Categories - Archaeologs

Ancient Pottery

Sacred Ceremonies

Ancient Languages

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Mi-So’N

archaeologsOthers

Mirrors (Japan)

Many round imported mirrors and their domestic copies are found from Yayoi and Kofun graves. They are flat and shiny on one side, with a raised rim and decorative designs and inscriptions arranged around one or more knobs with holes on the other. Most are of Chinese derivation, but several mirror...

Mirrors (Japan)

archaeologsOthers

Mirrors (China)

The typical early Chinese mirror is a bronze disc with a faintly convex reflecting surface and cast decoration on the back; it has no handle, being held by a cord tied to a projecting loop in the centre of the back. Such mirrors were not common until about the 5th century bc, but far older exampl...

Mirrors (China)

archaeologsOthers

Miriwun

A rock shelter in the Ord River valley, east Kimberley region, Western Australia, now inundated by the Argyle Dam. Occupation deposits date from 16,000 be. Artefacts from the early phase include adze flakes, small denticulated flakes, thick notched flakes, pebble tools, irregular blade cores and ...

Miraflores

A complex of cultural materials which define a phase (100 bc — ad 200) of Highland Mayan sites in the Late Pre-Classic (see Kaminaljuyu). Characteristic artefacts include engraved soft stone and engraved monochrome ceramic vessels and ‘mushroom stones’ (hollow stones set in an annular base and ca...

EnglishAncient Pottery

Minyan

Wheel-thrown fine grey ware of the Middle Helladic period, found throughout the Aegean. Traditionally it has been associated with an apparently violent end to the Early Helladic culture, c2000-1900 bc and the arrival of Greek-speaking peoples in the Aegean. It is now regarded as a Greek product d...

Minyan

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Minusinsk Basin

An island of steppe on the upper Yenisei River in southern Siberia, surrounded by forested mountains. Very large numbers of burial mounds of different periods exist in the area and some 40,000 bronze objects survive in collections — presumably only a fraction of the number originally present. See...

Minoan

[Minoans]. Term for the Bronze Age culture of Crete and the earliest civilization found on European soil, named by Sir Arthur Evans after the legendary king Minos. Minoan civilization, once attributed to immigration or at least influence from elsewhere, is now thought by many scholars to be a loc...

Mindel/Riss

The term for the interglacial erosion interval envisaged by Penck and Bruckner as separating the min del and riss glacials. The Alpine sequence is now known to be much more complex than was originally thought, but ‘Mindel/Riss’ has unfortunately gained wide currency as a general term meaning the"...

Mindel/Riss

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Mindelheim

Hallstatt (7th century bc) cemetery west of Munich in West Germany. The grave goods include distinctive melon-shaped urns and wide open bowls, heavily decorated with incised geometric designs, as well as the long sword type to which the site has given its name. Mindelheim swords are made of bronz...

Mindel

A group of Quaternary deposits in the Alps and the valleys of south German rivers. The Mindel consists of moraine and related river terraces of proglacial deposits. It formed part of the classical scheme of four glacials with intervening interglacials published in 1909 by Penck and Bruckner. In t...

Minaean

Minaeans. One of the kingdoms of southern Arabia in the 1st millennium bc, contemporary with the Sabaeans, Qataba-neans and Hadramis. Its capital city was Qarnâwu.

Mimbres

A late manifestation of the Mogollon cultural tradition of the Southwestern USA, which also evidences a strong Anasazi influence. It is characterized by an extraordinary ceramic art style which flourished from c900-1200. The essentials of the style are complex geometric or fine naturalistic desig...

Milpa

Maya term meaning literally ‘cornfields’, synonymous in Mesoamerican archaeology with slash-and-burn agriculture. Depictions on Maya frescos and codices coupled with ethnographic evidence of modern-day methods of cultivation in the Maya Lowlands, gave rise to the theory that milpa agriculture was...

Millet

Number of cereal plants, belonging to different genera, are described as millets. Broomcorn or common millet (Panicum miliaceum) is rarely grown today, but it had a much wider distribution in the past. The earliest finds are from Neolithic central and eastern Europe, spreading into southern Europ...

Millefiori

A very delicate and attractive technique developed by Anglo-Saxon glass and metal-workers, whereby panels of multicoloured glass were set into a background of metal or enamel. To create the distinctive minute chequerboard or rosette-like patterns, bundles of glass rods of varying cross-section we...

Millefiori

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Miletus

This ancient settlement on a bay at the mouth of the Meander River in southwest Turkey was inhabited from the 2nd millennium bc. By the beginning of the 1st millennium bc it was an Ionian Greek city, colonizing Black Sea and Egyptian Delta areas in the 7th and 6th centuries bc. Miletus produced p...

EnglishAncient Cities

Milestone

Roman examples show stones, normally cylindrical, up to two metres high. These were placed along all principal roads, and instances are found from about 250 BC onwards. The stone was typically inscribed to give the distance in (Roman) miles to the nearest major town, and commonly a date of instal...

Mile Fort

[or mile castle]. A small Roman fort set at intervals of one Roman mile along a major well-defended frontier (limes). On Hadrian s Wall examples show a small rectangular plan. A gateway in the wall, with watchtower over, permitted access into an area of offices and barrack quarters for up to abou...

