Archaeology Wordsmith

Results for ring:

annular ring nail: CATEGORY: artifact
DEFINITION: A nail with sharp-edged ridges that lock into wood fibers and greatly increase holding power
attribute clustering: CATEGORY: typology
DEFINITION: Any grouping method based on associations between attributes and including Spaulding's configurationist typology and factor analysis.
auger: SYNONYMS OR RELATED TERMS: augering (n)
CATEGORY: tool
DEFINITION: A tool used to probe into the ground and extract a small sample of a deposit without performing actual excavation. Its applications in archaeology are as a means of sampling and understanding the geological environment of a site and also for extracting peat for pollen analysis. There are various types of augers and they can be manual- or power-driven. Simple augers bring up samples on the thread of a drill bit. More elaborate ones open a chamber to collect a core after the drill has bored to an appropriate depth. Augering is generally restricted to the earliest stages of archaeological reconnaissance to determine the depth and characteristics of deposits.
battering-ram: CATEGORY: artifact
DEFINITION: An ancient military engine" used for smashing in doors and battering down walls. It consisted of a beam of wood with a head of iron -- originally a ram's head but later in the form of a ram's head -- and swung by chains from an overhead scaffolding. It had a roof to protect those working it from the missiles of the garrison."
bearings: CATEGORY: measure
DEFINITION: A direction or relative position; a horizontal direction expressed in degrees east or west of a true or magnetic north or south direction.
Bering Land Bridge: CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: The present-day floor of the Chukchi and Bering Seas, which emerged as dry land during Late Pleistocene glacial advances. It is the only route for faunal exchange between Eurasia and North America as it united Siberia and Alaska. It seems to have been breached only in the past 2.5 million years, with the earliest immigrants crossing it about 40,000-15,000 years ago. They were part of a migratory wave that later reached as far south as South America (about 10,000 years ago). During the Ice Age the sea level fell by several hundred feet, making the strait into a land bridge between Asia and North America, over which a considerable migration of plants and animals, as well as man, occurred. That period also allowed the transit of cold water currents from the Pacific into the Atlantic.
Beringia: CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: The part of the continental shelf that connects Northeast Asia with present-day Alaska. These were the polar continental shelves that escaped glaciation during the ice ages but which were exposed during periods of low sea level, which facilitated migration of people to North America from Asia, and in the Laptev and East Siberian seas. When exposed at the time of the last glacial maximum, it was a large, flat, vegetated landmass. In 1993, investigations on the climatic interstadial of 11,000-12,000 years ago in Beringia (now submerged under the Bering Strait) and the way it provided for the peopling of the New World from Asia were reported. Traces of starch from an apparently domesticated variety of the taro plant on flint tools from the Solomon Islands suggested that conscious planting was being done in the Pacific as long ago as 28,000 years before the present.
Beringian tradition: SYNONYMS OR RELATED TERMS: American Paleo-Arctic
CATEGORY: culture
DEFINITION: A culture in existence approximately 12,000 years ago between Siberia and temperate Alaska. The term was used by H. West to cover various Alaskan and Siberian archaeological formations which had developed from the Siberian Upper Paleolithic period, an area now largely submerged under the Bering Strait. Chronologically these formations lie between the middle of the Holocene period (c 35,000-9/10,000 BP), depending on the area. West's categorization includes the Bel'kachi, Diuktai, and Lake Ushki cultures in Siberia, the Denalian culture and American Paleo-Arctic formations in Alaska and the Yukon. Although Alaska is generally thought to be the gateway through which humans entered the New World, the earliest undisputed evidence for people there dates later than 12,000 years ago, well after the climax of the last major glacial advance but while glaciers still covered much of Arctic Canada. Artifacts of 11,500 to 9,000 years ago are known from a number of Alaskan sites, where hunters of caribou (and, in one case, of an extinct form of bison) manufactured blades.
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."
birefringence: CATEGORY: measure
DEFINITION: The difference between the indices of refraction of the fast ray and slow ray as light passes through an anisotropic mineral, causing the velocities of the two light components, oscillating at right angles to one another, to differ.
biscuit: SYNONYMS OR RELATED TERMS: bisque, bisque firing
CATEGORY: artifact
DEFINITION: Pots that have been given a preliminary firing to render them hard enough for further work such as decoration and glazing. The higher the temperature of the bisque firing, the harder will be pot, resulting in reduced reaction between glaze and body in the final firing. Unglazed fired pottery, awaiting glazing - the first or preliminary firing of a ware that is subsequently glazed and refired in the glost firing.
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.
centrally based wandering model: CATEGORY: technique
DEFINITION: A model for hunter-gatherer cultures centered around base camps.
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.
clearing excavation: CATEGORY: technique
DEFINITION: Any excavation designed primarily to reveal the horizontal and, by inference, functional dimensions of an archaeological site -- such as the extent, distribution, and patterning of buried data.
cold hammering: SYNONYMS OR RELATED TERMS: cold working
CATEGORY: geology; artifact
DEFINITION: A technique for making metal artifacts in which the metal is shaped by percussion without heating. Most metals, such as copper, bronze, gold, and silver, are soft enough to be worked while cold. Operations such as hammering and beating could be carried out without any heating to make the metal softer. These softer metals, however, cannot be cold-worked indefinitely because the metal becomes brittle and eventually fractures. It can be counteracted by gentle heating called annealing. Annealing allows crystals within the metal to recrystallize and distribute the stress that has built up. Cold working can then go on until the metal becomes brittle again. Metallographic examination, the study of crystal structure, can give information about the cold working and annealing processes in the last stages of the making of an artifact. Pure gold is one of the few metals that can be cold worked indefinitely without annealing.
collaring: CATEGORY: ceramics
DEFINITION: A part of wheel-throwing a vessel that involves using both hands to apply inward pressure on the rotating body to narrow it and form a neck or closure.
complacent ring: CATEGORY: flora
DEFINITION: The tree rings of a particular species of trees (as oak) which show no visible difference in ring patterns.
compression rings: CATEGORY: lithics
DEFINITION: The faint lines on the dorsal side of a flake, indicating the direction of force.
core: SYNONYMS OR RELATED TERMS: coring
CATEGORY: artifact
DEFINITION: A black or gray zone in the interior cross-section of a vessel wall, usually associated with incomplete removal of carbonaceous matter from the clay during relatively low-temperature firing; not to be confused with black coring at high temperatures, which results from trapped gases and may lead to bloating
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.
coring: CATEGORY: technique
DEFINITION: Driving a hollow tube into the ground to get a stratigraphic sample of the subsoil.
cup-and-ring mark: SYNONYMS OR RELATED TERMS: cup mark, cup and ring mark
CATEGORY: artifact; lithics
DEFINITION: The commonest form of rock carving in the British Isles, consisting of a cup-like depression surrounded by one or more concentric grooves. Cup-and-ring marks are found on standing stones, singular or in stone circles, and on the slabs of burial cists, as well as on natural rock surfaces. In its classic form most cup-and-ring art belongs in the Bronze Age, but the motif occurs on passage graves, for example in the Clava tombs and on the capstones at Newgrange, where it may show links with similar rock carvings in northwest Spain. They are also found in Ireland and Scotland and can be dated to the Neolithic period of the 4th-3rd millennium BC.
cut flooring nail: CATEGORY: artifact
DEFINITION: A nail with a rectangular cross-section and a blunt tip, used to blind-nail flooring through edges without splitting
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.
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.
Durrington Walls: CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: A Neolithic (late 3rd millennium BC) henge monument in Wiltshire, England, with a large twin-entrance, and first occupied by people who made pottery of the Windmill Hill, Grooved Ware, and Beaker styles. Inside, the excavators found remains of two large circular timber structures, each of which had evidence for several different phases of construction.
Ehringsdorf: CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: A Middle Pleistocene site in eastern Germany near Weimar. A badly broken skull and other human remains have been found with stone tools resembling the Mousterian. The fossil man is of generalized Neanderthal type and the artifacts include scrapers, points, and bifaces which were typical of the Middle Palaeolithic. Often ascribed to the last interglacial (about 120,000 years ago), the remains have also been dated by the uranium series method to about 225,000 years ago.
electronic distance measuring devices: SYNONYMS OR RELATED TERMS: EDM
CATEGORY: technique
DEFINITION: Any surveying or mapping instrument using electronics and infrared or laser beams in measuring and calculating distances, points, and angles. They often work with computers.
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.
feathering: CATEGORY: artifact
DEFINITION: An effect obtained by trailing a feather through wet slip decoration in pottery-making
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.
firing: CATEGORY: ceramics
DEFINITION: The process of heating raw ceramics to a high temperature, driving all the water out of the paste and (depending on the composition of the paste and tempering) causing new chemical bonds to form within the paste.
footring: CATEGORY: artifact
DEFINITION: A low pedestal-like ring formed on the base of a vessel to enable it to stand more securely.
funerary offering: CATEGORY: artifact
DEFINITION: Any items provided initially by mourners and later, magically, through inscriptions and pictures in the tomb. Funerary offerings are essential" for the well-being of the 'ka' in Egyptian tradition. Funerary offerings present rich documentary evidence of a culture."
grit tempering: CATEGORY: ceramics
DEFINITION: The addition of small pieces of rock or sand to the paste used in creating a ceramic object.
grog tempering: CATEGORY: ceramics
DEFINITION: The addition of small pieces of crushed ceramic to the paste used in creating a ceramic object.
hammer-dressed: SYNONYMS OR RELATED TERMS: hammering (n.)
CATEGORY: artifact
DEFINITION: Having the surface (of a stone) roughly shaped or faced with a hammer
Hjortspring: CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: A peat bog on the Danish island of Als where a votive deposit with a boat or war canoe was deposited in c 200 BC (pre-Roman Iron Age). With the boat were many shields, spears, and swords. The boat was plank-built, sewn together without the use of nails, with room for about 50 oarsmen. The bow and stern were upturned and had ramlike projections. There were also everyday items such as bowls, boxes, and smith's tools.
jiggering: SYNONYMS OR RELATED TERMS: jollying
CATEGORY: ceramics
DEFINITION: A pottery-forming technique that involves use of a rotating mold that leaves its impression on either the interior or exterior surface of the vessel, which is otherwise shaped by wheel-throwing. When the clay body is placed within a concave mold, the process may be called jollying.
kiln firing: CATEGORY: ceramics
DEFINITION: A method of firing ceramics in which the ceramics are exposed to the heat from a fire within an oven-like structure called a kiln rather than to a direct flame.
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.
Lamb Spring: CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: Palaeoindian site in Colorado with camel bones dated to c 13,000 BP. There are also mammoth, bison, and horse bones and later Palaeoindian components.
Lehringen: CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: A Middle Palaeolithic site near Bremen in north Germany (Lower Saxony), where organic muds revealed a pollen diagram of the last Interglacial. In these muds, a yew wood spear broken into several pieces was found. It passed between the ribs of the skeleton of an Elephant of Elephas antiquus type. The tip was finely shaved to a point and fire-hardened; the spear was evidently used for thrusting.
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.
Little Salt Spring: CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: A prehistoric site in Florida with hearths, a boomerang, projectile point, and shell of extinct giant land tortoise from the Palaeoindian period (12,000-8500 BP). There was an Archaic occupation (6800-5200 BP) with burials of 1000 individuals preserved in peat.
lock ring: SYNONYMS OR RELATED TERMS: lock-ring
CATEGORY: artifact
DEFINITION: Small penannular (almost complete ring) ornament of gold or bronze popular in the Early to Middle Bronze Age in northern Europe. They are thought to have been used as hair ornaments.
lock rings: SYNONYMS OR RELATED TERMS: lock-ring
CATEGORY: artifact
DEFINITION: Small penannular (almost complete ring) ornaments of gold or bronze popular in the Early to Middle Bronze Age in northern Europe. They are thought to have been used as hair ornaments.
microscarring: CATEGORY: lithics
DEFINITION: Minute patterns of edge damage on a stone tool, often suggesting how that tool was utilized.
microwear: SYNONYMS OR RELATED TERMS: microscarring
CATEGORY: lithics
DEFINITION: The patterns of edge damage on a stone tool providing archaeological evidence of the ways in which that tool was used. Microscopic scratches and polish on the surface of stone tools or hominid teeth might reveal how various tools were used or what types of food certain hominids ate.
monitoring: CATEGORY: term
DEFINITION: Making periodic checks on the condition of collections, recharging exhausted silica gel and taking action on deteriorated objects where necessary.
neutron scattering: CATEGORY: technique
DEFINITION: A remote sensing technique involving the placing of a probe into the soil in order to measure the relative rates of neutron flows through the soil. A beam of neutrons is aimed at the target material and the resultant scattering of the neutrons yields information about that material's atomic structure. Since stone produces a lower count rate than soil, buried features can often be detected.
object clustering: CATEGORY: technique
DEFINITION: An approach to typology based on clusters of human artifacts that are seen as specific classificatory types.
offering table: CATEGORY: artifact
DEFINITION: An important element of the Egyptian private tomb throughout the Pharaonic and Greco-Roman periods. It was usually placed in an accessible location, such as the chapel, so that offerings could be brought to it by the funerary priests or relatives of the deceased.
Old Bering Sea Culture: SYNONYMS OR RELATED TERMS: Old Bering Sea stage
CATEGORY: culture
DEFINITION: An Eskimo subculture that settled in northern Alaska and northeast Siberia between 1500-2000 years ago, and is best known for its ivory objects. The earliest sites were in Bering Strait area and the major type site is on St. Lawrence Island. It is an early manifestation of the western Arctic Thule tradition, often linked with the possibly contemporaneous Okvik culture. Although both share similar traits -- a highly evolved art style, polished slate tools and pottery -- the relationship between the two is still uncertain. The art style appears to have flourished between 100-500 AD.
open-air firing: CATEGORY: ceramics
DEFINITION: The heating and hardening of ceramics in pits or simple, above-earth temporary structures.
ordering: CATEGORY: artifact
DEFINITION: The arranging of artifacts in logical classes and in chronological order
paring chisel: CATEGORY: artifact
DEFINITION: A type of tool made of stone or, more usually, metal with a shaped narrow blade that can be used carefully to remove thin strips or shavings of wood when fashioning a joint or shaping a block.
pit firing: CATEGORY: ceramics
DEFINITION: A method of firing ceramics using an open or exposed flame as opposed to a kiln.
porringer: CATEGORY: artifact
DEFINITION: A small bowl, often with a handle, used for soup or similar dishes.
ring: CATEGORY: artifact
DEFINITION: A small circular band, typically of precious metal and often set with one or more gemstones, worn on a finger as an ornament or a token of marriage, engagement, or authority
ring building: CATEGORY: artifact
DEFINITION: A type of coiling in which individual coils or annular rings are placed as separate 'courses' to build up a vessel
ring neck: CATEGORY: artifact
DEFINITION: A flagon neck with moldings forming a series of superimposed horizontal rings; not to be confused with a screw neck.
ring-headed pin: CATEGORY: artifact
DEFINITION: Bronze or iron dress-fitting comprising a slender shaft typically 5-10cm in length with a point at one end, while the other end has been bent round onto itself to form a loop or ring. Found in middle and later Iron Age contexts in the British Isles.
Ringkloster: CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: Unusual Late Mesolithic (Ertebolle) site in Denmark, about 10 km inland but with evidence of contact with the coast.
ringwork: SYNONYMS OR RELATED TERMS: ring-work
CATEGORY: structure; feature
DEFINITION: A circular entrenchment, the most modest form of medieval castle, originating in Germany in the later 10th century. Excavations of several of the hundreds of 10th-13th-century ringworks have shown them to be fortified manors. The first ringworks in England were constructed just before the Norman Conquest; after the Conquest hundreds of ringworks, were erected to defend timber and masonry buildings.
shattering: CATEGORY: flora
DEFINITION: A natural method of seed dispersal.
shell tempering: CATEGORY: ceramics
DEFINITION: The addition of small pieces of crushed shell to the paste used in creating a ceramic object.
shivering: CATEGORY: artifact
DEFINITION: A pottery defect caused by compressive stress, resulting in incomplete coverage or peeling of the glaze
single-link clustering: CATEGORY: measure
DEFINITION: Adding a new member to a group on the basis of a high coefficient of similarity to only one existing member of the group.
sintering: CATEGORY: ceramics
DEFINITION: A process in which the edges of the clay particles soften and adhere to one another. This process begins at about 350 degrees C and is completed by 700 degrees C.
soldering: SYNONYMS OR RELATED TERMS: solder (n., v.)
CATEGORY: artifact
DEFINITION: Method for joining two or more pieces of metal together using a fusible alloy that attaches to both parts and forms a solid bridge between or around then. First recognized during the middle Bronze Age.
string mark: CATEGORY: artifact
DEFINITION: The marks on the base of a vessel caused by the potter detaching the pot from the wheel by means of a wire or string.
Sulphur Spring: SYNONYMS OR RELATED TERMS: Sulphur Springs
CATEGORY: culture; site
DEFINITION: The earliest of three stages of the Cochise culture, named for a cluster of sites in southeast Arizona, and dating from 6000 / 7000 BC to c 4000 BC. Evidence of plant food processing (cobble manos) together with split and burnt faunal remains, imply an Archaic lifestyle, although there are almost no projectile points, blades, or knives. Besides milling stones, it is characterized by various scrapers. The remains of food animals indicate that some hunting was done.
tempering: CATEGORY: geology; ceramics
DEFINITION: One of the processes in the manufacture of steel and other metal artifacts, the heat treatment of hardened steels to improve toughness and reduce brittleness. The steel is reheated to a temperature of around 450? C and then rapidly cooled by quenching. Also, the material added to the paste of a ceramic to make it stronger and give it properties it does not naturally have.
tipi ring: CATEGORY: feature
DEFINITION: Any circle of stones found in the Northern (Great) Plains of North America, thought to be the remains of weights used to hold up a tipi (tepee).
Titterington culture: SYNONYMS OR RELATED TERMS: Titterington Focus
CATEGORY: culture
DEFINITION: A non-ceramic Late Archaic culture of the Midwest, c 2500-1900 BC, with small hunting and processing camps, base settlements, and mortuary sites. The artifacts include bifaces and were not heat-treated.
tree-ring dating: SYNONYMS OR RELATED TERMS: dendrochronology
CATEGORY: technique
DEFINITION: The use of annual growth rings in trees to date archaeological sites.
Tule Springs: CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: Site near Las Vegas, Nevada, with traces of human occupation c 11,000 BP -- in the form of hearths and artifacts.
Warring States period: SYNONYMS OR RELATED TERMS: Contending States
CATEGORY: chronology
DEFINITION: A division of the Zhou/Chou Dynasty, 475-221 BC, the latter part of the Eastern Zhou period, made up of six or seven small feuding Chinese kingdoms. The Warring States period saw the rise of many of the great philosophers of Chinese civilization, including the Confucian thinkers Mencius and Hsün-tzu, and the establishment of many of the governmental structures and cultural patterns that were to characterize China for the next 2,000 years. The Warring States period is distinguished from the preceding age, the Spring and Autumn (Ch'un Ch'iu) period (770-476 BC), when the country was divided into many even smaller states. In 223 BC, Ch'in defeated Ch'u and two years later established the first unified Chinese empire.
weathering: CATEGORY: term
DEFINITION: The process whereby materials are altered through time. This can occur at various speeds, depending on the composition of the objects, the environment in which they are buried, and changes in the environment.
Yeavering: CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: Royal seat of the Anglo-Saxon Northumbria, England, in the 7th century AD and site of an impressive group of buildings. Great timber halls and a semicircular timber grandstand for meetings and assemblies have been excavated. Of the smaller buildings uncovered, one is thought to have been converted from a pagan temple into a church. It has advanced our knowledge of Saxon timber architecture.
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."
abbey: CATEGORY: structure
DEFINITION: A place where monks or nuns live, work, and worship. An abbey usually consisted of group of buildings housing a monastery or a convent and an abbey church or a cathedral. Monasticism originated in the Middle East during the second half of the 4th century and spread to Byzantium, France, Greece, and Italy and developed independently from that in Britain. Excavations have shown considerable variation in the layout of abbeys depending on the different monastic orders. They range from beehive cells and oratories of Early Celtic abbeys to the Cistercian plan with cloisters, domestic ranges, and a large church. Prior to the 10th century, monasteries were the principal artistic, economic, and educational centers of the Christian world. An abbey was the complex of buildings which served the needs of these self-contained religious communities. The first European abbey was Montecassino in Italy, founded in 529.
Abkan: CATEGORY: culture
DEFINITION: A stone industry of southern Nubia that was probably the work of indigenous peoples who were ancestral to the Nubian A Group. These peoples maintained trade contact with southerly regions of the Nile Valley during the 4th millennium BC.
abstract data type: SYNONYMS OR RELATED TERMS: ADT
CATEGORY: database design
DEFINITION: A class of data that does not conform to alphanumeric, numeric, Boolean, text, or string types; includes time and date fields as well as special data types for ordinal time, statistical dates, stratigraphic order, and spatial context.
Abu Gurab: SYNONYMS OR RELATED TERMS: Abu Ghurob
CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: A site on the west bank of the Nile between Giza and Saqqara, originally called the Pyramid of Righa" and containing the remains of a sun temple erected by the 5th Dynasty King Nyuserra (2445-2421 BC) whose pyramid is at Abusir just to the south. The building of a sun temple to Ra in addition to a royal pyramid complex was customary in the 5th Dynasty. Abu Gurah is the best preserved of the two surviving examples (Userkaf at Abusir is the other.). Reliefs from the temple were sent to museums in Germany but a number of them were destroyed during World War II."
Abu Hureyra, Tell: CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: A small tell on the Euphrates River, 120 km east of Aleppo in Syria. The site was excavated in 1972-73 prior to flooding by the Tabqua/Tabqa Dam. Two major phases of occupation were found: Mesolithic or Epi-Palaeolithic (early 9th millennium BC) to a Pre-Pottery Neolithic B Culture in the 6th millennium. There was a long period of abandonment in the 7th millennium and then a final abandonment c 5800 BC. The site depicted a transition from gathering to cultivation, including large quantities of einkorn wheat, and from hunting to herding (sheep and goats, also gazelle and onager). The Neolithic settlement was of enormous size, larger than any other recorded site of this period -- even Çatal Hüyük. In the uppermost levels, a dark burnished pottery appeared.
abutment: CATEGORY: structure
DEFINITION: The part of a structure, as a pier or buttress, from which an arch rises or springs and which directly receives the pressure.
Academy: SYNONYMS OR RELATED TERMS: Greek Academeia, Latin Academia
CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: In ancient Greece, the academy or college of philosophy developed by Socrates and Plato, located just northwest of Athens. Plato acquired property there about 387 BC and used it as a training ground and to teach. At the site had been a park and gymnasium sacred to the legendary Attic hero Academus. The term Academy was not applied during Plato's time but rather to his successors till the time of Cicero (106-43 BC). It was organized for worshipping the muses and instruction included mathematics, dialectics, natural science, and political science. It was closed by the emperor Justinian in 529 AD.
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.
aceramic: CATEGORY: term
DEFINITION: Without pottery or not using pottery. This term is applied to periods and societies in which pottery is not used, especially in contrast to other periods of ceramic use and with neighboring ceramic cultures. Aceramic societies may use bark, basketry, gourds, leather, etc. for containers.
Aceramic Neolithic: CATEGORY: chronology
DEFINITION: The early part of the Neolithic period in Western Asia before the widespread use of pottery (c. 8500-6000 BC) in an economy based on the cultivation of crops or the rearing of animals or both. Aceramic Neolithic groups were in the Levant (Pre-Pottery Neolithic A and B), Zagros area (Karim Shahir, Jarmoan), and Anatolia (Hacilar Aceramic Neolithic). Aceramic Neolithic groups are more rare outside Western Asia.
