Others - Archaeologs

Others

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Recently Added: Others

Medemblik

[formerly Medemelach]. The present town of Medemblik is situated on the Zuyder Zee. A monastery is known to have existed at Medemblik from Carolingian times up to the later medieval period, while occupation material suggests that there was an ancillary settlement from the later Meroving ian era d...

Mechta-Afalou

The name given to a human physical type represented in the archaeological record of the Maghreb, especially on Iberomaurusian sites. Cemeteries such as those at Columnata and Afalou bou Rhummel have yielded large numbers of skeletons, with the result that the physical parameters of the population...

Meare

A lakeside village of the Iron Age on the Somerset Levels in southwest England, which has produced evidence similar to that from the nearby site of Glastonbury. The settlement consisted of about 40 round houses built on dessicated peat and with timber and brushwood floors. It was surrounded by a ...

Mean Ceramic Dating

Method devised by Stanley South for arriving at the mean date of occupation of American Colonial sites. It is especially applicable to 18th-century sites, where many distinctive ceramic types may be expected to occur in large numbers. The mean ceramic date is found by multiplying the sum of the m...

Mean

A measure of central tendency in a distribution. The arithmetic mean is the sum of all values, divided by the number of cases. Other measures of central tendency include the mode — the most commonly occurring value — and the median — the value in the middle of the distribution’s range.

Meadowcroft Rock Shelter

Stratified site of long occupation, located 80 km southwest of Pittsburgh near Avella, Pennsylvania. Occupation extends from at least 14,000 be to historic times. Charcoal samples in the lowest stratum have yielded dates in the range 35,000 to 19,500 be, although there was no association with cul...

Meadowcroft Rock Shelter

archaeologsOthers

Mazapan

Ceramic style developing out of Coyotlatelco and first appearing in association with major architecture at Tula, Mexico. A red or orange-on-buff painted ware usually decorated with parallel wavy lines on the inside, it is considered a marker of Toltec culture.

Mazapan

archaeologsOthers

Mawangdui

[Ma-wang-tui]. A site in Hunan province, China, on the outskirts of Changsha. Three early Han tombs were excavated here in 1972-3. Tomb No. 2 belonged to the first marquis of Dai (d. 186 bc), a high official of the Han administration. Nos. 3 and 1 are apparently the tombs of his son (d. 168 bc) a...

Mauryas

An Indian dynasty which established an empire which flourished from the 4th to the 2nd century bc. The first Mauryan leader, Chandragupta, king of Magadha, was responsible for driving the Greeks out of India; his grandson Asoka who reigned from c270-232 bc is the ruler about whom most is known. A...

Mauryas

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Maupiti Burial Site

An early Eastern Polynesian burial site on Maupiti, Society Islands, dated ad 800-1200. Grave goods (adzes, pendants, fishing gear) are paralleled in the Marquesas (at Hane), New Zealand (at Wairau Bar) and elsewhere in the Society Islands on Vaito’OTIA (at Huahine).

Mauna Kea

The highest mountain in Polynesia, Mauna Kea on Hawaii Island is a dormant volcano, 4204 metres high, with very extensive prehistoric basalt adze quarries, mostly between 3350 and 3800 metres above sea level. The sites include workshops, rock shelters, stone-walled enclosures and shrines; radioca...

Mauern

The Weinberg caves at Mauem in Bavaria, southern Germany, have revealed two Mousterian levels, the upper one with abundant leaf points. Above these is an Upper Palaeolithic level. A female figurine has also been found.

Mauer

The lower jaw found in a sand pit at Mauer near Heidelberg, southern Germany, in 1907 was the first of the pre-Neanderthal fossils to be found in Europe. Although it dates from perhaps 400,000 years ago, it is not very different from the Neanderthals of c50,000 years ago. The teeth are similarly ...

Mauer

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Matupi

Cave at Mount Hogo, in the Ituri forest of northeastern Zaire, containing a long sequence of predominantly microlithic stone industries extending back to c40,000 be; the appearance of true backed microliths is dated prior to 19,000 be. The site is important both in indicating early settlement of ...

Matola

An Early Iron Age site near Maputo on the coast of southern Mozambique. The pottery recovered there is remarkably similar to that from Kwale near the Kenya coast far to the north. Despite the great geographical separation of the two areas, it seems plausible to suggest that there may have been an...

Mathura

An important religious and commercial centre in the Ganges Valley, India, in the post-MAURYAN period. A distinctively Indian art style developed here, showing contacts with Gandhara. Images of the Buddha appear from the 1st century ad; the image is always stylized and shpwn larger than other figu...

Mathura

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Matera

A town in southeast Italy which has a large number of Neolithic sites in the vicinity. Some of these are caves (e.g. the Grotta dei Pipistrelli) but many are ditched villages, such as Murgecchia and Murgia Timone. Matera has given its name to a type of Middle Neolithic pottery, decorated with inc...

Matarrubilla

Large passage grave near Seville in southern Spain, built in the Copper Age. The tomb was built mainly of dry stone walling and the chamber was roofed with a corbelled vault. A number of crouched inhumations were discovered, with rich grave goods including an ivory necklace and a clay sandal.

Mataram

A dynasty founded by king Sanjaya in the 8th century in the southern part of central Java, Indonesia. The name was applied retrospectively to the kingdom of Sanjaya in the 10th century, as the official name of the country which united the centre and the east of the island under the same authority...

