Nhunguza

A later Iron Age site in northern Mashonaland, Zimbabwe, where a large clay-built structure has been interpreted as a court house, with open yard and audience chamber.

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Ngandong

In 1931 a terrace of the Solo River at Ngandong, central Java, Indonesia, produced 11 skulls and 2 tibiae which are thought today to belong to a late and fairly large-brained population of Homo erectus. Faunal associations are Upper Pleistocene, and age estimates range from 60,000 to 300,000 year...

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Nezahuacoyotl

See Triple Alliance.

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Nezahuacoyotl

New Zealand

The southernmost and (except for Chatham Islands) the only temperate land-mass to be settled by Polynesians (Maoris). The sequence, beginning c900 ad, is predominantly horticultural in the North Island, grading to hunting and gathering in the colder South Island. Language, economy and technology ...

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New Hebrides

See Vanuatu.

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New Hebrides

New Guinea

The largest island of Oceania, New Guinea (800,000 square kilometres) was joined to Australia in periods of Pleistocene low sea-level, and was probably first settled by early Australoids at the same time as its larger neighbour (see Kosipe). New Guinea archaeology is best considered under two hea...

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Forest Ware

Colour-coated fine ware produced in the New Forest area (central southern England) of Roman Britain, in the 4th and 5th centuries ad.

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Forest Ware

Caledonia

The largest island of southwest Melanesia, with an Austronesian-speaking population and an archaeological record going back to La pita settlement, about 1300 bc. Settlement before this date remains hypothetical but probable. The island is well known for its prehistoric and ethnographic systems of...

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Caledonia

New Britain

The main island of the Bismarck Archipelago, northeast of New Guinea. Archaeological discoveries include stone pestles and mortars like those from the New Guinea Highlands, an undated industry of waisted flaked tools from Kandrian, and the first discovered Lapita site (on Watom Island, 1909). Als...

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New Archaeology

The name sometimes given to the innovations in archaeology associated especially with the names of Lewis Binford in the USA and David Clarke in the UK and introduced from the late 1960s onwards. The premises of the New Archaeology are the need for both an explicit theory and a rigorous methodolog...

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Neutron Activation Analysis

A method of Principle. A specimen or sample is irradiated in a nuclear reactor. In the nuclear reactions that result, stable atoms of the material are transformed into radioactive isotopes. These isotopes start to decay immediately, and emit gamma rays, whose energy is related to the elements pre...

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Neutron Activation Analysis

Nephrite

One of two distinct minerals which may be called jade. Nephrite is considerably more common than jadeite, the other ‘jade’ mineral. It varies widely in colour from white or grey to green, including yellow, blue and black. Sources of the material are known in China, Siberia, Pakistan, New Zealand,...

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Neoteny

The retention of juvenile or foetal features of the ancestral body form into adult life, as in the living axolotl, is thought to be an important mechanism in evolution, having facilitated certain crucial changes such as the emergence of the first chordates. Modem man has a number of features whic...

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Neo-Indian

See Barrancoid.

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Neo-Indian

Nemunas River

Located near Semai in Lithuania, northeast Poland, the mouth of this river is the source of a stray find of a bronze statuette of the Hittite sky god Teshub. The find has been adduced as evidence of longdistance trade in the European later Bronze Age.

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Nemunas River

Nelson Bay Cave

See Robberg.

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Nelson Bay Cave

Necker Island

Small (1km long) barren and isolated island off the west end of the Hawaiian chain, containing a very large number of prehistoric sites (including 33 heiau) for its size. The island may have been visited sporadically from the main Hawaiian chain, or it is possible that it had a resident populatio...

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Nebo

A Late Neolithic site of the Butmir culture, located near Travnik, central Bosnia, Yugoslavia, and dating to the early 4th millennium be. Excavations by A. Benac indicated two occupation phases in the Classic and Late Butmir periods. The large quantities of manufacturing debris on the site may be...

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Neanderthal

Quarrying in 1856 revealed a small cave in the Neanderthal or Neander Valley near Dusseldorf in West Germany, and in it a skull cap and some other bones. Similar long low skulls with brow ridges are now known to be typical of the Mousterian period, perhaps in the range 100,000 to 40,000 years ago...

