Others - Archaeologs

Others

Discover other things about archaeology.

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Recently Added: Others

Sahul Shelf

The shallow ocean shelf between Australia and New Guinea, at its narrowest under the present Torres Strait. The shelf was exposed as dry land at periods of low sea-level in the Pleistocene, and New Guinea and Australia share a linked prehistory until the Torres Strait was finally drowned between ...

Sago

The sago palm (Metroxylon sp.) stores large amounts of starch in its trunk prior to flowering. This starch can be washed out from the chopped pith of felled trees, and then cooked into porridge or cakes. Sago was utilized and traded widely around coastal New Guinea and the Moluccas Islands; the p...

Sacrifice

Many societies at different times and in various parts of the world have practised animal or human sacrifice, or both. In the Old World one of the best-known and most spectacular examples comes from the Mesopotamian city of Ur, where the Royal Cemetery provided several examples: Grave 800 (Queen ...

Saccopastore

A gravel exploitation on the Via Nomentana leading out of Rome has revealed two Palaeolithic human skulls. These are often regarded as early or generalized Neanderthals and are believed to belong to the last interglacial. The brain sizes of both skulls are smaller than those of Europeans today, a...

Sabra Tha

[Greek Habrotonon, Roman Sabratha]. A Roman port cm the north African coast in Libya, remarkable for its extensive imperial Roman remains. Originally a Phoenician foundation of perhaps the 5th century bc, Sabratha was one of the three cities of Roman Tripolitania. Together with neighbouring Oea a...

Sabra Tha

archaeologsOthers

Sabouni

See Al Mina.

Sabouni

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Sabah

See Borneo, Malaysia.

Sabah

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Saale

A group of Quaternary glacial deposits in northwest Europe. One of the main features is a complex series of end-MORAiNES, demarcating the maximum extent of icesheets. These ice-sheets flowed out from centres in Scandinavia, across the bed of the Baltic Sea and into northern Europe and the USSR. T...

Quynh-Van

A 5-metre deep marine shell midden in northern Vietnam which has produced a flaked stone industry together with pottery, grindstones and contracted burials, dated to c3000 bc. The industry lacks the normal Hoabinhian and Bacsonian pebble and edge-ground tools, but it could be a late and specializ...

Quynh-Van

archaeologsOthers

Qujialing

[Ch’ii-chia-ling]. Type site in Jingshan Xian, Hubei province, China, of a rice-growing Neolithic culture of the middle Yangzi region. Five radiocarbon dates from various sites range from c3100 to c2650 bc. At Xiawanggang Qujialing remains (radiocarbon dated to c3000 bc) were stratified above Yan...

Quirigua

Classic Maya site located 50 km north of Copan on the Rio Motagua in southeastern Guatemala. Probably at least partly controlled by its larger neighbour (perhaps through kinship ties), its architecture is unprepossessing. The site is notable, however, for its excellent examples of stone carving i...

Quirigua

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Quipu

A cord from which was suspended a series of knotted strings, used by the Inca as a record-keeping or mnemonic device. Based on a decimal system, the colour of the cord, as well as the size, configuration and placement of each knot, had a special meaning. So complex was the system that a special p...

Quinzano

Quarry at Quinzano near Verona in northern Italy has several lower and middle Palaeolithic levels and a human occipital skull-bone of perhaps generalized NeanderTHAL type. Nearby was an open settlement of the Square-mouthed pottery Neolithic culture and a cemetery of crouched inhumations. The nam...

Quetzalcoatl

Aztec name for the creator god of learning who was also patron of the arts, agriculture and science, among other things. The brother of Huizilpochtli, Texcatlipoca and Xipe Totec, he was, like them, a god of many other aspects, such as the wind god (Ehecatl) and the morning and evening star (Xolo...

Quetzalcoatl

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Quetta

The name of a modem town and adjacent valley in west Pakistan. The valley contains a number of important prehistoric sites, the earliest dating to the 5th millennium bc. The most important sites are Kili Ghul Mohammed, Damb Sadaat and Kechi Beg. The Quetta sequence is particularly useful since it...

