Others - Archaeologs

Others

Discover other things about archaeology.

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Recently Added: Others

Milpa

Maya term meaning literally ‘cornfields’, synonymous in Mesoamerican archaeology with slash-and-burn agriculture. Depictions on Maya frescos and codices coupled with ethnographic evidence of modern-day methods of cultivation in the Maya Lowlands, gave rise to the theory that milpa agriculture was...

Millet

Number of cereal plants, belonging to different genera, are described as millets. Broomcorn or common millet (Panicum miliaceum) is rarely grown today, but it had a much wider distribution in the past. The earliest finds are from Neolithic central and eastern Europe, spreading into southern Europ...

Millefiori

A very delicate and attractive technique developed by Anglo-Saxon glass and metal-workers, whereby panels of multicoloured glass were set into a background of metal or enamel. To create the distinctive minute chequerboard or rosette-like patterns, bundles of glass rods of varying cross-section we...

Millefiori

archaeologsOthers

Milestone

Roman examples show stones, normally cylindrical, up to two metres high. These were placed along all principal roads, and instances are found from about 250 BC onwards. The stone was typically inscribed to give the distance in (Roman) miles to the nearest major town, and commonly a date of instal...

Mile Fort

[or mile castle]. A small Roman fort set at intervals of one Roman mile along a major well-defended frontier (limes). On Hadrian s Wall examples show a small rectangular plan. A gateway in the wall, with watchtower over, permitted access into an area of offices and barrack quarters for up to abou...

Mile Fort

archaeologsOthers

Milazzo

Settlement site on the northeast coast of Sicily; it faces the Aeolian Islands and demonstrates close cultural connections with the prehistoric sequence on these islands (see Lipari). It was occupied throughout the Bronze Age. To the Middle Bronze Age Milazzese culture belongs a cemetery of pitho...

Mikulcice

A site situated on the River Morava in Czechoslovakia. It is a complex site with stratified deposits going back to the late 6th century, when it was one of the earliest Slavic fortified centres. This stronghold consisted of a central nucleus contained within a plank-built palisade, with an additi...

Mikhajlovka

[Mikhailovka, Mykhailivka]. settlement of the Late Neolithic and Bronze Age, located in the lower Dnieper Valley near Nikopol, Ukraine, USSR. Three main occupation horizons have been distinguished: I a Tripolye B2 settlement with shell-gritted, cord-impressed pottery of steppe origins; II a short...

Midrib

The raised midline which reinforces the blade of a bronze dagger.

Middle Missouri Tradition

One of the village-dwelling, farming traditions of the American Plains, based on the Missouri River drainage especially in the states of North and South Dakota. Although hunting and gathering were part of subsistence activities, the culture is characterized by a specially developed strain of cold...

Middle Horizon

One of seven periods within a chronological construction widely used in Peruvian archaeology. Dated ad 600-1000, it is characterized by the ascendancy of powerful regional states, especially Tiahuanaco and Huari. Although the decline of these two states was followed by a period of more localized ...

Middleburg

A town on the island of Wal-charan in the southwestern Netherlands, probably founded as one of the string of burhs intended to act as refuges for the Flemish population in the times of Viking raids. Those refuges were probably planned by Baldwin of Flanders in the 890s and at Middleburg and Soubu...

Micronesia

An ethnographic region comprising the Palau, Marianas, Caroline and Marshall Islands, and Kiribati [Gilbert Islands]. The Palaus and Marianas were probably settled from the Philippines after 2000 BC and each has a ceramic sequence throughout prehistory. The eastern groups, mainly atolls, were set...

Microlith

Very small stone tool made on a bladelet by the microburin technique. Microliths were produced in quantity at the end of the Palaeolithic period and especially in the Mesolithic. They were shaped by abrupt retouch into various shapes like triangles and crescents, and used for a variety of purpose...

Microburin

When a small bladelet is removed from a core it has an inconvenient thick butt end, which has to be removed before it can be made into a spear tip or barb. It is removed by making a notch and then snapping off the end, which is called a microburin. The name originates from the erroneous belief th...

Miaodigou

[Miao-ti-kou]. A Neolithic site in Shan Xian in the western comer of Henan province, China. The stratigraphy at Miaodigou was complicated but two main levels were distinguished. The lower level, Miao digou I, belongs to the Yangshao Neolithic; for this stratum a radiocarbon date of c3900 bc was o...

Miaodigou

archaeologsOthers

Mezin

An open-air site in the Desna valley of European Russia. It has a late Palaeolithic occupation, and art material with squared key pattern carving, in one case on an ivory wrist band.

Metate

The base and lower grinding surface of a two-part milling apparatus used in the preparation of plant food (the upper, movable part is the mano). Made from any suitably hard stone, it comes in a variety of shapes and sizes and is still used in many areas of the Americas. Mostly associated with the...

Metallurgy (China)

Quia (see Majiayao). Chinese metal working has yet to be established. The metal industry encountered towards the middle of the 2nd millennium bc at Erlitou, on the other hand, is clearly ancestral to the Shang and Zhou metalworking tradition, showing already the distinctive character that in the ...

Metallurgy (China)

archaeologsOthers

Metallurgy

See (China), silver, smelting, tin.

Metallurgical Analysis

The study of metals. Metal artefacts and the tools or waste products of their manufacture are examined to reconstruct working processes and the source of raw materials. This may be done by the various techniques of chemical analysis, or may involve metallographic examination under a microscope. I...

