Tata

Mouth

The special hole or opening on a container with a hollow inside.

archaeologsEnglishArtifacts, Ancient Pottery

Mouth

Clinker

Ash and partially fused residues from a coal fired furnace or fire.

archaeologsEnglishOthers

Clinker

Finishing Technique

A method for altering the surface characteristics of vessels by displacing or impressing surface material or applying or removing material.

archaeologsEnglishOthers

Finishing Technique

Kodja

A type of flaked stone hatchet of southwest Australia, made with two stones hafted in a ball of resin on the end of a stick, known for 2000-3000 years. One stone is used for pounding and the other is sharp for chopping.

archaeologsEnglishOthers

Kodja

Ionic Order

In architecture, one of the orders of ancient Greece and also found in cities of western Turkey and the islands of the eastern Aegean. The elegantly designed column has a capital formed by two sets of volutes, which looked like a pair of formalized ram's horns. In between the volutes is an echinu...

archaeologsEnglishArchitectural

Ionic Order

Arundel Marbles

A collection of marbles and ancient statues taken from Greece and Asia Minor at the expense of Thomas Howard, Earl of Arundel (1585-1646) and given to Oxford University in 1667, which came to be known as the Arundel (or Oxford) marbles.

archaeologsEnglishOthers

Arundel Marbles

Bologna

A city in the Po valley of northern Italy, originally the Etruscan Felsina, which was occupied by Gauls in the 4th century BC and became a Roman colony and municipium (Bononia) c 190 BC. Traces of street plans survive, as do cemeteries with trench-type inhumation and cremation. Finds include sand...

archaeologsEnglishOthers

Bologna

Morrow Mountain Point

Middle Archaic bifacially worked chipped stone projectile points found in eastern parts of North America and dating to the period c.6000-4000 BC. Characteristically, the points are triangular in outline with slightly flared sides towards the base, and a small rounded tang on the base.

archaeologsEnglishOthers

Morrow Mountain Point

Bibliotheca

The Latin term for a library or collection of books or manuscripts. The most celebrated library of antiquity was founded by the Ptolemies at Alexandria, destroyed by the Arabs in 640 AD.

archaeologsEnglishOthers

Bibliotheca

Mounded Tomb

A type of elite burial used in East Asia built with monumental earthen or stone-piled mounds which contained burial facilities. The burials ranged from wooden chambers, clay enclosures, to brick or stone megalithic chambers. There were round and square mounds and Japan's were keyhole-shaped. The ...

archaeologsEnglishTombs

Mounded Tomb

Horns of Consecration

A common religious symbol of the Minoans, based on the horns of a sacrificed bull. It frequently topped walls or shrines in the palace of Knossos, or was found in sanctuaries and other buildings, and was made of alabaster or other stone. Horns of consecration also appear in artistic depictions.

archaeologsEnglishMythology, Sacred Ceremonies

Horns of Consecration

Phalaborwa

An area of the eastern Transvaal, South Africa, with a copper and iron ore mining town and a long Iron Age sequence dated to the 8th century AD. Mining began during the final centuries of the 1st millennium AD and from the 11th century onwards the later Iron Age occupation appears to belong to a ...

archaeologsEnglishOthers

Phalaborwa

Home

A permanent shelter or living place. In the Stone Age, man was a hunter-gatherer and nomad, sheltering wherever he/she could. The earliest known homes of the Upper Palaeolithic are the Creswell Crags caves dating back to Mousterian times around 115 000 BC.

archaeologsEnglishOthers

Home

Gallery Grave

A tunnel-shaped megalithic tomb of Europe, characterized by a rectangular chamber with no separate entrance passage. The structure therefore resembles a megalithic corridor under an elongated mound, though sometimes they are cut in the rock. Gallery graves are frequently but not always found unde...

archaeologsEnglishTombs

Gallery Grave

Huns

A nomadic pastoralist people who invaded southeastern Europe c 370 AD and over the next 70 years built up an enormous empire there and in central Europe. Originating from beyond the Volga River after the middle of the 4th century, they first overran the Alani, who occupied the plains between the ...

archaeologsEnglishNations

Huns

Piltdown Man

A set of skull fragments presented in 1913 to be an apelike jaw and claiming to be the missing evolutionary link between ancient and modern humans, but revealed to be an elaborate hoax. Supposedly found at a site near Lewes in Sussex. In 1953, analysis by fluorine test and other methods showed th...

archaeologsEnglishOthers

Piltdown Man

Mortuary Practice

Ritual activity and preparation for disposal of a corpse.

archaeologsEnglishOthers

Mortuary Practice

Ahmose Ii

King of the late 26th Dynasty and originally a general in Nubia who came to the throne after his defeat of King Apries (589-570 BC). Ahmose was sent to pacify mutineering troops when they proclaimed him king. He fought Apries in a civil war and killed him in battle, though later giving him a roya...

archaeologsEnglishOthers

Ahmose Ii

Fuzzy Set

Any set whose members includes both certain or unambiguous members and members by degree.

archaeologsEnglishOthers

Fuzzy Set

Spatial Analysis

The statistical study of concentrations of human activity in a defined space; the systematic study of spatial patterning in archaeological data. Distribution maps showing artifacts or sites have long been used in archaeology, but spatial analysis adds rigorous mathematical and statistical techniq...

archaeologsEnglishOthers

Spatial Analysis

Direction Line

Any line in the nested series of curved lines drawn in each flake scar to indicate, by their placement, the direction of the blow or pressure that produced that scar when the force detached a piece of the stone

archaeologsEnglishOthers

Direction Line

Mobile

Any settlement pattern in which social groups move from place to place within a given territory, building camps at each site.

archaeologsEnglishOthers

Mobile

Terra Nigra

Black or silver-grey colored Gallo-Belgic tableware produced in Gaul during the 1st century BC through to the mid 1st century AD. Exported from Gaul to other nearby parts of the Roman empire for military and civilian use, and to communities outside the empire who presumably acquired it as a trade...

archaeologsEnglishOthers

Terra Nigra

Axum

A kingdom formed from at least the 1st century AD in southwestern Ethiopia which developed into an empire including northern Ethiopia, Sudan, and southern Arabia. It is also the name of a city there, in existence since the 3rd century AD which rose to be the center of the kingdom. The culture inc...

archaeologsEnglishAncient Cities, Nations

Axum

Gaudo

A Chalcolithic cemetery site in Campania, Italy, with 3rd millennium BC rock-cut tombs; the type site of the Campanian Gaudo culture. The tombs produced up to 25 disarticulated skeletons each, and great quantities of highly burnished unusual pots, especially asymmetric straight-necked flasks (som...

archaeologsEnglishPlace Names