the quantities of material (Y-axis) plotted against the distance from source (X-axis).
Far'ah, Tell el-: SYNONYMS OR RELATED TERMS: el-Fara
CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: Two tells of this name, excavated in Palestine, inland from Gaza. The northern tell had a 4th millennium BC Chalcolithic settlement with circular, semi-subterranean dwellings and an Early Bronze Age occupation. It later became an Israelite town; for a few years in the 9th century BC, the northern tell was the capital of Israel (Tirzah), before Omri moved to Samaria. The southern tell may have been a Hyksos fortification. Its remains include a large building of the Late Bronze Age and remains of the Philistines from the Iron Age. The most impressive material came from five rich Philistine tombs containing characteristic Philistine decorated pottery, native Late Bronze Age undecorated wares, bronze bowls, daggers and spears; an iron dagger and an iron knife were also found, among the earliest finds of this metal in Palestine.
fardo: CATEGORY: artifact
DEFINITION: In Peruvian archaeology, the package" formed by a human mummy wrapped together with various funerary offerings (amulets etc.) usually in several yards of material. Often a false head of wood or straw or metal mask was fixed to top of a fardo."
fiber-tempered pottery: SYNONYMS OR RELATED TERMS: fiber tempering
CATEGORY: ceramics
DEFINITION: Any clay pottery to which grass or root fibers have been added as a tempering material. This ware is the earliest pottery in Caribbean South America and is the oldest pottery in the United States, making its appearance in Archaic shell mounds in Georgia and Florida before 2500 BC.
filler: CATEGORY: artifact
DEFINITION: A powdered or ground substance added to a paint or sculpture material to give extra bulk or body. Fillers for resin also make the material opaque.
fineware: CATEGORY: artifact
DEFINITION: Good-quality pottery that has a fine textured fabric, relatively thin walls, and is usually tableware or for personal use. Fineware may be decorated, but above all stands out within the overall repertoire of material used by a community in being of superior quality.
Finglesham: CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: An early Saxon cemetery in Kent, used between the early 6th and mid-7th centuries. The large inhumation cemetery has produced an impressive collection of material including a pattern-welded sword, garnet-inlaid bird brooches made in Kent, radiate brooches from the continent, and a richly decorated square-headed brooch. Wooden boxes with bronze binding, strings of beads, corroded buckets, and bone objects of the period were also found. Some of the female burials seem to have been interred alive.
finishing technique: CATEGORY: ceramics
DEFINITION: A method for altering the surface characteristics of vessels by displacing or impressing surface material or applying or removing material.
Fiorelli, Giuseppe (1823-1896): CATEGORY: person
DEFINITION: Archaeologist who took over the early excavations at Pompeii, from 1860-1875, and was one of the first to apply the methods of stratigraphy and area excavation on a large scale. Through his training school at Pompeii he passed on his methods to many other archaeologists. He also developed a technique for taking plaster casts of the hollows in the hardened ash and cinders, thus creating impressions of the dead and other materials.
fire: CATEGORY: term
DEFINITION: The natural product of combustion, seen in the form of flame and smoke. The use of fire was a major landmark in man's adaptation to the cooler environment of the earth; it is often considered the single most important discovery by early man. Man probably knew how to make fire between 500,000-800,000 years ago in Europe or Asia. The ability to make fire efficiently and at will rather than merely catching it from natural sources may date from less than 200,000 years ago. Fire is first found on occupation sites of the Lower Palaeolithic period, approximately half a million years ago, although true hearths do not become typical until the penultimate glacial period, perhaps 200,000 years ago. Hearths and thick deposits of burnt material are typical of the last glacial period, by which time it is likely that the two main methods of making fire (the friction method of rubbing or rotating sticks to generate heat and the percussion method of striking sparks with iron and flint) were both in use.
fireplace: SYNONYMS OR RELATED TERMS: fire-place, hearth
CATEGORY: structure
DEFINITION: A place for building a fire, especially a semiopen space with a chimney; housing for an open fire within a dwelling. They are used for heating and cooking. Very early medieval fireplaces had semicircular backs and hoods and there was no chimney; the smoke passed out through an opening in the wall. By the 11th century, chimneys were added. Early fireplaces were made of stone; later, brick became the more popular material.
fishbone analysis: CATEGORY: technique
DEFINITION: The study of the remains of fish on archaeological sites, in the form of bones, otoliths, and scales. The latter only survive occasionally in anaerobic conditions, while otoliths have not, to date, been frequently recorded. Fish have markedly different skeletons from mammals. Many fishbones are so small that they appear only in sieving and the bones commonly preserved are the jaws and some other head bones, and the vertebrae. They usually accumulate in refuse deposits and may be interpreted in terms of diet and fishing on the site or in the area that supplied it. Identification of species through comparison with modern fishbones is becoming easier as larger collections of comparative material are built up. When a species has been identified it can lead to evidence for the hydrological conditions around the site; also, the occurrence of the remains of marine species on an inland site has implications for the movement of groups or a trade in fish. A combination of species identification and aging of fish through study of the otoliths can lead to assumptions about the seasonal occupation of certain settlement sites and the subsistence economy of the associated groups.
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.
flaker: CATEGORY: lithics
DEFINITION: Any pressure-flaking tool, often made from bone or antler, used to detach flakes in stone material in knapping; an implement for flaking flint.
flaking: CATEGORY: lithics
DEFINITION: The process of making stone tools by removing flakes from a larger mass, by percussion or pressure from another tool. Percussion flaking is done by striking the stone to be chipped with another stone or bone. Pressure flaking is done by pressing a blunt-pointed tool of antler or bone against the edge to be worked. Flaking is feasible with materials that are glassy in nature and fracture evenly (as obsidian, flint); it is not feasible with materials such as granite or sandstone which in general are ground.
flint: SYNONYMS OR RELATED TERMS: 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).
flint scatter: CATEGORY: artifact
DEFINITION: A general term applied to collections of worked flint, stone, debitage, and associated raw material gathered up from the surface of ploughed fields or disturbed ground. Such collections range in size from a few dozen through to many thousands of pieces, and may have been collected from areas of any size from a few metres across to several hectares. As such they do not represent distinct kinds of archaeological site but rather the archaeological manifestation of many different kinds of activity; their unity is a product of the way material has been recovered rather than the processes by which it was created in the first place. Much work has been devoted to characterizing flint scatters in terms of what they represent. It is now clear that some are caused by the erosion of underlying features and deposits which relate to a vast range of activities including settlements, stoneworking sites, and middens. In other cases the scatters reflect episodes of activity in the past that involved little more than the deposition of material on the contemporary ground surface which has subsequently become incorporated into the topsoil through natural and anthropogenic formation processes.
Florence: SYNONYMS OR RELATED TERMS: Roman Florentia, modern Italian Firenze
CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: Florence is a city in central Italy that was founded as a Roman military colony about the 1st century BC and achieved preeminence in commerce and finance, learning, and the arts during the 14th-16th centuries. Discovery of Villanovan material suggests earlier occupation, perhaps from the 8th-9th centuries BC. Remains of the Roman period include bath buildings, theater and amphitheater, and a temple to Isis.
florescence: CATEGORY: term
DEFINITION: In archaeology, what is considered the peak period of a culture -- the state or period of flourishing -- particularly in material aspects such as art and architecture.
flot: CATEGORY: technique; term
DEFINITION: A term from the technique of flotation; it is used to describe the material which floats on water or other media during the flotation process. Flot can be plant remains such as seeds and charcoal, insect remains, shells, as well as miscellaneous intrusive material like plant roots which are sorted from the sample before analysis.
flotation: CATEGORY: technique
DEFINITION: A technique developed to assist in the recovery of plant, insect, and molluscan remains from archaeological deposits; a method of screening in which minute pieces of flora are separated from the soil by agitation with water. The technique works on the principle that organic material such as carbonized seeds, snail-shells, and beetle wing-cases have a lower specific gravity than inorganic materials such as soil and stone, and will thus float on the top of a suitable liquid medium while the rest will sink. Water is commonly used for flotation, though there are disadvantages since it has a fairly low specific gravity and heavier material such as fruit stones will sink. Other media have been used, such as carbon tetrachloride solution or zinc chloride solution. Flotation of samples by hand is called wet sieving. Samples of material are slowly poured into water, any lumps are broken up, and the flot is drawn off with a sieve. The method is more controlled than flotation by machine, and the recovery rate is better. For large-scale excavations, machines are used. Operating principles vary: samples are poured into a large container of water, or water and paraffin, which is agitated by air injection or by currents of inflowing water. The addition of a floculating agent increases surface tension, though not all machines are 'froth flotation' machines. The flot is carried off the surface through a mesh, or series of meshes to allow preliminary sorting. Samples retrieved are sent away for specialist identification and analysis by an archaeobotanist.
fluorine dating: SYNONYMS OR RELATED TERMS: fluorine test
CATEGORY: technique
DEFINITION: A relative dating technique used on bone. Bone absorbs fluorine from groundwater at a rate proportional to the time since burial -- if groundwater migration rates remain constant. Fluorine concentrations are chemically analyzed by the gradual combination of fluorine in groundwater with the calcium phosphate of the buried bone material. Bones from the same stratigraphical context can be dated relatively by comparison of their fluorine content. The Piltdown forgery was finally exposed by this method.
flux: CATEGORY: term
DEFINITION: Material used to lower melting temperatures of or promote fusion between metals or minerals -- as in soldering, welding, and glass-making.
