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Abejas phase

CATEGORY: chronology
DEFINITION: The first important agricultural phase in the Tehuacan Valley of Mexico, dating 3500-1500 BC, after the introduction of maize.

Ajuerado phase

CATEGORY: chronology
DEFINITION: The earliest phase of pre-village, pre-agriculture in Tehuacan Valley, Mexico, from c 7200-7000 BC. There was hunting and gathering.

Coxcatlán phase

CATEGORY: culture
DEFINITION: Occupation phase of Mexico's Tehuacán Valley from c 5500-4500 BC. Maize first appeared, though wild and semi-domesticated plants were still eaten along with small game.

El Riego phase

CATEGORY: culture
DEFINITION: The occupation phase of c 7000-5500 BC in Tehuacán Valley, Mexico, with a hunter-gatherer society. Squash, chili peppers, and avocados may have been domesticated by the very small population.

Erligang phase

SYNONYMS OR RELATED TERMS: Erh-li-kang
CATEGORY: culture
DEFINITION: A stage of the early Bronze Age in North China seen in two strata at Zhengzhou Erligang, classified archaeologically as Middle Shang. The phase preceded the Anyang period (c 1300-1030 BC) and radiocarbon dates have been c 1600-1550 bc. The massive rammed-earth fortification, 118 feet wide at its base and enclosing an area of 1.2 square miles, would have taken 10,000 men more than 12 years to build. Also found were ritual bronzes, including four monumental tetrapods, palace foundations; workshops for bronze casting, pot making, and bone working; burials; and two inscribed fragments of oracle bones. The Erligang phase may correspond to the widest sway of the Shang empire and is known for its highly developed bronze-casting industry. Some Chinese archaeologists call the phase Early Shang.

Meillacoid phase

SYNONYMS OR RELATED TERMS: Melliac
CATEGORY: culture; ceramics
DEFINITION: One of two ceramic series (the other being Chicoid) which emerged from the Ostinoid series. Originating in Haiti, it remained largely confined to the western Greater Antilles. Sites are usually village shell middens, but are often close to good agricultural land. The characteristic pottery is thin and hard but with a rough surface texture and simple incision, sometimes combined with appliquéd strips. The dates are usually within 850-1000 AD, although some sites in central Cuba endured to as late as 1500.

Phase I survey

SYNONYMS OR RELATED TERMS: Phase I
CATEGORY: technique
DEFINITION: An exploratory survey of an area to determine location and boundaries of any historic or archaeological site potentially eligible for the National Register of Historic Places.

Phase II testing

SYNONYMS OR RELATED TERMS: Phase II
CATEGORY: technique
DEFINITION: A thorough investigation of an historic or archaeological site to make recommendations regarding its eligibility for listing on the National Register of Historic Places.

Phase III data recovery

SYNONYMS OR RELATED TERMS: Phase III
CATEGORY: technique
DEFINITION: An excavation of an historic or archaeological site listed or eligible for listing on the National Register of Historic Places prior to its demolition for new construction.

Prairie phase

CATEGORY: culture
DEFINITION: Early Woodland-Middle Woodland group in southwestern Wisconsin, dated to c 100 AD. Prairie Ware, sandy-paste vessels with incised, corded, and fingernail-punctated decoration, was associated with it.

Purron phase

CATEGORY: chronology; culture
DEFINITION: In the Tehuacán Valley, Mexico, a phase, c 2300-1500 BC, with food collecting and plant cultivation. The dates fall between the end of the Abejas and start of the Ajalpan phases. In the Purron phase, the first pottery was produced in vessel forms that duplicate earlier stone vessels.

Weeden Island phase

CATEGORY: culture
DEFINITION: A culture following Middle Woodland and preceding Mississippian that occupied much of north Florida, southwest Georgia, and southeast Alabama c 200-1000 AD. The pottery is among the finest of the eastern US.

phase

CATEGORY: term; technique
DEFINITION: A term generally referring to an archaeological unit defined by artifacts and cultural traits that distinguish it from other units. It is an archaeological unit defined by characteristic groupings of culture traits that can be identified precisely in time and space. It lasts for a relatively short time and is found at one or more sites in a locality or region. Therefore, it is an interval of time in the archaeological record, especially a relatively limited time within a specific locality or region and often used to represent a distinct prehistoric people. The archaeologist abstracts the phase from a number of components which occupy a certain area in space and the same span in time and which share many or most of their distinctive features with each other. These components may represent units as small as tribal camps or as large as cities. It is similar to "focus" in the Midwestern Taxonomic System and to "culture" in the Old World.

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A Group

SYNONYMS OR RELATED TERMS: A Horizon, A-Group
CATEGORY: culture
DEFINITION: A term created by American archaeologist George Reisner to refer to a semi-nomadic Nubian Neolithic culture of the mid-fourth to early third millennium BC. The term has evolved into a horizon because there was also a C Group and the term was misleading that there were two separate ethnic groups rather than two phases of Nubian material culture. Traces of the A group which may have evolved from the Abkan culture survive throughout Lower Nubia. An important site is Afyeh near Aswan Sayala and Qustul. There is evidence among the grave goods that the A Group was engaged in regular trade with the Egyptians of the Predynastic and Early Dynastic periods. The A Group was eventually replaced by the C Group during the Old Kingdom. The existence of a B Group has now been rejected.

Abu Hureyra, Tell

CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: A small tell on the Euphrates River, 120 km east of Aleppo in Syria. The site was excavated in 1972-73 prior to flooding by the Tabqua/Tabqa Dam. Two major phases of occupation were found: Mesolithic or Epi-Palaeolithic (early 9th millennium BC) to a Pre-Pottery Neolithic B Culture in the 6th millennium. There was a long period of abandonment in the 7th millennium and then a final abandonment c 5800 BC. The site depicted a transition from gathering to cultivation, including large quantities of einkorn wheat, and from hunting to herding (sheep and goats, also gazelle and onager). The Neolithic settlement was of enormous size, larger than any other recorded site of this period - even Çatal Hüyük. In the uppermost levels, a dark burnished pottery appeared.

Acheulian

SYNONYMS OR RELATED TERMS: Acheulean, Acheulian industry
CATEGORY: chronology; culture
DEFINITION: A European culture of the Lower Palaeolithic period named for Saint-Acheul, a town in northern France, the site of numerous stone artifacts from the period. The conventional borderline between Abbevillian and Acheulian is marked by a technological innovation in the working of stone implements, the use of a flaking tool of soft material (wood, bone, antler) in place of a hammerstone. This culture is noted for its hefty multipurpose, pointed (or almond-shaped) hand axes, flat-edged cleaving tools, and other bifacial stone tools with multiple cutting edges. The Acheulian flourished in Africa, western Europe, and southern Asia from over a million years ago until less than 100,000 and is commonly associated with Homo erectus. This progressive tool industry was the first to use regular bifacial flaking. The term Epoque de St Acheul was introduced by Gabriel de Mortillet in 1872 and is still used occasionally, but after 1925 the idea of epochs began to be supplanted by that of cultures and traditions and it is in this sense that the term Acheulian is more often used today. The earliest assemblages are often rather similar to the Oldowan at such sites as Olduvai Gorge. Subsequent hand-ax assemblages are found over most of Africa, southern Asia and western and southern Europe. The earliest appearance of hand axes in Europe is still refereed to by some workers as Abbevillian, denoting a stage when hand axes were still made with crude, irregular devices. The type site, near Amiens in the Somme Valley contained large hand ax assemblages from around the time of the penultimate interglacial and the succeeding glacial period (Riss), perhaps some 200,000 to 300,000 years ago. Acheulian hand axes are still found around the time of the last interglacial period, and hand axes are common in one part of the succeeding Mousterian period (the Mousterian of Acheulian tradition) down to as recently as 40,000 years ago. Acheulian is also used to describe the period when this culture existed. In African terminology, the entire series of hand ax industries is called Acheulian, and the earlier phases of the African Acheulian equate with the Abbevillian of Europe.

Ain Mallaha

SYNONYMS OR RELATED TERMS: Eynan
CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: A large village of the early Natufian period near Lake Huleh in Upper Jordan. The three phases contain 50 large circular houses and open areas with storage pits. The well-built houses suggest a permanent occupation. The economy was probably based on the hunting and herding of gazelle and other large animals, fishing, and harvesting cereals. Many of the houses had paved stone floors and a central stone-lined hearth.

Alaca Hüyük

CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: A tell site in north central Turkey, near Boghaz Köy and 150 km east of Ankara, that was occupied in the 4th, 3rd, and 2nd millennia BC. Its Chalcolithic and Copper Age phases include a cemetery of 13 extremely rich tombs from c 2500 BC (Early Bronze Age II). The burials were single and double inhumations in rectangular pits, with fine metalwork including copper figurines (thought to be mounts from funeral standards), sun discs, ornaments, weapons, jugs and goblets, diadems, bracelets, and beads. The quantity of gold and copper imply that this was a royal cemetery. The tombs were lined with rough stone and skulls and hooves of animals were hung from the wooden beams as part of the funeral rite. The site was later reoccupied under the Hittites, who erected a monumental gateway with two great stone sphinxes. It has been tentatively identified as the Hittite holy city of Arinna.

Ali Kosh

CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: An early farming site near Deh Luran in southwestern Iran, occupied c 7500-5600 BC. It was the first excavated farming site where significant quantities of plant remains were collected using the flotation technique, a landmark in the study of farming origins. The earliest phase, named Bus Mordeh and dated c 7500-6750 BC is characterized by simple mud-brick buildings and a combination of wild and domesticated foods, some herding, and the catching of fish. The succeeding phase, Ali Kosh and dated c 6770-6000 BC had similar plants and animals, hunting and fishing, but a decline in wild plant foods which points to more successful cereal cultivation. The buildings were much more substantial in this period. The final phase, Muhammed Jaffar and dated c 6000-5600, saw the introduction of pottery and ground stone. The evidence shows some strain of over-exploitation and by the mid-6th millennium BC, the area was abandoned. The site illustrates the transition from food gathering to food production and the improvement of house-building quality.

Almizaraque

SYNONYMS OR RELATED TERMS: Almeria
CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: A native site in southeast Spain belonging to the Copper Age Los Millares culture. Oval houses were surrounded by ditches and there is a nearby megalithic tomb, similar to those of Los Millares. Baker pottery appears in later phases.

Altin-Depe

SYNONYMS OR RELATED TERMS: Altin-depe
CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: A large Chalcolithic and Bronze Age site in southern Turkmenistan which is similar to Namazga-Depe. The urban phase of the early 2nd millennium BC has a large artisans' quarter where there is evidence for specialized pottery production. The residential quarter has rich grave goods, including jewelry of precious and semi-precious stones and metals and imported materials. There is a complex of monumental structures which are similar to the ziggurats of Mesopotamia, with three main periods of construction. The settlement declined early in the 2nd millennium BC and was abandoned mid-millennium.

Amarna period

CATEGORY: chronology
DEFINITION: A phase in the late 18th Dynasty, including the reigns of Akhenaten, Smenkhkare, Tutankhamun, and Ay (1379-1352 BC), when important religious and artistic changes took place. The name is derived from the site of Akhenaten's capital at Tell el-Amarna.

Amuq

CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: A swampy plain in northern Syria east of Antioch (Antakya) at the foot of the Amanus mountains and beside the Orontes River at the northeast corner of the Mediterranean Sea. Its important sites Tayanat (Neolithic-Chalcolithic), Atchana (Copper Age to Hittite), and Antioch (Hellenistic and Roman). The plain is rich in tell settlements of the prehistoric and later periods. The basic prehistoric sequence for the area has phases designated by letters, as 'Amuq A represents the Early Neolithic.

Amur Neolithic

CATEGORY: culture
DEFINITION: A number of Neolithic cultures recognized near the Amur River in eastern Siberia. They are mainly defined by the presence of pottery. In the Middle Amur region, the earliest phase is known as the Novopetrovka blade culture. Later is the Gromatukha culture, with unifacially flaked adzes, bifacially flaked arrowheads, and laurel-leaf knives and spearheads. Settlements on Osinovoe Lake, which are characterized by large pit houses, date to around the 3rd millennium BC. Millet was cultivated, representing the first food production in the area, and there was fishing. A fourth Neolithic culture in the area, dating to the mid-2nd millennium BC was a combination of farming and fishing by people who moved there from the Lower Amur area. The Neolithic of the Lower Amur is known from sites such as Kondon, Suchu Island, and Voznesenovka. Fishing provided the economic basis for the establishment of unusually large sedentary settlements of pit houses - a situation paralleling the examples from the Northwest coast of North America. In the 1st millennium BC, iron was introduced and fortified villages constructed. In Middle Amur, millet farming became the lifeway.

Anlo

CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: A site in Holland with a long sequence of occupation, starting with the Funnel Beaker culture. It was followed by a cattle enclosure during the Late Neolithic (protruding foot beaker) people, then a cemetery of five flat graves with foot beakers and bell beakers with cord ornament. The next phase was a settlement with late varieties of Beaker pottery, followed by a Middle Bronze Age plow soil, and a Late Bronze Age urnfield.

Anza

SYNONYMS OR RELATED TERMS: Anzabegovo
CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: A large settlement of the First Neolithic and Early Vinca periods of Macedonia near the Bregnalnica River. Excavations have revealed a four-phase occupation c 5300-4200 BC. There was cultivation of emmer and wheat as well as some herding. The architecture was mud brick walls to wattle-and-daub timber-framed houses. The artifacts are similar to those found in northern Greece and the Anatolian Late Neolithic.

Arad

CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: A city in southern Israel west of the Dead Sea named for Biblical Arad and having ruins visible at Tel 'Arad, just a few miles northeast. First excavated in 1962, 'Arad has three separate phases of occupation. The first settlement was in the Chalcolithic period with a walled city at the beginning of the 3d millennium BC, which was destroyed by c 2700 BC. Imported Egyptian pottery was found in that phase. A resettlement occurred in the Early Bronze I and II phases and a succession of walled citadels and a temple have been found as well as ostraca (inscribed pottery). The last period of occupation was confined to a citadel on the highest part of the earlier town and it was occupied from the 12th-11th centuries BC. It served as a southern frontier post of the kingdom of Judah. There was a sanctuary for the worship of Yahweh. There were also citadels on this site in the Hellenistic and Roman periods. The Book of Numbers (21:1-3) tells how the Canaanite king of 'Arad fought the Israelites during the exodus from Egypt, but his cities were utterly destroyed by Israel's armies. The city's name appears on the Temple of Amon al-Karnak Egypt in the inscription of Pharaoh Sheshonk I first ruler of the 22nd Dynasty (reigned c 945-924 BC).

Argar, El

CATEGORY: site; culture
DEFINITION: An Early Bronze Age settlement near Almeria in southeast Spain that is the type site of a culture of the 2nd millennium BC. The settlement was fortified and contained rectangular stone houses, though little has been recovered as they are not as well-preserved as the Argaric sites Ifre and El Oficio. The settlement also contained 950 interments, with the earliest in cists and later switching to jar burial. Grave goods in the cist burial phase included daggers, halberds, and wristguards. In the jar burials, there was also faience, and swords and axes of copper or bronze and gold and silver ornaments. Silver was more common in this area than anywhere else in Europe at the time. The pottery of this culture was plain burnished in simple shapes. The Agaric culture, which developed trading with eastern Mediterranean centers, reached its peak between 1700-1000 BC and spread through the central, southern, and Levantine regions and to the Balearic Islands. The area may owe its origin to immigration from western Greece.

Argissa

CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: An important Neolithic site in Thessaly, northern Greece, which has given much information on the early phases of the Greek Aceramic Neolithic period. In the Argissa Magula near Larissa, there have been early prepottery Neolithic finds of probably the 6th millennium BC. Timber-framed huts consisted of shallow mud-walled pits that were likely roofed with branches. Obsidian was already being traded and flint tools were made. The earliest known domesticated cattle date from about 6000 BC at Argissa (and Nea Nikomedeia) in Greece, in association with cultivated einkorn, emmer wheat, and barley, millet, lentils. Sheep, goats, and pigs were also cultivate and kept. This site (along with Knossos) is also responsible for the earliest evidence of agriculture, soon after 7000 BC. The site was occupied throughout the Neolithic and well into the Bronze Age.

Asprochaliko

SYNONYMS OR RELATED TERMS: Asprochalico
CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: A large Palaeolithic rock shelter near Ioánnina, in Epirus, northwest Greece. There are Mousterian phases, an earlier one with carefully retouched tools and use of the Levallois technique, and a later phase with small tools. The Upper Palaeolithic levels of backed blades include one radiocarbon-dated to c 26,000 BC (24,000 ? 1000 BC). In the final stage (11,7000 ? 260 BC), geometric microliths and microburins appeared alongside the backed blades. Occupation ended around 9000 BC.

Atchana, Tell

SYNONYMS OR RELATED TERMS: ancient Alalakh
CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: A mound on the Amuq plain of northern Syria (southeastern Turkey), next to the River Orontes and identified as the ancient city of Alalakh with occupation levels from the 4th-late 2nd millennium BC. Seventeen building phases spanned c 3400-1200 BC, including a long Copper Age, a period as an independent state, and one as a provincial capital of the Hittites. There was a mix of cultural influences from Mesopotamia and the Aegean. Atchana was wealthy from trade and from the timber of the Amanus Mountains. Woolley discovered the remains of a small kingdom of largely Hurrian population. In level VII, dated to the 18th and 17th centuries BC, was the palace of Yaram-Lim II (Yamhad) demonstrating an early form of Syrian architecture in which stone, timber and mud-brick were all used. Another palace was excavated in level IV, of the late 15th and early 14th centuries, belonging to Niqmepa, with rooms around a central court and a large number of tablets in Akkadian cuneiform. The tablets describe trading with cities such as Ugarit and the Hittite capital Hattusas, involving food products such as wheat, wine, and olive oil. Later in the 14th century the city fell to the Hittites and became a provincial capital of the Hittite empire. It was eventually abandoned after destruction c 1200 BC, perhaps at the hands of the Peoples Of The Sea.

Atlantic period

SYNONYMS OR RELATED TERMS: Atlantic phase, Atlantic climatic period
CATEGORY: chronology
DEFINITION: In Europe, a climatic optimum following the Boreal, the warmest period of the Holocene. 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.

Azmak, Tell

SYNONYMS OR RELATED TERMS: Asmaska Moghila
CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: A tell site in southern Bulgaria of the Neolithic and Copper Age. Several settlement horizons, building levels of early Neolithic Karanovo I culture, building levels of Karanovo V and VI cultures, and building phases of Early Bronze Age Karanovo VII culture have been unearthed. The layouts of the villages may yield architectural detail for the whole sequence.

B Group

SYNONYMS OR RELATED TERMS: B Horizon
CATEGORY: culture
DEFINITION: A term no longer used to describe the final stages of the Neolithic A Group in Nubia (c 2800-2300 BC), prior to the beginning of the C Group phase. In soils, the B horizon lies immediately beneath the A horizon and may reach a depth of 65 to 90 centimeters (26 to 35 inches). It is a zone of more moderate weathering in which there is an accumulation of many of the products removed from the A horizon.

Badarian

CATEGORY: culture
DEFINITION: An Upper Egyptian, Predynastic culture of the later 5th millennium BC, named for the type site of el-Badari, on the east bank of the Nile River. It extended over much of Middle Egypt also. Excavations during the 1920s revealed settlements and cemeteries dating to about 4000 BC (Neolithic). Their fine pottery, black-topped brown ware (later red), was very thin-walled, well-baked, and often decorated with a burnished ripple. This effect was apparently produced by firing it inverted to prevent the air from circulating inside and over the upper rim, keeping these areas black whereas the base and lower wall externally were oxidized to brown or a good red color. Other remains include combs and spoons of ivory, slate palettes, female figurines; and copper, shell, and stone beads. Badarian materials have also been found at Jazirat Armant, al-Hammamiyah, Hierakonpolis (modern Kawm al-Ahmar), al-Matmar, and Tall al-Kawm al-Kabir. Flinders Petrie and other found large numbers of graves with artifacts in 1893-1894 and divided it into two phases: Naqada Culture I and Naqada Culture II.

Baden

SYNONYMS OR RELATED TERMS: Baden-Pécel; Ossarn or Pecel culture; Channeled Ware or Radial-decorated pottery culture
CATEGORY: culture
DEFINITION: A third millennium Copper Age culture over much of central Europe (the Carpathian basin: northern Yugoslavia, all of Hungary, most of Czechoslovakia, southern Poland, and parts of Austria and Germany). Ancient Baden was occupied by Celts and then by Germanic peoples and was conquered by Rome in the 1st century AD. It was a successor to the Lengyel culture. They produced metal tools including ax-hammers and torcs of twisted copper wire. The pottery was plain and dark, but some have channeled decoration and handles of Ansa Lunata type. The horse was domesticated and carts mounted on four solid disk-wheels were used. Baden had contacts with the Early Bronze Age cultures of the Aegean. It was named for the town of Baden, near Vienna. A radiocarbon chronology has divided the Baden culture into three phases: Early (2750-2450 BC), Classic (2600-2250 BC), and Late (2400-2200 BC). The most complete sequences are in Hungary and Czechoslovakia. Baden was remarkable at the time because it had a highly dispersed settlement pattern and a central cemetery pattern.

Bahía

CATEGORY: culture
DEFINITION: A phase in Ecuador's culture, dating c 500 BC - 500 AD that was discovered on La Plata Island (Manabi). Large pyramidal platform mounds, helmeted figurines, spouted jars, and incised pottery have been found and evidence of polychrome painting and metallurgy. Houses with saddle roofs (low, downward-curving roof ridges), pottery head/neck rests, figurines with one leg crossed over the other, Pan pipes graduated towards the center and ear plugs shaped like golf tees were unique to the culture - but they have parallels in southeast Asia. It has been suggested that they were introduced into Ecuador by voyagers from across the Pacific. Particularly elaborate anthropomorphic vessels give information on dress and ornamentation (nose discs and tusk-like pendants). Bahia was a well-developed socio-political and religious unit. The La Plata Island site was probably a ceremonial center as there is little evidence of daily living. Unfortunately, many sites have already been lost to modern development.

Baikal Neolithic

CATEGORY: chronology; culture
DEFINITION: The Neolithic period of the Lake Baikal region in eastern Siberia. Stratified sites in the area show a long, gradual move from the Palaeolithic to Neolithic stage, starting in the 4th millennium BC. The Postglacial culture was not "true" Neolithic in that it farmed but Neolithic in the sense of using pottery. It was actually a Mongoloid hunting-and-fishing culture (except in southern Siberia around the Aral Sea) with a microlithic flint industry with polished-stone blade tools together with antler bone and ivory artifacts; pointed- or round-based pottery and the bow and arrow. Points and scrapers made on flakes of Mousterian aspect and pebble tools showing a survival of the ancient chopper-chopping tool tradition of eastern Asia have also been found. There was a woodworking and quartzite industry and some cattle breeding. The first bronzes of the region are related to the Shang period of northern China and the earliest Ordos bronzes. The area covers the mountainous regions from Lake Baikal to the Pacific Ocean and the taiga (coniferous forest) and tundra of northern Siberia. A first stage is name for the site Isakovo and is known only from a small number of burials in cemeteries. The succeeding Serovo stage is also known mainly from burials with the addition of the compound bow backed with bone plates. The third phase named Kitoi has burials with red ochre and composite fish hooks possibly indicate more fishing. The succeeding Glazkovo phase of the 2nd millennium BC saw the beginnings of metal-using but generally showed continuity in artifact and burial types. Some remains of semi-subterranean dwellings with centrally located hearths occur together with female statuettes in bone.

Baile Herculane

CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: A large cave site in Rumania where flint implements from the Paleolithic Period (about 2,500,000 years ago) and Neolithic objects were found. There is important Palaeolithic, Mesolithic, Neolithic and Copper Age stratigraphy comprising three main occupation horizons: Upper Palaeolithic levels corresponding to the Würm II phase and defined by a quartzite industry with end scrapers; a late Mesolithic level with microlithic flints, crude quartzite tools, and Danube fish bones; and levels of Late Copper Age occupation.

Banawali

CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: A site in northern Indiana with occupation between 2500-1500 BC. The earliest settlement had pottery similar to Early Harappan. A second phase was urban with residential blocks on regular streets and Mature Harappan-type pottery. The third phase had pottery comparable to Late Harappan wares (Bara ware, Late Siswal ware, ochre-colored pottery).

Baradostian

CATEGORY: culture
DEFINITION: An Upper Palaeolithic flint industry following the Mousterian in northern Iraq and Iran, with the type site in a cave at Shanidar. It has radiocarbon dates c 30,000 BC and may have begun as early as 36,000 BC. The Baradostian was replaced by a local Upper Palaeolithic industry called the Zarzian (12,000-10,000 BC), probably caused by the extreme cold of the last phase of the Würm glaciation. The Zarzian marks the end of the Iranian Paleolithic sequence that preceded various Mesolithic developments in the Middle East.

Barkaer

CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: A site of the final Early Neolithic (phase C, TRB culture) in northeast Jutland, Denmark. There was a cobbled street, two timber buildings (80 m long and divided into 26 single rooms) which were at first thought to be houses but may have been burial structures. Offerings in the pits below the buildings included amber beads, copper objects, and pottery.

Bat Cave

CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: A cave in southern New Mexico's Carlsbad Caverns National Park, notable for its evidence of prehistoric plant cultivation. The site of Bat Cave has produced specimens of a type of primitive corn that is also known from the Flacco phase in Tamaulipas at 2000 BC but that is here in association with a Chiricahua assemblage from which Cochise materials (maize and squash) have been dated at about 1000 BC. Evidence of beans (dated to 1000-400 BC) was found in association with San Pedro materials. Early levels indicate the use of primitive pod corn (dated c 3500 BC), but a cultivated form of maize was in use by 2500 BC, the earliest date for cultigens in the American Southwest. During the summer a colony of several million bats inhabits the cave.

Beidha

SYNONYMS OR RELATED TERMS: Bayda', Al-, Beida
CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: A site in south-central Yemen near Petra that was first occupied in the Early Natufian and Aceramic Neolithic. It is situated on a high plateau and, until the unification of the two Yemen states in 1990, was part of North Yemen (San'a'), though it lay near the disputed frontier with South Yemen. At first it was a semi-permanent camp which lived off goat and ibex. Beidha was reoccupied c 7000 BC by a Pre-Pottery Neolithic A [PPNA} group, who lived in a planned community of roughly circular semi-subterranean houses. They domesticated goats and cultivated emmer, wheat, and barley. There was a succeeding PPNB phase in which the buildings changed to complexes of large rectangular rooms, each with small workshops attached and with plastered floors and walls. Burials without skulls were found and there was also a separate ritual area away from the village. Finds from the site include materials from great distances, including obsidian from Anatolia and cowries and mother-of-pearl from the Red Sea.

Bel'kachi I

CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: A settlement site on the Aldan River in central Siberia, occupied during the Neolithic (c 4th millennium BC). Finds include the earliest date for pottery in Siberia, for a hand-molded, sand-tempered ware decorated with net or mat impressions. There was a succeeding phase, often known as the Bel'kachinsk culture (3rd millennium BC), which had distinctive pottery style, decorated with impressions from a cord-wrapped paddle. In that area during the Late Neolithic (2nd millennium BC), check-stamped ware, made by beating with a grooved paddle, appeared. Changes in stone and bone tools occurred during the development of the Neolithic, but throughout the economic basis remained hunting and fishing.

Boghazköy

SYNONYMS OR RELATED TERMS: Boghaz Keui, ancient Hattusas, Bogazkoy, Boghaz Koy
CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: The site of the Hittite capital of Hattusas, excavated by Hugo Winckler in the early 20th century and which yielded thousands of cuneiform tablets from which much of Hittite history was reconstructed. The capital is on a rock citadel near the Halys River in central Turkey and the site had been occupied since the Chalcolithic times. In c 1500 BC, it became the citadel of Hattusas. As the Hittites' power grew, so did their capital, all within a massive defensive wall of stone and mudbrick. Six gateways were decorated with impressive monumental carved reliefs, showing a warrior, lions, and sphinxes. Four temples have been excavated within the walls, each grouped around an open porticoed court. Two buildings housed the archives with over 10,000 inscribed clay tablets inscribed in cuneiform script and the Hittite language. A cemetery close to the city held large numbers of cremation burials, a surprisingly early occurrence of this rite. The city fell at the same time as the empire, c 1200 BC. Little is known of the Chalcolithic or Hittite Old Kingdom phases on the site; excavation has in the main concentrated on the monuments of the New Kingdom city.