Metallographic Examination

Technique of involving the examination of metals under the metallurgical microscope. Samples are taken from metal artefacts, polished flat on one surface and examined under reflected light. This allows study of the crystalline structure of metals, and may yield information about manufacturing pro...

Metallographic Examination

archaeologsOthers

Metal Detector

Device used in electromagnetic surveying, specifically designed for the detection of buried metal objects.

Metal

The metals most commonly used in antiquity were copper and copper alloys (such as bronze), iron and steel, gold and silver, tin and lead were commonly used as constituents of alloys. See metallurgy.

Metal

archaeologsOthers

Mesopotamia

Greek name (literally ‘between the rivers’) for the land between the Tigris and Euphrates rivers, mainly within the borders of present-day Iraq. This land was the home of the world’s earliest civilization, that of the Sumerians, and of the later Babylonian and Assyrian civilizations. The chronolo...

Mesoamerica

A culture area originally defined on the basis of shared traits such as the developments of agriculture, urbanization and elaborate ceremonial practice. Centered on the modem states of Mexico, Guatemala, Belize and El Salvador, its northern borders are the deserts of Sinaloa, Durango and Tamaulip...

Mesa Verde

An area of Anasazi occupation in the northern San Juan region of southwest Colorado, USA. Major occupation began in c600 ad, and the population rose steadily until 1200, after which date came decline and total abandonment of the area by the end of the century. The defensive aspect of the Pueblo I...

Mersin

The tell of Yumuktepe in the coastal plain of Cilicia, southeast Turkey. The 24-metre deposit contained 33 major levels, starting with an Early Neolithic deposit dated c6000 be with dark-surfaced wares, some with impressed decoration, and ending with a medieval deposit dated to cl500 ad. A series...

Merovingian

This general name is usually applied to the Frankish rulers and their kingdom from the time of Childeric (d 481) until the middle of the 8th century. The name is derived from the mid-5th century Mero-vech, father of Childeric. The term is used to describe all the archaeological evidence from the ...

Merimde

An early village site of farming people on the southwest side of the Nile delta, inhabited late in the 5th millennium be, broadly contemporary with the Fayum Neolithic settlement. The oval houses were of insubstantial construction, but by contrast great care and expertise were devoted to the manu...

Merimde

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Merida

[Roman Augusta Emerita]. A flourishing and extensive Roman colonia in western Spain, capital of the province of Lusitania (roughly equivalent to modern Portugal). The town, on the right bank of the River Guadiana, was founded by the emperor Augustus in 25 bc for the settlement of veterans from th...

Mercia

The Anglo-Saxon kingdom of Mercia encompassed most of Central England, bordered by the Welsh Marches, East Anglia, Yorkshire, ancient Northumbria and Wessex, and defended by linear earthworks such as Wat’s and Offa’S dykes. The name is thought to be derived from Mierce meaning border folk. Rulers...

Menhir

Standing stone. Menhirs may occur singly, in rows (alignments) or in enclosures (stone circles). Anthropomorphic examples are known as statue-menhirs. Menhirs occur in all parts of the world where megalithic monuments are known, but they are particularly profuse in prehistoric Europe.

Memphis

An important Egyptian adminstra-tive centre at the head of the Nile Delta. It rose to prominence under the First Dynasty and was traditionally linked with the process of Egyptian unification (see Dynastic Egypt). Its major temple was dedicated to the god Ptah. At an early date Memphis saw a major...

Meluhha

Name appearing in Mesopotamian texts of the Akkadian and Ur III periods as a land with which the city states of Sumer were trading. The land is described as a source of gold and it is usually identified as the area of the Harappan civilization in western India and Pakistan.

Melos

One of the Cycladic islands in the southern Aegean Sea. The island was important in prehistory, because it possesses a source of obsidian which was exploited from the Mesolithic period onwards. A campaign of survey and excavation carried out in the 1970s has thrown much light on the prehistoric e...

Melanesia

An ethnographic region comprising New Guinea, the Bismarck Archipelago, the Solomons, Vanuatu, New Caledonia, Fui and minor intermediate groups. Early Australoid settlers reached New Guinea when it was joined to Australia, by at least 30,00040,000 years ago, and the New Guinea Highlands have a lo...

Mejiro

A rock shelter near Old Oyo, southwestern Nigeria, where a microlithic industry occurs, without associated pottery, in an undated context. This is one of relatively few presumed pre-pottery ‘Late Stone Age’ occurrences yet known in Nigeria.

Mcganthropus

Name given to a large-toothed hominid of uncertain (probably Middle Pleistocene) age, known only by mandible fragments from Sangiran, central Java, Indonesia. The remains could belong to members of a Homo erectus population. See

Mcganthropus

archaeologsOthers

Megalith

Meaning literally large stone (from the Greek megas, ‘large’, and lithos, ‘stone’), the term megalith is generally applied to monuments made of large stone slabs including chamber tombs, menhirs, It is CUStOmary to include also in a general category of megaliths monuments of similar type built no...

Medina

[ancient Yathrib]. An oasis town in western Saudi Arabia, 300 km from Mecca. It is venerated by all Muslims as the place to which the Prophet Mohammad fled from Mecca in 622. This event (the Hijra) marks the beginning of the Islamic era. Mohammad built himself a house consisting of a walled compo...

Medicine Lodge Creek

Deeply stratified site located in the Big Hom Mountains of Wyoming, USA, with a date range of c8000 be to historic times. Evidence of a diversified subsistence base of small game hunting and gathering occurs at a time when the Big Game Hunting tradition was still widely practised on the Great Pla...

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