Achaemenids: SYNONYMS OR RELATED TERMS: Achaemenid dynasty, Achaemenid
CATEGORY: culture
DEFINITION: The Persian dynasty, descendants of Achaemenes (c. 700 BC), which ruled from Cyrus the Great to Darius III (c 550-331 BC). Cyrus II (559-530 BC) overthrew the Medes empire to found a Persian empire, conquering Lydia, Babylonia, the Iranian plateau, and Palestine. His son, Cambyses II, added Egypt in 525 BC. The throne then passed to Darius, who set up an efficient administration of an empire then extending from the Nile to the Indus. This empire united for the first time all the peoples of the east -- from Thrace and Egypt to the Aral Sea and the Indus Valley -- and had as its capitals Parsargadae, Susa, and Persepolis. At Marathon in 490 BC, Darius failed to conquer the Greeks, as his son Xerxes failed at Salamis in 480. Their successors, notably Artaxerxes, fought to consolidate a waning empire. The Achaemenids were finally overthrown in 332 BC by Alexander the Great. The period is an important one in Iranian civilization. It was marked by contacts between the classical civilizations of Europe and the east and the appearance and spread of Zoroastrianism, at its time the most advanced religion outside Judaism. The Achaemenids' most famous monuments are the work of Darius: his capital of Persepolis, outstanding for its architecture and monumental reliefs, and his trilingual rock-cut inscription at Behistun for the key it gave to the translation of the cuneiform script. Other surviving Achaemenid monuments include the tomb of Cyrus the Great at Pasargadae and the rock-cut tomb of Darius at Naqsh-i Rustam near Persepolis.
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.
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.
Aeolis: SYNONYMS OR RELATED TERMS: Aeolia
CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: A group of ancient cities of northwestern Asia Minor (west coast of Anatolia) which were founded at the end of the 2nd millennium BC by Greeks. The earliest settlements, on the islands of Lesbos and Tenedos and on the mainland between Troas and Ionia, were formed from migrations during 1130-1000 BC. At the end of the 6th century, after fighting between Greece and Persia, Darius I incorporated Aeolis into a province of the Persian Empire.
aerial photography: SYNONYMS OR RELATED TERMS: air photography, aerophotography, aerial reconnaissance
CATEGORY: technique
DEFINITION: A technique of photographic observation and survey of the ground from an aircraft, spacecraft, or satellite which provides detailed information about sites and features without excavation. It is most important for locating archaeological sites before destruction of the landscape through building, road construction, or modern agricultural practices. When viewed from the air, sites may be revealed as crop marks, soil marks, shadow marks, or frost marks. For example, the plan of a site, ditches, walls, pits, etc. can be reflected in the way the crops grew (crop marks) or a pattern of dark occupation soil may show against a lighter topsoil or stone from walls may be just under the surface (soil marks). Oblique aerial photos, from lower altitudes, detect shadows created by earthworks and permit more detailed interpretations of known sites (shadow marks). Variations in the amount of frost retained on the ground may indicate the presence of buried archaeological features (frost marks). Though these can sometimes be recognized on the ground by careful fieldwalking and contour planning, much larger areas can be examined from the air and overall patterns will be clearer. The same site may not be susceptible every year to aerial photographs, as local climatic variation affects the nature of the feature fillings; a site may only be seen once in ten or twenty years. The use of false-color infrared photography has increased the versatility of aerial photography and the development of photogrammetry allows the accurate mapping of both archaeological and geographical information. Recording of thermographic and radar images complements photographic methods. Aerial photography has proved to be one of the most successful methods of discovering archaeological sites. Large areas of ground can be covered quickly, and the ground plan of a new site can be plotted from the photographs. Features can be revealed in extraordinary detail by these means. The pioneers of this technique were O.G.S. Crawford and Major Allen in Britain and Père Poidebard in Syria, though its first use goes back to 1906 at Stonehenge.
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.
Agate Basin: CATEGORY: site; culture
DEFINITION: A Palaeoindian site of Wyoming with evidence of the killing and butchering of animals. Artifacts include a distinctive point, scrapers, and eyed bone needles. The complex dates to 10,500-10,000 BP.
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
agriculture: CATEGORY: term
DEFINITION: The cultivation of domesticated crops. The invention of agriculture occurred in the Near East during the Neolithic period (8500-4300 BCE).
Aguada: CATEGORY: culture
DEFINITION: A culture of northwestern Argentina during the period 700-1000 AD, located on the western slopes of the Andes, and noted for the fine quality of its arts. Decorated copper and bronze plaques and polychrome yellow and black pottery with designs of cats, dragons, humans, birds, warriors, weaponry, and trophy heads are characteristic and reflect a possible influence from Tiahuanaco. Decapitated burials are a further indication that warfare was a dominant preoccupation of Aguada. Its sudden disappearance from the archaeological record in c 1000 AD was probably the result of invasion from the east.
Aha (c 3100 BC): CATEGORY: person
DEFINITION: One of the earliest 1st Dynasty rulers of a unified Egypt, whose name means The Fighter". Funerary remains at Abydos Saqqara and Naqada attest the reign and Flinders Petrie's excavation at Umm el-Qa'ab (Early Dynastic cemetery at Abydos) in 1899-1900 revealed objects bearing the name Aha in Tomb B19/15. However the earliest of the elite tombs at north Saqqara of the 1st and 2nd Dynasty also contained jar-sealings from that time. Evidence suggests that Narmer was Aha's father and that one of the two was also called Menes."
Ahmose I (reigned c 1550-1525 BC): SYNONYMS OR RELATED TERMS: Amosis
CATEGORY: person
DEFINITION: The founder of the 18th Dynasty and the prince of Thebes who drove the Hyksos from Egypt, invaded Palestine, and established the New Kingdom. He was the son of the Theban 17th Dynasty ruler Seqenenra Taa II and Queen Ahhotep, and came to the throne of a reunited Egypt after he and his predecessor Kamose expelled the Asiatic rulers from Egypt. Ahmose I was responsible for reactivating the copper mines at Sinai, resuming trade with Syrian cities, and restoring temples. He was succeeded by his son Amenhotep I in 1555 BC.
Ahmose II (reigned 570-526 BC): SYNONYMS OR RELATED TERMS: Amasis, Amosis II
CATEGORY: person
DEFINITION: King of the late 26th Dynasty and originally a general in Nubia who came to the throne after his defeat of King Apries (589-570 BC). Ahmose was sent to pacify mutineering troops when they proclaimed him king. He fought Apries in a civil war and killed him in battle, though later giving him a royal burial. His reign was a time of great prosperity in Egypt.
Ahrensburg: SYNONYMS OR RELATED TERMS: Ahrensburgian
CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: A village near Hamburg, Germany, where there are two late Palaeolithic sites, Meiendorf and Stellmoor. Stellmoor dates to 8500 BC and is attributed to the Ahrensburgian culture. Tanged points, which were possibly arrowheads, and pine arrow shafts with bowstring notches give evidence for the use of the bow and arrow. The Ahrensburgians mainly hunted reindeer.
aiguille: CATEGORY: artifact
DEFINITION: A needle-shaped drill for boring holes in rock or masonry.
Ajdabiya: SYNONYMS OR RELATED TERMS: Ajdabiyah, Agedabia
CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: A town in northeastern Libya near the Gulf of Sidra that was the site of Roman and Byzantine colonization and a caravan junction from Egypt to the Maghreb and a trans-Saharan route from the Sudan during the early Middle Ages. There are ruins from the earlier colonization and two important monuments from the period 912-1051 -- an early congregational mosque and a qasr (fort).
Ajuerado phase: CATEGORY: chronology
DEFINITION: The earliest phase of pre-village, pre-agriculture in Tehuacan Valley, Mexico, from c 7200-7000 BC. There was hunting and gathering.
Akhenaten (reigned 1353-1336 BC): SYNONYMS OR RELATED TERMS: Amenhotep IV, Akhnaton, Ikhnaton, Neferkheperure Amenhotep, Greek Amenophis
CATEGORY: person
DEFINITION: The heretic pharaoh of Egypt's 18th Dynasty, who reigned with his queen Nefertiti towards the end of the New Kingdom. He was the son of Amenhotep III and Queen Tiy. During his reign, he attempted to replace Egypt's religions with worship of Amen-Ra, the sun disk, represented by the god Aten (or Aton). The art and literature of Egypt also was marked by rapid change during his reign. He set the tone for a new era by establishing a temple at Karnak dedicated to Aten and moved the capital from Thebes to modern Tell el-Amarna in Middle Egypt, calling the city Akhetaten. His religious reforms were fanatical and foreign affairs were neglected and his reign saw the collapse of the Egyptian Asiatic empire built by earlier rulers. His successor and probable brother, Tutankhamen, returned Egypt to the worship of Amen-Ra and the capital to Thebes. Later rulers attempted to remove all record of Akhenaten's heresy and name. Akhenaten has been controversial both in ancient and modern times.
Akhmim: SYNONYMS OR RELATED TERMS: ancient Ipu, Khent-Mim
CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: A site on the east bank of the Nile opposite modern Sohag, that was the capital of the ninth nome of Upper Egypt during the Pharaonic period, c. 3100-332 BC. The earliest surviving remains are Old and Middle Kingdom rock-cut tombs. The city originally included a number of temples dedicated to Min, but few stone buildings have survived because of the plundering. Colossal statues of Rameses II and Meritamun have been excavated.
Akkadian: CATEGORY: culture; language
DEFINITION: A Semitic-speaking dynasty founded by Sargon the Great (Sharrukin, 2334-2279 BC) c. 2370 BC with Akkad (or Agade), an unidentified site, as his capital. Under Sargon and his grandson, Naram-Sin, the dynasty established an empire that included much of Mesopotamia and neighboring Elam to the east. The dynasty saw three major developments: the beginning of the absorption of the Sumerians by the Semites, a trend from city-state to the larger territorial state, and imperial expansion. It is considered the first empire in history. Akkadian also refers to the Semitic dialects of Old Akkadian (3rd millennium) and Assyrian and Babylonian (2nd and 1st millennia). The Amarna Letters (diplomatic correspondence between Egypt and the Levant in the mid-14th century BC) are written in Babylonian, a late form of Akkadian. Akkadian was written in a cuneiform script borrowed from Sumerian and was the lingua franca of the civilized Near East for much of the 2nd millennium. It replaced Sumerian as the official language (though Sumerian was still used for religious purposes). Akkadian was gradually replaced by Aramaic.
Alaka culture: CATEGORY: culture
DEFINITION: A preceramic shell midden culture on the northwest coast of Guyana which may date to c 2000 BC. Located in the mangrove swamps, the middens have been grouped into the Alaka Phase. The culture relied on shellfish gathering, with some grinding stones, choppers, manos, and metates. There are some crude ceramics in the later stages and represent intrusive cultures and the passing of Alaka.
Alaska Refugium: CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: A large area of interior Alaska that was not glaciated during the latter part of the Pleistocene. It was connected to Beringia and eastern Siberia, allowing access for peoples between Asia and North America.
Alba Fucens: SYNONYMS OR RELATED TERMS: modern Albe
CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: An ancient fortified Roman colony, at the foot of Mount Velino, Italy. It was originally a town of the ancient Marsi people, but was occupied by Latin colonists c 302-303 BC. It was situated on a hill with three distinct summits, which were enclosed in its walls, much of which are still standing. Remains of the forum with a temple and various buildings of the time of Sulla are there, including a basilica, curia, macellum, theater, and amphitheater. This colony was important during the civil wars of the 1st century BC and state prisoners of Rome were often held there.
album: CATEGORY: artifact
DEFINITION: In Roman and Greek antiquity, a blank tablet on which praetor's edicts and other public notices were recorded for public information. It was also a space on the surface of a wall, covered with white plaster, upon which were written such announcements or advertisements. Afterwards, this term was extended to denote any kind of white tablets bearing an inscription.
Aleppo: SYNONYMS OR RELATED TERMS: Arabic Halab, Turkish Halep
CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: A city in northern Syria which stands on the site of an ancient, as yet unexcavated, city. On the route between the Euphrates and Orontes, the ancient site is mentioned in texts from the 2nd millennium onwards as the capital of the Amorite kingdom of Yamkhad in the 18th century BC. It subsequently came under Hittite, Egyptian, Mitannian, and again Hittite rule during the 17th-14th centuries. It was known to the Hittites as Halpa. The city was conquered by the Assyrians in the 8th century BC and then controlled by the Achaemenian Persians from the 6th-4th centuries BC before the Seleucids took it over, rebuilt it, and renamed it Beroea. Aleppo was very important during the Hellenistic period for its position along trade routes. The city became part of the Roman province of Syria in the 1st century BC. Conquered by the Arabs in 637, it reverted to its old name of Halab.
Aleutian Tradition: CATEGORY: culture
DEFINITION: The later marine mammal-hunting culture of the Aleutian Islands, off southwest Alaska, that separates the Bering Sea from the Pacific Ocean, originating approximately 5000 BP.
Alexander the Great (356-323 BC): CATEGORY: person
DEFINITION: Alexander the Great (Alexander III), king of Macedonia, began his career of conquest in 335 BC. He overthrew the Persian Empire and laid the foundation for the territorial kingdoms of the Hellenistic world. Born in Macedonia in 356 BC, he was the son of Philip II and Olympias. He was taught by the great philosopher Aristotle from the age of 13-16. Alexander took power in Macedonia and mainland Greece in 340 BC when Philip left to attack Byzantium. By 332 BC, his arrival in Egypt ended the Persian occupation and he had already conquered much of western Asia and the Levant before his arrival in Egypt. In Egypt, Alexander made sacrifices to the gods at Memphis and visited the oracle of Amun-Ra where he was recognized as the god's son, thus restoring the true pharaonic line. He founded the city of Alexandria and then left Egypt in 331 BC to continue his conquest of the Achaemenid empire. His empire stretched from India to Egypt. After his death from a fever in 323 BC, his kingdom quickly dissolved.
Alfred the Great (849-899): SYNONYMS OR RELATED TERMS: Aelfred
CATEGORY: person
DEFINITION: King of Wessex, 871-899, a Saxon kingdom in southwestern England. He prevented England from being conquered by the Danish and promoted literature, learning, and literacy -- helping to begin an artistic renaissance that flourished for two centuries. Our knowledge of him is known from the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, begun during his reign c. 890, and the biography written by his friend and teacher Asser. Alfred succeeded to the throne in 871 and fought off invading Danes before being forced to flee in 877. He returned to drive the invaders from his kingdom. Alfred also established the first English fleet and organized a chain of fortified towns on the southern coasts for protection.
Ali Kosh: CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: An early farming site near Deh Luran in southwestern Iran, occupied c 7500-5600 BC. It was the first excavated farming site where significant quantities of plant remains were collected using the flotation technique, a landmark in the study of farming origins. The earliest phase, named Bus Mordeh and dated c 7500-6750 BC is characterized by simple mud-brick buildings and a combination of wild and domesticated foods, some herding, and the catching of fish. The succeeding phase, Ali Kosh and dated c 6770-6000 BC had similar plants and animals, hunting and fishing, but a decline in wild plant foods which points to more successful cereal cultivation. The buildings were much more substantial in this period. The final phase, Muhammed Jaffar and dated c 6000-5600, saw the introduction of pottery and ground stone. The evidence shows some strain of over-exploitation and by the mid-6th millennium BC, the area was abandoned. The site illustrates the transition from food gathering to food production and the improvement of house-building quality.
alleé couverte: SYNONYMS OR RELATED TERMS: gallery grave
CATEGORY: structure
DEFINITION: One of the two types of French megalithic tomb, the other being the passage grave. These are long rectangular monuments, sometimes with a covering mound. There is no division between passage and chamber, though some have a small antechamber. They date from the 3rd millennium BC and are found mainly in Brittany and the Paris basin.
alloy: CATEGORY: geology
DEFINITION: Any of a number of substances which are a mixture of two or more metals, such as bronze (copper and tin), brass (copper and zinc), or tumbaga (copper and gold). An alloy has properties superior to those of the individual metals. They are not simple mixtures, but complex crystalline structures which may differ considerably from any of their constituents. Slight alterations of the proportions of the metals can bring significant changes in the properties of the alloy. Alloys containing only two major metals are known as binary alloys and those with three as ternary alloys. Gold is alloyed with various metals; when mixed with mercury it is called an amalgam and with silver, native gold. Bronze was the most important alloy in antiquity. The term is also used to describe the technique of mixing the metals.
Altheim: CATEGORY: site; culture
DEFINITION: A small site near Landshut, Bavaria (Germany) which has three concentric rings of ditches and palisades. It is also the name of the Late Neolithic-Copper Age culture of the upper Danube basin.
Altithermal: SYNONYMS OR RELATED TERMS: Climatic Optimum, Thermal Maximum, Long Drought; altithermal; Great Drought; Holocene climatic optimum.
CATEGORY: chronology
DEFINITION: A warm, dry postglacial period in the western United States approximately 5600-2500 BC. Coined by Ernst Antev in 1948, the term describes a time during which temperatures were warmer than at present. Other terms, like Long drought, are used.
Amarna, Tell el-: SYNONYMS OR RELATED TERMS: Akhetaten; El-Amarna; Tall al-Amarna; el-Amarna
CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: The site of the ruins and tombs of the city of the 18th Dynasty pharaoh Akhetaton in Upper Egypt, 44 mi (71 km) north of modern Asyut and 280 km south of Cairo. Akhenaton (Amenhotep IV) built the city in about 1348 BC as his capital and the center of his reformed religion and worship of Aten. The city consisted of a group of palaces, temples, and residential quarters (and rock-cut tombs) inhabited only about 25-30 years. It was abandoned less than four years after Akhenaten's death and the capital returned to Thebes. Tell el-Amarna's remains have preserved the record of this short, fascinating period of history during which a correspondence in cuneiform between the Egyptian pharaoh, kings of the Hittites and of the Mitanni, and governors of Egyptian possessions in western Asia took place. There is Mycenaean pottery, linking the site to the Aegean and statuary which differed from the traditional art of pharaonic Egypt. The art of this brief monotheistic period was realistic and unrestrained, in contrast with the stereotyped art styles of other periods in ancient Egypt. It is one of the best-preserved examples of an Egyptian settlement of the New Kingdom.
Amenhotep son of Hapu (c. 1440-1360 BC): SYNONYMS OR RELATED TERMS: Athribis, Huy
CATEGORY: person
DEFINITION: A high official during the reign of Amenhotep III of Egypt whose offices included chief royal architect. In this capacity, he probably supervised the construction of Amenhotep III's mortuary temples at Thebes near modern Luxor, the building of another temple in Nubia (modern Sudan), the extraction of stone for sculpting reliefs, and the commissioning of royal statues such as the Colossi of Memnon. Amenhotep III even ordered the building of a small funerary temple for Athribis, his honorary designation, next to his own temple, which was a unique honor for a nonroyal person in Egypt.
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.
Amorites: SYNONYMS OR RELATED TERMS: Amurru
CATEGORY: culture
DEFINITION: A branch of the Semites who were nomads in the Syrian desert and who overthrew the Sumerian civilization of Ur c 2000 BC and dominated Mesopotamia, Syria, and Palestine till c 1600 BC. In the oldest cuneiform sources (c 2400-2000 BC), the Amorites were equated with the West, though their true place of origin was most likely Arabia, not Syria. They founded a series of kingdoms throughout Mesopotamia and northern Syria, the most important being Babylon and Assur. Their arrival in Palestine was at the change from Early Bronze to Middle Bronze Age. The Amorites became assimilated into the population and culture of these regions. Eventually, the Amorites settled and amalgamated with the Canaanites of the Middle and Late Bronze Age. During the 2nd millennium BC the Akkadian term Amurru referred not only to an ethnic group but also to a language and to a geographic and political unit in Syria and Palestine. In the dark age between c 1600-1100 BC, the language of the Amorites disappeared from Babylonia and the mid-Euphrates; in Syria and Palestine, however, it became dominant. In Assyrian inscriptions from about 1100 BC, the term Amurru designated part of Syria and all of Phoenicia and Palestine but no longer referred to any specific kingdom, language, or population.
amphitheatre: SYNONYMS OR RELATED TERMS: amphitheater
CATEGORY: structure
DEFINITION: A large-scale Roman arena open to the elements and surrounded by tiers of seats. They were constructed for exhibiting gladiatorial and other public spectacles (military displays, combats, and wild beast fights) to the populace. The earliest were oval and built of wood, later changing to stone construction. Rome's Colosseum has tiered galleries 2-3 stories in height and has provision for covering the arena with shades to protect against rain or sun. Roofing of so wide an expanse was beyond Roman technology. The arena of the Colosseum had a false timber floor, below which there was a labyrinth of service corridors. The animal cages were situated here, linked with pre-tensioned lifts and automatic trapdoors so that participants and animals could be sent up to the floor of the arena with speed and precision. Somehow Roman engineers staged the grand opening by flooding the arena for a full-scale sea battle. Amphitheatres accommodated a great number of spectators (possibly more than 50,000 at the Colosseum). The Romans derived their ideas from the classic Greek theater and stadium and the model was widely copied throughout the Roman empire. It could be erected on any terrain and set inside an urban center. An early example of the Republican period is at Pompeii the Colosseum is of the Imperial model. The fortress of Caerlon and the towns of Caerwent, Cirencester, Colchester, Dorchester, Richborough, and Wroxeter are some British places which had amphitheatres.
amphora: SYNONYMS OR RELATED TERMS: plural amphorae, amphoras
CATEGORY: ceramics
DEFINITION: A large Greek or Roman earthenware storage jar, with a narrow neck and mouth and two handles (two-eared"; each called an anem) at the top. The body of the jar is usually oval and long with a pointed bottom. It was used for holding or transporting liquids especially wine or oil and other substances such as resin. Its shape made it easy to handle and ideal for tying onto a mule's or donkey's back. They were often placed side-by-side in upright positions in a sand-floored cellar. Sinking it into the sand or ground kept the contents cool. Amphorae were also made of glass onyx gold stone and brass and some had conventional jar bottoms with a flat surface. The container would be sealed when full and the handle usually carried an amphora stamp impressed before firing giving details such as the source the potter's name the date and the capacity. Amphorae were probably not normally re-used."
Amun: SYNONYMS OR RELATED TERMS: Amun-Ra
CATEGORY: deity
DEFINITION: The supreme god of the Egyptian pantheon, who was established by the 11th Dynasty at Thebes. The name means hidden" or "secret". Amun was frequently identified with Ra the sun-god of Heliopolis and called Amun-Ra. His temple at Karnak is the best surviving example of a religious complex of the New Kingdom. His wife was Amaunet and he is depicted in male human form. Amun's supremacy was challenged only during the reign of Akhenaten."
anachronistic: CATEGORY: chronology
DEFINITION: Pertaining to the representation of something as existing or occurring at other than in its proper time, particularly earlier, and involving or containing anything out of its proper time.
analysis: SYNONYMS OR RELATED TERMS: analytical archaeology
CATEGORY: technique
DEFINITION: A stage in archaeological research design that involves isolating, describing, and structuring data, usually by typological classification, along with chronological, functional, technological, and constituent determinations. The research involves artifactual and nonartifactual data. The method evolved from the tendency to formalize the archaeological process, especially through the work of LR Binford, DL Clarke, and JC Gardin. Computer science and mathematics are used to elaborate the means for transforming simple descriptions of archaeological data into cultural, economic, and social reconstructions of earlier societies. This type of research is attempts to provide archaeology with a theoretical framework based on scientific method.
analytical type: CATEGORY: technique
DEFINITION: The method of defining arbitrary groupings of artifacts. Analytical types consist of groups of attributes that define artifacts for comparing sites in space and time. They do not necessarily coincide with actual tool types used by prehistoric people.