Boian

CATEGORY: culture
DEFINITION: A Neolithic culture (c 7000-3500 BC, some say Middle Neolithic c 4200-3700 BC) in lower Danube valley of southern Romania and characterized by terrace-floodplain settlements, consisting at first of mud huts and later of fortified promontory settlements of small tells. The Boian phase was marked by the introduction of copper axes, the extension of agriculture, and the breeding of domestic animals. The distinctive Boian pottery was decorated by rippling, painting, and excised or incised linear designs with white paste. Intramural burial is most common, but occasional large inhumation cemeteries are known. By spreading northward into Transylvania and northeastward to Moldavia, the Boian culture gradually assimilated earlier cultures of those areas. Flourishing exchange networks are known to involve Prut Valley flint, Spondylus shells from the Black Sea, and copper.

Bouqras

CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: 7th-millennium BC Pre-Pottery Neolithic village near the River Euphrates in Syria. The first occupation phase had two levels with rectangular mud-brick houses. The next four levels had more solid mud-brick houses, some with plastered floors, benches, and pillars. The economy was based on hunting of wild animals, except in the final phase when sheep and cattle were bred. Sickle blades, pounders, and querns were used for wild or cultivated plants in the first phase. Artifacts include a white ware, made of mixed lime and ash and used to cover baskets, producing watertight vessels. Obsidian occurs in large quantities, indicating extensive trade networks linking Bouqras with the source sites in Anatolia.

Brzesc Kujawski

CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: A large settlement site in central Poland of the Lengyel culture of the early 4th millennium BC. There were about 60 trapezoidal long houses, smaller areas of one or more house clusters, and a large inhumation cemetery with double graves, animal burials, and rich copper grave goods. There were four phases of occupation.

Bubalus period

CATEGORY: chronology
DEFINITION: The earliest phase of rock art in northern Africa, between 12,000-8,000 BC, in which large-scale carvings of animals appeared. These early engravings - in southern Oran, in Algeria, and in Libya - reflect a hunting economy based on the now-extinct giant buffalo Homoioceras antiquus or Bubalus antiquus (hence the name).

Bubanj

SYNONYMS OR RELATED TERMS: Bubanj-Hum
CATEGORY: culture
DEFINITION: A Late Neolithic culture of late 4th to early 3rd millennia BC in the Morava valley of eastern Yugoslavia, close to Nis. The site, on a gravel terrace of a river, was first excavated in the 1950s and the culture is derived from the Vinca and closely related to Salcuta in Romania. The main periods recognized include the early Neolithic Starcevo with graphite painted ware and Vinca-like dark burnished ware; a phase of Baden pottery; and an Early Bronze Age occupation.

Bug-Dniester

SYNONYMS OR RELATED TERMS: Bug/Dniester
CATEGORY: culture
DEFINITION: A complex of sites in two river valleys in Russia from the 5th millennium BC. Each phase is typified by short-lived sites on river terraces, occupied year-round for 5-10 years. There was hunting, fishing and shell-collecting, and some domestication of pigs, cattle, and einkorn wheat. Pointed-base pottery evolved there.

Burzahom

CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: A Neolithic site in the Vale of Kashmir with phases of occupation dating from c 3050 BC to the 3rd-4th centuries AD. Deep pit dwellings are associated with ground stone axes, bone tools, and coarse gray burnished pottery. These characteristics plus the absence of blades, use of pierced rectangular knives, and association of dog skeletons with human burials, all seem to point to connections with central and northern Asia, as Mongolia, rather than with the rest of the Indian subcontinent. Hunting seems to have been the main basis of the economy. Phase II has houses of mud and mudbrick and Phase III has a group of large stones arranged in a rough semicircle.

Butana

CATEGORY: site; culture
DEFINITION: Seven sites in eastern Sudan, dating to 5500-4500 BP, with ceramics and stone artifacts. The cultural group belonged to the Kassala phase.

Butmir

CATEGORY: culture; site
DEFINITION: A Late Neolithic settlement near Sarajevo in Bosnia which gave its name to a culture, though the type site is not characteristic of the entire Butmir culture. The site represents a classic or late phase, defined by richly decorated ceramics (with incised meander designs) and a wide range of fired clay anthropomorphic figurines of various physical types, costume, and pathological condition. The culture was related to the Vinca culture. The Butmir culture comprises the Middle and Late Neolithic of central Bosnia, in the period c 4350-3700 BC.

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.

Can Hasan

CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: The site of a number of tells in southern Turkey. Can Hasan III was an aceramic Neolithic settlement c 6500 BC. There were at least seven structural phases, with dark burnished pottery in several levels and painted pottery in one. The villagers were agriculturists, growing einkorn and emmer, lentil, and vetch in the earlier phases. The main Can Hasan mound was occupied in the late Neolithic and Chalcolithic periods.

Cape Krusenstern

CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: The site of a national monument on the coast of the Chukchi Sea with a horizontal stratigraphy covering the whole of north Alaskan prehistory. Located on 114 ridges along ancient beach lines, the monument's remarkable archaeological sites illustrate the cultural evolution of the Arctic people, dating back some 4,000 years and continuing to modern Eskimos. There are campsites of 10 successive cultures, beginning with the Denbigh Flint Complex, followed by the Old Whaling culture, then by the Eskimo cultures known as Trails Creek-Chloris, Chloris, Norton, Near Ipiutak, Ipiutak, Birnirk, Western Thule, and late prehistoric. On the terrace behind the beaches were two more phases (Palisades I and II) which go back to c 8000 BC. The stratigraphy is visible as a sequence of strips, roughly parallel to the shoreline, with the oldest, Denbigh, being furthest from the present-day shoreline. This horizontal sequence, in combination with the vertical stratigraphy of Onion Portage, forms the most reliable chronological framework in Western Arctic prehistory.

Capsian

SYNONYMS OR RELATED TERMS: Capsian industry, Capsian Neolithic
CATEGORY: culture
DEFINITION: A Mesolithic/Stone Age (8000 BC-2700 BC) cultural complex prominent in inland northern Africa near the present border between Tunisia and Algeria. Its shell midden sites are in the area of the great salt lakes of what is now southern Tunisia, the type site being Jabal al-Maqta'. The tool kit of the Capsian is a classic example of the industries of the late Würm Glacial Period and it is apparently related to the Gravettian stage of Europe's Perigordian industry (which dates from about 17,000 years ago). However, it occurs in Neothermal (postglacial) times and, like its predecessor, the Ibero-Maurusian industry (Oranian industry), the Capsian was a microlithic tool complex. It differed from the Ibero-Maurusian, however, in having a far more varied tool kit with large backed blades, scrapers, backed bladelets, microburins, and burins in its earlier phase and a gradual development of geometric microliths later. These became its leading feature by the 6th millennium BC. Shortly after 5000 BC, pottery and domesticated animals were introduced. Some North African rock paintings are attributed to people of the Capsian industry. The Capsian Neolithic, with pointed-base pottery and a stone industry, lasted from c 6200-5300 BP, in the Atlas Mountains of Algeria and the northern Sahara. The name derives from Capsa, the Latin form of Gafsa, a town in south central Tunisia where such artifacts were first discovered. Hunting and snail-collecting seem to have formed the basis of the economy. Human remains from Capsian sites are mostly of Mechta-Afalou type.

Caso y Andrade, Alfonso (1896-1970)

CATEGORY: person
DEFINITION: Mexican archaeologist and government official who explored the early Oaxacan cultures and who excavated Tomb Seven at Monte Albán, the earliest-known North American necropolis. His discovery and analysis of the burial offerings at Tomb Seven proved that Monte Albán had been occupied by the Mixtec people after they had displaced the Zapotecs before the Spanish conquest. Caso found evidence of five major phases, dating back to the 8th century BC, and established a rough chronology through comparisons with other sites. Caso also deciphered the Mixtec Codices. He made important contributions to regional archaeology and to the interpretation of Mixtec manuscripts, Mexican calendars, and dynastic history in general. He held posts as head of the Department of Archaeology at the National Museum, director of the museum, and director of the National Institute for Indian Affairs.

Cassibile

CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: A Late Bronze Age settlement and cemetery containing 2,000 rock-cut chamber tombs near Syracuse in southeast Sicily. It is the type site of a Late Bronze Age phase - Pantalica II - of the early 1st millennium BC. The Pantalica culture was characterized by large urban settlements. Artifacts include a distinctive buff painted ware with plume or 'feather' motifs, c 1250-1000 BC, and a number of typical bronze types, including stilted and thick-arc fibulae and shaft-hole axes.

Cayla de Mailhac

CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: A site in southwestern France with a settlement and a series of cemeteries of Late Bronze Age and Early Iron Age c 700-100 BC. Occupation began with an urnfield culture. Iron became common in a second phase and a cart burial from La Redorte shows similarities to the Hallstatt Iron Age cultures. Phase III is dated to the second half of the 6th century BC by imports of Greek black figure ware and Etruscan pottery. The settlement of Phase IV was enclosed by a rampart and had houses of sun-dried brick. Datable material included Greek red figure pottery and fibula brooches of Hallstatt/early La Tène types. The last phase was of the La Tène culture.

Cayönü Tepesi

CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: A site on a tributary of the Tigris River in eastern Turkey with occupation dating from c 7500-6500 BC. There are impressive architectural remains with stone foundations and evidence of a farming and hunting community. The latest phase included domesticated sheep and goats. Einkorn wheat was cultivated as well as emmer wheat, peas, and lentils. Another important feature of this site was the very early appearance of simple copper objects, derived from closeby Ergani Maden. Also, clay bricks, baked figurines, and pottery have been found.

Chalcolithic

SYNONYMS OR RELATED TERMS: Chalcolithic period; Eneolithic, Copper Age
CATEGORY: chronology
DEFINITION: Literally, the Copper Stone Age, a period between the Neolithic (Stone Age) and the Bronze Age from 3000-2500 BC in which both stone and copper tools were used. It was a transitional phase between Stone Age technology and the Bronze Age and an increase in trade and cultural exchanges. The term is much less widely used than other divisions and subdivisions of the Three Age System partly because of the difficulty in distinguishing copper from bronze without chemical analysis partly because many areas did not have a Chalcolithic period at all.

Chedworth

CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: A site in Cotswold, southern England, with the ruins of a large Roman villa, one of the best-preserved in Britain. The villa was typical of the last years of the Roman occupation. Three phases have been found, c 100-150 AD, early 3rd century, and early 4th century.

Cheng-chou

SYNONYMS OR RELATED TERMS: Cheng Chou, Chengxian
CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: The site of the Shang dynasty capital from 1500-1200 BC, in Honan province, China on the Yellow River. Following villages of the Yang Shao and Lung Shan cultures, four phases of Shang occupation have been traced. Cemeteries of pit graves have been found and a rectangular wall enclosed an area divided into different quarters. Outside this city, in addition to remains of large public buildings, a complex of small settlements has been discovered. Since 1950 archaeological finds have shown that there were Neolithic settlements in the area. The site remained occupied after the Shang dynasty moved its capital again; Chou (post-1050 BC) tombs have also been discovered. It is thought that in the Western Chou period (1111-771 BC) it became the fief of a family named Kuan. In 605 AD it was first called Cheng-chu.

Chicanel

CATEGORY: culture
DEFINITION: A phase of the Lowland Maya Pre-Classic, the Late Formative culture of Petén, dating from 300 BC to 150 AD. It was characterized by architectural and ceramic traits which convey the rise of the Classic Maya civilization: temple-pyramids, corbelled arches, and painted murals. Their sites are quite uniform and there was a variety of ceramic forms. Chicanel pottery includes dishes with wide, grooved rims, bowls, and vessels resembling ice buckets. Figurines are absent. Temple platforms (e.g. Uaxactún) were built by facing a cemented-rubble core with thick layers of plaster. At Tikal, a huge Maya ceremonial center, the Acropolis was begun in Chicanel times, and white-stuccoed platforms and stairways with polychromed masks were much like Uaxactún. There is also a huge site, El Mirador, in the northern part of Petén. The El Mirador construction dwarfs even that of Tikal, although El Mirador only flourished through the Chicanel phase. Chicanel-like civilization is also known in Yucatán, where some temple pyramids of enormous size are datable to the Late Formative. Another important site is the cave of Loltún in Yucatán.

Chiozza

CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: A Neolithic settlement site in Emilia in northern Italy, of the later 5th or early 4th millennium BC. Structural remains are oval and circular pits. The pottery was square-mouthed and the term Chiozza is sometimes used for this type of pottery or its latter phase.

Choga Mami

CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: A settlement site of the Samarra culture in southeast Iraq with radiocarbon dates of the late 6th millennium BC. There are several occupation phases from the Samarran to the Ubaid culture. Cattle, sheep, and goats were raised and wheat, barley, and flax cultivated with the aid of irrigation. The site has buildings of mud-brick; houses were rectangular and had ranges of rooms, in two or three rows. A mud-brick tower guarded the entrance to the settlement. Artifacts include Samarran painted pottery and elaborate female figurines of clay.

Choisy-au-Bac

CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: A settlement site at the confluence of the Oise and Aisne rivers in France, occupied from the Late Bronze Age to Hallstatt D in three main phases. There is bronze-working debris and iron-working furnaces.

Christy, Henry (1810-1865)

CATEGORY: person
DEFINITION: English archaeologist and ethnologist who journeyed from Mexico Toltec remains to Hudson's Bay to the caves of southern France and who supported other excavations after a successful banking career. He assisted French archaeologist Edouard Lartet in his investigations of the series of Palaeolithic caves in southwest France, including Laugerie Haute, La Madeleine, Les Eyzies, and Le Moustier. With Christy, Lartet went on to show that the Stone Age comprised successive phases of human culture. Their research was published as "Reliquiae Aquitanicae" ("Aquitanian Remains") in 1865-1875 with money left by Christy in his will. Christy left Palaeolithic material to be divided between France and Britain and his trustees presented the rest of the ethnological collection to the British Museum together with money for future acquisitions. The Christy Collection now contains about 30 000 specimens.

Circea

CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: A settlement site of the Early Neolithic Cris in the Olt Valley of southwestern Rumania, dating from the late 6th to mid-5th millennia BC. Four main occupation phases have been found, all of which are defined by rich painted ware assemblages. Level I has some of the earliest white-on-red painted pottery of the First Temperate Neolithic and the latest level has polychrome painted pottery of Starcevo-Cris.

Cochise

CATEGORY: culture
DEFINITION: An ancient North American Indian culture that existed 9,000-2,000 years ago, in Arizona and western New Mexico. The culture was named for the ancient Lake Cochise (now Willcox Playa, Arizona), near which important finds were made. The Cochise, a local variant of the Desert Culture, contrasted with the Big-Game Hunting cultures to the east (Clovis, Folsom), and was based on the gathering and collecting wild plant foods. In later stages, there is evidence of the development of agriculture. The Cochise culture has been divided into three developmental periods. The earliest stage, Sulphur Spring, dates from 6000 or 7000 BC to about 4000 BC and is characterized by milling stones for grinding wild seeds and by various scrapers, but no knives, blades, or projectile points. Its type site has been associated with mammoth and extinct horse remains and there are some indications that hunting was done. During the second stage, Chiricahua, lasting from 4000 to perhaps 500 BC, the appearance of projectile points seems to indicate an increased interest in hunting, and the remains of a primitive form of maize in Bat Cave (NM) suggest the beginnings of farming. In the final or San Pedro stage, from 500 BC to the beginning of the Christian era, milling stones were replaced by mortars and pestles (mano and metate), and pit houses (houses of poles and earth built over pits) appeared. During the San Pedro stage, pottery appeared in the area of the Mogollon Indians. The poorly understood Cazador phase may bridge the long hiatus between Sulphur Springs and Chiricahua, but the evidence so far in inconclusive.

Coptic period

CATEGORY: chronology
DEFINITION: Chronological phase in Egypt lasting from the end of the Roman period, c 395 AD, until the Islamic conquest, c 641 AD. It is also described as the 'Christian' period and is roughly equivalent to the Byzantine period elsewhere in the Near East.

Corded Beaker culture

CATEGORY: culture
DEFINITION: A Late Neolithic culture in central and northern Europe from c 2800 BC, named after a characteristic cord-marked decoration found on pottery. The Corded beaker culture belongs to the so-called Battle-Ax cultures of Europe. There were two phases of new burial rites, with individual rather than communal burials and an emphasis on burying rich grave goods with adult males. The first phase, characterized by Corded Ware pottery and stone battle-axes, is found particularly in central and northern Europe. The second phase, dated to 2500-2200 BC, is marked by Bell Beaker pottery and the frequent occurrence of copper daggers in the graves; it is found from Hungary to Britain and as far south as Italy, Spain, and North Africa. At the same time, there was an increase in the exchange of prestige goods such as amber, copper, and tools from particular rock sources.

Coyotlatelco

CATEGORY: culture
DEFINITION: A ceramic horizon of the Early Post-Classic Period beginning in central Mesoamerica after the fall of Teothihuacan. It was a distinctive red-on-buff painted ware and appeared in the early phases of both Tula and Cholula, and is a forerunner of the late Mazpan style.

Crickley Hill

CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: A Neolithic causewayed camp and Iron age hillfort in Gloucestershire, southwest England. The site was used for several centuries and the ditches and banks were refurbished several times. The final Neolithic phase had deeper quarry ditches and a rampart faced with drystone walling at the front and a timber stockade at the back and a wooden fence on the top. There were two gateways and evidence of burning and large numbers of flint arrowheads indicate that the site was attacked and burnt down around 1500 BC. There is also a stone circle erected in the Late Neolithic. The site was abandoned for nearly two millennia, when it was once again used for a defended settlement. Two phases of Iron Age occupation are represented, probably falling between 700-500 BC. The earlier phase was characterized by rectangular houses and square storage huts, while the second phase had one large round house, smaller round buildings, and more small square huts, perhaps granaries. The site was burned down again c 500 bc and never reoccupied.

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.

Cupisnique

CATEGORY: culture; artifact
DEFINITION: A style of pottery of the north coast of Peru during the Early Horizon, and a local variant of Chavín culture. It is most often associated with graves and is characteristically a polished gray-black ware with globular bodies, stirrup spouts, and relief decoration. Early Cupisnique tends to be strongly modeled by plastic manipulation of the surface. In later phases, red and black banding, separated by incision and life modeling, especially stylized felines, appear. The style dates from 900-200 BC and gave rise to three other styles: Salinar, Gallinazo, and Vicus.

Dadunzi

SYNONYMS OR RELATED TERMS: Ta-tun-tzu
CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: A Neolithic site in Pei Xian, Jiangsu province, China, with three main levels named after the nearby sites of Qinlian'gang, Liulin, and Huating. The lowest (Qinglian'gang) level at Danunzi yielded a radiocarbon date of c 4500 BC. In the middle (Liulin) level, extraordinary painted pottery was found with the usual undecorated pots native to the local Qinglian'gang tradition. Both the shapes and the painted designs copy the Yangshao pottery of Miaodigou; radiocarbon dates suggest that the Liulin phase belongs in the 4th millennium BC. Some graves of the Liulin phase at Dadunzi contained sacrificed dogs. At Dawenkou in Shangdong, where the lower level belongs to the Huating phase, pigs appear instead, and the graves often take the form of a stepped pit - significant as forerunners of characteristic Shang burial practices. Perforated tortoise shells from Liulin graves may likewise foreshadow tortoise plastrons in Shang oracle bones.

Dahe

SYNONYMS OR RELATED TERMS: Ta-ho
CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: A Neolithic village site, now preserved as a museum, at Zhengzhou in China. Several Yanshao levels are overlaid by Hougang II and Shang remains; radiocarbon dates range from c 3700-3050 BC. The uppermost Yanshao level is a late stage of the Miaodigou I culture; the expected painted pottery is found alongside unpainted pots, including ding and dou shapes, that recall the Huating-Dawendou phase of the Qinglin'gang culture. This pottery may represent the beginnings of a westward movement of east-coast influences that eventually transformed the Yangshao tradition, giving rise to the Hougan II culture.

Daimabad

CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: A site in western India with five phases from the 3rd and 2nd millennia BC known for copper hoards.

Danevirke

SYNONYMS OR RELATED TERMS: Danekirke
CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: A 5th-century line of earthwork fortifications that cut across the base of the Jutland peninsula, forming the southern boundary of Viking Age Denmark (now in Germany). Timbers in its construction have been dated to about 737 AD, but these were likely replacement timbers, making the first building phase still earlier. It is puzzling archaeologically because the traces of only one large timber hall have been found, associated with enormous quantities of imported luxury items including a great deal of West European glass. Godfrey, king of Denmark who halted Charlemagne's march northward, began the construction of the Danevirke.

Danilo

CATEGORY: site; culture
DEFINITION: A Neolithic culture of the Dalmatian coast of Croatia and parts of Bosnia, dating to 4700-3900 BC. The site consists of large numbers of pits and post holes, whose associated material has been subdivided typologically into five phases. There are two associated pottery styles, painted in black and broad red bands on buff ware, and incised on dark burnished ware, belong in the Middle Neolithic. The geometric designs suggest connections with contemporary wares in Italy, particularly Ripoli and Serra D'Alto. There was also a long blade and tanged point stone industry closely related to fishing.

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.

Denekamp Interstadial

CATEGORY: chronology
DEFINITION: A warm period during the Middle pleniglacial phase of the last (Weichselian) glaciation (cold stage) in Europe. It is dated to around 28,000 BC (30,000 bp).

Diana

CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: A site on the island of Lipari, of the Aeolian Islands north of Sicily, which has given its name to a local Late Neolithic culture with dates in the early 4th millennium BC. Diana had a very distinctive pottery with a glossy red slip and splayed lugs or tubular handles, found also on Sicily and mainland Italy. The culture is associated with the last phase of intensive exploitation of the Lipari obsidian source.

Dolní Vestonice

CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: An Upper Palaeolithic camping site in southern Moravia of the mammoth hunters of loess country. Excavation has revealed various phases of occupation, represented by houses, hearths, flint tools (burins, scrapers, backed blades), ornaments of mammoth ivory, animal figurines of baked clay, Venus figurines, faunal and human remains. The main occupation level dates from 25,000 BP, the beginning of the last glacial maximum (the end of an interstadial period). The culture has been called Pavlovian or eastern Gravettian.

Dong-dau

SYNONYMS OR RELATED TERMS: Dong Dau
CATEGORY: culture; site
DEFINITION: The second Bronze Age phase of North Vietnam (bronze moyen), dated to the second half of the 2nd millennium BC. Its bronzes contain about 20 per cent tin, and forms and casting methods are ancestral to those of the classic Dong-Son (bronze final) phase and succeeded Phung Nguyen in c 1500 BC. Dong-dau is the site which gave its name to this period.

Dong-son

SYNONYMS OR RELATED TERMS: Dong Son
CATEGORY: culture; site
DEFINITION: A classic Bronze Age site in north Vietnam and its culture, dating c 500 BC to 100 AD. It was preceded by the Go Bong (c 2000-1500 BC), Dong-Dau (c 1500-100 BC), and Go Mun (c 1000-500 BC) phases of the Vietnamese Bronze Age. The Dong-son culture thus overlaps the Chinese conquest of northern Vietnam in 111 BC. Characteristic are large incised cast-bronze drums, bronze situlae (buckets), bells, tools, and weapons from elaborate boat burials and assemblages in lacquered wood coffins. Dong-son drums of presumed Vietnamese manufacture were traded through wide areas of Southeast Asia and southern China to as far as New Guinea, and the Dong-son bronze-working tradition was by far the richest and most advanced ever to develop in Southeast Asia. Iron was used for tools. There is evidence for developing urbanism in defensive earthworks and wet rice cultivation. Major sites include Chao Can, Viet Khe, Lang Ca, and Co Loa.

Dowris

CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: A site in Ireland where a hoard of over 200 bronzes of the Irish Late Bronze Age have been dated to the 8th century BC. Implements of the Dowris A phase (c 1000-c 800 BC) include many gold ornaments and a series of bronzes showing great proficiency in casting and sheet metalwork. Ireland was at this time in contact with Mediterranean and Nordic lands. Bronze cauldrons and V-notched shields demonstrate western links, while U-notched shields, bronze buckets and horns, pins with sunflower-shaped heads, and the use of conical rivets show connections with northern and central Europe. Ireland did not enter the Iron Age until just after 400 BC (i.e. during the La Tène period), though a few swords and axes show contact with Hallstatt Iron Age cultures. Dowris B and C were the final Irish bronze industries (c 800-400 BC) contemporary with the first part of the continental Iron Age.

Dryas

CATEGORY: chronology
DEFINITION: A series of cold climatic phases in northwestern Europe, during a time when the North Atlantic was in almost full glacial condition. Dryas I was c 16,000/14,000 BP, Dryas II (Older Dryas) was c 12,300-11,800 bp, and Dryas III (Younger Dryas) was c 11,000-10,000 bp. It is named after a tundra plant. . The increasing temperature after the late Dryas period during the Pre-Boreal and the Boreal (c 8000-5500 BC, according to radiocarbon dating) caused a remarkable change in late glacial flora and fauna.

Dubois, Eugène (1858-1940)

CATEGORY: person
DEFINITION: A Dutch palaeoanthropologist and anatomist who discovered Java man, the first known fossil of Homo erectus, in 1891. Dubois named the fossils Pithecanthropus erectus to indicate an intermediate phase in the evolution then believed to proceed from simian ancestors having the upright posture of modern man. For years there was much controversy over his finds, until reexamined in 1923.

Durrington Walls

CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: A Neolithic (late 3rd millennium BC) henge monument in Wiltshire, England, with a large twin-entrance, and first occupied by people who made pottery of the Windmill Hill, Grooved Ware, and Beaker styles. Inside, the excavators found remains of two large circular timber structures, each of which had evidence for several different phases of construction.

Early Dynastic period

SYNONYMS OR RELATED TERMS: Archaic Period
CATEGORY: chronology
DEFINITION: A chronological phase in southern Mesopotamia between c 2900-2330 BC, ending with the founding of the Dynasty of Akkad. It was also known as the Pre-Sargonid period. The Sumerian city-states flourished under their separate dynastic rulers - Ur, Umma, Kish, and Lagash. The period is 3100-2450 BC on what is called the "high chronology" (the other being the "medium chronology"). The term itself is derived from the Sumerian 'king list' which implies that Sumer was ruled by kings at this stage although archaeological evidence for the existence of kingship is meager before the middle of the period. Traditionally it is divided by archaeologists into three subdivisions - ED I II and III - each of approximately 200 years duration. The Royal Tombs of Ur belong the ED III period. The Early Dynastic phase shows clear continuity from the preceding Jemdet Nasr and represents a period of rapid political cultural and artistic development. Within the period the pictographic writing of the earlier period developed into the standardized cuneiform script. This period represents the earliest conjunction of archaeological and written evidence for the history of southern Mesopotamia.

Eastern Chin Dynasty

CATEGORY: culture
DEFINITION: A phase of the Chin dynasty; the ruling house of Chinese origin controlling southeastern China from 317-420 AD when northern China was under rule of Turkic tribes. There are numerous tombs and Yueh Ware. It was one of the Six Dynasties of China.

Egolzwil

CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: A series of Neolithic sites around former Lake Wauwil in Switzerland from the earliest phase of the Neolithic in that area. Most of them belong to the Cortaillod culture and have well-preserved organic material. The site of Egolzwil 4 had ten rectangular wooden houses placed close together. Food remains include cereals, lentils, beans, and flax, and wild strawberries and chestnuts; animal remains include both domesticated and wild animals, and duck, salmon, perch, and carp from the lake. The earliest settlement, Egolzwil 3 dated to the late 5th or early 4th millennium BC.

