The structure of economic life in a country, area, or period; the provisioning of human society with food, water, shelter, etc.
A small spiny leguminous tree or bush with hard wood often burned in a barbecue to flavor food and whose beanlike pods are high in sugar.
Silicon dioxide, a hard, unreactive, colorless compound which occurs as quartz and in sandstone and many other rocks.
Pertaining to a group in which each of its members possess many but not all group characteristics, i.e. each characteristic is possessed by many members and no single characteristic is diagnostic of group membership.
The Christian population of Egypt whose church rituals and traditions date from before the Arab conquest of the 7th century. Their art is largely borrowed from Syria, Sassanian Persia, and the Egyptian past, sometimes using Christianized symbols from ancient Egyptian religion. Although the Coptic...
A transition phase where copper and bronze came into use, but stone was still most important.
The area on a store core which is struck to remove a flake or blade in toolmaking. Part of the original platform is removed with the detached flake. The platform itself is prepared by the removal of one or more flakes, and in the latter case is described as a faceted striking platform.
A warm, dry postglacial period in the western United States approximately 5600-2500 BC. Coined by Ernst Antev in 1948, the term describes a time during which temperatures were warmer than at present. Other terms, like Long drought, are used.
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.
A Spanish archaeologist who worked on megaliths, on the dating and interpretation of prehistoric Spanish cave art, and on the site of Ampurias / Emporion.
A city in northwestern Germany which is the site of a palace complex of Carolingian buildings, particularly a chapel built by Odo of Metz for Charlemagne between 790-805. Aachen was the capital of Charlemagne's kingdom and the Palatine Chapel (also called Palace Chapel or Octagon), was part of th...
Important site of the Middle Neolithic Yangshao culture in China. It was occupied periodically, suggesting slash-and-burn agriculture. In the upper level, dated c 2800 BC, fine pottery was made with designs of arcs and dots, showing some connection with earlier Yanshao cultures (e.g. Banpo) but t...
A small island off the southern coast of Brittany, France, with a Mesolithic settlement and cemetery with 14 individuals accompanied by antlers. The artifacts were of Tardenoisian type and the whole site was a Mesolithic midden, though there are remains of domestic sheep. The radiocarbon date is ...
A Late Palaeolithic culture of the Northwest Arctic in Yukon, near the border of Canada and Alaska. Artifacts, such as percussion flakes, share traits of European and Asian Levallois-Mousterian stone toolkits and are possibly 18,000 years old.
Aegean island site of Aegina, occupied since the late 4th millennium BC. The Bronze Age settlement combined Helladic, Cycladic, and Minoan cultural traditions. The name of the site is derived from a single intact column of the 6th century BC temple of Apollo.
The property of a material that enables it to be shaped when wet and to hold this shape when the shaping force is removed
A research perspective which gives prime attention to the role of symbols in society. Culture is a system of inherited conceptions expressed in symbolic forms which are used to communicate and develop knowledge and attitudes. The function of culture then is to impose meaning on the world and make...
Establishment of the temporal sequences of human cultures by the application of a variety of dating methods to cultural remains.
A Middle Horizon site in the Moche Valley of coastal Peru of a small local people. It may have been under control of the Huari empire but the valley was largely abandoned by the Moche culture by this time.
A Palaeolithic rock shelter in the northern Caucasus of European Russia. A Middle Palaeolithic assemblage contained sidescrapers. Upper Palaeolithic layers have end scrapers and backed blades. The sequence probably dates to the last glacial.
The epoch of geologic time in the late Quaternary following the Pleistocene; referred to as Holocene in several European countries. It is the present geological epoch, which began some 10,000 (bp) years ago (8300 BC). The Recent epoch is marked by rising temperatures throughout the world and the ...
Late Bronze Age metal hoard in Charente, France, c 700 BC. A large pottery vessel contained 2720 bronzes, including swords, spearheads, socketed axes, and bracelets.
Light whose wave vibrations are constrained (often in a single plane) rather than in all directions.
Late Neolithic site in Moravia of the Funnel Beaker and Baden cultures used as a guide to the Late Neolithic and Eneolithic of the Carpathian Basin.
The approach explaining cultural, economic, and social change as being the result of adaptation to material conditions (e.g. the environment) as opposed to ideational factors
EnglishAncient Pottery