Fontéchevade: CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: A French cave site in the Charente region, dated to the Riss glaciation. It has fragments of a human skull in association with chopping tools of Tayacian or Clactonian character dating from the Riss or Riss-Würm Interglacial period. The Fontéchevade skull has been classified as pre- or early Neanderthal. The upper levels are Middle and Upper Palaeolithic material.
footing: CATEGORY: structure
DEFINITION: A wall section below the basal stones. A footing is not a continuation of the wall masonry and its materials usually differ in size and shape from those used in the wall. Often, a footing is laid in a trench.
formation process: SYNONYMS OR RELATED TERMS: site formation process
CATEGORY: term; technique
DEFINITION: The total of the processes -- natural and cultural, individual and combined -- that affected the formation and development of the archaeological record. Natural formation processes refer to natural or environmental events which govern the burial and survival of the archaeological record. Cultural formation processes include the deliberate or accidental activities of humans. On a settlement site, for example, the nature of human occupation, the activities carried out, the pattern of breakage and loss of material, rubbish disposal, rebuilding, or re-use of the same area will all influence the surviving archaeological deposits. After the site's abandonment, it will be further affected by such factors as erosion, glaciation, later agriculture, the activities of plants and animals, as well as the natural processes of chemical action in the soil. Reconstruction of these processes helps to relate the observed evidence of an archaeological site to the human activity responsible for it.
fossil cuticles: CATEGORY: artifact
DEFINITION: The outermost layer of the skin of leaves or blades of grass, made of cutin, a very resistant, protective material that survives in the archaeological record often in feces. Cuticular analysis is useful to palynology in environmental reconstruction.
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.
fracture mechanics: CATEGORY: artifact
DEFINITION: Characterization of crack growth (fatigue crack growth, sustained load fracture and dynamic crack growth). There are also two chapters dealing with mechanisms of fracture and the ways in which actual material behavior influences the fracture mechanics characterization of crack growth.
Fraser River: CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: A complex of sites in the Fraser River delta in British Columbia, Canada, showing the sequence of the Northwest Coast Tradition of three periods: Early 1000 BC-1 AD; Intermediate 1-1250 AD; and Late from 1250 AD. Three culturally distinct areas (the Canyon, the Plateau, and the Delta) contain evidence of the differing influences which influenced the Northwest Coast Tradition materials. Canyon sites provide evidence of a long occupation covering Big Game Hunting Tradition, Old Cordilleran Culture, and Archaic. Taken together, the sites indicate a movement from inland to the coast beginning c 2000 BC.
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.
frost marks: CATEGORY: feature
DEFINITION: Variations in the amount of frost retained on the ground that indicate the presence of buried archaeological features, detected primarily by aerial photography. The differential retention of frost in hollows and over different types of material can reveal the features of an archaeological site.
froth flotation: CATEGORY: technique
DEFINITION: Flotation in which the separation is enhanced by using a liquid to which a frothing agent, such as a detergent, has been added and bubbling air through it, forming a froth in which certain lightweight materials collect. Soil samples agitated in froth flotation, such as seeds and charcoal fragments, can be more easily separated from the matrix by this method.
Fuegian tradition: SYNONYMS OR RELATED TERMS: Shell Knife culture
CATEGORY: culture
DEFINITION: A primitive people inhabiting the South American archipelago of Tierra del Fuego from c 2000 BC. The culture, a coastal tradition of the Alacaluf tribes, was often called the Shell Knife culture. It was based on the exploitation of marine resources and operative on the southern coast and offshore islands of southern Chile. The beginning of the tradition was marked by a change from land-oriented hunting and gathering; bone and stone tool technology persisted well into historic times. The primitive cultures of the Ona and Yámana (Yahgan) of Tierra del Fuego are so similar that anthropologists traditionally group them with the neighboring Chono and Alakaluf of Chile into this one Fuegian culture area". The Ona inhabit the interior forests and depend heavily on hunting guanaco (a small New World camel). The Yámana are canoe-using fishermen and shellfish gatherers. They are all nomadic and are sparsely scattered over the landscape and poor in material culture."
Funan: CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: The Chinese name for an early kingdom of Southeast Asia, founded in the 1st century AD and recorded as a trading partner of China from at least the 3rd century AD. Located in the lower Mekong region of Cambodia and southern Vietnam, this Indianized state was strategically situated on the trade routes between India and China. It was conquered by the Khmer state of Chenla in the 7th century. There is abundant information about the material culture of Funan from excavations, notably those of Oc-eo, thought to have been its main port, and from Angkor Borei.
Gawra, Tepe: CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: A tell site east of the Tigris River near Khorsabad, Iraq, occupied from the 6th-2nd millennia BC. The earliest material was of the Halaf period, while the succeeding period shows increasing contacts with the southern Mesopotamian 'Ubaid culture. It was as a northern outpost of the 'Ubaid culture in the 5th-4th millennia. Three temples facing onto open courtyards show resemblance to works at Eridu and Warka. There is evidence for surprisingly extensive trade. Neolithic settlers used undecorated pottery and Halaf pottery. The succeeding period is contemporary with the Uruk and Jemdet Nasr periods to the south; this is often described as the 'Gawra period' late 4th millennium BC). In this period there is abundant evidence for differential wealth and social position, seen in the grave goods. Several temples of the period have an unusual form with separate portico. The most distinctive building of this phase, however, is a circular structure known as the 'Round House'.
Geissenklösterle: CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: A cave in Baden-Württemberg, Germany, with Middle Palaeolithic, Aurignacian (36,000-34,000 bp), Gravettian (23,000 bp), Magdalenian, and Mesolithic material. The Aurignacian levels have ivory figurines and an ivory bas-relief of a human.
gender archaeology: CATEGORY: branch
DEFINITION: The archaeological study of the relative positions in society of men and women through identifying and studying the differences in power and authority they held, as they are manifested in material remains. These differences can survive in the physical record although they are not always immediately apparent and are often open to interpretation. The relationship between the genders can also inform relationships between other social groups such as families, different classes, ages and religions.
gender archaeology: CATEGORY: term
DEFINITION: The archaeological study of the relative positions in society of men and women through identifying and studying the differences in power and authority they held, as they are manifested in material remains. These differences can survive in the physical record although they are not always immediately apparent and are often open to interpretation. The relationship between the genders can also inform relationships between other social groups such as families, different classes, ages and religions.
genome: CATEGORY: term
DEFINITION: The collection of genes in the nucleic-acid core of a virus or the complete set of genetic material -- the chromosomes and the genes they contain -- that makes up any organism and determines hereditary features.
geoglyph: SYNONYMS OR RELATED TERMS: Nasca lines; Nazca Lines
CATEGORY: artifact; lithics
DEFINITION: Any ground-constructed example of rock art, such as intaglios or rock alignments; straight lines, geometric shapes, and other representative designs found on the desert plain. Geoglyphs can be formed by piling up materials on the ground surface or by removing surface materials and most suggest a largely ceremonial function.
geophysical prospecting: SYNONYMS OR RELATED TERMS: geophysical survey
CATEGORY: technique
DEFINITION: The location and recording of buried sites by detecting variations in the magnetic properties or resistance to an electrical current of the soil. Many archaeological surveying techniques designed to identify features without excavation use instruments that measure physical properties of surface materials.
gesso: SYNONYMS OR RELATED TERMS: gypsum, chalk
CATEGORY: artifact
DEFINITION: Material consisting of a layer of fine plaster to which gilding was often attached using an adhesive. It was a fluid, white coating composed of plaster of Paris, chalk, gypsum, or other whiting mixed with glue, applied to smooth surfaces such as wood panels, plaster, stone, or canvas to provide the ground for tempera and oil painting or for gilding and painting carved furniture and picture frames. In Medieval and Renaissance tempera painting, the surface was covered first with a layer of gesso grosso (rough gesso) made with coarse, unslaked plaster, then with a series of layers of gesso sottile (finishing gesso) made with fine plaster slaked in water, which produced an opaque, white, reflective surface.
ghost wall: SYNONYMS OR RELATED TERMS: shadow wall
CATEGORY: feature
DEFINITION: The outline of a wall that has been removed so that the building materials may be used elsewhere.
Gilf el Kebir: CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: A plateau of Nubian sandstone in the Sahara Desert of southwest Egypt with Late Acheulian artifacts and Neolithic material (stone tools, grinding stones, bone, pottery) and prehistoric rock engravings.
glass: CATEGORY: artifact
DEFINITION: A hard, amorphous, inorganic, usually transparent, brittle substance made by fusing silicates, sometimes borates and phosphates, with certain basic oxides and then rapidly cooling to prevent crystallization. It was first developed from faience about 4,000 years ago in the Near East, but was rarely used for anything larger than beads until Hellenistic and Roman times. Glass bottles in Egypt are represented on monuments of the 4th Dynasty (at least 2000 BC). A vase of greenish glass found at Nineveh dates 700 BC. Glass is in the windows at Pompeii and the Romans stained it, blew it, worked it on lathes, and engraved it. Natural glasses, such as obsidian, are rare, but cryptocrystalline materials, with fine crystal structures somewhat like glasses, are relatively common (e.g. flint).
Gobi: CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: The great desert of east central Asia that stretches across vast lands in the Mongolian People's Republic and the Inner Mongolia region of China. Mesolithic and Neolithic material was discovered, proving that climatic conditions were much less extreme in the past. Finds included many microliths, together with polished stone axes and coarse pottery. The items show influences from Siberia and, to a lesser extent, China. The ancient Silk Road traversed the southern part of the Ala Shan Desert and crossed the Ka-shun Gobi as it skirted north and west around the Takla Makan Desert. The Gobi region first became known to Europeans through the vivid 13th-century descriptions of Marco Polo.
