Archaeology Wordsmith

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Results for subsistence:

subsistence: CATEGORY: term
DEFINITION: Means of supporting life, in particular by obtaining food. Subsistence is that part of economy concerned with acquisition, distribution, and production of food.
subsistence economy: SYNONYM: subsistence strategy
CATEGORY: term
DEFINITION: The way in which a society exploits its environment to procure food, including acquisition, distribution, and production. There are two broad types of subsistence: exploitation of wild plants and animals or of domesticated plants and animals. There are variations and combinations of these two types. The term can also be used to describe the economic level of those who produce only enough food for their own consumption, without any surplus.
subsistence level: CATEGORY: term
DEFINITION: The minimum resources, e.g., food, shelter, water, necessary to support human life.
Anau: CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: A tell site in the Kara Kum oasis of southern Turkestan, first excavated in the 1880s and again in 1904. Its name has been given to a Chalcolithic culture of the 5th and 4th millennium BC that parallels that of the sites of Sialk and Hissar (Hassuna) in Iran, especially with connections in pottery styles.. Characteristic finds include fine pottery with geometric painted decoration and simple copper tools. There was a farming subsistence economy and metal ores were probably imported from the south.
aroids: CATEGORY: flora
DEFINITION: The edible tubers of the Aracae family that were important in prehistoric Oceanic, South Asian, and Southeast Asian subsistence. The species is grown in irrigated terraces or fields or cultivated in pits cut to groundwater. Aroids were cultivated by at least 3000 BC and had spread from India to Egypt and Africa by the late 1st millennium BC.
Asiab, Tepe: CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: A semi-permanent settlement in the Zagros region of western Iran, dated between 7100-6750 BC, belonging to the Karim Shahir culture. There is evidence of tool manufacture, settlement patterns, and subsistence methods, including the crude beginnings of the domestication of both plants and animals in this site as well as nearby sites at Guran, Ganj-e Dareh, and Ali Kosh. Burials have been excavated, covered in red ochre.
Atlantic period: SYNONYM: Atlantic phase, Atlantic climatic period
CATEGORY: chronology
DEFINITION: In Europe, a climatic optimum following the last Ice Age. This period was represented as a maximum of temperature and evidence from beetles suggests it being warmer than average for the interglacial. It seems to have begun about 6000 BC, when the average temperature rose. Melting ice sheets ultimately submerged nearly half of western Europe, creating the bays and inlets along the Atlantic coast that provided a new, rich ecosystem for human subsistence. The Atlantic period was followed by the subboreal period. The Atlantic period, which succeeded the Boreal, was probably wetter and certainly somewhat warmer, and mixed forests of oak, elm, common lime (linden), and elder spread northward. Only in the late Atlantic period did the beech and hornbeam spread into western and central Europe from the southeast.
band: CATEGORY: term
DEFINITION: A term in cultural anthropology describing the simplest type of human social organization consisting of a small number of nuclear families (30-50 people) who are informally organized for subsistence and security purposes. Bands are egalitarian and based mainly on kinship and marriage and the division of labor is based on age and sex. Bands may also be integrated into a larger community, usually called a tribe. Bands exist in sparsely populated areas and use primitive technologies (and are often hunters and gatherers) -- ranging from the desert-dwelling Australian Aborigines, the Pygmies of the Congo rain forests, and the Kaska Indians of the Yukon. Bands often moved seasonally to exploit wild (undomesticated) food resources.
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.
Broad Spectrum Revolution: SYNONYM: Kebaran Complex, Natufian
CATEGORY: term
DEFINITION: A theory that there was a subsistence change in western Asia to a wide range of foodstuffs, including small mammals, invertebrates, aquatic resources, and plants in the Late Pleistocene -- a prelude to the 'Neolithic revolution'.
Bylany: CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: A large village settlement of the Danubian culture in the loess lands of the Bohemian plain of Czechoslovakia. This large site had many phases of occupation, including by people who made stroke-ornamented pottery. There were timber-framed long houses in the three main phases of the Linear Pottery sequence. Subsistence was based on emmer wheat cultivation and cattle husbandry.
carrying capacity: CATEGORY: term
DEFINITION: The maximum population of a species that can be supported by a particular habitat or area with the food potentially available to it from the resources of the area, including the most unfavorable period of the year. The carrying capacity is different for each species within a habitat because of the species' particular requirements for food, shelter, and social contact and because of competition with other species that have similar requirements. Studies of both human and animal groups suggest that few populations reach such a theoretical maximum level, but adjust themselves to a size which allows a margin for fluctuations in the actual food production in the area. In archaeological terms, carrying capacity is the size and density of ancient populations that a given site or region could have supported under a specified subsistence technology.
Chilca: CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: A site in the coastal valley south of modern Lima, Peru, where excavations have revealed settlements dating to the Pre-Ceramic period c 4200 BC. The Chilca Monument was originally a summer camp and later, due to an increasingly warm climate, became favorable for a subsistence pattern called encanto. There are remains of conical huts of cane thatched with sedge. The dead were buried wrapped in twined-sedge mats and the skins of the guanaco. The lomas, patches of vegetation outside the valleys that were watered at that season by fogs, began to dry up. The lomas had provided wild seeds, tubers, and large snails; and deer, guanaco, owls, and foxes were hunted. The camps were eventually abandoned c 2500 BC in favor of permanent fishing villages. Dolichocephalic human remains date to this period but appear ultimately to have been replaced by brachycephalic types some time after 2500 BC.
computer simulation: SYNONYM: computer simulation studies
CATEGORY: technique
DEFINITION: Reconstruction of the past based on the production of computerized models. The computer model describes ancient conditions and variables and those are used to generate a sequence of events that are compared against the known archaeological record. The computer imitates the dynamic behavior of an explicit model and helps scientists examine how such systems respond to changing conditions and also to refine and test hypotheses about the past. In an example study of hunter-gatherers, the effect of various changes in the natural environment on such factors as the population settlement pattern or subsistence could be monitored; or the growth of a settlement system could be studied under different conditions of population, economy, technological, or environmental change. The relationships between the various elements in the cultural system must be specified, and then any variety of actual conditions can be simulated. The data used could be derived from observations and the simulation used to examine the effect of different assumptions; the results could then be compared to the observed data to test their validity.
