Cacao

The crop from which chocolate, the favoured drink of the nobility of many Mesoamerican cultures, is produced. Because its production is limited by the environmental setting in which it will flourish (that is, tropical lowlands), cacao attained considerable importance as a luxury item in the econo...

archaeologsEnglishOthers

Bonfire Shelter

See Plano.

archaeologsEnglishOthers

Bowl Barrow

See barrow.

archaeologsEnglishOthers

Bylany

A large village settlement of the Bohemian regional group of the Linear pottery culture, located on the fertile loesslands of the Bohemian plain in Czechoslovakia. This 6.5-hectare site comprises timber-framed long houses from three main phases (2-4) of the Linear Pottery sequence. According to t...

archaeologsEnglishOthers

Bygland

A site in Norway where the grave of a Viking Age smith was discovered. The cremated remains were accompanied by an outstanding collection of 25 iron-working tools, as well as some of the craftsman’s products: these included swords, shield bosses and axes of mid-10th century date.

archaeologsEnglishOthers

Bygland

Bus Mordeh

See Ali Kosh.

archaeologsEnglishOthers

Bus Mordeh

Bush Barrow

Rich grave under a barrow, belonging to the Wessex culture of southern England. It contained a single male inhumation with grave goods, including a bronze axe, two bronze daggers of ‘Bush Barrow’ type, one of which had a hilt decorated with many tiny gold pins, a belthook and two lozenge-shaped p...

archaeologsEnglishOthers

Burzahom

A prehistoric site in Kashmir. Four phases of occupation have been identified, ranging in date from the 3rd-2nd millennium bc to the 3rd-4th centuries ad. Phase I is characterized by pit-dwellings, while Phase II has houses of mud and mudbrick, as well as burials of both humans and animals (dog, ...

archaeologsEnglishOthers

Burrill Lake Rock Shelter

A rock shelter situated on the southeast coast of New South Wales, Australia, with basal deposits dated to cl8,000 be. Stone artefacts in these Pleistocene levels included flake scrapers and dentated saws. At about 3000 be Bondi points and other tools of the Australian Small Tooltradition appeare...

archaeologsEnglishOthers

Burrill Lake Rock Shelter

Burnish

A polish given to the surface of a pottery vessel, usually with a bone or wooden implement, and carried out after drying but before firing. The purpose is usually to make the vessel less porous and more watertight, but burnishing is sometimes used for decorative purposes. For instance, areas are ...

archaeologsEnglishOthers

Burma

The history of the Irrawaddy basin is that of several peoples, the ethnic Burmans being only one of them. On their southward move from eastern Tibet they had been preceded by the Pyu, who had established a kingdom there as early as the 3rd century. The original historical inhabitants of Lower Bur...

archaeologsEnglishOthers

Burma

Burin

A kind of stone tool often made on a blade. At one end, slivers or spalls of stone have been removed to make a kind of chisel edge, probably used for carving antler and bone tools, as well as art objects. There are many kinds of burin and they are often multiple. Burins are typical of sites of th...

archaeologsEnglishOthers

Buried Soils

Soils may be buried by structures and deposits on archaeological sites. Such soils are frequently preserved under ramparts, barrows and other mounds, or buried within the fill of a ditch. Turves, and the upper horizons of the soil profile which may have been cut with them, can also be preserved w...

archaeologsEnglishOthers

Buried Soils

Burial Mound Period

The penultimate period of a chronological construction relating to the whole of eastern North American prehistory. Formulated in 1941 by J.A.Ford and Gordon Willey, the total chronology, from early to late, runs Paleo-Indian, Archaic, Burial Mound, Temple Mound. The Burial Mound Period is divided...

archaeologsEnglishOthers

Burh

A small fortified town, found in later Anglo-Saxon England, where the population could take refuge during times of threat. Burhs were established as a national system of defence in the later 9th century by King Alfred of Wessex in response to the persistent threat of Viking incursions. This defen...

archaeologsEnglishOthers

Burgaschi-See Sud

Lakeside settlement site of the Neolithic Cortaillod culture in Switzerland, dated to the mid-4th millennium BC. Like other Cortaillod sites, Burgaschi-See Sud has excellent preservation of organic remains. Unlike other sites of the period the fauna consisted of 90 per cent wild species, of which...

archaeologsEnglishOthers

Buret*

Site in southern Siberia near Lake Baikal, occupied in late Palaeolithic times, famous for some peg-like female figurines dressed apparently in fur suits.