Anasazi: CATEGORY: culture
DEFINITION: A major cultural tradition of canyon dwellers found in southwestern United States between 100-1600 AD -- mainly in the four corners area of northeastern Arizona, northwestern New Mexico, southeastern Utah, and southwestern Colorado. These Native Americans began settlements with the cultivation of maize. Pottery was unknown at the beginning, but basketry was well developed, hence the name Basket Maker" is given to these early stages. By the sixth century there were large villages of pit houses with farming and pottery and it evolved into the full Anasazi tradition. The first pueblos and kivas were constructed and fine painted pottery made. The next few centuries (the Pueblo I-III periods) were a time of expansion during which some of the most famous towns were founded (Chaco Canyon) and fine polychrome wares produced. At this time the Mogollon people to the south adopted the Anasazi way of life and their Hohokam neighbors were also influenced perhaps suggesting that the Anasazi actually migrated to these areas. In such an arid environment farming was always vulnerable to fluctuations in climate and rainfall and these factors caused considerable population movement and relocation of settlements during 11th-13th centuries with the virtual abandonment of Chaco Canyon in 1150 and the plateau heartland by 1300. From 1300 until the arrival of the Spanish in the 16th century the Anasazi culture and population dwindled and the homeland in northern Arizona was abandoned. Then with the encroachment of nomadic Apache and Navajo tribes and with the arrival of Europeans from the south and east Anasazi territory decreased further. However some pueblos have continued to be occupied until the present day. The generally accepted chronological framework of three Basketmaker and five Pueblo stages was first proposed at the 1927 Pecos Conference. Although exact links are uncertain it is clear that modern Pueblo Indian people are descended from Anasazi ancestors. The name Anasazi is derived from a Navajo word meaning "enemy ancestors" or "early ancestors" or "old people"."
Ancón Yacht: CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: A site in the Ancón Valley on Peru's coast, just north of Lima. There is a high shell mound with deep stratified layers containing baskets, chipped leaf points, cultivated plants, shell fishhooks, string, twined cloth and baskets, and wooden tools. The site dates between 2500-2000 BC.
Ancestral Pueblo: CATEGORY: culture
DEFINITION: One of the major cultural traditions of the American Southwest during late prehistoric times, centered in the northern part on the high plateau of the Four Corners region
Anglian: SYNONYMS OR RELATED TERMS: Anglian-Elsterian
CATEGORY: chronology
DEFINITION: Quaternary glacial deposits found in East Anglia, England. Other possibly related and isolated patches exist elsewhere in Britain, but they are older than the extreme range of radiocarbon dating and palaeomagnetism shows them to be younger than 700,000 bp. This period is sometimes equates with the Elster glacial maximum and dated to c 300,000-400,000 years ago. During the Anglian-Elsterian glaciation in Europe a large ice-dammed lake formed in the North Sea, and large overflows from it initiated the cutting of the Dover Straits. In East Anglia, the deposits are stratified below Hoxnian and above Cromerian interglacial deposits and Acheulian and Clactonian artifacts are found in the sediments. Most of the evidence of human activity in Britain and Europe is later than this time. Anglian is more often used to describe the group of deposits or the one glaciation (antepenultimate) of that time.
Anglo-Saxon Chronicle: CATEGORY: language
DEFINITION: A chronological account of events in Anglo-Saxon and Norman England, a compilation of seven surviving annals that is the primary source of the early history of England. Believed to have been started around 870, during the reign of King Alfred (871-899), it was mostly finished by 891 though further accounts were added until 1154. The annals were probably written in the monasteries of Abingdon, Canterbury, Peterborough, Winchester, and Worcester. They include vivid accounts of the Viking raids, Alfred's reign, and the period of anarchy under Stephen. The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle also included the Venerable Bede's Historia ecclesiastica gentis Anglorum" genealogies regnal and episcopal lists some northern annals and some sets of earlier West Saxon annals. The compiler also had access to a set of late 9th-century Frankish annals. The completeness and quality of the entries vary for different periods; the Chronicle has sparse coverage of the mid-10th century and the reign of Canute for example but is an excellent authority for the reign of Aethelred the Unready and from the reign of Edward the Confessor until the annal ends in 1154. The Chronicle survived in seven manuscripts (one of these being destroyed in the 18th century) and a fragment which are generally known by letters of the alphabet. The oldest the A version is written in one hand up till 891 and then continued in various hands. The B version and the C version are copies made at Abingdon from a lost archetype. B ends at 977 whereas C which is an 11th-century copy ends mutilated in 1066. The D version and the E version share many features. D which was written up until 1079 probably remained in the north whereas the archetype of E was taken south and continued at St. Augustine's Canterbury and was used by the scribe of manuscript F. The extant manuscript E is a copy made at Peterborough written in one stretch until 1121. It is the version that was continued longest. The F version is an abridgment in both Old English and Latin made in the late 11th or early 12th century based on the archetype of E but with some entries from A and it extends to 1058. The fragment H deals with 1113-14 and is independent of E."
Anglo-Saxons: CATEGORY: culture
DEFINITION: The name of the combined cultures, the Angles and the Saxons, who left their North Sea coastal homelands in the 5th century AD and moved to eastern England after the breakdown of Roman Rule. The name derives from two specific groups --- the Angles of Jutland and the Saxons from northern Germany. Some other Germanic peoples took part in the migrations, such as the Jutes and the Frisians, and they are sometimes included under this name. The language, culture, and settlement pattern of medieval and later England can be traced directly to the Anglo-Saxons. The movement to the area probably began in the 4th century when barbarian Foederati went to serve in the Roman army in Britain. The main immigration began in the middle of the 5th century. Bede, writing in the early 8th century, gives the only reliable historical record for this period, though incidental information can be found in the Old English literature, particularly the poem of Beowulf. The English kingdoms took shape by the late 6th century. Archaeologically, there are three periods: the Early or Pagan Saxon period went until the general acceptance of Christianity in the mid-7th century; the Middle Saxon period until the 9th century, and the Late Saxon period which went up till the Norman invasion of 1066. The earliest period's remains are mainly burial deposits, often cremation in urns or by inhumation in cemeteries of trench graves or under barrows. Grave goods often include knives, sword or spear, shield boss, and brooches, buckles, beads, girdle-hangers, and pottery -- depending on the gender. Most archaeological evidence comes from the cemeteries, including the exceptional ship burial at Sutton Hoo. Churches were built and in the Middle and Late Saxon periods, including Bradford-Upon-Avon and Deerhurst. Important monuments of the Middle and Late Saxon periods are the royal palaces at Yeavering and Cheddar. The Late Saxon period, after the Viking invasions, saw the growth of the first towns in Britain since the Roman period, following the establishment of Burhs in response to the Scandinavian threat. There was wide-ranging trade, developed coinage, and improved pottery manufacture and metal-working. The separate British kingdoms (most important: Mercia, Northumbria and Wessex) eventually became a unified England with a capital at Winchester in Wessex. The Anglo-Saxons were responsible for the introduction of the English language and for the establishment of the settlement patterns of medieval England.
aniconic: CATEGORY: artifact
DEFINITION: A seal bearing no image.
Animal Style: CATEGORY: artifact
DEFINITION: A term describing a type of gold production whose themes were animals and which arose from the Scythians, a seminomadic people from the Eurasian steppes who moved from southern Russia into the territory between the Don and the Danube and then into Mesopotamia. During the 5th-4th centuries BC, this style appeared on shaped, pierced plaques made of gold and silver, which showed running or fighting animals (reindeer, lions, tigers, horses) alone or in pairs facing each other. The animal-style had a strong influence in western Asia during the 7th century BC. Ornaments such as necklaces, bracelets, pectorals, diadems, and earrings making up the Ziwiye treasure (found in Iran near the border of Azerbaijan) show evidence of highly expressive animal forms. This Central Asian Scythian-Iranian style passed by way of Phoenician trading in the 8th century BC into the Mediterranean and into Western jewelry. The most popular themes are antlered stags, ibexes, felines, birds of prey and, above all, the animal-combat motif, which shows a predator, usually bird or feline, attacking a herbivore. The joining of different animals and the use of tiny animal figures to decorate the body of an animal are also characteristic. Animal bodies were also contorted -- animals curved into circles and quadrupeds with hindquarters inverted. The term is shorthand for this complex of motifs and treatments, which for long periods represented the art of the vast steppe zone of Europe and Asia. The transformations they underwent in the course of their long history on the steppes often leave the sources and affiliations of particular versions obscure.
Anlo: CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: A site in Holland with a long sequence of occupation, starting with the Funnel Beaker culture. It was followed by a cattle enclosure during the Late Neolithic (protruding foot beaker) people, then a cemetery of five flat graves with foot beakers and bell beakers with cord ornament. The next phase was a settlement with late varieties of Beaker pottery, followed by a Middle Bronze Age plow soil, and a Late Bronze Age urnfield.
annealing: CATEGORY: geology
DEFINITION: The treating of a metal or alloy with heat and then cold -- or the repeated process of heating and hammering to produce the desired shape. After casting metal, it may be necessary to further process it by cold-working, hammering, and drawing the metal -- either to produce hard cutting edges or to produce beaten sheet metal. Hammering makes the metal harder, though more brittle and subject to cracking because it destroys its crystalline structure. Annealing, the reheating of the metal gently to a dull red heat and allowing it to cool, produces a new crystalline structure which can be hammered again. The process may be repeated as often as is necessary. The final edge on a weapon may be left unannealed as it will be harder and last longer.
annular: CATEGORY: artifact
DEFINITION: Ring-shaped
annuli: SYNONYMS OR RELATED TERMS: sing. Annulus
CATEGORY: measure
DEFINITION: Annual growth rings or increments in mollusk shell, fish vertebrae, tooth cementum, or wood.
Antioch: SYNONYMS OR RELATED TERMS: Antiochia, Antioch Pisidian, Antiocheia Pisidias, Caesarea Antiochia
CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: An ancient city of Phrygia near the Orontes River and modern Yalvaç in Turkey. It was founded in 300 BC by Seleucus I (c 358-281 BC) after the death of Alexander the Great and was one of the two capitals of the Parthian Empire. It became a Roman city in 64 BC at the hands of Pompey and served as a capital of the province of Syria and was one of the three most important cities of the Roman world. Antioch peaked under Hadrian as a civil and military administrative center, then suffered Persian invasions during the 3rd century AD. It was rebuilt by Diocletian and successive emperors form the 4th century AD. The plain of Anitoch was occupied from the Neolithic onwards. Its ruins include a large rock cutting which may have held the temple of Men Ascaënus, the local Phrygian deity.
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.
Antonine Wall: CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: A defensive fortification on the frontier of the Roman Empire in Scotland, built by the governor Lollius Urbicus for the emperor Antoninus Pius c 142-145 AD. It spans the distance between the Firth of Forth and the Firth of Clyde in Scotland, running for 36.5 miles (58.5 km) with 19 forts on its line and others forward and to the rear. The wall, mainly turf-built, was 14-16 ft (4.5 m) wide and probably 10 ft (3 m) high with a ditch of 40 ft (12 m) wide and 12 ft (4 m) deep in front of the wall and a military road behind it. The forts are 2 miles (3 km) apart. The wall was probably a last attempt to secure the Scottish Lowlands by the Romans and it provided defense beyond Hadrian's Wall, which was around 100 miles (160 km) south. The work was carried out by men from the legions stationed in Britain, and was probably completed section by section by different work groups who marked their handiwork with decorative plaques. Crop marks reveal some evidence for the temporary camps for the builders. The wall was abandoned temporarily in c 155-158 AD during the northern revolt and permanently before the end of the century when the garrison withdrew to Hadrian's Wall. Rough Castle is a well-preserved fort site and other traces of the wall remain.
Anuket: SYNONYMS OR RELATED TERMS: Anqet, Anukis
CATEGORY: deity
DEFINITION: Goddess of Sehel, the Nile cataract region near Aswan. She is generally represented as a woman holding a papyrus scepter and wearing a tall plumed crown.
Anuradhapura: CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: Sinhalese kingdom centered at Anuradhapura in Sri Lanka and its capital from the time of the introduction of Buddhism in the 3rd century BC until the site was abandoned in the 10th century AD after many incursions by the Tamils of South India. The South Indians gained control of the kingdom several times -- in the 2nd, 5th, and again in the late 10th century AD, after which Anuradhapura was finally abandoned as the Sinhalese capital in favor of Polonnaruva. There was also internal warring by clans trying to establish separate dynastic lines. The most important Anuradhapuran dynasties were the Vijayan (3rd century BC-1st century AD) and the Lamakanna (1st-4th century AD and 7th-10th century). Buddhist monuments include palaces, monasteries, and stupas, many of which have been conserved and restored. During its 1,000 years of existence, the kingdom of Anuradhapura developed a high degree of culture. Among the most famous are the Thuparama stupa, the Ruvanveli dagaba (an enormous stupa), and the Lohapassada monastery. The kingdom also developed a remarkably complex system of irrigation, considered by many scholars to be its major achievement.
Apis: SYNONYMS OR RELATED TERMS: Egyptian Hap, Hep, Hapi
CATEGORY: deity
DEFINITION: In ancient Egypt, the sacred bull worshipped at Memphis. Revered at least as early as the 1st Dynasty (c 2925-2775 BC) and sacred to Osiris, Apis came to prominence during the Greco-Roman period. Apis was probably at first a fertility god concerned with grain and herds. It served as the ba (physical manifestation) of the god Ptah and was also associated with Sokaris.
aplastics: SYNONYMS OR RELATED TERMS: temper
CATEGORY: ceramics
DEFINITION: Intentional or accidental inclusions in pottery clays before firing.
Arad: CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: A city in southern Israel west of the Dead Sea named for Biblical Arad and having ruins visible at Tel 'Arad, just a few miles northeast. First excavated in 1962, 'Arad has three separate phases of occupation. The first settlement was in the Chalcolithic period with a walled city at the beginning of the 3d millennium BC, which was destroyed by c 2700 BC. Imported Egyptian pottery was found in that phase. A resettlement occurred in the Early Bronze I and II phases and a succession of walled citadels and a temple have been found as well as ostraca (inscribed pottery). The last period of occupation was confined to a citadel on the highest part of the earlier town and it was occupied from the 12th-11th centuries BC. It served as a southern frontier post of the kingdom of Judah. There was a sanctuary for the worship of Yahweh. There were also citadels on this site in the Hellenistic and Roman periods. The Book of Numbers (21:1-3) tells how the Canaanite king of 'Arad fought the Israelites during the exodus from Egypt, but his cities were utterly destroyed" by Israel's armies. The city's name appears on the Temple of Amon al-Karnak Egypt in the inscription of Pharaoh Sheshonk I first ruler of the 22nd Dynasty (reigned c 945-924 BC)."
Aramaean: SYNONYMS OR RELATED TERMS: (fr Greek Aramaios, Syria") adj. Aramaic"
CATEGORY: culture; language
DEFINITION: A branch of the confederacy of Semite tribes who moved out of the Syrian desert and who conquered the Canaanites and established themselves in their own series city-states in c 16-12 BC. The foremost of these states was Aram of Damascus, a large region of northern Syria, which was occupied between the 11th-8th centuries BC, and also Bit-Adini, Aram Naharaim, and Sam'al (Sinjerli). In the same period some of these tribes seized large tracts of Mesopotamia. By the 9th century BC, the whole area from Babylon to the Mediterranean coast was occupied by the Aramaean tribes known collectively as Kaldu (also Kashdu), the biblical Chaldeans. Assyria, nearly encircled, attacked the armies of the Aramaeans and one by one the states collapsed under the domination of Assyria in the succeeding centuries. The destruction of Hamath by Sargon II of Assyria in 720 marked the end of the Aramaean kingdoms of the west. Those Aramaeans along the lower Tigris River remained independent somewhat longer and in 626 BC, a Chaldean general (Nabopolassar) proclaimed himself king of Babylon and joined with the Medes and Scythians to overthrow Assyria. Thereon in the Chaldean empire, the Chaldeans, Aramaeans, and Babylonians became one group. Their North Semitic language, Aramaic, became the international language of the Near East by the 8th century BC, replacing Akkadian. Aramaic was written in the Phoenician script and was the diplomatic and vernacular speech of the Holy Land during the time of Christ. It was replaced by Arabic after the Arab Conquest, but is still spoken in some remote villages of Syria. In the Old Testament the Aramaeans are represented as being related to the Hebrews and living in northern Syria around Harran from about the 16th century BC. Few specifically Aramaic objects have been uncovered by archaeologists.
Aratta: CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: A site name mentioned in a Sumerian epic that was supposedly involved in long-distance trade with Mesopotamia during the 3rd millennium BC.
arbitrary excavation: CATEGORY: technique
DEFINITION: Excavation by predetermined levels of a given thickness; used on sites or areas of sites without visible layering of the soil.
archaeological culture: CATEGORY: culture
DEFINITION: The constantly recurring artifacts or group of assemblages that represent or are typical of a specific ancient culture at a particular time and place. The term describes the maximum grouping of all assemblages that represent the sum of the human activities carried out within a culture.
archaeologist: CATEGORY: term
DEFINITION: A professional scholar who studies and reconstructs the human past through its physical remains. An archaeologist's work involves the scientific finding, collecting, cleaning, sorting, identifying, and measuring objects found in or on the earth or sea. The motive is to record and interpret ancient cultures rather than collect and display artifacts for profit.
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.
archaeometric: SYNONYMS OR RELATED TERMS: archaeometry, archeometry
CATEGORY: technique
DEFINITION: Relating or referring to the use of scientific techniques from fields such as chemistry, geology, physics, and other sciences for the analysis of archaeological data.
archaeozoology: SYNONYMS OR RELATED TERMS: zooarchaeology
CATEGORY: branch
DEFINITION: The study of animal remains, especially bones, from archaeological contexts, including the identification and analysis of faunal species as an aid to reconstructing human diets, determining the impact of animals on past economies, and in understanding the environment at the time of deposition. Animal remains are collected, cleaned, sorted, identified, and measured for their study and interpretation. The study of bones involves calculations of minimum numbers of individuals belonging to each species found; their size, age, sex, stature, dentition, and whether the bones have any marks from implements implying butchering and eating. Archaeologists attempt to answer questions such as how many species of domesticated animals there were, how far wild animals were exploited, how many very young animals there were to determine kill patterns and climate changes, in what way bones were butchered, what the sex ratios there were in determining breeding strategies, and if there were any animals of unusual size. By analyzing remains from different parts of a site it may be possible to understand some of the internal organization of the settlement, while a comparison between sites within a region may show areas of specialization.
archaic: SYNONYMS OR RELATED TERMS: Archaic, Archaic period, Archaic tradition
CATEGORY: chronology; culture
DEFINITION: A term used to describe an early stage in the development of civilization. In New World chronology, the period just before the shift from hunting, gathering, and fishing to agricultural cultivation, pottery development, and village settlement. Initially, the term was used to designate a non-ceramic-using, nonagricultural, and nonsedentary way of life. Archaeologists now realize, however, that ceramics, agriculture, and sedentism are all found, in specific settings, within contexts that are clearly Archaic but that these activities are subsidiary to the collection of wild foods. In Old World chronology, the term is applied to certain early periods in the history of some civilizations. In Greece, it describes the rise of civilization from c 750 BC to the Persian invasion in 480 BC. In Egypt, it covers the first two dynasties, c 3200-2800 BC. In Classical archaeology, the term is often used to refer to the period of the 8th-6th centuries BC. The term was coined for certain cultures of the eastern North America woodlands dating from c 8000-1000 BC, but usage has been extended to various unrelated cultures which show a similar level of development but at widely different times. For example, it describes a group of cultures in the Eastern US and Canada which developed from the original migration of man from Asia during the Pleistocene, between 40,000-20,000 BC, whose economy was based on hunting and fishing, shell and plant gathering. Between 8000-1000 BC, a series of technical achievements characterized the tradition, which can be broken into periods: Early Archaic 8000-5000 BC, mixture of Big Game Hunting tradition with early Archaic cultures, also marked by post-glacial climatic change in association with the disappearance of Late Pleistocene big game animals; then Middle Archaic tradition cultures from 5000-2000 BC, and a Late Archaic period 2000-1000 BC. In the New World, the lifestyle lacked horticulture, domesticated animals, and permanent villages.
Arctic Small Tool tradition: CATEGORY: culture
DEFINITION: The first coastal dwellers of the true Arctic regions who appeared before 2200 BC and who had a hunting tradition and a distinctive set of stone tools, weapon tips, and adzes of small size (hence the name). Their sites stretched from the Bering Sea across the north Canadian coast as far east as northernmost Greenland, though there is no evidence of sleds or boats. Within a century or two of 2000 BC, they also expanded southward in Alaska to the Alaska Peninsula and south along the northeastern American coast to the Gulf of St. Lawrence. The Denbigh Flint Complex (or Arctic Denbigh culture, named for the type site Cape Denbigh, Alaska) is the characteristic tool assemblage. It included small chipped stone artifacts derived from Neolithic eastern Siberia -- such as blades, microblades, burins, scrapers, large bifacial projectile points. There was no pottery and the economics were balanced between products of the land (caribou, lake and river fish, musk ox) and sea mammals. Approximate dates range from 4000-1000 BC and this tradition is thought to be associated with ancestral Eskimo. In Canada and Greenland, the Small Tool people gradually developed into the Dorset culture. In Alaska, the Small Tool people disappeared and were replaced by 400 BC by people of the Norton culture who used Siberian-type pottery.
area: CATEGORY: technique
DEFINITION: A sector of units of excavation that consists of a group of closely related, usually contiguous, squares. The numbering of Areas is by capital letters, e.g., Area A, Area M, etc., and squares by Arabic numbers, Area A, Square 1. In some systems of excavation what is an Area in the above description is called a field, and instead of the smaller unit of squares already described, that unit is called an area, e.g., Field 1, Area 1.
Arles: SYNONYMS OR RELATED TERMS: Latin Arelate
CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: A city in southern France on the left bank of the Rhône that was once a colony founded by Caesar (46 BC) and which has an amphitheater and cryptoporticus dating from 1st century BC. Very little is known of the Celto-Greek settlement, traditionally colonized by the Phocaeans. Marius constructed the Fossae Marianae, a navel canal linking Arles with the sea, in 104 BC. Arles from then on was a service port and naval shipyard. Caesar used it as his naval base in 49 BC when attacking Marseilles (Massilia). Two aqueducts were built to bring water from the Alpilles. Constantine the Great (306-337 AD) adopted the city as one of his capitals. It was a mint in late Roman times and an imperial Roman theater and the largest amphitheater north of the Alps were located there. In the 1st century AD, St. Trophime founded the bishopric, which remained until 1790.
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.
Armorican coin: CATEGORY: artifact
DEFINITION: Collective name for coinage issued by a range of tribes living in Brittany during the early 1st century BC, including the Coriosolites, Baiocasses, Redones, Unelli, and Osismii.
Armorico-British dagger: SYNONYMS OR RELATED TERMS: Breton dagger
CATEGORY: artifact
DEFINITION: Type of bronze dagger found in the ESSEX I Phase of the early Bronze Age (c.1700-1500 BC) in southern Britain which has similarities with examples from Brittany. It has a flat triangular blade, lateral grooves, and six rivets for attaching the blade to the hilt. Sometimes a small tang or languette is present to assist securing the blade to the hilt. Traces of wooden and leather sheaths have been found with some blades; the hilts were probably of wood and in the case of an example found in the Bush Barrow, Wiltshire, were inlaid with gold tacks.
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.
arsenic: CATEGORY: geology
DEFINITION: A semi-metallic substance of steel-gray color that forms a link between the metals and non-metallic bodies. It is found together with copper in some ore deposits, appearing as arsenical copper (copper alloyed with arsenic). This substance was valued and deliberately produced to improve casting properties and hardness, but was not important after the development of tin-bronze (tin alloyed with copper). It gave a very hard cutting edge to tools and weapons.
