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Goumia

A Minoan settlement in eastern Crete, interesting because, unlike most other Minoan sites, it is not dominated by a palace, but appears to be a civilian town with narrow curving streets and many small houses. There was a small palace here, constructed in the Middle Minoan period, but in the Late ...

EnglishPlace Names

Goumia

archaeologsPlace Names

Gourd

The cucurbit Lagenaria siceraria produces a large fruit with a hard rind which was widely used for containers in Africa, southern Asia, the Pacific Islands and the Americas. Attested in South America and Thailand (Spirit Cave) prior to 7000 be, the plant is perhaps the most widespread of all the ...

Goths

[Ostrogoth, Visigoth]. A group of Germanic tribes from the steppes of southeast Europe and southern Russia. In the 4th century food shortages and pressure from the Huns to their east caused the Goths to join other Barbarian tribes in attacks on the outlying Roman and Byzantine provinces. They com...

Gortyn

An important ancient Dorian Greek city in southern Crete, later to become capital of the Roman province of Crete and Cyren-aica. It is perhaps most famous for the Gortynian Law Code, a 5th or 6th century bc inscription incorporated by the Romans into the back wall of an odeum when this was being ...

EnglishAncient Cities

Gorods’Ke

The latest phase of the Cucuteni-Tripolye culture development (Tripolye C2) dated to the late 3rd millennium be and centred on Volhynia, northeast of the Carpathians. Most settlements are located on high plateaux above river valleys, with rich household assemblages of bone and stone work. Metal i...

Gorods’Ke

archaeologsOthers

Gornja Tuzla

Tell settlement of the StarCevo, Early and Late VinCa and Late Copper Age periods, located near a narrow valley in upland north Bosnia, Yugoslavia. Pottery typology and radiocarbon dates for levels VI (<4690 — Starcevo) and III (c3760-3630 be — Late Vinca) indicate sporadic occupation intersperse...

EnglishPlace Names

Gordion

[Gordium]. A city occupying the mound of Yasi Hüyük, 90 km west of Ankara in Turkey, capital of the Phrygian kingdom in the 8th century bc and sacked by Cimmerian nomads in 685 bc. Gordion occupied c8 hectares, surrounded by a massive mud-brick wall with a monumental gateway. The city w...

EnglishAncient Cities

Gordion

archaeologsAncient Cities

Go Mun

(1) The third phase of the Bronze Age of north Vietnam (bronze supérieur), dated clOOO-500 be and immediately preceding the classic Dong-Son phase. (2) A late site within the Phung-Nguyen culture.

EnglishPlace Names

Gomolava

A large, frequently occupied, site comprising two tells, formerly on an island in the Sava River in Srem, northern Yugoslavia. On both tells, the prehistoric sequence is broadly similar and divided into eight levels. Level I has Late VinCa houses and pits (on the south tell, a cemetery with coppe...

EnglishPlace Names

Gombe Point

[formerly known as Kalina Point]. A site overlooking the Congo River in Kinshasa, which has yielded a long series of stone industries best regarded as local variants of the Lupemban-Tshitolian sequence of west-central Africa. Although apparently stratified, the succession is now believed to have ...

Goltho

See deserted medieval villages,

Goltho

archaeologsOthers

Goljamo Delcevo

An important Neolithic and Copper Age site located 30 km inland from the Black Sea in northeast Bulgaria and comprising a tell settlement with adjoining cemetery. The tell, dated pre-4000 to 3600 be, has 16 occupation layers with many complete house-plans. All categories of find, even metal and e...

Gold

The most common source of ancient gold would have been nuggets or fine particles of native metal, not ore. Gold in this form usually occurs alloyed with other metals. To make pure gold, these impurities have to be removed by a complex refining process. In any case, the remarkable malleability of ...

Golasecca

Iron Age culture of Lombardy, northwest Italy, from the 9th century to the 1st century bc. A few defended hilltop settlements are known, but the culture is known mainly from its cemeteries of inumed cremations, containing tens, hundreds or sometimes, as at the type site, thousands of burials. Gra...

EnglishCultures

Gokstad Ship

Discovered in 1880 under a large tumulus near Oseberg on the Oslo Fjord, Norway, the Gokstad Ship is the most impressing Viking vessel ever found. Much of its original timber was preserved by the clay in which it was set. In the middle of the ship a special platform had been constructed to hold t...

Gokomere

A site in south-central Zimbabwe where Early Iron Age settlement is attested from the 5th century to the 7th century ad. Through its characteristic pottery, Gokomere ware, the site has given its name to the archae ological industry representing the Early Iron Age occupation of central and eastern...

Godin Tepe

Site on the Gamur Ab river system of western Iran, with a continuous occupation from the 6th millennium be to cl600 bc, when it was abandoned following an earthquake and not reoccupied for c800 years. Soundings to the earliest levels (Godin VII) revealed two building levels associated with straw-...

