Archaeology Wordsmith

Results for quartz:

quartz: CATEGORY: geology
DEFINITION: A hard mineral of many varieties that consists primarily of silica or silicon dioxide. Quartz has been important from the earliest times; crystals of it were known to the ancient Greeks as 'krystallos'. It is typically colorless to white, with some minor impurities which make it into many different colors. Quartz has great economic importance. Many varieties are gemstones, including amethyst, citrine, smoky quartz, and rose quartz. Sandstone, composed mainly of quartz, is an important building stone. Large amounts of quartz sand are used in the manufacture of glass and porcelain and for foundry molds in metal casting. Quartz is the second most abundant mineral in the Earth's crust after feldspar.
quartz crystal: CATEGORY: artifact
DEFINITION: Pure silicate rock-crystal. Usually perfectly clear with six crystal surfaces. May be used as a raw material for lithic tool manufacture.
quartzite: CATEGORY: geology
DEFINITION: Metamorphic rock based on sandstone and consisting mostly of quartz; it is dense hard rock that fractures concoidally. Flaked tools were made of quartzite when there was no chert or flint and it was important for heavy monumental building stone. Pebbles of it were made into hammerstones and hand axes.
vein quartz: CATEGORY: artifact
DEFINITION: A relatively pure type of quartz which is found in veins in areas of igneous rocks.
agate: CATEGORY: geology
DEFINITION: A common semiprecious silica mineral and a variety of chalcedony that occurs in bands of various colors and is somewhat transparent. It is essentially a variety of quartz and was engraved in antiquity. Its name comes from a corruption of the word Achates, a river of Sicily, where Pliny said the mineral was first found.
Ambrona: CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: A Lower Palaeolithic site in Soria, central Spain, first discovered before World War II. Ambrona probably dates 300,000-400,000 years ago, from the end of the Mindel glacial period. Its occupants hunted elephants, deer, and bovines though the horse was the most common animal in the area. There are stone hand axes, scrapers, and cleavers of the Acheulian type and similar to some African sites were made from chalcedony, quartzite, quartz, and limestone. Points were fashioned from young elephant tusks. Pieces of charcoal show that fire was used.
Asturian: CATEGORY: culture
DEFINITION: A macrolithic industry of the Mesolithic in northern Spain, discovered from shell mounds at cave mouths. It followed the Azilian and is characterized by a long pointed unifacial quartzite pick. It dates to the 9th and 8th millennia BP.
Baikal Neolithic: CATEGORY: chronology; culture
DEFINITION: The Neolithic period of the Lake Baikal region in eastern Siberia. Stratified sites in the area show a long, gradual move from the Palaeolithic to Neolithic stage, starting in the 4th millennium BC. The Postglacial culture was not true" Neolithic in that it farmed but Neolithic in the sense of using pottery. It was actually a Mongoloid hunting-and-fishing culture (except in southern Siberia around the Aral Sea) with a microlithic flint industry with polished-stone blade tools together with antler bone and ivory artifacts; pointed- or round-based pottery and the bow and arrow. Points and scrapers made on flakes of Mousterian aspect and pebble tools showing a survival of the ancient chopper-chopping tool tradition of eastern Asia have also been found. There was a woodworking and quartzite industry and some cattle breeding. The first bronzes of the region are related to the Shang period of northern China and the earliest Ordos bronzes. The area covers the mountainous regions from Lake Baikal to the Pacific Ocean and the taiga (coniferous forest) and tundra of northern Siberia. A first stage is name for the site Isakovo and is known only from a small number of burials in cemeteries. The succeeding Serovo stage is also known mainly from burials with the addition of the compound bow backed with bone plates. The third phase named Kitoi has burials with red ochre and composite fish hooks possibly indicate more fishing. The succeeding Glazkovo phase of the 2nd millennium BC saw the beginnings of metal-using but generally showed continuity in artifact and burial types. Some remains of semi-subterranean dwellings with centrally located hearths occur together with female statuettes in bone."
