Categories - Archaeologs

Incision

A finishing technique in ceramics manufacture whereby a narrow tool cuts into the surface, displacing material to either side and drags along to deposit more material toward the end of a linear or curvilinear trough or valley.

Incision

Paijan Point

Bifacially worked chipped stone points of triangular outline with a small stem or tang at the base. Characteristic of the Archaic Stage paiján Tradition of South America in the period 9000-7000 BC.

Paijan Point

Banshan Pottery

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...

EnglishCultures, Ancient Pottery

Banshan Pottery

archaeologsCultures, Ancient Pottery

Ritsuryo

Code of laws adopted in Japan in 702 AD, marking the shift from Yamato to Ritsuryo state administration. The ritsuryo system refers to the governmental structure defined by ritsu, the criminal code, and ryo, the administrative and civil codes. Such a system had long been in force in China, and th...

Ritsuryo

Touchstone

A stone used to test how genuine an object is by rubbing the object against the stone, particularly used for testing gold and silver.

Touchstone

Catalog Number

The unique number assigned to each individual item (or group of items) in an archaeological collection

Catalog Number

Frequency Seriation

A relative age determination technique in which artifacts or other archaeological data are chronologically ordered by ranking their relative frequencies of appearance. It is based on the idea that an artifact type first steadily grows in popularity and then steadily declines.

Frequency Seriation

Koumbi Saleh

Site north of Bamako, Mali, which may have been the capital of the ancient Ghana empire in the 11th century. Ghana was a great trading empire that flourished in western Africa from the 9th through the 13th century. The city had a large urban settlement, two cemeteries, and a mosque. Within its bo...

Koumbi Saleh

Mummy Label

A type of identification tag used during the Greco-Roman period, when corpses were regularly being transported from the home to the cemetery or back to their village. The tags were made of wood and, occasionally, stone. Mummy labels were inscribed with short ink texts in Greek or demotic, giving ...

Mummy Label

Tlachtli

Aztec word for ritual ballgame.

Tlachtli

Bison Jump

A steep cliff or other natural feature used to kill stampeding buffalo.

Bison Jump

Radiate

An imperial Roman coin on which the emperor is shown wearing a radiate or pointed solar crown, especially in the 3rd century AD.

Radiate

Scarcement

The setback of a wall or embankment to form a ledge.

Scarcement

Absolute Age

The amount of time elapsed, with reference to a specific time scale, since an object was made or used.

Absolute Age

Latte

Double rows of large stone pillars with capstones that formed the foundation of structures, especially in the Mariana Islands, Micronesia, about 1000 years ago. The latte stones of this area are now thought to have been piles for raised houses, perhaps for chiefs and wealthy men, since the latte ...

Latte

Stadia Rod

A long, brightly colored rod with calibrations for obtaining elevations with a surveying instrument. Stadia is a surveying method for determination of distances and differences of elevation by means of this telescopic instrument having two horizontal lines through which the marks on a graduated r...

Stadia Rod

Dentition

The general characteristic arrangement, type, and number of teeth in animal (vertebrate) species. The study of dentition is an important part of the discipline of archaeozoology. It is used to identify animal remains, and can also be used to determine age in both man and animal, either from the s...

Dentition

Burrup Peninsula

A rich archaeological area on the northwest coast of Western Australia with 10,000+ engravings on rocks, including geometric figures of humans and animals. Artifacts and features are quarries, shell middens, standing stones, and dry-stone walls and terraces. The site dates range from 6700-200 bp.

Burrup Peninsula

Globular Amphora

A type of pottery vessel which has given its name to a Late Neolithic or Copper Age culture of the 3rd millennium BC through much of Germany, Poland, and western Russia. The amphora itself is bulbous in shape with a narrow neck and small handles (for hanging) and appeared with the eastern wing of...

archaeologsAncient Pottery

EnglishAncient Pottery

Globular Amphora

Stylobate

The substructure on which the columns of a temple or other building stand.

Stylobate

Chaltoon

A series of underground chambers found in areas of Mesoamerica that were used principally for storage. Shaped like bottles, they may also have been used as seat baths or burial chambers.

Chaltoon

Douglass, Andrew Ellicott

An American astronomer who developed the dendrochronology dating method. He outlined the method as early as 1901, but it was not until 1929 that he was able to publish an unbroken sequence of tree-rings for the Southwest US, extending back from the present day to the early years of the present er...

Douglass, Andrew Ellicott

Icknield Way

An early Neolithic trackway across England from Norfolk to Wiltshire, connecting camps on the hilltops. It ran from Avebury and Stonehenge to the coast of Norfolk, the site of the major flint mines known as Grime's Graves. In parts the track is doubled above and below the spring line of the escar...

Icknield Way

Seasonality Studies

The determination of the time of year that a site was occupied based on certain plant or animal remains.

Seasonality Studies

Dissociation

The principle that states that artifacts deposited together in a certain location were not necessarily used together at that location.