A site of the late Mesolithic Narva culture, stratified in a peat bog in Estonia. The thin occupation deposits on slight wooden platforms have radiocarbon dates of c 2900-2400 BC. A rich assemblage of bone tools is associated with fragmentary Narva pottery.
A relative dating method used for bone. Calcium ions in the phosphatic mineral hydroxyapatite are gradually altered after burial into uranium ions as a result of uranium being in solution in the percolating groundwater. The longer bone has been in the ground, the more uranium will have been absor...
Site of a Neolithic cemetery in the Tao River valley of China, the type site of the Banshan (or Pan-shan) culture which belongs to the western or Gansu branch of the Yangshao Neolithic. Banshan is best known for its painted pottery first found in a grave in 1923. Pan-shan ware is generally consid...
A set of short chains attached to a woman's belt, used for carrying keys or other items.
Illegal artifact collecting
English archaeologist and ethnologist who journeyed from Mexico Toltec remains to Hudson's Bay to the caves of southern France and who supported other excavations after a successful banking career. He assisted French archaeologist Edouard Lartet in his investigations of the series of Palaeolithic...
A Predynastic cemetery site in Egypt c 3500 BC, famous for Petrie's sequence dating.
Middle Bronze Age pin typical of the Ornament Horizon in northwest Europe (British Taunton Phase) comprising a thin shank with a point at one end and a large, rather ostentatious, ring cast onto the shank at the other.
A Baden culture cemetery near Budapest, Hungary, where a very early four-wheeled wagon was found in a grave.
Palaeolithic site in the Altai region of Siberia with artifacts including Levallois cores, retouched blades, denticulates, and endscrapers probably dating to the early Upper Palaeolithic.
A wide-mouthed cylindrical container made of glass or pottery.
A Middle Kingdom archaeological site, on the eastern bank of the Nile, Egypt, about 150 miles south of Cairo. The site is known for its rock-cut tombs of the 11th- and 12th-dynasty (2125-1795 BC) officials of the 16th Upper Egyptian (Oryx) nome, or province. Some of the 39 tombs are painted with ...
A red, crystalline form of mercuric sulphide, a naturally occurring and most important ore of mercury. It was used as a pigment for painting sculptures, pottery, and figurines by the Romans, Olmecs, and others.
A term for an eolith shaped like a bird's beak.
A sedimentary structure with fine strata (laminae) within a bed which are inclined relative to the bounding beds. Orientation of cross-bedding can be used to reconstruct past depositional environments that may have related archaeological deposits.
A knife for reaping corn, first used by Neolithic man, made of flint and shaped like a banana. These flint blades were mounted in a wooden or bone haft, as in the Natufian of Palestine. Later sickles were of bronze and some of terra-cotta were in Sumer. In the Bronze Age, a socketed sickle appear...
The characteristic mark left on the base of glass vessels by breaking off the glass-blower's rod.
One of the most famous cities of antiquity, the capital of southern Mesopotamia (Babylonia) from the early 2nd millennium to the early 1st millennium BC and capital of the Neo-Babylonian (Chaldean) Empire in the 7th and 6th centuries BC. It was located about 80 km south of Baghdad, Iraq on the Eu...
Any of a wide variety of holes in bones for nerves, blood vessels, etc.
Upper Palaeolithic site on the Saale River, eastern Germany, dated to 12,542-11,750 bp. There are backed blades, endscrapers, burins, bone points, and Venus figurines. The assemblage is assigned to the Magdalenian.
The method of defining arbitrary groupings of artifacts. Analytical types consist of groups of attributes that define artifacts for comparing sites in space and time. They do not necessarily coincide with actual tool types used by prehistoric people.
A substance that cannot be broken down any further, made up of atoms with the same atomic number. It joins with other elements to form compounds. Common examples are hydrogen, gold, and iron. The term also means, in faunal analysis, the specific part of the animal (e.g. humerus).
The excavation of an area of a site without leaving intervening walls or pillars, which exposes contiguous areas of floors better than the balk method.
An approach to typology based on clusters of human artifacts that are seen as specific classificatory types.
A term describing the full scope of competitive exchanges taking place - imitation, emulation, competition, warfare, the exchange of material goods and information, etc. - between autonomous socio-political units, generally within the same geographic region.
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