Archaeology Wordsmith

Results for wedge:

fossil ice wedges: SYNONYMS OR RELATED TERMS: foliated ground ice, wedge ice
CATEGORY: geology
DEFINITION: Soil features caused when the ground freezes and contracts, opening up fissures in the permafrost that fill with wedges of ice. The fossil wedges are proof of past cooling of climate and of the depth of permafrost. Foliated ground ice, or wedge ice, is the term for large masses of ice growing in thermal contraction cracks in permafrost.
ice wedge: SYNONYMS OR RELATED TERMS: ice-wedge; foliated ground ice
CATEGORY: geology
DEFINITION: Large masses of ice growing in thermal contraction cracks in permafrost. In periglacial conditions, alternating freeze and thaw can lead to the formation of vertical, narrow, and deep wedges of ice in gravels. After melting, these tend to fill with sediment, forming a cast of the ice wedge seen as dark bands, easily confused with manmade features, in aerial photographs. Casts of fossil ice wedges are one of the few true indicators of former permafrost conditions. Fossil ice-wedges of this kind are seen in many sections of sand and gravel deposits in Europe. They have been used to reconstruct the extent of the periglacial zone which developed around the Devensian and Weichselian ice-sheets.
wedge: CATEGORY: artifact
DEFINITION: An object, usually wood or metal used to force open or keep open another object. Often used to split timber by striking the thick end and forcing the wood apart.
wedge-shaped gallery grave: SYNONYMS OR RELATED TERMS: wedge tomb
CATEGORY: structure
DEFINITION: A megalithic chamber tomb particular to Ireland in the Late Neolithic and some from the Middle-Late Bronze Age. There is a long narrow chamber of orthostats supporting capstones, which decrease in height toward the back; it would not have a separate entrance passage. The division between antechamber and burial area is marked by a sill slab or by stone jambs. The cairn may be round, oval, or D-shaped, and often has a retaining wall. The earliest grave goods are bucket-shaped pots of the Late Neolithic period, but Beaker pottery is predominant.
wedge-shaped microcore: CATEGORY: lithics
DEFINITION: A core that is small and keel- or wedge-shaped and used to make microblades. They have been found in East Europe, Siberia, Mongolia, northern China, Alaska, northwestern North America, and Japan on Upper Palaeolithic sites from the close of the Pleistocene.
Afontova: CATEGORY: site; culture
DEFINITION: Upper Palaeolithic sites of a culture located in south-central Siberia of c 20,000-10,000 BP. Artifacts include wedge-shaped microcores, microblades, and scrapers. Reindeer, woolly mammoth, and arctic fox were common.
Bluefish Caves: CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: Caves discovered in 1975 in the northern Yukon, Canada, which may be the oldest archaeological site in North America. There are deposits of the late glacial period and some artifacts associated with woolly mammoth, Dall sheep, reindeer, and other vertebrates. The radiocarbon dates of bone fragments range from 25,000-12,000 bp. Evidence of human occupation is from at least 13,000-10,000 bp. There was a wedge-shaped microcore, microblades, and burins similar to those from Siberia of the same time. The lowest levels of 20,000 bp have debitage flakes and large numbers of cut and butchered animal bones.
chamber tomb: SYNONYMS OR RELATED TERMS: chambered tomb
CATEGORY: structure
DEFINITION: A prehistoric tomb, often megalithic in construction, that contained a large burial chamber. Such a vault was usually used for successive burials over a long period of time. The term is also used for a rock-cut tomb, especially the shaft-and-chamber tomb, with a similar burial rite. Chamber tombs were built in many parts of the world and at many different times. The European varieties were called court cairn, dolmen, entrance grave, gallery grave, giants' grave, hunebed, passage grave, portal dolmen, tholos, transepted gallery grave, and wedge-shaped gallery grave. Many were rectangular chambers cut into the side of a hill and approached by a long entrance passage (dromos), especially in the Aegean.
