Javelin Head

A kind of large flint projectile point used during the Neolithic in the British Isles. Usually lozenge-shaped in outline with slightly convex curves on the leading edges. Finely made, and sometimes polished and ground on the large flat sides, presumably to reduce the weight and produce a thinner ...

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Javelin Head

Balawat

The site of ancient Imgur-Enlil, east of Mosul in northern Iraq. Excavators have found the palace of Shalmaneser II and a pair of great bronze gates (now in the British Museum). These huge wooden gates were part of a set of three with evidence of the campaigns of Assurnasirpal II and Shalmaneser ...

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Balawat

Spanish Borderland

The North American Spanish colonial territories.

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Spanish Borderland

Adulis

A seaport on the Red Sea coast of Ethiopia, near modern Massawa. It was the principal port of Axum on an important trade route. It may have been established in Ptolemaic times during the Pre-Axumite period, though excavations have yielded material belonging to the 3rd century AD or later.

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Adulis

Anthropomorph

A representation of the human form in art, such as those found on ancient pottery. A figure, object, or rock art with or using a human shape. The term also refers to the attribution of human features and behaviors to animals, inanimate objects, or natural phenomena.

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Anthropomorph

Myanmar

Burma was the name of this Southeast Asian country when it was under British control; the name Myanmar was adopted in 1989 when it became an independent nation. The first human settlements in Myanmar appeared some 11,000 years ago in the middle Irrawaddy River valley. A group of people known as t...

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Myanmar

Gavrinis

A Neolithic rectangular cairn on an island in the Gulf of Morbihan, France, with one of the most elaborately decorated passage graves in Europe. The designs pecked into the walls include representations of polished stone axes as well as abstract patterns. The radiocarbon date is c 3400 BC.

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Gavrinis

Paglicci

Prehistoric cave site on the Gargano peninsula on the Adriatic coast of Italy. Excavations have yielded a long sequence of Upper Palaeolithic levels of Gravettian or Epi-Gravettian type dating from c 24,700-20,000 bp. There are engraved objects from several levels, a few cave paintings, and two b...

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Paglicci

Debert

A Clovis site in Nova Scotia, Canada, dating to 11,000-10,000BP. Artifacts, hearths, and faunal evidence are on the site.

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Debert

Hunt Cup

A popular style of Roman color-coated beaker with a decorative scene, usually depicting dogs hunting stags or hares, executed in barbotine.

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Hunt Cup

Sweet Potato

Food plant native to tropical America and widely cultivated in tropical and the warmer temperate climates, not to be confused with the yam. It is reported from sites in Peru as early as 8000 BC. During the mid-1st millennium AD, the sweet potato was carried by prehistoric voyagers into eastern Po...

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Sweet Potato

Swanscombe, Barnfield Pit

British Lower Palaeolithic site on a terrace of the lower Thames Valley, North Kent, England, with a skull of possibly an archaic Homo sapiens with strong Neanderthal features. The skull bones are considerably thicker than those of modern European or Neanderthal skulls; the skull pieces may be th...

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Swanscombe, Barnfield Pit

Isolated Data

A single object that is found without association to any other artifact or feature; typically lost during travel or moved by a relic hunter. Any unassociated archaeological remains.

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Isolated Data

Karasuk

A Bronze Age culture that succeeded the Andronovo culture in southern Siberia in the late 2nd millennium BC. The three main, basically successive, yet often overlapping cultures were the Afanasyevskaya, Andronovo, and Karasuk. The Karasuk culture developed when a gradual change was made from sett...

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Karasuk

Sheep

A ruminant (cud-chewing) mammal of the genus Ovis, usually stockier than its relative the goat. Sheep were first domesticated from wild species of sheep by at least 5000 BC, and their remains have been found at numerous sites of early human habitation in the Middle East, Europe, and Central Asia....

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Sheep

Archaeological Record

The surviving physical remains of past human activities, which are sought, recovered, analyzed, preserved, and described by archaeologists in an attempt to reconstruct the past.

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Archaeological Record

Campanulate Bowl

A bowl or other kind of vessel, whether of pottery, metal, or some other material, shaped to the form of an inverted bell.

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Campanulate Bowl

Eyasi

A late Middle Pleistocene site in northern Tanzania with faunal remains including archaic Homo sapiens and extinct mammal species as well as artifacts.

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Eyasi

Ruse

A city of northern Bulgaria, located on a major crossing-point of the Danube, which began as a fortified Roman harbor called Sexantaprista (Sixty Ships) in the 1st century BC. It was destroyed by barbarians in the 7th century. The Ottomans built a new town Roustchouk which subsequently bore the n...

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Ruse

Conflict Theory

Any theory that traces the origin of the state to warfare or intragroup conflicts.

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Conflict Theory

Historical Particularism

A school of anthropological thought associated with the work of Franz Boas and his students (including Ruth Benedict, Margaret Mead, and A.L. Kroeber), whose studies of culture emphasized the integrated way of life distinctive of a people. It is a detailed descriptive approach to anthropology des...

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Historical Particularism

Xibeigang

Site in Hebei Province, China, of the Royal Cemetery of the Late Shang, with seven shaft tombs with wooden-chamber burials and human sacrifices. There are also over 2000 small pit-graves with human sacrifices. The hierarchy of burials at this and other cemeteries in the area reflected the social ...

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Xibeigang

Bouar

A city of the Central African Republic where, about 2500 years ago, farming people set up numerous series of megalithic monuments consisting of standing stones - which weighed several tons - associated with tumuli. The cooperation necessary to make and position these monuments suggests that they ...

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Bouar

Bering Land Bridge

The present-day floor of the Chukchi and Bering Seas, which emerged as dry land during Late Pleistocene glacial advances. It is the only route for faunal exchange between Eurasia and North America as it united Siberia and Alaska. It seems to have been breached only in the past 2.5 million years, ...

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Bering Land Bridge

Pigment

An organic or inorganic coloring material.

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Pigment