Ullastret

Early Iron Age town in Girona, Spain, founded in the 6th century BC. It consisted of a hilltop enclosure surrounded by a stone wall with circular towers; inside were stone-built houses, cisterns, paved streets, and a market. Greek pottery and coins are among the artifacts. Ullastret was destroyed...

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Ullastret

Port Aux Choix

Archaic cemetery site in northwest Newfoundland, Canada, dated between late 3rd-late 2nd millennia BC. The 100 burials had grave goods of ochre, polished slate, barbed bone points, toggled bone harpoon heads, shell beads and combs, needles, knives, and scrapers.

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Port Aux Choix

Viking Age

The period of Scandinavian history from c 700-1100 AD that begins with the first Viking raids on western Europe at the end of the 8th century. Therefore, the period is more narrowly defined as the 9th-11th centuries.

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Viking Age

Secondary Classification

A classification based on inferred or analytic attributes, often carried out by technicians in specialized laboratories.

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Secondary Classification

Sandia Cave

Type site for a tanged and unfluted projectile point in New Mexico's Sandia Mountains. This cave has yielded artifacts of the so-called Sandia Man (25 000 BC). In Pueblo mythology the Sandias were sacred marking the southern boundary of the Tiwa-speaking Indian territory. Sandia points were strat...

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Sandia Cave

Rouffignac

A huge cave in the Dordogne, southwest France, with Mesolithic levels (Sauveterrian and Tardensoisian) at the entrance dating from 9150-8370 bp. Deep inside this large cave system are black paintings and engravings in which mammoth predominates from the Magdalenian. There has been much controvers...

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Rouffignac

Royal Cemetery

A site in Ur in southern Mesopotamia with 1500 tombs from the later Early Dynastic to the Ur III period, mostly of the c 2600-2300 BC time. The richest tomb belonged to king Meskalamdug, which held many precious materials and famous artifacts of the Sumerian civilization. The royal burials were a...

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Royal Cemetery

Camden, William

A renowned British antiquary who was among the first to describe antiquities found in Britain. His book "Britannia" (1586) described the archaeological past of all the British Isles to Norman times and was the first comprehensive topographical survey of England.

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Camden, William

Kivik

A site in southern Sweden with one of the largest grave mounds in Scandinavia, c 70 m in diameter. The barrow covers a central cyst made of slabs with carvings on their inner faces. The designs include processional scenes, a chariot with rider, ships, horses, fish, axes, sun-wheels, and human fig...

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Kivik

Pucara

A major urban center of the Early Intermediate Period, near the Peruvian shore of Lake Titicaca. The important buildings included a walled sanctuary, monumental U-shaped sunken court surrounded by structures, and walls of dressed stone slabs. The city is best known for its carved stone statues an...

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Pucara

Samuilitsa Ii

Middle Palaeolithic cave site on the Iskr River in Bulgaria. The layers date back to the early Last Glacial and the upper layers are estimated to 42,780 bp. Artifacts include scrapers and bifacial foliates.

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Samuilitsa Ii

Monumental Architecture

Large buildings such as temples, palaces, and pyramids, readily identifiable in the archaeological record and assume to have been built by means of the collective labor of many people.

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Monumental Architecture

Ku Bua

Settlement of the Dvaravati period in south-central Thailand near the mouth of the Mae Klong River. Remains of Dvaravati architecture include stupa bases at Ku Bua, some of which have elephants supporting their bases, following a pattern that originated in Ceylon. A moat dates to the Khmer period...

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Ku Bua

Sun Disk

Decorative symbol for the sun; an ancient Near Eastern symbol consisting of a disk with conventionalized wings emblematic of the sun-god (as Ra in Egypt). It was also used frequently throughout the European Bronze Age.

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Sun Disk

Smith, Charles Roach

The founder in 1843 of British Archaeological Association, who gave the British Museum 5,000 items from his collection. He also gave artifacts to a private museum at Strood in Kent and published seven volumes of Collectanea Antiqua (1848-1880).

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Smith, Charles Roach

Unflaked

A face which was unaltered by applying flaking

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Unflaked

Calpulli

Corporate group in Aztec society which functioned above the level of the household. Calpullis had social, political, and economic functions. They occupied whole villages or neighborhoods of towns and cities; members corporately held rights to farm plots as long as they continued to use them.

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Calpulli

Mortarium

A Roman grinding bowl, or mortar; a culinary pottery form. Examples are often stamped with maker's name, and some sophisticated versions have been found.

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Mortarium

Holmes, William Henry

American archaeologist who extinguished the more bizarre theories of the origins of humans in North America and who helped establish professional archaeology in the US. Holmes opposed a popular belief that there was a period in New World prehistory comparable to Upper Paleolithic (Old Stone Age) ...

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Holmes, William Henry

Sarka Style

Variant of Linear Pottery of western Bohemia, c 3900 BC, parallel to the Zeliezovce in Slovakia and southern Poland. The vessels are painted in black spirals on buff before firing.

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Sarka Style

Pass-Through

An opening similar to a doorway but too small for an adult to fit through. It occurs at or below the vertical midpoint of a wall.

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Pass-Through

Java

A major island of Indonesia, best known for its remains of Homo erectus dating from 1,000,000-500,000 BP. Neolithic and Bronze Age cultures are known. The colonization of Java apparently took place from mainland Southeast Asia, and domestic agriculture is known to have been practiced there as ear...

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Java

Ashurnasirpal Ii

King of Assyria 883-859 BC, who consolidated the conquests of his father, Tukulti-Ninurta II, and commanded the last period of Assyrian power before the establishment of the New Assyrian Empire. His military expeditions took him as far as the Mediterranean and, according to his own testimony, he ...

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Ashurnasirpal Ii

Chernigov

A town on the River Dnieper in western Russia, whose archaeology suggests a 7th-century origin, although the site was first mentioned in 907 as founded by the Swedish Vikings. It was one of the chief towns of Kievan Rus and center of a princedom. Its Spassky Cathedral dates from 1024. It was prin...

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Chernigov

Hypotheticodeduction

A type of scientific reasoning in which a hypothesis is made, predictions are deduced, and then the hypothesis tested for accuracy against archaeological data. Deductive reasoning is used to find and verify the logical consequences. Developed by Sir Isaac Newton in the late 17th century, it is a ...

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Hypotheticodeduction