Arthur (c 5th century AD?): CATEGORY: person
DEFINITION: The legendary British king who is described in medieval romances as the leader of a knightly fellowship called the Round Table. It is said that he rallied the British against the Anglo-Saxon invaders and that behind the legend there may be a sub-Roman warleader who filled such a role. Though his name does not survive in contemporary records, he may have led the British at the battle or siege of Mount Badon which stopped the Saxon advance c 490 AD for some fifty years hence. All the historical references to him in the chronicles of Bede, Gildas, Nenius, Geoffrey of Monmouth and others were written between 100 and 600 years after the event, so they are considered unreliable for archaeologists. The search probably started with the monks of Glastonbury, who in 1191 claimed to have found the burial of King Arthur and Queen Guinevere inscribed with the words, Here lies Arthur in the Isle of Avalon buried". Various locations as far apart as Cornwall and Scotland are claimed as the site of Mount Badon; the refortified Iron Age hillfort of Badbury Rings in Dorset seems the most credible possibility. The site of Arthur's court at Camelot may be the historical site of South Cadbury. Excavations carried out at South Cadbury revealed an important fortified settlement of the 5th and 6th centuries which could have been the center from which British resistance to the Saxons was organized."
aryballos: SYNONYMS OR RELATED TERMS: aryballus; from Greek bag
CATEGORY:
DEFINITION: artifact; ceramics There are two uses for this term -- one for a small Greek vase, one for a large Inca pottery jar. The Greek flask was one-handled, normally globular (quasi-spherical or pear-shaped), with a narrowing neck. It was used mostly for oil, perfume, unguent, or condiments and stood about 2-3 inches (5-8 cm) high. Aryballos were originally made at Corinth from about 575 BC. There were painted patterns on them until 550 BC and sometimes patterns were engraved. The Inca version was a large jar with conical base, tall narrow neck, and flaring rim. It was used for carrying liquids, designed to be carried on the back by a rope which passed through two strap handles low on the jar's body and over a nubbin at the base of the jar neck.
Ascalon: SYNONYMS OR RELATED TERMS: Askalon, Askelon
CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: A Philistine city on the southern coast of Palestine, southwest of Jerusalem. Excavations have uncovered remains of the Roman period, with some small areas of Philistine levels. Egyptian texts describe Ascalon as one of the cities that revolted against Rameses II. During the Roman period, Ascalon was the birthplace of Herod the Great. It flourished during that time and was occupied in the Byzantine and Arab periods.
Ashoka (d 238 BC?): SYNONYMS OR RELATED TERMS: also Asoka, Asokan
CATEGORY: person
DEFINITION: The last major emperor of the Mauryan empire of India in the 3rd century BC. He started out as a bloody tyrant, but underwent a spiritual crisis and became a Buddhist, furthering the expansion of that religion throughout India. His reign was c 265-238 BC but has also been given as c 273-232 BC. His kingdom included most of modern Pakistan and India, except the extreme south. Many monuments survive from his period: stupas, rock-cut temples, and commemorative pillars. A series of inscriptions, enshrining Buddhist teaching, survives on rock faces and stone pillars in various parts of the empire.
Asine: SYNONYMS OR RELATED TERMS: modern Koróni
CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: A pre-Classical Greek settlement and port on the east side of the Akrítas in the Argolid Gulf. It was originally settled by the Argives after the First Messenian War (c 735-715 BC). Evidence of Early, Middle, and Late Helladic settlement and of Hellenistic city walls remains. It was reoccupied during the Middle Ages by refugees from the north who gave it the name of their former village.
aspartic acid racemization: CATEGORY: technique
DEFINITION: A method for determining the absolute age of bone tissue by discovering the process of cumulative change in the form of amino acids, beginning at the death of an organism.
ass: CATEGORY: fauna
DEFINITION: The wild ass was distributed widely in North Africa and Asia. In Asia, it was domesticated as a draft animal c 3000 BC. The modern donkey derives from an animal of Ethiopia and the Sudan, which the Egyptians imported from the 2nd millennium on. The earliest date of these for the African ass is an Egyptian tomb relief of 1650 BC. Remaining populations can be found in Iran (called the onager), northwest India (called the ghorkar), and Mongolia (called the kiang). Asiatic wild asses as a group may also be called onagers, kemiones, or half-asses. Artistic representation of the domestication of asses has been found, but little osteological evidence. The ass arrived in Europe during medieval times. The domestic ass, or donkey, may be hybridized with the horse: a male ass crossed with a female horse produces a mule, and a female ass crossed with a male horse produces a hinny and both hybrids are sterile.
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.
Astarte: SYNONYMS OR RELATED TERMS: Asherah, Ashtoreth, Ashtart
CATEGORY: deity
DEFINITION: The goddess of the ancient Near East that was the chief deity of many important sites and the fertility goddess of the Phoenicians and the Canaanites. She is sometimes equated with Egyptian Isis, Babylonian Ishtar, Carthaginian Tanit, and Greek Aphrodite, Cybele, and Hera. She originated in Syria as a war goddess, probably introduced into Egypt in the 18th Dynasty (1550-1295 BC). Astarte was usually portrayed as a naked woman on horseback wearing a headdress or bull horns.
Asuka: CATEGORY: culture; chronology
DEFINITION: A culture and period in Japanese history during which the development of art, the introduction of Buddhism from Korea, and the adoption of a Chinese pattern of government were important. Located in the southwestern part of the Nara Basin (Yamato Plain), the culture flourished from 552-645 AD. In art history, the Asuka culture refers to early Buddhist art and architecture in the Northern Wei style. In chronology, the Asuka period refers more to the reign of Soga family during which Buddhism was promoted and a formal administrative structure with diplomatic relations was introduced. Many old temples and palaces are surviving examples of Asuka architecture, sculpture, and paintings.
Asyut: SYNONYMS OR RELATED TERMS: ancient Djawty, Lycopolis, Syut, Asiut, Assiout
CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: Capital of the Asyut muhafazah (governorate) and the largest settlement of Upper Egypt, midway between Cairo and Aswan on the west bank of the Nile. It was a center of worship for Wepwawet, the jackal-headed god. In the Middle Kingdom, it was the capital of the 17th nome (province) of Upper Egypt. It was commercially important as a terminus of caravan routes across the deserts. In Hellenistic times it was known as Lycopolis (Wolf City") referring to the worship of the jackal-headed god."
Aten: SYNONYMS OR RELATED TERMS: Aton, Yati
CATEGORY: deity
DEFINITION: The deity represented in the form of a sun disk and introduced as the sole gold by the heretic pharaoh, Akhenaten (Amenophis IV, 1353-1336 BC) during the 18th Dynasty of Egypt, c 1350 BC. Akhenaten built the city of Akhetaton (now Tell el-Amarna) and established a temple at Karnak dedicated to Aten's worship. The sun god was depicted as the solar disk with rays terminating in human hands.
Aterian: CATEGORY: culture
DEFINITION: A stone tool culture of the Middle and Late Palaeolithic, widespread in the late Pleistocene in northern Africa. Centered on the Atlas Mountains, but with extensions into Libya and deep into the Sahara, the Aterian people were among the first to use the bow and arrow. It appears to have developed, perhaps initially in the Maghreb of Algeria and Morocco, from the local Mousterian tradition. Aterian assemblages, named after Bir el Ater in Tunisia, are marked by the presence of varied flake tools, many of which possess a marked tang. Some tools (such as side scrapers and Levallois flakes) resemble Mousterian types, but the tanged points and bifacially worked leaf-shaped points appear distinctively Aterian. The leaf-shaped blades, however, have been likened to Solutrean blades and it has often been suggested that the Aterians may have entered the Iberian Peninsula during Solutrean times. The date at which the Aterian first appeared is not well attested, but may have been c 80,000 BC. The Aterian occupation came to an end c 35,000 BC as the Sahara became drier and unsuitable for human settlement.
Athens: SYNONYMS OR RELATED TERMS: Athínai (modern Greek), Athenai (ancient Greek)
CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: Important classical Greek city-state with evidence for continuous occupation from the Late Neolithic, but because of its continuous occupation and the resulting disturbance of the earlier levels, its history is told from the time of the Mycenaeans in the Late Bronze Age. The citadel on the Acropolis was walled early in its history. It is the capital of Greece and generally considered to be the birthplace of Western civilization. Athens is best known for its temples and public buildings of antiquity. The Parthenon, a columned, rectangular temple built for the city's patron goddess, Athena, is considered to be the culmination of the Doric order of classical Greek architecture. Also located on the Acropolis are the Erechtheum, originally the temple of both Athena and Poseidon, and the Propylaea, the entrance of which is through the wall of the Acropolis. At the foot of the Acropolis, to the south, are the theaters of Herodes and Dionysus, while to the northwest is the Agora, the ancient marketplace of the city. The Kerameikos cemetery documents the city's Iron Age (c 11-8 BC), after which archaeology and history combine to tell of its brilliance through the classical period. It supposedly rivaled Knossos and later resisted successive waves of Dorian invaders. It is still not clear how far Athens, perhaps the base of the very early Ionian colonies, managed to ride out the 'dark age' that followed the collapse of Mycenaean civilization. There is evidence of a cultural and commercial renaissance in the 7th and 6th centuries BC. A major component of this socioeconomic revolution was the borrowing of the Phoenician alphabet for the writing of Greek. Commercial success brought rapid economic growth and a population explosion. New ideas were imported and political upheaval led to experiments in government, such as democracy. Athens resisted Persian invaders and developed a prestige which allowed the establishment of the Delian League and the extension of her political power -- the Athenian empire. In the years 447-431 BC, under Pericles, vast sums were spent on public works, such as the new group of buildings on the Acropolis including the Parthenon. Pericles would not grant the Hellenes the freedom requested by Sparta, which led to the Peloponnesian War (431-404 BC) after which Athens was a dependent of Sparta. Escape from Spartan imperialism in the 4th century BC was threatened by Philip of Macedon and Alexander the Great. By the end of the century, Macedon dominated and Athens did not achieve independence until 228 BC. Rome then intruded in the 2nd and 1st centuries and Athens was sieged and plundered by Sulla. During the Imperial period, Athens was confined to a role as a cultural center and seat of learning for the rich -- which lasted into the 6th century AD, when the edict of Justinian in 529 closed down the schools of philosophy. By the Byzantine period, Athens had become a modest provincial town. Athens' ruins will be difficult to protect from the corrosive atmosphere and millions of visiting tourists.
atlas: SYNONYMS OR RELATED TERMS: atlantes (plural) telamon (Latin), caryatid (female)
CATEGORY: structure
DEFINITION: In Greek architecture, male figures which were so called for the story of Titan Atlas, in which humans were used instead of columns to support entablatures, balconies, or other projections. Such figures are posed as if supporting great weights, just as Atlas was bearing the world. The female counterpart is the caryatid, but it is not similarly posed. The earliest known examples of true atlantes occur on a colossal scale in the Greek temple of Zeus (c 500 BC) in Sicily. Atlantes were used only rarely in the Middle Ages but reappeared in the Mannerist and Baroque periods.
atomic absorption spectrometry: SYNONYMS OR RELATED TERMS: AAS
CATEGORY: technique
DEFINITION: A method of analysis used to determine the chemical composition of metal artifacts -- especially copper -- and non-metallic substances such as flint. It measures energy in the form of visible light waves and is capable of measuring up to 40 different elements with an error rate of around 1 percent. It is not a completely nondestructive technique, since a small sample must be removed from the artifact (between 10 mg. and 1 g., depending on the concentration of the elements). The sample is first dissolved and then atomized in a flame. A beam of light, of carefully controlled wavelength, is shone through the flame to a detector on the other side. The light takes a defined wavelength corresponding to the emission wavelength of the chosen element. The atoms of that element in the sample therefore absorbs a proportion of the light, measured with a photomultiplier, and a comparison of the intensity of the light with that which has not gone through the sample shows the extent of the absorption, thus providing an estimate of the amount of the chosen element in the specimen. One of the method's drawbacks is that a separate measurement (and a different hollow cathode lamp) is necessary for each element, so that analysis for a large number of elements is time-consuming. There are also problems of contamination with the high dilutions necessary for elements present in high concentrations, so that the method is used for the analysis of minor elements and trace elements rather than for major elements. The results are generally more accurate than those obtained using optical emission spectrometry and the technique's use will probably increase, especially for the identification of sources of metal ores through the recognition and quantification of the trace elements.
Attic: CATEGORY: language
DEFINITION: The particular dialect of Greek spoken and written in classical Athens, especially in the 5th century BC. This dialect was originally only one of a number of differing regional forms, but has come to be regarded as standard classical Greek. Attic is the language of dialogue in tragedy. Thucydides and Plato wrote in Attic.
Attic black-figure ware: CATEGORY: artifact
DEFINITION: Type of pottery manufactured in the Attica region of southern Greece from about 720 BC. Vase-painters in Athens and Corinth developed a characteristic style of decoration in which one or more friezes of human and animal figures are presented in silhouette in black against a red ground. The delineation of the figures is sometimes heightened by the use of incised lines and the addition of white or purple coloring agents. Around 530 BC the style was replaced by its inverse:
Atum: SYNONYMS OR RELATED TERMS: Tem, Tum (means the all")"
CATEGORY: deity
DEFINITION: A creator god and solar deity of Heliopolis. Atum's myth merged with that of the sun god Ra (Re), to form the god Ra-Atum (or Re-Atum). Atum came into being before heaven and earth were separated, rising up from Nun (the waters of chaos) to form the Primeval Mound. He was identified with the setting sun and was shown as an aged figure who had to be regenerated during the night, to appear as Khepri at dawn and as Re at the sun's zenith. Atum was often identified with snakes and eels, typical primeval beings.
auroch: CATEGORY: fauna
DEFINITION: The name of an extinct species of wild ox (Bos primigenius), the ancestor of present-day domestic cattle, which became extinct in the 17th century AD. It was described by Caesar as Urus and it inhabited Europe and the British Isles in ancient times and survived in most recent times in Lithuania, Poland, and Prussia. The name has often been applied erroneously to another species, the European bison, which still exists in the Lithuania forests. It was probably domesticated in some places, such as in eastern Hungary during the 4th millennium BC.
Avebury: CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: A site in Wiltshire, England, at which stands one of Britain's finest megalithic monuments (known as henges) and one of the largest ceremonial structures in Europe. It was built c 2000 BC in the Neolithic, where the ridgeways of southern England meet, a natural site for tribal gatherings. It consists of a large bank with internal ditch (1.2 km long) with four equally spaced entrances. Inside the ditch was set a circle of 98 sarsen stones, weighing as much as 40 tons each. In the center were two smaller stone circles, each c 100 meters in diameter. The northern circle contains a U-shaped setting of three large stones, and the southern inner circle once had a complex arrangement of stones at its center. The Ring Stone, a huge stone perforated by a natural hole, stood within the earthworks and main stone circle at the southern entrance. The southern entrance leads out to two parallel rows of sarsens forming an avenue 15 m wide and 2.5 km long which ends at a ritual building (the so-called Sanctuary) on Overton Hill. Traces of a second avenue remain on the opposite side of the monument. From the bottom of the ditch came sherds of Neolithic Windmill Hill, Peterborough, and Grooved Ware styles, while higher up were fragments of South British (Long Necked) Beaker and Bronze Age pottery. Burials with Beaker and Rinyo-Clacton wares have been excavated at the bases of some of the stones. Near the southern end of the Avenue was an occupation site with Neolithic and Beaker sherds. The complex geometry of the site is studied, especially the possible astronomical alignments built into it. The circles at Avebury and the wooden structure on Overton Hill were all probably built at the same time by Neolithic communities.
awl: SYNONYMS OR RELATED TERMS: piercer, pricker, bodkin
CATEGORY: artifact
DEFINITION: A small tool consisting of a thin, tapering, sharp-pointed blade of bone, flint, or metal used for piercing holes, making decorations, or in assisting basketweaving.
ax factory: SYNONYMS OR RELATED TERMS: axe factory
CATEGORY: feature
DEFINITION: An often isolated outcrop of high-quality rock in Europe during the Neolithic period. These sources were exploited for the production of polished stone axes and this became an important industry of the time. The tools were roughly flaked at the factory sites and traded, either as blanks or as finished axes. There were many ax factories in Britain's highlands, northern Ireland, and northwest France. Microscopic analysis is used to identify the rocks by their distinctive crystalline structure, which has enabled the trading networks to be reconstructed.
axis of flaking: CATEGORY: lithics
DEFINITION: An imaginary line drawn roughly down the middle of a lithic flake as viewed from the dorsal side and extending from the point of percussion and is parallel to the direction of striking or the line of force during striking.
Ay (fl. 14th c BC): SYNONYMS OR RELATED TERMS: Kheperkheprure Ay
CATEGORY: person
DEFINITION: King of Egypt (reigned 1323-19 BC) who rose from the ranks of the civil service and the military to take the throne after the death of Tutankhamen (1333-1323 BC) and was the last king of the 18th Dynasty. Ay became King Tutankhamen's closest adviser and helped him reconcile with the priesthood of Amon, which Akhenaton had persecuted. A ring with Ay's and Tutankhamen's widow's (Ankhesenamen) names, seen in 1932 in Cairo, has been evaluated to mean that Ay became king through marriage with the heiress. Ay's original wife remained his chief queen, as depicted on his royal tomb.
Ayampitin: CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: A site in Cordoba, northwestern Argentina, which has evidence of a transition from Big Game Hunting to a more specialized hunting and gathering economy. The assemblage contains crude, large bifacial willow-leaf projectile points, lithic hunting tools, and tool-making debris in association with manos and milling stones, dating between 8,000-12,000 years ago.
Aztec: SYNONYMS OR RELATED TERMS: Mexica, Tenochcas
CATEGORY: culture
DEFINITION: The last pre-Columbian civilization to enter the Valley of Mexico after the collapse of the Toltec civilization in c 12 AD, who built a magnificent capital at Tenochtitlán and were later conquered by the Spaniards (1521). They called themselves the Mexica or Tenochca and were the dominant political group of the Late Post-Classic Period. The people spoke Nahuatl. Their origin is obscure, partly because of the deliberate destruction of their own records, but tradition says that in 1193 AD the last of seven Chichimec tribes left Aztlan , a mythical birthplace somewhere north or west of Mexico, and filtered south. For a while they lived around Lake Texococo, but in 1345 they were allowed to found Tenochtitlán (under present-day Mexico City) on some unoccupied islands. By 1428 Tenochtitlán, Texococo, and Tlacopan formed an independent state which controlled most of present-day Mexico from the desert zone in the north to Oaxaca in the south, with extensions as far as the Guatemalan border -- all through military expansion. By inclination and training the Aztecs were militaristic, and a person's status depended on his success as a warrior. The chief god of the Aztecs, Huitzilopochtli, was a war god who required the blood of sacrificial victims, and only constant warfare supplied the altar of the god. Human sacrifice was necessary also to ensure the daily rising of the sun. Other major deities were Huitzilpotchtli (the warrior god and chief deity of Tenochtitlan), Texcatlipoca (god of night, death and destruction), Xipe Totec (god of spring and renewal), and Quetzacoatl, the plumed serpent (god of self-sacrifice and inventor of agriculture and the calendar). Tenochtitlán became a great imperial city, so large that it could not be self-sufficient but had to rely on tributes from its provinces. Luxury goods and necessities were brought to the city, and craftsmen produced jewelry, turquoise mosaics, featherwork, and carved stone. Mold-made clay figurines were common, and the black-on-orange pottery was decorated with geometrical designs and stylized creatures. Little architecture or painting survived the Spanish conquest of 1521. Copies of several books have been preserved (as the Dresden Codex). Aztec society was set in a clearly defined hierarchical class system. At the top was the ruling class (pipil) from whom and by whom the emperors were chosen. The mass of the population were freeman (machuale) and under them were the serfs (mayeques) and then at the bottom the slaves. Most people were of the landholding group called the calpulli, which had its own internal hierarchy. Change of social class was possible through state service in the military and sometimes through merchant activity. The merchants (pochteca) served as early-reconnaissance and espionage groups. The arrival of the Spaniards and the fall of Tenochtitlán after a 90-day siege marked the end of Aztec dominance.
B Group: SYNONYMS OR RELATED TERMS: B Horizon
CATEGORY: culture
DEFINITION: A term no longer used to describe the final stages of the Neolithic A Group in Nubia (c 2800-2300 BC), prior to the beginning of the C Group phase. In soils, the B horizon lies immediately beneath the A horizon and may reach a depth of 65 to 90 centimeters (26 to 35 inches). It is a zone of more moderate weathering in which there is an accumulation of many of the products removed from the A horizon.
bît hilani: SYNONYMS OR RELATED TERMS: bit hilani
CATEGORY: structure
DEFINITION: An architectural type describing a pillared porch, usually of wood. A bit hilani is a wooden-pillared portico or 1-3 columns at the top of a short flight of steps at the entry to reception suites. At one end of the portico there was a staircase to an upper story, leading to a reception or throne room. There was usually an adjoining staircase to the roof and a varying number of retiring rooms. It was a standard palace unit, first found at the Syrian site of Tell Atchana with a date of mid-2nd millennium BC. It was adopted by the Syro-Hittites and Assyrians. Another fine example of bit hilani is the Kaparu Palace at Tall Halaf.
Bükk: CATEGORY: site; culture
DEFINITION: A rugged mountain range in northern Hungary which gave its name to a Middle Neolithic pottery culture of the late 5th millennium BC. There are a number of cave sites with evidence of seasonal occupation and use of rocks for tools. There are hoards of axes and flint blades as well as painted and incised pottery. Obsidian was also exchanged even though there are volcanic tuffs, lavas, and post-volcanic hot springs.
Baal: SYNONYMS OR RELATED TERMS: (lord" or "owner")"
CATEGORY: deity
DEFINITION: A god worshipped in many ancient Middle Eastern places and the most important deity of the Canaanites. He was first mentioned in inscriptions of the Middle Bronze Age, middle of the 2nd millennium BC, and was depicted as a young armed warrior with bull's horns coming from his helmet. He was the fertility deity and also the lord of life and of rain and dew. Baal was also worshipped by the Phoenicians and at Carthage. An important temple dedicated to Baal has been excavated at Ugarit, which is where the first tablets bearing his name were discovered.
Babylon: SYNONYMS OR RELATED TERMS: Bab-ilu (Babylonian), Bab-ilim (Old Babylonian), Bavel or Babel (Hebrew), Atlal Babil (Arabic)
CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: One of the most famous cities of antiquity, the capital of southern Mesopotamia (Babylonia) from the early 2nd millennium to the early 1st millennium BC and capital of the Neo-Babylonian (Chaldean) Empire in the 7th and 6th centuries BC. It was located about 80 km south of Baghdad, Iraq on the Euphrates River. Babylon was occupied from the 3rd millennium BC, but it first reached prominence under King Hammurabi (reigned 1792-1750 BC), who made it the capital of his empire. (Hammurabi is best known for his code of laws.) Babylon was destroyed by the Hittites c 1595 BC and ruled by the Kassites until c 1157 BC. The city had frequent wars with Elam and Assyria during several short-lived dynasties until the 11th and last dynasty (626-539 BC), when the city was at its highest development and largest size. This last dynasty -- that of Nebuchadnezzar -- was instrumental in destroying Assyria and it conquered lands from the Persian Gulf to the Mediterranean before being overthrown by Cyrus in 539 BC. It continued in existence through the Achaemenid period, though with much reduced importance, until its abandonment in 641 AD after the Muslim conquest. The city itself covered around 200 hectares and had a population of about 100,000. Excavations beginning at the turn of the 20th century revealed the city's plan and scanty remains of the ziggurat, the original Tower of Babel. The high water table, which has risen in the last few millennia, allowed those excavators (R. Koldewey from 1899-1917) access to only buildings of the Neo-Babylonian period. The ruins, including temples (some for Marduk, the city's patron deity), fortifications, palaces, and the substructure of the Hanging Gardens, have not held up well over time, especially due to brick-robbing. The finest surviving monument is the Ishtar Gate and Procession Street. Important buildings excavated include Nebuchadnessar's palace, close to the Ishtar Gate, a huge building with many rooms arranged around five different courtyards. Another huge palace of Nebuchadnezzar's reign (605-562 BC) -- the 'Summer Palace' -- was constructed to the northwest of the Inner City and was enclosed by a triangular outer wall.
Babylonia: CATEGORY: site; culture; language
DEFINITION: An ancient region occupying southern Mesopotamia between the Tigris and Euphrates rivers (southern Iraq from Baghdad to the Persian Gulf), whose capital was Babylon for many centuries. The term Babylonia also refers to the culture that developed in the area from its original settlement c 4000 BC and their language of cuneiform script. Before Babylon's rise to political prominence (c 1850 BC), the area was divided into Sumer (in the southeast; the world's earliest civilization) and Akkad (in the northwest) during the third millennium BC. The region one of the richest agricultural areas of the ancient world.
