Others - Archaeologs

Others

Discover other things about archaeology.

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Recently Added: Others

Box Flue

A brick of four terra cotta tiles that were joined together to conduct the furnace-heated air of a Roman (hypocaust) heating system. The tiles were joined at the edges and open at the top and the bottom. The air was directed through them up the walls to escape at the eaves. The exposed faces of t...

Box

A container with a flat base and sides and usually a lid.

Bowl

A round, deep dish or basin.

Bow Brooch

Any brooch with the pin sprung or hinged at one end and the catch-plate at the other end of a curved or flat bow. It can be a one- or two-piece construction.

Bow And Arrow

Weapon consisting of two parts. The bow is made of a strip of flexible material, such as wood, with a cord linking the two ends of the strip to form a tension from which is propelled the arrow. The arrow is a straight shaft with a sharp point on one end and usually with feathers attached to the o...

Bout Coupé

İn British archaeology, a well-made cordiform or subtriangular refined biface from northwest Europe. It may be a diagnostic Mousterian tool.

Boulder Clay

A clayey deposit of an ice age that contains boulders; the clay of a glacial or drift period.

Bottle

A container, typically made of glass or plastic and with a narrow neck, used for storing drinks or other liquids.

Boss

A stud on the center of a shield.

Boshanlu

A Chinese incense burner (lu) with a lid designed to represent mountain peaks, such as Boshan, a mountain in Shangdong province. They are stemmed bowls of pottery or bronze with a perforated conical lid. Most examples date from the western Han period. One from the tomb of Liu sheng (dated 113 bc ...

Boreal

A climatic subdivision of the Holocene epoch, following the PreBoreal and preceding the Atlantic climatic intervals. Radiocarbon dating shows the period beginning about 9500 years ago and ending about 7500 years ago. The Boreal was supposed to be warm and dry. In Europe, the Early Boreal was char...

Boomerang

A curved wooden throwing stick with a biconvex or semi-oval cross-section, distributed widely over Australia except for Tasmania, and used for hunting and warfare. The boomerang had marked regional variations in design and decoration. Returning boomerangs are used in Australia as playthings, in t...

Bonneville

A time in the late Pleistocene epoch about 30,000 years ago when a prehistoric lake formed covering an estimated 52,000 km2 (20,000 square miles), over much of western Utah and parts of Nevada and Idaho in the US. These conditions existed during the interval of the last major Pleistocene glaciati...

Bone China

White porcelain containing the mineral residue of burnt bones.

Bone

Connective tissues of the body, consisting of crystallite minerals and collagen. After death, the proteins slowly decompose and the remaining mineral is subject to solution in acid soil conditions. Bones are preserved on a wide variety of archaeological sites. From early prehistory, the bones, ho...

Bondi Point

A small, asymmetrically backed point, named for Bondi, Sydney, which is a component of the Australian Small Tool tradition. It is usually less than 5 cm (2 inches) long and is sometimes described as a backed blade. Some examples suggest that the points were set in wooden handles or shafts. It occ...

Bolt

An iron arrow or missile, especially stout and short with a blunt or thickened head, discharged from a crossbow or other engine. [quarrel]

Bolling Interstadial

An interstadial of the Weischselian cold period, dated to between 13,000 and 12,000 bp.

Bolas Stone

Weighted balls of stone, bone, ivory, or ceramic that are either grooved or pierced for fastening to rawhide thongs and used to hunt prey. The bolas, still found today among some of the peoples of South America and among the Inuits, usually consists of two or more globular or pear-shaped stones a...

Body Sherd

Any fragment of a ceramic vessel not identifiable as a rim sherd. [body shard]

Body Shape

Overall form of a ceramic object.

Body

1. The main part of a vessel that contains the volume (or sherds of it). 2. Clay or a mixture of clay and inclusions (temper) that is suitable for forming vessels or that has been fired into a vessel. [fabric, paste, ware]

Bodkin

1. A sharp slender instrument for making holes or for other functions. It may be shaped like a dagger, stiletto, or hairpin. 2. A blunt needle with a large eye for drawing tape or ribbon through a loop or hem.

Boatstone

A boat-shaped stone atlatl - a throwing-stick weight - put on the shaft to give great propulsion to a thrown dart. Unlike the bannerstone, it was apparently lashed to the stick shaft. [bannerstone, birdstone]

Boatmaking

Boatmaking and navigation have been important for thousands of years and there is evidence of dugout canoes from Mesolithic times onward, the earliest being at Perth and in Denmark. Neolithic people used skiffs as well as dugout canoes. Plank boats appeared in the Middle Bronze Age. In the Roman ...