Mile Fort

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Mildenhall

Thistley Green, West Row, 5 km from Mildenhall in Suffolk, eastern England is the find-site of a hoard of 4th-century Roman silver plate, richly decorated with figured reliefs. The 34 pieces include a large dish (roughly 60 cm in diameter) depicting the head of Oceanus, ringed by friezes of sea a...

EnglishAncient Cities, Place Names

Milazzo

Settlement site on the northeast coast of Sicily; it faces the Aeolian Islands and demonstrates close cultural connections with the prehistoric sequence on these islands (see Lipari). It was occupied throughout the Bronze Age. To the Middle Bronze Age Milazzese culture belongs a cemetery of pitho...

Mikulcice

A site situated on the River Morava in Czechoslovakia. It is a complex site with stratified deposits going back to the late 6th century, when it was one of the earliest Slavic fortified centres. This stronghold consisted of a central nucleus contained within a plank-built palisade, with an additi...

Mikhajlovka

[Mikhailovka, Mykhailivka]. settlement of the Late Neolithic and Bronze Age, located in the lower Dnieper Valley near Nikopol, Ukraine, USSR. Three main occupation horizons have been distinguished: I a Tripolye B2 settlement with shell-gritted, cord-impressed pottery of steppe origins; II a short...

Migration Period

Term applied to the time between the 5th and later 7th centuries when ‘barbarian’ tribes overran the Roman Empire. The settlements and cultural record of Migration Period Europe are distinctive, and essentially owe their character to the Romanperiod tribes in central and Eastern Europe, as well a...

Midrib

The raised midline which reinforces the blade of a bronze dagger.

Middle Missouri Tradition

One of the village-dwelling, farming traditions of the American Plains, based on the Missouri River drainage especially in the states of North and South Dakota. Although hunting and gathering were part of subsistence activities, the culture is characterized by a specially developed strain of cold...

Middle Horizon

One of seven periods within a chronological construction widely used in Peruvian archaeology. Dated ad 600-1000, it is characterized by the ascendancy of powerful regional states, especially Tiahuanaco and Huari. Although the decline of these two states was followed by a period of more localized ...

Middleburg

A town on the island of Wal-charan in the southwestern Netherlands, probably founded as one of the string of burhs intended to act as refuges for the Flemish population in the times of Viking raids. Those refuges were probably planned by Baldwin of Flanders in the 890s and at Middleburg and Soubu...

Micronesia

An ethnographic region comprising the Palau, Marianas, Caroline and Marshall Islands, and Kiribati [Gilbert Islands]. The Palaus and Marianas were probably settled from the Philippines after 2000 BC and each has a ceramic sequence throughout prehistory. The eastern groups, mainly atolls, were set...

Microlith

Very small stone tool made on a bladelet by the microburin technique. Microliths were produced in quantity at the end of the Palaeolithic period and especially in the Mesolithic. They were shaped by abrupt retouch into various shapes like triangles and crescents, and used for a variety of purpose...

Microburin

When a small bladelet is removed from a core it has an inconvenient thick butt end, which has to be removed before it can be made into a spear tip or barb. It is removed by making a notch and then snapping off the end, which is called a microburin. The name originates from the erroneous belief th...

Michelsberg

A Neolithic culture of the late 4th and early 3rd millennia be, found mostly in the Rhineland and stretching from Belgium in the north to Switzerland in the south. Connections have been claimed both with the north European TRB culture and with the west European cultures such as Chassey and Windmi...

EnglishCultures

Miaodigou

[Miao-ti-kou]. A Neolithic site in Shan Xian in the western comer of Henan province, China. The stratigraphy at Miaodigou was complicated but two main levels were distinguished. The lower level, Miao digou I, belongs to the Yangshao Neolithic; for this stratum a radiocarbon date of c3900 bc was o...

Miaodigou

archaeologsOthers

Mezin

An open-air site in the Desna valley of European Russia. It has a late Palaeolithic occupation, and art material with squared key pattern carving, in one case on an ivory wrist band.

Metate

The base and lower grinding surface of a two-part milling apparatus used in the preparation of plant food (the upper, movable part is the mano). Made from any suitably hard stone, it comes in a variety of shapes and sizes and is still used in many areas of the Americas. Mostly associated with the...

Metallurgy (Japan)

Metal tools are first reliably documented in Japan as continental imports about the same time as wet-rice cultivation was established in northern Kyushu around 300 bc. By the middle of the Yayoi period, in the 1st century ad, bronze bells and weapons that were much larger than their continental p...

EnglishArchitectural

Metallurgy (Japan)

archaeologsArchitectural

Metallurgy (China)

Quia (see Majiayao). Chinese metal working has yet to be established. The metal industry encountered towards the middle of the 2nd millennium bc at Erlitou, on the other hand, is clearly ancestral to the Shang and Zhou metalworking tradition, showing already the distinctive character that in the ...

Metallurgy (China)

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Metallurgy

See (China), silver, smelting, tin.

Metallurgical Analysis

The study of metals. Metal artefacts and the tools or waste products of their manufacture are examined to reconstruct working processes and the source of raw materials. This may be done by the various techniques of chemical analysis, or may involve metallographic examination under a microscope. I...

Metallographic Examination

Technique of involving the examination of metals under the metallurgical microscope. Samples are taken from metal artefacts, polished flat on one surface and examined under reflected light. This allows study of the crystalline structure of metals, and may yield information about manufacturing pro...

Metallographic Examination

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