El Juyo

CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: An Upper Palaeolithic cave site of northern Spain with much faunal evidence from the Solutrean and Magdalenian (14,440 bp) phases. It seems that red deer were hunted by driving rather than stalking.

El Mirador

CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: Late Preclassic site of northern Petén, Guatemala, which was one of the earliest urban centers in the Maya Lowlands. El Mirador's architectural complex dwarfs that of Tikal, although El Mirador was only substantially occupied through the Chicanel phase. It declined around 2300 bp.

El Paraiso

SYNONYMS OR RELATED TERMS: Chuquitanta
CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: A large ceremonial site in the Chillón Valley on the central coast of Peru,) dating to the Late Preceramic and Initial Period. It has a massive architectural complex of 6-7 mounds, courts, and rooms interconnected by corridors. Five to six building phases are evident in the constructions of fieldstone masonry laid in clay. No pottery or maize has been found, but twined and woven textiles are common in burials and domesticated beans and squash remains have also been recovered.

Elsloo

CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: A settlement and cemetery of the Neolithic Linear Pottery culture of southern Netherlands. Long houses of various types have been found, as in the other Dutch sites of this culture (Geleen, Sittard, Stein). Elsloo has been organized into six main chronological phases. The grave goods have provided information about the Linear Pottery social stratification.

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.

Epigravettian

SYNONYMS OR RELATED TERMS: Epi-Gravettian
CATEGORY: culture
DEFINITION: The late glacial industries of Italy from 20,000-8000 bp, which evolved into the Mesolithic. It is divided into early (20,000-16,000 bp), evolved (16,000-14,000 bp), and final (14,000-8,000 bp) phases. Epigravettian was followed by the Sauveterrian and Castelnovian in the 7th millennium BC. Epigravettian cultures developed contemporaneously in various parts of Europe, notably the Creswellian in Britain.

Eridu

SYNONYMS OR RELATED TERMS: Abu Shahrain
CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: A tell site at Abu Shahrain, identified as the ancient Eridu, the oldest city of Sumer - possibly the oldest in history. Occupation began in the 'Ubaid period, the earliest phase of which is named after this site, in the mid 6th millennium BC. A series of temples of the 'Ubaid and Uruk periods have been found, decorated with typical Sumerian buttresses and niches in the walls. Its long succession of superimposed temples portrayed the growth and development of an elaborate mud-brick architecture. A palace of the Early Dynastic period c 2500 BC has also been excavated. It was important throughout Mesopotamian history as a religious center and sanctuary of Enki (Ea). Outside the temple precinct, a large cemetery of the late 'Ubaid period was found; containing around 1000 graves. Grave goods include painted pottery vessels, terra-cotta figurines, and baked clay tools, such as sickles and shaft-hole axes. The site declined in importance with the rise of Ur under its 3rd dynasty (c 2100 BC) and was occupied until around c 600 BC.

Erlitou

SYNONYMS OR RELATED TERMS: Erh-li-t'ou
CATEGORY: site; culture
DEFINITION: Type site of the Erlitou phase in Henan province, north China. The Erlitou phase represents the earliest known stage of the Chinese Bronze Age of c early 2nd millennium BC. The earliest bronze ritual vessels yet known from China, along with bronze blades and fine jades were also found. Two palace compounds have been excavated. The Erlitou remains provide the fullest evidence now available for the emergence of the Shang civilization from its local forbears.

Ertebølle

CATEGORY: culture
DEFINITION: The final Mesolithic culture of the west Baltic coastal region and coastal kitchen midden culture of Scandinavia. The type site is a coastal shell mound in Jutland, Denmark, dated to c 3900-3250 BC. Pollen analysis places the start of the culture within the Atlantic period, after c 5000 BC. The later phases of Ertebølle are marked by the introduction of pottery and polished stone axes, perhaps as a result of contact with the newly arrived Neolithic farmers to the south.

Ezero

CATEGORY: site; culture
DEFINITION: An Eneolithic and Early Bronze Age site in central Bulgaria which lends its name to a culture of the lower Danube basin and the Black Sea coast of Bulgaria. There were two building phases of the Veselinovo culture (Karanovo III) dated c 4320 BC, a level with Karanovo IV pottery, eight building levels of the Copper Age (Karanovo V-VII) dated c 3630 BC, and nine building levels of the Early Bronze Age. The Bronze Age levels have radiocarbon dates of c 2500-2200 BC and the pottery has affinities with the Early Bronze Age of Troy. Ezero had a very rich bone, antler, and stone industry and provides the most detailed chronology for southeastern Europe for the time period.

Faiyum A

CATEGORY: culture
DEFINITION: The earliest-known phase of the Predynastic sequence of Lower Egypt with settlements in the northern Faiyum area. The economic base was agriculture, though there was much hunting of large mammals (elephant, hippopotamus).

Fauresmith

CATEGORY: culture
DEFINITION: An older term used to refer to the final Acheulian phase in the southern African interior. It was a Stone Age industry with tools representing a development from the final Acheulian handax tradition; the handaxes were small, were well-finished, and pointed. At Saldanha, Fauresmith artifacts were likely contemporary with a Neanderthal-like skull similar to the one from Broken Hill.

Fiji

CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: An archipelago in eastern Melanesia. Archaeological evidence shows that Fiji was settled by Austronesian-speaking peoples in the late 2nd millennium BC, and they developed pottery by about 1300 BC. A rich archaeological sequence begins with the Lapita culture from about 1300 BC, and progresses through successive ceramic phases to a period of earthwork for construction and warfare, starting after c 1100 AD. Fijians are a Melanesian/Polynesian population, and their islands formed the main bridgehead for the Polynesian settlement of western Polynesia soon after 1300 BC. Fiji is the most easterly point in Oceania to have maintained production of pottery throughout its pre-history. The Dutch navigator Abel Tasman explored the islands of Vanua Levu and Taveuni in 1643.

Final Neolithic

CATEGORY: chronology
DEFINITION: A transition phase where copper and bronze came into use, but stone was still most important.

First Intermediate Period

CATEGORY: chronology
DEFINITION: Chronological phase, c 2130-1938 BC) between the Old Kingdom (2575-2130 BC) and the Middle Kingdom (1938-1600 BC), which appears to have been a time of relative political disunity and instability. The period includes the 9th dynasty (c 2130-2080 BC), 10th dynasty (c 2080-1970 BC), and the 11th dynasty (c 2081-1938 BC). The 9th dynasty (c. 2130-2080 BC). (The period corresponds to Manetho's 7th to 10th Dynasties and the early part of the 11th Dynasty.) After the end of the 8th dynasty, the throne passed to kings from Heracleopolis, who made their native city the capital. Major themes of inscriptions of the period are the provision of food supplies for people in times of famine and the promotion of irrigation works. In the 10th dynasty, a period of generalized conflict focused on twin dynasties at Thebes and Heracleopolis. The 11th dynasty made Thebes its capital. In the First Intermediate Period, monuments were erected by a larger section of the population and, in the absence of central control, internal dissent and conflicts of authority became visible in public records. Nonroyal individuals took over some of the privileges of royalty, notably identification with Osiris in the hereafter and the use of the Pyramid Texts. These were incorporated into a more extensive corpus inscribed on coffins - the Coffin Texts - and continued to be inscribed during the Middle Kingdom.

Font de Gaume

SYNONYMS OR RELATED TERMS: Font-de-Gaume
CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: A painted cave close to Les Eyzies in the Dordogne region, southwest France. Excavations have revealed archaeological levels deep in the interior spanning several earlier Upper Palaeolithic phases, but the polychrome paintings of bison and other animals date from the late Magdalenian at the end of the Palaeolithic (c 14,000-10,000 BC).

Fontbrégoua

CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: Cave site in southern France with Epipalaeolithic and Neolithic occupations, dating to c 8000 BC. Hunting and gathering remains are hazelnuts and plants; there was domestic livestock and pottery of the Cardial and Epicardial phases. Neolithic remains include pits of human bones with cutmarks and pits of butchered animals bones, possibly evidence for cannibalism. There are also Middle Neolithic Chasséen, Late Neolithic, and Bell Beaker artifacts.

Fort Harrouard

CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: A Middle Neolithic fort in Eure-et-Loir, France, that was occupied till the Gall-Roman period. There was a Chasséen phase with decorated vase supports and terra-cotta female figurines, an Artenacien occupation, and evidence of metallurgy in the Middle and Late Bronze Age (crucibles, molds, etc.).

Gallinazo

CATEGORY: ceramics; culture
DEFINITION: A pottery style and culture of the first phase of the Early Intermediate Period, flourishing c 200 BC-200 AD on the north central coast of Peru (Virú Valley). Together with the slightly earlier Salinar, the Gallinazo culture is seen as transitional from Chavin-associated groups, such as Cupisnique, to the rise of the Moche state. It is related to the contemporary Recuay style of the highlands. The best-known Gallinazo pottery is black-on-orange negative resist decorated ware. The type site appears to have been a ceremonial center with a nucleus of adobe mounds and walled courtyards. Residential apartment complexes are scattered over an area around the center; it was abandoned some time after the rise of Moche.

Ganj Dareh, Tepe

SYNONYMS OR RELATED TERMS: Ganj Dareh
CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: A small mound in the Kermanshah region of western Iran, which has yielded five occupation levels with radiocarbon dates ranging from 8400-6800 BC. The lowest level had no permanent architecture, only shallow pits and hollows. The next level had mud-brick structures, mostly very small adjoining cubicles, perhaps used for storage. Subsequent phases include wattle-and-daub rectilinear structures and a wide range of unfired clay objects. Animal and human figurines suggest that the stone industry remained largely the same throughout.

Garcel, El

SYNONYMS OR RELATED TERMS: El Garcel
CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: A Middle Neolithic hilltop settlement in Almeria, southeast Spain, the type site of the earlier phase of the Almerian culture, c 5th millennium BC. Excavations have produced evidence of wattle-and-daub round houses, storage pits, undecorated round- and pointed-based pottery and, before the end of the settlement, copper slag, suggesting the local development of metallurgy.

Gargas

CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: A cave in southern France (Hautes-Pyrénées) containing important examples of Late Paleolithic mural art, paintings, and engravings dating from the Aurignacian Period, the oldest phase of European Stone Age art. The site was first known for its Ice Age fauna. There are approximately 150 engravings of animals and 250 red or black hand prints. A curious feature of these silhouettes is that many are representations of mutilated hands with one or more finger joints missing, most frequently the last two joints of the last four fingers. The significance of the hand prints and the missing fingers is unknown. The cave was occupied from at least the Middle Palaeolithic and the animal engravings are attributed to the Gravettian.

Gaviota

CATEGORY: culture
DEFINITION: The name of a final preceramic phase, 2000-1750 BC, of the central Peruvian coast. There was sedentary agricultural village life and early construction of large ceremonial centers.

Gawra, Tepe

CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: A tell site east of the Tigris River near Khorsabad, Iraq, occupied from the 6th-2nd millennia BC. The earliest material was of the Halaf period, while the succeeding period shows increasing contacts with the southern Mesopotamian 'Ubaid culture. It was as a northern outpost of the 'Ubaid culture in the 5th-4th millennia. Three temples facing onto open courtyards show resemblance to works at Eridu and Warka. There is evidence for surprisingly extensive trade. Neolithic settlers used undecorated pottery and Halaf pottery. The succeeding period is contemporary with the Uruk and Jemdet Nasr periods to the south; this is often described as the 'Gawra period' late 4th millennium BC). In this period there is abundant evidence for differential wealth and social position, seen in the grave goods. Several temples of the period have an unusual form with separate portico. The most distinctive building of this phase, however, is a circular structure known as the 'Round House'.

Gezer

CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: An important Biblical tell site of Palestine near Jerusalem, occupied from the Chalcolithic (5th millennium BC) to the Byzantine period. The first fortified town belonged to the Middle Bronze Age (early 2nd millennium BC); an important discovery of this phase was a 'High Place' (ceremonial meeting place) consisting of a row of 10 tall monoliths. To the Iron Age belong the remains of a gateway built by Solomon. Succeeding levels show a decline, with destruction attributed to Assyrians and later, Babylonians. The city became important again in the Hellenistic period. The most noteworthy finds were a potsherd with one of the earliest uses of the alphabet (18th-17th c BC) and the Gezer calendar (11th-10th centuries BC), the oldest known inscription in Early Hebrew writing. The city was particularly prosperous during 2nd millennium BC and is mentioned in Egyptian texts from 15th century onwards.

Ghar Dalam

CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: A cave site in southern Malta near Birzebbuga which has lent its name to the island's earliest Neolithic phase. The culture, dated to the late 5th millennium BC, is characterized by evidence of domesticated animals and cultivated plants and by the use of Impressed Ware similar to that of contemporary eastern Sicily (Stentinello). There was obsidian from Lipari. The earliest archaeological remains date from about 3800 BC. Neolithic farmers lived in caves like those at Dalam or villages like Skorba (near Nadur Tower).

Gilgamesh

CATEGORY: deity
DEFINITION: The hero of the best-known Sumerian epic, a famous figure of the early 3rd millennium BC in Mesopotamia. Gilgamesh was considered half god, half man in the literature. The Gilgamesh epic is an Akkadian poem written on 12 tablets which describe his reign as ruler of Uruk and his search for immortality; it includes the story of the Flood. The historical figure was named as a ruler of Warka in the Sumerian king list. He is now thought to have been a real king of the First Dynasty of Uruk (Early dynastic III phase, c 2650-2550 BC). The epics credit him with the construction of two temples and the city wall at Uruk and archaeological excavations have shown that these are real structures. Out of the nine Sumerian epics known, four are about Gilgamesh and cover a wide variety of topics, including man and nature, love and adventure, and friendship and combat. The desire for immortality carries Gilgamesh to the mythical land of Dilmun and brings him into contact with the Babylonian/Sumerian Noah-figure, Utanapishtim.

Gilund

CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: A site in Rajasthan, western India, along the banks of the Banas and its tributaries of the Harappan (Indus) and post-Harappan cultures of the 3rd and 2nd millennium BC. Archaeological evidence indicates that early humans lived there some 100,000 years ago. It became a substantial farming village, with four major phases of occupation. Pottery types include black and red ware and a fine black, red and white polychrome ware.

Giyan, Tepe

CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: A long-lived tell site south of Hamadan, western Iran, going back to late Halaf c mid-5th millennium BC. Excavations provided the cultural sequence that was the standard for Luristan for some time. The five-phase sequence continued into the Iron Age and had a series of painted pottery styles. In the 2nd millennium, the native painted pottery replaced by the gray monochrome ware believed to be associated with the first Indo-European speaking Iranians. Its highest level shows it to have been an outpost of Assyria, with a palace of the 8th century BC.

Glanum

SYNONYMS OR RELATED TERMS: St. Rémy de Provence
CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: A settlement site in southern Gaul (France), originally founded by the Greek colonists of Marseilles, with three phases of occupation - native Ligurian, Hellenistic, and Roman. With Romanization from the 1st century BC, Glanum became a prosperous provincial town with baths, forum, temples, shrines, a triumphal arch, and the so-called Mausoleum of the Julii. German attack in 270 AD brought an end to the occupation of the site.

Go Mun

CATEGORY: culture; site
DEFINITION: A site in north Vietnam which has given its name to the third phase of the Bronze Age of the area, dated to c 1200-600 BC, following Dong Dau and preceding Dong Son. There was a range of bronze tools, weapons, and ornaments and polished stone adzes. The phase fell within the Phung-Nguyen culture.

Gonur-depe

CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: A site in Turkmenia with a fortress of the Gonur phase between the Kelleli and Togolok phases, c late 3rd-early 2nd millennia BC. There are Murghab seal-amulets with rich iconography.

Gorods'ke

CATEGORY: culture
DEFINITION: The latest phase of the Cucuteni-Tripolye culture development dated to the late 3rd millennium BC and centered on Volhynia, northeast of the Carpathians. Most settlements are located on high plateaus above river valleys, with rich household assemblages of bone and stone work. Metal is plentiful in Gorods'ke cremation cemeteries; some metal tools and weapons indicate a date in the Early Bronze Age.

Gradesnitsa

CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: A Late Neolithic village site of the Gumelnita culture in northwest Bulgaria with Karanovo I and Copper Age layers. Excavations have revealed complete early Neolithic house plans, succeeded in the Copper Age by a large village of three occupational phases with houses arranged in streets. In a Copper Age ritual assemblage is a house model inscribed with signs and the so-called Gradesnitsa plaque - a fired clay disc covered in elaborate incised symbols - similar to the one found at Tartaria.

Great Zimbabwe

CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: A Late Iron Age site in southeastern Zimbabwe, by far the largest and most elaborate of the dry-stone constructions to which the term dzimbahwe is applied. After an Early Iron Age phase of 500-900 AD, the main sequence of occupation began around 1000 when Shona speakers occupied Zimbabwe Hill and began building stone walls around 1300. Great Zimbabwe was the capital of the Shona empire from 1270-1450 AD, which stretched from the Zambezi River to the northern Transvaal of South Africa and eastern Botswana. There was a class system and the kings accumulated wealth through trade, attested by items such as glass vessels and beads, pottery, and porcelain. Gold was the principal export; Great Zimbabwe appears to have been at the center of a network of related sites through which control was exercised over the gold-producing areas. Archaeologically, the culture is called the Zimbabwe Tradition and is divided into Mapungubwe, Zimbabwe, and Khami phases. In the 15th century the site declined with trade and political power shifting to the north near the Zambezi Valley.

Gua Kechil

CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: A limestone rock shelter in central Malaysia, with remains related to the Ban Kao Neolithic, just as other sites such as Gua Cha. This site also had a late phase of the Hoabinhian with cord-marked pottery. The Neolithic assemblage dates to c 2800 BC.

Gwithian

CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: A Middle Bronze Age farming site in Cornwall, England, with prehistoric and medieval remains. There are houses of the Beaker Period, field systems of the Middle Bronze Age, and small square fields of Celtic type. The sites of the post-Roman period include a small settlement of circular drystone huts, a shell midden, and a late Saxon chapel. There are also sub-Roman (400-950), early Christian (550-850), and the Late Saxon (850-1050) levels which have been determined by the pottery. Gwithian ware and Mediterranean imports mark the first phase, and Grass-Marked pottery, the second. The chapel of St. Gocanius is one of the few pre-Conquest buildings in Cornwall (c 9th-10th century).

Hacilar

CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: A small but important site in the lake region of southwest Turkey, with a Late Neolithic and early Chalcolithic (c 5600-4500 BC). The aceramic early levels have some radiocarbon dates in the 7th millennium BC. The houses were of mudbrick or wood and daub on stone foundations, with an upper story of wood. They were finished internally in plaster, rarely painted. Crops included barley, emmer, and lentils and bones of sheep, deer, and cattle were also found. The site was abandoned and reoccupied in the Late Neolithic, early in the 6th millennium BC, when it had more substantial houses, monochrome red to brown pottery, and some use of copper. Querns, mortars and braziers were fitted into mud plaster floors, while recesses in the walls acted as cupboards. The kitchen was separated from the living rooms and upper stories were used as granaries and workshops. Female figurines of a unique style were also made. The latest phase of this period was burnt c 5400 BC and when the site was reoccupied it was smaller; this settlement was also burnt c 5050-5000 BC. The Hacilar (Chalcolithic) period had a fortified settlement, characterized by boldly painted red on white pottery.

Hajji Muhammed

SYNONYMS OR RELATED TERMS: Hajjii Mohammad
CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: A small early 5th-millennium BC site near Uruk in southern Mesopotamia which has given its name to a type of painted pottery and an early phase of the Ubaid culture (Ubaid 2). The pottery is painted in dark brown or purplish black in a geometric style. Hajji Muhammed pottery is found also at Eridu in layers stratified between the earliest Eridu pottery and the fully developed Ubaid culture. It is found over southern Mesopotamia, as far north as Ras Al-Amiya. The architecture was wattle-and-daub.

Halaf culture complex

CATEGORY: culture
DEFINITION: A material culture with a distinctive painted pottery style, centered at Tell Halaf. It is divided into Early, Middle, and Late phases from the late 6th to early 5th millennia BC (5050-4300). The pottery is decorated with geometric, floral, and some nature motifs. The Late Halaf pottery includes a polychrome painted ware. Well-known sites include Tell Aqab, Arpachiyah, and Yarim Tepe.

Hallstatt

SYNONYMS OR RELATED TERMS: Hallstatt period
CATEGORY: site; culture
DEFINITION: A site on Lake Hallstatt in the Austrian Alps with a cemetery of over 3000 cremation and inhumation graves with great quantities of local and imported grave goods. There were prehistoric salt mines in the area. Hallstatt is also a late Bronze age and early Iron Age cultural tradition, c 1200-6000 BC in continental temperate Europe. The term also refers to a cultural period of the Late Bronze Age and Early Iron Age in central Europe, divided into four phases, Hallstatt A, B, C, and D. In central European archaeology the terms Hallstatt A (12th and 11th centuries BC) and Hallstatt B (10th-8th centuries BC) are used as a chronological framework for the urnfield cultures of the Late Bronze Age. The first iron objects north of the Alps appear at the close of this period, and the Iron Age proper begins with the Hallstatt C (or I) stage of the 7th century BC. The area of fullest development is Bohemia, upper Austria and Bavaria, where hillforts were constructed and the dead were sometimes interred on or with a four-wheeled wagon, covered by a mortuary house below a barrow. Sheet bronze was still used for armor, vessels, and decorative metalwork, but the characteristic weapon was a long iron sword (or bronze copy). These swords are found as far afield as southeast England, in the so-called 'Iron Age A' cultures. During the Hallstatt D (or II) period, in the 6th century, the most advanced cultures are found further west, in Burgundy, Switzerland, and the Rhineland. Wagon burials are still prominent and trade brought luxury objects from the Greek and Etruscan cities around the Mediterranean. By the close of this period in the mid-5th century BC, elements of Hallstatt culture are found from southern France to Yugoslavia and Czechoslovakia. The Hallstatt precedes the La Tène period; the Hallstatt Iron Age culture certainly developed out of the Urnfield Bronze Age groups.

Harappan civilization

SYNONYMS OR RELATED TERMS: Indus Valley civilization
CATEGORY: culture
DEFINITION: One of the great civilizations of antiquity, located in Pakistan and northwest India in the 3rd millennium BC. Nearly 300 settlements of the civilization are known: two large cities (Mohenjo-Daro and Harappa), and a number of smaller towns and villages (Chanhu-Daro, Judeirjo-Daro, Kalibangan, and Lothal). The Harappan civilization was characterized by a high level of architectural, craft, and technical achievement. We know little of the political, social, and economic structure of the civilization because, although it was literate, the script remains undeciphered. Like other early civilizations in Mesopotamia and Egypt, the Harappan civilization was based on the cultivation of cereal crops (plus rice and cotton), probably with irrigation. Among the most distinctive achievements of this civilization are the architecture and town planning, with the use of true baked brick for building, and cities and towns laid out on a grid-iron street plan, perhaps the earliest examples of town planning in the world. Among crafts, the most outstanding were the seals, mostly made of steatite and decorated with carefully executed incised designs. The Harappan civilization came to an end early in the 2nd millennium, either as a result of environmental factors (excessive flooding) or as a result of invasions by Aryan intruders. It is divided into three phases - Early, Mature (Urban), and Late (Post-Urban) and emerged from Punjab and Baluchistan regions.

Hasanlu

CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: A tell site on Lake Urmia, northwest Iran, with a sequence beginning in the late 7th millennium BC. Much information has been gained on the early Ceramic Neolithic phase of the late-7th to mid-6th millennia BC. The citadel dates from the 10th century BC and is surrounded by a lower town. Four buildings on the citadel, facing onto a court and linked to a higher court with further buildings, have been interpreted as a palace complex. In c 800 BC, Hasanlu was destroyed. One of the skeletons held a magnificent gold bowl decorated with mythical scenes in relief. The bowl is related artistically to the finds from Marlik and Ziwiyeh. Other rich finds of gold, silver, electrum, glass, and ivory have been made at Hasanlu.

Helladic

SYNONYMS OR RELATED TERMS: Helladic culture
CATEGORY: chronology; culture
DEFINITION: The Bronze Age culture of central and southern mainland Greece, with three main divisions: Early (c 3000-2000 BC), Middle (c 2000-1550 BC), and Late (c 1550-1050 BC). It is equivalent to Cycladic in the Cyclades and Minoan in Crete; Late Helladic is equated with the period of the Mycenaean civilization. Each of the three periods is subdivided into three phases designated by Roman numerals.

Heuneburg, The

CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: An Early Iron Age fortified site and hillfort of the Hallstatt period on the upper Danube in Baden-Württemberg, Germany. The site was the center of the dominant Celtic chiefdom in southwest Germany c 600-500 BC. Wine amphorae and Attic Black-Figure pottery were imported from the Greek city of Massalia, demonstrating Heuneburg's wealth. There are nearby princely burials of the same date, including the rich Hohmichele tumulus. This covered a timber mortuary house containing the body of an archer accompanied by a wooden wagon and precious offerings. The site has five main building phases, the most remarkable of which was the second, when the traditional timber-framed construction was replaced by a Greek type of construction, with a bastioned wall built of mud-brick on stone foundations.

Hissarlik

SYNONYMS OR RELATED TERMS: Hisarlik, Troy
CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: A small site above the Scamander Plain, Turkey, with massive ruins that Heinrich Schliemann established to be the ruins of ancient Troy (1877-1890). It is set on a plain overlooking the southern entrance to the Dardanelles in northwestern Anatolia. The series of seven Bronze Age settlements (with subphases) date from the late 4th millennium BC to the 12th century BC. The famous 'treasure of Priam', a hoard of precious metal and semi-precious stone objects, came from one of the Troy II levels. The settlement was ended by massive fires.

Hoabinhian

SYNONYMS OR RELATED TERMS: Hoabinh
CATEGORY: culture
DEFINITION: A little-known Mesolithic or Neolithic culture (early-to-mid-Holocene stone tool industry) of southeast Asia (type site is Hoa Binh, Vietnam) dating from 10,000-2000 BC. There are many chipped, pecked, and polished stone axes found in piles of shells. Its importance lies in its position between the earliest centers of rice growing in India and China, and in the part it most have played in diffusing the knowledge of agriculture into Indonesia and the Pacific. The Neolithic assemblages have pottery and ground stone tools for several millennia after 6000 BC. It is best described as a techno-complex with successive cultural accretions, the Hoabinhian cannot be regarded as an archaeological culture of chronological horizon. The majority of Hoabinhian sites found to date are in rock shelters and coastal shell middens. The three recognized phases are: archaic with unifacially worked pebble tools, intermediate with smaller pebble tools and bifacial working and edge-grinding, and late characterized by some pottery, smaller scrapers, grinding stones, knives, piercers, polished stone tools, and shell artifacts.

Holstein

SYNONYMS OR RELATED TERMS: Holsteinian Interglacial
CATEGORY: chronology
DEFINITION: North European Middle Pleistocene warm phase occurring between the Elsterian and Saalian cold stages, c 300,000-200,000 BP. These deposits are stratified above Elster Glacial deposits and are overlain by Saale glacial deposits. The Alpine equivalent is the Mindel-Riss and the North American equivalent is the Yarmouth. In Britain, it was the Hoxnian.

Huamanga

CATEGORY: culture
DEFINITION: A cultural phase, 900-1100 AD, in Ayacucho, Peru, which follows the downfall of the Huari Empire. It is characterized by crude polychrome pottery.

Hyrax Hill

CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: A site located on Lake Nakuru in central Kenya with Later Stone Age material and a pastoral Neolithic settlement. The earlier settlement is attributed to the East African Pastoral Neolithic complex. The second phase is of the Iron Age, and includes a series of so-called Sirikwa Holes which are interpreted as semi-subterranean cattle pens constructed by Nilotic-speaking peoples. There is also a cemetery of stone-covered flexed burials.