coiled: SYNONYMS OR RELATED TERMS: coiled basketry
CATEGORY: artifact
DEFINITION: Concerning a method of basketry based on a spirally coiled foundation, esp. that made with a vertical stitch or weft. A basket is said to be coiled when a long bundle of fibrous material is laid up, spiral fashion. Each coil is sewn by a slender splint to the coil below it. The basketmaker would pierce the fiber bundle with a bone awl and pass the splint through the hole thus made. In ceramics, coiling is a construction technique where the vessel is formed from the base up with long coils or wedges of clay that were shaped and joined together.
core rejuvenation flake: SYNONYMS OR RELATED TERMS: core tablet
CATEGORY: artifact
DEFINITION: A roughly round slightly wedge-shaped flake of flint with the remains of flake beds around the outside edge. Such flakes are the product of extending the life of a core that has become uneven or difficult to work but which still has the potential to yield further blades.
cuneiform: CATEGORY: language
DEFINITION: The characteristic wedge-shaped writing of western Asia, used for over 3000 years, emerging in the 4th millennium BC in southern Mesopotamia as a system of accounting during the Uruk period. It consisted of triangular markings pressed on a clay tablet with a split reed. The word itself comes from Latin 'cuneus' meaning wedge-shaped" "wedge". The pictographic script of the Uruk period the oldest known in the world was reduced to angular forms to make it more suitable for impressing in wet clay with a split reed. The nature of the script was very like that of the Egyptians with ideographs phonograms and determinatives. The script was used for a number of languages (Sumerian Akkadian Elamite Hittite Old Persian etc.) even being adapted to serve as an alphabet at Ugarit. The first success in its decipherment was by Georg Grotefend a German philologist in 1802. In inscriptions from Persepolis he recognized the names of Darius and Xerxes and the Old Persian word for 'king'. In 1844-1847 further progress came through the recording and study of Darius's rock inscriptions at Behistun by Henry Rawlinson. He was able to translate the Old Persian version; Westergaard in 1854 tackled the Elamite text and Rawlinson with others cracked the Babylonian in 1857. This was much the most important of the three as it led directly back through the many cuneiform inscriptions at that time coming to light to the first written records those of ancient Sumer. Cuneiform texts have been found in Egypt at el-'Amarna and on various objects of the Persian Period. In the Near East cuneiform tablets from Egypt have been found at Bogazkoy in Anatolia and Kamid el-Loz in Syria. A consonantal alphabet developed at Ugarit which vanished with the town at beginning of 12th c BC; and syllabary script was used solely by Achaemenid Persians to transcribe their language from 6th-4th c BC."
Denalian culture: SYNONYMS OR RELATED TERMS: Denali complex
CATEGORY: culture
DEFINITION: A prehistoric culture or complex of central Alaska (the Tangle Lakes) dating to c 10,500-7000 BC. Similar to the Siberian Dyuktai (Diuktai) culture and defined by H. West in 1967, it is characterized by wedge-shaped microcores, microblades, burins, and bifacial points, scrapers on flakes, and large blades.
glaciation: SYNONYMS OR RELATED TERMS: glacial
CATEGORY: chronology; geography
DEFINITION: The process by which land is covered by continental and alpine glacier ice sheets or the period of time during which such covering occurred; several glaciations are required to make up an Ice Age (as the Pleistocene). The land is subject to erosion and deposition by this process, which occurred repeatedly during the Quaternary; the process modifies landscapes and affects the level of ocean basins. These periods of colder weather are also called glacials, and the warmer periods between them interglacials. At the onset of colder weather, water is taken up into the ice-sheets and glaciers, causing a drop in sea level. Landscapes covered by ice can be recognized by the smooth rock surfaces and the U-shaped valleys formed by the ice-sheets and glaciers and the rock rubble carried along in them. As the climate warmed, the glaciers retreated, the ice melted, and the sea-level rose. The ice also deposited various forms of boulder clays, and banks of debris at the sides and ends of glaciers, known as moraines. Beyond the limits of glaciers and ice-sheets, extensive layers of outwash sands and gravels were deposited; where these deposits occur in lakes they are called varves. The periglacial zone around the margin of an ice sheet has permanently frozen subsoil, and is occupied by cold-loving plants and animals. Erosion was mainly brought about by solifluxion. The low temperatures and the constant freezing and