Godin Tepe: CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: A site in the Kangavar valley of Luristan, western Iran, with continuous occupation from the early 5th millennium to c 1600 BC (late Iron Age) when it was abandoned following an earthquake and not reoccupied for around 800 years. The cultural sequence provides the framework for the cultural history of this section of the Zagros Mountains. The earliest two building levels are associated with straw-tempered, poorly fired pottery and a stone industry. Most interesting is Godin V of the late 4th millennium BC in which Late Uruk materials (bevel-rimmed bowls, pottery, seal styles, tablets) are found. In Godin II, c 750 BC, the site was a fortified town of the Medes, and an important building with three colonnaded halls and a throne room has been excavated. A stain on an amphora has revealed the world's earliest wine c 3500 BC.
gorge: CATEGORY: artifact
DEFINITION: A bipointed object of bone (or other material) which was tied to a fishing line and caught in the fish's mouth
gorget: CATEGORY: artifact
DEFINITION: A flat artifact made of stone or another material and worn as an ornament over the chest. It may also have been a protective piece for the throat region. These ornamental collars were common in the prehistoric US Southeast and Midwest.
grain impression: CATEGORY: artifact
DEFINITION: A cereal grain which has been incorporated by chance in an artifact, such as pottery, bricks, daub, etc. The impression left in the clay may be clear enough for identification to be possible and thus provide useful evidence on the crops in cultivation at the time. On firing, or as a result of decomposition of time, the organic material is lost but its outline remains, often in great detail. Casts of these impressions are taken using latex rubber, and the original plant or animal may be identified. Before the widespread sieving and flotation of deposits began to yield large amounts of environmental evidence, these grain impressions were an important method of getting information on farming practices.
grass-marked pottery: SYNONYMS OR RELATED TERMS: grass-tempered pottery
CATEGORY: ceramics
DEFINITION: Pottery either marked or tempered with grass. In western Britain, there are examples of pottery covered with 'grass' impressions from Ulster, the Hebrides, and Cornwall, especially around the 5th-6th centuries AD. The term also refers to crude handmade ware made in various parts of Frisia in the Migration Period and in certain parts of southern England in the Early Saxon period in which ferns and other organic material was used as tempering.
graver: SYNONYMS OR RELATED TERMS: 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.
Greek fire: CATEGORY: term
DEFINITION: Any of several flammable materials used in warfare in ancient and medieval times. Ancient writers refer to flaming arrows, firepots, and such substances as pitch, naphtha, sulfur, and charcoal, but true Greek fire was evidently a petroleum-based mixture. It was evidently invented during the reign of Constantine IV Pogonatus by a Greek-speaking Syrian refugee from the Arab conquest of Syria. It could be thrown in pots or discharged from tubes and was difficult to put out when alight.
greenstone: CATEGORY: geology
DEFINITION: A loosely applied term for a variety of metamorphosed basic igneous rocks of a green color: serpentine, olivine, jade, jadeite, nephrite, chloromelanite, etc. The general term is useful, though, since ancient man used these materials interchangeably, mainly for high quality or ceremonial polished stone axes, figures, and other objects. Jade was particularly popular in China and Middle America, considered to have magical properties. Greenstone was important in southeastern Australia and in New Zealand. The green color comes from the minerals chlorite, hornblende, or epidote.
grinding: CATEGORY: artifact
DEFINITION: A method of stoneworking employed in the smoothing of an edge or surface by rubbing it with a hammerstone or other abrader prior to use. Performed on projectiles or blades so that hafting materials (lashings) would not be cut by sharp edges of the base. Also commonly referred to as Basal Grinding when the base and sides of the stem have been ground.
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.
groove-and-splinter technique: CATEGORY: artifact
DEFINITION: An economical method of working bone, ivory, or antler developed during the Upper Palaeolithic. Two deep, parallel grooves are cut in the raw material and the splinter between them is snapped free to produce a blank for subsequent reworking.
ground stone tool: SYNONYMS OR RELATED TERMS: ground stone, polished tool, ground-stone artifact, groundstone
CATEGORY: lithics
DEFINITION: A class of lithic (stone) artifacts produced by abrasion -- grinding or pecking -- and formed into a tool or vessel. Granite, pumice, and steatite fall into this class. Manos, metates, mortars, and pestles are common ground stone artifacts. Ground stone tools used to crush, pound, grind, or otherwise process materials are also commonly referred to as milling implements"."
Gwisho: CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: A series of mounds and hot springs in western Zambia with evidence of intense Late Stone Age (Zambian Wilton) occupation from about 5000-3500 years ago. The sites are of particular importance because of the preservation of organic materials in the spring deposits. Grass-lined hollows have been interpreted as sleeping places. Among the wooden artifacts in the assemblage were bows, arrowheads, fire-drills, and digging sticks. The microlithic chipped stone industry is of the Zambian Wilton type. Graves at the sites yielded some 35 Khoisan skeletons. The economy was based on hunting game but also on a variety of vegetables.
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.
Hafit: CATEGORY: site; culture
DEFINITION: A mountain ridge in southeast Arabia with a number of Jemdet Nasr-type pottery in cairns. There are other Mesopotamian ceramics and local materials in the early-3rd millennium BC burials. It is evidence of Mesopotamian contact with ancient Magan culture and provide the name for the earliest Bronze Age cultural period in the area.
Haftavan Tepe: SYNONYMS OR RELATED TERMS: Haft Tepe
CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: A tell site in northwest Iran occupied off and on from the Early Bronze Age to the Sassanian period. The earliest occupation is dated to the 6th millennium BC, but its most important material comes from the Elamite period of the 15th-13th centuries BC. A royal tomb of c 1500 BC containing 21 skeletons, some covered in red ochre, is an early example of a vaulted tomb. This tomb was connected by a stairway to the main temple which contained many simple burials, some in urns. Fragments of inscribed stelae in cuneiform in the 14th-century BC Elamite language have provided details of the temple economy. In the 8th century BC, the mound became an Urartian citadel with an attached lower town. It was destroyed either by Sargon II in 714 BC or by the Cimmerians. The site was reoccupied in the Sassanian period: a town wall and numerous graves of this period are known.
Halaf culture complex: CATEGORY: culture
DEFINITION: A material culture with a distinctive painted pottery style, centered at Tell Halaf. It is divided into Early, Middle, and Late phases from the late 6th to early 5th millennia BC (5050-4300). The pottery is decorated with geometric, floral, and some nature motifs. The Late Halaf pottery includes a polychrome painted ware. Well-known sites include Tell Aqab, Arpachiyah, and Yarim Tepe.
handstone: SYNONYMS OR RELATED TERMS: mano
CATEGORY: lithics
DEFINITION: A handheld milling stone used to process materials on a metate.
Harappa: CATEGORY: site; culture
DEFINITION: One of the twin capitals of the Indus Civilization, located in Pakistan and northwest India, c 2300-1750 BC. Excavation has revealed a pre-Indus occupation related to that of Kot Diji and perhaps the Zhob Valley. There was a brick-walled town with pre-Harappan material, rare Indus inhumation cemetery, granaries, and cemetery of dismembered burials with non-Indus pottery, dating from reoccupation, possibly by Aryans. Mohenjo-Daro and Harappa are remarkable for their town planning and public and private systems of hygiene and sanitation. Unfortunately the site was largely destroyed during the last century by the extraction of bricks for ballast for the Lahore-Multan railway, then under construction.
hard water effect: CATEGORY: technique
DEFINITION: A potential source of artifact contamination in radiocarbon dating. When material that is radiocarbon-dated has been buried, groundwater may have percolated into it. Groundwater frequently contains dissolved calcium carbonate, where it has passed through limestones. Such carbonate may crystallize within the sample to be dated. As a result, carbon from a source very much older than the sample may be included. Dates from material that has been contaminated in this way will be too old. Samples such as wood and charcoal may be treated with hydrochloric acid to dissolve away the crystallized carbonate, eliminating the problem. Shell samples, which are themselves made of calcium carbonate, cannot be so treated. If the hard water effect is suspected and corrections are not made, the dates should be reported as maximums only.
hard-paste: SYNONYMS OR RELATED TERMS: true porcelain
CATEGORY: artifact
DEFINITION: Denoting true porcelain made of fusible and infusible materials (usually kaolin and china stone) fired at a high temperature. Developed in early medieval China, it was not made in Europe until the early 18th century.
Hassuna: SYNONYMS OR RELATED TERMS: Tell Hassuna
CATEGORY: site; culture
DEFINITION: A prehistoric tell site near Mosul in northern Iraq with a sequence of a pre-Samarran culture in northern Mesopotamia. The site has given its name to the pottery ware present in its lowest levels, dated to the 6th millennium BC, and a culture complex. This pottery may be related to that of the upper levels at Jarmo and is widely distributed. It was usually a buff ware in simple shapes, sometimes burnished, sometimes painted or incised with simple geometric patterns. In higher levels it was replaced by Samarra ware. Evidence from Yarim Tepe, another important Hassuna site, indicates that they were already experimenting with metallurgy and that pottery-making was a specialist activity (with true pottery kilns). The appearance of stamp seals suggests the importance of private ownership. There were several Halaf levels and 'Ubaid levels. Subsistence was cereal cultivation and herding cattle, goat, and sheep. The material culture used copper, turquoise, and carnelian beads.
headhunting: CATEGORY: term
DEFINITION: The practice of removing and preserving human heads. Headhunting arises in some cultures from a belief in the existence of a material soul. Headhunting may go back to Paleolithic times, as in deposits of the Late Paleolithic Azilian culture found at Ofnet in Bavaria. In Europe, the practice survived until the early 20th century in the Balkan Peninsula.
hearth: CATEGORY: feature
DEFINITION: Any place where a pit was dug and a fire built, sometimes identified by charcoal, baked earth, ash, discoloration, or an outline of stones or clay footing. The site of an open domestic fire might have served as kiln or oven. Hearths often appear in one layer of soil after another as an archaeologist digs down through a site, and they are an indication of a succession of camps or habitations. Charcoal from a hearth can be dated by the radiocarbon method. Baked clay in a hearth can be dated by the palaeomagnetic method. Burnt earthen rims may provide oxidized material for archaeomagnetic dating. The hearth is often centrally located and has a variety of shapes and sizes.
heat treatment: CATEGORY: artifact
DEFINITION: A process in which the flintknapping properties of stone tools' raw materials are improved by subjecting the material to heat
heavy fraction: CATEGORY: term
DEFINITION: The heaviest materials that sink to the bottom of flotation equipment mesh -- such as pottery sherds, flint, and large seeds.
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.
