An ancient city between the Tigris and Euphrates rivers in northern Iraq, founded as a military outpost by the Arsacids (Parthians) during the 1st century BC. It soon became the center of the small state of Araba and an important caravan city. Temples were built for the Sumero-Akkadian god Nergal...
An Early Iron Age village site near modern Lusaka, Zambia, dated to about the 5th century AD, that gives its name to a tradition of the Chifumbaze complex. The elaborately decorated pottery is similar to that from contemporary Copperbelt sites. Iron-working was a major industry. A late phase, 9th...
A late Middle Palaeolithic culture of Moravia, Czechoslovakia, with artifacts including sidescrapers, endscrapers, bifacial foliates, denticulates, burins, and laurel-leaf points.
Sanskrit for 'City of Hunters', capital city of the ancient Hindu kingdom of Funan, which flourished from the 1st-6th century AD in an area that comprises modern Cambodia and Vietnam. It is 120 miles (190 km) from the mouth of the Mekong River, near a landform called Ba Hill in southern Cambodia.
The main writing material used by the scribes of early civilizations. Signs were impressed or inscribed on the soft clay, which was then dried in the sun. The ancient Sumerians, Babylonians, Assyrians, and Hittites wrote on tablets made from water-cleaned clay. A common form was a thin quadrilate...
The traditional capital of Moravia in the southeastern Czech Republic, which was inhabited in prehistoric times according to archaeological evidence. Important sites surround and are in the town, including a burial covered in red ochre, mammoth tusks, and ornaments, which has proven to be one of ...
Etruscan city just north of Rome, of south Etruria, destroyed by Rome in 396 BC. After some intermittent Bronze Age occupation, it was settled in the Villanovan period (9th century BC), occupying a large plateau. The 7th century BC saw early Etruscan chamber tombs, including some painted examples...
An Early Stone Age rock shelter located in the Cape Province of South Africa, about 150 km east of Cape Town. This site is one of the very few African caves to have preserved traces of Acheulian material. Later horizons include one containing an industry which has been variously attributed to the...
Any dating technique relying on the phenomenon of isotopal decay - analyzing the ratios of the principal isotopes. The analysis of isotopes - any of two or more species of atoms of a chemical element with the same atomic number and nearly identical chemical behavior but with differing atomic mass...
The technique of carving or decorating wood by use of an ax or hatchet.
A South American Indian settlement directed by Jesuit missionaries, existing as a Spanish colonial policy that brought dispersed Indian populations into mission settlements. The term also means the removal of mass from a stone.
A coastal settlement in Washington state occupied for c 1000 years by ancestors of the present-day Makah Indians; a prehistoric culture of the Northwest Coast tradition. Ozette suffered disaster two centuries ago when longhouses and individual dwellings were buried by mudslides and preserved in p...
A shrine, usually monolithic, in which the image of an Egyptian deity was kept, especially in temple sanctuaries. A small wooden naos was normally placed inside a monolithic one in hard stone; the latter are typical of the Late Period, and sometimes elaborately decorated. The largest naoi are tho...
Any of the various principles that archaeologists employ in the process of recovery, such as where and how to search for sites and how to excavate those sites.
A direction or relative position; a horizontal direction expressed in degrees east or west of a true or magnetic north or south direction.
Major anthropological subdivisions of the North American continent, characterized by relatively uniform environments and relatively similar cultures. It is a geographical region in which general cultural homogeneity is to be found, defined by ethnographically observed cultural similarities within...
A site in eastern Afghanistan north of Kabul which has been identified as Kapisa, the capital of several Indo-Greek rulers of the 3rd and 2nd centuries BC and the Kushan summer capital from the 1st century BC to 3rd century AD. It was important for its placement on the caravan route between India...
An Aceramic Neolithic site in Syria's Damascus basin, occupied c 7800-6600 BC. There is evidence of early farming (plant cultivation including barley, cereals, emmer wheat, lentils, peas, pulses).
A major archipelago in eastern Polynesia in the central South Pacific, divided into the Windward (Tahiti and Moorea) and Leeward (Raiatea, Huahine, Borabora, Tahaa, Maupiti). The islands were settled around 500 AD by Polynesians who developed a number of chiefdoms. The islands were first recorded...
Clothing, crowns, tattoos, head deformation, social attitudes, or even language that become established to set certain individuals apart from others in society.
A small container, typically with sloping sides and made from plastic or earthenware, used for growing a plant
The use of quantitative chemical techniques, such as neutron activation analysis or X-ray fluorescence spectrometry, for determining the elements present in a mineral in minor proportions. These methods are widely used in the identification of raw material sources for metal, clay, obsidian, etc. ...
Neolithic and Bronze Age settlement mound in Thessaly, Greece. The Final Neolithic is characterized by red, pink, and white pottery.
An igneous rock that is the volcanic equivalent of granite; a constituent element in Hoabinhian pebble tools.
Prehistoric cave site northwest of Kraków, southern Poland. There are Middle Palaeolithic assemblages of sidescrapers correlating to the end of the Middle Pleistocene, Last Interglacial, and Early Glacial. Upper Palaeolithic levels contain laurel-leaf points of the Jerzmanowician industry, with o...
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