Cordilleran: SYNONYM: Cordilleran ice sheet; Laurentide
CATEGORY: chronology; culture
DEFINITION: The ice mass that covered the coastal mountains along the Pacific Ocean coast of North America from northern Washington state into southern Alaska. At its maximum extent, about 20,000 years ago, it connected with the Laurentide ice sheet to the east and with the Pacific Ocean to the west, and reached a thickness of some 3 kilometers (1 mile). The Cordilleran Geosyncline is a linear trough in the Earth's crust in which rocks of Late Precambrian to Mesozoic age (roughly 600 million to 66 million years ago) were deposited along the western coast of North America, from southern Alaska through western Canada and the United States, probably to western Mexico. The eastern boundary of the geosyncline extends from southeastern Alaska along the eastern edge of the Northern Cordillera and Northern Rocky Mountains of Canada and Montana, along the eastern edge of the Great Basin of Utah and Nevada, and into southeastern California and Mexico. The Old Cordilleran culture appeared in the Pacific Northwest about 9000 or 10,000 BC and persisted until about 5000 BC in some areas. Subsistence was based on hunting, fishing, and gathering. Simple willow-leaf-shaped, bipointed projectile points are characteristic artifacts.
Cucuteni-Tripolye: CATEGORY: culture
DEFINITION: A Neolithic culture of southeastern Europe, distributed throughout the Ukraine (Tripolye culture) and Moldova and Romania (Cucuteni culture), which arose about 3000 BC. The type site of the Cucuteni is in the Siret valley of Romania and the type site of the Tripolye is near Kiev in Ukraine. The Cucuteni is divided into stages: Pre-Cucuteni, Cucuteni A, AB and B, dating c 4200-3000 BC. Tripolye is divided into five phases -- A, B1, B2, C1 and C2 -- the latest dating to the full Early Bronze Age in the 3rd millennium BC. The late Cucuteni-Tripolye phase is regarded as the local climax of Neolithic cultural development. They produced fine wares (red or orange and was decorated with curvilinear designs painted or grooved on the surface) on a large scale and long chipped stone blades. They also mastered metallurgical techniques such as alloying, casting, and welding. There was a subsistence economy depending on fruits and the earliest recorded domestication in Europe of the horse. The villages consisted of long, rectangular houses, though the Tripolye people practiced shifting agriculture and frequently moved.
Dar Tichitt: CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: A series of very early Neolithic farming sites on the southern fringes of Sahara Desert in southern Mauritania. The first village settlements of the Naghez phase, 1200-1000 BC, had circular compounds connected by wide paths. Fishing, hunting, and wild grasses were the village's subsistence. During Chebka phase, 1000-700 BC, lakes dried up, so animal husbandry increased and millet was cultivated. The Akanjeir phase, 700-300 BC, saw further climatic deterioration, ending permanent settlement.
Denbigh Flint complex: CATEGORY: culture
DEFINITION: An Arctic Small Tool Tradition flint industry found at Cape Denbigh, Iyatayet, Cape Krusenstern, Onion Portage, and other Alaskan sites. The typical artifacts are finely worked microblade tools (bladelets, small crescents), burins, and bifacially pressure-flaked points. The Denbigh complex had developed by c 3200 BC. The Arctic Small tool tradition spread eastwards over the whole Arctic zone from Alaska to Greenland and contributed to the earliest Eskimo cultures. Land mammals seem to have been the primary focus of subsistence activity.
Desert culture: SYNONYM: Desert tradition
CATEGORY: culture
DEFINITION: A hunting-and-gathering way of life adapted to the post-Pleistocene conditions of the arid and semi-arid zones of the American West from Oregon to California, and with extensions into similar areas of Mexico. Agriculture was unknown or unimportant, and the small nomadic bands lived by collecting wild plants and hunting game. The concept was devised by J. Jennings at Danger Cave. Typical artifacts include grinding stones, basketry, small projectile points, and spear throwers. There is an absence of ceramics. Their mode of subsistence was established c 9000 BC and lasted until agriculture had developed sufficiently to permit settled life. In Mexico, farming villages were widespread by 2000 BC. In the southwestern US, this did not occur until the last few centuries BC.
Divostin: CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: A Neolithic site in Serbia with occupations of the Early Starcevo and Vinca cultures dating from c 5250-4960 (Starcevo) to c 3900-3300 BC (Vinca). Excavation uncovered seven complete house-plans of the Late Vinca village, including one house containing 100 pots. The subsistence economy was based on cattle husbandry and agriculture. Cult objects included a model ritual scene and many fired clay anthropomorphic figurines.
