Categories - Archaeologs

Body Sherd

Any fragment of a ceramic vessel not identifiable as a rim sherd.

Body Sherd

Active Remote Sensing

Any geophysical sensing method that passes energy through the soil and measures the response in order to read what lies below the surface.

Active Remote Sensing

Atlantis

An earthly paradise described by Plato in two of his dialogues, "Timaeus" and "Critias". In "Timaeus" quoting Athenian lawgiver Solon Plato describes a circular island that developed a high level of civilization but which degenerated and sank into the sea (due to earthquakes) as punishment. Atlan...

Atlantis

Quoit Brooch

Ornate circular Anglo-Saxon brooch of the early 5th century AD, distinctive in being essentially a penannular brooch to which has been added a wide decorative plate with a round hole in the middle.

Quoit Brooch

Saoura

In the northwest Sahara, a basin with a long sequence from the Oldowan, Acheulian, and Aterian. Called a wadi or oued, meaning ephemeral stream, the Saoura is the longest wadi, running nearly 600 miles south from the High Atlas to the Saharan interior, where it eventually dies out.

Saoura

Toldos, Los

Stratified cave in Patagonia, southern Argentina, with a sequence of unifacial tools, fishtail points, and preceramic materials dating c 10,600-2000 BC.

Toldos, Los

Opus Signium

A Roman construction technique of crushed brick set in mortar, a kind of waterproof plaster, used to seal walls and floors in bath complexes. The mix was essentially a lime mortar with an aggregate of coarse pieces of broken terra-cotta. This Latin technique term was used by Vitruvius c 30 BC.

Opus Signium

Grape Cup

Type of miniature cup or accessory vessel found in early Bronze Age (Wessex II) graves in southern England. Generally less than 15cm across, grape cups are characterized by having a narrow base, narrow mouth, and an expanded rather bulbous body covered in small applied balls of clay so that they ...

Grape Cup

Georeferenced

Pertaining to data that is input to a GIS database using a common mapping reference (e.g. UTM grid) so that the data can be spatially analyzed

Georeferenced

Urial

A species of wild sheep in Iran, Turkestan, and the Himalayas with the first record of domestication from Anau c 5000 BC. It replaced the moufflon to become the ancestor of nearly all modern sheep.

Urial

Funan

The Chinese name for an early kingdom of Southeast Asia, founded in the 1st century AD and recorded as a trading partner of China from at least the 3rd century AD. Located in the lower Mekong region of Cambodia and southern Vietnam, this Indianized state was strategically situated on the trade ro...

Funan

Pressure Flaking

A method for the secondary working of flint tools involving the use of a hard object against a stone core or mass to remove flakes. The roughed-out form of the tool is sharpened and finished by exerting pressure with a bone, antler, stone, or stick on the edge in order to remove small thin chips....

Pressure Flaking

Phalera

In ancient Greece and Rome, a bright metal disc worn on the chest as an ornament by men, or used to adorn the harness of horses.

Phalera

Smith, William

British engineer and geologist known for his development of the science of stratigraphy. He collected fossils throughout England and discovered that different exposures of the same stratum contained comparable fossils, eventually leading to the formulation of the index fossil concept. Smith's gre...

Smith, William

Tuyère

A metal nozzle through which the air is forced into a forge, hearth, kiln, or furnace from the bellows. In antiquity it was usually of clay, and often survives as the only evidence for a metalworking site. This short tube made of clay, through which the air from bellows could be blown into a furn...

Tuyère

Dar Tichitt

A series of very early Neolithic farming sites on the southern fringes of Sahara Desert in southern Mauritania. The first village settlements of the Naghez phase, 1200-1000 BC, had circular compounds connected by wide paths. Fishing, hunting, and wild grasses were the village's subsistence. Durin...

EnglishPlace Names

Dar Tichitt

archaeologsPlace Names

Tepe

Persian word for "tell" or artificial mound. [In this dictionary the sites are listed by their second element.]

Tepe

Ninevite 5

The period or horizon from c 2900-2500 BC in northern Mesopotamia characterized by distinctive painted and incised and excised pottery. The name derives from the site of Nineveh where it was first excavated. The term also refers to the pottery itself.

Ninevite 5

Lindisfarne

Island off the coast of Northumberland, northeast England, where in 634, St. Aidan and other monks from Iona founded a monastery. It became a center for producing illuminated manuscripts (Lindisfarne Gospel, c 700) and works of art of the Northumbrian school. In 793, it was subjected to the first...

Lindisfarne

Area

A sector of units of excavation that consists of a group of closely related, usually contiguous, squares. The numbering of Areas is by capital letters, e.g., Area A, Area M, etc., and squares by Arabic numbers, Area A, Square 1. In some systems of excavation what is an Area in the above descripti...

Area

Longevity

The expectation of the life span of a person, culture, etc. Man's expectation of life is one of the simplest ways of measuring his ability to cope with his surroundings. It can rarely be calculated for an ancient population because too few skeletons are usually found to provide an adequate statis...

Longevity

Dog

The first domesticated animal species; the earliest such site is the Upper Palaeolithic cave of Palegawra in Iraq, with a date of c 10,000 BC. Other early evidence is from the Mesolithic in Star Carr c 7500 BC, from Turkey c 7000 BC, and in America in a Late Pleistocene deposit at Jaguar Cave, Id...

Dog

Elandsfontein

A farming site in southern Cape Province, South Africa, which has produced several Palaeolithic cultures and a human skull somewhat like that of Broken Hill. The skull ('Saldanha' cranium) is believed to be associated with late Acheulian tools and is considered to be of late Middle Pleistocene ag...

Elandsfontein

Time Slice

The use of thousands of individual reflections separated into horizontal slices, each of which corresponds to a specific estimated depth in the ground, which can reveal the general shape and location of buried features at each depth.

Time Slice

Trivet

A ceramic, stone, or metal stand on which a cooking pot or kettle is stood for support or to protect an underlying surface.