Others - Archaeologs

Others

Discover other things about archaeology.

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Animal Style

Term coined by Rostovtzeff to describe the horse-trappings and personal regalia of the nomads who inhabited the Eurasian steppes in the 1st millennium bc. The animal themes that dominate this art are treated with widely varying degrees of conventionalization, stylization or abstraction. With a fe...

Anglo-Saxon Chronicle

Compilation of annals, believed to have been initiated around 870, during the reign of Alfred. The major part was completed by 891, but further accounts were added up until the 12th century. The annals were probably composed in English in the monasteries of Abingdon, Canterbury, Peterborough, Win...

Anglian

Group of British Quaternary glacial deposits, mainly found in East Anglia; isolated patches of glacial deposits exist elsewhere in Britain which may possibly be correlated with the Anglian. The exact age of the Anglian sediment is unknown, but they are older than the extreme range of radiocarbon ...

Angles-sur-l"Anglin

The Roc aux Sourciers at Angles, in the Vienne department, west central France, is a rock shelter with Upper Palaeolithic art. The back wall has fine bas-relief carvings: an outstanding frieze of three female figures in frontal view dominates the shelter, and there are several animal carvings, Th...

Angles-sur-l"Anglin

archaeologsOthers

Angkor Wat

[Khmer: ‘the capital (which has become a Buddhist) monastery’]. The best-known monument of Angkor, supposed to be the largest religious structure in the world. Built under king Suryavarman II (1113-1150) as his temple-mountain, it was completed in about 25 years. Situated in an enclosure of 1.5 b...

Angkor Thom

[Khmer: ‘the big capital’]. City situated in the northwestern part of the plain of Angkor. It was the capital of the Khmer empire intermittently from the 11th century onward, notably during the reign of king Jayavarman VII (1181-cl218) who surrounded it with walls and moats of 4 by 4 km and built...

Angkor Borei

[from Sanskrit puri: ‘sacred city’]. The capital of the kingdom of Funan, in the southern part of the Indochinese Peninsula, for some time towards the end of this kingdom in the 6th century. It appears as Na-fu-na in Chinese chronicles, which can be identified with Naravaranagara, and is now a ri...

Angkor

[from Sanskrit nagara". ‘royal city, the capital’]. A complex of more than 250 monuments, dating from the 9th to the 13th century and built almost exclusively in sandstone, on a plain just north of the present town of Siem Reap in northwestern Cambodia. Here were the capitals of the Khmer empire ...

Anghelu Ruju

Cemetery site in northwest Sardinia of the Ozieri Copper Age culture. It contained 36 rock-cut tombs, some very elaborate in plan; some were decorated with carved bulls’ heads. They were used for multiple burials and yielded copper and silver objects as well as Ozieri and Beaker pottery.

Ang-Ang-Hsi

Group of Neolithic sites in Manchuria, showing strong connections with the Novopetrovka and Gromatukha cultures of the Middle Amur in eastern Siberia, especially in lithic technology. Abundant animal, fish and mollusc remains occur on these sites.

Andrai

(1875-1956). German scholar who excavated the major Mesopotamian city of Assur between 1903 and 1914. These excavations were of very high quality for that period. As well as exposing the major buildings of the Assyrian city, they excavated a sounding beneath the great Temple of Ishtar to expose a...

Andrai

archaeologsOthers

Andersson

(1874-1960). Swedish geologist who worked in China in the second and third decades of this century. His most important excavations were on sites of the Yangshao Neolithic culture, including the type site and other sites of the same culture farther west in Kansu. He was also the first excavator in...

Andersson

archaeologsOthers

Ancon Yacht Club

See Encanto.

Ancon Yacht Club

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Anau

Site consisting of two separate tells in the Kara Kum desert of southern Turkmenia, Soviet Central Asia, first excavated in the 1880s and again in 1904. It has given its name to a Chalcolithic culture of the 5th millennium bc, which has been recognized on a number of tell sites. Characteristic ma...

Anasazi

One of three major cultural traditions in the American Southwest which engaged in sedentary agriculture (see also Hohokam and Mogollon). The core area is on the plateau where the borders of New Mexico, Arizona, Utah and Colorado meet (also known as Four Corners). The generally accepted chronologi...

Ananatuba

See Marajo Island sites.

Ananatuba

archaeologsOthers

Amuq

Plain in northern Syria near the Turkish border east of Antioch. The plain is rich in tell settlements of the prehistoric and later periods. Excavations at Tell Judeidah and other sites by the Oriental Institute of Chicago University in the 1930s established the basic prehistoric sequence for the...

Amud

[Amudian]. A valley close to the Sea of Galilee which contains several important caves. Emireh Cave is the type site of the Emiran. Zuttiyeh Cave is the type site of the Amudian, supposed to be an early occurrence of Upper Palaeolithic blade tools earlier than the Mousterian and its flake tools. ...

Amud

archaeologsOthers

Amratian

See Predynastic Egypt.

