Crvena Stijena

A long-lived cave site in the karstlands of the southern Dinaric mountains, located in the Trebisnjica Valley 20 km inland from Dubrovnik, in Dalmatia, Yugoslavia. 31 levels have been distinguished in a 20-metre stratigraphy: XXXI-V, Palaeolithic, with deposits of the Mousterian and Upper Palaeol...

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Cruck

A simple, easily constructed form of timber-framed building, well known from the 13th century onwards and most commonly used for barns, farm buildings and dwellings. The distinguishing feature of the cruck, as opposed to box-frame construction, is that the essential longitudinal supports take the...

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Crucible

A vessel, usually of pottery, in which metal may be melted. This process may be carried out for extraction, alloying or casting.

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Crossbow

A bow made with a crossbow parallel to the arrow and operated by a mechanical trigger release. The crossbow appeared in China no later than the 4th century bc (some scholars say far earlier) and may be a Chinese invention. Cast-bronze trigger mechanisms are commonly found in late Eastern Zhou bur...

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Crop Marks

Variations in the colour or growth of a crop or other vegetation, shown on an aerial photograph, may reveal the buried walls, ditches and pits of an archaeological site. In particular, buried pits and ditches may retain moisture better than the surrounding subsoil, and during a dry spell plant gr...

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Crop Marks

Cromlech

Welsh term applied to all Megalithic tombs, sometimes used in France to apply to stone circles as well. The term is no longer used by archaeologists, but persists in popular usage in Wales.

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Cromerian

The Cromerian stage is a group of interglacial deposits of the Quaternary system in Britain. These deposits are stratified under Anglian glacial deposits and above an extensive sequence of earlier Quaternary deposits. The type site of the stage is at West Runton, Norfolk, but a number of other de...

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Cromagnon

A small cave at the edge of the village of Les Eyzies in the Dordogne, southwest France. In 1868 several skeletons were found here, resting on the Upper Palaeolithic levels. Their exact age is not well established, and might be anything in the range 28,000 to 10,000 be. Nevertheless, these finds ...

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Cromagnon

Crnolacka Bara

A three-level occupation site of the late StarCevo, early and late VinCa periods, located in the low foothills east of the middle Morava valley in Serbia, Yugoslavia. The site indicates repeated, intermittent occupation rather than continuous settlement of a preferred long-term site.

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Crnolacka Bara

Crickley Hill

Neolithic causewayed camp and Iron Age hillfort in Gloucestershire, southwest England. The Neolithic site was used for several centuries and the ditches and banks were refurbished several times. The final Neolithic phase had deeper quarry ditches and a rampart faced with drystone walling at the f...

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Crawford

(1886-1957). British archaeologist who made many contributions to the development of archaeology. Like Cyril Fox, Crawford brought a geographical approach to his studies; as Archaeological Officer of the Ordnance Survey, he was largely responsible for the high standard of mapping of archaeologica...

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Crawford

Crannog

Small artificial island constructed beside or in the middle of a lake, usually defended by a wooden palisade and supporting houses. Crannogs are confined to Ireland and Scotland; their origins are believed to go back to the pre-Roman Iron Age period, and on many of them occupation continued throu...

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Cracow

A city in western Poland, situated on the once-great trade route which ran across Europe to Byzantium in the early middle ages. Excavations have revealed that by the 10th century there was a well-established trading centre here, with a large fortified acropolis containing stone palaces and church...

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Cracow

Cozumel

An island located 16 km off the east coast of the northern Yucatan Peninsula in Mexico. Although its earliest artefacts date to c 1000 be, its major period of occupation was in the Post-Classic. Important as a redistribution centre in coastal trade networks, it was coincidentally a place of pilgr...

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Coveta De I’Or

A cave in eastern Spain near Valencia. An Early Neolithic level with impressed ware has produced remains of einkom, emmer and bread wheats, and naked barley, together with radiocarbon dates of the mid-5th millennium be. Large deep pottery jars may have been used for grain storage.

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Coveta De I’Or

Covalanas

An Upper Palaeolithic painted cave in the Cantabrian region of northern Spain. The style, including a finger-blob technique, suggests that it belongs to a primitive stage of cave art, possibly preceding the

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Coup De Poing

French name for the Palaeo-liithic tool type known in English as a hand axe.

