Archaeology Wordsmith

Results for triangle:

triangle: CATEGORY: artifact
DEFINITION: A geometric microlith that has one side with a sharp cutting edge and two other sides shaped by backing
acroterion: CATEGORY: artifact
DEFINITION: The sculptured figure, tripod, disc or urn, of bronze, marble, or terracotta, placed on the apex of the pediment of a Greek temple or other substantial building; sometimes also above the outer angles of the pediment triangle.
Andronovo culture: CATEGORY: culture
DEFINITION: A culture of southern Siberia, between the Don and Yenisei Rivers, dating to the 2nd millennium BC. The culture was relatively uniform in this large area and agriculture played a large role. Wheat and millet were cultivated and cattle, horses, and sheep bred. The metal-using culture (ores from the Altai), which succeeded the Afansievo, lived in settlements of up to ten large log cabin-like semisubterranean houses. Bowl- and flowerpot-shaped vessels were flat-bottomed, smoothed, and decorated with geometric patterns, triangles, rhombs, and meanders. Burial was in contracted position either in stone cists or enclosures with underground timber chambers. The wooden constructions in rich graves may have designated social differentiation. The Andronovo complex is related to the Timber-Grave (Russian Srubna) group in southern Russia and both are branches of the Indo-Iranian cultural block. The Andronovo were the ancestors of Karasuk nomads who later inhabited the Central Asiatic and Siberian steppes.
calamus: SYNONYMS OR RELATED TERMS: plural calami
CATEGORY: artifact
DEFINITION: A reed or cane used by early writers, especially as an implement for scribes working on clay. Calami were usually made from reeds in Mesopotamia, but also from wood, and the point was sharpened to form a triangle. The pressure of the calamus on the clay produced the cuneiform script. Pressing lightly or firmly made longer or shorter lines.
false relief: CATEGORY: ceramics
DEFINITION: A form of excised or impressed decoration on pottery in which two rows of inward pointing triangles are cut from, or impressed on, the pot surface. The zigzag running between them then appears to be in relief, though it is actually no higher than the surface of the pot.
geometric: SYNONYMS OR RELATED TERMS: Geometric
CATEGORY: artifact
DEFINITION: A style of decoration with repeated geometric motifs -- circles, squares, triangles, lozenges, and running linear patterns -- flourishing in Greece c 900-700 BC. The term is also applied to such design on wall painting, for textiles. The style derived from the triangular, circular, meander, zigzags, rhomboids, and other linear decoration on Greek pottery of this period. In classical Greek art history, the term is used specifically of the early phases of vase-painting as, for example, Protogeometric (c 1050-900 BC), Geometric (c 900-750 BC), and Late Geometric (c 750-700 BC). When the term is applied to the period of Greek history in which the decoration flourished, it is often extended to 1100-700 BC, after the fall of Mycenaean civilization and marking transition from Bronze to Iron Age. The first phase, called Protogeometric (1100-900) corresponds to the dark ages" when Greek culture was inward looking and very poor. Its final phase Late Geometric (770-700) coincided with resumption of relations with Asian cultures and beginning of colonization of the northern southern and western shores of Mediterranean."
geometrics: CATEGORY: artifact
DEFINITION: A general category of artifacts that includes lunates (crescent-shaped), triangles (three sides), trapezes (four sizes, two approximately parallel), and rectangles (four sides) - generally very small tools, usually less than an inch long and with the shapes formed by backing and a sharp cutting edge
Lagozza: SYNONYMS OR RELATED TERMS: Lagozza di Besnate
CATEGORY: site; culture
DEFINITION: Late Neolithic lake village settlement in Lombardy, Italy, dated to c 3600 BC. Remains of wooden pile dwellings exist in the type site of the Lagozza culture, characterized by finely made black-burnished carinated bowls. Decoration is rare, consisting of radiating lines on the lower walls or scratched cross-hatched triangles. Instead of proper handles, simple and multiple perforated lugs were used, including the flûte de pan. The culture is related to, and possibly derived from, Chassey (France) and Cortaillod (Switzerland). Spindle whorls and loom-weights show textile production. The culture was established in the north and spread slowly down the Adriatic side of Italy to the Marche and Ripoli in the Late Neolithic, and to Ariano by the Copper Age, surviving there to give rise to the Apennine culture of the Bronze Age. Copper axes are among the earliest copper items of northern Italy.