Djeitun: CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: A Neolithic site of a 6th millennium BC (and possibly late 7th) culture of Turkmenia characterized by mud-brick architecture of one-roomed houses with lime-plastered floors. Both floors and walls were sometimes painted. The subsistence economy was based on cereal agriculture (barley, wheat), accompanied by the rearing of sheep, cattle, and goats and the hunting of gazelle, onager, wild pig, and smaller animals. The Djeitun culture had a microlithic flint industry and chaff-tempered pottery, decorated with simple painted designs. The culture was the earliest Neolithic of central Asia.
Dnieper-Donets: SYNONYM: Dnepr-Donets
CATEGORY: culture
DEFINITION: A 3rd- and 2nd-millennium BC Late Neolithic culture of the Ukraine. Large numbers of small settlements are known with hunter-gatherer subsistence known. Large quantities of comb-pricked pots found but grave goods were rare except for copper rings and tooth necklaces. Extended inhumation was the norm; the physical type in these burials is identified as Cro-Magnon.
Encanto: CATEGORY: culture; site
DEFINITION: A series of sites on the central coastline of Peru, including Chilca, which constitute a cultural phase which began to exploit maritime resources and cultivation, c 3750-2500 BC. Stone artifacts include milling stones, small percussion-flaked projectile points, and simple scrapers as well as bone and wooden tools. The changing subsistence patterns resulted from the decreasing availability of lomas vegetation.
ethnoarchaeology: SYNONYM: ethnoarchaeological studies
CATEGORY: branch
DEFINITION: The study of contemporary cultures with a view to understanding the behavioral relationships which underlie the production of material culture. It is the use of archaeological techniques and data to study these living cultures and the use of ethnographic data to inform the examination of the archaeological record. It is a relatively new branch of the discipline, followed particularly in America. It seeks to compare the patterns recognized in the material culture from archaeological contexts with patterns yielded through the study of living societies. The ethnoarchaeologist is particularly concerned with the manufacture, distribution, and use of artifacts, the remains of various processes that might be expected to survive, and the interpretation of archaeological material in the light of the ethnographic information. Less materially oriented questions such as technological development, subsistence strategies, and social evolution are also compared in archaeology and ethnology under the general heading of ethnographic analogy. Lewis Binford's study of the Nunamiut Eskimo is one of the best known studies in ethnoarchaeology.
experimental archaeology: SYNONYM: experimental studies
CATEGORY: branch
DEFINITION: The reconstruction and reproduction of past behavior and processes to obtain or evaluate archaeological data and test hypotheses about the way man dealt with subsistence and technology. The experiments involve such activities as creating and using stone tools, duplicating prehistoric methods of farming, building, and travel, etc. The term is normally used only for those experiments which deal with material culture, such as industry, the building of structures, mining, and crop processing. The more theoretical aspects, such as ideas about the development and organization of society, are generally thought of a part of processual archaeology rather than experimental. Reconstructions can be based on excavated ground plans, and some of these have been deliberately burned or left to decay so that an idea can be gained of what the archaeologist might expect to find later. Boats have been built and sailed, food has been cooked in earth ovens and eaten, stone monuments have been laboriously erected, and trumpets and stringed instruments have been made and played. Although past events are not exactly repeatable, experimental simulation can prove very instructive and is being increasingly used. One of the earliest examples was General Pitt-Rivers' observations of the rate and duration of ditch silting on his excavations at Cranbourne Chase in the 19th century.
fishbone analysis: CATEGORY: technique
DEFINITION: The study of the remains of fish on archaeological sites, in the form of bones, otoliths, and scales. The latter only survive occasionally in anaerobic conditions, while otoliths have not, to date, been frequently recorded. Fish have markedly different skeletons from mammals. Many fishbones are so small that they appear only in sieving and the bones commonly preserved are the jaws and some other head bones, and the vertebrae. They usually accumulate in refuse deposits and may be interpreted in terms of diet and fishing on the site or in the area that supplied it. Identification of species through comparison with modern fishbones is becoming easier as larger collections of comparative material are built up. When a species has been identified it can lead to evidence for the hydrological conditions around the site; also, the occurrence of the remains of marine species on an inland site has implications for the movement of groups or a trade in fish. A combination of species identification and aging of fish through study of the otoliths can lead to assumptions about the seasonal occupation of certain settlement sites and the subsistence economy of the associated groups.
formative stage: CATEGORY: culture
DEFINITION: Any culture having the presence of agriculture or other subsistence economy of comparable effectiveness; also, the successful integration of such an economy into well-established, sedentary village life.
Fort Rock Cave: SYNONYM: Fort Rock Basin
CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: An ancient Pleistocene site in Oregon dated to over 13,000 BP and associated sites with a long sequence of occupation in the same lake basin. Deposits of pumice from an eruption of nearby Mount Mazama in c 5000 bc provided excellent chronological control for these sites. Associated artifacts, including a mano and metate, projectile points, and other stone artifacts indicate an early hunting and gathering subsistence pattern for this period. Later contexts contain artifacts of the Desert Tradition. Occupation continued into historic times, but looting has caused the archaeological record to be unreliable after c 1000 BC.
Gomolava: CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: A large, frequently occupied, double-tell site on the Sava River in Serbia. On both tells, the prehistoric sequence goes from the Late Neolithic to the Middle Ages. The Late Neolithic occupation belongs primarily to the Vinca culture, with houses, pits, and a cemetery with copper grave goods. The subsistence economy of most levels indicates reliance on einkorn wheat, flax, and cattle husbandry.