Iblis, Tal-i

CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: A prehistoric mound of Kirman, Iran, occupied off and on in the 5th through 1st millennia BC. The earliest occupation, dating to the early 5th millennium BC (Tal-i Iblis O), is characterized by coarse-tempered red burnished ware made into a variety of simple forms. In the next phase, dated to the late 5th millennium BC (Tal-i Iblis I), small quantities of painted ware, in maroon or black on a buff ground, appear in a settlement of mud-brick houses, each consisting of a central area of storerooms, surrounded by living rooms with red plaster floors. This layer also produced abundant evidence of copper-working and smelting. The finds suggest that the communities of Iran were at least as developed as those of Mesopotamia, if not more so, in the practice of metallurgy. The exploitation of copper and steatite and trade in these commodities to the civilizations of southern Mesopotamia and Susiana in the 4th and early 3rd millennia BC allowed Tal-i Iblis to grow to urban or proto-urban status. Clay tablets inscribed in the Proto-Elamite script demonstrate the connections that linked Iran to western countries by the early 3rd millennium BC.

Inamgaon

CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: A site in Pune of west-central India which depicts the 2nd millennium BC Malwa and Jorwe cultures of the northern Deccan. The Malwa phase had large rectangular, wattle-and-daub structures. By late Jorwe times, the structures were mainly small round wattle-and-daub huts. The area provides one of the clearest pictures of the region after the demise of the Indus civilization.

Jaywa

CATEGORY: culture
DEFINITION: A preceramic phase, 7100-5800 BC, in Ayacucho basin of central Andes, Peru. Nomadic groups of hunters and gatherers used a distinctive toolkit of stemmed and pentagonal projectile points.

Jomon

SYNONYMS OR RELATED TERMS: Jomon Period
CATEGORY: culture; chronology
DEFINITION: The earliest major postglacial culture of hunting and gathering in Japan, 10,000-300 BC, divided into six phases. This early culture, its relics surviving in shell mounds of kitchen midden type around the coasts of the Japanese islands, had pottery but no metal. The pottery was heavy but elaborate, especially in the modeling of its castellated rims. The term Jomon means 'cord marked', indicating the characteristic decoration of the pottery with cord-pattern impressions or reliefs. One of the earliest dates in the world for pottery making has been established as c 12,700 BC in Fukin Cave, Kyshu. Other artifacts, of stone and bone, were simple. Light huts, round or rectangular, have been identified. Burials were by inhumation, crouched or extended. The Jomon was succeeded by the Yayoi period. There are over 10,000 Jomon sites divided into the six phases: Incipient (10,000-7500 BC), Earliest (7500-5000 BC), Early (5000-3500 BC), Middle (3500-2500/2000 BC), Late (2500/2000-1000 BC), and Final (1000-300 BC). Widespread trading networks and ritual development took place in the Middle Jomon. Rice agriculture was adopted during the last millennium BC. The origins of Jomon culture remain uncertain, although similarities with early cultures of northeast Asia and even America are often cited.

Judeirjo-daro

CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: A town of the Harappan Civilization in Kachi province, Pakistan, probably the third largest settlement of this civilization, after Mohenjo-daro and Harappa. Surface investigation suggests that both pre-Harappan and mature Harappan phases are represented on the site.

CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: Late Iron Age site in northern Transvaal, South Africa occupied in the 11th-12th centuries AD. It is the name of the initial phase of the Leopard's Kopje Complex of the Limpopo Valley, characterized by bone and ivory working.

Kachemak stage

SYNONYMS OR RELATED TERMS: Kachemak culture
CATEGORY: culture
DEFINITION: A marine mammal-hunting culture found around the Kachemak Bay of the southern Kenai Peninsula in central southern Alaska. It is divided into three phases, the oldest of which may date back as far as the 8th century BC and the most recent lasting until historic times. The first phase was the most distinctly Eskimo in character. Stone (including slate) implements in the early period were usually retouched; later they were ground. Round or oval stone lamps and realistic human figures of carved stone have been found. Copper tools and pottery appeared in the third stage. Rock paintings were mainly representations of men and animals. Burials have the body in a crouched position, with associated grave goods. During the final stage, artificial bone or ivory eyes were placed over those of the deceased. There may have been cultural connections with eastern Asia, with adjacent land areas, and with Kodiak Island.

Kambuja

SYNONYMS OR RELATED TERMS: Kambuja-desa
CATEGORY: culture
DEFINITION: The Khmer kingdom founded in Cambodia by Jayavarman during the pre-14th century phase known as Angkor. It is the ethnic name of the people of that first kingdom of the Khmers. Jayavarman was Cambodia's first nationally oriented king.

Kamilamba

CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: Named after a site in the Upemba depression of the valley of the upper Lualaba in southeastern Zaire, this is the initial phase of the local Early Iron Age, precursor of the Kisalian. Dated to between the 5th and 8th centuries ad, it is poorly illustrated by the research so far undertaken, but the associated pottery shows affinities with that from settlements of the same age in the Copperbelt area further southeast.

Kaminaljuyú

CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: A large and important Maya site near Guatemala City that originally contained over 200 mounds, strongly influenced by Teotihuacán during the Early Classic. As the greatest of the early centers in the highland Maya zone, Kaminaljuyú has a history of occupation dating back to c 1800 BC, but it reached its first climax during the Miraflores phase in the centuries after 300 BC. Its earliest occupation during the Early to Mid-Pre-Classic has Olmec-influenced artifacts such as the 'squashed frog' motif, kaolin pottery, and pits reminiscent of those at Tlatilco. About 200 burial sites from the Late Formative Period, 300 BC-100 AD, have been uncovered, and there are carved stelae in the Izapa manner and a hieroglyphic script unlike that of the lowland Maya.. There are also courts for playing the ball game tlachtli. Because of the lack of stone suitable for construction, pyramids and other structures at Kaminaljuyú were built of adobe and later of other perishable materials. After a period of decline, the site was revived in c 400 when it became an outpost of the Teotihuacán civilization. Kaminaljuyú controlled the obsidian production along the Pacific. Its decline took place after the Late Classic Period c 600-900 AD. Evidence suggests that various Mexican dynasties ruled over the Maya population until the Spanish conquest.

Kaneaki

CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: A heiau of Molokai, Hawaii, with six construction phases starting from 1460 AD.

Kapwirimbwe

CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: An Early Iron Age village site near modern Lusaka, Zambia, dated to about the 5th century AD, that gives its name to a tradition of the Chifumbaze complex. The elaborately decorated pottery is similar to that from contemporary Copperbelt sites. Iron-working was a major industry. A late phase, 9th-11th centuries AD, is represented at the Twickenham Road site.

Karanovo

CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: A tell site in eastern Bulgaria which has given the basic chronological sequence from the Early Neolithic, and much of the Eneolithic, to the Bronze Age, 7th to mid 2nd millennium BC, of the eastern Balkans. There were seven major phases of occupation. Karanovo I is the earliest Neolithic and forms part of the complex of cultures that include Starcevo, Cris, and Körös. The architecture was wattle-and-daub and eventually the 50-60 early, scattered, square huts were replaced by rectangular, larger, plastered, and painted ones. Karanovo II also represents the First Temperate Neolithic level. Karanovo III has Middle Neolithic Veselinovo levels, with dark burnished and carinated pottery. Level IV is the Kalojanoven level and V represents Marica levels, with graphite painted wares and excised pottery - both are contemporaneous with the Late Neolithic Vinca culture of the western Balkans. Level VI is the main Eneolithic Gumelnita occupation with graphite painted wares and copper metallurgy. Level VII is the Early Bronze Age level. Almost all the period designations have become known as cultures in their own right (e.g. the Karanovo III culture).

Kassala

CATEGORY: culture
DEFINITION: A cultural phase of eastern Sudan including the Butana, Gash, and Mokram groups.

Kauri Point

CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: A Maori Pa near Tauranga, New Zealand, which has revealed several phases of Classic Maori ditch and bank fortification from c 1500-1750 AD. The interior of the pa contained large numbers of sweet potato storage pits. The swamp preserved many artifacts, including wooden combs.

Kayatha

CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: A site with three Chalcolithic cultures on the Malwa plateau of central India. The first dated to the second half of the third millennium BC, was characterized by Kayatha ware of violet-painted brown slip and incised and red-painted buff wares. The second phase had pottery similar to the Banas culture, white painted black-and-red ware, dated to the early 2nd millennium BC. The last phase, of the second quarter of the 2nd millennium, belonged to the Malwa culture. There was also an Iron Age level.

Kenniff Cave

CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: A sandstone rock shelter in south central Queensland, Australia, one of the oldest sites yet discovered in the continent and containing one of the longest and most complete technological sequences for any Australian site. The basal strata contain an industry of core and flake scrapers dated by radiocarbon to c 14,000-13,000 BC. These tools were later joined by small blades, microliths, delicate points, woodworking flakes, and (around 2400 BC) by backed blades. Stone tools from the base to the 3000 BC levels also included steep-edge flake scrapers and cores, including horsehoof cores. Between 3000-500 BC, there occurred an unusually wide range of Australian Small Tools, including Pirri points, geometric microliths, Bondi points, and Tula adze flakes, as well as grinding stones. Ochre pellets, some use-striated, were scattered through all levels. There is stenciled art going back 19,000 years. It was the first evidence of Pleistocene occupation in Australia, establishing the two-phase sequence in current use for the continent.

Keros-Syros

CATEGORY: culture
DEFINITION: Cultural phase of two islands in the Cyclades, corresponding to Early Cycladic II, c 2700-2300 BC, in traditional chronology. An open-air sanctuary filled with marble figurines on the island of Kéros (Káros) is assignable to the Early Bronze Age.

Kesslerloch

CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: Magdalenian reindeer-hunting cave site in Switzerland that was occupied during a cold phase of the final Glaciation. There are bone harpoons and spearthrowers, art objects such as an engraving of a rutting reindeer, and a stone tool kit of borers.

Khami

SYNONYMS OR RELATED TERMS: Matopo industry
CATEGORY: site; culture
DEFINITION: A microlithic Later Stone Age industry of the Matobo Hills of southwest Zimbabwe, dating back 8000 years. It is also the name of the capital of the Torwa state, built in the 15th century AD after the decline of Great Zimbabwe, and occupied until the mid-17th century when the capital was moved. It is also the term for the third phase of the Zimbabwe tradition, which continued to the early 19th century.

Khirbet Kerak

SYNONYMS OR RELATED TERMS: ancient Beth-yerah; Tell Beth Yerah
CATEGORY: site; artifact
DEFINITION: A Palestinian site on the southwest shore of the Sea of Galilee, settled from the Early-Middle Bronze Age and occupied again from the Hellenistic to the Byzantine periods. In the 4th-3rd millennia BC, it was a small walled town which lent its name to a distinctive pottery ware (Khirbet Kerak ware, c 3400) which has been found on many sites throughout the Near East, from Judeidah in the Amuq to Lachish in the south. This highly burnished ware with red or black slip is often incised or ribbed in decoration. Its origins lie up in the southern Caucasus (it was related to Early Transcaucasian wares), from which it was likely carried south by an emigration of the ancestors of the Hittites. The pottery belongs to the EB III phase and has a wide distribution in Syria and Palestine. It is usually thought to have originated in northeast Anatolia and may have been distributed either by emigration or by trade. The town of the mid-3rd millennium BC contains a massive public building, probably a religious structure, that comprises eight circular stone structures all enclosed by a massive outer rectangular wall.

Khor Musa

SYNONYMS OR RELATED TERMS: Khor-Musa
CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: A site of Middle Palaeolithic occupation in the southern Nile Valley of Egypt in the Second Cataract. It has given its name to the final phase of the Nubian 'Middle Stone Age' for other sites close to the River Nile and contemporary with, or following, the Aterian. The site had Levallois flakes, denticulates, and burins. It seems probable that the Khormusan industry was broadly contemporary with the Dabban of Cyrenaica, belonging to the period following c 40,000 BC when increased aridity rendered the Sahara uninhabitable. Faunal remains from Khormusan sites indicate fishing and the hunting of land animals.

Kili Ghul Mohammed

CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: A prehistoric site just north of Quetta in western Pakistan, with four phases of occupation. The first has 4th millennium BC dates, farming, and cultivation of cereal crop but no pottery. In the second level, crude hand-made pottery was introduced and mud-brick was used for building. In the third level, black-on-red painted wares and some wheelmade wares occur; in phase four, the beautiful Kechi Beg ware and copper tools appear.

Klasies River Mouth

CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: A complex of caves and overhangs on the south coast of South Africa (Cape Province). It provides one of the most complete sequences available for the area, including sea-level changes of the Late Pleistocene - at least the last 60,000 years. A long development of the 'Middle Stone Age' shares some features with the Pietersburg industries and is interrupted by a phase attributed to Howiesons Poort. This is followed by Later Stone Age deposits containing three painted stone slabs and burials with shell beads dating to 5000 years ago. The site has some of the oldest-known remains of anatomically modern Homo sapiens, dating to 100,000 years ago. There are indications of cannibalism in the Late Pleistocene and exploitation of the marine resources around 120,000 years ago.

Knossos

SYNONYMS OR RELATED TERMS: Cnossus
CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: A well-known palace site on the island of Crete that has been inhabited almost continuously from 6000 BC when the first Neolithic settlement was constructed. It was the location of the chief palace of the Minoans, near Herakleion at the center of the north coast of Crete. The Neolithic settlement was succeeded by an Early Minoan one, but little is known about this phase. The site was leveled for the palace at the beginning of the Middle Minoan period, c 2000 BC. Around the palace were the main buildings, the throne room, reception halls, shrines, magazines, and the domestic quarter of at least three stories. Large banks of rooms of various types were arranged around a central courtyard, giving rise to the story of the labyrinth. Unlike the other Cretan palaces, Knossos survived the violent eruption of Santorini/Thera c 1450 BC, but came under new rulers, Mycenaeans. The palace was opulent and the frescoes show the bull sports which took place in or near the palace, the courtiers who watched them, others in ceremonial procession carrying offerings, and the priest-king himself. Clay tablets with inscriptions in Linear A and B show the careful accounting which supported this show. From them, too, we learn that in the last phase of occupation the rulers of the palace were Greek. Knossos likely governed much of Crete. The palace site was finally destroyed probably c 1375 BC, though Knossos remained prosperous and powerful, emerging as one of the foremost Greek city-states on Crete.

Kolomiishchina

CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: Settlement site of the Cucuteni-Tripolye culture in western Ukraine, dated to the late 4th to early 3rd millennium BC. The earlier of two occupations contains Tripolye B2 pottery associated with a small number of houses. In the second phase, a more formal circular village plan of some 25 houses is laid out. This village is dated to the earlier Bronze Age Tripolye C1 phase; the pottery in the houses shows affinities with the Corded Ware and Yamnaya styles.

Korucu Tepe

CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: Mound of the Altinova plain of eastern Anatolia where 12 phases of occupation began with the Early Chalcolithic, c 4500 BC. The Korucu sequence, which runs to the Early Iron Age c 800 BC, is used for regional comparative chronology. There is some connection with the Halaf and Kura-Araxes cultures and a late Uruk connection.

Koszider

SYNONYMS OR RELATED TERMS: Kosziderpadlás
CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: Three large hoards found at Dunapentele-Kosziderpadlá, on the Danube south of Budapest, Hungary. The contents were characteristic of an early phase of the Tumulus culture of the (Early) Bronze Age and serve to document the expansion of that culture (Rumania, Czechoslovakia, Poland, Germany) c 1400 BC. Similar hoards with ivy-leaf pendants, spiral anklets with rolled ends, shaft-hole battle-axes decorated with spiral and geometric patterns, belt plates, flanged axes, palstaves, solid-hilted daggers, socketed axes, and tanged sickles have been found in east-central Europe from the Baltic to the Sea of Azov, and mark the Koszider horizon throughout the region.

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.

Kouroukorokale

CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: Rock shelter near Bamako in Mali, West Africa, containing a microlithic and harpoon industry. The crude stone industry was accompanied in the second phase by barbed bone harpoon heads. The site may indicate a westerly representative of the heterogeneous complex of harpoon-fishing adaptations which is attested in the southern Sahara between the 8th-3rd millennia BC. Economy for the first phase was fishing, mollusks, and hunting; for the second it was mainly hunting and gathering.

Kumtepe

CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: A site in northwestern Turkey, overlooking the Dardanelles, close to Troy. Excavations have demonstrated three phases of Early Bronze Age occupation, all earlier than the first settlement at Troy, and probably dating to the earlier 4th millennium BC.

Köln-Lindenthal

CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: A settlement site of the Linear Pottery Culture outside modern Cologne, Germany. Köln-Lindenthal is recognized as a typical Danubian site with seven widely separated phases of occupation covering the Danubian I and II periods. It was the site of one of the earliest attempts to uncover a settlement plan. Post structures were identified as longhouses made of mud plaster, but was unusual for by being encircled by a ditched enclosure.

La Victoria

CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: An early Pre-Classic village site located on the Pacific coastal region of Ocos in Guatemala. The site's earliest phase dates to c 1300 BC and contains Olmec or Olmec-influenced pottery, some of which has been traded to other areas of Mesoamerica. The later Conchas Phase, 800-300 BC, contains sherds of a unique striped design which has also been found in Ecuador, indicating probable ocean trade.

Larnian culture

CATEGORY: culture
DEFINITION: A Mesolithic culture, named after Larne, Ireland, and found only on sites close to coasts and estuaries in western Scotland and eastern Ireland. It is characterized by shell middens and the early toolkits include leaf-shaped points made on a flake, the oldest unambiguous implement in Ireland, and scrapers. Some are dated to 6000 BC. Later assemblages contain more flakes than blades and include tranchet axes and very small scrapers. . More recent work casts doubt on the antiquity of the people who were responsible for the Larnian industry; association with Neolithic remains suggests that they should be considered not as Mesolithic but rather as contemporary with the Neolithic farmers. The Larnian could then be interpreted as a specialized aspect of contemporary Neolithic culture. Lake and riverside finds, especially along the River Bann, show a comparable tradition. A single radioactive carbon date of 5725 +/- 110 BC from Toome Bay, north of Lough Neagh, for woodworking and flint has been cited in support of a Mesolithic phase in Ireland.

Late Period

CATEGORY: chronology
DEFINITION: A phase of Egyptian history, c 664-332 BC comprising the 26th-31st Dynasties, stretching from the end of the Third Intermediate Period to the arrival of Alexander the Great. Shabaqo (716-702 BC), the second ruler of the Kushite 25th Dynasty, exerted Nubian influence by moving the administrative center back from Thebes to Memphis. In writing, the demotic script, the new cursive form, was introduced from the north and spread gradually through the country. Hieratic was, however, retained for literary and religious texts, among which very ancient material, such as the Pyramid Texts, was revived and inscribed in tombs and on coffins and sarcophagi. The Late Period also saw the greatest development of animal worship in Egypt.

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.

Laurentian

SYNONYMS OR RELATED TERMS: Lake Forest Late Archaic
CATEGORY: culture
DEFINITION: Important Late Archaic tradition in northern New York and Vermont and the upper St. Lawrence valley, c 4000-1500 BC. Characteristic artifacts are broad-bladed, notched projectile points; bifaces, scrapers, and polished-stone tools (celts, gouges, plummets, slate knives or points). The tradition has phases such as Brewerton, Vergennes, and Vosburg.

Lauricocha

CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: Area of several preceramic cave sites in the highlands of central Peru. The earliest level, dating c 8000-6000 BC, yielded the skeletons of people who hunted deer and guanaco with spears tipped with leaf-shaped points. The sites represent seasonal hunting camps. A second phase, dated c 6000-4000 BC, had better-made points of willow leaf shape. The second culture at Lauricocha was replaced by a third one with smaller leaf- and diamond-shaped points which lasted until 1500 or later; the latter part of this period overlaps with the earliest farming villages on the Peruvian coast, where points of Lauricocha type have been found. Fourth and fifth stages represent pottery-using cultures. Other caves in the area have engravings, some of which include motifs used by about 1000 BC on pottery at Kotosh. Occupations extend into the Initial Period.

Lengyel

CATEGORY: culture
DEFINITION: A late Danubian culture with the type site in western Hungary and many regional variants in Hungary, parts of Austria, and much of Czechoslovakia and Poland. It is closely linked to the Tisza culture of the Hungarian plain, and it may have been from this area that the Lengyel people adopted painted pottery and the occasional use of copper (some of the earliest use in temperate Europe). With the Rössen and Tisza culture, it is a descendant of Linear Pottery culture. The Lengyel culture is divided into two main phases: the Painted Lengyel, defined by white, red, and yellow crusted wares and dated c 4000-3500 BC, and the Unpainted Lengyel, characterized by knobbed and incised pottery and dated c 3500-3000 BC. The type site was a settlement adjoining a cemetery of some 90 inhumation graves. Sites have trapezoidal longhouses and some defensive works.

Leopard's Kopje

SYNONYMS OR RELATED TERMS: Nthabazingwe
CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: A site near Khami, southwestern Zimbabwe, and the name of a later Iron Age industry which developed in c 10th-11th century AD. At the type site, large circular houses were excavated. During later phases, from about the 14th century, gold mining and building with stone occurred. The complex covered adjacent areas of the northern Transvaal, South Africa. There was trade with the East African coast, class distinction, and the development of sacred leadership leading up to the Zimbabwe culture.

Leopards Hill

CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: A cave in south-central Zambia, east of Lusaka with a dated sequence from c 20,000 BC through a Nachi-Kufan I phase and successive stages, to the appearance of the local Early Iron Age in about the 5th century AD.

Lower Nubia

CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: The part of the Nile Valley south of the traditional border of Egypt at Aswan as far as the Second Cataract of the Nile River. The region of Lower Nubia, basically between the first and second Nile cataracts, saw one of the earliest phases of state formation in the world when rulers of the A-Group culture, who were buried in a cemetery at Qustul, adopted symbols of kingship similar to those of contemporary kings of Egypt of the Naqadah II-III period. Lower Nubia is now one of the most thoroughly explored archaeological regions of the world. Most of its many temples have been moved, either to higher ground nearby, as happened to Abu Simbel and Philae, or to quite different places, including various foreign museums.

Lower Palaeolithic

SYNONYMS OR RELATED TERMS: Lower Paleolithic
CATEGORY: chronology
DEFINITION: The earliest part of the Palaeolithic period, beginning about 2.5 million years ago and lasting to about 100,000 years ago. It was characterized by the first use of crude stone tools, the practice of hunting and gathering; and the development of social units, settlements, and structures. It was the era of the earliest forms of humans. The phases of the Palaeolithic have been subdivided based on artifact typology; the Lower Palaeolithic is the period of early hominid pebble tool and core tool manufacture. In China, the Early Palaeolithic ran from 1,000,000-73,000 BC.

Lusatian culture

SYNONYMS OR RELATED TERMS: Lausitz culture; Lusatia
CATEGORY: culture
DEFINITION: A Late Bronze Age and Early Iron Age (Hallstatt period) culture of Poland and eastern Germany, an urnfield culture which had formed by c 1500 BC. Larger settlements, such as Biskupin, Senftenberg, and Sobiejuchy, are fortified. The culture is noted for its bronzework and its fine dark pottery, sometimes graphite-burnished and generally decorated with bosses and fluted ornament. Iron tools were adopted in the north throughout the earlier Iron Age. In some classifications, the Middle Bronze Age 'pre-Lausitz' phase is considered the first stage of the Lusatian culture proper.

Mad'arovce

CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: Early Bronze Age regional group of the central Danube basin in western Slovakia and dated to the mid-2nd millennium BC. A large number of sites are hilltop settlements fortified by earthen banks or ditches. Tell-like multi-phase settlements are also known from lowland valleys, often with rich assemblages of dark burnished pottery. Mixed burial rites, sometimes inhumation, sometimes cremation, are known from the medium-sized lowland cemeteries. The culture emerged towards the end of the neighboring Unetice culture and may have been a late sub-group of that culture.

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.

Magellan periods

SYNONYMS OR RELATED TERMS: Magellan complex
CATEGORY: chronology; culture
DEFINITION: A chronological sequence covering 8000 BC-1000 AD constructed on the basis of assemblages from Fell's Cave and the Palli Aike Cave in Patagonia, South America. The sequence is divided into five phases, describing a series of hunting and marine adaptations. The earliest assemblage (Magellan I) contains fishtail projectile points, signifying Paleoindian activity. Horse and sloth bones and the remains of three partly cremated Dolichocephalic humans, found in association with these points, have produced a single radiocarbon date of c 8700 BC. A shift to willow-leaf points occurred in Magellan II c 8000-4000 BC, which coincides with the disappearance of Pleistocene megafauna and widespread climatic change. Magellan IV-V are ill-defined but represent a continuing hunting strategy blending into a period of ceramic use.

Mailhac

CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: A series of important Late Bronze Age and Iron Age sites near Narbonne in southwest France, dating from the 8th-1st centuries BC. The sites comprise a defended hilltop settlement (Le Cayla) and a series of urnfield cemeteries (Le Moulin, Grand Bassin I and II). The earliest phase has an urnfield-type cemetery, wooden houses, and evidence of farming supplemented by hunting. In the second phase (early 6th century BC), Hallstatt influences include iron and a chieftain's wagon burial (La Redorte). Greek and Etruscan imports appear in both graves and occupation deposits in this and in the succeeding phase. Occupation ended early in the 1st century BC with a burning, probably a Roman punitive action after threatened uprisings in the area.

Majiabang

SYNONYMS OR RELATED TERMS: Ma-chia-pang
CATEGORY: site; culture
DEFINITION: A Neolithic site and culture of Jiaxing, China, near Shanghai. The people are descendants of the 5th millennium BC Ho-mu-tu in the region south of the Yangtze near Shanghai. The early phase yielded a radiocarbon date of c 4000 BC. It had close ties with the Ch'ing-lien-kang culture in southern Kiangsu, northern Chekiang, and Shanghai. The successor to the Majiabang culture is the 3rd millennium BC Liangzhu culture. The earliest examples of jade from the lower Yangtze River region appear in the latter phases of Ma-chia-pang culture (c 5100-3900 BC).

Malta

CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: A Mediterranean island south of Sicily with a settlement of the impressed ware culture at Skorba dated to c 4900 BC. Further immigrants arrived from Sicily c 3500. These people from c 4000-2400 BC erected a startling and unique series of megalithic temples, some 30 still surviving, of sophisticated plan and construction. They are among the oldest human monuments in the Mediterranean basin. The major temple complexes, most of which contained two or three separate temples, were built in several phases over a long period of time. The temples are built of local limestone in Cyclopean masonry and are characterized by a series of apsidal courts or chambers arranged on either side of a central corridor opening from a monumental facade. The whole structure is enclosed by a solid outer wall and the space between this and the building itself filled with stone and earth rubble. They have a number of installations which are presumably ritual, including altar-like constructions, niches, and porthole openings. The temples are unique in form and construction and are in any case too early to be derived from any east Mediterranean stone architecture. They are now seen as a local development. The people of this time were succeeded by warlike immigrants, possibly from western Greece or Carthage (8th-7th c BC), who dug an urnfield into the ruins of the temples and built villages on naturally defended hilltops; it is to this period that the mysterious 'cart-ruts' belong. The island was finally brought under the control of the Phoenicians in the 9th century BC and conquered by Rome in 218 BC.

Mambo

CATEGORY: culture
DEFINITION: A Late Iron Age phase of the Leopard's Kopje complex of southern Zimbabwe. It is dated to the 10th-11th centuries AD.

Mamon

CATEGORY: culture
DEFINITION: A phase of the Pre-Classic in the Lowland Maya area dated c 550-300 BC, first defined at Uaxactún and Tikal. Some artifacts of stone and obsidian are included in the complex, but it is principally characterized by monochrome pottery with a 'waxy' feel to it. The flat-bottomed bowl was a common shape. Figurines are also characteristic.