archaeologsEnglishOthers

Buret*

Bulb Of Percussion

When a flake is removed from a core by striking with a hammer, the flake has a swelling adjacent to the point where it was hit, and spreading over part of the newly exposed flake surface. This is called the bulb of percussion and usually indicates human manufacture.

archaeologsEnglishOthers

Biikk

This mountain range in the north of Hungary gives its name to a Middle Neolithic regional group of the Alfold Linear pottery culture of the late 5th millennium be. The appreciable number of cave sites in upland locations indicates a seasonal focus on transhumance, as well as the exploitation of r...

archaeologsEnglishOthers

Biikk

Bukhara

A city in Soviet Central Asia, already an important town before the Arab conquest in 713. Bukhara flourished after the conquest, becoming the capital of the Samanid dynasty from 875 to 999. In 1220 the city was sacked by Chingiz Khan. The best-known monument is the Mausoleum of Ismael the Samanid...

archaeologsEnglishOthers

Buka

See Solomon Islands.

archaeologsEnglishOthers

Buka

Buhen

A fort on the west bank of the Nile, 260 km upstream of Aswan, erected during the Middle Kingdom (see Dynastic Egypt) to secure Egyptian control of trade in gold and other commodities during the military occupation of Nubia.

archaeologsEnglishOthers

Bug-Dniester

The names of these two river valleys in southwest European Russia define the distributiqn of a long-lived culture which developed throughout the 5th millennium be. Three phases are recognized: Early (Sokoletz), Middle (Samtcin) and Late (Savran). Each phase is typified by short-lived sites on the...

archaeologsEnglishOthers

Buccino

A group of sites within the comune of Buccino in southwest Italy. In the San Antonio area, a cemetery of six rock-cut tombs of the Copper Age Gaudo group, with radiocarbon dates of 2580-1970 bc (c3350-2500 bc) has been found. In the Tufariello area there is a settlement site of the Early Bronze A...

archaeologsEnglishOthers

Bucchero

Pottery fired so as to be grey throughout the fabric with a slight surface sheen. It was inspired by earlier near-eastern models, and occurs principally in Greekspeaking and Etruscan areas between the 8th and 5th centuries bc. Shapes vary greatly as do styles of decoration (incised, stamped and a...

archaeologsEnglishOthers

Bubanj-Hum

A poorly understood group dated to the late 4th to early 3rd millennia be in the Morava valley of eastern Yugoslavia. The eponymous site, on a gravel terrace of the Nisava river outside Nis, was excavated by Garasanin in the 1950s. Four main periods are recognized, after surface finds of the earl...

archaeologsEnglishOthers, Place Names

Bubanj-Hum

Brzesc Kujawski

A multi-focal site of the Lengyel culture located in the Blackearth region of Kujavia, central Poland, and dated to the early 4th millennium be. Brzesc Kujawski comprises a large settlement site of c60 trapezoidal long houses, smaller sites of one or more house clusters and a large flat inhumatio...

archaeologsEnglishOthers

Bryn Celli Ddu

Passage grave in Anglesey, Wales, under a cairn <50 metres in diameter. This tomb is linked to the Boyne culture by the decoration on the underside of the capstone; such decoration is rare outside Ireland, although it occurs on another Anglesey passage grave, at Barclodiad Y Gaw-res. Another dist...

archaeologsEnglishOthers

Bryn Celli Ddu

Bryggen

See Bergen.

archaeologsEnglishOthers

Bryggen

Bruniquel

A cave and a rock shelter at Bruniquel in the Tam department, southwest France, have revealed Magdalenian deposits, including the remains of two or three well-preserved skulls and skeletal parts, and mixed fragmentary remains of over a dozen more individuals. Carved bone and antler art objects ar...

archaeologsEnglishOthers

Brucato

See deserted medieval villages.

archaeologsEnglishOthers

Brucato

Brown Forest Soil

The type of soil which develops under mature deciduous woodland. Variants of the Brown Forest soil are thought to have covered most of the British Isles and temperate Europe under the great forests which existed during the middle of the present interglacial ( see Atlantic). The soil type is chara...

archaeologsEnglishOthers

Brown Forest Soil

Brorup Interstadial

An interstadial of the Weichselian cold stage. It has been dated by radiocarbon to between 63,000 and 61,000 bp, but this is at the extreme range of the technique (see radiocarbon dating) and it may be earlier.

archaeologsEnglishOthers

Brorup Interstadial

Brook Street

See Winchester.

archaeologsEnglishOthers

Brook Street

Bronzes (China)

See ritual vessels (China), bells (China), mirrors, drums (China).

archaeologsEnglishOthers