Baile Herculane: CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: A large cave site in Rumania where flint implements from the Paleolithic Period (about 2,500,000 years ago) and Neolithic objects were found. There is important Palaeolithic, Mesolithic, Neolithic and Copper Age stratigraphy comprising three main occupation horizons: Upper Palaeolithic levels corresponding to the Würm II phase and defined by a quartzite industry with end scrapers; a late Mesolithic level with microlithic flints, crude quartzite tools, and Danube fish bones; and levels of Late Copper Age occupation.
chalcedony: SYNONYMS OR RELATED TERMS: chalcedony
CATEGORY: geology
DEFINITION: A fine-grained hard stone, a variety of the silica mineral quartz. A form of chert, it is found in a variety of milky or grayish colors with distinctive parallel bands of contrasting color. In antiquity, chalcedony was the stone most used by the gem engraver for beads, seals, and sometimes as a substitute for flint. The agate, carnelian, jasper, and onyx are some of the varieties still cut and polished as ornamental stones.
chert: SYNONYMS OR RELATED TERMS: hornstone, phthanite
CATEGORY: geology
DEFINITION: A coarse type of siliceous (silica) rock, a form of quartz, used for the manufacture of stone tools where flint was not available. It is of poorer quality than flint, formed from ancient ocean sediments and often has a semi-glassy finish. It is pinkish, white, brown, gray, or blue-gray in color. Flint, chert, and other siliceous rocks like obsidian are very hard, and produce a razor-sharp edge when properly flaked into tools. This crystalline form of the mineral silica is found as nodules in limestones. Varieties of chert are jasper, chalcedony, agate, flint, and novaculite. Chert and flint provided the main source of tools and weapons for Stone Age man.
Choukoutien: SYNONYMS OR RELATED TERMS: adj. Choukoutienian
CATEGORY: site; culture
DEFINITION: A type site near Peking, China, for an Upper and Middle Paleolithic culture. It is the place where 40 of the first skeletons of Homo erectus was found -- in limestone fissures of Middle Pleistocene deposits, probably of Mindel date, some 500,000 years old. The find also yielded extinct animals; flake, core, and chopping tools of quartz and sandstone; and traces of fire. From another area came skeletons of Homo sapiens with stone and bone tools of the Upper Palaeolithic.
cleavage surface: SYNONYMS OR RELATED TERMS: cleavage plane
CATEGORY: artifact
DEFINITION: A surface formed by a separation of the rock along a natural cleavage plane or crack, esp. on quartz crystals, slate, petrified wood
Coclé: CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: A region in Panama where the type site of Sitio Conte has yielded deep rectangular tombs with grave goods of a rich ceramic and metallurgical tradition of c 500-1000 AD. The Coclé region was strongly influenced by the Quimbaya style. It is particularly known for its striking gold pieces set with precious stones, including emeralds, quartzes, jaspers, opals, agates, and green serpentines. The extremely fine polychrome pottery is characterized by decoration of intricate geometric patterns and by stylized biomorphic forms. Gold- and tumbaga-working techniques, probably imported from Columbia, include cire perdue casting. Some association with Tairona is recognized in some artifacts especially in the wing-shaped pendants. In addition to the grave goods, there are indications that wife and servant sacrifice took place at the death of an important person.
Colossi of Memnon: CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: Two colossal seated statues of Amenhotep III (1390-1352 BC), carved from quartzite sandstone, which are located at the eastern end of the site of his much-plundered mortuary temple in western Thebes; each of the figures is flanked by a representation of Tiy. The two remaining statues are 70-feet (21-meters) high, each hewn from a single block of stone. The more northerly of these was partly destroyed by an earthquake in 27 BC, resulting in a curious phenomenon. Every morning, when the rays of the rising sun touched the statue, musical sounds like the twang of a harp string were heard. This was supposed to be the voice of Memnon responding to the greeting of his mother, Eos. After the restoration of the statue by the Roman emperor Septimius Severus (170 AD) the sounds ceased. The sounds had come from air passing through the pores of the stone, caused by the change of temperature at sunrise, and the masonry patching caused the singing" to cease. These statues once flanked the gateway in front of the temple pylon but now sit alone in the middle of cultivated fields."
