Others

Gilyak

Gilimanuk

An important burial site of perhaps the early 1st millennium in western Bali, Indonesia. The burial goods appear to be pre-Hindu/Buddhist, and include bronze and iron artefacts, beads, and a gold eye-cover of probable south Indian origin. Burials are primary, secondary or umed.

Gilgamesh

Heroic king of the ancient Mesopotamian city of Uruk who appears in a number of epic tales, collectively labelled the Epic of He is now thought to have been a real historical king belonging to the First Dynasty of Uruk (in the Early Dynastic III phase, c2650-2550 bc). The epics credit him with th...

Gibraltar

Cave sites on the island of Gibraltar in the western Mediterranean have revealed remains of Neanderthal man and stone tools. The first Neanderthal skull ever found came from Forbes Quarry, Gibraltar, in 1848. A second, juvenile, Neanderthal was found in 1926 at Devil’s Tower. A third cave reveale...

Giant’S Grave

Local name for the megalithic tombs of the island of Sardinia. The tombs are of gallery grave type, with curved facades and forecourts and are set in long cairns. They belong to the Nuraghic Bronze Age culture of the 2nd millennium be.

Giant’S Grave

Ghazni

Major pre-Islamic settlement in Afghanistan, the most spectacular remains of which are the Buddhist monastery at Tapa Sardar. In the Islamic period, it became the capital of the Ghaznavids, a dynasty of Turkish origin which ruled from 977-1186 and for a time controlled large parts of Afghanistan,...

Ghassul

A Palestinian site northeast of the Dead Sea, consisting of several low mounds. Four main occupation layers were revealed by excavation, all belonging to the Chalcolithic period of the 5th and early 4th millennia be. This site has given its name to the local Chalcolithic culture, which is known a...

Ghar-I Khar

[Donkey Cave]. A cave in the mountain zone of western Iran, occupied from the Middle Palaeolithic onwards. The Upper Palaeolithic industry is similar to the Baradostian at Shanidar Cave. The cave has also yielded a Neolithic level with pottery, probably associated with a foodproducing community. ...

Ghar-I Kamarband

[Belt Cave]. Cave situated near the southeast comer of the Caspian Sea in northern Iran. Occupation levels demonstrate settlement spanning the late Palaeolithic to early farming period (clO,000-5000 be). After c6000 be there is evidence of increasing concentration on caprines (sheep and goat) in ...

Gftar Dalam

Cave site in the south of the island of Malta which has given its name to the island’s earliest Neolithic phase, and indeed the earliest evidence of occupation of any kind. The culture, which is dated to the late 5th millennium be, is characterized by evidence of domesticated animals and cultivat...

Gftar Dalam

Ghana

Ancient Ghana, possibly the earliest, and certainly one of the most important of the early African sudanic states, is not to be confused with the modem republic of the same name, being centred in southern Mauritania and southwestern Mali between the upper reaches of the Rivers Niger and Senegal. ...

Gezer

An important Palestinian site northwest of Jerusalem. The results of excavations early this century have been clarified by new work in the 1960s and 1970s. The site was occupied from the Chalcolithic (5th millennium bc) to the Hellenistic period and perhaps as late as Byzantine times. The first f...

Geophysics

The physics of the earth. Many archaeological dating methods may be said to be based on geophysical principles. Geophysical methods are often used to investigate archaeological sites without (or prior to) excavation. Features of a buried site may change the physical properties of the earth. Elect...

Geometric Pottery (China)

Well-fired, stamp-impressed pottery characteristic of 2nd-millennium BC sites in south and southeastern China. The ‘Geometric pottery cultures’ seem to have grown out of local Neolithic predecessors; in and near Shanghai, for instance, Geometric pottery levels overlie Liangzhu remains. These cult...

Geometric Pottery (China)

Geometric

Used generally of any style of decoration that characteristically makes use only of ‘geometric’ shapes, such as circles, squares, triangles, lozenges and running linear patterns etc and, where it does admit human and animal figures, treats them also in a linear schematic way. In classical Greek a...

Geology

The study of the earth and its history. Geology’s aims overlap considerably with those of archaeology, particularly in the prehistoric periods. Even in later periods, the study of environmental archaeology could be described as the ‘geology of the Holocene’. Work on the stratigraphy of the Quater...

Geochronology

A geologically based chronology, into which archaeological events can be fitted. For example, Quaternary chronologies form the basis of Palaeolithic archaeology (see Tables 5-7, pages 418-20). Late Tertiary chronologies give a framework to hominid evolution. Geological chronologies are based on t...

Genoa

A major medieval port which competed with Venice, Pisa and Florence for the trade of the Mediterranean. Genoa’s importance dates back to Byzantine times, when it was a small fort. The medieval city wall enclosing a substantial area by the seashore probably dates to the 12th century, when the city...

Gelidonya

See Cape

De Geer

(1858-1943). Swedish scholar who developed the technique of dating by counting varves, first published in a paper of 1910 entitled ‘A Geochronology of the last 12,000 years’. Geieen. A settlement of the Neolithic Linear pottery culture in southern Holland, which has produced house types similar t...

