Others - Archaeologs

Others

Discover other things about archaeology.

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Recently Added: Others

Armor

Protective clothing with the ability to deflect or absorb arrows, bullets, lances, swords, or other weapons during combat. There are three main types: (1) armor made of leather, fabric, or mixed materials reinforced by quilting or felt; (2) mail of interwoven rings of iron or steel; and (3) rigid...

Armlet

A band or bracelet worn round the upper part of a person’s arm.

Argillite

A compact metamorphic rock formed from siltstone, shale, or claystone and intermediate in structure between shale and slate. It is cemented by silica but has no slaty cleavage.

Ardagh Chalice

A large, two-handled silver cup decorated with gold, gilt bronze, and enamel, that is one of the finest examples of early Christian art from the British Isles. Discovered in 1868, along with a small bronze cup and four brooches in a potato field in Ardagh, Ireland, the chalice may have been part ...

Archaistic

İmitatively archaic; affectedly and deliberately antique.

Apulian Pottery

An important type of south Italian pottery, mostly decorated in the red-figured technique. Production seems to have started in the late 5th century bc and may have been influenced by Athenian pottery. One of the early centers may have been Tarentum. In the middle of the 4th century the scenes bec...

Appliqué

Decoration or ornament applied to or laid on another material, such as metal on wood or embroidery on cloth; a ceramic finishing technique that involves joining shaped pieces of a plastic body to a leather-hard surface by pressure. The applied pieces can be functional (e.g., handles) or decorativ...

Apotropaic

Of statues, etc., supposedly having the power to avert evil influences or bad luck.

Apothecary Jar

A jar used to store medicines, drugs, or the constituent parts of medicines and drugs.

Aplastics

İntentional or accidental inclusions in pottery clays before firing; particulate matter in a clay body that does not contribute to plasticity or that reduces the plasticity of the clay. [aplastic, temper]

Anvil Technique

A prehistoric method of making chipped stone tools that involves striking a stone repeatedly against a static boulder used as an anvil. [anvil flaking]

Antler Sleeve

A section of deer antler carved into a cavity or hole at one end to hold a stone axhead. The piece was either set into a socket in a haft or perforated to attach to the haft. This material was used for its resilience and shock-absorbing value in toolmaking. Roughly trimmed antler picks have been ...

Antler

Lowest, forward branch of the horn of a deer - bonelike material that is grown and shed annually. Antlers indicate the sex of the species, for example only male red deer, fallow deer, and elk (moose) have antlers. They may also indicate whether a site is occupied seasonally as they are naturally ...

Anthropomorphic

Manlike; used to describe artifacts or art work decorated with human features or with a manlike appearance. [anthropomorphous]

Anthropomorph

A representation of the human form in art, such as those found on ancient pottery; 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. [anthropomorphic figure; anthrop...

Anthropoid

Of human form; manlike. Taken from the Greek term for man-shaped, it is used to describe sarcophagi and coffins and other artifacts of human shape. The term is also used to describe a being that is only human in form or an anthropoid ape (gibbons, orangs, chimpanzees, gorillas). [anthropomorphous]

Antefix

Ornamental tiles fixed to the eaves and cornices of ancient Greek and Roman buildings to decoratively conceal the ends of the rain tiles. The term also refers to vertical ornamental heads of animals, etc. that were the spouts from the gutters. [antefixal (adj.)]

Ansa

Latin term for handle or anything handlelike, such as an eyelet, haft, or hole. Any vessel or vase with large ears or circular handles on the neck or body is said to have ansae. [ansae (pl.)]

Annular Ring Nail

A nail with sharp-edged ridges that lock into wood fibers and greatly increase its holding power.

Annular

Ring-shaped.

Annealing

The treating of a metal or alloy with heat and then cold - or the repeated process of heating and hammering to produce the desired shape. After casting metal, it may be necessary to further process it by cold working, hammering, and drawing the metal - either to produce hard cutting edges or to p...

Anklet

An ornamental chain worn around the ankle.

Ankh

Egyptian hieroglyphic sign for life, consisting of a T-shape surmounted by a loop. It represents a sandal strap or the handle of a mirror. The ankh is commonly shown being carried by deities and pharaohs and was widely used as an amulet. Temple reliefs frequently included scenes in which a king w...

Animal Style

A term describing a type of gold production whose themes were animals and which arose from the Scythians, a seminomadic people from the Eurasian steppes who moved from southern Russia into the territory between the Don and the Danube and then into Mesopotamia. During the 5th to 4th centuries bc t...

Animal Bell

A bell worn by an animal, e.g., sheep, goats, cows and hawks, to inform the owner of the animal’s position.

Anglian

Quaternary glacial deposits found in East Anglia, England. Other possibly related and isolated patches exist elsewhere in Britain, but they are older than the extreme range of radiocarbon dating and paleomagnetism shows them to be younger than 700,000 bp. This period sometimes equates with the El...