Devil's Lair: CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: A limestone cave near the southwest coast of Western Australia, containing deep, well-preserved organic and stone deposits dating from 27,000-10,000 BC. It is one of the longest occupation sequences in Australia, with well-defined hearths and occupation floors and a rich faunal assemblage. The stone assemblage included cores, scrapers, denticulate flakes, retouched flakes, and adze flakes of chert or quartz. Undersea-drill cores from the nearby continental shelf have produced the same Eocene chert from a zone which would have been exposed during Pleistocene low sea-levels. Three unifacially incised limestone plaques (10,000-18,400 BC) and a piece of artificially perforated marl have been interpreted as ritual items or adornments. Bone tool artifacts included points dating to c 27,000 BC and beads of macropod (kangaroo/wallaby) fibulae between 13,000-10,000 BC, claimed to be the oldest known ornaments in Australia.
Diring: CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: A Neolithic site in northeast Siberia with burials of the Ymyakhtakh culture and an assemblage of quartzite cores, pebble tools, and flakes.
discoidal: SYNONYMS OR RELATED TERMS: disc
CATEGORY: artifact
DEFINITION: A stone artifact circular in shape and concave on both sides, usually of quartz, granite, flint, hematite, slate, or basalt. It ranges 1-9 inches in diameter and 1-20 pounds in weight. Some have a hole through the center and others have flanges around the edges. They seemed to have a ceremonial or ritual purpose or for mixing herbs or medicines.
dunting: CATEGORY: artifact
DEFINITION: Cracking that occurs in a fired ware as a result of thermal stresses; cracking that occurs if a ware is cooled too rapidly or that appears on refiring bisque ware through 400-600 degrees Celsius, with the expansion of quartz
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.
felsite: CATEGORY: geology
DEFINITION: A dense, fine-grained, igneous rock consisting typically of feldspar and quartz
Filimoshki: CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: A Pleistocene site on the Zeya River in eastern Siberia with flaked quartzite cobbles recovered from alluvium and classified as Lower Palaeolithic tools.
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).
glaze: SYNONYMS OR RELATED TERMS: enamel, couverte
CATEGORY: ceramics
DEFINITION: A type of slip applied to pottery which produces an impermeable and glassy surface when fired at high temperatures. It is usually produced by coating pottery with powdered glass and reheating them to a temperature where the glass begins to fuse. Glaze is a vitreous substance and, like glass, glaze is made from silica; this substance only melts at a temperature higher than that which would melt the pot, so a flux must be added to make it useable. Silica is present in most pottery, so in these cases only the flux -- an oxide of sodium, lead, or potassium -- needs to be added, and a colorant if required, usually in the form of a frit crushed and suspended in water. The pot is then fired at a temperature suitable for melting the glaze (somewhere between 900?-1200? C depending on the constituents), which runs into an even layer all over the pot. Known in ancient Egypt where a mixture of fine sand, quartz or crystal dust was used with an alkaline base (soda, potash). Glaze or couverte can be identified in the Persian faiences and Flemish stoneware. In Hellenistic period, lead glaze was invented, in which lead monoxide replaced soda or potash. A large variety of glazes may be used, varying in color, texture, and suitability for different types of pottery.
granite: CATEGORY: geology
DEFINITION: A granular igneous rock composed essentially of the minerals quartz, orthoclase feldspar, and mica. It is the most common plutonic rock of the Earth's crust, formed by the cooling of magma at depth. Primarily gray in color, the crystalline rock is used mainly for building, paving, and tombstones.
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.
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.
Kartan culture: CATEGORY: culture
DEFINITION: A group of stone assemblages with heavy core tools found on Kangaroo Island and the nearby peninsulas of South Australia, a variant of the Australian Core Tool and Scraper Tradition. Kangaroo Island, now separated from Australia by a 15-km strait, was joined to the mainland during the Pleistocene. There were no Aboriginal inhabitants at the time of European contact. Radiocarbon estimates of 14,000 BC have been obtained for a possibly subsequent small scraper industry in Seton rock shelter on Kangaroo Island. Kartan tools include unifacially flaked pebble choppers, large steep-edged flake scrapers, waisted ax blades, and large horsehoof cores (mean weights of 500 grams), sometimes associated with small quartz flakes. The proportion of core tools in the assemblage is much higher than in other Pleistocene sites.