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.
bag wear: CATEGORY: term
DEFINITION: The damage that can occur to artifacts and ecofacts during excavation, transportation, and cataloging.
bajo: CATEGORY: geography
DEFINITION: A Spanish term for a broad, flat, clay-lined depression in the Maya lowlands that fills with water during rainy season
Balkh: SYNONYMS OR RELATED TERMS: Vazirabad, Bactra
CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: A village in northern Afghanistan that was formerly Bactra, the capital of ancient Bactria. A settlement existed at the site as early as 500 BC and it was associated with Zoroaster until captured by Alexander the Great in c 329 BC. It was then made the capital of the Greek satrapy of Bactria, but in succeeding centuries fell to various nomadic invaders, including the Turks and Kushans, until it was decisively taken by the Arabs in the 8th century. Balkh then became the capital of Khorasan. Under the Abbasids and Samanids, it was a capital and a center of learning and known as the Mother of Cities". Balkh was completely destroyed by the Mongols under Genghis Khan in 1220. It lay in ruins until its capture by Timur in the 15th century. The alleged discovery of the tomb of 'Ali the Prophet Muhammad's son-in-law in neighboring Mazar-e Sharif (1480) once again reduced Balkh to insignificance. Balkh was incorporated into Afghanistan in 1850. Balkh was a caravan city on the Silk Route and a major outpost of Buddhism. Very little is known about the pre-Islamic city."
ball clay: SYNONYMS OR RELATED TERMS: ball-clay
CATEGORY: artifact
DEFINITION: A fine-textured, highly plastic sedimentary clay, usually composed of the mineral kaolinite, typically containing considerable organic matter and firing white or cream
ball-court: SYNONYMS OR RELATED TERMS: ballcourt, ball court
CATEGORY: structure
DEFINITION: The structure upon which the ball game was played in pre-Columbian Mesoamerica. It was shaped like a capital I with exaggerated end pieces, and in the Post-Classic period stone rings or macaw heads were fixed to the side walls. Aztec records say that the team which passed the ball through one of these rings won the game outright.
ball-game: SYNONYMS OR RELATED TERMS: ballgame, ball game; ollama, pok-ta-pok
CATEGORY: term
DEFINITION: The ritual and sporting activity played throughout pre-Columbian Mesoamerica, especially in Mexico and Guatemala from the Pre-Classic period. (Stone reliefs at Dainzu and the possible remains of a ball court at San Lorenzo Tenochititlan indicate that the game existed as early as Pre-Classic times.) It may have originated among the Olmecs (La Venta culture, c 800-400 BC) or even earlier and it spread to other cultures, including Monte Albán and El Tajín; the Maya (called pok-ta-pok); and the Toltec, Mixtec, and Aztec. In Aztec times, it was a nobles' game and was often accompanied by heavy betting. Various myths mention the ball game, sometimes as a contest between day and night deities. It is still played in isolated regions. The players, who were sometimes heavily padded, were allowed to use only their hips and thighs in propelling a rubber ball around the court. The ball-court itself was shaped like a capital I with exaggerated end pieces, and in the Post-Classic period stone rings or macaw heads were fixed to the side walls. Aztec records say that the team which passed the ball through one of these rings won the game outright. Tlachtli is the name of the court itself, but also for the game. Tlachtli and ollama are Nahuatl words. There was considerable diversity in the rules both over time and across culture. Death through injury was not unusual and the loss of a game could sometimes result in the sacrifice of the losing team. There is a considerable inventory of artifacts associated with the ball game, including hachas, palmas, court markers, elbow stones, and yokes.
ballista: SYNONYMS OR RELATED TERMS: balista
CATEGORY: artifact
DEFINITION: An ancient heavy missile launcher designed to hurl javelins or heavy balls on the principle of a crossbow. The smaller ballista was just that -- a basic, large crossbow fastened to a mount. It was also used to hurl iron shafts, Greek fire, heavy darts, etc. during sieges. The huge, complicated Roman ballista, however, was powered by torsion derived from two thick skeins of twisted cords through which were thrust two separate arms joined at their ends by the cord that propelled the missile. The largest ballistas were quite accurate in hurling 60-pound weights up to about 500 yards. The catapult was yet another machine used for firing bolts and other arrow-like missiles. The two terms are often used interchangeably.
banana: CATEGORY: flora
DEFINITION: A giant edible fruit-bearing herb of the genus Musa that has hundreds of varieties in cultivation. Consumption of the banana is mentioned in early Greek, Latin, and Arab writings and Alexander the Great saw bananas on an expedition to India. Just after the discovery of America, the banana was brought from the Canary Islands to the New World, where it was first established in Hispaniola and soon spread to other islands and the mainland. Linguistic evidence supports the probability that bananas were being cultivated Austronesians in Southeast Asia by 3000 BC.
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.
barbotine: CATEGORY: ceramics
DEFINITION: A primitive technique of decorating pottery by adding thick slip to the surface of a pot before firing. The term also refers to the creamy mixture of kaolin clay itself, for pottery ornamented with barbotine, and the technique of applying incrustation of this mixture to a ceramic surface for decorative effect. The slip was not applied evenly, but in order to form a thick incrustation in patches or trails. On certain types of pottery, such as the Nene Valley ware, the barbotine decoration may form a picture or a pattern. Sometimes the result is simply a roughened surface, rather like icing upon a cake. The method was particularly popular in Roman Gaul and Britain.
Barkaer: CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: A site of the final Early Neolithic (phase C, TRB culture) in northeast Jutland, Denmark. There was a cobbled street, two timber buildings (80 m long and divided into 26 single rooms) which were at first thought to be houses but may have been burial structures. Offerings in the pits below the buildings included amber beads, copper objects, and pottery.
barrow: SYNONYMS OR RELATED TERMS: burial mound; tumulus; burial cairn
CATEGORY: feature
DEFINITION: A round or elongated mound of earth or stones used in early times to cover one or more burials; a grave mound. The mound is often surrounded by a ditch, and the burials may be contained within a cist, mortuary enclosure, mortuary house, or chamber tomb. There are two types, the long (elongated) and the round barrow (also known as tumuli). The former were built in the Late Stone Age, the latter in the Bronze Age, though burial under a round mound was occasionally practiced during the Roman, Anglo-Saxon, and Viking periods.. The long barrow was a tribal or family burial vault built of stone slabs, some weighing many tons, and covered with earth or stones. The large, round barrows were often communal. They are often found in prehistoric sites in Britain -- earthen (or unchambered) long barrows from the Early and Middle Neolithic (Windmill Hill Culture). Other long barrows were constructed over megalithic tombs of gallery grave types. Most of the British round barrows incorporate circles of stakes. Bowl barrows --- simple round mounds, often surrounded by a ditch --- were the most common form, used throughout the Bronze Age and sporadically also in the Iron Age. The Wessex Culture of the southern English Early Bronze Age was characterized by special types of barrows: bell, disk, saucer, and pond barrows. Bell barrows have relatively small mounds and a berm or gap between the mound and the ditch; disk barrows are very small mounds in the center of a circular open space, surrounded by a ditch; saucer barrows are low disk-like mounds occupying the entire space up to the ditch; while the oddly named pond barrows are not mounds at all, but circular dish-shaped enclosures surrounded by an external bank. The related term 'cairn' is used to describe a mound constructed exclusively of stone. Barrow burials occur also in Roman and post-Roman times: one of the most famous of all barrows in Britain is that covering the Anglo-Saxon boat burial at Sutton Hoo.
basal-looped spearhead: CATEGORY: artifact
DEFINITION: Type of leaf-shaped socketed spearhead of the European middle Bronze Age which has two small holes or loops at the base of the blade, one either side of the socket. It is assumed that these were to assist in securing the metal spearhead to the wooden shaft, but they might also have been used to tie streamers of some kind to the top of the spear.
base shapes: CATEGORY: artifact
DEFINITION: concave, disk, flat, foot-ring, knob, loop, omphalos, C279pedestal, pod, pointed, ring, round, stump, trumpet/ogee
Basket Maker: SYNONYMS OR RELATED TERMS: Basketmakers
CATEGORY: culture
DEFINITION: Two early chronological periods of the early Puebloans or Anasazi -- 100-500 AD, followed by the Modified Basket Maker period, 500-700; They lived people in the Four Corners area (northwestern New Mexico, southwestern Colorado, southeastern Utah, and northeastern Arizona) of the U.S. The origin of the Basket Maker Indians is not known, but it is evident that when they first settled in the area they were already excellent basket weavers and that they were supplementing hunting and wild-seed gathering with the cultivation of maize and pumpkins. They lived either in caves or out in the open in shelters constructed of a masonry of poles and adobe mud. Both caves and houses contained special pits, often roofed over, that were used for food storage. The Basket Makers were among the first village agricultural societies in the Southwest. Three Basketmaker stages were recognized at the 1927 Pecos Conference of Southwesternists: Basketmaker I (hypothetical), Basketmaker II (1--450 AD) which was a large base camp and widely scattered seasonal camps where the preferred container was the basket, and Basketmaker III (450--700/750) in which there were small villages of pit houses in well-watered valley bottoms. Specialized structures such as wattle-and-daub storage bins and large rooms for communal activity (possibly early kivas) also began to occur more frequently in the latter stage.
Basques; Basque: SYNONYMS OR RELATED TERMS: Spanish Vasco, or Vascongado, Basque Euskaldunak or Euskotarak
CATEGORY: culture; language
DEFINITION: A people living in both Spain and France in areas bordering the Bay of Biscay and encompassing the western foothills of the Pyrenees Mountains. The Basques are distinguished partly by an unusual pattern of blood groups, very high in the Rhesus negative factor, and by their language, quite unrelated to any other known one. They probably represent one of the people who inhabited Europe before the arrival of the Indo-Europeans. Basque is the only remnant of the languages spoken in southwestern Europe before that region was Romanized. The origin of the Basque language remains a mystery. It has been hypothesized that Basque had a genetic connection with the now-extinct Iberian and that both languages evolved from the Hamito-Semitic (Afro-Asiatic) language group -- but there is another theory that the similarities between the two arose from geographic proximity. Although Basque and Iberian are similar, the knowledge of Basque could not help decipher ancient Iberian inscriptions discovered in eastern Spain and on the Mediterranean coast of France. Basque is also linked with Caucasian, the ancient language spoken in the Caucasus region.
Bastet: SYNONYMS OR RELATED TERMS: Bastis, Bast, Ubasti
CATEGORY: deity
DEFINITION: The ancient Lower Egyptian goddess worshipped in the form of a lioness, and later a cat. Bastet's form was often changed after the domestication of the cat around 1500 BC. Her principal cult center was Bubastis in the Nile River delta but she also had an important cult at Memphis. In the Late and Ptolemaic periods large cemeteries of mummified cats were created at both sites, and thousands of bronze statuettes of the goddess were put there as votive offerings. Her cult was carried to Italy by the Romans, and traces have been found in Rome, Ostia, Nemi, and Pompeii.
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.
Bath: SYNONYMS OR RELATED TERMS: [Aquae Sulis]
CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: A site of hot mineral springs (120 F [49 C]) which attracted the Romans after their invasion of Britain, who founded Bath as Aquae Sulis, dedicated to the deity Sul (Minerva). From the late 1st century AD onwards the springs became the center for a complex of lavish monumental buildings. These include the Temple of Sulis Minerva and an extensive collection of baths, the most notable being the vaulted Great Bath.
baths, Roman: SYNONYMS OR RELATED TERMS: bathhouse
CATEGORY: structure
DEFINITION: The Roman baths featuring a combination of steaming, cleaning, and massage appeared wherever the Romans made conquests. In Rome itself the aqueducts fed sumptuous baths such as those of Caracalla, which covered 28 acres (11 hectares). From the 1st century BC onwards, the Romans built establishments called balneae or, later, thermae incorporating suites of rooms at different temperatures. A typical installation would include a tepidarium (warm room, probably without bath), a caldarium (hot, with plunge bath), a frigidarium (cold, also with bath), and an apodyterium (changing-room). Elaborate examples might also include a laconicum (room with dry heat), a swimming bath, an exercise area (palaestra), gardens, and a library. These complexes were important social meeting-points and were not limited to high society. Most large private houses from the 2nd century BC onwards had their own bath suite. The four large series of baths at Rome were built by Titus, Trajan, Caracalla, and Diocletian. Baths existed as early as the 4th century BC.
Bayeux Tapestry: CATEGORY: artifact
DEFINITION: A medieval embroidery depicting the Norman Conquest of England in 1066, which is considered a remarkable work of art and important as a source for 11th-century history. It consists of a roll of unbleached linen worked in colored worsted with illustrations and is about 70 m long and 50 cm deep. The work was probably commissioned by Bishop Odo of Bayeux, a half-brother of William the Conquerer, and took about two years to complete. It was likely finished no later than 1092. The tapestry depicts the events leading up to the invasion of England by William Duke of Normandy and the Battle of Hastings on 14 October 1066, when the English King Harold was defeated and killed. Though not proven, the tapestry appears to have been designed and embroidered in England. The themes are enacted much like that of a feudal drama or chanson de geste. The technical detail and iconography of the Bayeux Tapestry are of great importance. For instance, the 33 buildings depicted offer a look at the contemporary churches, castles, towers and motte and bailey castles. The battle scenes give details on the infantry and cavalry formations, Norman armor and weapons, and the clothing and hairstyles of the time. The invasion fleet is 'Viking double enders' (clinker-built long boats, propelled by oars and a single mast). The tapestry was discovered" in the nave of Bayeux Cathedral in France by French antiquarian and scholar Bernard de Montfaucon who published the earliest complete reproduction of it in 1730. It narrowly escaped destruction during the French Revolution was exhibited in Paris at Napoleon's wish in 1803-04 and thereafter kept in the Bayeux public library."
beans: CATEGORY: flora
DEFINITION: The seeds or pods of certain leguminous plants of the family Fabaceae and important to man since the beginning of food production. Most modern beans are of the genus Phaseolus, different species of which occur wild in two hemispheres. Their cultivation commenced at an early date in both. These species all originated in Mexico and South America, spreading to the Old World after Columbus. The earliest finds of cultivated Phaseolus beans are from 6th millennium BC Peru and Mexico. Vicia faba, the ancestor of the broad bean, was confined to the Old World, and was already being grown in the Neolithic Near East. Later in the Neolithic, the species appeared in Spain, Portugal, and eastern Europe. During the Bronze Age, the field bean grew in southern and central Europe, and by the Iron Age it reached Britain.
bear: CATEGORY: fauna
DEFINITION: A large carnivore of the family Ursidae, closely related to the dog (family Canidae) and raccoon (Procyonidae). The bear is the most recently evolved of carnivores and it appears to have diverged from the dog family during the Miocene. It evolved through such forms as the Pliocene Hyaenarctos (of Europe, Asia, and North America), into modern types such as the black and brown bear (Ursus). Today's bears are of three groups: the brown bears, the black bears, and the polar bear. Occasional finds of fossil polar bear bones outside the Arctic Circle are presumably related to the presence of pack ice and ice shelves at the edges of ice sheets during glaciations. Brown bears existed in Europe and Asia during the late Quaternary period. One very large variant evolved in Europe, the 'Cave Bear', whose fossils are quite common in Quaternary cave deposits.
bec: CATEGORY: lithics
DEFINITION: A Palaeolithic flake boring tool that was retouched on one edge to form a point.
Beersheba: CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: A site in southern Israel which was a frontier post in ancient Palestine. The earliest occupations were in 12th and 11th centuries BC, but the first town belonged to the period of the United Monarchy (10th century). The 8th century BC town wall with a great gateway flanked by double guard chambers and external towers has been excavated. There was also a 15-meter ring road inside the wall which divided the inner and outer towns. Beersheba may have been the administrative center of the region and there are indications of storerooms which may have contained the royal stores for the collection of taxes in kind (grain, wine, oil, etc.). The town was destroyed in the mid-7th century BC. Beersheba is first mentioned as the site where Abraham, founder of the Jewish people, made a covenant with the Philistine king Abimelech of Gerar (Genesis 21). Isaac and Jacob, the other patriarchs, also lived there (Genesis 26, 28, 46).
Behistun: SYNONYMS OR RELATED TERMS: Bisitun, Bisotun
CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: A rock face on the Kermanshah-Hamadan road in Iran on which Darius I (Darius the Great, reigned 521-485 BC) recorded his victories which gave him the Achaemenid empire in 522-520 BC. The bas-relief -- 400 feet above the road -- shows Darius, under the protection of the god Ahuramazda, receiving his defeated enemies. The inscriptions were carved in the cuneiform script, and repeated in the Old Persian, Elamite, and Babylonian languages. The rock face below them was then cut back to the vertical to prevent any attempt at defacement. In total, the area covered by the inscriptions and the relief panel were about 25-feet high and 50-feet wide. In 1833, Sir Henry Rawlinson went to Iran and became extremely interested in Persian antiquities and in deciphering the cuneiform writing at Behistun. Between 1835-1847, Rawlinson went through the intense work copying the inscription from harrowing positions above the road. It enabled him subsequently to understand the cuneiform script and to decipher the languages of the inscription. In 1837, he published his translations of the first two paragraphs of the inscription. After having to leave the country because of problems between Iran and Britain, Rawlinson was able to return in 1844 to obtain impressions of the Babylonian script. As a result, his Persian Cuneiform Inscription at Behistun" was published (1846-51) -- containing a complete translation analysis of the grammar and notes. The accomplishment yielded valuable information on the history of ancient Persia and its rulers. With other scholars he succeeded in deciphering the Mesopotamian cuneiform script by 1857. This provided the breakthrough to the decipherment later of other languages in the cuneiform script including Sumerian."
Beijing: SYNONYMS OR RELATED TERMS: Pei-ching, Peking
CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: The modern capital of China. More than 2,000 years ago, a site just outside present-day Peking was already an important military and trading center for the northeastern frontier of China. The Shang civilization reached this area in the early part of their dynasty and a grave of c 14th century BC at Pinggu Liujiacun contained bronze ritual vessels and a bronze ax with a blade of forged meteoritic iron. There have been many early Zhou finds, notably at the cemetery site of Fangshan Liulihe. In 1267, during the Yüan (Mongol) dynasty (1206-1368), a new city built on the site (called Ta-tu) which became the administrative capital of China. During the reigns of the first two emperors of the Ming dynasty (1368-1644), Nanking was the capital, and the old Mongol capital was renamed Pei-p'ing (Northern Peace"); the third Ming emperor however restored it as the Imperial seat of the dynasty and gave it a new name Peking ("Northern Capital"). Peking has remained the capital of China except for a brief period (1928-49) when the Nationalist government again made Nanking the capital (then to Chungking during World War II)."
Beit el-Wali: CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: A rock-cut temple on the west bank of the Nile (Lower Nubia), which was dedicated to Amun-Ra and built during the reign of Rameses II (1279-1213 BC).
Bel'kachi I: CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: A settlement site on the Aldan River in central Siberia, occupied during the Neolithic (c 4th millennium BC). Finds include the earliest date for pottery in Siberia, for a hand-molded, sand-tempered ware decorated with net or mat impressions. There was a succeeding phase, often known as the Bel'kachinsk culture (3rd millennium BC), which had distinctive pottery style, decorated with impressions from a cord-wrapped paddle. In that area during the Late Neolithic (2nd millennium BC), check-stamped ware, made by beating with a grooved paddle, appeared. Changes in stone and bone tools occurred during the development of the Neolithic, but throughout the economic basis remained hunting and fishing.
Beldibi: CATEGORY: site; culture
DEFINITION: A rock shelter which gave its name to a Mesolithic or 'Proto-Neolithic' culture succeeding the Belbasi culture in southern Anatolia. Phases contained imported obsidian and early forms of pottery. There is no evidence of food production or herding. Bones of deer, ibex, and cattle occur and subsistence was likely by coastal fishing and the gathering of wild grain.
Belgae: CATEGORY: culture
DEFINITION: Any of the inhabitants of Gaul north of the Sequana and Matrona (Seine and Marne) rivers of mixed Celtic and Germanic origin, first described by Julius Caesar in mid-first century BC. Their origins on the continent can be traced back to the La Tène period in the 5th century BC and evidence suggests that the Romans penetrated into those areas about 150 BC. In Caesar's day, they held much of Belgium and parts of northern France and southeast England. The Belgae of Gaul formed a coalition against Caesar after his first Gallic campaign but were subdued the following year (57 BC). During the first half of the 1st century BC, Belgae from the Marne district had crossed to Britain and had formed the kingdom that in 55 BC was ruled by Cassivellaunus. After further Gallic victories (54-51 BC) by Caesar, other settlers took refuge across the Channel, and Belgic culture spread to most of lowland Britain. The three most important Belgic kingdoms, identified by their coinage, were centered at Colchester, St. Albans, and Silchester. Archaeologically, the Belgae can be identified with the bearers of the Aylesford-Swarling culture, otherwise known as Iron Age C. Coinage, the heavy plow, and the potter's wheel were introduced by the Belgae. They lived in large fortified settlements called oppida and amphorae and Italian bronze vessels have been found in their richly furnished tombs.
bell: CATEGORY: artifact
DEFINITION: The earliest bell founding (i.e., the casting of bells from molten metal) is associated with the Bronze Age. The ancient Chinese were superb founders, their craft reaching an apex during the Chou dynasty (c 1122-221 BC). Characteristic were elliptical temple bells with exquisite symbolic decorations cast onto their surfaces by the cire perdue, or lost wax, process. Bells had an important ceremonial role in ancient China during the Chou Dynasty. The earliest Chinese bells, of Shang Dynasty (c 1600-1123 BC), were mounted mouth upwards and struck. Later bells hung mouth downwards.
Bell Beaker: CATEGORY: ceramics; culture
DEFINITION: A type of pottery vessel found all over western and central Europe from the final Neolithic or Chalcolithic, c 2500-1800 BC. The culture's name derives from the characteristic pottery which looks like an inverted bell with globular body and flaring rim. The beakers were valuable and highly decorated. They are often associated with special artifacts in grave assemblages, including polished stone wristguards, V-perforated buttons, and copper-tanged daggers.
bellarmine: CATEGORY: artifact
DEFINITION: A capacious round-bellied jug or pitcher bearing a grotesque human mask. Originally created in the Netherlands as a burlesque likeness of Cardinal Bellarmine, the idea spread widely and the term later became applied to any jug bearing a human mask.
belt hook: SYNONYMS OR RELATED TERMS: toggle
CATEGORY: artifact
DEFINITION: Small decorative and functional objects used as garment hooks in China, Korea, and other Near Eastern areas as early as the 7th century BC. Belt hooks have been found in Han tombs in southwestern China, but this luxury item was most in vogue during the Warring States period (5th-3rd centuries BC). These belt hooks were inlaid with gold or silver foil, polished fragments of turquoise, or more rarely with jade or glass; sometimes they were gilded. Most examples are bronze, often lavishly decorated with inlays, but some are made of jade, gold, or iron. The belt hook consists of a bar or flat strip curving into a hook at one end and carrying at the other end, on the back, a button for securing it to the belt. The hooks vary widely in size, shape, and design, and although contemporary sculptures sometimes show them at the waists of human figures, some examples are far too large to have been worn and their function is unclear. Textual evidence hints that the belt hook was adopted by the Chinese from the mounted nomads of the northern frontier of inner Asia, perhaps along with other articles of the horseman's costume. They were probably worn by both men and women.
Belverde: CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: A Bronze Age site of the Apennine near Cetona in Tuscany, Italy. There are indications that it may have been a ritual site, with rocks carved to form tiers of seats and other shapes. Complete pottery vessels filled with acorns, beans, and carbonized grain were placed into fissures in the rocks, perhaps as offerings to a deity.