Magdalenian: SYNONYMS OR RELATED TERMS: Age of the Reindeer
CATEGORY: culture
DEFINITION: The final major European culture of the Upper Paleolithic period, from about 15,000-10,000 years ago; characterized by composite or specialized tools, tailored clothing, and especially geometric and representational cave art (e.g. Altamira) and for beautiful decorative work in bone and ivory (mobiliary art). The people were chiefly fishermen and reindeer hunters; they were the first known people to have used a spear thrower (of reindeer bone and antler) to increase the range, strength, and accuracy. Magdalenian stone tools include small geometrically shaped implements (e.g., triangles, semilunar blades) probably set into bone or antler handles for use, burins (a sort of chisel), scrapers, borers, backed bladelets, and shouldered and leaf-shaped projectile points. Bone was used extensively to make wedges, adzes, hammers, spearheads with link shafts, barbed points and harpoons, eyed needles, jewelry, and hooked rods probably used as spear throwers. They killed animals with spears, snares, and traps and lived in caves, rock shelters, or substantial dwellings in winter and in tents in summer. The name is derived from La Madeleine or Magdalene, the type site in the Dordogne of southwest France. Its center of origin was southwest France and the adjacent parts of Spain, but elements characteristic of the later stages are represented in Britain (Creswell Crags), and eastwards to southwest Germany and Poland. The Magdalenian culture, like that of earlier Upper Palaeolithic communities, was adapted to the cold conditions of the last (Würm) glaciation. The Magdalenian has been divided into six phases; it followed the Solutrean industry and was succeeded by the simplified Azilian. Magdalenian culture disappeared as the cool, near-glacial climate warmed at the end of the Fourth (Würm) Glacial Period (c 10,000 BC), and herd animals became scarce.
Meroe: CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: A site in Upper Nubia, a city-state in the Sudan which succeeded Napata (original capital of kingdom of Kush/Cush) as the capital of a vigorous state flourishing from 750 BC-350 AD. The 25th, or Ethiopian dynasty of ancient Egypt is believed to have retired to Kush after 656 BC and established itself at Meroe. After the sack of Napata in c 590 by the Egyptian pharaoh Psamtik II, Meroe became the capital of the kingdom. It is the type site of the Meroitic period (c 300 BC-350 AD) and located on the east bank of the Nile in the Butana region of Sudan. Dependent on Nile, kingdom lay in triangle of land at confluence of Nile and Atbara. It was the center of the Kushite kingdom in the fifth century BC. Meroe was able to exploit a region of considerable agricultural potential with fairly regular, if not abundant, rainfall. There was also a supply of timber adequate to fuel the smelting of the local iron deposits. By the beginning of the Christian era, if not before, the iron industry had been developed on a considerable scale. Meroitic architecture included temples in the Egyptian style and royal pyramid tombs (e.g. Musawwarat es-Sufra). Egyptian influence gradually diminished; Egyptian hieroglyphs were abandoned in about the 2nd century BC in favor of a local script. The Meroitic language thus recorded cannot at present be understood. The tenuous nature of the link with Egypt is to be appreciated by considering the trade route, which it appears did not follow the inhospitable Nile Valley, but ran along the Red Sea coast. From about the beginning of the Christian era, this route was increasingly endangered by local developments, notably the rise of the kingdom of Axum. By the 3rd century AD, Meroe was in decline; its final collapse came with the conquest by Axum early in the 4th century. The chief features are palaces and a great temple of Amon.
microlith: SYNONYMS OR RELATED TERMS: pigmy stone
CATEGORY: lithics
DEFINITION: Any of various very small stone tools varying in size from 1-5 cm -- mainly thin blade or blade fragments with sharp cutting edges, usually geometric in shape and set into a wooden handle or shaft or the tip of a bone or antler as an arrow point. They were shaped by abrupt retouch into various shapes like triangles and crescents. Microliths were produced during the Later Upper Palaeolithic and Mesolithic and were either struck as blades from very small cores or were made from fractured blades using the microburin technique. They are characteristic, for example, of Azilian culture of the Mesolithic. Microliths represent both a versatile and an economic use of raw material: just as blades yield more cutting edge than flakes per unit weight of raw material, so bladelets improve yet further this advantage, by a factor of something over 100 compared to core tools.
mosaic: SYNONYMS OR RELATED TERMS: mosaic work
CATEGORY: artifact
DEFINITION: A technique of decoration used mainly on floors or walls involving the setting of small colored fragments of stone, tile, mineral, shell, or glass, each called a tessera (plural tesserae), in a cement or adhesive matrix. Mosaic also refers to a tesselated area, often of complex designs and, possibly, inscriptions. Mosaic floors were made from small squares, triangles, or other regular shapes up to an inch in size. They were laid in cement to form designs, figures of animals, or classical figures representing the seasons, etc. Old limestone would be used for white and various reds, browns, or grays from baked clays. Glass, too, was sometimes incorporated. The earliest known mosaics date from the 8th century BC and are made of pebbles, a technique refined by Greek craftsmen in the 5th century BC. Greek mosaics were simple pebble floors and then became more complex and sophisticated under Macedonian kings. Mosaics are known from Pompeii and Rome, Tivoli, Aquileia, and Ostia -- as well as Africa, Antioch, Sicily, and Britain. Under the Roman Empire, the achievements of the 5th-6th century Byzantine artists at Ravenna are impressive. An excellent collection of mosaics from Pompeii may be seen in the Mueo Nazionale at Naples, and a good selection of Imperial Roman provincial work may be seen at the Museum of Le Bardo, outside modern Tunis, Tunisia. Pre-Columbian American Indians favored mosaics of semiprecious stones such as garnet and turquoise and mother-of-pearl. These were normally used to encrust small objects such as shields, masks, and cult statues. Mosaic as an art form has most in common with painting. It represents a design or image in two dimensions. It is also, like painting, a technique appropriate to large-scale surface decoration.