Ampurias

[Roman Emporiae, from the Greek emporion: ‘market’]. A trading and staging post some 40 km northeast of presentday Gerona, in the Gulf of Rosas, Costa Brava, Spain, founded by Greeks from Massalia [now Marseilles] in the early 6th century bc. Ampurias was probably at its most prosperous in the 5t...

Amphitheatre

A characteristically Roman development of ideas derived from the classic Greek theatre and stadium, the amphitheatre is a large-scale construct with tiers of seats rising from a central space, usually an oval. Designed for events of spectacular complexity, the amphitheatre reveals two typically R...

Amersfoot interstadial

An interstadial of the Weichselian cold stage. It has been dated by radiocarbon to between 68,000 and 65,000 bp, but this is at the extreme range of the technique (see radiocarbon dating) and it may be earlier.

Amersfoot interstadial

archaeologsOthers

Ambrona

One of a pair of Lower Palaeolithic sites (sccTorralba) in the province of Soria, central Spain. First discovered by the Marques de Cerralbo before World War I, Ambrona was extensively excavated in the early 1960s. The occupants hunted mainly elephants of the species Elephas antiquus and also dee...

Amber

Fossilized resin. It is soft and easily carved into jewellery and other artefacts. Amber is normally yellow or orange and transparent, but may be clouded due to the presence of many tiny air bubbles. The main source of European amber is as nodular fragments in the Tertiary sand deposits of Prussi...

AI ‘Ubaid

See Ubaid.

AI ‘Ubaid

archaeologsOthers

Alton Ha

A moderately sized Classic Maya site, located 10 km inland from the coast of Belize [formerly British Honduras], It is best known for its numerous caches of obsidian and jade and other rich exotic material including the largest piece of worked jade in Mesoamerica — a 4.5 kg head of the Maya sun g...

Alton Ha

archaeologsOthers

Altin-Depe

A large Chalcolithic and Bronze Age settlement in southern Turkmenia, Soviet Central Asia, similar in nature and history to Namazga-Depe. In its urban (Namazga V) phase of the early 2nd millennium bc (later 3rd millennium bc), it was smaller in size than Namazga-depe itself, covering c45 hectares...

Altar De Sacrificios

Lowland Maya site located at the junction of the Pasion and Chixoy Rivers in the southwest Peten province of Guatemala. Its earliest remains (Xe pottery) date to 1000 bc, the Middle Pre-Classic. The beginnings of formal architecture (a ceremonial precinct of three thatch-and-pole buildings on pac...

Altai

Mountainous region of southern Siberia which has yielded important prehistoric remains. As well as some possible Palaeolithic deposits at Ulalinka Creek, a late glacial occupation is documented on a number of sites including the Ust’Kanskaia Cave. Food-producing cultures appeared probably in the ...

Alsónémedi

Large cremation cemetery of the Hungarian earlier Bronze Age Nagyrév group, located 30 km south of Budapest, is found near the same village as a large inhumation cemetery of the Late Copper Age Baden culture. The Baden graves yielded cart burials and paired oxen burials, indicating the importance...

Alphabet

See writing.

Alpera

The Cueva Vieja at Alpera, southeast Spain, has a fine panel of paintings over the back wall of its shallow rock shelter. They belong to the Spanish Levant cycle, probably of the Mesolithic period between about 8000 be and 5000 be. The humans include a group of women and some hunters or warriors ...

Almizaraque

A settlement site in Almeria, southeast Spain, belonging to the Copper Age Los Millares culture. Houses, oval in plan and with traces of plaster, were surrounded by a ditch. Nearby was a megalithic tomb, similar to those of Los Millares. The site, which was formerly thought to represent one of a ...

Al Mina

Site on the coast of Syria near the mouth of the Orontes River. It was at least in part a Greek settlement established from Euboea before the end of the 9th century bc and probably called Posideion. It was an entrepot site, and excavated buildings were all probably warehouses, built to a standard...

Alloy

A mixture of metals. Alloys containing only two major metals are known as binary alloys, those with three major constituents as ternary alloys. Bronze is a binary alloy of copper and tin; brass a binary alloy of copper and zinc. Alloys are not simple mixtures but complex crystalline structures wh...

Altered interstadial

An interstadial of the Weichselian cold stage. It is dated to between 11,800 and 11,000 bp.

Altered interstadial

archaeologsOthers

Allen

(d. 1940). One of the pioneers of aerial photography between the two World Wars. Piloting his own aircraft and operating a hand-made camera, he took many thousands of aerial photographs, mostly in southern England. He emphasized the value of oblique aerial photographs, as opposed to the vertical ...

Allen

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All Cannings Cross

An important site of the Early Iron Age in Wiltshire, southern England. Within this open settlement were rectangular-built houses and evidence of iron smelting. It is noted especially for its fine haematite-coated bowls with horizontal furrows above the carinations. In the earlier, diffusionist, ...

Alignment

Term referring to single or multiple rows of standing stones (menhirs). They occur most frequently in Brittany (see Carnac) and in the British Isles, where they are often found in association with stone circles or henge monuments. Other exam ples occur in Corsica. Very little dating evidence has ...

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