Masada

A hilltop desert fortress beside the western bank of the Dead Sea. It was built by Herod in the 1st century bc as a stronghold against the Parthians and was destroyed in ad 70 by the Romans after a last stand by the Zealots of the First Jewish Rebellion. Most of the excavated remains are the buil...

Mary Rose

Tudor warship, the flagship of Henry VIII’s fleet, which sank in the Solent, off the south coast of England, on its maiden voyage in 1545. The exploration, excavation and recovery of this ship is the largest underwater archaeology project ever undertaken. By the time the ship was raised from the ...

Marseilles

[Greek Massalia; Roman Massilia]. Situated at the Bouches-du-Rhône in the south of France, the city was an important Mediterranean port from the end of the 7th century bc and throughout antiquity. The traditional date of foundation, by Phocaean settlers, is put at about 600 BC. With their excelle...

Marrakesh

A city built on a fertile plain at the foot of the High Atlas in Morocco. Marrakesh was the capital of two dynasties with possessions on both sides of the Strait of Gibraltar: the Almoravids (1061-1147) and the Almo-hads (1147-1248). The Almoravids were nomadic Sanhaja berbers from Mauretania. Th...

Marquesas Islands

An island group of Eastern Polynesia, first settled c300 ad, and perhaps the first group to be settled in Eastern Polynesia. See Hane, Puamau, Taipivai.

Maros Points

Small hollow-based stone projectile points, often with serrated edgeretouch, characteristic of a mature phase of the Toalian industry of southwestern Sulawesi (<4000 bc into the 1st millennium bc). See Toalian, Leang Burung, Ulu Leang....

Maros Points

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Marnians

Name formerly given to the regional La T₺ne Iron Age group found in the Mame Valley of northern France and thought to represent a group which invaded Britain in the 3rd and 2nd centuries bc. The view is generally rejected today, although there were certainly close connections between Iron Age gro...

Marnians

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Markkleeberg

A site just outside Leipzig in East Germany, where gravel pits have revealed gravels earlier than the Saale ice maximum advance in the region. They contain a cold-indicating fauna of early penultimate glacial date and numerous stone artefacts, especially Levallois flakes.

Markkleeberg

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Mariette

(1821-88). Starting his career in the Louvre, Mariette spent most of his life in Egypt, where he became head of the new Egyptian Antiquities Service in 1858. He excavated many of the most important sites of ancient Egypt, and although his excavations were carried out according to the unsystematic...

Mariette

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Marianas Islands

An island group in western Micronesia. Excavations have revealed a sequence starting with settlement cl500 be, perhaps from the Philippines (Marianas Redware Phase), and continuing after AD 800 with settings of large coral limestone pillars in double parallel rows (latte), which presumably served...

Mari

[modem Tell Hariri]. Situated on the middle Euphrates River in Syria, Mari was a wealthy and powerful city in the 3rd and early 2nd millennium bc. The city probably dates back to the Early Dynastic II period and was occupied until its final destruction by Hammurabi in 1757 bc on the Middle Chrono...

Inarching Camp

Usually refers to a Roman temporary military camp. The Roman army on the move had a systematic procedure for overnight and short-stay stops. Surveyors laid out a suitable and reasonably flat rectangular site, tent positions were planned and marked, and a ditch and low rampart were quickly dug, us...

Inarching Camp

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Marca Huamachuco

An important regional centre located in the northern highlands of Peru near the ruins of Viracocha Pampa. The site consists of a complex of circular and rectangular multi-storey buildings in cut stone (10-metre high walls still stand) and is surrounded by a stone wall 1 km long and 4 metres high....

Marathon

A coastal plain on the northeast coast of Attica and, under classical Athens, location of a deme (subordinate township). The area shows evidence for some kind of occupation from Neolithic times, through Helladic, continuously to Classical. The area gains most fame as site for the Battle of Marath...

Marajo Island Sites

A number of sites on an island group located in the mouth of the Amazon River, which evidence a long sequence of ceramic use. A single radiocarbon date of c980 be relates to the earliest Anana-tuba phase which has relatively deep shell middens that imply a long-term stable residence unusual for t...

Marajo Island Sites

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Marae

Stone temple of Eastern Polynesia, usually consisting of a stone platform [ahu] in a walled, paved or terraced court. The word marae (or malae) also refers to an open space within a village in Tonga, Samoa and New Zealand. Marae comprise important archaeological remains in Easter Island (here cal...

Mapungubwe

An Iron Age hilltop site in the Limpopo Valley, northern Transvaal, South Africa. The material from the earliest levels is very similar to that from the nearby site of Bambandyanalo. Later developments in the 14th and 15th centuries ad included finer pottery, evidence for the spinning of cotton, ...

Maoris

The Polynesian native people of New Zealand, whose ancestors arrived about ad 900 from central Polynesia, (possibly from Cook Islands, or Society Islands). See New Zealand.

Manor

The focal point of the feudal societies that developed throughout Western Europe from the 8th and 9th centuries. The manor reflects the emphasis upon landholding in feudal society, and the relation of the village workforce to the lord who owned the manor. Very few manors have been excavated. The ...

Mano

Hand-held stone implement, used throughout the Americas for milling, grinding or pounding operations. Most often used in conjunction with a metate, it is a hallmark artefact in defining the economic or subsistence base of prehistoric societies. Its forms vary considerably, from a barely modified ...

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