Newgrange: SYNONYMS OR RELATED TERMS: New Grange
CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: The most famous and splendidly decorated of the Irish passage graves, part of the Boyne Valley cemetery, in Meath County. The kidney-shaped mound, dated to c 3100 BC, is over 100 meters in diameter and 13 meters high. The cairn itself was carefully made of alternate layers of stones and turf. A kerb of large stones carved with wavy lines, lozenges, triangles, etc. encloses the base of the mound. On either side of the entrance the green kerbstones were topped by a retaining wall of white quartz. Some distance from the original base of the mound is a surrounding circle of free-standing stones. The burial chamber, cruciform in plan, is roofed by corbelling and has three subsidiary cells; the tomb has a very long passage, 19 meters in length, and built of orthostats. Midwinter sunrise shines through an opening above the door to illuminate the central chamber, the clearest example of an astronomical orientation recorded from a European prehistoric monument. Many stones of both chamber and passage carry pecked designs including an unusual triple spiral. Excavation has shown that the upper surfaces of the capstones had drainage channels, as well as art which would have been invisible once the overlying cairn had been built. Traces of cremation burials were found in the cells of the chamber, and soil from a habitation site, possibly close to the tomb, had been used to pack the interstices of the passage roof. There are two radiocarbon dates around 3200 BC and the site was reoccupied after the tomb-builders had left it and the cairn had begun to slump by a group which used Late Neolithic and Beaker pottery.
offset planning: CATEGORY: technique
DEFINITION: A technique used in small-scale excavations to measure the plans of features. A point is measured with reference to a baseline, which is frequently the edge of an excavation trench. The measurement requires the formation of a right-angle at the point at which the tapes meet; this can be achieved by using a T-square, or by constructing a right-angled triangle with a tape using the Pythagoras theorem.
pediment: CATEGORY: structure
DEFINITION: A low-pitched gable forming the top section of the facade of a classical Greek and Roman temple; a triangular recess usually found at both ends of classical temples and treasuries and often filled with sculpture. In the classical temple, the outline of the triangle is formed by horizontal and 'raking' cornices which carry decorative moldings. The vertical 'back wall' (tympanum) is often decorated with painting, relief, or sculpture. Each of the three corners was also faced with a special 'corner-piece' (acroterion). It is located above the entablature.
plowshare-shaped currency bar: CATEGORY: artifact
DEFINITION: Type of iron ingot found in the 1st and 2nd centuries BC in southern England, typically about 0.5m long, an elongated triangle in outline, with turned-in corners at the wider end. Examples of this style of currency bar are mainly found in the Thames Valley and south midlands.
Polynesia: CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: A vast region of scattered islands in the central Pacific occupied by closely related ethnic groups, falling mostly within a triangle made up of the Hawaiian Islands, New Zealand, and Easter Island. Western Polynesia was settled by Austronesian speakers from Southeast Asia (Lapita culture) around 1500 BC, and migrations progressed throughout the triangle until New Zealand was reached c 900 AD. The Polynesians are a homogeneous population in terms of language and social organization, which developed into powerful chiefdoms in the larger islands. The Polynesian economy was based on tuber and fruit horticulture. Pottery production ceased in Western Polynesia c 300 AD and was never present in most eastern islands nor in New Zealand. Western Polynesia consists of Tonga, Samoa, and Tuvalu; Eastern Polynesia includes the Society, Cook, Austral, Marquesas, Tuamotu, and Hawaiian Islands, Easter Island, and New Zealand.
Proto-geometric: SYNONYMS OR RELATED TERMS: Protogeometric
CATEGORY: ceramics
DEFINITION: A type of Greek painted pottery and the period of its making, c 1050-900 BC, which succeeded the Mycenaean. The style emerged at Athens and then other regions. Decoration was severely geometric and included concentric circles and the use of zigzags and triangles.