Koptos: SYNONYMS OR RELATED TERMS: Qift, ancient Kebet, Qebtu
CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: Town site in Upper Egypt just below Luxor, at the entrance to the Wadi Hammamat (the road to the Red Sea), existing since early dynastic times. It was important for nearby gold and quartzite mines in the Eastern Desert, worked during the 1st and 2nd dynasties, and as a starting point for expeditions to Punt. The town was associated with the god Min, whose temple ruins remain, and the goddess Isis, who, according to legend, found part of Osiris' body there. Destroyed in 292 AD by Diocletian, it later became a Christian community. This valley also served as the principal trade route between the Nile valley and the Red Sea.
Kota Tampan: CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: Site in peninsular Malaysia with a pebble and flake industry dating to 31,000 BP in the Upper Palaeolithic. . In northern Malaya a large series of choppers and chopping tools made on quartzite pebbles and found in Middle Pleistocene tin-bearing gravels have been referred to collectively as the Tampanian, since they come from Kota Tampan in Perak.
Kow Swamp: CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: Large cemetery site in Murray Valley, Victoria, Southern Australia, dated to between 15,000-9000 bp. More than 40 crania and mandibles show marked robusticity of the fronto-facial regions combined with more modern, but still thick-boned, posterior areas of the crania. There is evidence of artificial deformation. Kow Swamp stone tools consisted of a few small quartz flakes and bipolar cores, similar to finds of the same age at Green Gully. Kow Swamp had the large single Late Pleistocene population in the world.
Lagoa Santa caves: CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: A system of caves in Minas Gerais, Brazil, occupied from the late Pleistocene, with human remains, stone tools, and remains of extinct mastodon and sloth. Dated to 15,300 bp is an industry of quartz flakes. The Cerca Grande complex of 10,000-8000 bp had small rock-crystal flakes, axes, bone projectile points, hammerstones, and a cemetery of 50 flexed inhumations. There are hundreds of rock paintings from the Planalto Tradition of 7000-3000 bp.
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.
Muge: CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: Mesolithic shell mounds (concheiros) in Portugal, dated between 7350-5150 bp (Atlantic period). There was a microlithic industry, quartzite pebbles and grindstones, and bone points and axes of red deer antlers. There are more than 230 burials -- individuals with at least some Cro-Magnon characteristics, called Cro-Magnoids. It is an important European Mesolithic funerary assemblage.
Newgrange: SYNONYMS OR RELATED TERMS: New Grange
CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: The most famous and splendidly decorated of the Irish passage graves, part of the Boyne Valley cemetery, in Meath County. The kidney-shaped mound, dated to c 3100 BC, is over 100 meters in diameter and 13 meters high. The cairn itself was carefully made of alternate layers of stones and turf. A kerb of large stones carved with wavy lines, lozenges, triangles, etc. encloses the base of the mound. On either side of the entrance the green kerbstones were topped by a retaining wall of white quartz. Some distance from the original base of the mound is a surrounding circle of free-standing stones. The burial chamber, cruciform in plan, is roofed by corbelling and has three subsidiary cells; the tomb has a very long passage, 19 meters in length, and built of orthostats. Midwinter sunrise shines through an opening above the door to illuminate the central chamber, the clearest example of an astronomical orientation recorded from a European prehistoric monument. Many stones of both chamber and passage carry pecked designs including an unusual triple spiral. Excavation has shown that the upper surfaces of the capstones had drainage channels, as well as art which would have been invisible once the overlying cairn had been built. Traces of cremation burials were found in the cells of the chamber, and soil from a habitation site, possibly close to the tomb, had been used to pack the interstices of the passage roof. There are two radiocarbon dates around 3200 BC and the site was reoccupied after the tomb-builders had left it and the cairn had begun to slump by a group which used Late Neolithic and Beaker pottery.
Ngilipitji: CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: Quartzite quarry in eastern Arnhem Land, northern Australia. Products include Leilira blades.
Nihewan: SYNONYMS OR RELATED TERMS: [Ni-ho-wan]
CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: Formation in Hebei Province, China, thought to be 1 million years old and containing northern China's earliest Palaeolithic tools of quartzite choppers and flakes. Mammal fauna is of the Lower Pleistocene and may be an early form of horse.
