Depas

The Homeric term which Schliemann used to describe the two-handled cups which he found in the Early Bronze Age contexts at Troy.

archaeologsEnglishAncient Pottery, Artifacts

Depas

Skeuomorph

An object in which its shape or decoration copies the form it had been when made from another material or by another technique. For example, a pot would be decorated to make it look similar to a vessel of basketry, skin, or other material. In some cases, it is an artifact which represents in deco...

archaeologsEnglishOthers

Skeuomorph

Midland

Paleoindian complex of the North American Plains similar to the Folsom but the point is different. The type site is the Scharbauer site near Midland, Texas, though the culture is best represented at Hell Gap. A skeleton (Midland Man) of a young woman dating to 10,000 BP from Scharbauer was one of...

archaeologsEnglishOthers

Midland

Herakleopolis Magna

An ancient Egyptian site that was the capital of the 20th nome of Upper Egypt and the cult center for the god Harsaphes. Its peak came when it was the capital of the 9th and 10th Dynasties of the First Intermediate Period (2181-2055 BC). The city was lost by the clan when Mentuhotpe II of the 11t...

archaeologsEnglishAncient Cities

Herakleopolis Magna

Homo

The Hominid genus to which humans belong. The genus includes modern man (Homo sapiens), Neanderthal Man (H. neanderthalensis), and Homo erectus (Pithecanthropus).

archaeologsEnglishOthers

Homo

Eridu

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 ha...

archaeologsEnglishAncient Cities, Place Names

Eridu

Socketed Spearhead

A type of spearhead typical of the middle and later stages of the European Bronze Age in which an elongated hollow was cast into the base of the blade to receive the shaped end of the wooden spear shaft. Some socketed spearheads are fixed to the shaft by means of a peg set at right angles through...

archaeologsEnglishOthers

Socketed Spearhead

West Stow

Early Saxon settlement in Suffolk, England near a Romano-British site, inhabited between the 5th-7th centuries. Pottery production appears to have been carried out at West Stow, and one group of wares has been attributed to the so-called Illington-Lackford potter who operated in the late 6th cent...

archaeologsEnglishOthers

West Stow

Chaiya

The location of two sites in Thailand: Wat Wiang of the late 1st-early 2nd millennium and Ban Phum Rieng. Wat Wiang is a moated settlement with inscriptions connecting the town with Grahi, Srivijaya, and Tambralinga.

archaeologsEnglishOthers

Chaiya

Phyllosilicate

A layered silicate mineral; the major category of clay minerals, composed of those with a regular ordering of layers of silica and alumina structural components

archaeologsEnglishOthers

Phyllosilicate

Sredni Stog Culture

Early Eneolithic culture of the Dnepr basin of the Ukraine, c late 4th and early 3rd millennia BC with settlements and cemeteries. It preceded the Yamnaya culture (Late Eneolithic) and was important in the domestication of the horse.

archaeologsEnglishCultures

Sredni Stog Culture

Modius

A tall cylindrical container which was also the largest Roman measure of capacity. In Classical art and Egyptology, the term is used also to describe a cylindrical headdress commonly worn by such deities as the hippopotamus-goddess Taweret.

archaeologsEnglishOthers

Modius

Potato

One of some 150 tuber-bearing species of the genus Solanum (family Solanaceae). The potato is considered by most botanists a native of the Peruvian-Bolivian Andes and is one of the world's main food crops. At the time of the Spanish conquest, potatoes were grown all over the highlands from Colomb...

archaeologsEnglishOthers

Potato

Biogeography

A subdiscipline of biology that studies, and attempts to explain, the geographical distribution of living things, animal and vegetable.

archaeologsEnglishOthers

Biogeography

Value

The intensity, brilliance, or lightness/darkness of a color; in Munsell, value is the vertical dimension, varying from dark to light

archaeologsEnglishOthers

Value

Clan

A group or tribe of persons from one common family, united by a chieftain. A clan develops for social and security reasons and membership of a clan is defined in terms of actual or purported descent from a common ancestor. The descent is unilineal - i.e., derived only through the male (patriclan)...

archaeologsEnglishOthers

Clan

Isimila

A site in southern Tanzania that may have been occupied about 250,000 years ago. The most distinctive tools are hand axes and cleavers of African Acheulian type, but two other assemblage types are found, one with picks and the other with small retouched tools.

archaeologsEnglishPlace Names

Isimila

Burial Mound

A large artificial hill of earth and stones built or placed over the remains of the dead at the time of burial. In England the equivalent term is barrow; in Scotland, cairn; and in Europe and elsewhere, tumulus. In western Europe and the British Isles, burial cairns and barrows date primarily fro...

archaeologsEnglishOthers

Burial Mound

Adytum

In classical architecture, an enclosed room which formed the innermost sanctuary of a temple. It was entered via the opisthodomos and was to the rear of the cella.

archaeologsEnglishArchitectural

Adytum

Basal Grinding

The grinding of projectile points at their base and lower edges (so that the lashings will not be cut), a Paleo-Indian cultural practice. Basal thinning obtains the same result through the removal of small chips instead of grinding.

archaeologsEnglishOthers

Basal Grinding

Yengema

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 tool...

archaeologsEnglishOthers

Yengema

Melkhoutboom

Cave in eastern Cape Province, South Africa, with Later Stone Age material spanning the last 15,000 years. There is an excellent plant collection from the last 7500 years; Late Stone Age people relied heavily on plant foods, the remains of which have been well preserved at this site.

archaeologsEnglishPlace Names

Melkhoutboom

Payne, Humfry

English Archaeologist who directed the British School at Athens from 1929-1936. He prepared a definitive study of Archaic Corinthian art, "Necrocorinthia" in 1931 in which a vast body of important information on archaic vase painting and other arts practiced at Corinth was gathered and classified...

archaeologsEnglishOthers

Payne, Humfry

Ajdabiya

A town in northeastern Libya near the Gulf of Sidra that was the site of Roman and Byzantine colonization and a caravan junction from Egypt to the Maghreb and a trans-Saharan route from the Sudan during the early Middle Ages. There are ruins from the earlier colonization and two important monumen...

archaeologsEnglishAncient Cities, Place Names

Ajdabiya

Ogee

A double curve, one concave the other convex.

archaeologsEnglishOthers

Ogee