Guitarrero Cave: CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: A stratified cave site of long occupation in the Callejón de Huaylas in northern Peru. It was occupied in the Preceramic period (c 12,500-6000 years ago) and continued through later ceramic periods, showing domesticated lima and common beans by c 8000 BC. A wide variety of artifacts, lithic and organic, in Guitarrero I (10,610 @ 360 bc) contains flaked tools similar to the Ayacucho complex and Tagua-Tagua. Stemmed points similar to those in Lauricocha II were found in the same level. There is evidence that the site was occupied by hunter-gatherers and that the subsistence was transhumance. The dates of some human bones, if dated correctly, represent the earliest human remains yet found in South America. Guitarrero II has produced a series of radiocarbon dates covering the period c 8500-5700 BC and contains bone and wood artifacts, basketry an loosely woven textiles, and the willow-leaf projectile point.
Hassuna: SYNONYM: Tell Hassuna
CATEGORY: site; culture
DEFINITION: A prehistoric tell site near Mosul in northern Iraq with a sequence of a pre-Samarran culture in northern Mesopotamia. The site has given its name to the pottery ware present in its lowest levels, dated to the 6th millennium BC, and a culture complex. This pottery may be related to that of the upper levels at Jarmo and is widely distributed. It was usually a buff ware in simple shapes, sometimes burnished, sometimes painted or incised with simple geometric patterns. In higher levels it was replaced by Samarra ware. Evidence from Yarim Tepe, another important Hassuna site, indicates that they were already experimenting with metallurgy and that pottery-making was a specialist activity (with true pottery kilns). The appearance of stamp seals suggests the importance of private ownership. There were several Halaf levels and 'Ubaid levels. Subsistence was cereal cultivation and herding cattle, goat, and sheep. The material culture used copper, turquoise, and carnelian beads.
Holocene: SYNONYM: Recent, Postglacial
CATEGORY: chronology
DEFINITION: The present geological epoch, which began some 10,000 (bp) years ago (8300 BC). It falls within the Quaternary period (one of the four main divisions of the earth's history) and followed the Pleistocene Ice Age. The Holocene is marked by rising temperatures throughout the world and the retreat of the ice sheets. During this epoch, agriculture became the common human subsistence practice. During the Holocene, Homo sapiens diversified his tool technology, organized his habitat more efficiently, and adapted his way of life. The Holocene stage/series includes all deposits younger than the top of either the Wisconsinian stage of the Pleistocene Series in North America and the Würm/Weichsel in Europe.
hunter-gatherer: CATEGORY: culture
DEFINITION: A way of life in which subsistence is based on the hunting of animals and the collection of wild plants rather than settled agriculture. It is a collective term for the members of small-scale mobile (to be near seasonally available wild foods) or semi-sedentary societies and the organizational structure is based on bands with strong kinship ties. This way of life is believed to have lasted for over 3 million years during the Palaeolithic and Mesolithic periods. It survived down to recent times over considerable areas: Australia until the Europeans, South Africa until the Portuguese and Bantu, America until the Europeans settled, and Siberia.
Initial Period: CATEGORY: chronology
DEFINITION: The period of 1800-900 BC marking the introduction of pottery in Andean South America. It was also the time when agriculture and animal husbandry began to be the subsistence base for most cultures in the area. It is one of a seven-period chronological construction used in Peruvian archaeology. Its close is marked by the occurrence of Chavin materials and the abandonment of many of the coastal centers. Many of the traits that make up the Peruvian cultural tradition such as intensive agriculture, the widespread use of textiles, monumental ceremonial architecture, and larger and more numerous population centers, occurred during this period.
Inuit: SYNONYM: Eskimo
CATEGORY: culture
DEFINITION: The eastern Arctic peoples descending from the Thule culture, a prehistoric maritime society, whose subsistence was based on hunting. The origins of the Inuit living in the territories, largely in the coastal areas, are obscure. They now constitute about one-third of the territorial population.
Kalomo: CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: A Late Iron Age industry in southern Zambia, dating from the end of the 9th till the 13th century AD. The industry probably developed from an Early Iron Age ancestor in the valley and spread to the plateau. The people were subsistence farmers, herding cattle and small stock, cultivating a variety of food crops, making pottery and a few metal tools, and occupying villages beside river valleys or on artificially built mounds.
Kenyon, (Dame) Kathleen Mary (1906-1978): CATEGORY: person
DEFINITION: British archaeologist who made major contributions to the understanding of the history of Palestine -- especially through work at Jericho and Jerusalem. The work at Jericho established the existence of an aceramic Neolithic (PPNA/B) and an Epipalaeolithic subsistence on wild cereals in the 9th-8th millennia BC.
Kotosh: CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: Major pre-Columbian ceremonial site in the north-central highlands of Peru, near Huánuco, coming into use during the Late Preceramic Period and continuing until after the end of the Chavín culture during the Early Horizon, c 1 AD. It is known for its temple structures, the earliest of which have interior wall niches and mud-relief decorative friezes, and date to the end of the Late Preceramic Period (c 2000-1800 BC). In the earliest levels (Mito) are remains of a platform on which stood the Temple of the Crossed Hands. Stone tools, some similar to Laurichocha II and III, and other artifacts appropriate to an Archaic subsistence pattern also occur in this phase. The next (Wairajirca) period has a radiocarbon date of 2305 +/- 110 BC and saw the introduction of the first pottery, a gray ware with incised designs and post-fired painting in red, white, or yellow. In the following (Kotosh) stage, there is evidence of maize cultivation, and the pottery, with grooved designs, graphite painting, and stirrup spouts, has Chavín-like features. Radiocarbon dates suggest that this period is centered on c 1200 BC and was closely followed by a pure Chavín stage with the typical pottery and ornament. Next in sequence came levels (Sajarapatac and San Blas phases) with white-on-red pottery, and the uppermost strata (Hiqueras period) were characterized by red vessels, rare negative painting, and copper tools.
