Categories - Archaeologs

Faiyum A

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).

Faiyum A

Casemate Wall

A defensive wall consisting of parallel walls with a space or internal chambers in the thickness of the wall. Sometimes the chambers were rooms; sometimes they were filled with debris or left empty.

Casemate Wall

Zazaragi

Palaeolithic site in Miyagi prefecture, Japan, dated to c 45,000-40,000 bp, a very early occupation for the islands.

EnglishPlace Names

Zazaragi

archaeologsPlace Names

Phylum

In taxonomy, the second-highest level.

Phylum

Peterborough Culture

Neolithic culture grafted on to the native Mesolithic culture, one of the two major Neolithic groups of England (with the Windmill Hill people). They lived in villages and on seashores, grew grain and raised cattle, and hunted with square-tipped arrowheads. They also used axes and microlithic sic...

EnglishCultures

Peterborough Culture

archaeologsCultures

Dry Screening

The sieving of excavated soil and sediment through (usually) 1/4-inch mesh, to recover artifacts not found in excavation.

Dry Screening

Matrix Sorting

The hand-sorting of processed bulk soil samples to find very small artifacts and ecofacts

Matrix Sorting

N-Transforms

The movement and reposition of cultural material on an archaeological site by natural agencies, such as animals or freeze-thaw action.

N-Transforms

Plowshare

The part of a plow that goes into the ground to disturb or turn the soil. These often become detached from the main mechanism of the plough while working and are subsequently lost. For this reason many plowed soils, both ancient and modern, contain within them broken or lost plowshares as a tell-...

Plowshare

Medina

An oasis town in western Saudi Arabia, 447 km (278 miles) from Mecca, known as Yathrib before Muhammad's residence there. Medina is second only to Mecca as the holiest place of Muslim pilgrimage. It is venerated by all Muslims as the place to which the Prophet Muhammad fled from Mecca in 622. Thi...

Medina

Chicoid

One of the two ceramic series (the other, Meillacod) that seem to have developed out of the Ostinoid series. They originated near the type-site of Boca Chica, Dominican Republic, and then influenced much of the eastern Antilles. The Chicoid materials represent the ball game, Zemis, a variety of w...

Chicoid

Didyma

A temple site in Miletus, Turkey, dating to the 8th century BC. The reconstructed Hellenistic temple included a naiskos inside the adyton.

EnglishPlace Names, Ancient Cities

Didyma

archaeologsPlace Names, Ancient Cities

Kachemak Stage

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 ...

Kachemak Stage

Playa Hermosa

A site on central Peruvian coast north of Lima which has yielded an assemblage of preceramic period tools, textiles, and evidence of cultivated corn, lima beans, chili peppers c 2300-2100 BC.

Playa Hermosa

Hand-Thrown

A ceramic ware, formed on a potter's wheel with one's hands

Hand-Thrown

Kandahar

A site near the crossing of the Arghandab in southern Afghanistan. The city was included in the Achaemenian empire by Darius I, was taken by Alexander the Great in 329 BC, was surrendered by Seleucus I to Candra Gupta in 305 BC and dignified by a rock inscription in Greek and Aramaic by his grand...

Kandahar

Solstice

Either of the two times of the year when the sun is at its greatest distance from the celestial equator.

Solstice

Hand Stencil

An impression of a hand produced by spraying thick paint (often made from white clay or red or yellow ocher) through a blowpipe around the edges of a hand placed against a rock surface. Many hand stencils are found in caves.

Hand Stencil

Barbar

A site and culture of northern Bahrain with a sequence of square temples built on an oval platform, dating from the late 3rd to mid-2nd millennium BC. The culture had distinctive pottery and seals and included sites at Qal'at al Bahrain, Bahrain Tumulus Fields, and others from Failaka to Qatar.

Barbar

Sipapu

In a kiva (ceremonial room) of the U.S. Southwest, a hole in the center of the floor that symbolizes the emergence of the spirit into another world - giving access to the lower world in Pueblo mythology. They are sometimes carved through a plank of wood. Sipapus have been identified by homology.

Sipapu

Slopewash

A type of sediment formed by soil and rubble being moved down hillslopes. The deposit may be caused by solifluxion or by plowwash. The poorly sorted deposit can sometimes carry the remains of archaeological sites downhill with it, resulting in a false location and mixed material.

Slopewash

Anedjib

Ruler of the late 1st Dynasty who is thought to have been buried in Tomb X in Abydos, the smallest of the Early Dynastic royal tombs in the cemetery of Umm el Qa'ab.

Anedjib

Interstadial

A brief period of milder climate within a longer, cooler glacial period (between two cold periods during a major glaciation). Although it is similar to an interglacial period, it is too cold or too short to allow for growth of vegetation. Examples are the Devensian, Weichselian, and Wisconsin.

Interstadial

Anklet

An ornamental chain, worn around the ankle.

Anklet

Subtractive Technology

Any manufacturing process in which artifacts take form as material is removed from the original mass. Flint knapping is a subtractive technology.