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Neanderthal

Nderit Drift

A site on the Nderit River south of Lake Nakuru, Kenya, which preserves a long sequence of alluvial and lacustrine deposits containing several archaeological occurrences which illustrate the precursors of the Pastoral Neolithic complex. Full details of the sequence are not yet available, but a bl...

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Naxos

(Greece). Largest of the group of Aegean Islands known to antiquity as the Cyclades (see Delos), and an important centre for the so-called Cycladic culture of the Aegean Early Bronze Age (late 4th to 2nd millennium bc). Mycenaean, Protogeometric and Geometric periods are also well represented. In...

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Naxos

Nawamoyn

See Oenpelli Shelters.

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Nawamoyn

Naveta

A type of megalithic tomb found on the island of Minorca during the Bronze Age (see megalithic monuments). It takes its name from its shape, which resembles — a little — an upturned boat. Navetas were built of Cyclopean masonry and contained long chambers with corbelled roofs. The best preserved ...

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Navdatoli

A large prehistoric settlement on the Narbada River in Medhya Pradesh, central India, made up of four separate mounds. There were three main phases of occupation. The first, of the 3rd millennium bc, was a village of 50-75 houses, mostly measuring cl 2 by 6 metres; the occupants were farmers grow...

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Naukratis

A Greek trading settlement on the western (Canopic) branch of the Nile. Sources mention concessional arrangements made by Psammetichus I (663-609 bc), who may have been grateful for support from Greek mercenaries, and later by Amasis (578-525 BC). It looks as if Greek trading and residence on Egy...

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Natufian

Mesolithic culture of the Levant; dated cl0,000-8000 be; most sites occur in a band ¿40 km wide along the Mediterranean coast, though some sites occur much further inland, like Mureybat in Syria. Caves and rock shelters continued to be occupied, as in earlier periods, but open settlements also oc...

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Natsushima

An initial Jomon shell midden near Tokyo, Japan, dated to 7290 and 7500 be. The dated layer contained deep conical bowls with cord-marks made by rolling a cord-wrapped stick over the surface of wet clay. There were also bones of domestic dogs, bone and stone arrowheads, grinding stones, partially...

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Natal Early Iron Age

The South African province of Natal has revealed traces of the furthest southeastern extension of the Early Iron Age complex of sub-Saharan Africa, which has been linked provisionally with the dispersal of peoples speaking Bantu languages. In Natal, evidence for Early Iron Age settlement is found...

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Nasera

A rock shelter on the Serengeti Plain of northern Tanzania, formerly known as Apis Rock, containing one of the longest well-documented archaeological sequencs from any single site in the region. Pastoral Neolithic material overlies an aceramic microlithic industry dated to about the 6th millenniu...

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Nasca

[Nazca]. The dominant pottery style of the valleys of south-coast Peru, during the Early Intermediate Period. The characteristic polychrome decoration is a continuation of the earlier Paracas style. Although the two styles are similar, Nasca can easily be distinguished because its colours are set...

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Narva

The eponymous site of a late Mesolithic culture distributed on and near the Baltic coast of Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania and dated to the 4th-3rd millennium be. Similar in type to the ancestral Kunda culture, the Narva economy was based on hunting and fishing, with more tools of bone and antler ...

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Narosura

An important Pastoral Neolithic settlement site near Narok in southern Kenya, occupied between the 9th and the 5th centuries bc. Post-holes suggest the presence of semi-permanent structures of some kind, and the site appears to have covered an area of at least 8000 square metres, although it cann...

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Narce

A settlement on the Treia gorge near Calcata in Lazio, Italy, surrounded by extensive necropolis, and probably inhabited from the 12th century BC. Essentially occupation seems to have been by Faliscans, an Indo-European Italic group, and therefore the site is to be associated with their centres a...

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Naranco

A town near Orviedo in northern Spain. The province of Asturias and Galicia remained an independent Christian kingdom after the Moors had conquered most of the country, and in Asturias a very individual preRomanesque school of architecture flourished between the 8th and 10th centuries. The Asturi...

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Naranco

Nara

See Haji, Kofun, mirrors (Japan), Sue.

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Nara

Naqsh-I Rustam

See Persepolis.

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Naqsh-I Rustam