San Jose Mogote

The largest of a number of village communities which developed in the Pre-Classic Period in central Oaxaca, Mexico, some time prior to 1300 be. Established in an area where the water table was a mere three metres below the land surface, agriculture was practised by ‘pot irrigation’, that is, dire...

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San Jose Mogote

Sanjaya

(1) A Sivaite king of the 8th century in Central Java. His earliest inscription dates from 732, and in much later ones he is represented as the founder of the kingdom of Mataram and of a dynasty bearing his name. However, his successor reigned under the suzerainty of the Sailendras. (2) The name ...

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Sanjaya

Sangoan

The name, derived from Sango Bay on Lake Victoria, Uganda, loosely applied to a rather heterogeneous group of industries in eastern and south-central Africa, and perhaps in West Africa also, following the final Acheulian. Its charactertistic artefacts are massive triangular-sectioned picks and co...

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Sangiran

The most important locality for Indonesian finds of Homo erectus in central Java. Rich fossil-bearing deposits of both Middle Pleistocene (Trinil fauna) and Lower Pleistocene (Djetis fauna) have yielded fossils of more than four hominid individuals from each level, including five skulls from the ...

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Sangamon

Group of quaternary interglacial deposits in North America (see Table 7, page 420). The Sangamon comprises a range of sediments, including organic sediment, but is represented mainly by a palaeosol, which overlies Illinoian tills and is covered by Wisconsin loess and tills. This palaeosol can be ...

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Sangamon

Sanga

Major Iron Age cemetery beside Lake Kisale in the Upemba depression, southeastern Zaire. The numerous graves that have been investigated are attributed to the Kisalian and Kabambian industries.

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Sandia Cave

Located in the Sandia Range near Albuquerque, New Mexico, USA, the lowest levels of this site contained a unique tool assemblage. Radiocarbon dates indicating an age greater than 10,000 years are generally disputed but the Sandia level was overlain by Folsom material. An association with certain ...

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Sand

Term describing the size of particles which go to make up a sediment, soil or similar material. Sand particles are those between 2mm and 0.06mm (BS 1377) in diameter( see particle size). The term has no implications of colour, organic content or any property other than particle size or texture.

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Sanchi

Site in central India with a famous Buddhist stupa. Excavations have shown that a brick-built stupa of the Asokan period was later encased in stone and surrounded by a stone railing. This stupa measured c40 metres in diameter and cl 8 metres in height.

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San Agustin

Group of sites centred in the area of the headwaters of the Magdalena River in the highlands of Colombia. Though pottery, wattle and daub dwellings, and evidence of irrigation and terracing indicate a long cultural sequence in the region, San Agustin is most notable for its mounds and monumental ...

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San Agustin

Sample

(1) In statistics, a sample refers to a representative group of objects, cases or items, selected from a larger population. If the selection has been random, the distributions within a sample should have similar proportions to those of the original sample. The degree to which a sample is truly re...

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Samoa

Major island group of Western Polynesia, settled, with Tonga, by Lapita colonists in the late 2nd millennium bc. Samoa maintains a pottery sequence through the 1st millennium bc, after which pottery manufacture ceases. As with Tonga, the period since about ad 200 has been aceramic. On the evidenc...

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Sambungmacan

The find-site (1973) on the Solo River, Java, of a calotte of Homo erectus, with Middle or Upper Pleistocene faunal associations. The calotte belongs to an advanced grade within Southeast Asian populations of Homo erectus, perhaps slightly earlier than the population from Ngan dong, further downs...

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Sambungmacan

Sambor Prei Kuk

See ISanapura.

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Sambaqui Tradition

Based on the southern coast of Brazil, the tradition is named after a local term meaning shell midden. Crudely chipped stone tools and a subsistence strategy based on molluscs and fish imply that Sambaqui sites represent an Archaic lifestyle and were therefore only seasonally occupied. Exceptiona...

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Sambaqui Tradition

Samarra

9th-century city half way between Mosul and Baghdad in Iraq, excavated by Ernst Herzfeld before the First World War. As well as remains of the historical city, Herzfeld found traces of a prehistoric occupation. He was unable to establish very much about the nature or date of this settlement (or c...