Benghazi/Banghazi: SYNONYMS OR RELATED TERMS: ancient Euesperides; later Berenice; Italian Bengasi
CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: Seaport city of northeastern Libya, the de jur capital, which was founded by the Greeks of Cyrenaica as Hesperides (Euesperides) in the 6th century BC. It was replaced in the mid-3rd century by a new city, named Berenice by the Egyptian pharaoh Ptolemy III in honor of his wife. It continued in occupation until the 10th or 11th century ad and was ultimately replaced by the city of Benghazi, remaining a small town until it was extensively developed during the Italian occupation of Libya (1912-42). Excavations offer evidence of Classical and Hellenistic levels and the refurbishing of the enclosing walls during Justinian's time (reigned 527-565 AD).
Beni Hassan: SYNONYMS OR RELATED TERMS: Bani Hasan, Beni Hasan
CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: A Middle Kingdom archaeological site, on the eastern bank of the Nile, Egypt, about 150 miles south of Cairo. The site is known for its rock-cut tombs of the 11th- and 12th-dynasty (2125-1795 BC) officials of the 16th Upper Egyptian (Oryx) nome, or province. Some of the 39 tombs are painted with scenes of daily life and important biographical texts. The governors of the nome, whose capital was Menat Khufu, ancestral home of the 4th-dynasty pharaohs, administered the eastern desert. The tomb of one, Khnumhotep II, contains a scene showing Semitic Bedouin merchants in richly colored garments entering Egypt. A rock-cut shrine of Pakhet, known as Speos Artemidos, built by Queen Hatshepsut and Thutmose III of the 18th dynasty, lies one mile north, in an ancient quarry, with a smaller shrine of Alexander II nearby. There are some small tombs dating back to the 6th Dynasty (2345-2181 BC).
Bernam-Sungkai: CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: A peninsular area of Malaysia with stone slab graves during a metal age around 300 BC.
Bes: CATEGORY: deity
DEFINITION: A minor god of ancient Egypt, appearing only in the New Kingdom, represented as an ugly dwarf. The name Bes is now used to designate a group of deities of similar appearance. Bes, associated with music and childbirth, was intended to inspire joy or to drive away evil spirits. He was also popular with the Phoenicians.
Beth-Shan: SYNONYMS OR RELATED TERMS: Bet She'an, Baysan (Arabic), Beisan (modern); Scythopolis
CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: A very large tell of northeastern Israel, site of one of the oldest inhabited cities of ancient Palestine. Overlooking the town to the north is Tel Bet She'an (Arabic Tall al-Husn), one of the most important stratified mounds in Palestine. It was excavated in 1921-1933 by the University of Pennsylvania, which discovered the lowest strata date from the late Chalcolithic period in the country (c 4000-3000 BC) through Bronze Age and Iron Age levels and upward to Byzantine times (c AD 500). Buildings, including temples and administrative buildings, span the Egyptian period -- the earliest from the time of Thutmose III (ruled 1504-1450 BC), and the latest dating to Rameses III (1198-66 BC). Important stelae (stone monuments) show the conquests of Pharaoh Seti I (1318-1304 BC) and of the worship of the goddess Astarte. During the Hellenistic period, the city was called Scythopolis; it was taken by the Romans in 64 BC and given the status of an imperial free city by Pompey. In 1960 a finely preserved Roman amphitheater, with a seating capacity for about 5,000, was excavated. The city was an important center of the Decapolis (a league of 10 Hellenistic cities) and under Byzantine rule was the capital of the northern province of Palaestina Secunda. All these periods were also represented in the surrounding cemeteries. It declined after the Arab conquest (636 AD).
Beycesultan: CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: A tell on the upper Meander River of southwestern Anatolia (western Turkey) which has yielded evidence from the Chalcolithic to Late Bronze Age and of a culture contemporary with the Hittite empire. It is thought to have been the capital of the 2nd-millennium BC state of Arzawa. From the Chalcolithic, there was a cache of sophisticated copper tools and a silver ring, the earliest known use of that metal. Buildings that were religious shrines have been uncovered, almost unknown in Anatolia at those times. Rectangular shrine chambers were arranged in pairs, with ritual installations recalling the Horns of Consecration and Tree, or Pillar, cults of Minoan Crete. A palace building at the same site, dating from the Middle Bronze Age (c 1750 BC), Beycesultan's most prosperous period, had reception rooms at first-floor level, also in the Minoan manner. In common with most other Bronze Age buildings in Anatolia, its walls were composed of a brick-filled timber framework on stone foundations. The private houses of this period at Beycesultan were all built on the megaron plan. The whole settlement and a lower terrace on the river was enclosed by a perimeter wall. The town was violently destroyed and though it was rebuilt, it remained relatively poor into the Late Bronze Age.
Bharhut: CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: A village, about 100 miles southwest of Allahabad, India, famous for the ruins of a Buddhist stupa built in the time of Ashoka (c 250 BC). Originally built of brick, it was enlarged during the 2nd century BC and surrounded with a stone railing with four stone gateways (toranas) placed at four cardinal points. An inscription on these gateways assigns the work to King Dhanabhuti in the rule of the Shungas (i.e., before 72 BC). The railing is decorated with scenes from the Jataka stories. The sculptures adorning the shrine are among the earliest and finest examples of the developing style of Buddhist art in India. Discovered in 1873, the stupa's sculptural remains are now mainly preserved in the Indian Museum, Calcutta, and in the Municipal Museum (Allahabad).
bifacial thinning flake: CATEGORY: artifact
DEFINITION: A flake removed during the thinning or resharpening of bifaces. These flakes are relatively flat, have broad, shallow flake scars (produced by the detachment of previous thinning flakes from the dorsal face), and tend to exhibit a feathering out of lateral margins. The proximal end of the flake often retains the edge of the biface and, if the platform is retained, it often exhibits a low angle and evidence of crushing or grinding (i.e., platform preparation).
Big Game Hunting tradition: SYNONYMS OR RELATED TERMS: Big Game Hunting culture
CATEGORY: culture
DEFINITION: Any of several ancient North American cultures based on hunting herd animals such as mammoth and bison; the first indigenous cultural complex of the continent. It may have developed from an earlier hunting culture whose people arrived in North America between 20,000-40,000 years ago in an interstadial (break) in the Wisconsin Ice Age. It is also probable that this culture derived from a migration across the Bering Land Bridge c 13,000-14,000 BC. The remains of these cultures have been found mainly in the North American Plains as well as in the eastern and southwestern regions of North America. Lanceolate projectile points, such as Clovis and Folsom, characterize the tradition. The big-game-hunting tradition began to decline or change after 8000 BC.
billabong: CATEGORY: geography
DEFINITION: In Australia, a branch of a river or waterhole in a watercourse, that fills when flooded during the rainy season, forming a blind channel, backwater, or stagnant pool. It dries up in the dry season.
Biskupin: CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: An Early Iron Age defended settlement of the Lusatian culture of c 550-400 BC, on a former island in Lake Biskupin, northwest Poland. The island site was ringed by a breakwater of piles and fortified by a rampart of timber compartments filled with earth and stones. Inside were more than 100 wooden cabins, which were all erected within a year, arranged along parallel streets made of logs. Up to 1200 people may have been housed there. Workshops for craftsmen in bone, bronze, and horn have been excavated. Waterlogged ground preserved the structures.
bison: CATEGORY: fauna
DEFINITION: The name of two species of wild oxen, the European bison or wisent and the American bison or buffalo. Only a small number of European bison now exist, bred from zoo specimens, and in a protected state in forest of Lithuania. Two further species, now extinct, inhabited Europe and Great Britain for much of the Quaternary period. The great steppe wisent was present during both interglacials and cold period. The smaller wood wisent, was only present in Europe during interglacials. Sometimes these animals are called aurochs. In North America, a number of species preceded today's bison. One species, popularly called 'buffalo', formerly roamed in vast herds over the interior of the continent, mainly in the Rocky Mountains.
Black Death: CATEGORY: term
DEFINITION: A particularly severe outbreak of plague which crossed Europe between 1347 and 1351 AD, probably a combination of bubonic and pneumonic plagues. It took a greater toll of life than any other known epidemic or war up to that time. A rough estimate is that 25 million people in Europe died from plague during the Black Death. The population of western Europe did not reach its pre-1348 level until the beginning of the 16th century.
Black-and-red ware: SYNONYMS OR RELATED TERMS: black and red ware
CATEGORY: ceramics
DEFINITION: Any Indian pottery with black rims and interior and red on the outside, due to firing in the inverted position, which was made beginning in the Iron Age. Characteristic forms include shallow dishes and deeper bowls. It first appeared on late sites of the Indus civilization and was a standard feature of the Banas culture. This ware has been found throughout much of the Indian peninsula with dates of the later 2nd and early 1st millennium BC. In the first millennium it became widespread in association with iron and megalithic monuments. In the Ganges Valley it post-dates ochre-colored pottery and generally precedes painted gray ware.
black-figure: SYNONYMS OR RELATED TERMS: black-figure ware; black-figured (adj.)
CATEGORY: ceramics
DEFINITION: A type of Greek pottery that originated in Corinth c 700 BC and was popular until red-figure pottery, its inverse, began c 530 BC. This style consisted of pottery with one or more bands of human and animal figures are silhouetted in black against the tan or red ground. The red color is probably taken when the pot is fired. The delineation of the figures was often heightened by the use of incised lines and the addition of white or purple coloring. The figures and ornamentation were drawn on the natural clay surface of a vase in glossy black pigment; the finishing details were incised into the black. The first significant use of the black-figure technique was on the Proto- Corinthian style pottery developed in Corinth in the first half of the 7th century BC. The Corinthian painter's primary ornamental device was the animal frieze. The Athenians, who began to use the technique at the end of the 7th century BC, retained the Corinthian use of animal friezes for decoration until c 550 BC, when the great Attic painters developed narrative scene decoration and perfected the black-figure style. There were also studios producing black-figure ware in Sparta and eastern Greece.
blank: CATEGORY: lithics
DEFINITION: A partly finished stone artifact that has been worked roughly into a shape but which must be further chip to a suitable size and form to become a tool. This is an intermediate manufacturing stage in the production of stone tools, where the tools are given the rough shape at a quarry or workshop and often taken elsewhere for completion. Blanks were presumably made in quantity because they were easier to carry from place to place than heavy lumps of stone.
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.
boat burial: SYNONYMS OR RELATED TERMS: boat grave
CATEGORY: term; feature
DEFINITION: A type of burial during the Late Iron Age in which a body or its cremated remains were placed in a boat, which was then covered by a mound of earth. This was a north European practice, common in Scandinavia and Britain from c 550 to 800 AD. This pagan ritual was widely adopted by the Vikings and practiced to a lesser extent by the Anglo-Saxons and Germans. In Norway alone there are 500 known boat burials, and many more from the rest of Scandinavia and other Viking colonies. To these seafaring people, ships were a means of transport, a way of life, and symbols of power and prestige. The Anglo-Saxon poem Beowulf" describes the belief that the journey to the afterlife could be achieved in a vessel. In Anglo-Saxon Britain there are three 7th century examples in Suffolk including the rich burial of Sutton Hoo. The best-known after Sutton Hoo are the 9th-century barrows of Oseberg and Gokstad in Norway and the 10th-century barrow at Ladby in Denmark. Burial in churchyards became customary in the 11th century in those areas."
boat-shaped buildings: CATEGORY: structure
DEFINITION: In Scandinavia and other parts of Europe, there is evidence of a variety of longhouse with bowed sides during the Viking period. The finest examples have been excavated at 11th-century Viking camps such as Trelleborg in southern Jutland. A reconstructed example there has walls made of halved tree trunks set in rows, with the curved face outwards as in stave churches. A series of angled posts around the outside acted as buttresses and gave additional support to the gabled roof with its curved ridge. The roof may have been covered in wooden shingles, thatch, or turf. There is considerable variation in boat-shaped houses, depending on function and location. Two British examples are a boat-shaped building in Hamwih and another in Bucken.
bog burial: CATEGORY: term
DEFINITION: Areas where human bodies are found in peat bogs in Scandinavia and northern Europe, including more than 160 from Denmark, and which are remarkably well-preserved. The chemicals in the peat preserve the bodies, which allows archaeologists to study aspects of past life, including the soft tissues of the bodies themselves and the contents of the stomachs. Burials and ritual deposits were interred in these bogs in antiquity, especially during the Bronze and Iron ages.
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.
Bologna: SYNONYMS OR RELATED TERMS: Bononia; Felsina
CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: A city in the Po valley of northern Italy, originally the Etruscan Felsina, which was occupied by Gauls in the 4th century BC and became a Roman colony and municipium (Bononia) c 190 BC. Traces of street plans survive, as do cemeteries with trench-type inhumation and cremation. Finds include sandstone grave stelae and many grave goods. Prior to the Etruscan inhabitation, there were villages of the Apennine culture, which were succeeded by Villanovans. During that time it was a bronzeworking and trade center. It was then subject to the Greeks, then the papacy, then occupied by the Visigoths, Huns, Goths, and Lombards after the barbarian invasions. After a feudal period, Bologna became free in the early 12th century.
bombylos: SYNONYMS OR RELATED TERMS: bombyle
CATEGORY: artifact
DEFINITION: A Greek or Roman vase so-called from the gurgling noise which the liquid made when pouring out the narrow neck.
bone dating: CATEGORY: technique
DEFINITION: Any of a serious of methods of analyzing bone samples, especially by measuring fluorine, uranium, nitrogen -- also called the FUN technique -- or by using stratigraphy. Human remains may be compared with animal bone or fossils found in the same strata. Relative dates may be obtained form time-related chemical changes which occur in bone, especially in fluorine, uranium, and nitrogen. Still, the most commonly used is radiocarbon dating because both the collagen and mineral components of bone are dateable.
bone hammer: CATEGORY: artifact
DEFINITION: A bone that is used as a hammer in the removal of flakes from a core in the manufacturing of stone tools.
bone measurement: CATEGORY: technique
DEFINITION: The measurement of bones to compare size and shape between different individuals. The dimensions of skeletal structures can be taken using a variety of calipers and other measuring equipment. Multivariate analysis is one method of comparison which helps to identify and distinguish bones by species and sex and for studying the genetics of groups of animals. Much work has been done in human skull measurement to investigate genetic relationships of ancient populations.
Bonneville: SYNONYMS OR RELATED TERMS: Bonneville period
CATEGORY: chronology
DEFINITION: A time in the late Pleistocene Epoch about 30,000 years ago when a prehistoric lake formed covering an estimated 20,000 square miles (52,000 sq km), over much of western Utah and parts of Nevada and Idaho in the US. These conditions existed during the interval of the last major Pleistocene glaciation. Lake Bonneville shrank rapidly in size and, by 12,000 years ago, had permanently shrunk to a point where it had become smaller than the Great Salt Lake.
Book of the Dead: CATEGORY: language
DEFINITION: The modern name given to a collection of ancient Egyptian mortuary texts made up of spells or magic formulas, placed in tombs and believed to protect and aid the deceased in the hereafter. The collection, literally titled The Chapters of Coming-Forth-by-Day received its present name from Karl Richard Lepsius, German Egyptologist who published the first collection of the texts in 1842. It was probably compiled and re-edited during the 16th century BC, and over half of the collection is comprised of the Coffin Texts dating from c 2000 BC and the Pyramid Texts dating from c 2400 BC. The Book of the Dead had numerous authors, compilers, and sources. Scribes copied the texts on rolls of papyrus, often with illustrations, and sold them to individuals for use in burials. Many copies of the book have been found in Egyptian tombs, but none contains all of the approximately 200 chapters. The choice of spells varies from copy to copy.
bore sample: SYNONYMS OR RELATED TERMS: core sample
CATEGORY: term
DEFINITION: In dendrochronology, a straw-sized core removed from the bark to the pith of a tree to note and count each tree ring.
Boreal: SYNONYMS OR RELATED TERMS: Boreal Climatic Interval
CATEGORY: chronology
DEFINITION: A climatic subdivision of the Holocene epoch, following the Pre-Boreal and preceding the Atlantic climatic intervals. Radiocarbon dating shows the period beginning about 9,500 years ago and ending about 7,500 years ago. The Boreal was supposed to be warm and dry. In Europe, the Early Boreal was characterized by hazel-pine forest assemblages and lowering sea levels. In the Late Boreal, hazel-oak forest assemblages were dominant, but the seas were rising. In some areas, notably the North York moors, southern Pennines and lowland heaths, Mesolithic man appears to have been responsible for temporary clearances by fire and initiated the growth of moor and heath vegetation.
Borneo: CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: The largest island of Southeast Asia, first mentioned in Ptolemy's Guide to Geography" of c 150 AD. Joined to mainland Southeast Asia during the low sea-level Pleistocene period archaeological sequences have been found in the Niah Caves of Sarawak and the Madai-Tingkayu region of Sabah. The Niah Great Cave sequence suggests the presence of a population of early Australoids from about 40 000 years ago and evidence from all sites indicate that the ancestors of present-day Borneans arrived around 3000 BC possibly from the Philippines. Though traces of Homo erectus from 2 million years ago were found on neighboring Java so far no evidence has been found of Homo erectus in Borneo. Roman trade beads and Indo-Javanese artifacts give evidence of a flourishing civilization dating to the 2nd or 3rd century BC. A Sanskrit inscription dated to c 400 AD is the earliest historical document on the island. Three rough foundation stones with an inscription recording a gift to a Brahman priest date from the early 5th century AD found at Kutai provide evidence of a Hindu kingdom. The first recorded European visitor was Franciscan friar Odoric of Pordenone who visited on his way from India to China in 1330."
Botta, Paul-Emile (1802-70): CATEGORY: person
DEFINITION: French consul in Mosul, Iraq, and archaeologist whose discovery of the palace of the Assyrian king Sargon II at Dur Sharrukin in 1843 started the large-scale field archaeology of ancient Mesopotamia. He was seeking the vanished cities of Assyria, known at that time only from the accounts of ancient writers and from biblical references. Botta revealed the remains of the great palace of Sargon II (721-505 BC), with its famed winged figures, relief sculptures, and cuneiform inscriptions -- but he mistakenly thought he had found ancient Nineveh. The remains tended to disintegrate quickly after being unearthed and one shipment of antiquities was sunk in transit, but another reached Paris and the Louvre. He published Monuments of Nineveh..." in 1949-50 with beautiful illustrations by E.N. Flandin. Later Botta was devoted to deciphering cuneiform."
bottle: CATEGORY: artifact
DEFINITION: A container, typically made of glass or plastic and with a narrow neck, used for storing drinks or other liquids
Boudicca (d. AD 60): SYNONYMS OR RELATED TERMS: Boadicea
CATEGORY: person
DEFINITION: Ancient British queen of the Iceni tribe or Norfolk who led a revolt against Roman rule in 60 AD. After suffering many cruelties to her family, herself, and her tribe at the hands of the Romans, Boudicca raised a rebellion throughout East Anglia. They burned Camulodunum (Colchester), Verulamium (St. Albans), the mart of Londinium (London), and several military posts; massacred approximately 70,000 Romans and pro-Roman Britons; and destroyed the Roman 9th Legion. The Roman governor Paulinus regained the province in a battle during which 80,000 of the rebelling tribesmen were killed and after which Boudicca took poison or died of shock.
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.
Boxgrove: CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: An Acheulian site in West Sussex, England, with biface manufacturing, lithic tools and debitage.
brain endocast: SYNONYMS OR RELATED TERMS: endocranial cast
CATEGORY: technique
DEFINITION: A cast of the cranial cavity (inner surface of the cranium) to produce an accurate image of and the approximate shape of the brain. These are made by pouring latex rubber into a skull. The fossil record can yield endocranial casts and, from them, possible brain volumes -- especially of early man.
brass: CATEGORY: geology
DEFINITION: The general name for alloys of copper with zinc or tin, with the proportions about 70-90% copper and 10-30% of the other base metal. It is possible that due to difficulties in introducing the zinc ore calamine into the melt, brass appeared later in use than bronze (copper and tin) and other copper alloys. Mosaic gold, pinchbeck, prince's metal, are varieties of brass differing in the proportions of the ingredients. Corinthian brass is an alloy of gold, silver, and copper.
breastplate: CATEGORY: artifact
DEFINITION: A piece of armor covering the chest
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.
Bronze Age: CATEGORY: chronology
DEFINITION: The second age of the Three Age System, beginning about 4000-3000 BC in the Mideast and about 2000-1500 BC in Europe. It followed the Stone Age and preceded the Iron Age and was defined by a shift from stone tools and weapons to the use of bronze. During this time civilization based on agriculture and urban life developed. Trading to obtain tin for making bronze led to the rapid diffusion of ideas and technological improvements. The Iron Age began about 1500 BC in the Mideast and 900 BC in Europe. Bronze artifacts were valued highly and became part of many hoards. In the Americas, true bronze was used in northern Argentina before 1000 AD and it spread to Peru and the Incas. Bronze was never as important in the New World as in the Old. The Bronze Age is often divided into three periods: Early Bronze Age (c 4000-2000 BC), Middle Bronze Age (c 2000-1600 BC), and Late Bronze Age (c 1600-1200 BC) but he chronological limits and the terminology vary from region to region.
brooch: CATEGORY: artifact
DEFINITION: An ornamental pin or piece of decorative metalwork attached by a pin, that was either a fastener or ornament, and are found from c 1400 BC. Brooches developed from the Roman fibula, which was similar to a safety pin, and first made at La Tène on Lake Neuchâtel, Switzerland. Their styles vary especially in the twistings of the spring and may be used to date other finds. There were long brooches, rosette or circular brooches, and penannular types.
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.
Brythons: SYNONYMS OR RELATED TERMS: Britons
CATEGORY: culture
DEFINITION: A combination of Nordic and Alpine peoples who arrived in southeast England about 550 BC. They introduced iron and gave their name to Britain. During the Roman occupation, England was inhabited by Celtic Brythons, but the Celts withdrew before the Teutonic Angles, Saxons, and Jutes into the mountainous areas of western and northern Britain and to Ireland.
bucchero: CATEGORY: ceramics
DEFINITION: A fine gray pottery, with a black or gray shiny surface, which was produced principally in Greek-speaking or Etruscan areas between the 8th and 5th centuries BC. Shapes and decoration styles varied greatly -- incised, stamped and applied were employed. This earthenware pottery was common in pre-Roman Italy between the 7th and early 5th century BC. The shiny surface was produced by polishing and the color achieved by firing in an atmosphere charged with carbon monoxide instead of oxygen ('reducing firing'). The light, thin-walled bucchero sottile, considered the finest, was made in the 7th and early 6th centuries and the shapes were derived largely from Oriental models. In the 6th century the Greek influence changed the forms to alabastrums, amphorae, kraters, kylikes with incised, modeled, or applied birds and animals in friezes or geometric schemes appear. Greek black pigment was used and human and animal figures were painted on the surface of bucchero in black, red, and white. Technique and workmanship declined from about the mid-6th century onward, when bucchero sottile was replaced by bucchero pasantë, a heavy, complex thick-walled ware that was decorated with elaborate reliefs.
Buckley earthenware: CATEGORY: artifact
DEFINITION: C 1720-1775, North Wales, The body of this earthenware is quite coarse because of the combination of two different types of clay in the process. The ware is made of layers of pink-firing and yellow clays. The combination of the two clays served to make the poor clays more workable. The ware is decorated with a black lead-glaze. The exterior fabric color on unglazed portions is purplish-red. The body exteriors are often heavily ribbed. When broken, the fabric interior exhibits the characteristic red and yellow layers.
bulbar scar: CATEGORY: lithics
DEFINITION: The irregularly shaped scar on the bulb of percussion of a struck flint flake. It marks the place where a small piece of flint is dislodged during fracture. The bulbar surface is the surface upon which the bulb of percussion occurs. This fracture pattern is evident by a bruised striking platform at the point of impact with shock waves radiating from it and, on the resultant flake, a bulb of percussion and bulbar scar. When these features are present, it is possible to distinguish human workmanship from natural breakage caused by heat or frost.
