Categories - Archaeologs

Ancient Pottery

Sacred Ceremonies

Ancient Languages

We try our best to keep the ads from getting in your way. If you'd like to show your support, you can use Patreon or Buy Me a Coffee.

Recently Added

Carnac

A region of south Brittany, northern France, famous for its stone alignments. Each group consists of 10-13 parallel rows several kilometres long, some ending in semicircular or rectangular enclosures. The stones, nearly 3000 in number, were chosen carefully and planned so that they decreased stea...

EnglishPlace Names

Carination

A sharp angle in the profile of a pottery or metal vessel.

EnglishAncient Pottery, Others

Carib

A native group occupying the Lesser Antilles at the time of Columbus. Originating somewhere on mainland South America, they migrated along the islands, displacing the Arawak, probably by force. The Arawak language, however, remained; and the new group is distinguished from the old by the absence ...

Cardo

[Latin: ‘hinge’]. Term for the main north-south axis of Roman towns and military forts and camps. Technical use of the term seems to originate with Roman agricultural surveying practice, where cardo denotes the principal north-south axis of the site, about which other measurements ‘hinge’. In a t...

EnglishArchitectural

Carchemish

Tell site on the Euphrates River on the Turkish-Syrian border. It was occupied from the 5th millennium be, but became an important city only after the Hittite conquest in the 14th century bc. Carchemish remained important after the fall of the Hittite empire, during the period of the Syro-Hittite...

EnglishPlace Names

Carbonization

Terms often used by archaeologists to describe organic materials preserved in a carbon-rich form, as a result of partial burning. Charring is a more precise word for this process.

Capua

[present-day Santa Maria di Capua Vetere]. This important coastal town in Campania, southern Italy, already had an early Iron Age settlement in the 9th century bc. Some time towards the end of the 7th century bc it was occupied by the Etruscans, who transformed it into a very prosperous city, fam...

Capstone

A large slab of stone set horizontally to cover a megalithic tomb or cist grave.

Capstan Neolithic

The Capsian industries of the Maghreb were succeeded by a somewhat heterogeneous series of assemblages, including pottery and — in some cases — evidence for the practice of food-production, to which the name ‘Capsian Neolithic’ [Néolithique de tradition capsienne] has generally been given. Potter...

Capstan Neolithic

archaeologsPeriods

Capsian

Post-PLEiSTOCENE industry of North Africa which occurs in several facies. The Typical Capsian, dated to c6500 be, characteristically occurs on shell middens and has large burins, backed blades and other implements. It is restricted to a limited area south of Tebessa near the present border betwee...

Capitol

[CapitoliumJ. The Capitol in Rome acted as citadel and religious centre for the city from its beginnings. The Capitol comprised twin hillocks overlooking the Forum. On the northern of the two hills was a citadel, and on the southern the great temple of Jupiter Capitolinus. The temple, whose found...

Capitol

archaeologsOthers

Capital

In architecture, the decorative topmember of a column, usually made of wood or stone. Portraying a moulded part (echinus) below, and a flat slab (abacus) above, it eases the visual transition from column shaft to the roofing beam (architrave) above. Decoration was normally according to one of the...

EnglishArchitectural

Capeletti

A cave in the Aures Mountains of eastern Algeria which has yielded the clearest picture yet available of early North African pastoralism by a ‘Capsian Neolithic’ population. The first appearance of small stock (sheep and/or goats) appears broadly to have coincided with the beginning of pottery ma...

Capeletti

archaeologsOthers

Cape Krusenstern

A site with evidence of long occupation on the north Alaskan coast, at which chronological associations have been uniquely preserved. The major cultures of Arctic prehistory, spanning a period from c3000 bc to historic times, are represented here. (The Palisades complex at nearby Ingitkalik Mount...

Cape Gelidonya

Part of the rugged coast of southwestern Turkey, famous for the underwater excavation of a very early ship, wrecked off this coast in the late Bronze Age (13th century bc). The small merchant ship was carrying a cargo of copper and bronze ingots, still wrapped in basketry. The presence of tin oxi...

Cape Gelidonya

archaeologsOthers

Cantharus

A type of pottery cup made in Greek-speaking areas and in Etruria between the 8th and the 1st centuries bc, with a deep bowl, a foot, and characteristic pair of high vertical handles. Related Roman forms occur.

Cantharus

archaeologsOthers

Canterbury

[Durovemum Cantiacorum]. Town in Kent, southeast England, occupied from the later Iron Age to the present day. Strategically well-sited at a crossing of the River Stour, and at the intersection of important land routes, Canterbury already had a sizeable Belgic settlement before the arrival of the...