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Samarkand

Before the MdWgol conquest, Samarkand occupied the site known as Afrasiab, outside the modem city in Soviet Central Asia. Both the old and the new sites benefited from their situation in a fertile oasis at the point where the Silk Route from the West divided, one branch proceeding to China and th...

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Samaria

Central Palestinian town site which was occupied, after a sporadic Early Bronze Age occupation, from the 9th century bc until the Byzantine period. The first six phases of occupation were Israelite and indeed Samaria was the capital of the northern kingdon) (Israel) at this time. Excavations have...

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Salonae

See Split.

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Salonae

Salin Styles

Name of the Dark Age art styles of northern Europe, first described by E. Salin in his work Die altgermanische Thierornamentik (1904). During the late 5th, 6th and 7th centuries, much of western European art, from Scandinavia to the Balkans, was pervaded by anthropomorphic designs, probably deriv...

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Salin Styles

Salinas La Blanca

An early Formative village site located on the left bank of the Naranjo River near Ocos on the Pacific coast of Guatemala, noted for its excellent preservation of vegetal materials. The principal features of the site are two low house-mounds raised above the level of the surrounding swamp, constr...

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Salinar

Culture centred on the Chicama Valley of north-coast Peru, at the beginning of the Early Intermediate Period. Salinar, together with the slightly later Gallinazo phase, is seen as a transitional culture between Cupisnique and Moche. This transition is evidenced in a shift from reduced-fired to ox...

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Saliagos

A later Neolithic enclosed settlement now on a tiny island, formerly a promontory adjacent to the Cycladic island of Antiparos. The community that lived here <4200-3700 be lived largely by tunny fishing, although farming was also practised. Tanged points of Melian obsidian were common, as was pai...

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Salamis

(Greece). An island which straddles and encloses the bay of Eleusis to the west of Athens. The modern town of Salamis is situated on the western side of the island dominating the Bay of Koulouri. However, the ancient town of Salamis is probably to be located on the eastern side, in the region of ...

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Salamis

(Cyprus). A principal city of prehistoric and classical Cyprus, situated on the east coast of the island six km from Famagusta. There is a large area of surviving ruins, and an extensive necropolis to the west. The Mycenaean settlement was probably at Enkomi, a short distance inland. Salamis surv...

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Salamis

Saladoid

The earliest of the ceramic series developed by Irving Rouse and José Cruxent for the purpose of cultural comparison in the Lesser Antilles/Venezuela region. The type site, Saladero, situated on the Orinoco River, rendered a series of radiocarbon dates placing its inception in the early 1st mille...

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Saladoid

Sàlacea

Fortified promontory site of the earlier Bronze Age Otomani culture, located near Marghi|a in northwest Rumania and dated to the mid-2nd millennium be. The principal find is a three-roomed ‘temple’ of MEGARON-type appearance, unique so far in Bronze Age Europe. In one of the rooms, fired clay alt...

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Sàlacea

Sai Yok

A large rock shelter in Kanchanaburi province, western Thailand, which has produced a 4.75-metre sequence from a possibly pre-HoABiNHiAN industry, through Hoabinhian, to a Neolithic assemblage of Ban Kao type. The sequence is undated, but from its depth the site could have the longest record of H...

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Saipai

See Ochre-coloured pottery.

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Saipai

Saint Urnel

Recent excavations at Saint Umel, near Penmarch in western Finistère, Brittany, have revealed an extremely large Dark Age cemetery. The hundreds of skeletons found have provided anthropologists with the opportunity of investigating whether the population was descended from British refugees, or wh...

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Saint Urnel

St Ninian’s Isle

During the excavation of the small 12th-century chapel on St Ninian’s Isle in the Shetlands in 1958 the finest hoard of Pictish metalwork ever found in Britain came to light. The hoard seems to have been deposited at the end of the 8th century (possibly in response to Norse raids), and included s...

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St Ninian’s Isle

St Gereon

See Cologne.

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St Gereon

Saint Acheul

See Acheulian.

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Saint Acheul

Sa-Huynh

An Iron Age culture of southern Vietnam, dating mainly from the 1st millennium BC and associated with pottery urn burials and rich artefact assemblages paralleled most closely in the Philippines. The culture may be associated with early Chamic (Austronesian) settlement in Vietnam, and appears to ...

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