Buret: CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: A site in southern Sibera, western Turkistan, which was occupied in late Palaeolithic times. It is known for mammoth-tusk figurines of women. They resemble Paleolithic statuettes from Europe and the Middle East and the nude ones probably served as fertility symbols or as representations of the great goddess, whose cult was widespread. Of five found at Buret, the most unusual is a clothed woman wearing a one-piece trouser suit with a hood attached to it comparable to those still worn by present-day Eskimos.
burned spot: CATEGORY: feature
DEFINITION: An area of localized fire-reddening and/or charring on a surface with no evidence of deliberate construciton. The burned spot may be accompanied by an accumulation of ash and/or charcoal on the surface or by soot-blackening on a wall face above the surface.
burnish: CATEGORY: artifact; lithics
DEFINITION: A polish given to the surface of an artifact, either to improve its appearance and make it more valuable or to compact it (as with clay) to make it less porous. A pot is polished, often using a spatula of wood or bone, while it is still in a leathery 'green' state, i.e. before firing. After firing the surface is extremely shiny. Often the whole outer surface of the pot is thus decorated, but in certain ceramic traditions there is 'pattern burnishing' where the outside and, in the case of open bowls, the inside are decorated with burnished patterns in which some areas are left matte. In stroke burnish, the surface is completely polished, but the marks of the burnisher, a pebble or bone slip, remain distinct. On bronze it was done to improve the appearance; even mirrors could be produced in this way. A burnisher is a metal instrument used by engravers to soften lines or efface them.
butcher marks: SYNONYMS OR RELATED TERMS: cut marks, chop marks, scrapes
CATEGORY: artifact
DEFINITION: Marks made on animal bone by stone tools during butchering. These marks are used to associate humans with animal remains for a relative date. The marks are classified according to form and function as cut marks, chop marks, and scrapes.
butteris: CATEGORY: artifact
DEFINITION: A farrier's tool for paring a horse's hoof.
Byblos: SYNONYMS OR RELATED TERMS: modern Gebeil, Gubla, Jubeil, Gebail, Jubayl, Jebeil; ancient/biblical Gebal; adjective Jiblite (Kubna, ancient Egyptian; Gubla, Akkadian)
CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: An ancient seaport on the Mediterranean coast just north of Beirut, Lebanon and one of the oldest continuously inhabited towns in the world. Papyrus received its early Greek name (byblos, byblinos) from its being exported to the Aegean through Byblos. The English word Bible is derived from byblos as the (papyrus) book." Excavations revealed that Byblos was occupied at least by the Neolithic period (c 8000-4000 BC) and that an extensive settlement developed during the 4th millennium BC. Byblos was the main harbor for exporting cedar and other valuable wood to Egypt from 3000 BC on. Egyptian monuments and inscriptions on the site describe to close relations with the Nile valley throughout the second half of the 2nd millennium. During Egypt's 12th dynasty (1938-1756 BC) Byblos became an Egyptian dependency and the chief goddess of the city Baalat with her well-known temple at Byblos was worshipped in Egypt. After the collapse of the Egyptian New Kingdom in the 11th century BC Byblos became the most important city of Phoenicia. Byblos has yielded almost all of the known early Phoenician inscriptions most of them dating from the 10th century BC. The crusaders captured the town in 1103 but they later lost it to the Ayyubids in 1189. The ruins today consist of the crusader ramparts and gate; a Roman colonnade and small theater; Phoenician ramparts three major temples and a necropolis."
Byzantine empire: SYNONYMS OR RELATED TERMS: Byzantium (later Constantinople, now Istanbul)
CATEGORY: site; culture
DEFINITION: The eastern half of the Roman Empire, based in Byzantium (later Constantinople, now Istanbul), an ancient Greek settlement on the European side of the Bosporus. It was inaugurated in AD 330 by the Emperor Constantine I who transferred the capital of the Roman Empire to Byzantium. The empire survived the collapse of the Western empire until overrun by the Ottoman Turks in 1453. Originally a Greek colony at the entrance to the Black Sea, a typical Roman town was then laid out over it. Remains of the imperial palace lie south of the former Greek city nucleus. The land walls, giving the city an area greater than that of Rome, were built by Theodosius II (408-450 AD) and are among the best-preserved ancient fortifications anywhere. In the 7th century BC Dorian Greeks founded the settlement of Byzantium on a trapezoidal promontory on the European side of the Bosporus channel which leads from the Mediterranean to the Black Sea and separates Europe from Asia. Septimus Severus (193-211 AD) was responsible for restoring the city, re-walling it and beginning the construction of the limestone racecourse, the Hippodrome. In 368 AD, Valens raised his still impressive aqueduct. In 413 Theodosius II built the colossal surviving walls of stone and brick-faced concrete, with 96 variously shaped towers, and the principal entrance at the Golden Gate. The Eastern Christian empire preserved much of Greek and Roman culture and introduced eastern ideas to the west. Byzantium was essentially a Christian church state, preserving its religion against the onslaught of Islam, despite the Arab encroachments on Palestine, Syria, and northern Africa during the 6th-7th centuries AD. The Byzantine period is the time, about the 6th-12th centuries AD, when its style of architecture and art developed. Byzantine architecture is noted for its Christian places of worship and introduced the cupola, or dome, an almost square ground plan in place of the long aisles of the Roman church, and piers instead of columns. The apse always formed part of Byzantine buildings, which were richly decorated, and contained much marble. St. Sophia (532-537), St. Mark's (Venice, 977) and the Cathedral of Aix-la-Chapelle (796-804) are of pure Byzantine style. Byzantine painting preceded and foreshadowed the Renaissance of art in Italy. Mosaics are perhaps the supreme achievement of Byzantine art.
caelatura: CATEGORY: artifact
DEFINITION: From the Latin word meaning to emboss engrave" a general term for working in metal by raised work or intaglio such as engraving carving chasing riveting soldering or smelting. Similar work on wood ivory marble glass or precious stones was called sculptura."
Caerleon: SYNONYMS OR RELATED TERMS: Isca
CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: A town and archaeological site in Wales in which the Romans established a legionary fortress dating to 74-75 AD when the conquest of the Silures of Wales began. The foundation of the fortress is set on a terrace along the Usk and it is one of three major legionary fortresses -- the other two being at Chester and York. Originally built of timber and earth, it had been largely rebuilt in stone (253-255) before the Roman garrison left during the abandonment of the province. Evidence has been found for centurion houses, workshops, barracks, stores, ovens, hospital, baths, and latrines. There is also an amphitheater, two bath buildings, and extensive cemeteries in an associated settlement. The fortress was occupied, probably by a nonmilitary population, until the 370s. Caerleon, traditionally a seat of the legendary King Arthur, was a Welsh princely capital until the Norman Conquest (1066).
Cajamarca: SYNONYMS OR RELATED TERMS: Cajamarquilla
CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: An ancient Inca city, the site of the capture, ransom, and execution of the Inca chief Atahuallpa by conquistador Francisco Pizarro in 1532. In the north Peruvian highlands, Cajamarca developed a strong regional civilization and was a provincial capital, flourishing between 200-1476 AD. Cajamarca pottery is slip-painted with linear running patterns (cursive) or with stylized creatures and animal heads in brownish black over a cream background. The Spanish capture ended the Inca period and Andean prehistory. It was a cultural center during the Early Intermediate period. The cemetery, Nievería has Huari-related artifacts.
calcareous concretion: CATEGORY: artifact
DEFINITION: A rounded mass of mineral matter occurring in sandstone, clay, etc. -- often in concentric layers around a nucleus.
calcareous concretions: CATEGORY: geology
DEFINITION: A rounded mass of mineral matter occurring in sandstone, clay, etc. -- often in concentric layers around a nucleus.
calcite-gritted ware: CATEGORY: artifact
DEFINITION: Pottery whose fabric embodies crushed calcite (either shell or mineral grit) as a tempering agent, used especially for kitchen wares such as storage jars, cooking pots, and bowls.
caldera: CATEGORY: geology
DEFINITION: A large, bowl-shaped volcanic depression leading to the expulsion of a large quantity of molten rock (magma). The depression is more than one kilometer in diameter and surrounded by faults with instabilities that can bring about a renewal of volcanic activity. Calderas usually, if not always, form by the collapse of the top of a volcanic cone or group of cones because of removal of the underlying body of magma. Subsequent minor eruptions may build small cones on the floor of the caldera. These may later fill with water, as did Crater Lake in Oregon.
calendar: SYNONYMS OR RELATED TERMS: calendrics
CATEGORY: term
DEFINITION: A cyclical system of measuring the passage of time. The day is the fundamental unit of computation in any calendar. Most ancient civilizations (and perhaps some non-literate prehistoric societies) developed calendrical systems to mark the passage of time and various methods have been employed by different peoples. Where these were both carefully calculated and written down, as in Egypt, Mesopotamia and Mesoamerica, they are of considerable assistance to archaeologists for dating purposes. In the Americas, the origins of calendrics are still obscure, but evidence from Monte Albán suggests that the 52-year Calendar Round was known by the 6th century BC. The Long Count system was in use by c 1st century BC if not before. Ancient Near Eastern calendars varied from city to city and from period to period. In most cities the year started in the spring and was divided into 12 or 13 months. In some places the months were of fixed length; in others they were lunar months starting at the first sighting of the crescent of the new moon. As there are more than 12 lunar months in a solar year additional, or intercalary, months were included so that every third year contained 13 months. The earliest Egyptian calendars were based on lunar observations combined with the annual cycle of the Nile inundation, measured with nilometers. On this basis, the Egyptians divided the year into 12 months and three seasons: akhet (inundation), peret (spring/ crops), and shemu (harvest). The Egyptians had 30-day months and 5 intercalary days in their solar or civil calendar. For agricultural purposes and for determining religious festivals, they used a different calendar based on observations of Sirius, the dog star. The calendar in use in ancient Mesopotamia and the Levant was lunar, based on 12 months of 30 days each. This produced a year of only 354 days, about 11-1/4 days short of the true solar year; the necessary correction was made by the addition of seven months over a period of 19 years. This type of calendar is still used in both Judaism and Islam for religious purposes, though many countries now also employ the Gregorian solar calendar for secular purposes. The origin of the calendric system in general use today -- the Gregorian calendar -- can be traced back to the Roman republican calendar, which is thought to have been introduced by the fifth king of Rome, Tarquinius Priscus (616-579 BC). This calendar was likely derived from an earlier Roman calendar -- a lunar system of 10 months -- that was supposedly devised about 738 BC by Romulus, the founder of Rome. In the year 46 BC, Julius Caesar corrected the calendar by having a year of 445 days (known as the ultimus annus confusionis' or 'the last year of the muddled reckoning'). He then adapted the Egyptian solar calendar for Roman use, inserting extra days in the shorter months to bring the total up to 365, with the addition of a single day between the 23rd and 24th February in leap years. This calendar, known as the Julian Calendar, remained in use until the time of Gregory XIII in 1582, who made a further correction (of eleven days) and instituted the calendar which is in general use today. Very useful to Mesoamerican archaeologists is the Maya Long Count or Initial Series, which was a means of recording absolute time. Its starting date of 3113 BC (using the Goodman-Thompson-Martinex correlation) marks some mythical event in Maya history and itself stands at the beginning of a cycle 13 Baktuns long. A Baktun at 144,000 days in the largest unit of time in the calendar and is further divided into smaller units: the Katun (7200 days); the Tun (360 days); the Uninal (20 days) and the Kin (a single days). Thus Long Count dates are expressed in terms of these units in a five place notation. Therefore the date 9.18.0.0.0. indicates the passage of 9 x 144,000 plus 18 x 7200 days since the initial date of 3113 BC. In cultural contexts, however, the dates are inscribed as a series of hieroglyphs which incorporate numeration via bars (units of five) and dots (units of one). Short count dating replaced the Long Count after 900 AD and the Katun replaced the Baktun as the largest unit. It is less precise, however.
Cambodia: SYNONYMS OR RELATED TERMS: Kampuchea
CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: Neolithic peoples inhabited present-day Cambodia during the 2nd and 1st millennia BC. Stone tools have been found in terraces of the Mekong River in possible association with tektites from a shower that fell c 600,000 to 700,000 years ago. In western Cambodia there is an important Hoabinhian sequence from the cave of Laang Spean dating to 4300 BC. A major Neolithic mound site at Somrong Sen yielded elaborate assemblage which seems to predate 100 BC. Khmer civilization developed over several distinct periods, starting with the Hindu-Buddhist kingdoms of Funan and Chenla in the 1st century AD, which extended into the 8th century.
Canaanite amphora: CATEGORY: artifact
DEFINITION: Common transport vessel of the Late Bronze Age in the eastern Mediterranean. Canaanite amphoras average 30 inches in height and have a short, relatively narrow flaring mouth, a wide shoulder with two handles on it, and a tapering profile running down to a narrow pointed base. They were made in various centers in the eastern Mediterranean and were roughly contemporary with stirrup jars.
canopic jar: SYNONYMS OR RELATED TERMS: canopic vase, canopea
CATEGORY: artifact
DEFINITION: An ancient Egyptian funerary ritual in which four covered vessels of wood, stone, pottery, or faience were used to hold the organs removed during mummification. The embalmed liver, lungs, stomach, and intestines were placed in separate canopic jars. The jars or urns were then placed beside the mummy in the tomb, to be reunited in spirit, subject to the appropriate spells and rituals having been performed. The earliest Canopic jars came into use during the Old Kingdom (c 2575-2130 BC) and had plain lids. During the Middle Kingdom (c 1938-1600 BC), the jars were decorated with sculpted human heads, probably depicting of the deceased. Then from the 19th dynasty until the end of the New Kingdom (1539-1075 BC), the heads represented the four sons of the god Horus (Duamutef, Qebehsenuf, Imset, Hapy). In the 20th dynasty (1190-1075 BC) the practice began of returning the embalmed viscera to the body. The term appears to refer to a Greek demigod, Canopus, venerated in the form of a jar with a human head.
Cape Krusenstern: CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: The site of a national monument on the coast of the Chukchi Sea with a horizontal stratigraphy covering the whole of north Alaskan prehistory. Located on 114 ridges along ancient beach lines, the monument's remarkable archaeological sites illustrate the cultural evolution of the Arctic people, dating back some 4,000 years and continuing to modern Eskimos. There are campsites of 10 successive cultures, beginning with the Denbigh Flint Complex, followed by the Old Whaling culture, then by the Eskimo cultures known as Trails Creek-Chloris, Chloris, Norton, Near Ipiutak, Ipiutak, Birnirk, Western Thule, and late prehistoric. On the terrace behind the beaches were two more phases (Palisades I and II) which go back to c 8000 BC. The stratigraphy is visible as a sequence of strips, roughly parallel to the shoreline, with the oldest, Denbigh, being furthest from the present-day shoreline. This horizontal sequence, in combination with the vertical stratigraphy of Onion Portage, forms the most reliable chronological framework in Western Arctic prehistory.
Capua: SYNONYMS OR RELATED TERMS: modern Santa Maria di Capua Vetere; Casilinum
CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: An ancient city of Italy, founded around 600 BC by the Etruscans, whose people spoke the Oscan dialect of Italic. There had been an early Iron Age settlement in the 9th century BC. After the period of Etruscan domination, it fell to the Samnites c 440 BC. Capua supported the Latin Confederacy in its war against Rome in 340 BC. After Rome's victory in the war, Capua became a self-governing community, and its people were granted limited Roman citizenship. In 312 BC, Capua was connected with Rome by the Appian Way and its prosperity increased to make it the secondmost important in Italy. During the Second Punic War (218-201 BC) Capua sided with Carthage against Rome. When the Romans recaptured the city in 211 BC, they deprived the citizens of political rights. Spartacus, the slave leader, began his revolt at Capua in 73 BC. Although it suffered during the Roman civil wars in the last decades of the republic, it prospered under the empire until 27 BC. The Vandals sacked Capua in 456 AD and Muslim invaders destroyed everything except the church of Sta. Maria in 840. Capua was famous for its bronzes and perfumes. There are ruins of a theater, amphitheater, baths, ceremonial arch of Hadrian, and a mithraeum with painted frescoes. The Etruscan artifacts include characteristic pottery, bronzes, and tombs, and an important document of the Etruscan language -- the Capua Tile, an inscription of some 62 lines that was either religious or ritual text.
caravanserai: SYNONYMS OR RELATED TERMS: khan; caravansary
CATEGORY: structure
DEFINITION: In the Middle East, a public building that served an unfurnished inn or staging post for sheltering caravans and other travelers. It was usually constructed outside the walls of a town and was a quandrangular enclosure with massive walls with small windows near the top and small air holes near the bottom. A heavy-doored gateway was the entrance and it was secured from within by massive iron chains. Refreshments were available to the travelers.
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.
Carchemish: SYNONYMS OR RELATED TERMS: Europus
CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: An ancient city-state near modern Jarabulus, Syria. The site was a strategic crossing at the Euphrates River for caravans in Syrian, Mesopotamian, and Anatolian trade. The great tell of Carchemish was excavated by David G. Hogarth and later by Sir Leonard Woolley and was first occupied in the Neolithic Period. Halaf ware from the Chalcolithic (5th millennium BC) was found as well as later finds of Uruk-Jamdat Nasr pottery, a product of the southern Euphrates Valley in Sumerian cities of c 3000 BC. There were also tombs from the end of the Early Bronze (c 2300 BC) and the Middle and Late Bronze Age (c 2300-1550; c 1550-1200 BC). Written records concerning Carchemish first appear in the Mari letters -- royal archives of Mari, c 18th century BC. At that time the city was a center for trading wood and shipped Anatolian timber down the Euphrates. The large fortified citadel was important under the empire of the Hittites (14th century BC) and remained so after the fall of the empire, during the period of Syro-Hittite city-states (12th-8th centuries BC). The monumental city gates, temples, and palaces all bore considerable numbers of carved reliefs and inscriptions of the period. The Hittite hieroglyphic inscriptions were of great importance in helping to piece together its history down to its annexation by Assyria in 716 BC.
Carib: CATEGORY: culture; language
DEFINITION: American Indian people who inhabited the Lesser Antilles and parts of the neighboring South American coast at the time of the Spanish conquest. They were warlike immigrants from the mainland who drove the Arawak from the Lesser Antilles. They were notorious for eating captives (the word 'cannibal' is a corruption of the Spanish 'Caribal'). They were skilled pottery-makers and agriculturists but were mostly concerned with warfare. They were a maritime people who carried out long-distance raids with large dugout canoes. The Carib language was spoken only by the men; women spoke Arawak.
carination: CATEGORY: ceramics
DEFINITION: A sharp break or angle in the curve of the profile of a container or vessel, which resulted in a projecting angle or arris. On ancient jars or pots, it appeared as a sharply angled shoulder dividing the neck from the body of the vessel. It has been considered to be a purely stylistic feature derived from metal prototypes, but it may also be that carination may have had a practical function -- for example, for retaining dregs from a liquid while pouring.
carnelian: SYNONYMS OR RELATED TERMS: cornelian
CATEGORY: geology
DEFINITION: A reddish brown semiprecious stone used for beads, seal stones, and jewelry in antiquity. The Indus Valley civilization, Greeks, and Romans valued the stone. It is a translucent variety of the silica mineral chalcedony. Carnelian is usually found in volcanic rocks, such as the Deccan Traps of western India. Engraved cornelians in rings and signets have offered information about manners and customs of ancient Greeks and Romans.
Carolingian: CATEGORY: culture
DEFINITION: A term referring to the time and place of Charlemagne (Charles the Great), who called himself the king of the Franks and Lombards" from 768-814 AD. In an archaeological and architectural sense Carolingian describes the period c 750-900 AD. The Carolingian kingdom of Italy occupied the northern and central peninsula down to Rome except for Venice and Benevento. The cultural revival of the Carolingian period stimulated by Charlemagne was a renovation and renaissance of the arts and education."
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.
caryatid: SYNONYMS OR RELATED TERMS: pl. caryatides; korai
CATEGORY: structure
DEFINITION: A supporting base or column of a structure shaped in the form of a woman. Most often, a caryatid supported a porch, entablature, or a colonnade and was in the form of a draped woman bearing it on her head. The best known are of the Erechtheum at Athens (420-415 BC) and other examples part of three small buildings (treasuries) at Delphi in Greece (550-530 BC). The figures' origin can be traced to mirror handles of nude figures carved from ivory in Phoenicia and draped figures cast from bronze in archaic Greece. Caryatids were used in the Roman emperor Hadrian's Villa at Tivoli, the Villa Albani at Rome, two colossal figures at Eleusis, in Marcus Vipsanius Agrippa's Pantheon, and in the colonnade surrounding the Forum of Augustus at Rome. The male counterparts of caryatids are called 'atlantes'.
Caso y Andrade, Alfonso (1896-1970): CATEGORY: person
DEFINITION: Mexican archaeologist and government official who explored the early Oaxacan cultures and who excavated Tomb Seven at Monte Albán, the earliest-known North American necropolis. His discovery and analysis of the burial offerings at Tomb Seven proved that Monte Albán had been occupied by the Mixtec people after they had displaced the Zapotecs before the Spanish conquest. Caso found evidence of five major phases, dating back to the 8th century BC, and established a rough chronology through comparisons with other sites. Caso also deciphered the Mixtec Codices. He made important contributions to regional archaeology and to the interpretation of Mixtec manuscripts, Mexican calendars, and dynastic history in general. He held posts as head of the Department of Archaeology at the National Museum, director of the museum, and director of the National Institute for Indian Affairs.
Cassivellaunus (fl. 1st century BC): SYNONYMS OR RELATED TERMS: Cassivelaunus
CATEGORY: person
DEFINITION: A powerful British chieftain who was defeated by Julius Caesar during Caesar's second raid of Britain in 54 BC. Cassivellaunus is the first man in England whose name we know and he led his tribe, the Catuvellauni, a group of Belgic invaders from the River Marne area. He used guerrilla tactics and chariot warfare successfully until Caesar captured the fortified settlement, identified as present-day Wheathampstead, Hertfordshire. Cassivellaunus agreed to provide hostages and pay an annual tribute to Rome, but there is no evidence that he kept these promises. His son was Cunobelin, the Cymbeline" written about by Shakespeare."
Castanet: CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: An Upper Palaeolithic rock shelter at Castelmerle, southwest France. There were two Aurignacian levels with art objects of carved or painted stone. The art from Castanet and neighboring Blanchard rock shelter is amongst the earliest known, dating c 33,000 BC.
casting: CATEGORY: artifact; geology
DEFINITION: Casting consists of pouring molten metal into a mold, where it solidifies into the shape of the mold. The process was well established in the Bronze Age (beginning c 3000 BC), when it was used to form bronze pieces. It is particularly valuable for the economical production of complex shapes, from mass-produced parts to one-of-a-kind items or even large machinery. Three principal techniques of casting were successively developed in prehistoric Europe: one-piece stone molds for flat-faced objects; clay or stone piece molds that could be dismantled and reused; and one-off clay molds for complex shapes made in one piece around a wax or lead pattern (cire perdue). Every metal with a low enough melting point was exploited in early Europe, except iron and steel, was used for casting artifacts.
casting: CATEGORY: artifact
DEFINITION: Casting consists of pouring molten metal into a mold, where it solidifies into the shape of the mold. The process was well established in the Bronze Age (beginning c 3000 BC), when it was used to form bronze pieces. It is particularly valuable for the economical production of complex shapes, from mass-produced parts to one-of-a-kind items or even large machinery. Three principal techniques of casting were successively developed in prehistoric Europe: one-piece stone molds for flat-faced objects; clay or stone piece molds that could be dismantled and reused; and one-off clay molds for complex shapes made in one piece around a wax or lead pattern (cire perdue). Every metal with a low enough melting point was exploited in early Europe, except iron and steel, was used for casting artifacts.
casting flash: SYNONYMS OR RELATED TERMS: casting jet, casting seam
CATEGORY: artifact
DEFINITION: A thin irregular ridge of metal on the outer face of a casting, resulting from seepage of the molten metal into the joint between the separate components of the mould used in its manufacture. A casting jet is similar but is a small plug of metal that originally filled the gate or aperture used to fill the mould. During the final cleaning and finishing of a cast object the jet and flash are usually knocked off and filed smooth.
casting jet: CATEGORY: artifact; geology
DEFINITION: A plug of metal which is knocked out after an artifact is cast and which fits exactly into the opening (aperture or gate) of a mold. When casting metal into a bivalve or composite mold, the aperture through which the metal is poured into the mold becomes filled up with molten metal, and this plug of metal cools and hardens with the object. When the finished artifact is removed from the mold, the casting jet is still attached; in most cases it is knocked off and the scar polished down the metal plug being melted down for re-use. In some cases, however, it may be left on, particularly on neck rings and bracelets. Examples are sometimes in founder's hoards.
