Categories - Archaeologs

Warranting Argument

An argument used to support assumptions about the way the world works, employed by archaeologists to support interpretations of empirical observations.

Warranting Argument

Cliff Dwelling

The "apartment houses" of masonry built by the Pueblo/Anasazi people of the American Southwest during Pueblo III times or Classic Pueblo located in rock shelters on the sides of canyon walls. These prehistoric houses were built along the sides or under the overhangs of cliffs primarily in the Fou...

Cliff Dwelling

Geophysics

The study of the physical properties of the earth - structure, composition, and development - such as magnetism, radioactivity, vulcanism, etc. Its applications to archaeology have been to provide dating methods (geochronology) and techniques for exploration (magnetometer and resistivity survey)....

Geophysics

Wire

Metal drawn out into a thin flexible thread or rod

Wire

Household Archaeology

A branch of settlement archaeology specializing in the study of the activities and facilities associated with ancient households or houses.

Household Archaeology

Crannog

An artificial island in a lake, bog, or march that forms the foundation for a small settlement and upon which a fortified structure is usually built. This structure was typical of prehistoric Ireland, Scotland, and the Isle of Man, especially during the first century AD. The island was constructe...

Crannog

Rosellini

Italian Egyptologist who accompanied Jean-François Champollion on a Franco-Tuscan expedition to Egypt in 1828-1829. They published "Monuments de l'Égypte et Nubie". This ten-volume description of the major monuments of Egypt (1832-1844) was one of the most influential Egyptological publications o...

Rosellini

Mckellar Hypothesis

A principle stating that very small items, when no longer useful, will be discarded at their original location rather than disposed of elsewhere; thus such an item found at a specific site can be presumed to have been actually used at that site. The hypothesis was formulated by Judith McKellar, A...

Mckellar Hypothesis

Tranchet

A large Mesolithic or Neolithic chisel-ended flint artifact with a sharp straight cutting edge, produced by the removal of a thick flake at a right angle to the main axis of the tool. The technique was used for the manufacture of axes and adzes and allowed a blunted tool to be resharpened by remo...

Tranchet

Isis

Important Egyptian goddess, wife of Osiris and mother of Horus. She was anthropoid in form and goddess of the Moon. She was a powerful magician and also venerated as the ideal mother. She became the symbolic mother of the Egyptian king, who was himself regarded as a human manifestation of Horus. ...

EnglishGoddess Names

Isis

archaeologsGoddess Names

Gudnja

A cave site in a steep valley in southern Dalmatia, Croatia. The occupation levels discovered include: Early Neolithic Impressed Ware; Middle Neolithic Danilo culture; Late Neolithic regional variant of the Hvar culture; and Copper Age. This site has yielded the first radiocarbon dates for the Da...

Gudnja

Birrigai

A rock shelter in the highlands of the Australian Capital Territory with occupation in the last glacial maximum, starting c 2100 bp.

Birrigai

Brassempouy

A series of early Upper Palaeolithic deposits in southwest France near Brassempouy, famous for carved ivories and broken statuettes of Venus or "Lady". These statues are thought to be the work of Cro-Magnon artists.

Brassempouy

Igneous Rock

A rock which originated as molten magma from beneath the earth's surface and subsequently came to the surface as an extrusion, or remained below ground as an intrusion. The nature of the rock depends in part on the rate at which it cooled; as intrusions of magma slowly solidify, enough time elaps...

Igneous Rock

Shard

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 use...

Shard

Kamid Al Loz, Tell

A site in Lebanon, Kumidi, that was the seat of a state during the Late Bronze Age (mentioned in the Amarna archive). Settlement began in the late Neolithic and continued to Byzantine times. In the Middle Bronze Age and Late Bronze Age, it was a walled down with a palace and temples. Its location...

EnglishPlace Names

Kamid Al Loz, Tell

archaeologsPlace Names

Farfa

A rich Benedictine monastery of the early Middle Ages, located northeast of Rome, Italy. Founded c 680-700, its scriptorium was famous and it has undergone several rebuildings and ambitious additions.

Farfa

Rouletting

A technique used to decorate pottery. In Greek pottery-making, it began in the early 4th century BC. A strip of metal was applied to the pot as it was turned on the wheel, leaving a band of even decoration on the inside; it was more accurately called chattering. Alternatively, a cogged wheel was ...

Rouletting

Lime Popping

A surface defect on ware containing inclusions of calcium carbonate (limestone, shell, calcite)

Lime Popping

Yue

Ancient ethnic group of southeastern mainland China during the Han dynasty, an aboriginal people who in the 5th-4th century BC formed a powerful kingdom in present-day Chekiang and Fukien provinces. The name 'Vietnam' means south of the Yüeh and some Chinese scholars consider the Vietnamese to be...

Yue

Primary Refuse

Unwanted objects or materials found in the context where it was used and discarded.

Primary Refuse

Brandberg

A mountain massif in central Namibia with Stone Age and Iron Age material, including 43,000 important cave art paintings. "The White Lady of the Brandberg" romanticized by Abbé Breuil is the most celebrated.

Brandberg

Paddle-And-Anvil

A pottery-making method in which a wooden paddle and a stone or ceramic disk are used to smooth and shape a coiled pot. The paddle was used to strike the exterior surface of the vessel as a convex stone or clay anvil was held against the corresponding interior surface.

Paddle-And-Anvil

Tsodilo Hills

Later Stone Age and Iron Age rock shelters with rock art, in northwest Botswana. Depression Shelter in the Tsodilo Hills has evidence of continuous Khoisan occupation from about 17,000 BC to about 1650 AD. There is also evidence of early farming settlement there, alongside Khoisan hunter and past...

Tsodilo Hills

Lopburi

Settlement in central Thailand occupied from the Copper Age and in a region of copper and bronze production during the 2nd and 1st millennia BC. Some sites made copper and iron into the Khmer occupation. Lopburi, already a provincial capital, became a major center during the 11th-13th centuries A...