Later Stone Age: CATEGORY: chronology
DEFINITION: The third and final phase of Stone Age technology in sub-Saharan Africa, dating from about 30,000+ years ago until historical times in some places. There was much art and personal decoration, evidence of burials, and in assemblages some microlithic stone tools. Pottery and stone bowls appear during the last three millennia as the lifeways changed to herding from nomadic hunting and gathering. The large number of distinctive Later Stone Age industries that emerged reflect increasing specialization as hunter-gatherers exploited different environments, often moving seasonally between them, and developed different subsistence strategies. As in many parts of the world, changes in technology seem to mark a shift to the consumption of smaller game, fish, invertebrates, and plants. Later Stone Age peoples used bows and arrows and a variety of snares and traps for hunting, as well as grindstones and digging sticks for gathering plant food; with hooks, barbed spears, and wicker baskets they also were able to catch fish and thus exploit rivers, lakeshores, and seacoasts more effectively. The appearance of cave art, careful burials, and ostrich eggshell beads for adornments suggests more sophisticated behavior and new patterns of culture. These developments apparently are associated with the emergence between 20,000 and 15,000 BC of the earliest of the historically recognizable populations of southern Africa: the Pygmy, San, and Khoi peoples, who were probably genetically related to the ancient population that had evolved in the African subcontinent.
lithic: SYNONYM: Lithic, -lithic, lithics
CATEGORY: artifact
DEFINITION: Pertaining to or describing a stone tool or artifact. The capitalized term describes the first developmental period in New World chronology, preceding the Archaic period and characterized by the use of flaked stone tools and hunting and gathering subsistence. The combining form means relating to or characteristic of a (specified) stage in humankind's use of stone as a cultural tool and to form the names of cultural phases, e.g. Neolithic, Mesolithic. Lithics is the process or industry of making stone tools and artifacts.
lithic / Lithic / -lithic: SYNONYM: lithics
CATEGORY: lithics
DEFINITION: Pertaining to or describing a stone tool or artifact. The capitalized term describes the first developmental period in New World chronology, preceding the Archaic period and characterized by the use of flaked stone tools and hunting and gathering subsistence. The combining form means relating to or characteristic of a (specified) stage in humankind\'s use of stone as a cultural tool and to form the names of cultural phases, e.g. Neolithic, Mesolithic. Lithics is the process or industry of making stone tools and artifacts.
mano: SYNONYM: handstone
CATEGORY: lithics
DEFINITION: A one- or two-handled small and flat ground stone tool used with a metate (quern) for grinding vegetable material such as maize, seeds, nuts, pigments, etc. Manos date dates to the Archaic Indian period, the word coming from Spanish mano de piedra, hand stone" -- referring to the upper stone which is usually cylindrical or ovoid in shape. The underlying smooth stone slab is the metate. It is a hallmark artifact defining the economic or subsistence base of prehistoric societies. Its forms vary considerably from a barely modified cobble to a long cylinder similar to a rolling pin."
Medicine Lodge Creek: CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: A deeply stratified site located in the Big Horn Mountains of Wyoming, with a date range of c 8000 BC to historic times. Evidence of a diversified subsistence base of small game hunting and gathering occurs at a time when the Big Game Hunting Tradition was still widely practiced in the Great Plains. Manos, metates, and remains of fish, gopher, and rabbit were found at levels dated from 7500-6500 BC. Lanceolate projectile points, similar to those found at Mummy Cave, also fall within this date range, but stemmed points typical of the Archaic fall slightly later at c 6300 BC.
metate: SYNONYM: lower grindstone, concave quern, stone saddle quern
CATEGORY: lithics
DEFINITION: A ground-stone slab with a concave upper surface used as a lower millstone against which another stone is rubbed to grind vegetable material such as cereal grains, seeds, nuts, etc. A metate is one of a two-part milling apparatus -- the other part being with a mano (handheld upper grindstone). Metates are found in agricultural and preagricultural contexts over much of the world and are often made of volcanic rock in Mesoamerica. It is a Spanish term for the smoothed, usually immobile, stone with a concave upper surface and is mostly associated with the grinding of maize. It is a hallmark artifact in the definition of prehistoric subsistence patterns.
milpa: SYNONYM: milpa agriculture
CATEGORY: term
DEFINITION: An agricultural technique whereby forest vegetation is cut down annually and burned in place to prepare fields for crops -- slash-and-burn agriculture. Its derivation is from a term referring to the cultivation of maize fields, usually for only a few years, by swidden agriculture. Depictions on Maya frescos and codices coupled with ethnographic evidence of modern-day methods of cultivation in the Maya Lowlands, gave rise to the theory that milpa agriculture was the basis of Maya subsistence. Exhaustion of the land by its indiscriminate practice was long held to be a factor in the Maya collapse.
