Categories - Archaeologs

Ancient Pottery

Sacred Ceremonies

Ancient Languages

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Mauna Kea

The highest mountain in Polynesia, Mauna Kea on Hawaii Island is a dormant volcano, 4204 metres high, with very extensive prehistoric basalt adze quarries, mostly between 3350 and 3800 metres above sea level. The sites include workshops, rock shelters, stone-walled enclosures and shrines; radioca...

Mauern

The Weinberg caves at Mauem in Bavaria, southern Germany, have revealed two Mousterian levels, the upper one with abundant leaf points. Above these is an Upper Palaeolithic level. A female figurine has also been found.

Mauer

The lower jaw found in a sand pit at Mauer near Heidelberg, southern Germany, in 1907 was the first of the pre-Neanderthal fossils to be found in Europe. Although it dates from perhaps 400,000 years ago, it is not very different from the Neanderthals of c50,000 years ago. The teeth are similarly ...

Mauer

archaeologsOthers

Matupi

Cave at Mount Hogo, in the Ituri forest of northeastern Zaire, containing a long sequence of predominantly microlithic stone industries extending back to c40,000 be; the appearance of true backed microliths is dated prior to 19,000 be. The site is important both in indicating early settlement of ...

Matola

An Early Iron Age site near Maputo on the coast of southern Mozambique. The pottery recovered there is remarkably similar to that from Kwale near the Kenya coast far to the north. Despite the great geographical separation of the two areas, it seems plausible to suggest that there may have been an...

Mathura

An important religious and commercial centre in the Ganges Valley, India, in the post-MAURYAN period. A distinctively Indian art style developed here, showing contacts with Gandhara. Images of the Buddha appear from the 1st century ad; the image is always stylized and shpwn larger than other figu...

Mathura

archaeologsOthers

Matera

A town in southeast Italy which has a large number of Neolithic sites in the vicinity. Some of these are caves (e.g. the Grotta dei Pipistrelli) but many are ditched villages, such as Murgecchia and Murgia Timone. Matera has given its name to a type of Middle Neolithic pottery, decorated with inc...

Matarrubilla

Large passage grave near Seville in southern Spain, built in the Copper Age. The tomb was built mainly of dry stone walling and the chamber was roofed with a corbelled vault. A number of crouched inhumations were discovered, with rich grave goods including an ivory necklace and a clay sandal.

Matarrah

Prehistoric site south of Kirkuk in northeast Iraq, which has yielded evidence of occupation in the 6th millennium be, in the phase defined by the use of Samarra ware. See also Choga Mami, Sawwan.

EnglishPlace Names

Matarrah

archaeologsPlace Names

Mataram

A dynasty founded by king Sanjaya in the 8th century in the southern part of central Java, Indonesia. The name was applied retrospectively to the kingdom of Sanjaya in the 10th century, as the official name of the country which united the centre and the east of the island under the same authority...

Mastaba

[Arabic: ‘bench’]. The name given to the low rectangular superstructures which mark many tombs of the Egyptian Early Dynastic period and the Old Kingdom. Nobles and court officials were buried in tombs of this type, sometimes adjacent to the royal burial place. Initially made of mud-brick, the la...

EnglishArchitectural, Tombs

Masada

A hilltop desert fortress beside the western bank of the Dead Sea. It was built by Herod in the 1st century bc as a stronghold against the Parthians and was destroyed in ad 70 by the Romans after a last stand by the Zealots of the First Jewish Rebellion. Most of the excavated remains are the buil...

Marzabotto

Rare example of an Etruscan occupation site, 25 km from Bologna, northern Italy. Situated in the Reno valley, it was presumably deliberately set on an important Etruscan trade-route. Two distinct phases may perhaps be separated: a 6th-century bc phase, characterized by plain and rather primitive ...

EnglishAncient Cities, Place Names

Mary Rose

Tudor warship, the flagship of Henry VIII’s fleet, which sank in the Solent, off the south coast of England, on its maiden voyage in 1545. The exploration, excavation and recovery of this ship is the largest underwater archaeology project ever undertaken. By the time the ship was raised from the ...

Marseilles

[Greek Massalia; Roman Massilia]. Situated at the Bouches-du-Rhône in the south of France, the city was an important Mediterranean port from the end of the 7th century bc and throughout antiquity. The traditional date of foundation, by Phocaean settlers, is put at about 600 BC. With their excelle...

Marrakesh

A city built on a fertile plain at the foot of the High Atlas in Morocco. Marrakesh was the capital of two dynasties with possessions on both sides of the Strait of Gibraltar: the Almoravids (1061-1147) and the Almo-hads (1147-1248). The Almoravids were nomadic Sanhaja berbers from Mauretania. Th...

Marquesas Islands

An island group of Eastern Polynesia, first settled c300 ad, and perhaps the first group to be settled in Eastern Polynesia. See Hane, Puamau, Taipivai.

Maros Points

Small hollow-based stone projectile points, often with serrated edgeretouch, characteristic of a mature phase of the Toalian industry of southwestern Sulawesi (<4000 bc into the 1st millennium bc). See Toalian, Leang Burung, Ulu Leang....

Maros Points

archaeologsOthers

Marnians

Name formerly given to the regional La T₺ne Iron Age group found in the Mame Valley of northern France and thought to represent a group which invaded Britain in the 3rd and 2nd centuries bc. The view is generally rejected today, although there were certainly close connections between Iron Age gro...

Marnians

archaeologsOthers

Marlik Tepe

Royal cemetery of early Iron Age (late 2nd millennium bc) date, occupying a natural spur overlooking a fertile valley southwest of the Caspian Sea in northern Iran. A total of 53 graves was excavated in the early 1960s; some contained rectangular stone slabs, on which the body with its grave good...

