Remedello Sotto

A village and cemetery in Lombardy, Italy of the Chalcolithic Remedello culture of the Po valley and Veneto in the 3rd millennium BC. Its famous cemetery of 117 tombs is the type site of a Copper Age culture. Skeletons were crouched in trench graves, accompanied by bifacially flaked fling daggers...

archaeologsEnglishOthers

Remedello Sotto

Chan Chan

An ancient pre-Inca city on the northern coast of Peru, the capital of the Chimú kingdom c 1200-1400 AD. The ruins cover nearly 14 square miles (36 square km) and are in good condition because there is no rain. The buildings were made of adobe brick and there are 10 walled citadels (quadrangles) ...

archaeologsEnglishOthers

Chan Chan

Somme Bionne

A chariot burial of the Early La Tene Iron Age, in the Marne area of France, dated to c 450-420 BC. The burial, presumably of a chieftain, was under a large barrow and contained very rich grave goods, both imported objects and locally manufactured items. The imported items include an Attic Red-Fi...

archaeologsEnglishOthers

Somme Bionne

Devensian

The final continental glacial advance, dating to c 115,000-10,000 BP, especially referring to a group of British deposits, stratified above Ipswichian Interglacial deposits. Much of northern England, Scotland, and Wales is covered by a blanket of Devensian tills, sands, and gravels and these sedi...

archaeologsEnglishOthers

Devensian

Tertiary

The geological period following the Mesozoic (Secondary) era, constituting the first of two periods of the Cenozoic Era, the second being the Quaternary. It comprises the epochs Palaeocene, Eocene, Oligocene, Miocene, and Pliocene. It extended from the end of the Cretaceous to the beginning of th...

archaeologsEnglishOthers

Tertiary

Utu

Sumerian god, equal to the Akkadian Shamash, god of the sun and light and was the god of justice and righteousness.

archaeologsEnglishGod Names

Utu

Ariusd

A Late Neolithic settlement (c 3000 BC) found on a site in Romania's Upper Olt Valley. The regional painted ware is a variant of the Cucuteni-Tripolye culture. At the site, there are at least seven occupation horizons, some with gold jewelry and copper artifacts. The seventh level was a late Copp...

archaeologsEnglishPlace Names

Ariusd

Tehuacán Valley

Valley site in Puebla, Mexico, with human occupation from at least 7000 BC. This desert valley, 1800 meters above sea level, has one of the longest continuous sequences in Mesoamerica (ending 1520 AD). The earliest inhabitants were nomadic food-gatherers and hunters. Maize was grown by c 5000 BC,...

archaeologsEnglishOthers

Tehuacán Valley

Siassi Islands

Islands between New Guinea and New Britain which were occupied by traders between 1500-2000 years ago. Located in the Vitiaz Strait, they send pottery west and obsidian and sago east.

archaeologsEnglishOthers

Siassi Islands

Ty

Fifth Dynasty official who was overseer of the pyramid complexes and sun temples of the rulers Neferirkara and Nyuserra at Abusir, as well as the sun temples of Sahura and Raneferef.

archaeologsEnglishOthers

Ty

Conchoidal

A characteristic shell-like fracture pattern that occurs in siliceous rocks, such as obsidian, chert, and flint. The fracture has smooth shell-like convexities and concavities.

archaeologsEnglishOthers

Conchoidal

Homology

A type of reasoning by analogy, where two phenomena separated in time are similar because of an historic or genetic connection. In biology, similarity of the structure, physiology, or development of different species of organisms based upon their descent from a common evolutionary ancestor. Homol...

archaeologsEnglishOthers

Homology

Magnetic Dating

Any theoretically chronometric dating technique which uses the thermo-remanent magnetism of certain types of archaeological material. These methods use the known changes have taken place in the direction and intensity of the earth's magnetic field. Magnetic minerals present in clay and rocks each...

archaeologsEnglishOthers

Magnetic Dating

Plinth

In architecture, the foot or lowest member of a base of a column, pedestal, or wall; a block upon which the moldings of an architrave or trim are stopped at the bottom.

archaeologsEnglishArchitectural

Plinth

Cucuteni-Tripolye

A Neolithic culture of southeastern Europe, distributed throughout the Ukraine (Tripolye culture) and Moldova and Romania (Cucuteni culture), which arose about 3000 BC. The type site of the Cucuteni is in the Siret valley of Romania and the type site of the Tripolye is near Kiev in Ukraine. The C...

archaeologsEnglishOthers

Cucuteni-Tripolye

Bradshaw Figures

Small, red painted figures in scenes of the Kimberley region of Western Australia, named for Joseph Bradshaw who discovered them.

archaeologsEnglishRegions

Bradshaw Figures

Sailendra

A Mahayana Buddhist empire established in Java in the 8th century. Its name ('King of the Mountain') has been seen as the claim to 'Universal Rulership', taken over from the kings of Funan. In the 9th century, the dynasty left Java for Sumatra where they continued to hold power for several centur...

archaeologsEnglishOthers

Sailendra

Vicús

Early Horizon culture of the Piura basin in north Peru where deep shaft tombs were discovered. The Vicús tombs have produced abundant metalwork, modeled wares resembling the Gallinazo style and early Moche ceramics, and a local style of pottery with negative painting. Vicús material covers most o...

archaeologsEnglishOthers

Vicús

Probing

The use of any of several instruments to explore beneath the ground for archaeological deposits.

archaeologsEnglishOthers

Probing

Soft Hammer Technique

The use of a hammer that is softer than the material being hammered or struck. The hammer would be made of angler, bone, wood, or other soft material and used to remove flat flakes from flint. These flakes have a characteristic appearance: long, thin, with a diffuse bulb of percussion.

archaeologsEnglishOthers

Soft Hammer Technique

Alphabet

A set of written symbols or characters used to represent the sounds of a language. Each character in an alphabet usually represents a single sound rather than a syllable or group of vowels or consonants. The first alphabets were devised around the eastern shores of the Mediterranean around 1700-1...

archaeologsEnglishOthers

Alphabet

Ahualulco

A large, multiple-circle ceremonial complex in western Mexico with ball courts and elite residences, of c 200 BC-900/1000 AD. It is part of the shaft tomb culture.

archaeologsEnglishOthers

Ahualulco

Rescue Archaeology

The branch of archaeology devoted to studying artifacts and features on sites which are imminently threatened by development in the form of the construction of dams, buildings, highways, etc. Threats to archaeological remains occur in the form of road-building, road improvement, new building of h...

archaeologsEnglishOthers

Rescue Archaeology

Briquetage

Thick-walled very coarse ceramic material used for the manufacture of evaporation vessels in saltmaking from the mid 2nd millennium BC through to medieval times in northern Europe. The forms and fabrics of briquetage vessels are fairly distinctive and allow trade patterns and distribution network...

archaeologsEnglishOthers

Briquetage

Lion

A large, powerfully built cat of the family Felidae, and the second largest of the big cats (after the tiger), now found wild only in Africa south of the Sahara. A few hundred live in Gir Forest National Park in Gujarat state, India. It has been, since earliest times, one of the best known of wil...

archaeologsEnglishOthers

Lion