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.
cataract: CATEGORY: geography
DEFINITION: Any rocky areas of rapids interrupting the flow of the Nile River, caused by granite abruptly interspersed in the Nubian sandstone belt. There are six numbered and several minor cataracts between Aswan and Khartoum, which are hazards to navigation. The 2nd Cataract, the most formidable, was impassable except during the annual inundation. Cataracts 1-4 and the Dal Cataract were political frontiers at different times.
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.
cation-ratio dating: SYNONYMS OR RELATED TERMS: cation ratio dating
CATEGORY: technique
DEFINITION: A method of direct dating rock carvings and engravings, potentially applicable to Paleolithic artifacts with a strong patina caused by exposure to desert dust. The technique is based on the principle that cations of certain elements are more soluble than others; they leach out of rock varnish more rapidly than the less soluble elements, and their concentration decreases with time. A cation is an ion carrying a positive charge which moves toward the negative electrode/cathode during electrolysis.
causewayed camp: CATEGORY: structure
DEFINITION: A hilltop entrenchment characteristic of Neolithic times, 4th millennium BC, especially in southern Britain. The hilltop was enclosed by a series of concentric ditches, 1-4 in number, with internal banks and which were not continuous but interrupted by solid causeways (undisturbed lanes of earth). Pottery, animal bones, and domestic garbage stratified within the ditches show that the camps were used during the entire Neolithic period. A common theory about the camps' use is as meeting places used at intervals by the population of a wide area.
cave art: CATEGORY: artifact
DEFINITION: Any paintings, engravings, or designs on cave walls, man's oldest surviving art, especially those by Paleolithic and Pleistocene people that are found in southwest France, northeast Spain, and elsewhere in Europe. Other sites have been discovered in Portugal, Italy, Greece, and the Ural mountains; the only known Russian site is Kapovo Cave. The subject matter of cave art is predominantly animals, especially mammoth, horse, ox, deer, and bison; human figures are relatively uncommon. There are also numerous signs and symbols. The artist used a range of reds, blacks, yellows, and browns derived from ochres and other naturally occurring mineral pigments (iron oxide and manganese dioxide). The purpose and meaning of cave art are still obscure. In France, the caves are mainly in the limestone of the Perigord and Pyrennean regions and the most famous are Altamira, Lascaux, Niaux, and Pech Merle. Occupational evidence is rarely found with the art.
cave dwelling: SYNONYMS OR RELATED TERMS: n. cave-dweller or cave-man
CATEGORY: feature
DEFINITION: Natural prehistoric living places inside caves or rock shelters, often inhabited by Palaeolithic man. Cave dwelling were inhabited more often during colder periods by hunters and gatherers.
cave earth: CATEGORY: geology
DEFINITION: A layer of earth forming the old floor of a cave before the depositing of stalagmite. The term also describes cave deposits of shattered boulders and pebbles that occur from frost and weathering.
cenote: CATEGORY: geology; geography
DEFINITION: A type of natural well or reservoir, common in the Yucatán Peninsula, Mexico, formed when a limestone surface collapses, exposing water underneath. Cenotes are the major source of water in Yucatán and they are associated with the cult of the rain gods, or Chacs. In ancient times, especially at the Maya site of Chichén Itzá, precious objects, such as jade, gold, copper, and incense -- and human beings, usually children, were thrown into the cenotes as offerings. A survivor was believed to bring a message from the gods about the year's crops.
central place theory: SYNONYMS OR RELATED TERMS: central-place theory
CATEGORY: technique
DEFINITION: In geography, a theory concerning the size and distribution of central places (settlements) within a system or region. The primary purpose of a settlement or market town, according to central-place theory, is the provision of goods and services for the surrounding market area. Such towns are centrally located and may be called central places. As applied to archaeology, the theory states that human settlements will space themselves evenly across a landscape as a function of the availability of natural resources, communication and transportation routes, and other factors. Eventually, these will evolve into a hierarchy of settlements of different size that depend on one another. Central-place theory attempts to illustrate how settlements locate in relation to one another, the amount of market area (goods and services) a central place can control, and why some central places function as hamlets, villages, towns, or cities. The theory was first developed by German geographer Walter Christaller. Christaller's theory concentrated on centers of different order, since in a complex system there will be some larger centers offering more specialized services to a wider area; there may indeed be many levels of such centers in a complex settlement hierarchy. Christaller's model has been modified by other geographers, especially August Losch. The theory may suggest ways in which the factors have affected the settlement pattern. Central place theory has found useful applications in archaeology as a preliminary heuristic device.
ceque: CATEGORY: feature
DEFINITION: Any of 41 imaginary lines radiating outward from the Temple of the Sun in Inca city of Cuzco, Peru. The lines go to the edges of the valley and along each were a series of huacas or shrines at which offerings were made. The huacas and ceques combined to total the 328 days of the Inca calendar.
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
ceramic analysis: CATEGORY: technique
DEFINITION: Any of various techniques used to study artifacts made from fired clay to obtain archaeological data. Color is objectively described by reference to the Munsell soil color charts. Examination under the microscope may reveal the technique of manufacture and allow the identification of mineral grains in the tempering, which will identify the area of manufacture. Refiring experiments often show how the original baking was done.
ceramic ecology: CATEGORY: ceramics
DEFINITION: A framework for studying ceramics from the perspective of the manufacturing steps and use, analogous to the Chaine opératoire in lithic analysis.
ceramics: SYNONYMS OR RELATED TERMS: pottery
CATEGORY: artifact; ceramics
DEFINITION: The art or process of making useful and ornamental articles from clay by shaping and then hardening them by firing at high temperatures. Ceramics are generally known as pottery, but the term also refers to the manufacture of any product from a nonmetallic mineral by firing at high temperatures. The exceptional porcelain and stonewares of China are very well known, from as early as the Yang-Shao Neolithic culture, c 4500 BC.
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.
ceremonial center: CATEGORY: term
DEFINITION: In the prehistoric New World, a complex of buildings that served as the focus of religious and governmental activities, differing from a village or town. These buildings were used at prescribed times by the peoples lived in a dispersed areas. Permanent residence was restricted to very few people on these sites, usually the elite and their retainers. Sites such as Teotihuacan, Tikal, and Monte Alban, have been interpreted as ceremonial centers. However, subsequent fieldwork beyond the major architectural features has shown that many sites were directly associated with large populations and thus challenges the original premise of their being ceremonial centers. Other more valid examples may be La Venta and San Lorenzo.
Cernavoda: CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: A cemetery site of the Late Neolithic near the Black Sea coast of Rumania dating to the mid-4th millennium BC. Over 300 inhumations are known, occurring in groups, some with rich grave goods of the Hamangia culture. There is also a Late Copper Age site dating to the 3rd millennium BC that ranges over the Black Sea coast of Rumania and Bulgaria. The latter had short-lived occupation sites and is associated with the Ezero group.
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.
Cerveteri: SYNONYMS OR RELATED TERMS: ancient Caere; Roman Caere vetus, Etruscan Xaire, Greek Agylla
CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: One of the most important cities in Italy, north of Roman, whose earliest occupation was the Iron Age Villanovan of the 9th-8th centuries BC. It flourished from the 7th-5th centuries as one of the 12 major cities of the Etruscan federation. Two necropoleis from this period have been identified, with evidence for pit, trench, and chamber tombs. Accumulating wealth is reflected in the grandeur of many surviving tombs. There were two ports, Pyrgi and Alsium, the former with evidence of temples, which have provided scholars of the Etruscan language an important pieces of evidence -- a text on gold laminae. The city lost importance during the Roman period, and by the early Empire was reported to be no more than a village.
cesium magnetometer: CATEGORY: tool
DEFINITION: A measurement tool used to detect large structures underground and their magnetic fluctuations by measuring the effects of transitions between atomic energy levels. It is considered more efficient than a proton magnetometer, which does the same thing.
Ch'ü-chia-ling culture: CATEGORY: culture
DEFINITION: Neolithic culture of central China in the middle and lower Yangtze River valley in the 4th and 3rd millennia. It followed the Yang-Shao culture and preceded the Lung-Shan culture and shared a significant number of traits with the Ta-hsi culture. There was cultivation of rice, flat polished axes, ring-footed vessels, goblets with sharply angled profiles, ceramic whorls, and black pottery with designs painted in red after firing. Characteristic Ch'ü-chia-ling ceramic objects include eggshell-thin goblets and bowls painted with black or orange designs; double-waisted bowls; tall, ring-footed goblets and serving stands; and many styles of tripods. The whorls suggest a thriving textile industry. The chronological distribution of ceramic features suggests a transmission from Ta-hsi to Ch'ü-chia-ling, but the precise relationship between the two cultures is not known.
Ch'u: SYNONYMS OR RELATED TERMS: Ch'u state; Chu
CATEGORY: culture
DEFINITION: One of the most important independent states of south-central China between 770-221 BC, during the second half of the Chou Dynasty. It emerged in the fertile Yangtze River Valley just outside the Chinese culture of the time. It was a great military threat other Chinese states as the state was barbarian in origin. Ch'u began to expand rapidly into China proper, conquering much of present-day Honan province, and its people soon began to acquire Chinese speech and customs. From the 8th century until its destruction by Qin in the 3rd century bc Chu was the largest and most powerful of the Eastern Zhou states. Artifacts include bronze casting of fine inlaid bronzes, weapons, ritual vessels, bells, and drums, and mirrors and the state was known also for lacquer and silk. Lacquered objects range from containers to wooden effigies, musical instruments, coffins, and other wooden tomb furniture. Sites near Tung-t'ing (Yungmeng) Lake, and in Xiasi and Xinyang, but Ch'u remains are most densely concentrated at Jiangling in southern Hubei and Changsha in northern Hunana. The Ch'u capital was at Jiangling from 689-278 BC, when the city fell to Qin. The Ch'u court retreated to the Huai valley and stayed there until its final overthrow in 221 BC. Archaeological and historical sources show it to have been a distinctive, highly civilized cultural and political entity.
Ch'un-ch'iu: SYNONYMS OR RELATED TERMS: Chun Qiu
CATEGORY: chronology; language
DEFINITION: A term for the Spring and Autumn Period, 772-479 BC. It also refers to the Spring and Autumn [Annals]" the first Chinese chronological history said to be the traditional history of Lu as revised by Confucius. It is one of the Five Classics of Confucianism. The name which is actually an abbreviation of "Spring Summer Autumn Winter derives from the custom of dating events by season as well as by year. The work is a complete account of significant events that occurred during the reign of 12 rulers of Lu, the native state of Confucius. The account begins in 722 BC and ends shortly before Confucius' death (479 BC). It is interpreted by Confucian scholars in their commentaries.
chacmool: SYNONYMS OR RELATED TERMS: chac mool
CATEGORY: artifact; lithics
DEFINITION: A Mesoamerican life-sized sculpted stone figure representing a reclining human with head turned to one side, knees drawn up, and hands holding a shallow receptacle flat on the stomach. This was a widespread art form in the Post-Classic Period, especially at the Toltec sites of Tula and Chichen Itza and at Aztec and Tarascan sites. It is located at the entranceway to temples and was probably a repository for offerings.
Chaco Canyon: CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: An alluvium-filled 20-km stretch of canyon in northwest New Mexico, occupied by the Anasazi during Pueblo I and II, c 850-1150 AD. Now a national park, it contained spectacular pueblos, including Pueblo Bonito (c 919-1130) which housed some 1,200 people. There were at least a dozen pueblo-like towns and hundreds of small villages. During a period of increased rainfall between 950-1150, several other pueblos were constructed in the Canyon, with fields, irrigation canals, an elaborate road system, and signal stations for long-distance trade. The entire complex of ruins has been studied with the aid of photogrammetry, including infrared air photography, satellite photographs, image enhancement, and computer mapping. When the climate started to become dryer, in c 1150, the main occupation of Chaco Canyon ended.
Chagar Bazar: SYNONYMS OR RELATED TERMS: Tell Chagar Bazar
CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: A tell site on a tributary of the River Khabur in northeast Syria with levels from the 5th millennium BC (Halaf period) to the mid-2nd millennium BC. It gradually grew in size and importance and during the reign of the Assyrian king, Shamsi Adad I (early 2nd millennium BC) and was an administrative center. Excavated by Sir Max Mallowan from 1935-37, it yielded an important sequence of prehistoric wares, particularly Halaf and Samarra. There was iron (from the 28th c BC) and copper, too.
chain mail: SYNONYMS OR RELATED TERMS: mail
CATEGORY: artifact
DEFINITION: A type of protective body armor in the form of interlinked metal rings, worn by European knights and other military men throughout most of the medieval period. An early form of mail, made by sewing iron rings to fabric or leather, was worn in late Roman times and may have originated in Asia, where it was worn for many centuries.
chaining: CATEGORY: typology
DEFINITION: A problem found in hierarchical clustering methods whereby items in the same group may have no attribute values in common but are still grouped together because other members of the group share attribute values with one or both of them.
Chalcidian ware: CATEGORY: ceramics
DEFINITION: Black-figured pottery found in Etruria and the Chalcidian colony of Rhegium (modern Reggio) in Italy. The style included lettering of the inscriptions as part of the decoration.
chalice: CATEGORY: artifact
DEFINITION: A stemmed cup used for holding the wine during communion.
Champa: CATEGORY: culture
DEFINITION: An ancient kingdom formed in 192 AD, during the breakup of the Han dynasty of China, corresponding roughly to present central Vietnam. Although the territory was at first inhabited mainly by wild tribes which struggled with the Chinese colonies in Tonkin, it gradually came under Indian cultural influence. Champa artifacts include well-developed sculpture and reliefs from the 7th century and impressive architecture from the 9th century. The kingdom was slowly absorbed into Vietnam and by the end of the 17th century had ceased to exist.
champlevé: SYNONYMS OR RELATED TERMS: champ-levé
CATEGORY: artifact; ceramics
DEFINITION: An enameling technique or an object made by the process, a form of inlay in which the pattern is cut out of the metal to be ornamented. The pattern was then filled with enamel frit and fused in an oven, or with polished stones or shells. Champlevé can be distinguished from the similar technique of cloisonné by a greater irregularity in the width of the metal lines. It developed as a Celtic art in western Europe in the Roman period and was copied by the Anglo-Saxons. In the Rhine River valley and in Belgium's Meuse River valley, champlevé production flourished especially during the late 11th and 12th centuries. It was often used in the decoration of the escutcheons on hanging bowls.
Champollion, Jean-François (1778-1867): CATEGORY: person
DEFINITION: French historian and linguist who founded scientific Egyptology and played a major role in the deciphering of Egyptian hieroglyphics by deciphering the Rosetta Stone. A masterful linguist, Champollion started publishing papers on the hieroglyphic and hieratic elements of the Rosetta Stone in 1821-1822, and he went on to establish an entire list of hieroglyphic signs and their Greek equivalents. He was first to recognize that some of the signs were alphabetic, some syllabic, and some determinative (standing for a whole idea or object previously expressed). His brilliant discoveries met with great opposition, however. He became curator of the Egyptian collection at the Louvre, conducted an archaeological expedition to Egypt, and received the chair of Egyptian antiquities, created specially for him, at the Collège de France. He also published an Egyptian grammar and dictionary, as well as other works about Egypt.
Chanhu-Daro: SYNONYMS OR RELATED TERMS: Chanhudaro, Chanhu-daro
CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: A city of the Harappan civilization of the 3rd millennium BC that is located in the Indus Valley south of Mohenjo-Daro in modern Pakistan. First excavated in the 1930s, it was characterized by a gridiron street plan and drainage system of typical Harappan towns. Evidence was found for the processes of sawing, flaking, grinding, and boring of stone beads. Occasional copper or bronze weapons of foreign" type are found in late contexts at Chanhu-daro. Excavation also showed that like Mohenjo-Daro Chanhu-Daro had been inundated by floods: it was twice destroyed and subsequently rebuilt on a different plan. After the end of the Indus Valley civilization it was reoccupied by the Jhukar culture."
Chansen: CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: A settlement site of central Thailand which traded with India during the first two centuries AD and with Funan sites till the 5th-6th centuries.
chariot: CATEGORY: artifact
DEFINITION: A light vehicle of war, usually carrying two people, a warrior, and a driver. Examples have been found from the Uruk period in Mesopotamia and the chariot was on the standard of Ur. It first appeared in the Near East in the 17 century BC, associated with the immigrant peoples who became the Hyksos, Kassites, and Hurri. Its arrival in Egypt can be fairly reliably dated to the Second Intermediate Period (1650-1550 BC). The Aryans carried it to India, and in China it formed the core of the Shang army. The Mycenaeans introduced it to Europe, where it spread widely and rapidly. It revolutionized warfare by allowing warriors to be transferred rapidly from one part of a battlefield to another. It was mainly for aristocrats, which explains its popularity as a funeral offering. Burials of complete chariots with horses and charioteers have been excavated in Shang China (1200 BC), in Cyprus from the 7th century BC, and among the La Tène Celts. The earliest Celt chariot burials are in the Rhineland and eastern France with dates around 500 BC, and later burials are in east Yorkshire and Europe as far east as Hungary, Bulgaria, and southern Russia. The chariot was replaced by the mounted warrior or knight when horses of sufficient strength had been bred in the late and post-Roman periods.
chasing: CATEGORY: artifact
DEFINITION: A technique for the decoration of metalwork by engraving on the outside of the raised surface. The metal is worked from the front by hammering with tools that raise, depress, or push aside the metal without removing any from the surface. Chasing is the opposite of embossing, or repoussé, in which the metal is worked from the back to give a higher relief. Strictly chasing refers to line decoration applied to the face of repoussé work with a tracer, but the term is frequently used more generally to describe any hammered or punched decoration on metal.
Chavín de Huántar: SYNONYMS OR RELATED TERMS: Chavín
CATEGORY: site; culture
DEFINITION: The area of the great ruin of the earliest highly developed culture in pre-Columbian Peru, which flourished between about 900 and 200 BC and may have originated c 1200 BC. During this time Chavín art spread over the north and central parts of what is now Peru. It is not known whether this was the actual center of origin of the culture and art style. The central building at Chavín de Huántar is a massive temple complex constructed of dressed rectangular stone blocks, with interior galleries and bas-relief carvings on pillars and lintels. The principal motifs of the Chavín style are human, feline, and crocodilian or serpentine figures. Carved stone objects, fantastic pottery that demonstrates the most advanced skill, stone construction, and remarkably sophisticated goldwork have been found. Chavín pottery is known from the decorated types found in the temple and in graves on the northern coast, where it is called Cupisnique. Until the end of the period, the ware was monochrome -- dull red, brown, or gray -- and stonelike. Vessels were massive and heavy and the main forms are open bowls with vertical or slightly expanding sides and flat or gently rounded bases, flasks, and stirrup-spouted bottles. The surface may be modeled in relief or decorated by incision, stamping, brushing, rouletting, or dentate rocker-stamping. Some bowls have deeply incised designs on both the inside and outside faces. Its art style was never surpassed in the complexity of its iconography. The buildings, which show several periods of reconstruction, consist of various temple platforms containing a series of interlinked galleries and chambers on different levels. In the oldest part of the complex is a granite block, the Lanzón, on which is carved a human figure with feline fangs and with snakes in place of hair. Relief carvings in a similar style decorate the lintels, gateways, and cornices at the site, and human and jaguar heads of stone were on the outside wall of one of the platforms. On the coast, where stone is scarce, the highland architecture is replaced by work in adobe. Further south, the Paracas culture shows strong continuing Chavín influence.
Chichén Itzá: CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: The site of a ruined ancient Mayan city in south-central Yucatán state, Mexico. Chichén Itzá was founded in about the 6th century AD, presumably by Mayan peoples of the Yucatán Peninsula who had occupied the region since Pre-Classic, or Formative, Period times (1500 BC-AD 300). The only source of water in the region is from wells (Mayan cenotes) formed by the collapse of portions of the limestone formation of the area. Two big cenotes on the site made it a suitable place for the city and gave it its name, from chi (mouths") chen ("wells") and Itzá the name of the tribe that settled there. There are traces of early occupation at the site but the oldest surviving buildings are in the Puuc style of the 8th-early 10th centuries. In the 10th century after the collapse of the Maya cities of the southern lowlands Chichén Itzá was invaded -- probably by the Toltecs. New buildings have their closest parallels at Tula and offerings thrown into the Sacred Cenote or Well of Sacrifice show widespread trade contacts. Chichén Itzá was the dominant power in Yucatan until about 1200 when it was superseded by Mayapán. At the center of the site is the Castillo or temple-Pyramid of Kulkulkan the Maya equivalent of Quetzacóatl; this is linked by a causeway to the nearby Sacred Cenote. Other major structures include the Temple of the Warriors (in front of which stands a Chacmool) large 'dance platforms' the Group of a Thousand Columns the Temple of the Jaguars and the largest Ball Court in Mesoamerica. Bas-relief carvings on a massive skull rack (tzompantli) shows the Ball Game to be associated with scenes of sacrifice. Relief carvings with themes of conquest and violence about and representations of Maya warriors submitting to Toltec warriors have been found on gold discs recovered from the Sacred Cenote."
Chien ware: SYNONYMS OR RELATED TERMS: Chien Yao, Jian Yao, Temmoku ware, Tenmoku ware
CATEGORY: ceramics
DEFINITION: A dark brown or blackish glazed Chinese stoneware made for domestic use, mainly during the Sung dynasty (960-1279) and into the early 14th century. Within its limited palette, Chien ware has a range of variations. By careful control of the kiln temperatures, streaking and iridescent patches were formed on the glaze to make the hare's fur" and "oil spot" glaze which were the most prized. Large deposits of kiln wastes have been found at Chien-yang and Chien-an in Fukien province. Tea bowls are by far the most common though not the only form of Chien ware that survives. Used by Ch'an (Zen) Buddhist monks the highly esteemed tea bowls were carried back to Japan by Japanese monks who had visited China to study Buddhism. Until the late 16th century Chien ware was the type of tea bowl preferred for the highly ritualized Japanese tea ceremony."
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.
china clay: CATEGORY: artifact
DEFINITION: A fine usually white clay formed by the weathering of aluminous minerals (as feldspar); used in ceramics
Chincha: CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: A powerful ancient state on the southern coast of Peru which is known primarily from the study of historical sources, which flourished during the Late Intermediate Period, c 1000-1478. Chincha reached the height of its power in the early 15th century when it also controlled part of the Pisco valley, and it retained a certain prestige under the Inca after their conquest of the area in 1476. The main city was La Centinela, which included pyramids, platforms, and courts surrounded by storerooms and dwellings of the nobility. Chincha prospered through trade (black ware pottery and some polychromes) with adjacent highlands and northern coastal areas and there were about 30,000 households. Other sites include the administrative complex at Tambo de Mora (probably the capital) and La Cumbe. The Chincha vanished within the first three decades of the Spanish invasion.
chip-carving: SYNONYMS OR RELATED TERMS: chip carving
CATEGORY: lithics
DEFINITION: A technique of decoration with the use of an ax, hatchet, mallet, and/or chisel, which probably originated in the Roman and Celtic world. The technique was adapted by Germanic wood-carvers to make animal ornaments and by metalsmiths of the Migration Period. This excised decoration was done by cutting from the surface triangular and rectilinear small chips. The end result was a pattern of combined V-shaped incisions, with a glittering faceted appearance. It is found in woodwork and