Others

Agate Basin

See Plano.

Afyeh

See Nubian Group.

Afyeh

African food-production

The beginnings of food-production in Africa have only been documented with any precision in relatively recent years. Formerly, it was generally believed that techniques of food-production had been introduced into Africa in a relatively developed form, their initiation and formative processes havi...

African food-production

Afrasiab

See Samarkand.

Afrasiab

Afontova Gora II

See Yenisei.

Afontova Gora II

Afalou

See Mechta-afalou.

Afalou

Aerial Photography

Technique that has proved to be one of the most successful methods of discovering archaeological sites. Large areas of ground can be covered quickly, and the ground plan of a new site can be plotted from the photographs. Accurate surveys can in fact be made by this method (see photogrammetry). Wh...

Adulis

Located on the Red Sea coast of Ethiopia, southeast of the modem port of Massawa, Adulis was the principal seaport of Axum, to which it was linked by a well-travelled trade route. There are indications that Adulis may have been established in Ptolemaic times and, indeed, it must be assumed that p...

Adobe

An American term for sun-dried mud

Adlerberg

Early Bronze Age group in southwest Germany, a variant of the Unétice culture. It is known mainly from a number of flat inhumation cemeteries such as that of Adlerberg itself. The dead were usually accompanied by fairly simple offerings such as copper and bronze daggers and pins, flint tools and ...

Adichanallur

See megaliths (India).

Adichanallur

Addaura

Cave in the Monte Pellegrino group near Palermo, Sicily, with engravings of the Upper Palaeolithic period. The main scene is dominated by human figures. Two in the centre are lying and seem to be bound, while figures round them seem to be masked and dancing: it may be an initiation or circumcisio...

Years ‘after the birth of Christ’ (Anno Domini). The" lower case ‘ad’ represents uncalibrated radiocarbon years; the capitals ad denote a calibrated radiocarbon date, or a date such as an historically derived one, that does not need calibration (see Table 8, page 422). There is no year 0: AD 1 is...

Acroterion

An end ornament or ornamental figure, mounted with plinth at any of the three comers of the pediment of a classical building.

Acoustic Vessels

From the 9th century large pots were cemented into bell-towers to help boost the chimes of the church bells. A fine 9th-century collection of painted Badorf wares, for example, was found in the church of Meschede in Westphalia, and larger reliefband amphorae were used in 10th- and 11th-century ch...

Acoustic Vessels

Acheulian

The term Epoque de St Acheul was introduced by de Mortillet in 1872 for a span of prehistoric time, the early part of the Palaeolithic period. This usage is still occasionally found today but after 1925 the idea of epochs began to be supplanted by that of cultures and culture traditions, and it i...

Acculturation

The adoption of traits characteristic of one culture by another.

Acapana

See Tiahuanaco.

Acapana

Acacus

Region of the central Sahara, in what is now southwestern Libya, noted for the presence of rock shelters with occupation deposits and rock paintings. Pottery was made in this region from about 7000 be: the earliest vessels include examples with the wavy-line decoration typical of the so-called ‘a...

Abu Shahraim

See Eridu.

Abu Shahraim

Absolute Pollen Counting

Pollen analysis may be carried out by determining the number of grains of each pollen type per unit weight (grains/gm) or unit volume (grains/cm3) of sample. This is called absolute pollen counting, and avoids some of the problems of PROPORTIONAL POLLEN COUNTING, although it is rather more time-c...

Abri Pataud

Rock shelter in the village of Les Eyzies in southwest France, hardly known until the major programme of excavation from 1956-64 under Professor H.L. Movius. This revealed 14 main culture layers with radiocarbon ages from <32,500 be at the bottom to cl9,000 be at the top, which now form the basis...

Abri

See rock shelter.

Abkan

Stone industry of southern Nubia, believed to have been the work of indigenous peoples who maintained trade contact with more southerly regions of the Nile Valley during the 4th millennium be. These folk were probably ancestral to the Nubian A Group.

Abejas

Abbey

A place where monks or nuns live, work and worship. The concept of monasticism originated in the Near East during the second half of the 4th century, spread to Byzantium, Greece, Italy and France, and seems to have developed independently in the sub-Roman Celtic regions of Britain. The Middle Age...

Abbeville

One of the key localities where it was first shown that man was of great antiquity. From 1836 onwards Boucher de Perthes found stone tools in the gravel pits here, and a succession of scholars, especially from England, recognized the significance of these discoveries around 1859. Subsequently, th...

Abbeville

Aachen

[Aix la Chapelle]. One of the finest groups of Carolingian buildings is the palace complex at Aachen, in particular the chapel built by Odo of Metz for the Emperor Charlemagne between 792 and 805. The chapel stood on one side of a large courtyard opposite the main palace buildings, and was entere...

Aardenburg

See Flemish Blackwares.

Aardenburg

Aachen

Tang

Bir alet veya silahın tabanından, onu bir sapa veya şafta sabitlemek için kullanılabilecek dar çıkıntı veya tırnak.

Herm

Üst kısmında bir büst ya da baş betimlemesi olan kare şeklindeki taş sütun heykel. Özellikle Hermes heykellerinde görülür.

Pfyn

Kuzeydoğu İsviçre'nin Orta Neolitik kültürü, birkaç göl konutu bulunmaktadır. Rhineland'ın Michelsberg kültürüyle ilgilidir. Çanak çömlek yuvarlak ve düz tabanlıydı ve ayrıca bakır nesneler ve potalar da vardır.

Pectoral

Göğsü kaplayan dekoratif ve/veya koruyucu bir plaka. Aynı zamanda göğsü kaplayan kesenin önünü oluşturan bir plakadır.

Acisculus

Roma'da inşaat ve taş ustaları tarafından kullanılan bir ucu sivri, küçük çekiç.

Faiyum

Nil'in bir kolundan su alan Mısır sahrasının verimli bir bölgesi. Neolitik dönemde önemliydi ve yalnızca Orta Krallık ve Greko-Romen döneminde gelişti.

Colluvium

Yerçekimi nedeniyle malzemenin aşağı doğru hareketiyle biriken tortu.