Stirrup Spout

Semicircular tub set vertically, like a croquet hoop, on top of a closed vessel - common in many Peruvian cultures (Moche, Chimu, Chavín, Cupisnique, Nazca) and other parts of the New World. The lower ends open into the body of the pot, and from the apex of the curve rises a single vertical spout...

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Stirrup Spout

Carbon-14

A naturally occurring radioactive isotope of carbon with a half-life of 5,730-year (+/- 40 years) years and a mass number of 14, commonly used in radiocarbon dating archaeological materials and in demonstrating the metabolic path of carbon in photosynthesis. Its known rate of decay is the basis o...

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Carbon-14

Toro

A Late Yayoi village in Shizuoka Prefecture, Japan. Excavations have revealed 12 dwellings, two storage houses built on piles and with rat guards, and rice paddies. Artifacts include bronze ornaments, wooden bowls and other kitchen utensils, agricultural tools, and parts of looms.

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Toro

Qilakitsoq

Site on the western coast of Greenland with mummified remains dating c 1425-1525 AD. There were facial tattoos on five of the adults and the people were of the Thule culture.

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Qilakitsoq

Poverty Point

A site in northern Louisiana with a spectacular group of late Archaic sites, c 1300-400 BC in the Woodland stage. The site consisted of six concentric octagons, each formed of earthen ridges that seem to have been used as dwelling areas. There are also two mounds, and from the larger one the vern...

archaeologsEnglishPlace Names

Poverty Point

Site Exploitation Survey

A method of achieving a fairly standardized assessment of the area habitually used by a site's occupants.

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Site Exploitation Survey

Tablinum

A central room opening off the atrium of a Roman house.

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Tablinum

Kadesh

A site strategically placed on the River Orontes in Syria, famous for the inconclusive battle between Ramesses II of Egypt and Muwatallis of the Hittites c 1286 (1275 in some accounts) BC. Both sides claimed the victory, but it was actually a truce. Kadesh is mentioned for the first time in Egypt...

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Kadesh

Barkaer

A site of the final Early Neolithic (phase C, TRB culture) in northeast Jutland, Denmark. There was a cobbled street, two timber buildings (80 m long and divided into 26 single rooms) which were at first thought to be houses but may have been burial structures. Offerings in the pits below the bui...

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Barkaer

Microdenticulate

A small flake or blade with a series of notches along the edge.

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Microdenticulate

Playa

A shallow basin-like area in which surface water collects, found mainly in arid regions. It is often the sandy, salty, or mud-caked floor of a desert basin with interior drainage, usually occupied by a shallow lake during the rainy season or after prolonged, heavy rains. The word also refers to t...

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Playa

Armlet

A band or bracelet worn round the upper part of a person's arm

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Armlet

Phu Wiang

An area and culture in Khorat, Thailand, with prehistoric sites inhabited between c 3000-2500 BC. It was a transitional Neolithic-Early Bronze age phase.

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Phu Wiang

Parian

A white, semitransparent marble used for sculpture and quarried from and quarried from subterranean pits on the north side of Mt. Marpessa, a chief source of wealth for ancient Páros, an island of the Cyclades, Greece. It was particularly prized as its large crystals absorb light and glow in the ...

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Parian

Amorites

A branch of the Semites who were nomads in the Syrian desert and who overthrew the Sumerian civilization of Ur c 2000 BC and dominated Mesopotamia, Syria, and Palestine till c 1600 BC. In the oldest cuneiform sources (c 2400-2000 BC), the Amorites were equated with the West, though their true pla...

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Amorites

Sopdet

Personification of Sirius, or the Dog Star - a woman with a star on her head.

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Sopdet

Sukhaya Mechetka

Middle Palaeolithic site at Volgograd on the Volga River (European Russia), occupied from the Last Interglacial; one of the few Last Interglacial sites on the Russian Plain. Artifacts are scrapers and bifacial foliates.

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Sukhaya Mechetka

Aryan

A people of the Rigveda who invaded Iran and India from the northwest in the 2nd millennium BC and who then spread east and south over the succeeding centuries. Their language was an early form of Sanskrit, an Indo-European tongue. By c 500 BC, Aryan speech was probably established over much of t...

archaeologsEnglishNations

Aryan

Halophytic

Plants (such as saltbush, sea lavender) which can tolerate the absorption of a certain amount of mineral salts present in the soil in which they grow. These salts impregnate the plant tissues. Halophytes usually has a physiological resemblance to a true xerophyte.

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Halophytic

Tangential

A view or slice that is tangent to the vertical surface of a pot or cylindrical surface of a tree or branch.

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Tangential

Beikthano

A Buddhist religious and settlement site in central Burma of the early-to-mid 1st millennium AD.

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Beikthano

Holism

Theoretical approach which seems change in human society as the product of large-scale environmental, economic, and social forces and discounting individual wishes, desires, beliefs, and will.

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Holism

Cumulative Recording

Excavating and recording a trench in three dimensions, using both horizontal and vertical observations to reconstruct events at the site.

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Cumulative Recording

Pulsed Induction Meter

An instrument used in electromagnetic surveying, mainly for the detection of metals, though on a limited scale it can be used to locate archaeological features. The instrument has a transmitter coil, which sends pulses of magnetic field to the ground: the continuous rising and falling of the fiel...

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Pulsed Induction Meter

Tarragona

Important city of Roman Spain, later capital of the province of Hispania Tarraconensis, with the first identifiable occupation by the local Iberian. In 218 BC, it was captured by Roman generals and was transformed into one of the earliest Roman strongholds in Spain. Augustus recuperated there dur...

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Tarragona