thawing also affect the soil; these frost effects are called cryoturbation. Particularly characteristic are ice-wedges, polygonal cracks in the ground frequently recognizable in air photographs. They were caused by the shrinking of the ground at low temperatures and the filling of the cracks with water, which subsequently expanded on freezing to open the crack still further. The last two million years have been marked by a series of such glaciations. Broad correlations between the glaciation schemes in different parts of Europe and North America exist. Four Ice Ages have been figured; in Europe, the First Glaciation was at a climax 550,000 years ago. This gradually gave way to the First Interglacial (Gunz-Mindel) Period lasting about 60,000 years in which warm conditions again prevailed. The Second Glaciation came along with its climax 450,000 years ago, and the Second Interglacial Period (Mindel-Riss) followed, lasting 200,000 years. The Third Glacial Period (Riss) climax 185,000 years ago was relieved by 60,000 years of interglacial warmth. The Fourth (Wurm) and last Ice Age was at its height 72,000 years ago. The term has also commonly been used to describe the periods of generally cold climate which occurred at intervals during the Quaternary period. It is, however, now clear that ice-sheets grew only during parts of these so-called 'glacials' (e.g., the Devensian). For this reason, the term 'cold stage' is preferable.
Grimes Graves: SYNONYMS OR RELATED TERMS: Grime's Graves
CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: The oldest known Neolithic flint mine in England, in Norfolk, with the remains of around 350 mine shafts. The high-quality flint had three banks: floorstone, wallstone, and topstone. The products, mainly ax blades, were roughly chipped to shape at the site and were then traded in semi-finished condition. The miners used flint tools, deer's antlers as picks or wedges, and animal shoulder blades as spades. Excavation was probably by wooden shovel (a product of the polished ax and chisel) or possibly the shoulder blades of oxen. It is estimated that 50,000 picks made of red-deer antler were used during the 600 years of activity in the mine, which began about 2300 BC. In one shaft, the miners made a chalk statuette of a fat pregnant woman and a phallus of chalk; this practice, a fertility cult, was used to bring fruitful results in further mining. There are differing dates for the use of the mine shafts.
Kokorevo: CATEGORY: site; culture
DEFINITION: Six Upper Palaeolithic sites on the Yenisei River in southern Siberia. Radiocarbon dates put Kokorevo I-IV between 15,900-12940 bp. There are wedge-shaped microcores, microblades, sidescrapers, and retouched blades. Level I is Kokorevo culture, II and III are Afontova culture. The Kokorevo culture is dated to c 20,000-10,000 BP and included endscrapers.
Krasnyj Yar: CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: Upper Palaeolithic site in south-central Siberia, occupied from around the Last Glacial Maximum of 25,000-14,000 bp. The artifacts include wedge-shaped microcores, microblades, points, and endscrapers.
Lough Gur: CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: A series of 16 Neolithic and Early Bronze Age settlement sites around the shores of a lake in Limerick, Ireland, one of the greatest concentrations of sites in Ireland. There were rectangular Neolithic houses, some associated with Beaker pottery. Some are enclosed by a double ring of stones, dated to c 2600 bc. There are also megalithic chambered tombs and stone circles nearby. Ritual or funerary monuments include menhirs, a wedge-shaped gallery grave, a flat-topped cairn with urn burials, and a circle of contiguous stones which yielded Late Neolithic and Early Bronze Age pottery. There are also several cashels and a crannog.
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.
Majninskaya: CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: Upper Palaeolithic site on the Uj River near its confluence with the Yenisei in Siberia. The occupations dated from c 19,000-9000 bp. Artifacts include wedge-shaped microcores, sidescrapers, endscrapers, bone points, and an anthropomorphous figurine.
microblade: CATEGORY: lithics
DEFINITION: A small, narrow stone blade, ranging from less than 5-11 millimeters wide and about 15-45 mm long. They were often made from a conical or wedge-shaped microcore, often punch-struck or pressure-flaked. Microblades were often retouched into various forms of microliths. Microblades are found in the Upper Palaeolithic industries of Eurasia and in the Upper Palaeolithic of Siberia, but are also characteristic of the Mesolithic and later industries of the circumpolar regions. Examples are the Eastern Gravettian, Dyuktai culture, and the Arctic Small Tool Tradition.