De Geer

Gedi

Archaeologically, this is the most intensively excavated of the early towns of the East African coast; it does not, however, receive mention in any of the relevant written records. Located on a now abandoned site beside a tidal inlet south of Malindi, Kenya, Gedi was probably founded around 1300....

Gebal

[modem Gebail]. Ancient name of the east Mediterranean town known by the Greek name of Byblos.

Gebal

Gdansk

A city situated on the Vistula estuary in Poland, which evolved from the 12th century to become one of the most important trading centres of eastern Europe. The town controlled the overland timber trade and its access to the northern-flowing rivers gave good access to the Baltic. Some of the most...

Gavrinis

An early Neolithic passage grave on an island in the Gulf of Morbihan, Brittany. It is very elaborately decorated with pecked designs, mostly abstract, over most available surfaces.

Gaul

[Latin Gallia]. The Romans regarded France and Germany west of the Rhine as a unity, inhabited primarily by Galli. In 121 bc they annexed the southernmost strip as Gallia Transalpina. Caesar’s conquests (58-51 bc) and Augustus’s organization (30 bc-14 ad) resulted in four Gallic provinces: the so...

Gaudo

A cemetery site in Campania, southwest Italy, which has given its name to the local Copper Age culture of the 4th-3rd millennia bc. Gando sites are characterized by rock-cut tombs used for collective burial. Grave goods include abundant pottery — assymmetrical jars with strap handles sometimes ca...

Gatung’Ang’A

A site in the eastern highlands of Kenya which illustrates the Early Iron Age settlement of that region during the second half of the 1st millennium ad. The pottery shows similarities with Kwale ware and it seems probable that the Early Iron Age population of the eastern highlands derived from th...

Gatung’Ang’A

Garum

Many Romans greatly appreciated good cooking, and several writers mention a rich fish sauce (garon in Greek and garum in Latin) made from small fish, and a speciality of the provinces of Greece, North Africa and Spain.

Garum

Garstang

(1876-1956). Distinguished British archaeologist who worked for more than 30 years on prehistoric sites in Anatolia and the Levant. His excavations at Sakce Gözü, Jericho and Mersin made major contributions to the development of Near Eastern prehistory.

Garstang

Ganj Dareh Tepe

A small mound in the Kermanshah region of western Iran, which has yielded five occupation levels with radiocarbon dates ranging from 8400 to 6800 be. The lowest level had no permanent architecture, but only shallow pits and hollows. The next level, however, had mud-brick structures, mostly very s...

Ganj Dareh Tepe

Gangetic Hoards

Hoards of copper objects found in the Ganges basin in India. The main types of objects found are flat and shouldered axes, bar chisels, barbed harpoons, antenna-hilted swords and anthropomorphic objects. Associations with Ochre-coloured pottery suggest a date of the 2nd millennium bc. Most author...

Gangetic Hoards

Ganges Civilization

In the 7th-6th centuries bc the villages of the central Ganges and the Ganges-Jamuna Doab developed into true city-states, characterized by extensive urban settlement and a developed social organization. The states engaged in long struggles for power, which ended in the 4th century bc with the es...

Gandhara

An area on the northwest frontier of Pakistan which from the 6th century bc formed a satrapy of the Achaemenid (Persian) empire. Through this province Western influences, and perhaps actual craftsmen, reached India. Gandharan art reflects these Western (provincial Hellenistic) influences, alongsi...

Gallurus Oratory

A boat-shaped oratory situated on the Dingle peninsula in Co. Kerry, Ireland. Few examples of pre-11 th century Irish ecclesiastical architecture have survived, since most early Celtic monastic buildings were primitive constructions of timber or dry stone, but there are a few remaining beehive ce...

Gagarino

A late Palaeolithic site in the Don basin of European Russia. Mammoth hunters of this Kostenkian or east Gravet-tian group carved bone and ivory copiously, including female figurines of the ‘Venus’ type. Huts were also discovered.

Gades

[Phoenician Gadir, modem Spanish Cadiz]. City in southwest Spain. In antiquity Gades enjoyed great prosperity for more than a millenium as a commercial port. Tradition dates its foundation (by Phoenicians from Tyre) to 1100 bc, but a date in the 7th or 8th century bc is perhaps more plausible. Pr...

Funan

(probably a transcription of the Chinese rendering of the Old Khmer word for ‘mountain’). The first Indianized kingdom of Southeast Asia, founded in the 1st century ad in the lower valley of the Mekong in present Cambodia. According to legend it came into being as a result of the union of an Indi...

Fukui

A deep stratified rock shelter in Nagasaki prefecture on Kyushu, Japan. The unmistakable stone tools from the oldest layer, dated older than 31,900 years, are among the earliest convincing evidence of human occupation of Japan. Microblades appear in the last Palaeolithic layer, and continue in th...

Fu Hao

[Fu Hao]. A consort of Wu Ding, the fourth Shang king to rule at Anyang. Fu Hao is mentioned in many oracle bone texts. Her tomb, discovered at Anyang Xiaotun in 1976, is the only royal tomb of the Shang period found intact and the only one whose occupant could be identified: many bronzes from th...