Hellenistic period: SYNONYMS OR RELATED TERMS: Hellenistic and Roman period; hellenistic
CATEGORY: chronology; culture
DEFINITION: Period of widest Greek influence, the era between the death of Alexander the Great (323 BC) and the rise of the Roman Empire (27/30 BC), when a single, uniform civilization, based on Greek traditions, prevailed all over the ancient world, from India, in the east, to Spain, in the west. During these three centuries, Greek culture crossed many political frontiers and spread through many cities founded at that time, especially the new capitals of Alexandria, Antioch, and Pergamum. A common civilization became established throughout the known world for the first time, one which integrated the cultural heritage of each region and subsequently left a deep impression on the institutions, thought, religions, and art of the Roman, Parthian, and Kushan empires. Hellenistic cultural influence continued to be a powerful force in the Roman and Parthian empires during the early centuries AD. A common form of the Greek language, Koine [Greek: 'common'] developed, which was largely indebted to Attic Greek. The term 'hellenistic art' is applied to the post-classical material outside this geographic area, such as in Etruria or southern Italy.
Helwan: SYNONYMS OR RELATED TERMS: Hulwan
CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: A prehistoric and pharaonic settlement near the eastern bank of the Nile by Cairo. The name is sometimes applied to the material from the neighboring Neolithic site of El Omari.
Herculaneum: SYNONYMS OR RELATED TERMS: modern Ercolano
CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: An ancient city of Campania, Italy, that was buried by the same volcano in 79 AD that took Pompeii. Already damaged by Vesuvius in 63 AD, Herculaneum was home to 5000 people. It had modern houses, tastefully decorated, and it was wealthier than Pompeii. In the destruction of 79 AD, the town was covered in liquid mud which subsequently solidified after percolating and filling structures. It tended to preserve organic materials, especially timber. The houses are remarkable for the preservation of internal and external structures in timber, and, in some cases, of furniture and fittings. Also found are papyri and a library containing the works of Epicurus. Herculaneum probably started as an Archaic Greek foundation.
Hesi, Tell el-: CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: A tell site in southern Palestine occupied from the Early Bronze Age, c 2600 BC, to the Hellenistic period/Iron Age. Its excavation by Sir Flinders Petrie and F.J. Bliss were the first stratigraphic excavations in the area, and lent much information on pottery typology and successive building levels. Their work began the establishment of an absolute chronology for Palestinian prehistory, through the discovery of imported, datable Egyptian objects in association with local material.
High Lodge: CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: A British Palaeolithic site in Suffolk, where distinctive tools were found including classic Quina type scrapers similar to those of the Charentian culture of France. At first it was believed to have had three industries: Acheulian ovate biface, a crude flake industry, and a Mousterian. Dates of 450,000-500,000 years ago now suggest that the assemblage may be similar to material from Clacton and Swanscombe.
historiography: CATEGORY: related field
DEFINITION: The writing of history, with particular reference to the examination and evaluation of primary source material. Historiography is also the study of the development of historical method. The study is based on the critical examination of sources, the selection of facts from the authentic materials, and the synthesis of facts into a narrative.
Hittite: SYNONYMS OR RELATED TERMS: Hatti, Kheta
CATEGORY: culture; language
DEFINITION: A people of obscure origin who infiltrated Anatolia and the Levant from the north during the later 3rd millennium BC. In the Old Kingdom (c 1750-1450) they established a state in central Turkey with its capital first at Kussara, then at Boghazköy. They overran north Syria c 1600 and pushed on as far as Babylon. Under the empire (1450-1200) a more stable state was built up over most of Anatolia and north Syria, displacing the kingdom of the Mitanni and successfully challenging Assyria and Egypt. The end came quite suddenly in the Late Bronze Age c 1200 BC, notably by movements of the Peoples of the Sea and Anatolian groups from the north. The Hittite outposts in north Syria, however, survived as a chain of Syro-Hittite or neo-Hittite city-states -- Karatepe, Sinjerli, Sakçe, Gözü, Malatya, Atchana, and Carchemish -- down to their final annexation by the Assyrians in the 8th century BC. They are also known for their metal-working. They exploited and traded copper, lead, silver and also iron; indeed, they were among the first peoples to use iron, and for a period maintained a virtual monopoly in the new metal. Their language, Hittite and Hieroglyphic Hittite, is Indo-European, the earliest to be recorded. Hurrian, the language of the Hurri, was non-Indo-European, as of course was the Akkadian much used for commercial and foreign correspondence. The Akkadian cuneiform script was generally used too, though for monumental purposes local hieroglyphs were preferred. The discovery of the Hittite language was the major advance this century in the field of Indo-European languages -- with archives yielding thousands of tablets in many languages. The great period of the empire was 14th-13th centuries BC when a vast amount of material was recorded -- some in the important sister Anatolian languages of Palaic and Luvian.
hoard: CATEGORY: artifact
DEFINITION: Any collection of objects buried at one time; a deliberate deposit of complete and / or broken objects buried in the ground for subsequent recovery or as a symbolic act. A hoard often included valuables or prized possessions. Many hoards represent the personal property of individuals, buried for safety at a time of threat. Hoards are a useful source of evidence for archaeologists, because they provide considerable quantities of material and, except in the case of some votive hoards, that material represents a true association. Various classes are distinguished according to their method of accumulation. A personal hoard consists of an individual's personal property buried for safety and not recovered. A merchant's hoard will contain new objects ready for sale. A founder's hoard by contrast will contain obsolete, worn out, or miscast objects, and frequently cake metal as well, all of it awaiting melting down and recasting. A votive hoard is rather different in that the objects were deposited, possibly over a long period of time, in temples or caves, buried, or thrown into water as religious offerings, with no intention of recovery. A hoard of loot is self-explanatory. Bronze Age hoards provide much of the evidence for the period.
Hochdorf: CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: An Iron Age tumulus in Baden-Würtetemberg, Germany, from the 6th century BC (late Hallstatt). One burial chamber had very rich grave goods, including Mediterranean materials, a Greek bronze cauldron, gold-covered shoes, and bronze couch.
Hopewell: SYNONYMS OR RELATED TERMS: Hopewellian culture
CATEGORY: culture
DEFINITION: An agricultural subculture of the Woodland Stage Complex settling in Ohio and Illinois around 100 BC and lasting to 500 AD. It was one of the most advanced Indian cultures of North America, with conical or dome-shaped burial mounds, large enclosures with earthen walls, and fine pottery with corded or stamped decoration. Farming was practiced and trade brought exotic raw materials from many parts of the continent. Hopewell is noted for its minor art objects, such as carved platform pipes, ornaments cut out of sheet copper or mica, Yellowstone obsidian, distinctive broad-bladed points, and ceremonial obsidian knives -- often found in rich burials of the Hopewell rulers. Between 200 BC-600 AD, the Hopewell Interaction Sphere" flourished in the Midwest which constituted Hopewell religious cults and distinctive burial customs associated with a widespread (through trading) art tradition. The culture which had both agriculture and hunting-gathering succeeded the Adena culture."
hygroscopic: CATEGORY: artifact
DEFINITION: The ability or tendency of a material to take up moisture readily from the surrounding air or other most materials
Hyrax Hill: CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: A site located on Lake Nakuru in central Kenya with Later Stone Age material and a pastoral Neolithic settlement. The earlier settlement is attributed to the East African Pastoral Neolithic complex. The second phase is of the Iron Age, and includes a series of so-called Sirikwa Holes which are interpreted as semi-subterranean cattle pens constructed by Nilotic-speaking peoples. There is also a cemetery of stone-covered flexed burials.
Iberians: CATEGORY: culture
DEFINITION: A prehistoric people of southern and eastern Spanish coastal regions of the 1st millennium BC who later gave their name to the whole peninsula. In the 8th-6th centuries BC, waves of Celtic peoples migrated to the region. By the time of the Greek historian Herodotus (mid-5th century BC), 'Iberian' applied to all the peoples between the Ebro and Huelva rivers, who were probably linguistically connected and whose material culture was distinct from that of the north and west. There was a common script of 28 syllabic and alphabetic characters somewhat derived from Greek and Phoenician, and a non Indo-European language which cannot yet be translated. Notable among their products are their jewelry and statues, of which the Lady of Elche is the most famous. The Iberians' origins are obscure, perhaps North African. They disappeared as a separate group under the Roman occupation, partly by fusion with the Celts of the interior, partly through displacement of their language by Latin. The Iberian economy had a rich agriculture and mining and metallurgy.
icon: CATEGORY: artifact
DEFINITION: A kind of portrait of a sacred person with a formal pose and exaggerated spiritual expression which spread through the Christian world from the mid 6th century AD onwards. Usually icons are painted on wood and housed in jeweled and highly ornate mounts. Some became so powerful as objects of devotion as to cause a rift in the Christian church, known as the iconoclastic dispute, where icons were banned in the Byzantine empire from AD 726, although the Latin church continued to allow their use. They remain a central component of the material culture of the Orthodox church.
ideofact: CATEGORY: artifact
DEFINITION: Archaeological material resulting from past human ideological activities. Any object whose function is to express or symbolize the beliefs of a people rather than to serve practical or social needs.
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.
included fragments: CATEGORY: technique
DEFINITION: A principle of stratigraphy in which fragments, material, or debris from an older bed may be incorporated in a younger bed, but not vice versa.
inclusion: SYNONYMS OR RELATED TERMS: temper
CATEGORY: ceramics
DEFINITION: Material added to clay to provide strength and improve the firing process.
incrusting: CATEGORY: ceramics
DEFINITION: Impressing of material into the surface of a ceramic object.
