Bosing

Boshanlu

[po-shan-lu]. A Chinese incense burner (Zu) with a lid designed to represent mountain peaks (Boshan is a mountain in Shandong province). Made either of pottery or bronze, the boshanlu takes the form of a stemmed bowl with a perforated conical lid. Most examples date from the Western Han period. O...

archaeologsEnglishOthers

Borobudur

A Mahayana Buddhist monument near Yogyakarta in Central Java, Indonesia, which is the largest Buddhist monument in the world. In the form of a stepped pyramid, constructed of local volcanic stone around and over a natural hill, it consists of six square and three circular superimposed terraces, c...

archaeologsEnglishOthers

Borneo

The largest island of Southeast Asia, situated at the eastern edge of the Sunda Shelf. Borneo, with Sumatra and Java, was joined to mainland Southeast Asia during Pleistocene periods of low sea-level, but so far no traces of settlement by Homo erectus, attested from 2 million years ago on Java, h...

archaeologsEnglishOthers

Borg-İn-Nadur

A fortified promontory site in southeast Malta, which has given its name to the later Bronze Age culture of the island. The settlement was surrounded by walls of cyclopean masonry and enclosed oval huts. The discovery of a sherd of Mycenaean pottery points to long-distance trading contacts.

archaeologsEnglishOthers

Borg-İn-Nadur

Boreal

A climatic sub-division of the fland-rian period, supposed to be warm and dry. Godwin’s pollen zones V and VI correspond to the Boreal period in the British Isles. Zone V was dominated by birch and hazel, the latter rising through the zone to dominate Zone VI. The forest trees, elm, oak, alder an...

archaeologsEnglishOthers

Boomplaas

A cave near Oudtshoom in the Folded Mountain Belt of the Cape Province, South Africa, containing a long sequence of Upper Pleistocene and Holocene deposits. The earliest occupation probably took place some 80,000 years ago. Following a long ‘Middle Stone Age’ sequence which has not yet been repor...

archaeologsEnglishOthers

Boomerang

A curved wooden throwing stick of thin bi-convex or semi-oval cross-section, distributed widely over Australia but unknown in Tasmania. The boomerang was most frequently used as a fighting or hunting weapon, with marked regional variations in design and decoration. The returning type was usually ...

archaeologsEnglishOthers

Book Of Kells

One of the earliest illumin ated manuscripts of Europe, produced either at Kells (the Columban monastery founded by the monks of Iona when they fled from the Vikings in 806) or at Iona itself. Its appearance bears a strong resemblance to Irish manuscripts and metalwork of the early part of the 8t...

archaeologsEnglishOthers

Bon-Po Religion

The ancient shamanic religion of pre-Buddhist Tibet. Many small bronze artefacts found throughout Tibet — evidently amulets, decorations for clothing and horse harness, and jewellery — incorporate its symbolism of significant numbers (three, seven, thirteen) and mythical animals, especially the b...

archaeologsEnglishOthers

Bon-Po Religion

Bongkisam

See Santubong.

archaeologsEnglishOthers

Bongkisam

Bonfire Shelter

Bone Measurement

Dimensions of skeletal structures can be taken using a variety of calipers and other measuring equipment. The aim of such work is to compare the size and shape of bones between many different individuals. This is done by statistical methods, nowadays using multivariate analysis to compare many me...

archaeologsEnglishOthers

Bone Dating

Bone may be dated in a number of ways. The most commonly used is radiocarbon dating: both the collagen and mineral components of bone are dateable. Recently a number of bone samples have been dated by a uranium series method. Relative dates may be obtained from time-related chemical changes which...

archaeologsEnglishOthers

Bone

In life, bone is one of the connective tissues of the body and consists of crystallites of the mineral hydroxyapatite, deposited on a fibrous matrix of the protein collagen. Mineral occupies 71 per cent of the volume, collagen 19 per cent, other proteins 2 per cent, and water 8 per cent. After de...

archaeologsEnglishOthers

Bondi Point

A small asymmetric backed point, named after a site at Bondi, Sydney, Australia. It is usually less than 5 cm long and is sometimes described as a backed blade. A component of the Australian Small Tool traditon, it occurs on coastal and inland sites across Australia, generally south of the Tropic...

archaeologsEnglishOthers

Bonampak

A Maya ceremonial centre located close to the Lacanha River in the tropical rain-forest of northeast Chiapas, Mexico. Dating to the Late Classic Period (c450-750), it is most notable for its polychrome murals which can be tightly dated to 800 on the basis of long count inscriptions. The so-called...