Quern

A stone for grinding cereal grains into flour. Throughout most of later prehistory the characteristic form was the saddle quern, in which a hand rubber was pushed backwards and forwards on a concave base. From classical times this was replaced by the rotary quern, in which one stone was rotated o...

Quentovic

One of the most important ports on the English Channel in the Early Medieval period. Its coins were first minted in the early 7th century and during the 8th and 9th centuries its mint was one of the most important in the Carolingian Empire. The settlement is also known from many incidental refere...

Quenching

See iron and steel, steel.

Quaternary

The earth’s history is divided into ‘eras’: the Palaeozoic, Mesozoic and Cenozoic. The youngest, Cenozoic, era (starting at 65 million years bp) is traditionally divided into two ‘periods’: the Tertiary and the Quaternary. The Quaternary period extends up to the present day and includes two ‘epoc...

Quanterness

Megalithic tomb, usually classified as a form of passage grave, on the island of Orkney, north Scotland, excavated in the 1970s. Like other megalithic tombs, it had been used for collective burial, but the number of bodies found here was unusually high: remains of 157 individuals were found in th...

Qinwangzhai

[Ch’in-wang-chai]. SeeDAHE.

Qinwangzhai

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Qinglian’Gang

[Ch’ing-lien-kang]. Neolithic site in Huaian Xian, northern Jiangsu province, China. The name ‘Qinglian’gang culture’ is often used to designate all or part of the well-defined Neolithic sequence north of the Yangzi River in Jiangsu and Shandong (some authors use ‘Huating culture’ or ‘Dawenkou cu...

Qinglian’Gang

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Qing

[Ch’ing]. Name of the Manchu dynasty that ruled China from 1644 to 1911.

Qin

[Ch’in]. Name of an Eastern Zhou state centred in the Wei River valley of Shaanxi province, China, and of the dynasty (221-206 bc) founded after the Qin state had conquered and absorbed the various states ruling the rest of China. The first emperor of the dynasty, Qin Shi Huangdi, established his...

Qijia

[Ch’i-chia]. Successor to the Yangshao cultures of Gansu, China, named after the site of Qijiaping in the Tao River valley. Qijia is the Longshan culture of Gansu and is related to Kexingzhuang II in Shaanxi and Hougang II in Henan (see Longshan, sense 3). Qijia pottery is rarely painted and ofte...

Qibla

See mosque.

Qibla

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Qatabanean

One of the kingdoms of southern Arabia in the 1st millennium bc, contemporary with the Minaeans, Sabaeans and Hadramis. Its capital city was Timna‘.

Qatabanean

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Qasr Al-Hayr East

Islamic site in Syria standing in semi-desert. It consists of two fortified buildings and a bath-house, in an enclosure with conduits which tapped a spring 25 km away and brought rainwater from a nearby wadi. The Small Enclosure is roughly square, 66 metres across, with towers and a monumental ga...

Qarnâwu

See Minaean.

Qarnâwu

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Qal’At Sharqat

Modern name of Assur, capital of Assyria in northern Mesopotamia.

Qal’At Sharqat

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Qal’A Of The Banu Hammad

The Qal’a, in northeast Algeria, was founded in 1007 as a new capital by Hammad, the grandson of Ziri, builder of the first Sanhaja centre at Ashir. Excavations began in 1908 and have continued intermittently ever since. The major monuments include the Manar and Lake Palaces and the mosque. The m...

Qal’A Of The Banu Hammad

archaeologsOthers

Qadesh

See Kadesh.

Qadesh

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Qadan

A Nubian stone industry belonging to the period of high water levels in the Nile Valley prior to 9000 be. At this time the content of the various local stone tool assemblages shows considerable variation, and this has been plausibly interpreted as indicating not only the variety of specialized ac...

Oxygen Isotope Ratio

See deep sea cores.

Oxygen Isotope Ratio

archaeologsOthers

Oxus Treasure

A large hoard of gold and silver metalwork found in 1877 on the bank of the Oxus River near the present Afghan-Russian border. The objects include a variety of jewellery, ornamental plaques, figurines, chariot models and vessels. They show a great variety of influences, including Achaemenid Persi...

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