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.
industrial archaeology: CATEGORY: branch
DEFINITION: The archaeological study of the period and sites of the Industrial Revolution and later. It involves the discovery, recording, and study of the material remains of past industrial activities, covering ways of making, transporting and distributing things.
industry: CATEGORY: term
DEFINITION: A frequently repeated assemblage of a particular material or function, i.e. flake industry, flint industry. Such an assemblage of artifacts including the same types so consistently suggests that it is the product of a single society. The term also describes a large grouping of artifacts that is considered to represent or identify a particular people or culture, e.g. the Acheulian industry. If more than one class of objects (e.g. flint tools or bronze weapons) is found, it is a culture"."
infrared absorption spectrometry: SYNONYMS OR RELATED TERMS: infra-red absorption spectrometry
CATEGORY: technique
DEFINITION: A technique used to identify mineral and chemical composition artifacts, either to determine their nature or for identification of their source. A small sample is taken from the object and is ground finely before being subjected to infrared radiation. Constituent atoms in the specimen vibrate at characteristic frequencies; if the frequency is the same as that of the radiation, the radiation will be absorbed, while if frequencies do not match, the radiation will pass through the sample. A measurement of the amount of absorption at each wavelength leads to the identification of the minerals and chemical compounds present. Though the method can be used for both inorganic and organic materials, it tends to be used alongside X-ray diffraction for inorganic substances, where it is more sensitive to poorly crystallized minerals. It is most useful for organic materials such as amber, as the organic compounds in the amber absorb different wavelengths of infrared radiation passed through them.
infrastructural determinism: SYNONYMS OR RELATED TERMS: infrastructure
CATEGORY: technique
DEFINITION: A research strategy used by cultural materialists, in which priority is assigned to modes of production and reproduction. Technological, demographic, ecological, and economic processes are the most important elements for satisfying basic human needs (the 'independent variable'); the social system is the dependent variable. These primary elements lie at the causal heart of every sociocultural system. Domestic and political subsystems (the 'structure') are considered to be secondary. Values, aesthetics, rituals, religion, philosophy, rules, and symbols (the 'superstructure') are tertiary.
Initial Period: CATEGORY: chronology
DEFINITION: The period of 1800-900 BC marking the introduction of pottery in Andean South America. It was also the time when agriculture and animal husbandry began to be the subsistence base for most cultures in the area. It is one of a seven-period chronological construction used in Peruvian archaeology. Its close is marked by the occurrence of Chavin materials and the abandonment of many of the coastal centers. Many of the traits that make up the Peruvian cultural tradition such as intensive agriculture, the widespread use of textiles, monumental ceremonial architecture, and larger and more numerous population centers, occurred during this period.
inlay: CATEGORY: artifact
DEFINITION: The placement of one material, either glass or metal, into a prepared depression (reservoir) on the surface of an item for decorative purposes.
inorganic ecofacts: CATEGORY: flora; fauna
DEFINITION: Ecofacts (faunal or flora material) derived from nonbiological remains (matter other than plant or animal), including soils, minerals, and the like.
inscribed: CATEGORY: artifact
DEFINITION: Term used to describe marks or lines forming a design, motif, image, or pattern of some kind that can been cut into stone, metal, bone, wood, ceramic, or other fairly soft material.
involution: CATEGORY: geology
DEFINITION: A structure that develops within the active layer of the Periglacial (permafrost) zone. Cryoturbation (seasonal freezing) causes movement within the layer and sorting of its component materials. Involutions help to define the area of ancient periglacial zones but their action can cause disturbance or mixing of archaeological deposits. Involutions may also be confused with archaeological features.
iron-making, direct process: CATEGORY: geology
DEFINITION: The technique of smelting iron ore in a furnace with charcoal and limestone to produce a spongy, low-carbon form of iron known as a bloom. This ductile material can be forged into tools and weapons.
isostasy: SYNONYMS OR RELATED TERMS: isostatic uplift
CATEGORY: geology
DEFINITION: An alteration in the height of the land relative to the sea; the distribution of mass within the Earth's crust is balanced by large-scale topography. These variations are not necessarily associated with changes in sea-level (eustasy), but a major event such as glaciation can affect both land and sea. The weight of ice sheets can cause a lowering in the height of the land, but a thaw at the end of a glaciation frees the land of this pressure and it rises. Continental crust behaves like a body 'floating' on the denser underlying layers. Loading of one area may cause down-warping of the crust, which is compensated by uplift elsewhere. Removal of the load causes the crust to readjust to its former state. It is a theory that the condition of approximate equilibrium in the outer part of the earth is approximately counterbalanced by a deficiency of density in the material beneath those masses, while deficiency of density in ocean waters is counterbalanced by an excess in density of the material under the oceans. This phenomenon has occurred during the Quaternary, due to the development of large ice-sheets. The enormous weight of ice has caused downwarping of the continental crust beneath. At the ice-sheet margins, there was a compensatory uplift. On melting of the ice-sheets, the crust readjusted by uplift in the areas directly underneath and downwarping at the edges. This process is continuing today, for example in northern Europe.
ivory: CATEGORY: fauna; artifact
DEFINITION: Material from enlarged teeth (or tusk) of certain mammals and used for various tools and artifacts from the Upper Palaeolithic. The tusks of elephants, mammoths, and walruses have been prized throughout prehistory and history.
Jabrud: SYNONYMS OR RELATED TERMS: Yabrud
CATEGORY: site; culture
DEFINITION: A site of three rock shelters in Syria, each with long series of Palaeolithic industries, as well as some Natufian and Neolithic material. Jabrud is the type site of the Jabrudian industry, which is broadly contemporary with the Amudian and Late Acheulian of the Middle East. The Jabrudian is distinguished by well-made, thick side scrapers of Mousterian type and some bifacial blades similar to those of the Amudian as well as hand axes. At Jabrud the industry bears a strong resemblance to some Mousterian industries from France. The dating probably falls within the Riss-Würm interglacial or the first Würm interstadial. It marks one of the ways in which the transition from Lower Palaeolithic to Middle Palaeolithic cultures occurred in the Levant, about 150,000 BP, a kind of final Acheulian.
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.
Jhukar: CATEGORY: site; culture
DEFINITION: A site in Sindh, Pakistan, lending its name to a Late Harappan culture of Chalcolithic times (2nd millennium BC). The culture, which succeeded the Indus Civilization on certain sites in Sindh (type site of Chanhu-daro; Amri) has material showing a mixture of elements from the Indus, Baluchistan, and the Middle East. There were compartmented seals, copper dress pins, and a shafthole ax. The pottery is that of the Mature Harappan. Certain copper or bronze weapons and tools are comparable to examples from Iran and Central Asia.
Jorwe: CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: A small Chalcolithic site in southern India, consisting of several mounds and representing a single period material culture in the second half of the 2nd millennium BC. There was a wheel-made red ware painted in black, including distinctive long-spouted vessels. Jorwe had a rich copper tool industry in addition to stone toolmaking and it seems to be related to the Malwa complex further north.
Kaminaljuyú: CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: A large and important Maya site near Guatemala City that originally contained over 200 mounds, strongly influenced by Teotihuacán during the Early Classic. As the greatest of the early centers in the highland Maya zone, Kaminaljuyú has a history of occupation dating back to c 1800 BC, but it reached its first climax during the Miraflores phase in the centuries after 300 BC. Its earliest occupation during the Early to Mid-Pre-Classic has Olmec-influenced artifacts such as the 'squashed frog' motif, kaolin pottery, and pits reminiscent of those at Tlatilco. About 200 burial sites from the Late Formative Period, 300 BC-100 AD, have been uncovered, and there are carved stelae in the Izapa manner and a hieroglyphic script unlike that of the lowland Maya.. There are also courts for playing the ball game tlachtli. Because of the lack of stone suitable for construction, pyramids and other structures at Kaminaljuyú were built of adobe and later of other perishable materials. After a period of decline, the site was revived in c 400 when it became an outpost of the Teotihuacán civilization. Kaminaljuyú controlled the obsidian production along the Pacific. Its decline took place after the Late Classic Period c 600-900 AD. Evidence suggests that various Mexican dynasties ruled over the Maya population until the Spanish conquest.
Kangaroo Island: CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: An island off South Australia with Kartan sites showing previous Aboriginal occupation, though it was uninhabited at European contact. These sites may be late Pleistocene, but material found at Cape du Couedic is dated to around 7000 bp.
Karako: CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: A village site in Nara prefecture, Japan, of the Yayoi culture that is the type-site for the western Yayoi pottery chronology. Over 100 dwelling and storage pits contained pottery covering the whole span of the Yayoi period in this area. Organic materials were well-preserved, including baskets, wooden agricultural tools, a bundle of rice plants, melon seeds, nuts, and bones of wild boar, deer, dogs, and cattle. A bronze bell casting mold indicated craft production.
Karasuk: CATEGORY: culture
DEFINITION: A Bronze Age culture that succeeded the Andronovo culture in southern Siberia in the late 2nd millennium BC. The three main, basically successive, yet often overlapping cultures were the Afanasyevskaya, Andronovo, and Karasuk. The Karasuk culture developed when a gradual change was made from settled communities to seasonal transhumance. Two settlements of large pit houses are known and many cemeteries of stone cists covered by a low mound and set in a square stone enclosure equipped with round-bottomed pots; many of these are in the Minusinsk Basin. The Karasuk people were farmers who concentrated on sheep- and cattle-breeding. They also practiced metallurgy on a large scale; the most characteristic artifact is a bronze knife or dagger, with a curved profile and a decorated handle, related to China's An-Yang. They produced a realistic animal art, which probably contributed to the development of the later Sytho-Siberian animal art style. Remains of bridles mark the beginning of horse riding on the Siberian steppe. The character of their material culture came from exchange with the centers of Far Eastern metallurgy. The Karasuk culture originated and spread its influences farther to western Siberia and Russian Turkistan than did the Andronovo. Trade relations extended to central Russia. Chronology of this period is based on comparisons with northern Chinese bronzes. The Karasuk period persisted down to c 700 BC.
Karim Shahir: CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: A hilltop site near Kirkuk in northern Iraq occupied in the period when the transition was beginning from hunting-and-gathering to farming. Its material is closely related to that of Zawi Chemi Shanidar and the culture is dated c 9000-7000 BC. There is no evidence of architecture, so the site was probably seasonal. Artifact evidence suggests an increased dependence on plant resources: blades with the silica sheen often described as 'sickle gloss', pierced stone balls which might have been weights for digging sticks, and stone axes.
Kharga Oasis: SYNONYMS OR RELATED TERMS: al-Wahat al-Kharijah; al-Kharijah
CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: The southernmost and largest of the major Egyptian western oases, which is located in the Libyan Desert about 175 km east of Luxor. There are traces of Middle Palaeolithic (Mousterian) occupation at Kharga and its material culture was closely connected with that of the Nile valley throughout the Pharaonic period. This oasis is of approximately the same age as the Epi-Levalloisian sites of the Sebilian and the Fayyum Depression.