archaeologsEnglishOthers

Bologna

[Bononia]. The general area at the eastern end of the Po Valley now covered by the sprawl of modern Bologna, is naturally favourable to agriculture, and straddles obvious lines of communication between plain, mountain and seaboard. Evidence for settlement is often virtually obliterated by success...

archaeologsEnglishOthers

Belling Interstadial

An interstadial of the Weichselian cold stage. It is dated to between 13,000 and 12,000 bp.

archaeologsEnglishOthers

Belling Interstadial

Boian

After the excavations of I.Nestor in 1925 at the Boian A tell, it became possible to divide the Rumanian Neolithic into two phases: an earlier, Boian, phase and a later Gumelnita, phase. The Boian culture is now recognized as the principal Middle Neolithic culture in Muntenia, in the lower Danube...

archaeologsEnglishOthers

Bog Burials

Name given to the human bodies found in peat bogs in Scandinavia and northern Europe, including more than 160 from Denmark. They are renowned for the remarkable preservation of the bodies caused by the chemicals in the peat, which has allowed archaeologists to study aspects of past life usually l...

archaeologsEnglishOthers

Bog Burials

Bog

A term generally used to describe communities of plants growing on acid waterlogged ground, as opposed to fen. Three main types of bog can be distinguished: valley bogs remain waterlogged due to the concentration of drainage into a valley; raised bogs form as large pillows of peat, and are kept w...

archaeologsEnglishOthers

Bodrogkeresztur

The eponymous site of the Middle Copper Age culture of eastern Hungary comprises a Linear pottery domestic occupation stratified below a medium-sized Copper Age inhumation cemetery. The Bodrogkeresztur culture represents the first peak of metallurgical development in Hungarian prehistory, defined...

archaeologsEnglishPlace Names

Bodh Gaya

Site in northeast India, famous as the scene of the Buddha’s enlightenment. Archaeological remains include an Asokan pillar, erected by the emperor on his pilgrimage of 249 bc, and a railing surrounding the tree beneath which the Buddha meditated for six years before his enlightenment (perhaps 2n...

archaeologsEnglishPlace Names

Bochica

See Chibcha.

archaeologsEnglishOthers

Bochica

Boca Chica

See Chicoid.

archaeologsEnglishOthers

Boca Chica

Boat-Shaped Buildings

A variety of long house with bowed sides, known from Scandinavia and Scandinavian colonies in other parts of Europe throughout the Viking period. The finest examples have been excavated at 1 Ith-century Viking camps such as Trelleborg in southern Jutland. A typical example has been reconstructed ...

archaeologsEnglishArchitectural

Boat-Shaped Buildings

Boat Burial

A pagan burial ritual widely adopted by the Vikings, and practised to a lesser extent by the Anglo-Saxon and Germanic races before them. The AngloSaxon poem Beowulf demonstrates the belief that the journey to the afterlife could be achieved in a vessel, and indeed the Saxon boat graves excavated ...

archaeologsEnglishOthers

Boat Axe

A special type of stone battle-axe found in eastern Scandinavia in the late Neolithic, so named because it resembles a simple boat with upturned ends. The term ‘Boat-axe culture’ is sometimes used for the east Scandinavian variant of the single grave or corded ware culture in which these axes occur.

archaeologsEnglishArtifacts, Tools, Weapons

Boat Axe

Boadicea

See Boudicca.

archaeologsEnglishPublic Figures

Boadicea

Bo [Po]

See bells (China).

archaeologsEnglishOthers

Bo [Po]

Bloom

Spongy mass of iron and slag, resulting from the initial smelting of iron ore.

archaeologsEnglishOthers

Bloodletting

See Perforation.

archaeologsEnglishOthers

Bloodletting

Bleeper

A type of proton gradiometer, in which the reading is given as a series of bleeps. This design of magnetometer is very cheap to produce, and has therefore been widely used in archaeology.

archaeologsEnglishOthers

Blade

The basis of stone technology is the removal of pieces of flint or other stone by striking the parent nodule or core with a hammer. When the flakes removed are elongated so as to be at least twice as long as they are wide, they are called blades. A typical blade has parallel sides and regular sca...

archaeologsEnglishTools, Artifacts

Blackwater Draw

Deeply stratified site in eastern New Mexico, USA, with evidence of occupation from earliest Paleo-Indian through Archaic times. Stratigraphic evidence has established unequivocally that the Llano culture was earlier than Folsom, and showed a clear association between Clovis projectile points and...

archaeologsEnglishOthers

Black Pottery Cultures

See Longshan.

archaeologsEnglishOthers

Black Pottery Cultures