Can Hasan

Site of a number of tells in the Konya plain of southern Turkey. Can Hasan III was an Aceramic Neolithic settlement, perhaps of the 7th millennium be. It had at least seven structural phases of small rectangular buildings abutting on to each other. These were built mainly of slab pisé coated with...

EnglishPlace Names

Canegrate

Group of umfields in northern Italy which have given their name to a Late Bronze Age group. This culture was probably ancestral to the Golasecca culture of the Iron Age.

Canegrate

archaeologsOthers

Canaanites

A people who occupied Palestine in the 2nd millennium BC, the ancestors of the Phoenicians. The most important Canaanite towns were Jerusalem, Gezer, Hazor, Lachish, Megiddo and, further north, Byblos and Ugarit. Excavations of temples and the cemetery of Minet el Beidha near Ugarit have revealed...

Camulodunum

See Colchester.

Camulodunum

archaeologsOthers

Camerton-Snowshill

The name, derived from two burial sites, given to a form of ogival bronze dagger of the later part of the Wessex culture of southern England. The name is also sometimes used for the whole phase of the culture, during which cremation gradually replaced inhumation as the dominant burial rite and th...

Camerton-Snowshill

archaeologsOthers

Camelot

See Arthur, South Cadbury.

Camelot

archaeologsOthers

Camel

There are two surviving species of the genus Camelus, both domesticated: the twohumped Bactrian camel ( C. bactrianus) and the single-humped dromedary (C. dromedarios). Archaeological evidence is hard to obtain but the domestication of the Bactrian camel must have taken place within a broad area ...

Camden

(1557-1623). British antiquary who was among the first to describe the visible antiquities of Britain. Hadrian’s Wall and Stonehenge are among the sites described in his book Britannia, published in 1586.

Camden

archaeologsOthers

Cambodia

[present-day Kampuchea]. Prehistory. Lying between Thailand and Vietnam on the Southeast Asian mainland, Cambodia has important remains of both the prehistoric and historic periods. Stone tools have been found in terraces of the Mekong River in possible association with tektites from a shower tha...

EnglishAncient Cities, Place Names

Callanish

An important group of megalithic monuments on the island of Lewis in the Outer Hebrides. The main monument is a stone circle with an avenue to the north and alignments to the south, east and west. In the middle, and probably of a later date, is a small passage grave under a round cairn. The align...

Calendar Stone

A 20-tonne, 4-metre diameter, carved monolith, commissioned by the emperor Axayacatl in 1479, which symbolizes the Aztec universe. The populations of central Mexico believed that they were living in the fifth epoch of a series of worlds (or suns) marked by cyclical generation and destruction (see...

Calendar

Most ancient civilizations (and perhaps some non-literate prehistoric societies) developed calendrical systems to mark the passage of time. Where these were both carefully calculated and written down, as in Egypt, Mesopotamia and Mesoamerica, they are of considerable assistance to archaeologists ...

Calatagan

Peninsula in Batanga Province, about 100 km south of Manila in the Philippines, containing several burial grounds of the late 14th century to early 16th century. Burials are normally extended (some children were placed in urns); goods comprise local earthenware pottery, beads, glass bracelets, ir...

Calatagan

archaeologsOthers

Cairo

The capital of modern Egypt. In 641, the Arab conqueror of Egypt, Amr Ibn al-As, built a new quarter, Fustat [‘The Tents’], outside the old town of Cairo. Among the first monuments erected in Fustat was the Mosque of Amr; the present structure, however, is almost entirely of the 19th century. New...

EnglishPlace Names, Ancient Cities

Cahokia

Located in an alluvial valley near East St Louis, Illinois, USA, Cahokia is easily the most spectacular of the Mississippian centres. The site is 15-20 square kilometres in area, and at its height (1050-1250) had a population estimated variously between 10,000 and 38,000. It includes more than 10...

Cagayan Valley

Broad valley in northern Luzon, Philippines, containing several open sites from which, according to some claims, comes an association of a pebble and flake industry with a Middle Pleistocene fauna which includes Elephas, Stegodon, rhinoceros and bovids. Recent geomorphological studies have establ...

Caesarea

A coastal city in Israel, founded in the 4th century bc. It flourished under Herod the Great, who enlarged the city and rebuilt its harbour. After the death of Herod it became the capital of the Roman province of Judaea. An inscription naming Pontius Pilate is one of the best-known finds from thi...

Caerleon

[Isca]. The Romans established this 20-hectare fort, named Isca, with its 64 barrack blocks, during the pacification of Wales, which was finally achieved in ad 78. The fort is one of three major legionary fortresses, the other two being at Chester and York. Originally constructed of timber and ea...

Caere

See Cerveteri.

Caere

archaeologsOthers

Caddoan

See Spiro.

Caddoan

archaeologsOthers

Previous Next