Knovíz culture: SYNONYMS OR RELATED TERMS: Knovís
CATEGORY: culture
DEFINITION: A Bronze Age urnfield culture of Bohemia, Thuringia, and Bavaria, following the decline of the Tumulus Bronze Age, c 1400-900 BC. Except for the burial rite, the Knovíz culture is similar to that of the neighboring Milavce group. The Knoviz group is one of the exceptions to the normal urnfield rite in that inhumation is more frequent than cremation burial. Few large settlement sites are known, the bulk of material deriving from small farmsteads with pits and post-holes and cemeteries. Hengiform monuments and horseshoe-shaped enclosures are occasionally associated with Knoviz pottery. The vessel form is the Etagengefass, with a large bulging body and a smaller bottomless pot fused on top of it to form the neck.
krotovina: CATEGORY: geology
DEFINITION: A soil feature made up of an animal burrow filled with soil or sediment. That soil or sediment is often different from the material around the burrow and is derived from overlying soil horizons or sediment strata.
kula ring: CATEGORY: term
DEFINITION: A system of ceremonial, non-competitive, exchange practiced in Melanesia to establish and reinforce alliances. This exchange system began among the people of the Trobriand Islands of southeast Melanesia, in which permanent contractual partners trade traditional valuables following an established ceremonial pattern and trade route. In this system, described by the British anthropologist Bronislaw Malinowski, only two kinds of articles, traveling in opposite directions around a rough geographical 'ring' several hundred miles in circumference, were exchanged. These were red shell necklaces and white shell bracelets. Kula objects, which sometimes had names and histories attached, were not owned in order to be used but rather to acquire prestige and rank. Malinowski's study of this system was influential in shaping the anthropological concept of reciprocal exchange. The partnerships between men, involving mutual duties and obligations, were permanent and lifelong. The network of relationships based on the kula served to link many tribes by providing allies and communication of material and nonmaterial cultural elements to distant areas.
Kulli: CATEGORY: culture; ceramics
DEFINITION: An important Chalcolithic culture and pottery style of south Baluchistan. The pottery is mainly buff and wheelmade, painted in black with friezes of elongated humped bulls, cats, or goats and spiky trees between zones of geometric ornament. Clay figurines of women and bulls are found in this culture, as are copper tools and ornaments of lapis lzauli, bone and other materials. The culture is further distinguished from those of Amri-Nal in the same area by the practice of cremation burial; an important cemetery was excavated at Mehi. Mud-brick architecture and small tell sites are common to the two cultures. There are signs of Indus civilization influence on later Kulli material with carved stone vessels identical with examples from Early Dynastic Mesopotamia, dating to the early 3rd millennium BC.
La Ferrassie: CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: A rock shelter in the Dordogne, southwest France, with Middle Palaeolithic material and burials of several Neanderthal. Occupation began in the Mousterian period, to which belong two Neanderthal adults and five children, buried in shallow trenches. There are several layers of 'Ferrassie', a subdivision of the Charentian Mousterian tradition, with Levallois flaking. There is a long series of Upper Palaeolithic levels, including Châtelperonian, Aurignacian, and finally a thin Gravettian level. The stratification has contributed to an understanding of the Upper Palaeolithic sequence in France.
lake dwelling: SYNONYMS OR RELATED TERMS: lake village
CATEGORY: term
DEFINITION: A type of Neolithic settlement found common in prehistoric Europe in areas with many lakes, such as Switzerland, Germany, and north Italy. Such a settlement was formerly on the edge of a lake but is now buried by lakeshore sediment or underwater. They should properly be labeled lakeside villages, since in most cases they were constructed on the shore and not on stilts over the water, as was formerly believed. They were, however, frequently constructed on timber platforms and subsequently rising water levels in the lakes have preserved these platforms and much other wooden material, as well as artifacts of other organic substances. Cultures in which lake villages were common include Chassey, Cortaillod, Horgen, and Polada.
lamp: CATEGORY: artifact
DEFINITION: A device for producing illumination, consisting originally of a vessel containing a wick soaked in combustible material. The lamp was invented by at least 70,000 BC and was originally a hollowed-out rock filled with an absorbent material soaked with animal fat and lit. Simple saucers of stone or chalk for this purpose go back to the Upper Palaeolithic. In pottery, the use can rarely be proved unless a special spout or pinched lip was provided to support the wick, or signs of burning have survived at the rim. In ancient Greece, lamps did not begin to appear until the 7th century BC, when they replaced torches and braziers.
landscape signature: CATEGORY: feature
DEFINITION: The material remains of human activities across the landscape.
lapis lazuli: SYNONYMS OR RELATED TERMS: khesbed
CATEGORY: geology
DEFINITION: A semiprecious stone of an intense blue color, very popular in the ancient Near East for decorative inlays, beads, seals, etc. It is a metamorphosed form of limestone, rich in the blue mineral lazurite, which is dark blue in color and often flecked with impurities of calcite, iron pyrites, or gold. Its main source was Badakhshan, northern Afghanistan, and in Iran, from which it was traded as far as Egypt. The Egyptians considered that its appearance imitated that of the heavens, therefore they considered it to be superior to all materials other than gold and silver. They used it extensively in jewelry until the Late Period (747-332 BC), when it was particularly popular for amulets. One of the richest collection of lapis lazuli objects was found in the burials at Tepe Gawra. It has also been found at Ovalle, Chile.
Late Period: CATEGORY: chronology
DEFINITION: A phase of Egyptian history, c 664-332 BC comprising the 26th-31st Dynasties, stretching from the end of the Third Intermediate Period to the arrival of Alexander the Great. Shabaqo (716-702 BC), the second ruler of the Kushite 25th Dynasty, exerted Nubian influence by moving the administrative center back from Thebes to Memphis. In writing, the demotic script, the new cursive form, was introduced from the north and spread gradually through the country. Hieratic was, however, retained for literary and religious texts, among which very ancient material, such as the Pyramid Texts, was revived and inscribed in tombs and on coffins and sarcophagi. The Late Period also saw the greatest development of animal worship in Egypt.
Le Mas d'Azil: CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: Huge river tunnel and limestone grottoes in Ariège of the French Pyrenees with occupation from the Aurignacian to the Bronze Age. The Magdalenian level has portable art dated to the 12th millennium BC. The Azilian material, between the Palaeolithic and Neolithic, included perforated barbed points and painted pebbles. The site is rich in Palaeolithic remains.
Le Placard: CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: Cave site in the Charente region of France with Solutrean and Magdalenian levels with much industry and art material. Included in the artifacts were well-carved batons-de-commandement and other decorated, carved objects as well as engravings on the walls.
leaching: CATEGORY: geology
DEFINITION: To dissolve or subject to the action of percolating liquid -- as water; i.e. water seeping through the soil and removing the soluble materials from it.
Lerna: CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: Long-lived coastal settlement site near Argos in the Peloponnese, southern Greece. Middle and Late Neolithic villages were succeeded by a fortified township of Early Helladic II (c 3000 BC, Early Bronze Age). At this stage it was a fortified township, surrounded by a stone wall with D-shaped bastions. Houses, built of mud-brick on stone foundations, include a building known as the House of Tiles, roofed with stone and terra-cotta tiles -- a very early appearance of this roofing technique. Around 2400-2200 BC it burnt down and was rebuilt in Early Helladic III (Middle Bronze Age), when the first pieces of Minyan Ware appear; the radical cultural change suggests the burning was intentional. Scattered imports from Crete assist in the dating. Two rectangular shaft, royal graves contemporary with the Shaft Grave B circle at Mycenae, c 1600 BC (Middle Helladic), were the latest material on the site.
Lespugue: CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: Series of cave sites in Save Gorge, Haute-Garonne of the French Pyrenees with occupation from the Aurignacian to the Magdalenian. A famous ivory Venus was associated with Gravettian material.
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.
Levkas: SYNONYMS OR RELATED TERMS: Leucas
CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: One of the Ionian Islands off the west coast of Greece, which was once believed to be Homer's Ithaca, home of Odysseus. Mycenaean remains at Nidhrí on the east coast testify to early occupation and convince some scholars that Leucas, not Ithaca, was the home of Odysseus.The cave of Chirospilia has yielded Neolithic material, but more important are the Early and Middle Bronze Age cemeteries. The former included the rites of jar burial and partial cremation under barrows. Two groups of tombs of the Middle Bronze Age contained some Minyan Ware, and show some links with the shaft graves of Mycenae, as also with burial mounds in Albania. In the mid-7th century BC, Corinthian colonists established themselves just south of the present capital and dug a canal through the isthmus. Under Roman rule in the 2nd century BC, a stone bridge, of which there are some remains, was constructed to the main island. In 167, the Romans made Levkas a free city.
light fraction: CATEGORY: term
DEFINITION: The lighter materials that float to the top of flotation equipment during agitation -- such as seeds, shell, or flint chips.
Lime Springs: CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: Site in northeast New South Wales, Australia with evidence of diprotodon, protemnodon, and other megafauna in association with artifacts. Kartan material is dated to 19,300 bp.
Ljubljanko Blat: CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: A marsh near Ljubljana in Slovenia, on which a number of Late Neolithic and Eneolithic village sites have been found. The material includes copper and molds for casting it. The culture is related to others throughout the East Alpine area, such as Vucedol, and was in contact with northern Italy.