Andesite

A dark, fine-grained volcanic rock.

Andean Chronology

Chronological systems of the Central Andes area with two main stages, Preceramic and Ceramic. The Ceramic is broken down into: Initial Period, 1900-1200 bc Early Horizon 1200-300 bc Early Intermediate Period 300 bc to ad 700, Middle Horizon 700-1100, Late Intermediate Period 1100-1438/1478, and L...

Anchor Ornament

An anchor-shaped, terra cotta object with a perforation through the shank. These were widespread in the Early Bronze Age of Greece and appear later in Sicily and Malta. Grooving, as if from thread wear, suggests that these objects may have been part of looms.

Ancestor Bust

Small, painted, apelike busts that were the focus of ancestor worship in Egypt’s New Kingdom. Many were of limestone or sandstone, with some smaller examples made of wood and clay.

Analytical Type

Arbitrary groupings that an archaeologist defines for classifying artifacts; groups of attributes that define convenient types of artifacts for comparing sites in space and time.

Analysis

A stage of archaeological research that involves describing and classifying artifactual and nonartifactual data.

Amulet

Small good-luck charms, often in the form of gods, hieroglyphs, and sacred animals and made of precious stones or faience. They were especially popular with Egyptians and other Eastern peoples, worn in life and placed in burials or within mummy wrappings. Amulets were supposed to afford protectio...

Ampulla

A small Greek or Roman globular flask or bottle with two handles and a short narrow neck. It was used for holding oil for bathers (called ampulla oleria) or wine, oil, vinegar, and other beverages for table use (then called ampulla potaria). These small containers were usually the form of a globe...

Amorphous

Having no definite form or distinct shape.

Amersfoot Interstadial

An interstadial of the Weichselian stage that has radiocarbon dates between 68,000 and 65,000 bp, but it is possibly earlier.

Amber

Fossilized pine resin, a transparent yellow, orange, or reddishbrown material from coniferous trees. It is amorphous, having a specific gravity of 1.05-1.10 and a hardness of 2-2.5 on the Mohs scale, and has two varieties - gray and yellow. Amber was appreciated and popular in antiquity for its b...

Amarna Period

A phase in the late 18th dynasty, including the reigns of Akhenaten, Smenkhkare, Tutankhamen, and Ay (1379-1352 bc when important religious and artistic changes took place. The name is derived from the site of Akhenaten’s capital at Tell el-Amarna.

Altithermal

A warm, dry postglacial period in the western United States c. 5600-2500 bc Coined by Ernst Antev in 1948, the term describes a time during which temperatures were warmer than at present. Other terms, like “long drought,” are also used.

Alternating Retouch

Retouch that occurs on an edge of a lithic flake in such a way that it alternates between the dorsal and ventral sides from one end to the other of the edge. [alternate retouch]

Alternate Flaking

The opposite face of each edge is steeply flaked and each face opposing the beveled edge is flatly flaked.

Alloy

Any of a number of substances which are a mixture of two or more metals, such as bronze (copper and tin), brass (copper and zinc), or tumbaga (copper and gold). An alloy has properties superior to those of the individual metals. They are not simple mixtures, but complex crystalline structures tha...

Alkaline Glaze

A relatively low-fired glaze with a high concentration of alkali elements in its composition, often with wood ash in significant quantity.

Alfred Jewel

An elaborate gold ornament which is an example of 9th-century Anglo-Saxon craftsmanship and found at Somerset, England in 1893 (now in Ashmolean Museum, Oxford). It consists of an enameled plaque with an oval portrait in different-colored cloisonné, enhanced with filigree wire and backed by a fla...

Album

İn Roman and Greek antiquity, a blank tablet on which praetors’ edicts and other public notices were recorded for public information. It was also a space on the surface of a wall, covered with white plaster, upon which were written such announcements or advertisements. Afterwards, this term was e...

Albarello

A late medieval (15th to 18th centuries) Near East, Spanish, and Italian apothecary pottery jar. It was made in the form known as majolica or with a fine tin glaze over typically blue designs imitating the forms of Arabic script. Its basic shape was cylindrical but incurved and wide-mouthed for h...

Alabastron

A Greek container made of alabaster, but sometimes clay, used for unguents. [alabastrum]

Alabaster

A term used by Egyptologists for a type of white, semitransparent or translucent stone used in statuary, vases, sarcophagi, and architecture. It is a form of limestone (calcium carbonate), sometimes described as travertine. It was used increasingly from the Early Dynastic period for funerary vess...

Ajuerado Phase

Earliest phase of pre-village, pre-agriculture in Tehuacan Valley, Mexico, from c. 7200 to 7000 bc There was hunting and gathering.

Aging

Storing prepared ceramic material (as a wet plastic clay body) to improve its working properties by thorough wetting of particles, slow compression, bacterial action (souring), and other processes.

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