Mapungubwe

CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: Late Iron Age hilltop site in northern Transvaal, that was South Africa's first urban center. It has given its name to the southern facies of phase B of the Leopard's Kopje complex and it was occupied between 1220-1270 AD. The material from the earliest levels is very similar to that from the nearby site of Bambandyanalo. Mapungubwe was a forerunner of the developments at Great Zimbabwe and may have been the capital of a state that controlled trade with the East African coast. In Mapungubwe and Great Zimbabwe, a wealthy and privileged elite built with stone and were buried with gold and copper ornaments, exotic beads, and fine imported pottery and cloth. Their homes, diet, and ostentatious burials are in stark contrast to those of the common folk. The 13th-century burial of an important official uncovered at Mapungubwe was accompanied by a gold-covered statue of a rhinoceros, a golden staff, and other artifacts - one of the earliest indications of gold mining in southern Africa. The Mapungubwe gold was panned from alluvial deposits.

Marlik Tepe

CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: Early Iron Age royal cemetery of the late 2nd millennium BC southwest of the Caspian Sea in northern Iran. Its tombs include a wealth of gold and silver vessels, jewelry, and weapons. Some graves have rectangular stone slabs on which the body with its grave goods was laid and then covered with earth. Characteristic decoration is in relief and portrays mythical animal and human figures. Marlik Tepe may represent an early phase in the development of the art of the Medes.

Maros point

CATEGORY: lithics
DEFINITION: Small hollow-based stone projectile points, often with serrated edge-retouch, characteristic of a mature phase of the Toalian industry of southwestern Sulawesi, India, c 6000 BC into the 1st millennium BC. They were part of a mid-Holocene stone flake and blade industry.

Marzabotto

CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: An Etruscan occupation site, 25 km from Bologna, northern Italy, in the Reno valley. It was probably set on an important Etruscan trade route. Its 6th-century BC phase was characterized by plain, primitive dwellings and had evidence of metalworking. In a 5th-century BC stage, the city appears to have been laid out afresh upon a grid system, with blocks of houses on carefully paved streets. The town shows sophisticated drainage, both road and domestic. There are the workshops, foundries, and kilns bordering the principal street. Its acropolis shows evidence of three temples. Marzabotto's occupation, and possibly destruction, by the Boii in the 4th century BC seems to have brought an end to the settlement.

Maxton

CATEGORY: site; culture
DEFINITION: Early Iron Age site in central Zimbabwe of the 11th century AD; also the name of the late phase culture. The sites are often on hilltops with stone walls.

Mazapan ware

CATEGORY: ceramics
DEFINITION: A ceramic style developing out of Coyotlatelco and first appearing in association with major architecture at Tula, Mexico in the post-Classic Toltec phase (9th-12th century AD). The orange-on-buff (or red-on-buff) pottery was decorated by straight or wavy parallel lines produced by multiple brushes.

Medvednjak

CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: A pair of Neolithic settlement sites on adjoining hills, north of Smederevska Palanka in northern Serbia. The first site is dated to the earliest Vinca phase; the second has two occupations of the Early Vinca and Late Vinca (Vinca culture c 4500-3500 BC). Complete house-plans from the latest level indicate rectangular houses and assemblages have ritual finds and evidence of spinning, weaving, food storage, and grinding.

Mehrgarh

SYNONYMS OR RELATED TERMS: Mehrgahr
CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: Important site of a series of settlements of the Neolithic and Chalcolithic periods in Baluchistan, western Pakistan, important as the earliest farming site known in the area, perhaps dating from the 8th-6th millennia BC. The earliest phase was aceramic and the evidence at Mehrgarh provides a clear picture of an early agricultural settlement exhibiting domestic architecture and a variety of well-established crafts. The use of sea shells and of various semiprecious stones, including turquoise and lapis lazuli, indicates the existence of trade networks extending from the coast and perhaps also from Central Asia. Subsequent phases in the 5th, 4th, and 3rd millennia show a developing society, characterized by craft specialization (with specialist production of pottery figurines and beads of semi-precious stones) and extensive trade networks linking Baluchistan with eastern Iran and southern Turkmenistan. Although no Harappan Civilization phase is represented here, the culture of Mehrgarh provides a plausible local antecedent for this civilization. It was probably occupied until the beginning of the Mature Harappan in the 3rd millennium BC.

Merimde Beni Salama

SYNONYMS OR RELATED TERMS: Merinde, Merimda Beni Salama
CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: Site on the west bank of the Nile Delta, Egypt, representing one of the earliest cultures of Egypt, similar to that of the Fayyum (Faiyum). It yielded a radiocarbon date of 5060 BC and was occupied for about 600 years, probably c 4900-4300 BC, by a population up to 16,000. Three occupation phases showed progressively more substantial shelters, beneath which the dead were buried in a crouched position. Barley and emmer, cattle, sheep, and pigs are attested. Sickle flints and hollow-based arrowheads, pyriform and spherical maceheads, sling stones, fishhooks, spindle whorls, and simple stone axheads have been found. The pottery was poor, plain, straw-tempered and often covered with a slip. It is the earliest evidence for fully sedentary village life in the Nile valley. The Merimda phase of the Lower Egyptian Predynastic Period appears to have been roughly contemporary with the late Badarian and Amratian phases in Upper Egypt.

Micoquian

CATEGORY: artifact; culture
DEFINITION: Final Acheulian phase defined on the basis of assemblages from La Micoque, near Les Eyzies, France. Sites are in central Europe, including some in the former Soviet Union. The characteristic artifact is a pointed-pyriform (pear-shaped) or lanceolate (tapering) biface with a well-made tip.

Middle Kingdom

CATEGORY: chronology; culture
DEFINITION: A period in Egyptian history including the 11th through 13th Dynasties, c 2008-1630 BC. This phase began with the reunification of Upper and Lower Egypt by the 11th Dynasty king Mentuhotep II (Nebhapetre) ushering in years of stability and prosperity. It is usually divided into two phases, the early Middle Kingdom (late 11th and early 12th Dynasties) and the late Middle Kingdom (from the reign of Senusret III to end of 13th Dynasty).

Midwestern Taxonomic System

SYNONYMS OR RELATED TERMS: midwestern taxonomic system; McKern taxonomic system
CATEGORY: term; technique
DEFINITION: A hierarchical framework devised by William McKern in 1939 to systematize historical sequences in the Great Plains area of the United States, using the general principle of similarities between artifact assemblages. It was used to organize artifacts and sites in North America before World War II and is still in widespread use in modified form. One occupational unit of a particular culture was called a component. Related components were grouped into a focus, representing a culture unit approximating a tribe. Related foci constituted a pattern, and related patterns constituted a base, the highest level in the system. Classification was based strictly on similarities between compared units without regard to their respective ages. Many of the names of cultures are still called foci and the standard definition of a component is a single unit of occupation. Most units formerly called foci are now called phases, which have temporal as well as descriptive meaning.

Mikulcice

CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: A site situated on the Morava River in the Czech Republic, a settlement of Great Moravia and the earliest Slavic state polity. It is a complex site with stratified deposits going back to the late 6th century, when it was one of the earliest Slavic fortified centers. The stronghold consisted of a central nucleus within a plank-built palisade, with an additional suburb of workshops and houses. Mikulcice was an important metal production center, famous for elaborate bronze and gilded spurs. In Midulcice's second phase during the early 9th century, the defenses were refurbished in stone and timber, and a stone church was built. In the latter part of the 9th century, a stone-built palace and a number of other churches were built. These churches display an enormous variety of designs, and include several rotunda buildings. Greater Moravia fell in 907 AD.

Milazzo

CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: A town founded in 716 BC by colonists from Zankle (Messina). It was taken by the Athenians in 426 BC and by the Syracusan tyrant Agathocles in 315 BC. The consul Gaius Duilius won the first Roman naval victory over the Carthaginians in the bay in 260 BC. It is located on the northeast coast of Sicily, facing the Aeolian Islands, and demonstrates close cultural connections with the prehistoric sequence on these islands. It was occupied throughout the Bronze Age; the Middle Bronze Age culture had a cemetery of pithos burials (with the dead placed in large jars in the crouched position) while in the succeeding Late Bronze Age phase (Ausonian culture) had a cemetery of urnfield type, characterized by cremations in urns and bronzes of local Urnfield (Proto-Villanovan) type. The old town on a hill above is partly surrounded by Spanish walls from the 16th century and contains a 13th-century Norman castle.

Minoan

CATEGORY: culture
DEFINITION: The Bronze Age civilization of Crete, a name coined by Sir Arthur Evans derived from the legendary ruler of Knossos, Minos. The civilization is divided into three phases: Early (c 3000-2000 BC), Middle (c 2000-1550 BC), and Late (c 1550-1050 BC). Each had three subdivisions marked with Roman numerals. They stand out as the first civilized Europeans, with a highly sophisticated way of life and material equipment, and were surprisingly modern. They probably represented a fusion between Anatolian immigrants and the native Neolithic population, with some trading contacts through the east Mediterranean. In the Middle Minoan period, urbanization became apparent, towns appeared and, a Minoan specialty, the first of the great palaces, Knossos, Mallia, and Phaestos. Overseas trade was greatly expanded, too. The height of its development was in the 18th-15th centuries BC. By about 1580 BC Minoan civilization began to spread across the Aegean to neighboring islands and to the mainland of Greece. Minoan cultural influence was reflected in the Mycenean culture of the mainland, which began to spread throughout the Aegean about 1500 BC. The palaces were destroyed c 1450, probably by the cataclysmic eruption of Santorini/Thera - or by conquerors from the mainland. After that, Greek-speaking Mycenaeans gained control of Knossos and Crete; only Knossos was reoccupied on a significant scale. The final fall of Knossos, c 1400 BC, marked the end of Crete's period of greatness. Their Linear A script has not been deciphered, but Linear B has been successfully translated as an early form of Greek, written in a syllabary, but belongs only to the period of mainland domination, and is therefore more relevant to Mycenaeans than Minoans. Their pottery is among the most artistic of any place or time, using abstract curvilinear, floral, and marine designs. Craftsmen reached high levels of technical skill and aesthetic achievement in pottery, metal work, stonework, jewelry, and wall painting (the palaces are lavishly decorated with frescoes). Vessels, figurines, and magnificent seal stones were also carved in stone and bronze and gold objects made. There were many bull sporting events. Cult activities normally took place either in hilltop shrines, often in caves, or in small shrines within the palaces, and often involved animals, including goats and especially bulls. There is an alternative division of the Minoan civilization into Prepalatial (Early Minoan I-III), Protopalatial (Middle Minoan I-II), Neopalatial (Middle Minoan III-Late Minoan IIIA1), and Postpalatial (Late Minoan IIIA2-IIIC).

Miraflores

CATEGORY: culture
DEFINITION: A complex of cultural materials which define a phase from 100 BC to 200 AD of Highland Mayan sites in the Late Pre-Classic period. It is the Late Formative period of the Valley of Guatemala. Characteristic artifacts include engraved soft stone and monochrome ceramic vessels, as well as 'mushroom stones' (hollow stones set in an annular base and capped with mushroom-shaped covers, which may have been used in rites with hallucinogenic mushrooms). A strong Izapan influence is evident. The huge Miraflores mounds located at Kaminaljuyú contained log tombs of incredible richness. In one, the deceased was accompanied by sacrificed followers or captives. As many as 340 objects were placed with him, including jade mosaic masks, jade ear spools and necklaces, bowls of chlorite schist, and pottery vessels of great beauty.

Miriwun

CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: A rock shelter in the Ord River valley, Kimberley, Western Australia, now inundated by the Argyle Dam and submerged by Lake Argyle. Occupation deposits date from 16,000 BC. Artifacts from t he early phase include adze flakes, small denticulated flakes, thick notched flakes, pebble tools, irregular blade cores, and amorphous cores. Late phase tools, c 1000 BC, included unifacial and bifacial points, many denticulated, with the earlier tool types continued alongside.

Moche

SYNONYMS OR RELATED TERMS: Mochica
CATEGORY: culture
DEFINITION: The major culture of the northern coast of Peru during the Early Intermediate Period. It originated in the Moche and Chicama Valleys and later spread by conquest as far south as the Santa and Nepeña Rivers. The culture developed around the start of the Christian era and lasted until c 700 AD. Dominant during the Early Intermediate Period (c 400 BC-600 AD), it is best known for its irrigation works, its massive adobe temple-platforms, and for its pottery. Especially famous are the modeled vessels and portrait head vases, and the jars, often with stirrup spouts, painted in reddish brown with scenes of religion, war, and everyday life. The pottery sequence has five phases which are identified by the details of the spout formation on the stirrup-necked bottles and it is used for relative dating of the sites (c 300-700 AD). The Moche culture was the major contributor to the subsequent Chimú culture of the north coast. Huge structures at the ceremonial center include a large, terraced, truncated pyramid, Huaca del Sol, and the smaller Huaca de la Luna, on top of which is a series of courtyards and rooms, some with wall paintings. Huaca del Sol was perhaps the largest single construction of the prehistoric Andean region. Grave goods in gold, silver and copper display a fairly advanced metalworking technology. Archaeologists excavated a site called Huaca Rajada and found the elaborate, jewelry-filled tomb of a Moche warrior-priest. Several more burial chambers containing the remains of Moche royalty have been excavated, all dating from about 300 AD, whose finds greatly aided the understanding of Moche society, religion, and culture. Incised lines on lima beans have recently been interpreted as a form of nonverbal communication similar in concept to the quipu. Developing out of Cupisnique, Gallinazo and Salinar, Moche survived into the Middle Horizon but appears ultimately to have been overtaken by the Huari culture. In the last phase (Moche V), the southern part of the Moche territory was abandoned and a new capital established in the north, at Pampa Grande.

Molodova culture

CATEGORY: culture
DEFINITION: Upper Palaeolithic culture of the western Ukraine, found in the 5th level of Moldova. The early phase, c 30-25,000 bp, has burins, large retouched blades, and endscrapers; later phases, c 23-12,000 bp, also had backed blades and points.

Moloko

CATEGORY: culture
DEFINITION: Late Iron Age complex in Transvaal, South Africa, c 1200-1300 AD. Another phase started c 1600 AD and had many stone settlements.

Munhata

CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: A site occupied in the PPNB phase, located on a high terrace of the River Jordan in Israel, with a radiocarbon date of c 7200 BC. Several different building phases are documented and the architecture is characterized by plastered areas and raised stone platforms; earlier rectangular buildings were later replaced by round ones. Sickle blades, querns, grindstones, and pestles suggest that wild cereals were harvested. After a hiatus in occupation, there were three ceramic phases: the Yarmukian, with semi-sunken round huts; the Munhata phase with similar structures, and the Wadi Rabah phase with rectangular houses.

Nabta Playa

CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: A low-lying lake basin near the Egypt/Sudan border in the desert west of the Nile. Extensive scattered prehistoric occupation is attested from c 8100 bp, with assemblages of wild plant foods and ceramics. Settlement later concentrated in larger sites adjacent to the lakeshore. Pottery and concave-based arrowheads show affinities to those from Early Khartoum and the Fayyum, respectively. Cattle, probably domestic, were in the faunal remains. Sheep and goats were present by 6700 bp. Seeds were well-preserved and include two kinds of barley, doum palm, date palm, possible sorghum and several weed species indicative of the presence of cultivation. The degree of continuity from earlier times illustrated by this Neolithic phase is noteworthy, as is the early documentation of food production. A large aggregation site of 7000-6000 BP has associated megaliths.

Nachikufan

CATEGORY: culture
DEFINITION: Backed microlith industries of northern Zambia of the Later Stone Age, named after Nachikufu Cave. The complex, once regarded as a single local tradition (Nachikufan Industrial Complex), was of long duration and divided into three successive phases. The first phase, Nachikufan I, is now seen as a widespread industry, characterized by the presence of large numbers of small pointed backed bladelets, of early date; it extends back as early as c 20,000 BP at such sites as Kalemba and Leopard's Hill, till 12,000 BP. There were also various scrapers and examples of bored stones. The later phases are more restricted geographically and form part of a general continuum of variation among the backed-microlith industries of south-central Africa during the last 7-8 millennia BC.

Nagyrév

CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: The type site for a regional group of the Hungarian Early Bronze Age; the initial culture in the tripartite sequence distributed in the lowlands of northern Hungary, dated to c 2300-1500 BC. This first phase shows connections with the Beaker and Vucedol cultures, while the later phase is contemporary with early Unetice. The Nagyrév precedes the Hatvan and Füzesabony. Most known settlement sites are tells surrounded by enclosing banks and ditches. Timber-framed houses are common, though some clay houses are found at Tószeg. Rich grave goods are rare, occurring predominantly in the Budapest area. A universal pottery form is the one- or two-handled cup with tall funnel neck in black burnished ware.

Nahal Oren

CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: Cave and open terrace site on the western slope of Mount Carmel, Israel, occupied from the early Upper Palaeolithic (Kebaran, c 16,300-13,850 BC) to the early Aceramic Neolithic (PPNA) and PPNB (Pre-Pottery Neolithic B). Natufian levels show a strong bias towards the selective hunting, or possibly herding, of gazelle and this continued through to the PPNA levels. There was a growing assemblage of processing tools such as mortars, suggesting that plant-gathering was becoming more important. The material culture included chipped stone tools, ground stone tools, bone tools, stone vessels, and art objects. Natufian and PPNA buildings were round houses with central fireplaces. In the PPNB, they switched to rectangular houses with paved floors; these were sited on the artificial terrace outside the cave, constructed in the Natufian phase. A cemetery of early Natufian date is associated with the site: bodies were buried individually, usually tightly flexed with knees drawn up to the chin; old mortars were used as grave markers. Grave goods include carved stone and bone work; the most notable example was a gazelle's head.

Namazga-depe

CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: Large Chalcolithic and Bronze Age settlement in southern Turkmenia (western Central Asia) on the north slope of Kopet Dagh. The Namazga phases I-III are assigned to the Chalcolithic period, while Namazga IV and V belong to the Bronze Age - the Eneolithic (c 4800-3000 BC) and Bronze Age (c 3000-1500 BC); the sequence covers Anau IA Neolithic to the beginning of the Iron Age. The site was urban in character with a high population concentration and separate artisans' quarters, producing evidence of specialist production of bronze, gold, and silver goods, and wheelmade, kiln-fired pottery. The 'proto-civilization' of southern Turkmenia in the later 3rd millennium BC was characterized by two large towns - Namazga-depe and Altin-Depe - and a number of smaller settlements such as Ulug-depe. Other features include a wide-ranging trade network and an incipient writing system with repetitive symbols incised on flat clay figurines. This civilization never reached the levels achieved by the fully fledged civilizations of Mesopotamia, Egypt, and the Indus Valley. There was a marked decline in the early 2nd millennium BC, possibly due to environmental changes, and a collapse in its final 'tower' phase in the late 3rd or early 2nd millennium BC. Altin-depe was abandoned while Namazga-depe survived only as a small village.

Nasca

SYNONYMS OR RELATED TERMS: Nazca
CATEGORY: culture
DEFINITION: Major culture of the southern coast of Peru during the Early Intermediate Period, c 200 BC-600 AD, developed out of Paracas. The principal Nasca site is at Cahuachi on the Nasca River, with a great adobe temple atop a mound, some walled courts and large rooms, and a number of smaller constructions. The earliest pottery, of roughly the 2nd century BC, still shows Paracas influence in the iconography and the use of up to 16 colors, but the paint was not put on before firing. Typical Nasca pottery with designs of fish, birds, severed heads, human figures and demons, shows a long internal development. The final Nasca substyle incorporates patterns taken from the art of Huari, and this contact was soon followed by invasion. Stylistically, the Nasca ceramics have been divided into nine phases. With the expansion of the Huari empire to the coast around the 7th century AD, Nasca culture came to an end and was replaced by a local version of Huari. To the Nasca period belong some (or all) of the desert markings, the so-called 'Nasca lines', made by scraping away the weathered surface of the desert to expose the lighter material beneath. Motifs include lines, geometrical patterns, and a few animal or bird forms. The dead were buried in large cemeteries, mainly near Cahuachi. Nasca survived into the Middle Horizon, when it became fused with the more dominant Huari and Tiahuanaco styles.

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.

Navdatoli

CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: Important prehistoric site on the Narbada River of central India, made up of four separate mounds, with Lower and Middle Palaeolithic, Chalcolithic, Iron Age, and medieval occupations. The Chalcolithic, dated to the 2nd millennium BC, had four phases with a painted black-and-red ware and black-painted cream slip ware in the first phase, then Jorwe ware, and finally painted Malwa ware. Its rectangular houses were of timber and bamboo, with lime-coated clay or dung floors. Simple copper and microlithic stone industries were employed. Only wheat was recorded from the lowest level, but from the second phase rice was also known. The site was abandoned in the 1st millennium AD. Subsequently the site was abandoned and its role as a trading center was assumed by Maheshwar on the opposite side of the river.

Nebo

CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: Late Neolithic site of the Butmir culture, near Travinik, central Bosnia, and dating to the early 4th millennium BC. Excavations indicated two occupation phases in the Classic and Late Butmir periods. The large quantities of manufacturing debris on the site may be interpreted as workshop debris from stone and bone tool production.

Nevasa

CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: Prehistoric site on the northern Deccan plateau in western central India with a Middle Palaeolithic industry, a regional Chalcolithic with Jorwe ware of the later 2nd millennium BC, and a settlement of the late 1st millennium BC with wares of late Iron Age southern India. Another phase shows trade with Rome by the early 1st millennium AD. Glass beads and bangles characteristic of the Hindu culture of about 200 BC have been discovered in Nevasa excavations.

New Zealand

CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: The southernmost and (except for Chatham Islands) only temperate landmass to be settled by Polynesians/Maoris. Beginning in c 900 AD, the lifestyle was predominantly horticultural on the North Island, but hunting and gathering on the colder South Island. Language, economy, and technology are almost fully Polynesian. There are two archaeological phases: Archaic, c 900-1300, and Classic, c 1300-1800. The Classic is associated with many earthwork fortifications, a rich woodcarving tradition, and development of the chiefly society observed by Captain Cook in 1769.

Nineveh

SYNONYMS OR RELATED TERMS: modern Kuyunjik
CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: Large walled city, a capital of the Assyrians from the end of the 8th century BC, located across the Tigris River from Mosul, Iraq. The site was occupied from the earliest times, with pottery from the Hassuna phase on. The site today consists of two main mounds, Kuyunjik (the citadel) and Nebi Yunus (the arsenal). It was occupied from the 6th millennium BC (a test pit beneath the Temple of Ishtar, the goddess of love, produced material of Hassuna type at the bottom) until it was destroyed by the Medes late in the 7th century BC. Ninevite ware (or Ninevite V) represents the comparatively backward culture of the north, contemporary with the Early Dynastic of Sumer. Little of importance is recorded of the site until it became a joint capital of Assyria, with Assur and Nimrud, in the early 1st millennium. Sennacherib was responsible for making it a capital and his great palace has splendid carved reliefs. To this period belong the site's other spectacular monuments, the palaces with their elaborate architecture, carved reliefs, and cuneiform inscriptions. The most important finds were probably the two libraries of clay tablets found in the palaces of Sennacherib (704-681 BC) and Assurbanipal (668-627 BC). It was destroyed by Medes in 612 BC. A lifesize bronze head of an Akkadian king, possibly Sargon (founder of the Akkadian empire), dated to the later 3rd millennium BC, was found there.

Nitriansky Hrádok

CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: A multiple-phase defended settlement site of the Boleráz culture, a transition from the Eneolithic to Early Bronze Age, located on the banks of the River Nitra, western Slovakia. It dates to the late 3rd-early 2nd millennia BC. There was a double ditch and timber-framed rampart; the tell-like accumulation of material includes antler cheekpieces for horse bits.

Norton

SYNONYMS OR RELATED TERMS: Norton tradition phase
CATEGORY: culture
DEFINITION: A series of Arctic Alaska cultures, mainly coastal, dating from c 500 BC-1100 AD, with the first pottery of the region. The Choris culture, the earliest manifestation, has pottery that is Asiatic in origin, fiber-tempered with linear- and check-stamp decoration. Sometimes designated Paleo-Eskimo, the Norton tradition embraces the cultural continuum Choris-Norton-Ipiutak. The Norton aspect of this continuum is typically represented by the presence of poorly fired, check-stamped pottery and tools of crude appearance, made from basalt rather than chert. Polished slate implements and oil lamps appear as well as points, tips, side blades; discoidal scraper bits, broad flat labrets, and toggling harpoon heads. Cape Denbigh, Cape Krusenstern and Onion Portage for example, all have a Norton component. The extent to which the Norton tradition was ancestral to any of the Eskimos is open to interpretation, though the Yup'ik Eskimo are likely descendants of Norton people.

Nubian A Group

SYNONYMS OR RELATED TERMS: Nubian A-Group culture
CATEGORY: culture
DEFINITION: The name conventionally given to the earliest fully food-producing society known in the archaeological record of Nubia, late in the 4th millennium BC. The 'A Group' people probably had an indigenous Nubian ancestry, but were evidently in regular trade contact. The A Group is known mainly from graves, as from the excavated cemetery at Qustul, and adopted symbols of kingship similar to those of contemporary kings of Egypt of the Naqadah II-III period. It was one of the earliest phases of state formation in the world. Some settlement sites have been investigated, as at Afyeh near the First Cataract where rectangular stone houses were built, as well other rural villages. Sheep and goats were herded, with some cattle, while both wheat and barley were cultivated. Luxury manufactured goods imported from Egypt included stone vessels, amulets, copper tools and linen cloth.

Okvik

CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: Eskimo site of the Thule tradition of the Punuk Islands in the Bering Sea. It dates to c 300 BC and has artifacts of the art style which developed through the succeeding Old Bering Sea and Punuk phases of the Northern Maritime subtradition. The earliest and finest statuettes of which there is knowledge are assigned to the Okvik culture; Okvik art is concerned primarily with the representation of the human figure, differing in that respect from the contemporary or slightly later Old Bering Sea culture, where the main interest is animals, such as reindeer, elks, bears, and seals. There were also decorated ivory tools such as harpoons and extensive use of polished slate and organic artifacts.

Omari, el-

SYNONYMS OR RELATED TERMS: Omari
CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: A site south of Cairo, Egypt, on the east of the Nile Delta, showing primitive Neolithic material closely comparable to that from Merimde. This phase of the Lower Egyptian Predynastic period, consisting of several Predynastic settlements and cemeteries clustered around the Wadi Hof, was transitional between the Merimde and Maadi.

Ortoire

CATEGORY: culture
DEFINITION: A cultural phase in Trinidad dated to c 800 BC, recognized by crude chipped stone tools, netsinkers, and grinding stones.

Oshara tradition

CATEGORY: culture
DEFINITION: A Southwestern Archaic tradition of the Four Corners region of southwestern U.S. It was an Archaic hunting and gathering culture from c 5500 BC to c 400 AD. There are five phases based on projectile point form, artifact assemblages, and socioeconomic organization. These phases are: Jay, c 5000-4800 BC, and Bajada, c 4800-3300 BC of the Early Archaic with nomadic bands of foragers and hunters; the San Jose Phase, c 3300-1800 BC; the Armijo Phase, c 1800-800 BC, with maize horticulture introduced; and the En Medio Phase, c 800 BC-400 AD, which encompassed the Basketmaker II Phase of the Anasazi culture.

Otakanini

CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: A Maori pa (hillfort) on a small island in Kaipara Harbor, North Island, New Zealand. The site has three defensive phases from the 14th-18th centuries AD, and after 1500 its inner citadel was defended by palisades and large raised fighting platforms. Cultural affiliations are Classic Maori.

Ozark

CATEGORY: culture
DEFINITION: A cultural area named after Ozark Hills of Arkansas, Oklahoma, and Missouri. An Archaic culture, called Grove phase and dating before 5000 BC, was probably ancestral to the Bluff-Dweller sites of Ozark area. Occupied in this millennium, it consists of rock shelters, caves, and open sites. Baskets and extensive remains due to dryness of cave sites.