Llano: SYNONYMS OR RELATED TERMS: Llano tradition
CATEGORY: culture
DEFINITION: The earliest Palaeoindian Big Game Hunting culture, from the plains of New Mexico, 10,000-9000 BC. Best-known is the type site of Blackwater Draw; other sites were located in what was once boggy lakeshore. Its chief diagnostic trait is the presence of Clovis materials, especially the fluted point, in association with mammoth remains. Evidence of the culture exists throughout North America: as far south as Iztapan, Mexico, as far north as Worland, Wyoming, and possibly as far east as Debert, Nova Scotia. The large plateau of Llano Estacado covered eastern New Mexico and the Texas Panhandle.
loam: SYNONYMS OR RELATED TERMS: loehm, lehm
CATEGORY: geology
DEFINITION: A texture of soil used to describe a mixture of less than 52% sand, 28-50% silt, and 7-27% clay. Loams are agriculturally productive and have good drainage qualities. There are other loamy textures with different percentages of the materials.
locality: CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: A large site composed of two or more clusters of material remains; a variable area not larger than the space that might be occupied by a single community or local group and small enough to permit the working assumption of complete cultural homogeneity at any given time.
locus: SYNONYMS OR RELATED TERMS: pl. loci
CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: A predicted archaeological site locality; a center of cultural activity. The term is also applied to a distinct portion of an archaeological site, typically separated from other parts of the site by space devoid of cultural materials. Many open-air sites consist of various loci spread over a relatively large area.
loess: CATEGORY: geology
DEFINITION: A wind-borne rock dust (very fine sediments, silt) carried from outwash deposits and moraines and laid down as a thick stratum during periglacial conditions in the steppe country surrounding the ice sheets. Wind erosion was widespread in the periglacial zone that surrounded the large Quaternary ice sheets. Material was picked up by the wind from the large expanses of proglacial deposits at the ice sheet margins. Because of its exceptional fertility, areas of loess were chosen for settlement by early agriculturists. In central and eastern Europe, as well as Asia and North America, there are notable concentrations of sites on loess. It provided good grazing for the animals on which Palaeolithic man fed, was rich in nutrients for plants, and was later settled by Neolithic farmers who found it easy to till with primitive equipment. It is an essentially unconsolidated, unstratified calcareous silt; commonly it is homogeneous, permeable, and buff to gray in color, and contains calcareous concretions and fossils. Loess is important archaeologically as soil erosion in these regions during the Holocene caused substantial redeposition of this silt, often burying (deeply) and preserving archaeological sites. In semiarid regions people such as the Pueblo Indians made houses and fortresslike closed edifices from loess-based adobe.
Longshan: SYNONYMS OR RELATED TERMS: Lung Shan; Lung-shan; lungshanoid
CATEGORY: culture
DEFINITION: Collective name of the regional cultures of the Late Neolithic in northern China of the 3rd to mid-2nd millennia BC. The term refers to the culture of the Chengziyai type site, often distinguished as the Classic Longshan or Shandong Longshan, which may have survived to a time contemporary with the bronze-using Shang civilization. The Longshan period encompasses first metal use, warfare, compressed earth walled sites of Hangtu construction, abundant gray pottery, rectangular polished stone axes, and the delicate wheelturned black-burnished pottery of intricate shapes. A method of divination involving the heating of cattle bones and interpreting the cracks began here. In Honan, where its distribution overlaps that of the Yang Shao culture, Longshan is stratified above the former and below Shang material. Lungshanoid is another term used to describe these Neolithic cultures.
Lukenya Hill: CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: An inselberg (boulder-hill) in southern Kenya, southeast of Nairobi, with material from the Middle Stone Age to the Late Iron Age. Numerous rock shelters and other sites have preserved this long sequence of prehistoric occupation. A backed microlith industry was established by the 16th millennium BC and probably long before. A fragment of human skull associated with this industry displays modern Negroid features.
lynchet: SYNONYMS OR RELATED TERMS: terracette
CATEGORY: feature
DEFINITION: A bank of earth which accumulates on the downhill side of an ancient plowed field as the disturbed soil moves down the slope under the action of gravity. It is a small-scale terracing effect visible particularly in ancient field systems which is caused by accumulation of soil against an obstruction such as a field boundary. Field boundaries, such as banks or walls, become enlarged and overlaid by material loosened in the cultivation process. A corresponding erosion from the downslope side of the boundary creates a negative lynchet. Lynchets are conspicuous in the square Celtic fields (Bronze Age to Romano-British in date) and in the long rectangular fields, the so-called strip lynchets, laid out on sloping terrain in post-Roman and medieval times.
magma: CATEGORY: artifact
DEFINITION: Hot fluid or semi-fluid material within the earth's crust from which lava and other igneous rock is formed by cooling
magnetic dating: SYNONYMS OR RELATED TERMS: paleomagnetic dating
CATEGORY: technique
DEFINITION: Any theoretically chronometric dating technique which uses the thermo-remanent magnetism of certain types of archaeological material. These methods use the known changes have taken place in the direction and intensity of the earth's magnetic field. Magnetic minerals present in clay and rocks each have its own magnetic orientation. When heated to the so-called blocking temperature, the original magnetic orientation of the particles is destroyed, and they will take on the orientation of the earth's magnetic field in a fixed alignment -- which does not alter after cooling. These methods are most suitable for kilns and hearths. Once the direction of the archaeological sample has been determined, it may be possible to date it by fitting it to the secular variation curve established for the local area. There is no universal curve, since not only the earth's main field varies, but there are also local disturbances. Since the dating of the curve has to be constructed through independent dating techniques, and these are not available for every area, there are not established curves for every region. As a dating technique, it is strictly limited to those areas where dated curves have been established. A more recent dating technique using thermo-remanent magnetism is palaeointensity dating (archaeomagnetic intensity dating). The principle is that the thermo-remanent magnetism in burnt clay is proportional to the intensity of the magnetic field acting on the clay as it cools down. The measurement of its intensity, and a comparison with the intensity revealed by reheating in today's magnetic field, gives a ratio for the past and present fields which can be used to establish a curve of variation in the earth's magnetic field intensity. The method promises to be useful since direction in situ is not required and it can therefore be used for pottery and other artifacts as well as hearths and kilns.
magnetic susceptibility: CATEGORY: geology
DEFINITION: A property of soil and sediment, measured as a ratio of intensity of magnetization of the material to the strength of an applied magnetic field. Topsoil often has a somewhat enhanced 'magnetic susceptibility' due to magnetic minerals in the material, especially compared with the subsoil. The filling of a ditch or a pit has greater susceptibility than the surrounding area because of higher humus content and perhaps the presence of burnt occupation material. On the basis that contrast between feature and surroundings locates the features, walls, and other stone settings can also be located since they have less susceptibility than the area around them, i.e. they exhibit a reverse anomaly.
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.
malachite: CATEGORY: geology
DEFINITION: A minor ore but a widespread mineral of copper; basic copper carbonate, green in color. It was first employed as a cosmetic and ointment for the eyes, to cut down the glare of the sun and discourage flies. The discovery that metal could be obtained from it was probably accidental and then it was used as a source of copper. The extensive deposits in Sinai were much exploited in antiquity. It was also used for oils and water colors and encrusted upon other materials as ornament.
Malian: SYNONYMS OR RELATED TERMS: Malyan, Tal-i; Tal I Malyan; Anshan
CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: Ancient Anshan, located in the Kur River drainage of Fars, southwest Iran, a center of Elam. This tell site was occupied from the 5th millennium BC and many buildings of the Proto-Elamite and Middle Elamite periods have been discovered. In the 3rd and 2nd millennia BC, the city was clearly a major trading center, with much imported material as well as the local. It traditionally warred with southern Mesopotamian states. Its sequence extends to the early 1st millennium AD. Its most important occupations were the Banesh, c 3400-2800 BC, and Kaftari, c 2200-1600 BC.
mano: SYNONYMS OR RELATED TERMS: handstone
CATEGORY: lithics
DEFINITION: A one- or two-handled small and flat ground stone tool used with a metate (quern) for grinding vegetable material such as maize, seeds, nuts, pigments, etc. Manos date dates to the Archaic Indian period, the word coming from Spanish mano de piedra, hand stone" -- referring to the upper stone which is usually cylindrical or ovoid in shape. The underlying smooth stone slab is the metate. It is a hallmark artifact defining the economic or subsistence base of prehistoric societies. Its forms vary considerably from a barely modified cobble to a long cylinder similar to a rolling pin."
manufacture: CATEGORY: term
DEFINITION: The second stage of behavioral processes, in which raw materials are modified to produce artifacts.
Mapungubwe: CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: Late Iron Age hilltop site in northern Transvaal, that was South Africa's first urban center. It has given its name to the southern facies of phase B of the Leopard's Kopje complex and it was occupied between 1220-1270 AD. The material from the earliest levels is very similar to that from the nearby site of Bambandyanalo. Mapungubwe was a forerunner of the developments at Great Zimbabwe and may have been the capital of a state that controlled trade with the East African coast. In Mapungubwe and Great Zimbabwe, a wealthy and privileged elite built with stone and were buried with gold and copper ornaments, exotic beads, and fine imported pottery and cloth. Their homes, diet, and ostentatious burials are in stark contrast to those of the common folk. The 13th-century burial of an important official uncovered at Mapungubwe was accompanied by a gold-covered statue of a rhinoceros, a golden staff, and other artifacts -- one of the earliest indications of gold mining in southern Africa. The Mapungubwe gold was panned from alluvial deposits.
Maritsa culture: CATEGORY: culture
DEFINITION: Late Neolithic culture of the eastern Balkans, contemporary with Vinca C, between 4000-3700 BC. It is characterized by the materials from Karanovo's Layer V, with dark pottery whose surface tended to be covered by either incised or excised lines which were filled with white paint after firing.
marking: CATEGORY: language
DEFINITION: Notations on tokens and envelopes. Some of the envelopes have markings corresponding to the clay shapes inside. Moreover, these markings are more or less similar to the shapes drawn on clay tablets that date back to about 3100 BC and that are unambiguously related to the Sumerian language. These markings are thought to constitute a logographic form of writing consisting of some 1,200 different characters representing numerals, names, and such material objects as cloth and cow.