Nderit ware: SYNONYMS OR RELATED TERMS: Gumban A
CATEGORY: ceramics
DEFINITION: First discovered at Stable's Drift on the Nderit River, south of Lake Nakuru in the central Rift Valley of Kenya, Nderit ware is a widespread variety of pottery which may predate the florescence of the Pastoral Neolithic in the area. It is one of several distinct pottery wares associated with the Pastoral Neolithic in Kenya and northern Tanzania. It is characterized by finely executed, wedge-shaped decoration, apparently made by means of repeated impressions of a pointed object such as obsidian; it is also often deeply scored on the inside surface of the vessel. In northern Kenya, the pottery occurs at least as early as the 3rd millennium BC. Further to the south, Nderit ware only occurs with other pottery traditions.
opus reticulatum: CATEGORY: structure
DEFINITION: A Roman construction technique consisting of blocks which are laid on a concrete core so that the edges are placed on a diagonal and produce a crisscross pattern. It is a technical term used by Vitruvius c 30 BC to describe the diamond pattern of square stones that was often used as a decorative facing to an inner rough concrete core. Opus reticulatum came into vogue in the 1st century BC and remained until the time of Hadrian (AD 117). The construction was like that of opus incertum but the pieces of stone were pyramid-shaped with square bases set diagonally in rows and wedged into the concrete walls.
Paleo-Arctic tradition: CATEGORY: culture
DEFINITION: A tradition grouping industries of the Early Holocene in the western Arctic, including American Paleo-Arctic and Siberian Paleo-Arctic which are derived from Siberian Upper Paleolithic. Common features are blades and microblades, small wedge-shaped cores of campus" type various kinds of bifaces in varying degrees foliated end scrapers side scrapers and often burins of thick flakes."
periglacial: CATEGORY: chronology
DEFINITION: A term describing cold-climate processes and landforms, an environment with severe frost in non-glacial conditions and have much ground ice, mass movements, and strong winds. It applies to the region surrounding a glacial area and regions immediately beyond the ice-front during a glaciation. In a periglacial zone, part of the ground is perennially frozen. This so-called permafrost layer is covered by a layer which thaws and freezes seasonally, the active layer. Such seasonal changes give rise to several processes, some of which sort the constituents of the active layer and are collectively known as cryoturbation. A variety of landforms, including involutions, ice wedges, and pingos, are formed in the active layer and permafrost. Hillslopes become mantled with frost-shattered rubble that move downslope during cycles of freezing and thawing. Rivers are usually seasonal in the periglacial zone, and erosion by frost action is dominant. Wind erosion and deposition is often an important factor, and caused the formation of the huge deposits of loess and cover-sands in Europe and Asia. The periglacial zone is of interest because it would have been the environment in which man lived for long periods of time during the Devensian/Weichselian cold stage. During the coldest periods of the Quaternary (the last 1,600,000 years), the periglacial zone was enlarged to approximately twice its present size.
pie chart: CATEGORY: measure
DEFINITION: A graph that shows relative abundances by the area of wedges in a circle.
piece esquillee: SYNONYMS OR RELATED TERMS: splintered piece
CATEGORY: artifact
DEFINITION: A type of flaked stone artifact manufactured by the bipolar percussion technique. Generally characterized by a lenticular or wedge-shaped cross-section; opposed bifacial crushing, battering and hinge-fracturing; and frequently relatively long columnar blade-like" flake scars."
polished tool: SYNONYMS OR RELATED TERMS: ground stone tool
CATEGORY: lithics
DEFINITION: Any artifact made by the pecking or grinding of hard stones. The Neolithic Period was the first widespread used of polished rock tools, notably axes, with the adoption of a new technique of stoneworking. The revolutionary method used to create polished tools was essentially a finishing process that slicked a chipped tool by rubbing it on or with an abrasive rock to remove the scars of the chipping process that had produced the rough tool. Not only was the edge keener, but the smooth sides of the edge also promoted deeper penetration, with the added advantage of easier tool extraction from a deep wedged cut.