Serra d'Alto: CATEGORY: site; artifact
DEFINITION: Neolithic village in Basilicata, Italy, on a hill defended by three concentric ditches. It has yielded a distinctive painted pottery of the same name, c 4500-3500 BC. Geometric designs with diagonal meanders and solid triangles are painted in black or purple-brown on a buff surface. A frequent motif is a zigzag line between parallels (linea a tremolo marginato"). Jars and handled cups are the standard forms and the elaborate handles are horizontal tubular with zoomorphic additions on the top. In the later phase a thin and markedly splayed trumpet lug was adopted from the Diana Ware of Lipari. The high quality of the ware and the fact that it most often occurs in graves and other ritual contexts suggests that it was produced for special purposes. It was traded over a wide area occurring in Sicily Lipari Lake Garda Malta and in central Italy."
Serra d'Alto pottery: CATEGORY: artifact
DEFINITION: Neolithic village in Basilicata, Italy, on a hill defended by three concentric ditches. It has yielded a distinctive painted pottery of the same name, c 4500-3500 BC. geometric designs with diagonal meanders and solid triangles are painted in black or purple-brown on a buff surface. A frequent motif is a zigzag line between parallels (linea a tremolo marginato"). Jars and handled cups are the standard forms and the elaborate handles are horizontal tubular with zoomorphic additions on the top. In the later phase a thin and markedly splayed trumpet lug was adopted from the Diana ware of Lipari. The high quality of the ware and the fact that it most often occurs in graves and other ritual contexts suggests that it was produced for special purposes. It was traded over a wide area occurring in Sicily Lipari Lake Garda Malta and in central Italy."
Silla: CATEGORY: culture
DEFINITION: A kingdom traditionally dated 57 BC-668 AD, the oldest of the monarchies of the Three Kingdoms period, and including the Unified or Great Silla period of 668-935, the golden age of Korean art. It eventually came to cover most of southeastern Korea east of the Naktong River. The original territory of the Silla kingdom, the modern North Kyongsang province, is a mountain-secluded triangle. Silla was in competition with the Koguryo and Paekche until 668 and had relations with Japan's Yamato. When it unified in 668, its capital remained in Kyongju. At that site are large mounded tombs of the 5th-6th centuries with fine gold work. It became a gridded city in the 7th century and the Anapchi pond was built.
token: CATEGORY: artifact; language
DEFINITION: Small artifacts, generally of clay, made into one of sixteen types: cones, spheres, disks, cylinders, tetrahedrons, ovoids, rectangles, triangles, biconoids, paraboloids, bent coils, ovals, vessels, tools, animals, or miscellaneous. Such objects were used on early Neolithic sites in western Asia as counters to keep records of goods. A plain token was typical of the periods between 8000-4300 BC and after 3100 BC. The shapes are mostly restricted to cones, spheres, disks, cylinders, and tetrahedrons; the surface is usually plain. Complex tokens were typical of the 4th millennium BC temple administration and includes all 16 types of tokens. Complex tokens are characterized by an extensive use of markings -- linear, punctuated, or appliqué. Researchers (esp. Diane Schmandt-Besserat) suggest that tokens were the precursor of writing as they began to be placed within clay bullae (envelopes) that were marked with a cylinder seal representing the content of the bullae. This led to writing numbers on a tablet, and then to words.
triangular: CATEGORY: artifact
DEFINITION: A projectile, knife, preform or blade which has three sides or roughly has the shape of a triangle.
triangulation: CATEGORY: technique
DEFINITION: A surveying method used to measuring a large area of land by establishing a baseline from which a network of triangles is laid out. Triangulation is based on the laws of plane trigonometry, that if one side and two angles of a triangle are known, the other two sides and angle can be readily calculated. One side of the selected triangle is measured; this is the baseline. The two adjacent angles are measured by means of a surveying instrument (transit, theodolite), and the entire triangle is established. By constructing a series of such triangles, each adjacent to at least one other, values can be obtained for distances and angles not otherwise measurable. Triangulation can be used to plan features or significant finds whose exact position it is important to record.
Unstan ware: CATEGORY: artifact
DEFINITION: Style of Neolithic pottery found in the northern part of the British Isles, especially the Hebrides, Western Isles, and Orkney, defined by Stuart Piggott in 1954 on the basis of an assemblage from the chambered tomb of Unstan on Orkney. Including both decorated and undecorated vessels, Unstan ware is diverse in the range of shapes and sizes represented. However, it can be typified by round-bottomed forms either as deep bowls and jars or as shallow bowls with a carinated profile produced by the application of a fillet or cordon of clay. The decoration is generally incised with oblique or horizontal lines, triangles, or a zone of hatched triangles. Dated examples of this ware fall within the period 3500-2800 BC, Unstan ware being slightly earlier than GROOVED WARE in the region.

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