Marxist archaeology: CATEGORY: term
DEFINITION: The use of the writings of Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, which depict a materialist model of social change, to understand past societies. Change within a society is seen as the result of contradictions arising between the forces of production (technology) and the relations of production (social organization). Such contradictions are seen to emerge as a struggle between distinct social classes. Marxist archaeology is built on the notion that an understanding of who has power and how that power is exercised is a vital element in explaining social change.
mass: CATEGORY: measure
DEFINITION: A measure of the amount of material, independent of gravity, measured with a balance.
matrix: SYNONYMS OR RELATED TERMS: plural matrices or matrixes
CATEGORY: feature; term
DEFINITION: The soil or physical material in which an excavation is conducted, or within which artifacts or fossils are embedded or supported. The term also refers to the surrounding deposit in which archaeological finds are situated. Originally the term described the grains in sediments or rocks that are finer than the coarsest material in the sediment or rock. Matrix is the material within which cultural debris is contained.
Mawangdui: SYNONYMS OR RELATED TERMS: Ma-wang-tui
CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: Site in Hunan province, China, near Chang-Sha (Changsha City), of three Early Han-dynasty tombs with features of both shaft and mounded tombs. Tomb No. 2 belonged to the first marquis of Dai (d. 186 BC), a high official of the Han administration. Nos. 3 and 1 are apparently the tombs of his son (d. 168 BC) and wife (d. shortly after 168 BC). In construction and contents the three tombs are far different from Han princely burials in the north and reflect the lingering traditions and material culture of the Chu kingdom, which had fallen to Qin less than a century earlier. Each tomb takes the form of a massive compartmented timber box at the bottom of a deep stepped shaft; the shaft was filled in with rammed earth and a mound was raised over it. The contents of Tomb No. 1 were very well preserved: the body of the wife of the marquis, wrapped in silk and laid inside four richly decorated nested coffins. The 180 dishes, toilet boxes, and other lacquer articles, silk clothing, offerings of food, musical instruments, small wooden figures of servants and musicians, and a complete inventory of the grave goods written on bamboo slips depict extreme wealth. Tomb 3 was furnished in the same fashion as Tomb 1, but contained more silk paintings, three rare musical instruments, and an extraordinary collection of manuscripts, some on silk and some on bamboo slips, including some of the earliest known maps from China, treatises on medicine and astronomy, comet charts, and important literary texts (the Daoist/Taoist classic Dao De jing" ("Tao te ching") the "Yi jing" ("Book of Changes")) The contents of Tomb 2 are comparable to those of Tomb 1 but poorly preserved."
Meadowcroft: SYNONYMS OR RELATED TERMS: Meadowcroft rock shelter
CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: A rock shelter in Pennsylvania with a long series of stratified deposits spanning the period from at least 14,000 BC up to the 18th century AD -- Palaeoindian, Archaic, Late prehistoric, and historic periods. The site was occupied intermittently by groups representing all the major cultural stages in northeastern North America. Charcoal samples in the lowest stratum have yielded dates in the range 35,000-19,500 BC, although there was no association with cultural material. Flint tools bear a resemblance to finds at Blackwater Draw and Lindenmeier. The evidence from Meadowcroft established beyond reasonable doubt the presence of a human population south of the ice masses in the Late Pleistocene. Meadowcroft provides some of the earliest reliable evidence of man in North America.
Medemblik: SYNONYMS OR RELATED TERMS: formerly Medemelach
CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: A town on the Zuyder Zee, Netherlands, with a monastery known to have existed from Carolingian times up to the later medieval period. Occupation material suggests that there was an ancillary settlement from the later Merovingian era during the 8th and 9th centuries. Documents state that Pepin the Short incorporated Medemblik in a grant of land given to the Bishop of Utrecht.
Mehi: CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: A tell site of the Kulli culture in southern Baluchistan (Pakistan) with a settlement and cremation cemetery. Grave goods include copper tools, beads, and terra-cotta figurines of females, bulls, and birds. The tell also yielded Indus civilization material such as carved stone vases. A number of steatite bowls imported from Tepe Yahya around 2800 BC have been found.
Melkhoutboom: SYNONYMS OR RELATED TERMS: Melkhoutboom Cave
CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: Cave in eastern Cape Province, South Africa, with Later Stone Age material spanning the last 15,000 years. There is an excellent plant collection from the last 7500 years; Late Stone Age people relied heavily on plant foods, the remains of which have been well preserved at this site.
Memphis: SYNONYMS OR RELATED TERMS: Men-nefer
CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: The capital of Egypt in the Archaic Period and Old Kingdom (c 2575-c. 2130 BC), and thereafter one of the most important cities of the Near East. Located in Lower Egypt, it stood near the key point where the Nile begins to divide its waters at the head of the delta, 15 miles south of Cairo. The only surviving remains are the cemeteries west of the city, most notably the pyramids and Great Sphinx of Giza. The main pyramid fields are: Abu Ruwaysh, Giza, Zawayet el-Aryan, Abu Sir, Saqqarah (Saqqara), and Dahshur. It is said to have been founded by the 1st Dynasty ruler Menes c 2925 BC and was the seat of the creator god Ptah. During the New Kingdom (1539-1075), Memphis probably functioned as the second, or northern, capital of Egypt. Despite the rise of the god Amon of Thebes, Ptah remained one of the principal gods of the pantheon. The Great Temple was added to or rebuilt by virtually every king of the 18th dynasty. Chapels were constructed by Thutmose I and Thutmose IV and by Amenhotep III. Amenhotep III's son, the religious reformer Akhenaton, built a temple to his god, Aton, in Memphis. A number of handsome private tombs dating from this period in the Memphite necropolis testify to the existence of a sizable court. In 332 BC, Alexander the Great used Memphis as his headquarters while making plans for his new city of Alexandria. From the Fifth Dynasty onwards there was a very marked reduction in the size of the royal tombs, together with the use of materials and techniques which involved a lesser expenditure of effort and resources in their construction. By the First Intermediate period, the construction of monumental tombs seems to have stopped.
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.
metate: SYNONYMS OR RELATED TERMS: lower grindstone, concave quern, stone saddle quern
CATEGORY: lithics
DEFINITION: A ground-stone slab with a concave upper surface used as a lower millstone against which another stone is rubbed to grind vegetable material such as cereal grains, seeds, nuts, etc. A metate is one of a two-part milling apparatus -- the other part being with a mano (handheld upper grindstone). Metates are found in agricultural and preagricultural contexts over much of the world and are often made of volcanic rock in Mesoamerica. It is a Spanish term for the smoothed, usually immobile, stone with a concave upper surface and is mostly associated with the grinding of maize. It is a hallmark artifact in the definition of prehistoric subsistence patterns.
Mezin: CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: Upper Palaeolithic site in the Desna valley in the Ukraine with a radiocarbon date of 15,100 bp. Art material with squared key pattern carving was made, including an ivory wrist band. There are at least two mammoth bone houses with associated pits and hearths.
microlith: SYNONYMS OR RELATED TERMS: pigmy stone
CATEGORY: lithics
DEFINITION: Any of various very small stone tools varying in size from 1-5 cm -- mainly thin blade or blade fragments with sharp cutting edges, usually geometric in shape and set into a wooden handle or shaft or the tip of a bone or antler as an arrow point. They were shaped by abrupt retouch into various shapes like triangles and crescents. Microliths were produced during the Later Upper Palaeolithic and Mesolithic and were either struck as blades from very small cores or were made from fractured blades using the microburin technique. They are characteristic, for example, of Azilian culture of the Mesolithic. Microliths represent both a versatile and an economic use of raw material: just as blades yield more cutting edge than flakes per unit weight of raw material, so bladelets improve yet further this advantage, by a factor of something over 100 compared to core tools.
microstructure: CATEGORY: artifact
DEFINITION: The arrangement of phases of a material; in a ceramic, the internal arrangement of crystalline and amorphous materials, pores, and boundaries between them
midden: SYNONYMS OR RELATED TERMS: kitchen midden
CATEGORY: feature
DEFINITION: Any large refuse heap, mound, or concentration of cultural debris associated with human occupation. The term includes such materials as discarded artifacts (e.g. broken pots and tools), food remains, shells, bones, charcoal and ashes, -- and may include the material in which the debris is encapsulated and modifications of this matrix. Midden debris usually contains decayed organic material, bonescrap, artifacts (broken and whole), and miscellaneous detritus. Middens are a valuable source of archaeological data. The long-term disposal of refuse can result in stratified deposits, which are useful for relative dating. Sometimes the midden is a dump or trash pile separate from the residential area, but more commonly among hunters and gatherers the houses are on top of the midden itself. Some of the largest shell middens were accumulated by shore-dwellers in Mesolithic Denmark.
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).
Miraflores: CATEGORY: culture
DEFINITION: A complex of cultural materials which define a phase from 100 BC to 200 AD of Highland Mayan sites in the Late Pre-Classic period. It is the Late Formative period of the Valley of Guatemala. Characteristic artifacts include engraved soft stone and monochrome ceramic vessels, as well as 'mushroom stones' (hollow stones set in an annular base and capped with mushroom-shaped covers, which may have been used in rites with hallucinogenic mushrooms). A strong Izapan influence is evident. The huge Miraflores mounds located at Kaminaljuyú contained log tombs of incredible richness. In one, the deceased was accompanied by sacrificed followers or captives. As many as 340 objects were placed with him, including jade mosaic masks, jade ear spools and necklaces, bowls of chlorite schist, and pottery vessels of great beauty.
mitochondrial DNA: SYNONYMS OR RELATED TERMS: mtDNA
CATEGORY: term
DEFINITION: The genetic material inside the mitochondrian, an energy-producing unit of a cell, which has been studied to calculate the antiquity of modern humans. Some mtDNA studies suggest that modern humans arose first in Africa around 200,000 years ago. Investigations of human mitochondrial DNA reveal that the variation among modern human populations is small compared, for example, with that between apes and monkeys, which points to the recency of human origin. Research also points out that there is a distinction between African and other human mitochondrial DNA types, suggesting the substantial antiquity of the African peoples and the relative recency of other human populations.
model: CATEGORY: technique
DEFINITION: A devices used by archaeologists to aid the interpretation of data; models consist of hypothetical reconstructions of dynamic processes partly based on material remains and partly testing the