EnglishPlace Names

Markkleeberg

A site just outside Leipzig in East Germany, where gravel pits have revealed gravels earlier than the Saale ice maximum advance in the region. They contain a cold-indicating fauna of early penultimate glacial date and numerous stone artefacts, especially Levallois flakes.

Markkleeberg

archaeologsOthers

Mariette

(1821-88). Starting his career in the Louvre, Mariette spent most of his life in Egypt, where he became head of the new Egyptian Antiquities Service in 1858. He excavated many of the most important sites of ancient Egypt, and although his excavations were carried out according to the unsystematic...

Mariette

archaeologsOthers

Marianas Islands

An island group in western Micronesia. Excavations have revealed a sequence starting with settlement cl500 be, perhaps from the Philippines (Marianas Redware Phase), and continuing after AD 800 with settings of large coral limestone pillars in double parallel rows (latte), which presumably served...

Mari

[modem Tell Hariri]. Situated on the middle Euphrates River in Syria, Mari was a wealthy and powerful city in the 3rd and early 2nd millennium bc. The city probably dates back to the Early Dynastic II period and was occupied until its final destruction by Hammurabi in 1757 bc on the Middle Chrono...

Inarching Camp

Usually refers to a Roman temporary military camp. The Roman army on the move had a systematic procedure for overnight and short-stay stops. Surveyors laid out a suitable and reasonably flat rectangular site, tent positions were planned and marked, and a ditch and low rampart were quickly dug, us...

Inarching Camp

archaeologsOthers

Marca Huamachuco

An important regional centre located in the northern highlands of Peru near the ruins of Viracocha Pampa. The site consists of a complex of circular and rectangular multi-storey buildings in cut stone (10-metre high walls still stand) and is surrounded by a stone wall 1 km long and 4 metres high....

Marathon

A coastal plain on the northeast coast of Attica and, under classical Athens, location of a deme (subordinate township). The area shows evidence for some kind of occupation from Neolithic times, through Helladic, continuously to Classical. The area gains most fame as site for the Battle of Marath...

Marajo Island Sites

A number of sites on an island group located in the mouth of the Amazon River, which evidence a long sequence of ceramic use. A single radiocarbon date of c980 be relates to the earliest Anana-tuba phase which has relatively deep shell middens that imply a long-term stable residence unusual for t...

Marajo Island Sites

archaeologsOthers

Marae

Stone temple of Eastern Polynesia, usually consisting of a stone platform [ahu] in a walled, paved or terraced court. The word marae (or malae) also refers to an open space within a village in Tonga, Samoa and New Zealand. Marae comprise important archaeological remains in Easter Island (here cal...

Mapungubwe

An Iron Age hilltop site in the Limpopo Valley, northern Transvaal, South Africa. The material from the earliest levels is very similar to that from the nearby site of Bambandyanalo. Later developments in the 14th and 15th centuries ad included finer pottery, evidence for the spinning of cotton, ...

Maoris

The Polynesian native people of New Zealand, whose ancestors arrived about ad 900 from central Polynesia, (possibly from Cook Islands, or Society Islands). See New Zealand.

Mansio

Kind of Roman lodging-house. Communications throughout the Roman Empire were maintained by the provision along main roads of places to change horses (mutationes) and to stay overnight {mansiones). The mansio can be archaeologically difficult to identify, but is frequently sited near the town gate...

EnglishArchitectural

Manor

The focal point of the feudal societies that developed throughout Western Europe from the 8th and 9th centuries. The manor reflects the emphasis upon landholding in feudal society, and the relation of the village workforce to the lord who owned the manor. Very few manors have been excavated. The ...

Mano

Hand-held stone implement, used throughout the Americas for milling, grinding or pounding operations. Most often used in conjunction with a metate, it is a hallmark artefact in defining the economic or subsistence base of prehistoric societies. Its forms vary considerably, from a barely modified ...

Manioc

The principal staple of agricultural groups of the forest lowlands of northeastern South America. Probably first cultivated in what is now Venezuela in c2000 be, its use spread west to the coast of Peru and south into the Amazon Basin. It is normally divided into sweet and bitter varieties, and t...

Mangaasi

A long-lived pottery tradition of central Vanuatu (New Hebrides), dated to between c700 be and ad 1600. This is a Melanesian tradition, with parallels in the northern Solomons and New Caledonia, quite separate from the ancestral Polynesian Lapita culture.

Manda

A site located in the Lamu Archipelago off the coast of Kenya, showing evidence for an urban-type settlement with numerous stone-built houses from the 9th century ad onwards. Stone architecture was more advanced than at the contemporary settlement at Kilwa, and imported luxury goods more plentifu...

Manching

An oppidum near Ingolstadt, Bavaria, southern Germany, dating to the Middle La Tène period, 2nd-1st centuries BC. This enormous site covered some 380 hectares, enclosed by a rampart 7 km long of murus gallicus type. Large-scale excavations in the interior have revealed areas of housing and worksh...

Mancheng

[Man-ch’eng]. District in Hebei province, China, where very large rock-cut tombs of the Han prince Liu Sheng (¿113 bc) and his wife Dou Wan were discovered in 1968. The tombs, each of several chambers, were underground palaces: they openly imitate features of buildings above ground, and many of t...

Mancheng

archaeologsOthers

Manion

A phase of pre-Classic developments in the Lowland Maya area. Dated c550-300 bc, it was first defined at Uaxac-tun and Tikal. Although some artefacts of stone and obsidian are included in the complex, it is principally characterized by monochrome pottery, with a ‘waxy’ feel to it, which comes in ...

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