Mogollon: CATEGORY: culture
DEFINITION: A prehistoric civilization that existed from before 500 BC to approximately 1400 AD in southeastern Arizona and southwestern New Mexico in the Mogollon Highlands. Its roots lie in the Cochise version of the Desert Culture in this area, but the Mogollon folk were settled agriculturists who lived in villages of pit houses; they were also strongly influenced by the Anasazi and Hohokam. Evidence of maize and bean horticulture found at Bat Cave dates to earlier than 2000 BC, but unequivocally characteristic traits, such as plain brown pottery, do not appear until 300 BC. Although the tradition was agriculturally based, hunting and gathering continued to play some part in subsistence activities. Before c 1000 AD, typical communities were small villages of pit houses, located in easily defensible positions such as high mesas. Larger villages often included a communal assembly building (possibly early kiva) and sometimes fortifications. From c 1000 AD, the Mogollon people came under the influence of their northern neighbors, the Anasazi, and began to build pueblos. To this late period belongs some of the finest pottery of the American southwest, Mimbres ware, painted with stylized black animals on a white background. The culture is chronologically divided on the basis of architectural and pottery changes (Pine Lawn period, about 200 BC-AD 500; Georgetown period, 500-700; San Francisco period, 700-900; Three Circle period, 900-1050; and Mimbres period, 1050-1200). Unlike the Anasazi culture, the Mogollon culture did not survive as a recognizable group of modern Native Americans. Remnants of the Mogollon may have merged with Anasazi peoples to become what is known as the Western Pueblo people. The tradition has a number of regional variants: Mimbres, Pine Lawn, Upper Little Colorado, Forestdale, and Point of Pines.
molluscan analysis: CATEGORY: technique
DEFINITION: The analysis of molluscan remains, of both marine and land species, as part of the examination of the environment of man. A mollusk/mollusc is any of a large phylum (Mollusca) of invertebrate animals (as snails, clams, or squids) with a soft unsegmented body usually enclosed in a calcareous shell. Edible species yield information on the subsistence economy of certain groups; in most cases it is the shells which survive. The analysis of marine mollusks involves separation of the shells from the sample by wet sieving, and the identification of varieties. The occurrence of mounds of discarded shell debris in shell middens also allows for a clear understanding of the collecting patterns, seasonal use, and preferences of man in the marine region. Land snails are increasingly used as an adjunct to pollen and insect analysis in attempts to reconstruct past environments.
Mummy Cave: CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: A deeply stratified site in northwest Wyoming, containing 38 distinct cultural levels from which a series of radiocarbon dates was taken. There is evidence of intermittent occupation from at least 7300 BC-1580 AD. Subsistence activities were not based on the Big Game Hunting Tradition normally associated with the Plains area, but was a general hunting and gathering lifestyle. The cave is named for the desiccated body of an adult male who died there some 1200 years ago.
Natufian: CATEGORY: culture
DEFINITION: The final Epipalaeolithic (Mesolithic) culture complex of the Levant, dated to c 12,500-10,000 BP, with its type site at Wadi an-Natuf in Palestine. Hunting and gathering were still the basis of subsistence, but some Natufian communities had adopted a settled mode of life and the period saw the development of cereal grain exploitation. They built first permanent village settlements in pre-agricultural times in Palestine (Mallaha) and on middle Euphrates in Syria (Mureybet, Abu Hureyra). A series of burials was excavated at Mount Carmel; one important site is Wad Cave with a large cemetery, querns, sickles. The shrine at the base of the tell at Jericho was built during the Early Natufian phase, and the descendants of the Natufians built the earliest Neolithic town at the site. The characteristic toolkit includes geometric microliths, sickles, pestles, mortars, fishing gear, and ornaments of bone and shell. Generally, Natufian sites demonstrate greater diversity in economy and more permanent settlement than earlier cultures.
new archaeology: SYNONYM: New Archaeology; processual archaeology
CATEGORY: branch
DEFINITION: A movement which began in America in the 1960s, aimed at making archaeology more scientific, now more often called processual archaeology. It was suggested that explanations be based on carefully designed models of human behavior and emphasized the importance of understanding underlying cultural processes. This new approach was controversial and is commonly associated with Lewis R. Binford and his students. Binford's New Perspectives in Archaeology" in 1968 stressed the following ideas: the use of new techniques such as the computer for statistical and matrix analyses of data and concept of the ecosystem for the understanding of the economic and subsistence bases of prehistoric societies; an evolutionary view of culture; the use of models of cultures viewed as systems incorporating the evolutionary view of culture and a close relationship between archaeology and anthropology. Although the proponents of the new archaeology have been criticized by more traditionally minded scholars their basic principles are now widely accepted."
Northwest Coast tradition: CATEGORY: culture
DEFINITION: A series of prehistoric groups of the northern California coast, Oregon, Washington, British Columbia, and southeastern Alaska, with origins in the Fraser River delta and clearly established by 1000 BC. Their subsistence was based on hunting and gathering of riverine and marine food sources (mollusks, salmon, halibut, sea mammals). Characteristics in the archaeological record include bone and slate hunting tools, stone effigy carving, and woodworking tools. Totem poles and elaborately carved long houses are still a cultural feature in the area.
Obre: CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: A complex of Neolithic settlements on the Bosnia River near Sarajevo, Bosnia. Obre I comprises four occupation horizons, the first with Starcevo pottery, dating c 4500-4200 BC. It has rectangular houses similar to those at Karanovo I and Anza, and arranged in rows. Obre II represents the most complete development of the Butmir culture yet discovered, with nine habitation horizons in three main periods (dated c 4250-3950 BC, c 3900 BC, and c 3800 BC). This 1300-year cut through the Bosnian Neolithic sequence provides details on the evolution of timber-framed architecture, subsistence economy, and exchange systems. The pottery is interpreted as reflecting possible transhumant pastoralism.
peasant: CATEGORY: term
DEFINITION: Any person who cultivates land in rural areas for their basic subsistence and pays tribute to elite groups.