Pampa Grande

CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: Middle Horizon, Moche V site in Lambayeque Valley, northern Peru, dated c 1000 BC and occupied for relatively short time. It was a large urban center and probably the relocated capital, after the abandonment of Huacas del Sol and Luna, of the Moche polity in its closing phases. Highly differentiated architecture is scattered over the area and structures include masonry platforms, truncated adobe pyramids, small agglutinated rooms, and extensive network of corridors and large storage rooms. A variety of human face motifs on molded and handmade neck-jars may have socio-economic significance in identifying either the contents or the owner. Stone tools were used in metalworking and small utilitarian artifacts in copper have also been found.

Pantalica

CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: A Late Bronze Age to Early Iron Age site inland from Syracuse in southeast Sicily, occupied c 13th-8th centuries BC. The 5,000 rock-cut tombs which honeycomb the hillside around have yielded great quantities of material. Pottery and metal goods from the tombs indicate trading contacts with both mainland Italy and the Aegean. The characteristic local pottery is wheelmade, red-slipped, and burnished. Four phases run from contemporary with Late Mycenaean c 1200 BC to well after the first Greek colonies formed in the 8th century BC. At least one public building has been exposed: a large stone built structure described as an anaktoron or palace.

Paracas

CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: Large ceremonial area and major Early Horizon culture on the south coast of Peru, showing direct influence from Chavín - especially in the pottery (called Ocucaje in the Ica Valley). The pottery is a highly individual polychrome ware with designs executed in resinous paint applied after the pot was fired, including paint-filled incisions of Chavinoid deities. This early period pottery was not well-fired. Desert conditions have preserved all kinds of organic materials, including fine textiles, in rich burials. The best known graves belong to the closing stages of the culture and are of two types: deep shafts leading into underground chambers with several mummy bundles (Paracas Cavernas), and pits or abandoned houses filled with sand and containing more than 400 mummy bundles (the type site, Paracas Necropolis). These people also engaged in artificial deformation of the skull by binding the skull in infancy. Much of the material from the necropolis belongs to the earliest stage of the Nasca culture, which developed out of Paracas in about the 2nd century BC. The Paracas culture's earlier phase, called Paracas Cavernas, is dated 900 BC-1 AD; the Paracas cultures of the middle Early Intermediate Period (c 1-400 AD) are referred to as the Paracas Pinilla and the Paracas Necrópolis phases. There are no large temple structures at the type site.

Parpalló Cave

CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: A cave in the province of Valencia, Spain, with a sequence of Solutrean and other Upper Palaeolithic deposits. There is a Gravettian layer with backed blades, burins, and endscrapers; followed by a sequence of Solutrean levels with barbed and tanged points. Four Magdalenian levels had stone, bone, and antler artifacts (microliths, needles, harpoons). Over 5000 small stone plaques, engraved and painted with animal figures, were found in the Palaeolithic levels; a Mesolithic phase had microburins.

Pech Merle

CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: Cave site in Quercy, France, with Palaeolithic paintings and engravings of three phases from 20,000-10,000 BC. It was not inhabited but there are animal figures, dots, and signs.

Phu Wiang

CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: An area and culture in Khorat, Thailand, with prehistoric sites inhabited between c 3000-2500 BC. It was a transitional Neolithic-Early Bronze age phase.

Piki

CATEGORY: culture
DEFINITION: An archaeological phase occurring in Ayacucho basin in central Andes, Peru, with artifacts dating c 5800-4550 BC.

Pikimachay Cave

SYNONYMS OR RELATED TERMS: Pikimachay
CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: Preceramic cave site in Ayacucho basin of central highland Peru. At one time, it was believed to have the longest stratigraphy in the New World with remains 25,000 years old. These pre-Clovis phases have been largely discounted as having human occupation. A long preceramic occupation did begin c 9000 BC.

Pirak

CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: Prehistoric site of the Kacchi Plain, Baluchistan, Pakistan where a post-Harappan cultural sequence has at least seven phases over the 2nd millennium and early 1st millennium BC. The sequence is characterized by a painted pottery with a geometric style with earlier monochrome painted decoration becoming bichrome in later times. There is evidence of intensified agricultural production and the horse and camel appear. Between 1200-1100 BC, iron came into use, the earliest occurrence in India.

Poliochni

CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: A settlement site on the island of Lemnos in the northern Aegean, first occupied in the Final Neolithic. Its seven successive phases span the Neolithic to Middle Bronze Age, parallel to the first six cities of Troy. Its Neolithic cities, equipped with stone baths, represented the most advanced Neolithic civilization yet found in the Aegean. The Copper Age city was dated to c 5000 BC. In the Early Bronze Age (c 3000 BC) it was a fortified township with stone defenses, one of the largest in the Aegean, with houses laid out along streets and evidence of the practice of metallurgy. An associated cemetery of inhumation burials has many with rich grave goods. There was a catastrophic destruction, though it was later reoccupied.

Praia das Macas

CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: Two Chalcolithic chambered tombs near Lisbon, Portugal. In its first phase it was a simple rock-cut tomb and subsequently a passage grave with partially corbelled chamber was added. The rock-cut tomb contained decorated slate plaques and other material of Late Neolithic or early Chalcolithic type with a date of c 2300 BC. The later tomb, which blocked the entrance to the earlier tomb, contained about 150 burials, Beaker pottery, Palmela points, and a tanged dagger. Its date is 1690 BC.

Pre-Classic period

SYNONYMS OR RELATED TERMS: Formative period, Preclassic period
CATEGORY: chronology
DEFINITION: A period in Mesoamerican archaeology during which agriculture formed the basis of settled village life, c 2000 BC-250 AD. The earliest writing - glyphs - in Mesoamerica began in this period. The Olmec was the first culture to appear in the Preclassic. A similar level was attained in Peru at about the same time (Chavín). In many other areas life remained on a Formative level until the Spanish conquest. The final phase of the Pre-Classic cultures of the central highland forms a transition from the village to the city, from rural to urban life.

Pre-Pottery Neolithic

CATEGORY: culture
DEFINITION: Early phases of the Neolithic of the Near East/Levant, characterized by the practice of agriculture and permanent settlement prior to the use of pottery. Two phases of the Pre-Pottery Neolithic have been identified: the PPNA phase, with radiocarbon dates in the range 8500-7600 BC; and PPNB, dated c 7600-6000 BC. Recent work suggests a third phase, the PPNC, dated to 6200-5900 BC.

Promontory culture

CATEGORY: culture
DEFINITION: A culture sometimes identified with the Fremont culture in northern Utah which is now considered an early phase of the late prehistoric groups that followed the Fremont. It was a bison-hunting, cave-dwelling people.

Ptolemy

CATEGORY: person
DEFINITION: Name held by a succession of 15 Hellenistic rulers of Egypt from 305/304 to 30 BC. The Ptolemaic period is often taken to include the brief preceding Macedonian phase (332-305 BC), encompassing the reigns of Alexander the Great (332-323 BC), his half-brother Philip Arrhidaeus (323-317 BC), and his son Alexander IV (317-310 BC). Ptolemy I Soter (b 367/366 or 364 BC-d 283/282, Egypt), Macedonian general of Alexander the Great, became ruler of Egypt (323-285 BC) and founder of the Ptolemaic dynasty. The dynasty reigned longer than any other dynasty and only succumbed to the Romans in 30 BC after Cleopatra VII's death.

Qaluyu

CATEGORY: site; culture
DEFINITION: A site and cultural phase of the Early Horizon Period in northern Titicaca area of Peru. The pottery had incisions or simple painted geometric motifs in red on cream.

Qermez Dere

CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: Late Epipalaeolithic to early Aceramic Neolithic site in northern Iraq with seven phases of occupation defined. The lithic industry is similar to those west on the Euphrates River (Mureybet). It is the beginning of documented habitation on the north Mesopotamian plain. Views on the earliest Neolithic in Iraq have undergone radical revisions in the light of discoveries made at Qermez Dere, Nemrik, and Maghzaliyah.

Rajghat

SYNONYMS OR RELATED TERMS: Old Banaras
CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: City of the Ganges Civilization, India, in Uttar Pradesh with the earliest occupation characterized by Black and Red Ware and the beginnings of iron technology. There are eight phases starting with that in c 800 BC. The settlement of this period was surrounded by a massive brick rampart. After c 700-600 BC, Northern Black Polished Ware and copper coins appear.

Ras al-Amiya

CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: A site near Kish in southern Mesopotamia (modern Iraq) which consisted of a small mound with pottery of Hajji Muhammad type, now regarded as an early phase of the 'Ubaid culture of the earlier 5th millennium BC. Architectural remains included rectangular houses arranged around courtyards.

Reinecke, Paul (1872-1958)

CATEGORY: person
DEFINITION: German archaeologist who was responsible for many typological studies and is best known for his subdivision of the central European Bronze and Iron ages (with phases denoted by letters). His system involved eight phases: Bronze A to D (Early and Middle Bronze Age) and Hallstatt A to D (Late Bronze Age and Early Iron Age). It is still widely used today, although often in modified form. It was largely based on the typology of hoard finds in southern Germany.

Rim

CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: A site in northern Burkino Faso, Africa, with three phases dating c 12,000-1000 years ago. The second phase, a backed microlith industry lacking pottery and ground stone artifacts is dated to 3600 bp. From the mid-2nd millennium BC both these elements are present. Stone tool technology continued until around 1,000 years ago, after the first local appearance of metal implements.

Riss glaciation

SYNONYMS OR RELATED TERMS: Riss Glacial Stage
CATEGORY: chronology
DEFINITION: The third major glaciation of the Pleistocene in Alpine Europe; the penultimate Alpine glacial advance. It started 250,000 years ago and lasted over 100,000 years. The Riss, during which mountain glaciers descended from the highlands, followed the Mindel-Riss Interglacial Stage and preceded the Riss-Würm Interglacial Stage, both periods of relatively moderate climatic conditions. The Riss is correlated with the Gipping Glacial Stage of Great Britain and the Saale Glacial Stage of northern Europe. Like the Saale, the Riss Glacial Stage included two major phases of ice advance separated by a period of more moderate conditions. The Riss Glacial Stage is roughly contemporaneous with the Illinoian Glacial Stage of North America.

Rupar

CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: A site in east Punjab, Pakistan, at the foot of the Simla Hills with vestiges of two phases of the Indus Valley or Harappan civilization. It is stratified below an occupation with Painted Grey Ware, which was itself by a level with Northern Black Polished Ware.

Saale

SYNONYMS OR RELATED TERMS: Saale Glacial Stage, Saalian cold stage
CATEGORY: chronology
DEFINITION: A division of Pleistocene deposits and time in northern Europe which followed the Holstein Interglacial Stage and preceded the Eemian Interglacial Stage. It was the penultimate cold stage in northern Europe, c 200,000-125,000 BP. The extensive and complex Saale deposits are correlated with the Wolstonian (or Gipping) Glacial Stage of Britain and the Riss Glacial Stage of the European Alpine region. The Saale is roughly contemporaneous with the Illinoian Glacial Stage of North America. The Saale has three complex phases: the Drente, Treene, and Warthe substages. The Drente and Warthe represent periods of glacial advance, or maxima, whereas the Treene represents an interstadial period of glacial retreat between the early Drente and the late Warthe. In the region of central Europe, the Saale is represented by three glacial maxima separated by two periods, or interstadials, of moderating climatic conditions. One of the main features is a complex series of end-moraines, demarcating the maximum extent of ice sheets. These ice sheets flowed out from centers in Scandinavia, across the Baltic Sea and into northern Europe and Russia. The end-moraines are split into two sets: one called the Drenthe moraines (or Dnieper), and the Warthe moraines (Moscow in the USSR). These formations are complex and each seems to represent several 'pulses' of the ice-sheet edge. The Saale Glacial Stage was named for the German river, a tributary of the Elbe.

Sabz, Tepe

CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: Tell site in Khuzestan in southwest Iran which has given its name to a cultural phase succeeding the Muhammad Jafar phase, c 5500-5250 BC. It is characterized by the appearance of painted pottery, buff-colored with geometric designs executed in black paint. Evidence suggests that irrigation agriculture was practiced, and flax, emmer, barley, and pulses cultivated. By approximately 6000 BC, patterns of village farming were widely spread over much of the Iranian Plateau and in lowland Khuzestan. It has yielded evidence of fairly sophisticated patterns of agricultural life and general cultural connections with the beginnings of settled village life in neighboring areas such as Afghanistan, Baluchistan, Soviet Central Asia, and Mesopotamia.

Sai Yok

CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: A rock-shelter site in western Thailand with a sequence from a possibly pre-Hoabinhian industry, Hoabinhian, and a Neolithic assemblage of Ban Kao type. The sequence could have the longest record of Hoabinhian development in southeast Asia. The pre-ceramic phase had pebble tools c 10,000-8000 BC. The term is also applied to the pebble tools.

Salcuta

CATEGORY: culture; site
DEFINITION: A Late Neolithic culture and site of southwestern Romania c 3500-2500 BC. It derives from the Vinca culture, with further influence from the Aegean. By its end, copper was coming into use. There are four main occupation phases in the tell stratigraphy. The pottery is typically a dark burnished wares, contemporaneous to the Gumelnita and other Balkan cultures, and crusted painted wares. The Late Copper Age levels are characterized by unpainted pottery with 'Furstenstich' decoration and with affinities to Cotofeni and Baden pottery.

Samarran culture complex

CATEGORY: culture
DEFINITION: Cultural phase of east-central Irqu along the Tigris River which dates to the second half of the 6th and early 5th millennium BC, with sites such as Tell es Sawwan and Choga Mami. There are three phases of the complex: Early Samarran with coarse ware decorated by incision, Middle Samarran with painted pottery using naturalistic scenes and geometric designs; and Last Samarran with more geometric painted pottery and no naturalistic scenes. The Samarrans used irrigation agriculture and herding of animals, both important to the developing Mesopotamian civilizations.

San Lorenzo

SYNONYMS OR RELATED TERMS: San Lorenzo Tenochtitlan
CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: The oldest-known Olmec center, located in Veracruz, Mexico, and revealing information on Olmec origins. It was a large nucleated village flourishing during the Early Formative. The first phase of occupation (Ojochi, c 1800-1650 BC) left no architectural traces, but during the next period (Bajío, 1650-1550 BC) a start was made on the artificial plateau with lateral ridges forming the base of most subsequent structures. The Chicharras phase (1550-1450 BC) foreshadows true Olmec in its pottery, figurines, and perhaps also in stone-carving. The San Lorenzo phase (1450-1100 BC) marks the Olmec climax at the site, whose layout then resembled that of La Venta. The principal features of the site are a large platform mound and a cluster of smaller mounds surrounding what may be the earliest ball court in Mesoamerica; more than 200 house mounds are clustered around these central features. A system of carved stone drains underlying the site is a unique structural feature. Around 900 BC, the stone monuments were mutilated and buried upon the center's collapse. La Venta then came to power. The monuments weighed as much as 44 tons and were carved from basalt from the Cerro Cintepec, a volcanic flow in the Tuxtla Mountains about 50 air miles to the northwest. It is believed that the stones were somehow dragged down to the nearest navigable stream and from there transported on rafts up the Coatzacoalcos River to the San Lorenzo area. The amount of labor involved must have been enormous, indicating a complex social system to ensure the task's completion. Most striking are the colossal heads human portraits on a stupendous scale, the largest of which is 9 feet high. After a short hiatus, the site was reoccupied by a group whose culture still shows late Olmec affinities (Palangana phase, 800-450 BC), but was again abandoned until 900 AD when it was settled by early post-Classic (Villa Alta) people who used plumbate and fine orange pottery. The collapse of San Lorenzo c 1150/1100 BC was abrupt and violent. The population was forced to do its agricultural work well outside the site, which may have contributed to the center's collapse.

Sapalli-depe

SYNONYMS OR RELATED TERMS: Sapalli-Tepe
CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: Site in southern Uzbekistan with Middle to Late Bronze Age occupation. Data found there defines the Sapalli phase of regional chronology, mid-late 3rd millennium BC. There was a central square fortification and intramural burials with well-preserved organic remains.

Sarup

CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: Neolithic site in Funen, Denmark, with two enclosures - Sarup I of the Fuchsberg phase (Early to Middle Neolithic) c 3400 BC and Sarup II of c 120 years later. About 12 Neolithic enclosures like this are known in southern Scandinavia.

Schroda

CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: In northeast Transvaal, South Africa, the 9th century AD capital and religious center of the Zhizo phase of the Early Iron Age. Trade began between the southern African interior and the East African coast, leading to the rise of Mapungubwe and Great Zimbabwe. Evidence shows the site's occupants were rich in both livestock and trade beads.

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.

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.

Shahi Tump

CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: Small tell site in western Baluchistan with a small inhumation cemetery, probably of the 3rd millennium BC. Pottery and other artifacts show connections both with Iranian sites and the Kulli culture of southern Baluchistan. Grave goods included fine gray ware bowls with swastika motifs in soft black paint; rich copper work, a shaft-hole ax, and five compartmented stamp seals. Three phases of use were recognized: two phases of occupation, followed by a phase of use as a cemetery.

Shang

SYNONYMS OR RELATED TERMS: Yin; Shang civilization
CATEGORY: culture
DEFINITION: The first dynasty recorded historically, thought to have ruled from the mid-16th to mid-11th century BC (Some scholars date the Shang dynasty from the mid-18th to the late 12th century BC.). However, Shang as an archaeological term must be distinguished from Shang as a dynastic one. Earlier stages of the culture known from Anyang have been recognized at sites assigned to the Erligang Phase and, still earlier, the Erlitou phase. So far virtually no inscriptions have been found at these pre-Anyang sites; even if the date of the dynasty's founding were known it would be uncertain to what extent these archaeologically defined phases fall within the Shang period. Thus while the type site of the Erligang phase at Zhengzhou is generally assumed to have been a Shang capital, some archaeologists have argued that the Erlitou phase falls in the time of the Hsia dynasty, traditional predecessor of Shang. The archaeological classification of Middle Shang is represented by the remains found at Erligang (Erh-li-kang) (c 1600 BC) near Cheng-chou (Zhengzhou). The Shang replaced the Hsia (Zia) in c 1500 BC and was overthrown by the Chou in 1027 BC. The Shang dynasty belongs technically to the advanced Bronze Age - with that metal used for tools (socketed axes, knives, etc.), weapons (halberds, spears, and arrowheads) and for the highly ornamented and artistic ritual vessels. There was a fine white pottery and coarser grey wares, wheelmade and occasionally glazed, which clearly derive from the preceding Neolithic pottery. The period's claim to rank as a civilization is supported by the size and complexity of its cities and its use of writing. Two of its capitals have been identified, at modern Cheng-chou and Anyang, both in Honan province near the middle Yellow River. Rich cemeteries provide much of the evidence, particularly the royal tombs at Anyang. Building was mainly in timber on rammed earth foundations; city walls were also of rammed earth. Burial was by inhumation in pit graves with the skeletons extended, some face down. The pictographic writing appears as occasional inscriptions on the bronzes, much more commonly on the enormous number of oracle bones. The Shang was the second of the Chinese dynasties in the Protohistoric Sandai period.

Shindo

CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: A small spur projecting into the valley of the Kyi Chu River near Lhasa, Tibet. Three phases have been distinguished. Horizon A had flexed burials in rock-cut pits, accompanied by crude, handmade pottery but no metalwork. Horizon B contained two flexed burials in rock-cut pits with much finer handmade pottery and a few iron artifacts. There was also one larger tomb closed with two carefully dressed stone slabs and containing two skulls, a pile of long bones and vertebrae, three pottery vessels, and a wooden bowl with metal lining. Horizon C consisted of two tumuli built of pebbles, with flexed burials, fine wheel-turned pottery with traces of red decoration, and a few iron artifacts. About 50 meters from this ridge is a boulder with pecked carvings of animals and letters.

Sialk, Tepe

SYNONYMS OR RELATED TERMS: Siyalk
CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: Important tell site near Kashan on the plateau of Iran with a six major phases from the Neolithic to the Iron Age. They are: I, dating to the 6th-5th millennia BC, a simple village of recently settled farmers who used pottery painted with basketry designs and copper only in the form of hammered ornaments; II, a village of mudbrick architecture with very fine pottery elaborately painted with stylized animals; III, pottery made by wheel and kiln and more use of copper; IV, around 3000 BC, the site fell under the influence of Susa and Mesopotamia, the painted ware replaced by monochrome gray or red, much jewelry, and the introduction of proto-Elamite writing. This phase was followed by a break in occupation and the resettlement - represented in cemetery A - is often attributed to intruders from the northeast, who are thought to have been responsible for the introduction of Indo-European languages to this area. The final occupation of Tepe Sialk, represented in cemetery B and dated to the late 2nd-early 1 millennium BC, saw the first use of iron. Around 9th-8th century BC, the site was destroyed and abandoned.

Silbury Hill

CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: Largest prehistoric manmade mound in Europe, located in Wiltshire, England, and part of the Avebury complex of Neolithic monuments. It is a huge conical chalk mound, 40 meters high and 160 meters in diameter. No burials have been found within or beneath the mound to this date. It was built in four distinct phases, but apparently continuously as part of a single constructional process, dated c 2600-2300 BC.

Single Grave culture

SYNONYMS OR RELATED TERMS: Single-Grave Culture
CATEGORY: culture
DEFINITION: Late Neolithic cultures of Scandinavia, northern Germany, and the Low Countries, dated to c 2800-2400 BC. The burial rite was inhumation of a single corpse under or within a round barrow, and sometimes laid in a pit grave or a mortuary house. The burials include the stone battle-ax and corded ware beakers. The Single Grave culture has traditionally been regarded as intrusive in northern Europe because of the contrast with the collective burial in megalithic tombs practiced by the earlier Neolithic TRB people in the same area. It is possible that it developed out of the TRB culture and that the changes in the archaeological record at this time can be explained in terms of changing social systems - more complex social structures and the emergence of elites. The burial mounds are sometimes multi-phase with the sequence of under-grave, bottom-grave, and over-grave.

Skara Brae

CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: Neolithic village of stone-built houses in Orkney, Scotland, preserved beneath a sand dune with occupation c 3100-2500 BC. In its latest phase the village consisted of six or seven houses and a workshop hut, all clustered together and linked by paved alleyways. The associated pottery was of Grooved Ware type. Furniture included beds, hearths, tables, dressers and cupboards.

Skorba

CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: Site on the island of Malta near Nadur Tower with a temple complex under which earlier deposits have been found. Underneath a small trefoil-shaped temple, dated c 3000-2600 BC, was a Neolithic settlement of mud-brick houses on stone foundations and an oval hut of the Ghar Dalam (impressed ware) phase (c 5000 BC). A three-apse temple of the preceding Ggantija phase (c 3600-3000 BC) was also found as well as an oval-room building of the Red Skorba phase (c 4300-4000 BC). The latter is thought to have been a shrine, precursor to later temples. The name Skorba has been give to two successive pottery styles, Grey Skorba and Red Skorba, which seem to have developed out of the impressed pottery of the Ghar Dalam phase. The pottery seems related to that of contemporary eastern Sicily.

Soan

CATEGORY: culture
DEFINITION: A Lower Palaeolithic pebble tool and chopper industry of the Punjab (Pakistan) and northwest India. After a pre-Soan phase, the Soan proper begins during the second Himalayan interglacial, and its final stage, with an increase in flake tools (including some made by the Levallois technique), is probably contemporary with the early part of the Würm glaciation of Alpine Europe. There were handaxes and chopper / chopping tools. Some of the material has been redated to the Middle Palaeolithic and has questionable archaeological validity.

Solomon Islands

CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: Island nation in the center of Melanesia, southwestern Pacific Ocean. The Solomon Islands were initially settled by 2000 BC, probably by people of the Austronesian language group. The first European to reach the islands was the Spanish explorer Alvaro de Mendaña de Neira in 1568; the islands were named after the wealthy king Solomon of the Old Testament. Archaeological sequences are best known from the northern and southern extremities of the chain; the Santa Cruz islands in the south have very fine Lapita assemblages dating to c 1500-500 BC, and the island of Buka in the north has a continuous sequence from late Lapita (c 500 BC) through successive localized ceramic phases (similar to the Mangaasi tradition of Vanuatu) to recent times.

Solutrean

SYNONYMS OR RELATED TERMS: Solutrian
CATEGORY: culture
DEFINITION: A culture of the Upper Paleolithic period in western Europe, from about 19,000 BC, following the Perigordian and Aurignacian; characterized by the use of projectile points, especially the laurel-leaf blade. From Solutré, a site in central France, it was a short-lived style of toolmaking with particularly fine workmanship. The Solutrean industry, like those of other late Paleolithic big-game hunters, contained a variety of tools such as burins, scrapers, and borers; but blades that were formed in the shape of laurel or willow leaves and shouldered points are the implements that distinguish the Solutrean. It preceded the Magdalenian in parts of France and Spain. At Laugerie-Haute, unifacially chipped leaf-shaped points in the Early Solutrean show the gradual development of bifacial working, a stage dated c 19,000-18,000 BC. The Middle phase is characterized by fine large bifacial points and by the introduction of pressure flaking. In the Later Solutrean, this technique was used to produce slim leaf-shaped projectiles and small single-shouldered points. In southeast Spain this final stage also has barbed and tanged arrowheads. The laurel leaves were typical of Middle Solutrean and willow leaves (shouldered points) were from the Later Solutrean. The bone needle with an eye was invented in this period. Many decorated caves in France can be assigned to this period.

Somerset Levels

CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: Low-lying wetland region of Somerset in southwest England, famous for the preservation of remains in peat. Ancient trackways have been revealed and, with techniques such as pollen analysis and radiocarbon dating, it has been possible to establish the sequence of human and climatic development in the area. Permanent settlement occurred only on small 'islands' raised above the level of the marsh (e.g. the Iron Age villages of Glastonbury and Meare), but wooden tracks crossed the wet areas. The earliest discovered is the Sweet track dated to the Neolithic c 3600/2800 BC; after that tracks continued to be built at various times in the 3rd millennium BC. There was a long hiatus in track construction, perhaps because drier conditions made them unnecessary, but with climatic deterioration in the Late Bronze Age there was a new phase of track construction c 900-450 BC (alternatively, c 1100-500 BC).

Soufli

CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: Aceramic Neolithic-Bronze Age settlement in Thessaly, northern Greece. It had a Larisa phase cremation cemetery and is known for a rare piece of monumental sculpture depicting a more than life-size woman wearing a skirt and necklace.

St. Albans

SYNONYMS OR RELATED TERMS: St. Albans phase
CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: A British town was established on the west bank of the Ver in the 1st century BC, and subsequently the Romans built their town of Verulamium on the site. In 61 AD the town was sacked. Ruins of the town wall dating from the 2nd century AD exist. In c 304, a Roman named Alban, who had converted to Christianity, was taken from the town and killed on the east bank of the Ver. An abbey was later founded on the alleged site of his martyrdom, and the town of St. Albans grew up around the abbey.

Stanwick

CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: Largest late Iron Age earthwork fortification in Britain, in Richmond, Yorkshire, once called the largest 'hillfort'. It was constructed in the 1st century AD, probably in three phases. Phase I was a hillfort, which was partly demolished in Phase II (c 50-60) when a larger enclosure was added at the north. In Phase III (c 72), it was greatly enlarge to enclose the south side. Stanwick was probably a center of the Celtic Brigantes, an Iron Age tribe which always had a strong anti-Roman faction and was in rebellion between 50-70 AD. A hoard of Celtic metal objects, mainly chariot gear of the 1st century AD, was found close to the earthworks. The whole complex may have been designed to protect not only the people, but also the livestock - including horses - of a basically pastoralist economy. Some time between 69-72, Stanwick fell to the Romans and the site was abandoned. It is now thought to be an enclosed private estate or demesne containing residential compounds.

