Kassites

A people of the central Zagros mountains who occupied Babylon after the Hittite raid c 1595 BC and who had a distinctive culture and language. Their occupation ended with the city's conquest by Assyria and Elam c 1157 BC. The Kassites may or may not have been Indo-Europeans, but their rulers were...

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Kassites

Culture

In a general sense, the whole way of life of man as a species. In a more specific usage, it is the learned behavior, social customs, ideas, and technology characteristic of a certain people or civilization at a particular time or over a period of time (such as Eskimo culture). In this sense, a cu...

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Culture

Catacomb Grave Culture

The second in the Kurgan culture series, after Yamnaya and before Srubnaya, in southern Russia and Ukraine between the Dniepr and Volga rivers. It is dated between c 2000-1500 bc (Bronze Age). The graves are not true catacombs but rather burials in which the skeleton and grave goods are put in a ...

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Catacomb Grave Culture

Deverel-Rimbury Culture

A Bronze Age culture of southern Britain of the 15th-12th centuries BC. It was named after two sites in Dorset, and was characterized by Celtic fields, nucleated small farmsteads and palisaded cattle enclosures, and by inurned cremations, either in flat urnfields or under low barrows. The distinc...

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Deverel-Rimbury Culture

Tartessos

Early trading kingdom at the mouth of the Guadalquivir Valley in southwestern Spain, site of a semi-mythical city referred to by ancient writers as a source of gold, silver, tin, and lead. Tartessos, in fact, was the late Bronze Age society that included the mines of the Río Tinto in its territor...

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Tartessos

Basarabi Culture

An Iron Age culture of cemeteries and settlement sites over much of Romania with its type site on the Danube. It is a local version of the Hallstatt culture, dating to 975-850 BC.

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Basarabi Culture

Asuka

A culture and period in Japanese history during which the development of art, the introduction of Buddhism from Korea, and the adoption of a Chinese pattern of government were important. Located in the southwestern part of the Nara Basin (Yamato Plain), the culture flourished from 552-645 AD. In ...

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Asuka

Alaka Culture

A preceramic shell midden culture on the northwest coast of Guyana which may date to c 2000 BC. Located in the mangrove swamps, the middens have been grouped into the Alaka Phase. The culture relied on shellfish gathering, with some grinding stones, choppers, manos, and metates. There are some cr...

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Alaka Culture

Umm Dabaghiyah

Early 6th-millennium BC type site of the Umm Dabaghiyah culture, the earliest-known culture of the northern Iraq plain, a pre-Hassuna occupation of Mesopotamia. The small site has long buildings with rows of small cell-like rooms arranged around a central space. Some wall paintings have been reco...

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Umm Dabaghiyah

Corded Beaker Culture

A Late Neolithic culture in central and northern Europe from c 2800 BC, named after a characteristic cord-marked decoration found on pottery. The Corded beaker culture belongs to the so-called Battle-Ax cultures of Europe. There were two phases of new burial rites, with individual rather than com...

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Corded Beaker Culture

Tanged Point Culture

A term once used for any of a series of cultures of the Postglacial period whose tool kits include small tanged or shouldered points, e.g. the Ahrensburgian and Hamburgian.

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Tanged Point Culture

Culture Center

The center of a culture area, so designated because it best represents the essential qualities of the culture.

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Culture Center

Megalithic Culture

In India, an Iron Age culture of the south from the 1st millennium BC or earlier which lasted into the early 1st millennium AD. The grave forms include urn burials and various cist, pit, and rock-cut graves. Stone alignments are also associated and graves generally contain burnished black-and-red...

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Megalithic Culture

Andronovo Culture

A culture of southern Siberia, between the Don and Yenisei Rivers, dating to the 2nd millennium BC. The culture was relatively uniform in this large area and agriculture played a large role. Wheat and millet were cultivated and cattle, horses, and sheep bred. The metal-using culture (ores from th...

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Andronovo Culture

Ertebølle

The final Mesolithic culture of the west Baltic coastal region and coastal kitchen midden culture of Scandinavia. The type site is a coastal shell mound in Jutland, Denmark, dated to c 3900-3250 BC. Pollen analysis places the start of the culture within the Atlantic period, after c 5000 BC. The l...

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Ertebølle

Riverton Culture

Archaic culture near Vincennes, Indiana, dating c 1500-1000 BC. It was a hunting-gathering culture with a variety of stone and bone tools. There were year-round settlements and seasonally occupied bases, hunting, and transient camps.

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Riverton Culture

Przeworsk Culture

Late Iron Age culture in the Vistula and Bug drainages in southeast Poland of the La Tène period. It is known mainly from graves, which have metal artifacts and fibulae.

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Przeworsk Culture

Rössen Culture

The successor of western branch of the Neolithic Linear Pottery Culture, with which is has many features in common. Its main distribution was in Rhineland and central and southern Germany, parallel to Lengyel culture in Czechoslovakia and mid-Danube. It is characterized by pottery with complex in...

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Rössen Culture

Old Cordilleran Culture

A late Pleistocene cultural tradition based on the hunting of small game and the collection of wild foods in the mountain and plateau region of western North America, especially Oregon and Washington, between c 9000-5000 BC (or later). The diagnostic tool is the leaf-shaped Cascade point, a disti...

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Old Cordilleran Culture

Jastorf Culture

Iron Age culture of the southern Baltic during the late Hallstatt (600-300 BC), with some of the earliest iron metallurgy of the area. It extended from Lower Saxony through Pomerania.

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Jastorf Culture

Denalian Culture

A prehistoric culture or complex of central Alaska (the Tangle Lakes) dating to c 10,500-7000 BC. Similar to the Siberian Dyuktai (Diuktai) culture and defined by H. West in 1967, it is characterized by wedge-shaped microcores, microblades, burins, and bifacial points, scrapers on flakes, and lar...

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Denalian Culture

Spitsyn Culture

Early Upper Palaeolithic culture on the Don River in European Russia, dating to c 40,000-30,000 bp. Its artifacts include burins, retouched blades and scrapers, bone tools and ornaments.

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Spitsyn Culture

Agrelo Culture

The Agrelo culture was centered in northwestern Argentina and dates from AD 1 to 1000. The type site is just south of Mendoza and it features distinctive deep, wide-mouthed pottery with parallel stepped incised lines, punctations, and fingernail impressions, typical of southern Andean tradition. ...

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Agrelo Culture

Ozieri Culture

Late Neolithic culture of Sardinia, known from caves and open villages, and dated to the late 4th and 3rd millennia BC. It produced elaborately decorated, high-quality pottery. Classic Ozieri decorated ware has been dated to c 4100-3500 BC at the Grotta di Filiestru (Bonu Ighinu). There are rock-...

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Ozieri Culture

Majiabang

A Neolithic site and culture of Jiaxing, China, near Shanghai. The people are descendants of the 5th millennium BC Ho-mu-tu in the region south of the Yangtze near Shanghai. The early phase yielded a radiocarbon date of c 4000 BC. It had close ties with the Ch'ing-lien-kang culture in southern Ki...

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Majiabang