Blunt

A point that abruptly terminates part way up the blade with no true distal point for piercing. Typically the point is chipped in a mild excurvate or straight edge. Some feel that the point may have been used in hunting as a “stunning” weapon. However, most blunts show signs of being a conserved, ...

Blue Willow Pottery

First made in England over 200 years ago, and said to be “America’s favorite patterned ware.” Willow ware is available in a wide range of patterns; the makers are most identifiable by marks, styles, and periods, running from 1780 onward.

Blowpipe

A long, hollow tube used to blow molten glass into shapes.

Bloom

1. Spongy mass of material made up of iron and slag, produced from the initial smelting of iron ore. The slag and impurities are mostly driven off in preliminary forging. To produce useful iron, bloom must be hammered at red heat to expel the stone and add a proportion of carbon to the metal. 2. ...

Block Statue

A type of sculpture introduced in the Middle Kingdom (2055-1650 bc ), that represents the subject squatting on the ground with knees drawn up close to the body, under the chin. The arms and legs may be wholly contained within the simple cubic form, with the hands and feet protruding discretely. T...

Blattspitzen

A category of stone artifact with complete or nearly complete flaking on both sides and points at one or both ends. They are found in some late Middle and early Upper Paleolithic industries of central and eastern Europe.

Blank

A partly finished stone artifact that has been worked roughly into a shape but which must be further chipped to a suitable size and form to become a tool. This is an intermediate manufacturing stage in the production of stone tools, where the tools are given the rough shape at a quarry or worksho...

Bladelet

Shorter, narrower blade.

Blade Core

A flint or stone core from which blades have been struck, typically conical or pyramidal in shape and producing distinctive debitage.

Black-Glazed

A style of pottery decoration in which plain wares were given a black sheen, which continued well into the Hellenistic period - especially in Athens from the 6th to 2nd centuries bc . These wares were often made alongside figure-decorated pottery and, from the 5th century bc , the shapes were fre...

Black-Figure

A type of Greek pottery that originated in Corinth c. 700 bc and was popular until red-figure pottery, its inverse, began in c. 530 bc . This style consisted of pottery with one or more bands of human and animal figures silhouetted in black against the tan or red ground. The red color was probabl...

Bivalve

An aquatic mollusk that has a compressed body enclosed within two hinged shells, such as an oyster, mussel, or scallop, or any animal with two halves to its shell such as an ostracode or brachiopod.

Biscuit

Pots that have been given a preliminary firing to render them hard enough for further work such as decoration and glazing. The higher the temperature of the biscuit firing, the harder will be the pot, resulting in a reduced reaction between the glaze and body in the final firing. Also includes un...

Birdstone

A class of prehistoric stone objects of undetermined purpose, usually resembling or shaped like a bird; carved bird effigies. These polished stone weights occurred in the cultures of the Archaic tradition (8000-1000 bc ) and later cultures in the eastern woodlands of North America. They were prob...

Birdpoint

A smaller arrowhead used by Native Americans to kill small game such as rabbit, waterfowl, and birds. [bird point]

Birch-Bark Manuscript

Early Russian letters and documents scratched onto thin pieces of birch bark, dating to the 11th to 15th centuries ad . They were first found in 1951 in Novgorod by A. Artsikhovski and form a very important source of information as no other documents earlier than the 13 th century have survived b...

Bipolar Percussion

A type of percussion that involves the placement of raw material (usually small rounded or oval cobbles) on an anvil stone and striking it from the top. [bipolar flaking, bipolar technique]

Bipennis

An ax with a double blade or edge, used as an agricultural implement, an adze, or a military weapon. It was used by the Amazons, Scythians, and Gauls. [bipenne]

Binder

A substance, usually organic, added to a clay or glaze to increase its green strength.

Billet

A soft hammer used to strike flakes from a stone core, often made of antler, bone, or wood. [baton, percussor]

Bilaterally Barbed

A projectile point or harpoon with barbs on both edges.

Bifurcate

Point base split into double lobes with indentation similar to notches on the sides. [bifurcated base]

Bifid Razor

Type of tool, possibly a razor, of the Middle Bronze Age of Europe, with two ovate, sharp-edged lobes of thin metal attached to a central tang.

Bifacially Worked

Pertaining to an artifact that has been flaked on both sides. [bifacial working (n.)]

Bifacial Thinning Flake

Flakes removed during the thinning or resharpening of bifaces. These flakes are relatively flat, have broad, shallow flake scars (produced by the detachment of previous thinning flakes from the dorsal face), and tend to exhibit a feathering out of lateral margins. The proximal end of the flake of...

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