Omo: CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: A river basin in Ethiopia north of Lake Turkana, where fragmentary remains of Australopithecus and early Homo have been found. The same deposits have produced flakes of imported quartz, 2.4-2 million years, the oldest securely dated artifacts. The site is of outstanding importance as a basis for dating other sites throughout Africa, because its time-scale is unusually well fixed by palaeomagnetic studies, potassium argon dates, and faunal comparisons.
Quimbaya: CATEGORY: culture; artifact
DEFINITION: A late prehistoric culture of western Colombia, South America, dated 300-1600 AD. It is known for its fine goldwork -- flasks, helmets, jewelry, pins, etc. It represents some of the most advanced metallurgical techniques in the prehistoric New World. Pottery with negative painting and incision, and sometimes modeled, belongs to the final centuries before the Spanish Conquest. The Coclé region in Panama was strongly influenced by the Quimbaya style. It is particularly known for its striking gold pieces set with precious stones, including emeralds, quartzes, jaspers, opals, agates, and green serpentines.
San José Mogote: CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: The largest of a number of Zapotec village communities which developed in the Pre-Classic or Formative Period in central Oaxaca, Mexico, before 1300 BC. Agriculture was practiced by 'pot irrigation', direct watering from a well. There is evidence of Olmec influence and by c 900 BC the village had grown to 20 hectares. There were small lower-class residences, public buildings, and workshops. Artifacts include debris from 'prized' minerals such as ilmenite, hematite, mica, and green quartz; as well as finished goods of Olmec origin. These suggest that San Jose Mogote was a manufacturing site of shell ornaments and magnetite mirrors and was part of an Olmec-controlled trade system.
sandstone: CATEGORY: artifact
DEFINITION: Sedimentary rock consisting of sand or quartz grains cemented together, typically red, yellow, or brown in color.
Shungurian: CATEGORY: culture
DEFINITION: An industry of the lower Omo Valley north of Lake Turkana, Ethiopia, known for its remains of animals and hominids. Several archaeological deposits have been discovered on the site, dating back two million years. The industry is based on very small quartz flakes made from a nucleus or from the accidental shattering of pebbles used as percussion tools.
silica: CATEGORY: artifact
DEFINITION: Silicon dioxide, a hard, unreactive, colorless compound which occurs as quartz and in sandstone and many other rocks.
Sozudai: CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: Palaeolithic site in Oita Prefecture, Japan, where a date of 4000,000 bp was claimed based on geology and tool comparisons with Zhoukoudian. A few hundred tools, mostly of quartzite, were recovered from a secondary deposit on a marine terrace, including hand axes, scrapers, and flakes. A date of only 70,000 bp is accepted by many archaeologists.
Swartkrans: CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: One of three neighboring South African sites where important fossil hominid remains have been found -- a short distance from Sterkfontein and Kromdraai. The valley is the richest hominid site in South Africa and Swarkrans dates between 1.8-1 million years ago, with remains of possibly over 60 individuals of Australopithecus robustus. The Swartkrans artifacts are mainly relatively crude stone chopper cores, flakes, and scrapers made of quartzite and quartz, and some bone tools. The stone tools, including rough hand axes, are attributed to the Developed Oldowan. A second hominid is present, probably Homo erectus or habilis. Fire-blackened bones of 1.5-1 million years ago may be the oldest known direct evidence for the use of fire.
Tautavel: SYNONYMS OR RELATED TERMS: Caune de l'Arago
CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: Cave site in the east Pyrenees-Orientales of southern France with Middle Pleistocene/Lower Palaeolithic deposits of pre-Mousterian date with little stratification. The front half of a skull with heavy brow ridges and robust facial features has been found, as well as two lower jaws, one much bigger toothed than the other. They are associated with an archaic Taycian quartz industry. Their date may be c 320,000-200,000 years ago.
Upper Swan: CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: Site on Swan River, Western Australia, with a date of c 38,000 bp and an assemblage of quartz and quartzite flakes and flake tools.
York ware: CATEGORY: artifact
DEFINITION: Style of wheel-thrown late Saxon pottery current in the period AD 850-1150, one of a series of regional industries of the period making cooking pots, jars, pitchers, flagons, bottles, jugs, bowls, and dishes. York ware is distinctive hard wheel-thrown quartz-gritted fabric, light red to brown or grey in color.

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