stylus: SYNONYMS OR RELATED TERMS: stilus; plural styli, styluses
CATEGORY: artifact; language
DEFINITION: Pointed writing instrument made from a variety of materials: reed stem, bone, ivory, or metal (iron, bronze, silver). The sharpened implement is shaped like a pen with a wedge-shaped tip and one end flattened like a spatula; the latter served either to spread the wax on a writing tablet or to erase by smoothing. The stylus was used in ancient times as a tool for writing on parchment or papyrus. The early Greeks incised letters on wax-covered boxwood tablets using a stylus. A stylus was also used for impressing cuneiform writing into wet clay tablets, which were then baked.
talus: CATEGORY: geology
DEFINITION: Rock fragments transported downslope by flowing water or falling off the cliff from which they were wedged by the ice and accumulating as angular debris at the base of steep slopes. A natural slope formed by the accumulation of rock debris.
Ugaritic: CATEGORY: language
DEFINITION: An extinct Semitic language spoken and written from at least the middle of 2nd millennium BC at Ugarit and the surrounding area. It belonged to a western group of Semitic languages (i.e. Arabic, Hebrew) and was conveyed alphabetically -- the earliest alphabet for which we have a complete record. The cuneiform writing system used on the Syrian coast from the 15th-13th century BC. It was unique, though possibly patterned after the North Semitic alphabet. Ugaritic was written from left to right; its 30 symbols included 3 syllabic signs for vowels. Documents in Ugaritic are written on clay tablets with a wedge-shaped stylus and date from the 15th-14th century BC.
Ushki Lake: SYNONYMS OR RELATED TERMS: Ushki
CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: Five sites in Kamchatka, Siberia, with Neolithic levels overlying Upper Palaeolithic. Wedge-shaped cores and sidescrapers have been dated to the early Holocene c 8790 bp. A Dyuktai culture assemblage is dated to c 10,760-10360 bp. The lowest layer is c 14,300-13,600 bp with stemmed bifacial points and perforated stone ornaments. Hearths and a burial were excavated in this level, with red ochre surviving. This is the only Palaeolithic site in Siberia to represent a tundra rather than a forest adaptation.
writing: CATEGORY: language
DEFINITION: Any system for symbolizing the symbols of a language. Writing was developed independently several times in different places and both the writing materials and the types of script show great variation. The earliest true writing developed in southern Mesopotamia in the 4th millennium BC Uruk culture. The writing material was clay; it was first inscribed and later impressed with a stylus to produce the wedge-shaped cuneiform signs. The earliest signs were pictograms ('picture writing', in which the signs represent stylized pictures of the objects in question), but these rapidly developed into ideograms (the signs indicated not only the original object, but also associated objects or concepts). The Egyptian hieroglyphic script, used for inscriptions on stone, painting on walls, and also writing on papyrus, appears well before 3000 BC. There is dispute as to whether the Egyptians developed writing independently or whether the art was diffused from Mesopotamia. The Harappan Civilization of the Indus Valley had a writing system of its own, dated to the second half of the 3rd millennium BC and is found almost exclusively on stamp seals and seal impressions. It has not been deciphered. The first true alphabet, with signs for individual letters, seems to have developed in the Levant, probably in the first half of the 2nd millennium BC. The first definite evidence comes from Ugarit in the mid-2nd millennium BC. The Phoenicians spread the alphabet throughout the Mediterranean and theirs is ancestral to most of the alphabets in use today. In China, writing developed independently, first appearing on oracle bones of the Shang dynasty. In Europe the only pre-Classical writing occurs in the Aegean in the 2nd millennium BC -- the hieroglyphic and Linear A scripts of the Minoans, as yet undeciphered, and the Linear B of the Mycenaeans, used to record an early form of Greek. The development of writing in the Americas occurred only in Mesoamerica -- the glyphic writing of the Maya and related groups, found in inscriptions carved on monuments, and the pictographic writing of Post-Classic groups such as the Mixtecs and Aztecs, found on manuscripts of bark or deerskin known as codices.

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