Stonehenge

CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: Ancient monument on Salisbury Plain, Wiltshire, England, the remains of four massive trilithons surrounded by concentric circles of megaliths, probably constructed since c 3200 BC. It was a major Neolithic and Early Bronze Age ritual monument, architecturally unique, surrounded by a whole complex of barrow cemeteries and ritual sites. It had many phases of reconstruction. Apart from a cursus, the oldest structure was a circular earthwork about 100 meters in diameter, consisting of a ditch with an inner bank broken by a single entrance. Just inside the bank was a ring of 56 Aubrey holes (pits), some of which contained cremations. There were further cremations in the ditch and on the inner plateau. The presence of grooved ware pottery, together with radiocarbon dates from a cremation suggest that Stonehenge I belongs to the end of the Neolithic. Phase II occurred in c 2200-2000 when two concentric rings of sockets were dug at the center of the site for the erection of 80 bluestones imported from the Preseli Hills of southwest Wales. To this period belongs the Avenue, two parallel banks and ditches which run from the entrance to the river Avon 3 km away. In Stonehenge's third phase, the bluestones were removed, and Sarsen stones, some weighing over 50 tons, were brought from the Downs 38 km away to the north. These blocks, unlike those of any other henge or megalithic tomb, were dressed to shape before erection, and were then set up as a circle of uprights with a continuous curving lintel, enclosing a U-shaped arrangement of five trilithons. This phase has been dated 2120 +/- 150 BC and its work was carried out by the bearers of the Wessex culture. At a later stage (phase IIIc) the bluestones were re-erected in their present positions, duplicating the sarsen structure. There is a radiocarbon date of 1540 +/- 105 BC for the early part of this final stage, and the whole of Stonehenge III probably falls within the Early Bronze Age. The final stage came in the Middle or Late Bronze Age when the Avenue was extended 2000 meters east. The function of the monument is usually held to be religious, though it had no connection with the Druids. Theories are that the northeast-southwest axis may suggest some form of sun cult, the stone settings may have been used for astronomical observations in connection with the calendar, and the Aubrey holes for calculating the occurrence of eclipses. It has also been interpreted as the temple of a sun or sky cult. Archaeologists have long been fascinated by this monument, with its evidence of massive manpower input (one calculation suggests 30 million man-hours would have been required for the phase IIIA structure), its architectural sophistication, and astronomical alignments.

Submycenaean

CATEGORY: chronology
DEFINITION: A phase between the Late Helladic and the Protogeometric periods on mainland Greece, known from its pottery found in cemeteries in Attica and from sites in central Greece and the Peloponnese. It is dated c 1050-1020 BC. Pottery was the first art to recover its standards after the Dorian invasion and the overthrow of Mycenae. Athens escaped these disasters and in the ensuing dark age became the main source of ceramic ideas. For a short time Mycenaean motifs survived on new shapes - the Submycenaean ware. It gave way to the Protogeometric (c 1020-900 BC) style by converting the decaying Mycenaean ornament into regular geometrical patterns.

Sur Jangal

CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: Prehistoric site in the Loralai Valley of northern Baluchistan, Pakistan, with three major phases of occupation probably belong to the later 4th and 3rd millennia BC. Black-on-red painted wares frequently show humped (zebu) and humpless cattle; other artifacts include female figurines of Zhob type.

Susa

SYNONYMS OR RELATED TERMS: Susiana, Shushan, Seleucia
CATEGORY: site; culture
DEFINITION: Major city of western Asia, in Khuzistan, Iran, with its first four phases paralleling those of Mesopotamia (Ubaid, Uruk, Jemdet Nasr, and Early Dynastic). It was the capital of Elam in Akkadian times (3rd, 2nd, 1st millennium BC) and again in the first as a capital of the Achaemenid empire. Susa controlled important east-west trade routes and was the end of the Achaemenid Royal Road from Lydian Sardis. Darius built the citadel c 500 BC. The tell is made up of four separate mounds: 1) the acropolis, which has produced most of the prehistoric material from the site; 2) the Royal City which has important Elamite remains of the 2nd millennium BC; 3) the Apadana, with a large, impressive Achaemenid palace; and 4) the Artisans' Town, of the Achaemenid period and later. It continued under the name of Seleucia after being captured by Alexander the Great in 331 BC; it later passed to the Parthians and Sassanians. Susa's characteristic fine ceramic ware had geometric motifs painted in dark colors onto a light background. Among the more important finds of Susa are the victory stela of Naram-Sin (Akkadian period), many Kassite kudurru, and the law code of Hammurabi (Old Babylonian period), which had been brought to Susa from Babylon after an Elamite raid. Susa was traditionally associated with Anshan (Tepe Malyan) in Fars.

TRB culture

SYNONYMS OR RELATED TERMS: Funnel Beaker culture
CATEGORY: culture
DEFINITION: Abbreviated name for the Danish Tragterbecker or German Trichterrandbecher culture, alternatively known in English as the Funnel Beaker Culture. It is the first Neolithic culture of northern Europe, found in southern Scandinavia, the Low Countries, northern Germany, and northern Poland, in the later 4th and early 3rd millennium BC. It is characterized by the use of a funnel-necked beaker with globular body. It is thought to represent the acculturation of local Mesolithic communities by contact with the Linear Pottery culture groups further south. Five regional groups have been determined: western group in the Netherlands, sometimes associated with hunebedden (megalithic burial monuments); southern group in Germany; southeastern group in Czechoslovakia; eastern group in Poland; and northern group in Denmark and Sweden. Settlement sites are not well known, but burials are abundant, especially Dysser in Scandinavia and in Kujavian Graves in Poland; passage graves were eventually used. Other artifacts include ground stone axes and battle-axes, and copper tools appear in later phases. The TRB culture is succeeded by - and perhaps developed directly into - the Single Grave culture.

Taforalt

CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: Large cave in eastern Morocco with a blade industry of c 22,000 bp (Mousterian) through Aterian to a long succession of Iberomaurusian phases. A large Iberomaurusian cemetery and shell midden have been excavated. The cemetery had 185 people and is of the Mechta-Afalou type (c 11,900 bp).

Taiwan

SYNONYMS OR RELATED TERMS: Formosa
CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: Island 100 miles (160 km) off the southeast coast of the China mainland. Taiwan had a native aboriginal population of Malayo-Polynesian ancestry and it occupies an important position in the prehistory of Southeast Asia. Evidence for pre-Neolithic settlement is from c 3500 BC, followed by a Neolithic culture (Ta-p'en-k'eng culture). That culture had cord-marked pottery and was related to contemporary rice-cultivating cultures on the adjacent mainland. Linguistically, it represents the earliest recognizable phase of Austronesian language in the islands Southeast Asia. Later Taiwan Neolithic cultures also show close connections with south China and the Philippines. Major Chinese settlement of the island did not occur until the 17th century AD.

Tamaulipas

CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: A state in northeastern Mexico on the Gulf of Mexico with a series of caves having evidence of incipient agriculture in the Infernillo Phase. The earliest period had crude pebble tools (preprojectile points) and overlain by the Lerma Phase c 7000 BC which had projectile points similar to those of the Old Cordilleran tradition. Desert Culture materials have been found associated with the earliest known cultivated plants in the New World. Here, in the Infernillo phase, it appears that native American squash, peppers, and perhaps beans were being cultivated as early as 6500 BC. Manos and metates are found in increasing numbers in later phases, as well as flexed, wrapped burials. An early cereal, the foxtail millet, was probably domesticated around 4000 BC in Tamaulipas, but it was superseded by primitive maize, c 3000-2200 BC, during the La Perra phase.

Tambo Viejo

CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: Large site on the southern coast of Peru occupied in the early Nasca phases of the Early Intermediate period and reoccupied during Inca times.

Tasian

CATEGORY: culture
DEFINITION: Possibly the oldest-known cultural phase in Upper Egypt, c 4500 BC, known from evidence on the east bank of the Nile River at al-Badari and at Deir Tasa. A settlement of primitive farmers, it is now regarded as at best a local variant of the Badarian culture.

Tehuacán Valley

CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: Valley site in Puebla, Mexico, with human occupation from at least 7000 BC. This desert valley, 1800 meters above sea level, has one of the longest continuous sequences in Mesoamerica (ending 1520 AD). The earliest inhabitants were nomadic food-gatherers and hunters. Maize was grown by c 5000 BC, pottery was first made around 2300 BC, and settled village life may go back to the 3rd millennium BC (though it is not well attested before 1800 BC). Incipient agriculture phases gave way to reliance on domesticated foods. From the Pre-Classic period onwards, the valley was not as important as the richer and more fertile areas of Mexico. It was, before the Spanish conquest, a center of Mixteca-Puebla culture. The earliest phase is considered part of the Desert Tradition. The Ajuereado Phase (before 6500 BC) was characterized by small wandering groups engaged in hunting and gathering. In the El Riego Phase (6500-5000 BC) small groups gathered seasonally into larger groups, and grinding tools, weaving, and some plant cultivation occurred. The Coxcatlan Phase (5000-3500 BC) marked the appearance of larger semi-sedentary groups occupying fewer sites and engaged in agriculture. Artifacts include manos and metates and improved basketry. A significant change in settlement pattern occurs in the Abejas Phase (3500-2300 BC) with pit house villages occurring along the river terraces as year-round dwellings. New species of plant food, long obsidian blades, and possibly cotton appeared and there is increased hunting of small game. Pottery, which is a good index to the degree of permanence of a settlement (fragility makes it difficult to transport), was made in the Tehuacán valley by 2300 BC. The later phases (including Purron, 2300-1500 BC) represent a sedentary life, wide use of ceramics, and domestication of the dog.

Tekkalakota

SYNONYMS OR RELATED TERMS: Tekkalkota
CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: Neolithic site in the south-central Deccan, India with two phases of settlement in the early 2nd millennium BC. There are mud/stone floors of circular or rectilinear huts and fractional burials early on, later replaced by extended burials in interconnected vessels for adults, while children were buried in urns. Artifacts include rare metal objects (copper, gold). Three gold ornaments were found, indicating exploitation of local gold deposits. The people produced distinctive burnished gray pottery, smaller quantities of black-on-red painted pottery, stone axes, and bone points, and there is some evidence of a stone-blade industry.

Tepeu

CATEGORY: chronology; culture
DEFINITION: Late Classic phase dated to 600-900 AD, one of to Lowland Maya chronological phases or cultures (the other being the Tzakol, Early Classic, c 250 AD). It is defined by a complex of cultural materials, especially the polychrome vase. The typical shape is a tall, cylindrical vessel with a flat base and it is decorated with life scenes often involving mythological creatures and a band of hieroglyphs. The Tepeu culture saw the full florescence of Maya achievements. It ended with the downfall and abandonment of the central subregion.

Thermi

CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: Early Bronze Age settlement on the Aegean island of Lesbos. Excavations revealed five phases of occupation (3000-2750 BC), mainly a settlement of timber houses, later defended by a stone wall. Thermi apparently was settled by Troas, judging from its Troy I-like black pottery. It was destroyed some time before 3000 BC, at approximately the same time as sites such as Troy I in northwest Anatolia and Poliochni on Lemnos. It was later resettled and then destroyed by fire c 13th century BC.

Third Intermediate Period

CATEGORY: chronology
DEFINITION: A chronological phase (1075-656 BC) following the New Kingdom, when Egypt was divided. The north was inherited by the Tanite 21st dynasty (c 1075-950 BC), and much of the Nile Valley came under the control of the Theban priests.

Thule

CATEGORY: culture
DEFINITION: A prehistoric subculture of the Eskimos that began in Alaska about 900 AD and spread as far as Greenland by 1000 AD. The culture was distributed throughout the northern Arctic from Siberia to Greenland, and ancestral to most of the historic Eskimo cultures of that area. The latest phase in the west dates to c 1300. Thule people lived in circular houses partially dug into the ground and roofed with whalebones, turf, and stone. Tools are mainly bone, ivory, antler, and polished slate rather than chipped stone and they made coarse impressed pottery (later replaced by soapstone vessels). They hunted and fished with harpoon points, used skin-covered boats (open ones = umiaks, closed ones = kayaks), and dog sleds for travel across land and ice. Thule made ornaments of ivory, bone, and stone with simple geometric designs. It was the final Eskimo culture of the Northern Maritime tradition. It either absorbed or supplanted the Dorset Culture of the central and east Arctic. The Thule were the Skraelings discovered by the Vikings in the 10th century AD.

Tiemassas

CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: Site in Senegal, south of Dakar, with extensive undated microlithic industry. There may have been successive occupation phases, including a pre-pottery phase characterized by large backed tools, geometric microliths, and hollow-based and leaf-shaped bifacial projectile points.

Tiszapolgár

CATEGORY: culture
DEFINITION: The oldest stage of the Hungarian Copper (Eneolithic) Age, c 3500-3000 BC, and successor to the Tisza culture. It is named for Tiszapolgár-Basatanya, a cemetery in the plain of eastern Hungary with 156 graves containing single inhumations accompanied by pottery, long flint blades, and a few copper objects. The oldest graves belong to the Tiszapolgár phase, while the more recent ones are of the Bodrogkeresztur culture. Most domestic occupations were small-scale and short-lived farmsteads. The pottery is a continuation of the Tisza tradition, however with little or no decoration.

Toftum

CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: Neolithic site in Jutland, Denmark, with a causewayed ditch and material from the Fuchsberg phase c 3400 BC.

Togolok

CATEGORY: site; chronology
DEFINITION: Late Bronze Age sites in the Murghab delta, Turkmenia, with a material culture similar to the Bactrian Late Bronze Age. Togolok is also a chronological phase, c 2nd quarter 2nd millennium BC, with continuity to the preceding Gonur phase.

Trusesti

CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: Large settlement and cemetery site of the Late Neolithic Cucuteni-Tripolye culture, in Moldavia, Rumania. The site has almost 100 complete house-plans on a promontory, enclosed on one side by a double ditch, and there were rich pottery assemblages of the Cucuteni A phase.

Tsountas, Christos (1857-1934)

CATEGORY: person
DEFINITION: Greek archaeologist who excavated cemeteries of earlier phases of the Bronze Age on other Cycladic islands and continued the work begun by Heinrich Schliemann at Mycenae. He also investigated settlement sites in Thessaly (Dhimini, Sesklo).

Tula

SYNONYMS OR RELATED TERMS: Tollán
CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: The Toltec capital, located in the modern state of Hidalgo, Mexico, then identified as Tollán. Founded on an already existing settlement in c 960 AD, it grew to cover 11 sq. km. The site gained importance c 800 AD after Teotihuacán fell. There was a stepped pyramid on which there was a temple and buildings had colonnaded halls. At its height, there were some 1000 mounds and at least as many low rectangular house mounds, and five ball courts. The monumental civic architecture featured Talud-Tablero architecture. In sculpture, the most diagnostic figures are the Chac Mools, reclining human figures holding offering dishes, and the famous Atlantean statues that supported the roof of Pyramid B. The earliest pre-architectural phases at Tula are characterized by the presence of Coyotlatelco ware, but the dominant ceramic occurring after c1000 is Mazapan ware. Imported Plumbate Ware also occurs frequently. Although the Toltec are associated with the introduction of metallurgy into central Mexico, no metals have been found. Tula was violently destroyed, probably by a Chichimec group, in either 1156 or 1168 AD (depending on how one reads the Calendar date). Although its exact location is not certain, an archaeological site near the contemporary town of Tula in Hidalgo state has been the consistent choice of historians.

Tzakol

CATEGORY: culture
DEFINITION: One of the chronological phases or cultures of the Lowland Maya civilization which is Early Classic and began shortly before 250 AD. It is characterized by Lowland Maya artifacts, including elaborately decorated polychrome pottery, especially a basal flanged bowl. Almost all early Tzakol monuments draw heavily upon a heritage from the older Izapan civilization of the Late Formative, with its highly baroque, narrative stylistic content. Because of the Maya penchant for covering older structures with later ones, Tzakol remains will have to be laboriously dug out from under towering Late Classic.

Umm Dabaghiyah

CATEGORY: site; culture
DEFINITION: Early 6th-millennium BC type site of the Umm Dabaghiyah culture, the earliest-known culture of the northern Iraq plain, a pre-Hassuna occupation of Mesopotamia. The small site has long buildings with rows of small cell-like rooms arranged around a central space. Some wall paintings have been recorded with hunting scenes - something relied upon heavily for the economy. Domesticated sheep, goats, cattle, and pigs were also kept and some domesticated cereals are present, possibly imported. Pottery is abundant in all the four main phases and includes incised, burnished, plain, and painted types similar to 'archaic' Hassuna pottery. Other sites of this culture are Yarim Tepe, Telul Thalathat, and Tell es-Sotto (Tell Soto).

Uqair, Tell

SYNONYMS OR RELATED TERMS: Uqair
CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: Tell site south of Baghdad, Iraq, with a temple of the Uruk phase with unexpectedly fine wall paintings depicting mythical scenes. The fine polychrome wall paintings had human and animal figures. A small subsidiary chapel, later in date than the temple, contained a collection of pottery and four clay tablets inscribed with pictographic symbols of the kind used in the Jemdet Nasr period (4th millennium BC). The site was occupied from the 'Ubaid period.

Uruk

SYNONYMS OR RELATED TERMS: biblical Erech, modern Warka; Uruk period
CATEGORY: site; culture
DEFINITION: One of the greatest city-states of Sumer, northwest of Ur, which flourished at the beginning of the 3rd millennium BC. It is 250 km south of Bagdad, Iraq. Pottery dating from around 5000 BC has been found there, but the civilization is traditionally dated to c 3800-3100 BC. Uruk's rulers tried to lead Sumer until Ur became more powerful, but Uruk still remained important as a holy city. It was one of the great Sumerian city-states, developing from the 'Ubaid period. It was the site of numerous innovations, the most important being the invention of writing. It lost importance with the rise of Ur, c 2100 BC, but remained occupied till the Parthian period. Archaeologists have found very important structures and deposits of the 4th millennium BC and the site has given its name to the period that succeeded the Ubaid and preceded the Jemdet Nasr period. Uruk was Mesopotamia's - and the world's - first true city. There are two large temple complexes - the Anu sanctuary and the Eanna sanctuary - both with several successive temple-structures during the Uruk period, including the White Temple in the Anu sanctuary and the Limestone and Pillar Temples in the Eanna sanctuary. A characteristic form of decoration is clay cones with painted tops pressed into the mud plaster - known as clay cone mosaic. A ziggurat laid out by Ur-Nammu in the Ur III period (late 3rd millennium BC) is by the Eanna sanctuary. The earliest clay tablets appear in late Uruk levels; they are simple labels and lists with pictographic symbols. Tablets from slightly later levels, of the Jemdet Nasr phase, show further developments towards the cuneiform script of the Early Dynastic period. There was also mass-produced wheelmade pottery, cylinder seals, and sophisticated art. Uruk was the home of the epic hero Gilgamesh, now thought to be a real king of the city's first dynasty.

Utnur

CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: One of the earliest known settlements of peninsular India, dating to c 2900 BC. It is a Neolithic site in the central Deccan, with four major phases of occupation. The people were primarily cattle-herders, probably living in huts built of branches and brush. Pottery and stone tools were found.

Vailele

CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: Site in Upolu, Samoa, with assemblages from the terminal ceramic phase of Samoan pre-history c 300 BC-200 AD stratified beneath later aceramic mounds. The large earthen mounds were built as house platforms and contained plain pottery and stone adzes.

Val Camonica

CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: Glaciated Alpine valley in northwest Italy, with an abundance of rock carvings on rock faces. The carvings have four chronological phases - Neolithic, Chalcolithic, Bronze Age, Iron Age - which are often superimposed. What is exceptional about the carvings of the Val Camonica is that they represent a variety of subjects - rituals, battles, hunting, and daily labor - and that these were treated as compositions.

Valac

CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: Small hilltop settlement of the Late Vinca phase, c 3950 BC, near Kosovska Mitrovica, Kosovo, Serbia. The single occupation level has poor ceramics, but each house has a rich ritual assemblage with fired clay zoomorphic figurines known as 'centaurs'.

Valea Lupului

CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: A large settlement site of the Late Neolithic Cucuteni culture, Moldavia, Rumania, with a radiocarbon date c 2750 BC. The single phase occupation produced domestic assemblages of the Cucuteni B3 phase.

Valencia

SYNONYMS OR RELATED TERMS: Valencoid subtradition
CATEGORY: ceramics; culture
DEFINITION: Ceramic complex of red-colored jars, one of the best known in Venezuela and found on a number of mound sites in north central part of country. The shapes of huge human figurines with flat, wide heads are very distinctive. Typically the pottery is coarse and sand- or mica-tempered. Decoration may be appliqué work, rectilinear incision, or modeled human faces with coffee-bean eyes. It is c 1000-1500 AD and possibly derived from Arauquim complex or from the La Cabrera phase of the Barrancoid series.

Vedbaek Bogebakken

CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: Danish Mesolithic cemetery on Zealand dated to c 4800 BC. There are 17 graves of the Ertebolle phase.

Vendel Period

CATEGORY: culture
DEFINITION: A term for a main phase of the Migration Period, the 7th and 8th centuries AD in Scandinavia, the last phase of the Iron Age before the Viking Age. It takes its name from a site in central Sweden with rich burials. Other cemeteries of the Vendel Period are at Valsgarde and Old Uppsala, with burials often in boats with rich treasures.

Vila Nova de Sao Pedro

CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: Important Chalcolithic site near Santarém, Portugal with an unenclosed settlement c 3800 BC, succeeded by one surrounded by at least two bastioned stone walls, c 3200 BC. The first belonged to the Palmella culture and the final phase belonged to Beaker culture, c 2500 BC. Artifacts include copper axes, chisels, and daggers; pottery included Beaker material and local wares of the 3rd millennium BC. Strongly fortified settlements, such as this, accompanied by cemeteries containing rich collections of prestige goods suggest the appearance of a hierarchically organized society.

Vorbasse

CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: Migration Period settlement in southern Jutland, Denmark of the 4th-5th centuries, a planned village of longhouses. Each house was divided into three rooms with two or three minor buildings. There was also a series of sunken-floored workshops in the last phase. After its abandonment in the 5th century, the settlement was not reoccupied until the Viking period. In the 10th century, Vorbasse was turned into three major estates, each incorporating a large 'Trelleborg type' hall with associated workshops.

Vértesszöllös

CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: Lower Palaeolithic quarry site northwest of Budapest, Hungary, near the confluence of the Ataler and Danube rivers, with artifacts and fauna dating 350,000-175,000 bp (Middle Pleistocene). The pebble chopping tools and flake tools are associated with human skeletal remains which are intermediate between Homo erectus and Homo sapiens (Homo (erectus seu sapiens) palaeohungaricus). The principal significance of this specimen, apart from its structure, is that it is dated to a warm phase within the second (Mindel) glaciation, 500,000 to 400,000 years ago.

Waira-Jirca

SYNONYMS OR RELATED TERMS: Waira-jirca
CATEGORY: culture; site
DEFINITION: An Initial Period phase from the Kotosh site, eastern Andes, central Peru - the earliest ceramic phase, c 1800-1150 BC. The well-made, dark brown pottery with incised geometric designs resembles early jungle pottery from Ucayali and was ancestral to Kotosh-Kotosh and Chavín. Its most widely occurring forms are the neckless jar and the open bowl, although some spouted forms do occur.

Wayland's Smithy

CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: Early Neolithic long barrow in Oxfordshire, southern England, c 3500 BC. In the first phase of construction it covered a wooden mortuary house with the remains of 14 individuals. Over this was constructed a much longer trapezoidal (oval) chalk mound with a stone kerb and a megalithic passage grave of Severn-Cotswold type.

Western Chin Dynasty

CATEGORY: culture
DEFINITION: A phase of the Chin dynasty, ruling China from AD 265 to 317. Important tombs of this period have been excavated in Kiangsu and Chekiang provinces in southeastern China, as well as Yüeh ware and rare jewelry items.

Woolandale

CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: Late Iron Age site in central Zimbabwe and the name of the second phase of Leopard's Kopje Complex, dated to the 13th century AD.

Würm

SYNONYMS OR RELATED TERMS: Würm Glaciation
CATEGORY: chronology
DEFINITION: The fourth and final Pleistocene glaciation in the European Alps, c 110,000/70,000-10,000 years ago, ending with the onset of the postglacial Holocene. The Würm glacial stage followed the Riss-Würm interglacial and is correlated with the Weichsel glacial stage of northern Europe and the Wisconsin glacial stage of North America. It is divided into early, middle, and late phases. The end of the Würm and the retreat of the final glaciers was a complex of minor retreats and advances.

Yahya, Tepe

CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: Tell site in the Soghun valley of Kirman province, Iran, with a long cultural sequence of seven periods from c mid-5th millennium BC to early 1st millennium AD. The most important phase was Yahya IV, beginning c 3000 BC. It was at that time an active trading center, with a cache of tablets inscribed in proto-Elamite, the script of Elam. Jemdet Nasr painted wares and beveled rim bowls have been found. A local source of steatite (chlorite) was worked into distinctive bowls which were traded to Sumer, the Indus civilization, and the Persian Gulf. The site was on an important trade route between Mesopotamia and the Indus Valley, possibly via Shahr-i-Sokhta and the Persian Gulf via Bampur. Tepe Yahya was also in contact with the Harappan civilization of the Indus Valley and indeed was strategically placed on the overland route between the Indus Valley and Mesopotamia. In the later 3rd millennium BC, the importance of Tepe Yahya declined.

Yarim Tepe 1

SYNONYMS OR RELATED TERMS: Yarim Tepe
CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: Tell site of the Hassuna culture, with 13 levels spanning the Archaic through Standard Hassuna phases (6th millennium BC), near the Caspian Sea in northern Iraq. The ceramic sequences give much detail about the Hassuna culture. There is evidence of metallurgy, the smelting of copper and lead, and advanced potterymaking. Samarran elements appear and Halaf and Sassanian burials also occur. The Neolithic settlement was of the Turkmenian Djei-tun culture.

Yaz-depe

CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: Site in the Murghab delta of southern Turkmenia, the type site of the Iron Age Yaz complex. There is a citadel, extensive irrigation system, and pottery of three phases from mid-2nd to mid-1st millennium BC.

Yengema

CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: Town and cave site in eastern Sierra Leone with one of the few stratified sequences of Palaeolithic and Neolithic stone industries in that country. Crudely flaked picks, choppers, and flake-scrapers; hoe-like tools and backed blades have been found. In another phase, pottery and ground stone tools are found for the first time. Thermoluminescence tests dated the third-phase pottery at c 2000 BC.

Zakro

CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: Site of a Minoan palace in eastern Crete. Unlike many of the other Minoan palaces, Zakro did not have a Middle Minoan phase, but was constructed in the Late Minoan period after 1700 BC. The palace was relatively small but had the usual plan grouped around a central court. Among the finds were a collection of fine stone vessels and tablets in Linear A. Zakro was destroyed by fire c 1450 BC.

Zebbug

CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: Cemetery of five rock-cut tombs on the island of Malta, which has given its name to the Zebbug phase of the Maltese Islands pre-temple Neolithic, dated c 4100-3800 BC.

Zhengzhou

SYNONYMS OR RELATED TERMS: Cheng-chou
CATEGORY: site
DEFINITION: A modern city in Honan (Henan) province, China, the site of a large Bronze Age city, probably a capital of the Shang dynasty (Ao) belonging to the Erligang Phase. There were also Neolithic settlements in the area. A rammed-earth hangtu foundation of palace buildings is within a walled compound, dated c1500 BC. House foundations have been uncovered within the walled enclosure. Outside the wall are workshops for bronze, ceramics, and bone crafts and tombs with bronze ritual vessels. The nearby site of Erligang gives its name to the bronze vessel style at Zengzhou. The settlement declined sharply in importance after the Erligang phase. The Shang, who continually moved their capital, left Ao, perhaps in the 13th century BC. The site, nevertheless, remained occupied; Chou (post-1050 BC) tombs have also been discovered.

