Middle Palaeolithic cave in the Greater Caucasus of Georgia with two main cultural layers. Tools are scrapers and points and the newer assemblage has Levallois technique tools and blades.
The art of working metals. Various techniques include annealing, repoussé, cire perdue, cold-working, casting, forging, carburization, quenching, tempering, soldering, smelting, welding, and creation of alloys.
In pottery decoration, the roughening of the surface of a pot which may or may not have an applied slip. The roughening may be achieved using fingers, fingernails, twigs, etc., and though it may be pure decoration, in most cases it is probably a device to prevent a greasy pot slipping through the...
The melting and fusion of glassy minerals within clay during the high-temperature firing of pottery (above 1000 C), resulting in loss of porosity. It occurs when clay particles fuse together as glass - a process starting between 800-900 degrees C and completed at about 1200 degrees C.
Arabic term for building out of mud, especially mud mixed with straw that is applied to the top of the wall and allowed to dry before a further course is added.
The study of bones; a branch of anatomy dealing with bones.
A humanistic approach relying on ideational factors to explain archaeological findings, interpreting the past rather than testing hypotheses with scientific methods. The postprocessual paradigm sees change as arising from individuals' interactions within a symbolic or competitive system.
A Late Eneolithic (Copper Age) culture, a regional variant of the Baden group (southwestern Hungary), in southeast and central Europe in the 3rd millennium BC. Although some settlement sites are known, the majority of Pécel sites are cemeteries with cremation and inhumation burial.
A tool used for digging where the blade is at right angles to the handle.
The region containing the statistical population to be sampled, determined by the research question
A Copper Age tell in northeastern Bulgaria, dated to the mid-4th millennium BC, with many occupation levels. Eight levels have 10-15 complete houses densely packed within a triple palisade. Poljanica resembles a Roman fort in outward appearance and the name is also applied to the Early and Middle...
A lake in northeastern Irian Jaya, northern New Guinea, known for a range of tools and weapons of bronze and brass found in burial mounds. These artifacts are undated, but could represent a metallurgical industry established by Indonesian traders in recent centuries. New Guinea has no other ancie...
The site of one of the largest of the Maltese temple complexes, in southwest Malta. It contains three separate temples, constructed over a considerable period of time. The buildings have numerous altars of various shapes and a variety of niches and recesses. Many of the stones have pitted decorat...
Cave with Neolithic and Chalcolithic deposits in the Pyrenees Orientales, France. The cave is located halfway up a rock face and its Neolithic assemblage has simple globular vessels with tubular lug handles that fall between Early Neolithic cardial ware and Middle Neolithic Chasséen. The layer is...
A large late prehistoric or early historic moated site between Non Chai and Ban Chiang Hian in Khorat, Thailand.
Site in Upper Nubia, the successor to Kurru as the main royal pyramid cemetery of the Napatan kings of the mid-7th to early-3rd centuries BC. It is about 25 km southwest of the fourth Nile cataract and a few kilometers to the northeast of Napata (a principal political center of Kush/Cush). The la...
A movement which began in America in the 1960s, aimed at making archaeology more scientific, now more often called processual archaeology. It was suggested that explanations be based on carefully designed models of human behavior and emphasized the importance of understanding underlying cultural ...
A flake having no cortex.
Small stone tool made on a blade or bladelet and shaped like part of a circle; the backing is along a curved arc opposite a straight unretouched edge. It was hafted, possibly as a projectile tip or as part of a cutting tool. Segments occur in some sub-Saharan African Howiesons Poor and Later Ston...
Viking name for the part of North America visited by Leif Erikson (Eriksson) c 1000 AD, around L'Anse aux Meadows on the coast of Maine or eastern Canada.
Shell midden near Santarem, Brazil, with the oldest pottery in the New World - dated to the 8th millennium BP.
A disturbance of the soil surface by animals, especially by the burrowing and tunneling of gophers, mice, rabbits, etc.
Archaeologist who took over the early excavations at Pompeii, from 1860-1875, and was one of the first to apply the methods of stratigraphy and area excavation on a large scale. Through his training school at Pompeii he passed on his methods to many other archaeologists. He also developed a techn...
Eneolithic settlement of the Cucuteni-Tripolye culture in the Ukraine. Pit dwellings include hearths and female figurines.
The name for circular dry-stone towerlike structures built in Corsica (mainly in the south) during the Middle and Late Bronze Ages. They are typically of Cyclopean masonry and measure 10-15 meters in diameter and 3-7 meters in height; normally a narrow entrance opens into a central corbelled cham...
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