Phalaborwa: SYNONYM: Palabora
CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: An area of the eastern Transvaal, South Africa, with a copper and iron ore mining town and a long Iron Age sequence dated to the 8th century AD. Mining began during the final centuries of the 1st millennium AD and from the 11th century onwards the later Iron Age occupation appears to belong to a single developing tradition, perhaps related to that Sotho groups. Agriculture on terraced hillsides and the herding of domestic cattle formed the basis of the subsistence economy. There are hundreds of sites where ore was smelted and then worked into tools and ornaments.
Pitted-Ware culture: CATEGORY: culture
DEFINITION: In Sweden and Finland, a series of foraging groups during the 3rd-1st millennia BC, part of the circumpolar complex of Holocene foragers. Amber ornaments were made widely and communities depended on seals and pigs for subsistence.
Plains Village tradition: SYNONYM: Plains Village Indian
CATEGORY: culture
DEFINITION: Name given to group of cultures of the central and eastern plains of North America between 900-1850 AD, particularly in Kansas, Nebraska, and South Dakota. Contemporaneous with Mississippian tradition of Eastern Woodlands, it represents a fusion of that tradition with the Plains variant of the Woodland tradition. The Plains Village tradition was characterized by large habitation structures in settlements that were often fortified. Subsistence dependent on hunting, farming along rivers, beans/squash/maize, and the pottery was related to Mississippian and had incised decoration and rim adornment. When drought forced abandonment of the central plains, the inhabitants moved to the Middle Missouri area (North, South Dakota) and formed the Coalescent Tradition.
Preceramic Period: CATEGORY: culture; chronology
DEFINITION: The earliest of a seven-period chronological construction used in Peruvian archaeology, c 9000-1800 BC, starting with the first human occupation and ending with the introduction of ceramic artifacts. It is usually subdivided into six periods and is characterized by a variety of subsistence patterns and by a lack of ceramics. The first two periods (up to 8000 BC) represent a subsistence based on hunting. The third period, c 8000-6000 BC is seen as transitional from hunting to hunting and gathering. Period four c 6000-4000 BC had cyclical, seasonal migration. In Preceramic V, c 4000-2500 BC, the lomas dried up and people tended to be sedentary; agriculture supplied an increasing part of the diet. Large habitation sites, ceremonial centers and agriculture appear increasingly in Preceramic VI c 2500-1800 BC. There are lithic complexes in the Early Preceramic, followed by an Archaic Period with foraging populations and the beginning of domestic and ceremonial architecture. The Preceramic was followed by the Initial Period.
Recent: SYNONYM: Holocene
CATEGORY: chronology
DEFINITION: The epoch of geologic time in the late Quaternary following the Pleistocene; referred to as Holocene in several European countries. It is the present geological epoch, which began some 10,000 (bp) years ago (8300 BC). The Recent epoch is marked by rising temperatures throughout the world and the retreat of the ice sheets. During this epoch, agriculture became the common human subsistence practice. During the Recent epoch, Homo sapiens diversified his tool technology, organized his habitat more efficiently, and adapted his way of life. The Recent stage/series includes all deposits younger than the top of either the Wisconsinian stage of the Pleistocene Series in North America and the Würm/Weichsel in Europe.
Secondary Products Revolution: CATEGORY: culture
DEFINITION: In the Late Neolithic, a series of changes in the culture and subsistence data which has been interpreted as a shift from floodplain horticulture to a greater reliance on domestic livestock, particularly their secondary products"."
Selevac: CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: Late Neolithic site of the Early Vinca culture (B-C phases) in the Morava Valley of northern Serbia, dating c 4300-3950 BC. The houses were of timber posts with wattle-and-daub walls. Subsistence was mixed farming (cattle husbandry and cultivation of emmer and bread wheat). Copper from the Rudna Glava mine was used alongside stone.
settlement pattern: SYNONYM: settlement pattern study
CATEGORY: technique; term
DEFINITION: The study of ancient human occupation and activity patterns within a specified area -- the distribution of features and sites, buildings, and other constructions in relation to the topography of a given area. Archaeological studies of settlement patterns deal with such matters as urbanization, the relationship between town, village, and countryside, and the operation of administrative centers. Findings reflect the relationship of the inhabitants with their environment, and the relationship of groups with each other within that environment. Factors influencing the pattern of settlement in any area may include the subsistence strategy, the political structure, the social structure, population density, and carrying capacity.
Shahr-i Sokhta: CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: Tell site in the Seistan district of eastern Iran, close to the Afghan and Pakistan borders, which was the site of a vast urban center of the late 4th-early 2nd millennium BC. As well as abundant structural remains, enormous numbers of finds have been excavated -- thousands of potsherds and stone tools, clay figurines, and animal bones. The wealth of Shahr-i Sokhta was due at least in part to its role in the trade in lapis lazuli between its source in north Afghanistan and the markets of Mesopotamia and Egypt. An industrial area produced thousands of unfinished lapis lazuli beads, as well as flint drills and other tools used in their manufacture. Shahr-i Sokhta also has a huge cemetery, estimated to have contained 200,000 burials. In the early 2nd millennium BC, the course of the Helmand River, on which the city depended, changed; this led to the decline and abandonment of the settlement. The site is still important for understanding the urbanization, production and subsistence techniques, and complex societies of Bronze Age Iran and Afghanistan.
shell midden: SYNONYM: shell mound
CATEGORY: feature
DEFINITION: An archaeological deposit consisting of a refuse mound of discarded shells, offering evidence of early human use of certain mollusks. These often extensive heaps are the result of many years of exploitation of marine resources as a main or supplementary food source. Shell middens provide information on diet, harvesting techniques, subsistence economy, and seasonality.