Zhob

CATEGORY: site; culture
DEFINITION: A valley in north Baluchistan, western Pakistan, with a number of sites of a Chalcolithic culture, c 4th-3rd millennia BC. Rana Ghundai, Periano Ghundai, and Moghul Ghundai are the best-known sites. The pottery is painted black or red over a red slip; decoration may be stylized humped cattle and buck and groups of vertical lines linking narrow horizontal bands. Other artifacts include female figurines and copper. Buildings were of mudbrick and burials by cremation. Related material was found stratified beneath that of the Indus Civilization at Harappa, and there are similarities to the painted ware of Tepe Hissar in northern Iran. This phase was succeeded by the 'Incinerary Pot' phase, with burials placed in vessels under house floors, after disarticulation and some cremation.

assemblage

CATEGORY: artifact; term
DEFINITION: A group of objects of different or similar types found in close association with each other and thus considered to be the product of one people from one period of time. Where the assemblage is frequently repeated and covers a reasonably full range of human activity, it is described as a culture; where it is repeated but limited in content, e.g. flint tools only (a set of objects in one medium), it is called an industry. When a group of industries are found together in a single archaeological context, it is called an assemblage. Such a group characterizes a certain culture, era, site, or phase and it is the sum of all subassemblages. Assemblage examples are artifacts from a site or feature.

astronomy

CATEGORY: related field
DEFINITION: Most ancient civilizations studied the skies for astronomical knowledge. Ancient astronomy has been studied by archaeologists in prehistoric Europe through monuments and in Central America through inscriptions and documents. Studies of prehistoric astronomy in Europe have concentrated on the megalithic monuments and stone circles, which have been proven to incorporate alignments of the sun, moon, and brighter stars - especially significant points in their cycles. Solar alignments occur at New Grange and Stonehenge, lunar orientations at the Recumbent Stone Circles of Aberdeenshire and the Carnac stones in Brittany. Many theories are discussed as to the accuracy of measurements and the degree of astronomical understanding achieved by these early societies. The ability to predict astronomical events would have enhanced political power, which is something suggested in Mesoamerica. The ability to predict events by the governing elite class increased their credibility as able rulers. The Mesoamerican people put great emphasis on the calendar and astronomy and were able to make extremely accurate measurements of the solar year, the appearance of eclipses, and the phases of the Moon. Buildings seen as observatories occur at Chichen Itza and at Palenque, and the Dresden codex is a detailed collection of calculations tracing the eclipses of the Moon and Sun and the cycles of Venus and possibly Mars and Jupiter. The Maya were even aware of the impreciseness of the 365-day year in their Calendar Round and added a correction factor to account for the quarter-day per year discrepancy. The cycle of the Moon, in comparison, was calculated with amazing accuracy (29.5302 days compared to the actual figure of 29.5306). The cycle of Venus (calculated at 583.92) was also pinpointed as accurately as measurements taken by modern astronomical methods. The ancient astronomers' awareness of long-term astronomical phenomena was astonishing.

bluestone

CATEGORY: geology
DEFINITION: A type of bluish-gray combination of dolerite, rhyolite, and volcanic stone used in the second phase of building Stonehenge. The source seems to be the Preseli Hills of South Wales, 215 km away.

breccia

CATEGORY: geology
DEFINITION: A deposit of angular composite stone fragments held together by a matrix of natural cement, such as sap, lime, or a calcium-charged water. Its occurrence indicates a previous cold phase in the climate, since the rock is detached either by frost or alternating heat and cold. Many caves occupied by early man, e.g. Dordogne in southwest France, have layers of breccia crammed with bones, tools, art objects. This conglomerate used by the ancient peoples in architecture and sculpture. It is the opposite of conglomerate, in which the fragments are rounded and waterworn. Osseous or bone breccia is breccia in which fossil bones are found.

chronology

CATEGORY: chronology; technique
DEFINITION: Any method used to order time and to place events in the sequence in which they occurred. A sequential ordering that places cultural entities in temporal, and often spatial, distribution. It involves the collection of dates or successive datings establishing the position in time of a series of phenomena such as the phases of a civilization or the events of the history of a state. A chronology is relative/floating when only the order of a succession of facts is known, but not their dates, and absolute when the opposite is true. For periods or areas for which no textual evidence is available, relative chronologies have to be established and these are mostly based on pottery sequences and typology. Relative chronology is also based on the application of the principles of stratigraphy and cross-dating. The discovery of inscribed monuments and calendars associated with dated astronomical observations contributed to the development of an Egyptian chronology and it has served as a framework - through cross-dating - for all other Near Eastern chronologies. Inscribed Egyptian objects found in Near Eastern contexts have allowed the latter to be dated. Absolute chronology is based on scientific methods such as radiocarbon dating, thermoluminescence dating, and archaeomagnetism. Dates are often calibrated with dendrochronological dates. For dates after 1500 BC, an absolute chronology is not likely to change by more than ten years.

cluster

CATEGORY: artifact
DEFINITION: A group of stylistically and chronologically similar artifacts for which adequate excavation data does not exist to allow for the classification as a phase.

component

SYNONYMS OR RELATED TERMS: focus; phase
CATEGORY: term
DEFINITION: A culturally homogeneous stratigraphic layer within a site that belongs to one culture and is interpreted as the remains of a single people during a relatively brief period of time. At a particular site, there may be present several components, recognized by critical changes in the artifact assemblages. A number of similar and contemporary components make up a phase.

composite plan

CATEGORY: term
DEFINITION: A plan showing a surface which is composed of two or more units of stratification; the plan of a phase or period interface.

culture-historical approach

SYNONYMS OR RELATED TERMS: culture history, culture historical approach, culture-historical theory
CATEGORY: technique
DEFINITION: An approach to archaeological interpretation which uses the procedure of the traditional historian; the organization of the archaeological record into a basic sequence of events in time and space. This approach assumes that artifacts can be used to build a generalized picture of human culture and descriptive models in time and space, and that these can be interpreted. It is the reconstruction of the prehistoric past based on temporal and spatial syntheses of data and the application of general descriptive models usually derived from a normative concept of culture and induction. Culture history is the chronological arrangement of the time phases and events of a particular culture.

deep sea core

SYNONYMS OR RELATED TERMS: deep sea core dating, deep-sea core
CATEGORY: technique
DEFINITION: A technique used in the analysis of data from oceanic sediments in which the material retrieved by the core yields information on temperature changes in the ocean through time. These changes, suggestive of climatic variation, help to chart the progress of glaciation and, since they can be dated, the technique assists in the establishment of a chronology for the Quaternary. The cores, some 5 cm. in diameter and up to 25 m. deep, are extracted from the ocean floor. The sediments they contain have a high percentage of calcium carbonate content made up of the shells of small marine organisms and these sediments build up very slowly, from 10-50 mm per 1000 years, but their sequence is uninterrupted. Since these organisms have different temperature preferences depending on species, the relative abundance of the various species changes as the temperature alters. Variations in the ratio of two oxygen isotopes in the calcium carbonate of these shells give a sensitive indicator of sea temperature at the time the organisms were alive. Through the identification of the species, and by the use of oxygen isotope analysis, a picture can be built up of variations in temperature over the millennia. Since various forms of dating (radiocarbon dating, ionium dating, uranium series dating, palaeomagnetism, protactinium/ionium dating) can be used on the carbonate in the shells, absolute dates can be given to the different levels in the core. Thus dates emerge for glaciations and interglacial periods, which can assist in the age determination of archaeological material found in association with these glacial phases. Problems with the technique are the difficulty of correlating oceanic temperature changes with continental glacial and interglacial phases, and the disturbance by animals living on the ocean bottom. The piston corer was developed in 1947.

ditch

CATEGORY: feature
DEFINITION: A common feature of archaeological sites in association with defensive structures, as a means of drainage, or as a construction trench. A ditch was usually dug outside the walls of forts, fortresses and so on, as part of the defenses, and was often filled with water. Ditches which are allowed to erode, without much interference, go through three phases of infilling. Primary fill accumulates as the sides of the ditch collapse. Vegetation then begins at the bottom of the ditch and the secondary fill starts to build up. This material has a much finer texture than primary fill. The rate of secondary fill deposition is related to soil erosion in the surrounding area. If the land by the ditch is plowed, thick colluvial deposits, called tertiary fill, may bury the secondary fill.

dyss

SYNONYMS OR RELATED TERMS: pl. dysser
CATEGORY: structure
DEFINITION: The Danish name for the earliest type of megalithic chamber tomb found in Scandinavia in the Early Neolithic. The oldest dysser are rectangular slab cysts roofed with capstones and containing 1-6 skeletons. The burial chamber is covered with a mound which rises to the height of the capstone and has a retaining kerb of stones. Drysser are associated with an early phase (C) of the TRB culture. Similar but less massive cysts were built by other TRB groups elsewhere in northern Europe.

elm decline

CATEGORY: term; chronology
DEFINITION: A phase in the history of northern European vegetation recognized through pollen analysis and dated by radiocarbon as c 4000 BC. It marked a sudden and marked decline in elm pollen in contrast to other tree pollens. In some areas it was accompanied by a drop in frost-sensitive species such as ivy and mistletoe, while in many others it coincided with the appearance of plants associated with human settlements (plantain and nettles). It is now attributed to disease from beetles causing Dutch elm disease though other explanations for the decline include climatic change and human interference.

eustasy

SYNONYMS OR RELATED TERMS: adj. eustatic
CATEGORY: geology
DEFINITION: Changes in sea level on a global basis, usually as the result of a major event such as the end of a glaciation. In such a case a eustatic rise due to the melting of the glaciers can be expected in a post-glacial period. These sea-level movements can be independent of any change in the height of the land, but isostasy can happen contemporaneously as a result of the same phenomenon. This worldwide alteration in sea level is independent of any isostatic movement of the land. At the end of a glaciation melting of the water previously held in the ice sheets raises sea levels (eustatic rise), and a high level can often be correlated with an interglacial period or with the postglacial phase. Such fluctuations have occurred throughout the Quaternary, due to changes in the extent of ice sheets and thus in the volume of water locked up as ice. The larger the ice sheets, the less water available to the sea, and so sea level is lower during glacials than during interglacials. Evidence exists for a whole series of eustatic sea level fluctuations, but the most widespread is the 'high stand' in c 120,000 bp, just before the start of the last cold stage, when sea levels were between 2-10 meters higher than at the present day. During the maximum extent of the ice-sheets of the last cold stage, eustatic sea level was much lower than that of today. Large areas of continental shelf were exposed, some being occupied by the ice sheets themselves. Recovery of sea level at the end of the last cold stage is relatively well known from deposits in the Netherlands, Scandinavia, and Scotland, but is complicated by isostatic changes. The North Sea and English Channel flooded, separating Britain from the Continent, by about 7000 bp. Ireland became a separate island at about the same time. Scandinavia had a complicated series of different seas and lakes, until a sea similar to today's Baltic became established around 7000 bp. The main factors that influence sea level are global ice volumes, plate tectonics, changes in ocean volumes and dimensions, and the movement of mantle material.

focus

SYNONYMS OR RELATED TERMS: phase
CATEGORY: term
DEFINITION: A group of components that share high frequencies of similar cultural traits. The components will probably not be identical but should have a sufficient number of significant traits in common to indicate a relationship.

forum ware

CATEGORY: ceramics
DEFINITION: A distinctive green glazed pottery found in the 19th-century excavations of the Forum in Rome. This ware has since been found on may sites close to Rome, and in settlements of all types in southern Etruria. Typically there are pitchers, often with incised wavy-line decoration around the body of the pot. The ware belongs to the late 6th or early 7th century, a phase of Late Roman activity.

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.

hieroglyphics

SYNONYMS OR RELATED TERMS: hieroglyphic; hieroglyph
CATEGORY: language
DEFINITION: Ancient writing form with pictographic or ideographic symbols - used in Egypt, Mesopotamia, etc., especially a pictorial script used by ancient Egyptians from the beginning of the 3rd millennium BC until the end of the 4th century AD. A hieroglyph was a single character or pictorial element used in hieroglyphics. Literally, in Greek, it means 'sacred carved letters'. The script consisted of three basic types of sign: phonograms, logograms, and 'determinatives' arranged in horizontal and vertical lines. The script was used for funerary and monumental inscriptions as well as more strictly religious ones. The script's development seems to have been so rapid that it may have been in some sense an imitation of the earliest writing of Mesopotamia in its Uruk phase. In both scripts three classes of symbol were used, each a single picture or geometric figure. Pictograms or ideograms represented whole words in pictorial form. Phonograms represented the sounds of words, the picture of an object pronounced in the same way as the desired word being used in its place (this was made easier by the fact that the vowels were disregarded). Determinatives told the reader the class of word spelt by the phonograms, necessary where these were ambiguous. Often all three classes of symbol were used in conjunction. No attempt was made in its long history to simplify the system, even when the more cursive forms of it, hieratic and demotic, were introduced. More loosely the term has been applied to other pictographic writing systems, particularly those of Minoan Crete, the Hittites and the Maya. Many of the symbols consist of a conventionalized picture of the idea or object they represent. Egyptian hieroglyphs were deciphered by Jean-François Champollion in 1822, through his study of the bilingual inscriptions on the Rosetta Stone and an obelisk from Philae. Some 700 signs were employed.

horizon

SYNONYMS OR RELATED TERMS: horizon style
CATEGORY: term; artifact
DEFINITION: Any artifact, art style, or other cultural trait that has extensive geographical distribution but a limited time span. The term, in anthropology, refers to the spread of certain levels of cultural development and, in geology, the layers of natural features in a region; in soil science a horizon is a layer formed in a soil profile by soil-forming processes. The main meaning, however, refers to a phase, characterized by a particular artifact or artistic style that is introduced to a wide area and which may cross cultural boundaries. Provided that these 'horizon markers' were diffused rapidly and remained in use for only a short time, the local regional cultures in which they occur will be roughly contemporary. The term is less commonly used now that chronometric dating techniques allow accurate local chronologies to be built. Examples of art styles which fulfill these conditions is called a 'horizon style' - such as Tiahuanaco or Chavín.

insect analysis

CATEGORY: technique
DEFINITION: Any studies of insect remains in an attempt to reconstruct past environments. Pollen analysis and molluscan analysis can reveal information on climate, the environment and, sometimes, the activities of man. Insect remains are usually found in the form of the exoskeleton, parts such as the wing-cases of beetles, and they always come from anaerobic deposits such as ditches, wells, pits, and peat bogs; many of the parts of insects that are species-distinctive do not survive in archaeological deposits. They can be separated from the soil sample by flotation. Insects respond more quickly than plants to climatic change, and may therefore assist in the identification of micro-climatic phases. Insects also have habitat preferences, which is helpful in identifying specific environments.

level

CATEGORY: tool; term
DEFINITION: An instrument used in surveying which takes vertical measurements and which is much used in excavation for the recording of site contours and accurate depths of features, especially for making maps and identifying the location of artifacts. There are several types of leveling instrument, the Y or dumpy level, the tilting level, and the self-leveling level. Each consists of a telescope fitted with a spirit level and, generally, mounted on a tripod. It is used in conjunction with a graduated rod placed at the point to be measured and sighted through the telescope. The theodolite (q.v.), or transit, is used to measure horizontal and vertical angles; it may be used also for leveling. The differences between the types are in the ease of leveling: the first has a single spirit level for the whole instrument, the second a separate spirit level for spindle and telescope with a tilting mechanism and adjustable screw on the telescope, and the third an optical part operated by a pendulum so that the line of sight is always horizontal. Having established a datum point, the instrument is sighted on a leveling staff or rod which is marked in a graduated scale, metric, or imperial. The difference in level between the telescope and the base of the rod can be read off on this scale, and the result subtracted from the height of the level itself above ground; the final figure gives the real height, or depth, of the feature above or below the ground at instrument point. Subtracting the stadia rod reading from the height of the level above the ground surface gives the difference in height between ground surface at the instrument station and the ground surface at the datum point. A series of levels taken across a site will give contours, while excavated features and small finds can be leveled in with greater accuracy than with tapes from a hypothetical ground surface. The term is also used to refer to the actual height measurements taken with such an instrument. More generally, archaeologists often use the term 'level' interchangeably with layer. In excavations the remains are divided into levels that contain the buildings and objects belonging to a phase.

lithic

SYNONYMS OR RELATED TERMS: lithics; -lithic
CATEGORY: artifact; 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.

local sequence

CATEGORY: chronology
DEFINITION: A chronological series of components or phases within the geographical limits of a locality.

microstructure

CATEGORY: artifact
DEFINITION: The arrangement of phases of a material; in a ceramic, the internal arrangement of crystalline and amorphous materials, pores, and boundaries between them

multicomponent

CATEGORY: term
DEFINITION: The presence of more than one cultural phase at a site.

period

CATEGORY: chronology
DEFINITION: Any specific interval of time in the archaeological record, such as the Upper Paleolithic period. This term is often confusingly used interchangeably with phase and stage. A period is a true time division of the history of a large region (such as the Valley of Mexico or southern China) and does not necessarily imply any developmental characteristics. In archaeological context, it is a major unit of prehistoric time, usually containing several phases and pertaining to a wide area. It is a convenient term used to discuss the history of a complex area.

periodization

SYNONYMS OR RELATED TERMS: phasing
CATEGORY: technique
DEFINITION: The process by which the stratigraphical material from a site is arranged into periods and phases based upon stratigraphic, structural, and artifactual data.

potsherd

SYNONYMS OR RELATED TERMS: sherd, shard
CATEGORY: ceramics
DEFINITION: Any pottery fragment - piece of broken pot or other earthenware item - that has archaeological significance. Often abbreviated to sherd, potsherds are an invaluable part of the archaeological record because they are well-preserved. The analysis of ceramic changes recorded in potsherds has become one of the primary techniques used by archaeologists in assigning components and phases to times and cultures.

potter's wheel

CATEGORY: ceramics
DEFINITION: A wheel rotating horizontally which assists a potter in shaping clay into vessels. The development of the slow, or hand-turned, wheel as an adjunct to pottery manufacture led to the kick wheel, rotated by foot, which became the potter's principal tool. The potter throws the clay onto a rapidly rotating disk and shapes his pot by manipulating it with both hands. By the Uruk phase in Mesopotamia, c 3400 BC, the fast wheel was already in use. It spread slowly, reaching Europe with the Minoans c 2400 BC, and Britain with the Belgae in the 1st century BC. Its presence can be taken to imply an organized pottery industry, often also using an advanced type of kiln.

rampart

CATEGORY: feature
DEFINITION: An earthwork built to defend a site, such as a fort. It was the mound of earth on the inner side of the ditch or an elongated bank, often forming an enclosure. Often a palisade of stakes were on top. A rampart made it difficult to attack a castle or fort. Combinations of ramparts and ditches made up the defenses of hillforts in prehistoric Europe. Roman legion camps always built a rampart of ditches, earth walls, and wooden palisades, within which the space was divided into headquarters, supply, and troop areas. Indications of the construction of the rampart may occur as tip-lines or turf-lines, which may represent pauses in the work or different phases of building. Buried soils are frequently found underneath mounds and ramparts, a source of information for environmental archaeology.

recurrence surface

SYNONYMS OR RELATED TERMS: recurrence horizon
CATEGORY: geology
DEFINITION: A division in peat stratigraphy which separates well-humidified peat from unhumidified peat. Recurrence surfaces are found in raised bogs and blanket bogs which are nourished only by rainfall. It has therefore been suggested that recurrence surfaces are due to a change to damper climate. Recurrence surfaces of many dates have been found, often several in one bog, although not so many fitting into one age range. During the late prehistoric and early historic phases of the past 6,000 years, the peat bogs of northern Europe appear to have undergone a number of desiccations (warm, dry summers), revealed in the bog cores as dry, often wooded, surfaces. The dry phases were generally followed by wet conditions in which peat accumulation was rapid. These overlying layers of renewed peat growth are also known as recurrence horizons.

red-figure

SYNONYMS OR RELATED TERMS: Red-Figure ware, red-figured
CATEGORY: ceramics
DEFINITION: A technique of decorating pottery in which the area of the figure is left empty (reserved) and the detail is painted in. The red of the clay would contrast with the black. It is an important phase in Greek vase painting, the inverse of black-figure style, and it started in Athens in the late 6th century BC and was popular to the 4th century BC. Other local schools also developed in the late 5th century, especially in southern Italy, and continued until c 300 BC. It was also produced at Corinth.

regional sequence

CATEGORY: chronology
DEFINITION: A chronological series of phases within the limits of a region, arrived at by correlating (not combining or conflating) local sequences.

relative dating

SYNONYMS OR RELATED TERMS: relative dates; relative dating techniques
CATEGORY: technique; chronology
DEFINITION: Dating methods where phases or objects can be put into a sequence relative to each other, but which are not tied to calendrically measured time. It is the sequencing of events or materials relative to another but without linkage to ages in years bp (before present) or calendar years. A relative date is a date which can be said to be earlier than, later than, or contemporary with an event but which (unlike an absolute date) cannot be measured in calendar years. When archaeologists say that event A occurred before or after event B, they have a relative date for A. Before the advent of chronometric dating techniques, all dating was relative except where links with historical events could be proved. Some of these techniques, mainly stratigraphy and seriation, are still useful where chronometric dates cannot be obtained. Theoretically, floating chronologies which cannot be tied to an absolute date (e.g. certain dendrochronological sequences) are relative chronologies even though the techniques are essentially chronometric.

shard

SYNONYMS OR RELATED TERMS: sherd; potsherd
CATEGORY: ceramics; artifact
DEFINITION: Any pottery fragment - piece of broken pot or other earthenware item - that has archaeological significance. They are an invaluable part of the archaeological record because they are well-preserved. The analysis of ceramic changes recorded in potsherds has become one of the primary techniques used by archaeologists in assigning components and phases to times and cultures.

sherd

SYNONYMS OR RELATED TERMS: shard, potsherd
CATEGORY: artifact
DEFINITION: Any pottery fragment - piece of broken pot or other earthenware item - that has archaeological significance. They are an invaluable part of the archaeological record because they are well-preserved. The analysis of ceramic changes recorded in potsherds has become one of the primary techniques used by archaeologists in assigning components and phases to times and cultures.

sondage

SYNONYMS OR RELATED TERMS: test pit
CATEGORY: technique
DEFINITION: A deep trench, often of restricted area, to investigate the stratigraphy of a site; an exploratory excavation made to determine whether a thorough excavation is warranted; a genteel term for test pit. A number of sondages may be dug so that the maximum of preliminary information may be gained with the minimum of effort and disturbance. In modern archaeology, this technique of pre-examination of a site is generally replaced by physical methods (e.g. magnetometer survey, resistivity survey), or if applicable, aerial photography, though a more sophisticated version of the technique of sondage digging would be classified as sampling. Sondage may later be enlarged into an area excavation to give more evidence on the cultural levels or building phases disclosed. The term is often associated with the investigation of the deep stratigraphic record of tells in the Near East.

stratigraphy

CATEGORY: technique
DEFINITION: The study and interpretation of the stratification of rocks, sediments, soils, or cultural debris, based on the principle that the lowest layer is the oldest and the uppermost in the youngest - a major tool in establishing a relative dating sequence. The sequence of deposition can be assessed by a study of the relationships of different layers. Dateable artifacts found within layers, and layers or structures which are themselves dateable, can be used to date parts of stratigraphic sequences. An archaeologist has to master the skill to recognize it - to distinguish one deposit from another by its color, texture, smell, or contents; to understand it - to explain how each layer came to be added, whether by natural accumulation, deliberate fill, or collapse of higher-standing buildings; and to record it in measured drawings of the section. There can be problems where a feature filled with one type of material cuts into layers of the same material. Unless the later feature is recognized, objects of two different phases may appear to be stratified together. The underlying principles are: law of superposition, law of cross-cutting relationships, included fragments, and correlation by fossil inclusions. The stratigraphy principle was adopted from geology and is the basis of reconstructing the history of an archaeological site.

sugar cane

CATEGORY: flora
DEFINITION: Grasses which contain a sweet syrup in their coarse fibrous stems. It is believed that they were first used by man in the New Guinea region in an early phase of Austronesian settlement c 3000 BC.

terminus ante quem

SYNONYMS OR RELATED TERMS: TAQ; t.a.q.
CATEGORY: chronology
DEFINITION: Latin phrase meaning 'the end before which' - the date before which a stratum, feature, or artifact must have been deposited. The term is used either to define a relative chronological date for artifacts or provide fixed points in a site's stratigraphy. If a deposit can be securely dated by material found in it - for example, coins dating to the 2nd century AD found above a layer would provide that deposit with a terminus ante quem of the 2nd century AD. In some circumstances, such a 'date' may be combined with a terminus post quem from an earlier phase to produce a date range for the intervening deposit. This type of dating is used to show that something cannot be later than, or earlier than, something else.

terramara

SYNONYMS OR RELATED TERMS: pl. terremare; Terramara or Terramare
CATEGORY: term
DEFINITION: A local name for Middle Bronze Age settlements in the Emilia region of northern Italy's Po Valley - consisting of mounds of dark earth formed by the accumulated rubbish of a permanent settlement occupied for a long period. The habitations were built on pilings and protected by a vallum, or defensive wall, which screened them from floods in a flat countryside with violent seasonal rains. These villages, whose dead were cremated, lasted until the Early Iron Age. The people of the Terramara culture migrated to Italy from the Danubian region during the Middle Bronze Age (early 2nd millennium BC), and introduced the rite of urnfield burial into Italy. They were excellent bronzeworkers whose products were traded over much of Italy. The society was peasant and its art was limited to the construction of dwellings and to the production and ornamentation of weapons and vases. The pottery is a dark burnished ware with concentric groove decoration, bosses, and horned handles. The Terramara culture strongly influenced the Apennine culture in its last phase. The terramara is considered a forerunner of the Roman street and camp planning and also the medieval castle and village.

tomb

CATEGORY: structure
DEFINITION: A burial structure or chamber; the term is applied loosely to all kinds of graves, funerary monuments, and memorials. In many cultures and civilizations the tomb was superseded by, or coexisted with, monuments or memorials to the dead. The style of tombs has undergone different phases of development in various cultures.

tradition

CATEGORY: term
DEFINITION: A term describing the persistence in a given area over a period of time in individual attributes, artifact types, or technologies; a culture that exists for an extended period of time and usually over an extended area. An example is the chopping-tool tradition of South Asia. A tradition is also a series of archaeological phases or cultures that share cultural similarities. In American terminology, it is a sequence of cultures or pottery styles which develop out of each other and form a continuum in time. The term is used especially to designate specific New World cultures such as the Arctic Small Tool Tradition, Big Game (Hunting) Tradition, Mississippi(an) Tradition, Woodland Tradition, and Desert Tradition. The attributes, styles, traits, or technologies develop continuously, thus forming an easily accounted-for series of advancements. There are problems with the use of this term: where an industry is described as belonging to one culture with the tradition of another (e.g., Mousterian of Acheulian tradition for flint industries), it is unclear as to what is implied about the relationship of the two industries.

vegetational climax

CATEGORY: term; flora
DEFINITION: A model which tries to explain vegetational history - usually as a series of phases culminating in a terminal phase of equilibrium. It is maintained that there are points in vegetational history beyond which there can be no progress until the environmental conditions change. The stages leading up to these climaxes (seres) represent the gradual replacement of one ecosystem with another until a stabilized point (equilibrium) is attained. In different areas these climaxes take different forms depending on climate. A change in the climax vegetation therefore means a change in environmental conditions.

water smoking

CATEGORY: artifact
DEFINITION: Preheating; the initial phase of the firing cycle in which all mechanically held water in the clay piece is volatized and removed by slow heating to about 120 degrees Celsius

weed of cultivation

CATEGORY: flora
DEFINITION: Any plant which is unable to flourish in wooded shady areas but which finds its habitat in open regions such as agricultural fields. With the removal of vegetational competition as a result of clearance of woodland, these weeds establish themselves. Where early agriculturists cleared forest for the sowing of crops, these weeds appeared. Pollen evidence from weeds of cultivation is used by palaeobotanists in recognizing phases of agriculture.

year formula

SYNONYMS OR RELATED TERMS: date formula; year-name
CATEGORY: language
DEFINITION: A phase in Mesopotamia when cuneiform documents provide dates for significant events in relation to a given year in a king's reign. Dating by year formula, done from Akkadian through Old Babylonian times, provides a basic framework for the political history of southern Mesopotamia. The Assyrians did not, unlike the Babylonians, use year formulas containing interesting historical details; instead, every year was designated by the name of a high official (eponymic dating). The reconstruction of Hammurabi's rule is based mainly on his date formulas; years were named for a significant act the king had performed in the previous year or at the beginning of the year thus named.

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