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Coup De Poing

Counterscarp Bank

Low bank found on the outer side of a defensive ditch, most of the material from which has gone into the main bank on the inner side. The purpose of counterscarp banks is unclear, since they do not enhance the defensive value of the earthwork; they may have served to provide visual emphasis for t...

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Cotton

Plants of the genus Gossypium, cultivated for their hairy flowering heads, from which come fibres widely used in textiles. There are some 30 diploid (with two sets of chromosones) members of the genus — all of which originated in the Old World — and 4 tetrapioid (four sets of chromosones) species...

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Cotte De St Brelade

A cave with Palaeolithic occupation in the granite of St Brelade’s Bay, Jersey. A* long sequence of Mousterian levels is known, and beach deposits possibly of last interglacial date intervene in the sequence, suggesting a pre-Mousterian age for the first occupation levels. Human remains include l...

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Cotte De St Brelade

Cofofeni

Eponymous site of a widespread Late Copper Age culture distributed over most of Rumania and dated to the 3rd millennium be. The preponderance of sites are small, short-lived settlements with an altitudinal range from the lowest Danube flood plain to high mountain plateaux. Seasonality and presuma...

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Cofofeni

Cosa

[Modern Ansedonia]. A town on the west coast of Italy, some 140 km north of Rome. Cosa was a Latin colony, founded on a coastal crag in 273 BC to confirm Roman domination in an area that was still felt to be too strongly Etruscan. The fate of Etruscan Cusi (from which the Roman name derives) is o...

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Cortes De Navarra

A settlement site in the Ebro valley, northern Spain, occupied during the 1st millennium bc. The site is really a tell, as the building material used was mud-brick and successive rebuildings raised the level of the site. The houses were rectangular and arranged in rows. The cultural material is s...

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Correlation

(1) In statistics, correlation means the degree of relation between variables. Correlations between pairs of variables may be calculated using a correlation coefficient. Multivariate techniques for assessing correlation also exist. (2) In geology, the term correlation refers to the relation of on...

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Corinthian

In traditional classical archaeology, used principally of: (1) an important stage of Greek vase-painting, notably the Proto-Corinthian and Corinthian schools of c720-550 bc, to which may be attributed perhaps the invention of Blackfigure technique, and some new shapes, such as the graceful arybal...

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Corinthian

Core

Any lump or nodule of stone from which flakes have been intentionally removed. Frequently, cores are of special types, shaped to facilitate the removal of particular blanks like blades or bladelets, or large oval flakes with a sharp edge all round.The most distinctive cores of the last-mentioned ...

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Coprolite

Fossilized animal droppings. These are preserved on a variety of archaeological sites, coming from a whole range of animals, including man. The contents can be analysed and food plants, animals and palasites identified.

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Coppergate

See York.

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Coppergate

Copper Age

Another term for Chalcolithic. See also Three Age System.

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Copper

A relatively soft metal, which can be cold worked and melts at a low enough temperature to be cast using the technology available in antiquity. The metal occurs, rarely, as nuggets of native copper; it is in this form that it was first worked by man. More frequently, copper is obtained from ores....

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Coppa Nevigata

A site on the coast of southeast Italy. The first occupation was by a community of shellfish-gatherers, who have left us no trace of other economic activities, though these may well have been practised; they used impressed ware and a specialized microlithic flint industry, and may have been prese...

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Copan

An important Classic Period centre of the Southern Maya located in western Honduras on the Rio Copan, a tributary of the Rio Motagua. Although it is a ceremonial centre of massive proportions, including temple-PYRAMiDS, plazas and a ball court, Copan is best known for its ornate stone carving. 20...

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Copan

Coombe Rock

Periglacial deposit that results from solifluction (see periglacial).

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Coombe Rock

Cook Islands

An extensive island group in the central Pacific, settled by Polynesians about 1000 to 1500 years ago. Archaeological excavations have been undertaken on Rarotonga, Aitutaki and Penrhyn, and many islands of the group have well-preserved examples of Polynesian temples (marae).

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Cook

(1728-79). From 1769 until his death in the Hawaiian Islands in 1779, the great English navigator made three voyages of exploration in the Pacific and made many discoveries in Polynesia and Australia. Cook was not the first European to discover most of the islands he visited, but his accounts of ...

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Cook

Contamination

In general, the term contamination is applied to samples of archaeological deposits or materials which have been affected by contact with other matter. In particular the term is often applied to samples taken for radiocarbon dating which have been affected by their environment. For instance, they...

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