Pachamachay

Preceramic cave site in the central highlands of Peru, a base camp with a date of 11,800 bp. Occupation was highest between 9000-2000 bp.

archaeologsEnglishOthers

Pachamachay

Bat Cave

A cave in southern New Mexico's Carlsbad Caverns National Park, notable for its evidence of prehistoric plant cultivation. The site of Bat Cave has produced specimens of a type of primitive corn that is also known from the Flacco phase in Tamaulipas at 2000 BC but that is here in association with...

archaeologsEnglishOthers

Bat Cave

Casting-On Technique

A method used in a secondary stage of making metal objects for adding handles, legs, and hilts to complex artifacts. A clay mold is placed around part of an existing object and molten metal is then poured in and fuses onto the original object.

archaeologsEnglishOthers

Casting-On Technique

Chiripa

An early village site on the southern end of Lake Titicaca in Bolivia, dating to the Early and Middle Horizon. Late Chiripa pottery of the Early Horizon Period (1800-200 BC) is decorated with cream on red color zones, separated by incised lines. Early pottery is a cream-on-white ware, decorated w...

archaeologsEnglishOthers

Chiripa

Vaisali

A city of the Ganges civilization of northern India, famous as the birthplace of Mahavira, founder of the Jain religion. The earliest occupation belongs to the Iron Age, when Mahavira lived (6th century BC) and has yielded Northern Black Polished Ware and iron artifacts.

archaeologsEnglishOthers

Vaisali

Dolní Vestonice

An Upper Palaeolithic camping site in southern Moravia of the mammoth hunters of loess country. Excavation has revealed various phases of occupation, represented by houses, hearths, flint tools (burins, scrapers, backed blades), ornaments of mammoth ivory, animal figurines of baked clay, Venus fi...

archaeologsEnglishOthers

Dolní Vestonice

General Evolution

The long-term progressive change characteristic of human culture in general as opposed to the short-term localized social and ecological adjustments that cause specific cultures to differ from one another as they adapt to their own unique environments (specific evolution). It is the overall advan...

archaeologsEnglishOthers

General Evolution

Fujinoki

A mounded tomb in Nara Prefecture, Japan, of the late 7th century AD, with a stone sarcophagus full of horse paraphernalia and gilt-bronze ornaments.

archaeologsEnglishOthers

Fujinoki

Vendel Period

A term for a main phase of the Migration Period, the 7th and 8th centuries AD in Scandinavia, the last phase of the Iron Age before the Viking Age. It takes its name from a site in central Sweden with rich burials. Other cemeteries of the Vendel Period are at Valsgarde and Old Uppsala, with buria...

archaeologsEnglishPlace Names

Vendel Period

Veselinovo

Middle and Late Neolithic tell site of the Karanovo III culture in southern Bulgaria. Dated to the late 5th millennium BC, the culture marks a sharp break from the preceding Starcevo. It is contemporaneous with the early Vinca culture. The pottery is undecorated except for some cordons and is pea...

archaeologsEnglishCultures

Veselinovo

Factorium

A vessel containing exactly a factum, or quantity of grapes or olives to be placed under the press (torcular) in one making.

archaeologsEnglishOthers

Factorium

K-Means Technique

A clustering method whereby the multi-dimensional space of dissimilarities is partitioned into an optimal number of groups.

archaeologsEnglishOthers

K-Means Technique

Plow Zone

The top layer of the soil to the depth at which a plow will penetrate and disturb archaeological deposits.

archaeologsEnglishOthers

Plow Zone

Peyrony, Denis

French prehistorian who discovered the cave art at Font de Gaume, Bernifal, and Teyjat and excavated at La Ferassie and Laugerie Haute. He proposed the Perigordian system and founded the prehistory museum of Les Eyzies. The La Ferassie skeletons are hominid fossils found in a rock shelter gravesi...

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Peyrony, Denis

Prostyle

A facade composed solely of free-standing columns.

archaeologsEnglishOthers

Prostyle

Pig Fibula Pin

Bone pin made from the fibula of a pig with a long narrow triangular outline and a perforation at the thicker wider top end. Scandinavian in origin this simple style is found widely across northern Europe in the later 1st millennium AD. Possibly used as netting needles or dress pins.

archaeologsEnglishOthers

Pig Fibula Pin

Chibcha

A South American people who lived in the high valleys around the modern cities of Bogota and Tunja in Colombia. They had a population of more than 500,000 and were more centralized politically than any other South American people outside the Inca empire. Each of the many small districts had its o...

archaeologsEnglishCultures

Chibcha

Bell-Shaped Cist

A large pit whose greatest diameter is substantially larger than the diameter of its opening. A storage function is implied.

archaeologsEnglishOthers

Bell-Shaped Cist

Lot-Locus System

A method of archaeological recordkeeping that adds a secondary horizontally and vertically defined unit (locus) to the lot system, such that the artifacts and ecofacts found in each locus are collected in separate lots.

archaeologsEnglishOthers

Lot-Locus System

Cave Dwelling

Natural prehistoric living places inside caves or rock shelters, often inhabited by Palaeolithic man. Cave dwelling were inhabited more often during colder periods by hunters and gatherers.

archaeologsEnglishOthers

Cave Dwelling

Mound Architecture

The use of elevated mounds of earth or stone as the foundation for buildings, platforms, temples, and pyramids, which were often made of adobe (mudbrick).

archaeologsEnglishArchitectural

Mound Architecture

Roughout

An early stage in the making of bifacially chipped stone tools. Roughouts were often manufactured in quarry areas and later reworked into finished artifacts elsewhere.

archaeologsEnglishOthers

Roughout

Zhengzhou

A modern city in Honan (Henan) province, China, the site of a large Bronze Age city, probably a capital of the Shang dynasty (Ao) belonging to the Erligang Phase. There were also Neolithic settlements in the area. A rammed-earth hangtu foundation of palace buildings is within a walled compound, d...

archaeologsEnglishOthers

Zhengzhou

Yayoi

Protohistoric period of Japan, 300 BC-300 AD, which replaced the Jomon period and precedes the Kofun. It is marked by the strengthening of mainland influences from Korea and China, as shown by the appearance of bronze and, later, iron, wet-rice growing, the potter's wheel, and cist and jar burial...

archaeologsEnglishAncient Pottery, Cultures

Yayoi

Lid-Seated Vessel

A pot in which the rim is ledged, dished, or grooved internally to keep a lid in place.

archaeologsEnglishAncient Pottery

Lid-Seated Vessel