Soroki: CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: A complex of short-lived settlement sites of the Late Mesolithic and Early Neolithic, located in the middle Dniester valley in Moldova. The Mesolithic sites, with radiocarbon dates of c 5600-5400 BC, have provided data on the late Mesolithic / early Neolithic Bug-Dniester culture. The earliest occupations are aceramic and had a hunting-fishing economy. Later levels, c 4800 BC, have pointed-base vessels, hearths, and shallow pits. The subsistence economy is similar to the preceding Mesolithic, with the addition of some cultivated einkorn wheat and some domesticated cattle and pig.
Ténéré Neolithic: SYNONYM: Tenerian
CATEGORY: culture
DEFINITION: Variant of the so-called Saharan Neolithic complex in the Ténéré Dessert and extends from northeastern Niger into western Chad, Africa, dating from 6500-4500 BP. Chipped stone implements include backed microliths, bifacial projectile points, and discoid knives and the pottery may have connections with contemporary Sudanese Nile valley sites. Rock engravings and rock pictures of animals were also created by the Neolithic (8,000-5,000 BC) inhabitants. A pastoral economy existed as well as hunting; the climatic conditions at the time may have dictated the subsistence. Ténéré is now one of the most forbidding regions of the Sahara, with an extremely hot and dry climate and virtually no plant life. Fossils show that this arid desert was, in the Late Carboniferous Period (320-286 million years ago), a seafloor and later became a humid tropical forest. In the Middle Paleolithic (d 60,000 BC) human habitation is indicated in this region by flint axes, arrowheads, and stone artifacts.
Tikal: CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: Large and important site of the Maya people in the rain forest of Petén, Guatemala, dating to 800 BC. The earliest buildings were constructed in 800 BC when it was a simple farming village. It is the most thoroughly studied of the great lowland Maya sites and peaked c 600-800 AD in the Classic period (c 300-900 AD), when Tikal was one of the largest and politically most important Maya capitals. Studies of its architecture, tombs, art style, settlement pattern, subsistence and storage, and artifacts have accompanied an extensive mapping project. A population of between 45,000-75,000 occupied 120 square kilometers. Six statuesque limestone temple pyramids, giant paved plazas, shrines, palatial residences, ballcourts -- in all, 3,000 buildings, hundreds of monuments, stelae, altars are among the ruins. It is also the location of the oldest Maya monument known, 292 AD. Archaeologists have been able to work out the dynastic history of Tikal on the basis of stela inscriptions and have identified the tombs of individual listed rulers. Numerous elite burials containing exotic materials, such as jade, obsidian, and stingray spines occur within the Great Plaza and within some of the temple-pyramids. Commoners, by contrast, are usually buried under their houses. Archaeological data confirmed that there were close relations with Teotihuacán during the Early Classic period; Tikal was an important post in the great trading network that Teotihuacán had established in southern Mesoamerica.. Like other lowland Maya sites, Tikal was abandoned around 900 AD.
transhumance: SYNONYM: Transhumance; Transhumant
CATEGORY: term
DEFINITION: A subsistence practice which forms one aspect of seasonality of occupation; the transfer of cattle from summer to winter pasture and vice versa. It consists of the movement of farmers and their herds and flocks away from the winter settlement to upland pasture. Spring to autumn is spent on high pasture and in winter animals are taken to a main settlement, often in sheltered valleys, where fodder has been collected. This movement of farmers results in the occupation of two sites at different times of the year by the same group of people. In Europe and the Old World, the term is for pastoralist farmers and livestock. In the New World, the term is used for any animal-and-human migration. Identification of transhumance patterns is a focus of palaeoeconomy.
urban revolution: SYNONYM: Urban Revolution
CATEGORY: term
DEFINITION: A term applied to a sociocultural type or stage of human development. V. Gordon Childe proposed that the criteria for the urban revolution are: (1) cities, or large, dense settlements; (2) the differentiation of the population into specialized occupational groups; (3) social classes, including a ruling stratum exempt from primary subsistence tasks; (4) mechanisms for extracting a social surplus such as taxes or tribute; (5) monumental public buildings and other enterprises; and (6) writing.
Valdivia pottery: CATEGORY: artifact
DEFINITION: Formative period culture dating to the later 4th millennium BC on the coast of Ecuador, South America, named after a site of the same name excavated by B. Meggars and C. Evans in the early 1960s. The culture is important in being amongst the earliest in the region to have a developed ceramics industry which used a variety of plastic techniques for decorative motifs. Artifacts suggest a marine-orientated subsistence pattern.
Woodland pottery: CATEGORY: artifact
DEFINITION: A general term for cultural groups living in the wooded eastern parts of North America during the Formative. Woodland subsumes many local adaptations, but in general these were hunter-gatherer communities whose subsistence base was augmented with some cultivation. Woodland communities used pottery and had elaborate toolmaking and artistic traditions. Burials were usually made in established cemeteries, often within large earthen mounds. Trade networks were extensive. Starting about 1000 BC, Woodland comprises a series of distinctive cultures including Adena, Hopewell, Mississippian, and Iroquoian. In some areas Woodland societies continued down to modern times.

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