EnglishPlace Names

Go Bong

1) The earliest phase of the Bronze Age of north Vietnam ( bronze inférieur), with dates estimated at 2000-1500 be. 2) An early site within the Phung-Nguyen culture.

Go Bong

archaeologsOthers

Gobedra

A small rock shelter near Axum in northern Ethiopia which has yielded a stratified sequence of industries covering the last ten millennia be. The earliest occurrence was of large blades, replaced c8000 be by an industry dominated by backed microliths. Pottery first appeared at a level tentatively...

Gniezno

Town in Poland formally established during the 960s when Mieszko I united bands of Slavic tribes to form the Polish state. Excavations have been carried out on the earliest timber fortress with its impressive system of double defences. The old town has many interesting buildings including the cat...

Gnezdovo

Site outside Smolensk on the River Volga, where excavations have revealed one of the largest Viking Age gravefields known from Russia. Most of the grave mounds contained cremations associated with oval brooches and other objects dating from the 9th and 10th centuries. The burial area itself seems...

Gnezdovo

archaeologsOthers

Gloucester

[Roman Glevum]. A Roman colonia in southwest England founded officially under Nerva (96-98 ad). Some six years after the invasion of 43 ad and as part of their conquest of southern England, the Romans established a legionary fortress in this general area, although its precise location is uncertai...

Globular Amphora

Type of pottery vessel which has given its name to a Late Neolithic or Copper Age culture of the 3rd millennium be in much of Germany and Poland and extending into the western USSR. It is characterized by single burials, often in stone cists under barrows, usually accompanied by the characteristi...

EnglishAncient Pottery

Gleying

Waterlogging of soils. Gleying may result from a raised water table, or from drainage impedance within the soil profile; the latter condition occurs in some podzols. (labelled ‘Glastonbury style’), iron objects, including currency bars, and much bonework, mostly connected with the production of w...

Glaze

A glassy coating for pottery. Glazes are most commonly applied as a mixture of fine particles suspended in water, with which the pottery is coated. On firing, the particles fuse and as the pottery cools the material forms a glassy layer. A large variety of glazes may be used, varying in colour, t...

Glastonbury

(1) An Iron Age lake village on the Somerset Levels, southwest England, occupied from the 3rd century bc until the Roman period. Excavations between 1892 and 1907 were not of modem standard, but because of the excellent preservation conditions a great deal of information has been gained about the...

Glass Palace Chronicles

The Burmese Royal Chronicle of the 19th century, based on earlier versions. It relates events from the creation of the world, according to Buddhist cosmogony, to the early and later history of Burma up to the time of its final compilation.

Glass Palace Chronicles

archaeologsOthers

Glass (China)

Glass appeared in China far later than in the Near East and has played a comparatively minor role in Chinese material culture. High-fired glazes were known in China by about the 14th century BC (see Wucheng), and a few pale green glass beads have reportedly been found in 9th-8th century bc contex...

Glass (China)

archaeologsOthers

Glasinac

A valley in Bosnia, Yugoslavia, containing an estimated 20,000 graves, spanning the 10th to 1st centuries bc, including 25 groups of tumuli. Inhumation was the dominant rite and some graves were very richly equipped. Local sources of gold, silver, copper and iron were exploited, and the communiti...

Glanum

A settlement in southern France, some 24 km northeast of Arles, with three phases of occupation — native Ligurian, Hellenistic and Roman. It is likely that the dominant early association is that of religious shrine, dedicated perhaps to a healing deity. The Hellenistic phase still shows religious...

Glans Plumbea

[Latin: ‘lead acorn’]. A slug of lead, an item of hand ammunition in the Roman army. They were used in quantity and at high velocity (mostly by specialized corps of funditores, ‘slingsmen’) and as an alternative to stones. Both stone and lead missiles are found inscribed with epigrammatic wishes ...

EnglishTools, Weapons

Glans Plumbea

archaeologsTools, Weapons

Gladkaia I

Site in eastern Siberia which has yielded evidence of a Neolithic occupation (defined by the use of pottery rather than the practice of farming), dating probably to the 2nd millennium bc. The population of Gladkaia I lived by hunting and fishing, and used pottery and tools made of obsidian.

Glacial

[glaciation]. (1) Noun: Strictly, a glacial or glaciation is a period during which ice-sheets, ice-caps and glaciers grow. The term has also commonly been used to describe the periods of generally cold climate which occurred at intervals during the Quaternary period (see Tables 5-7, pages 418-20)...

Giza

The royal pyramid cemetery of the Fourth Dynasty of ancient Egypt (see Dynastic Egypt), near modem Cairo. Derived from earlier tomb types as seen at Saqqara, the Giza pyramids represent the peak of the concentration of resources on pharaonic funerary monuments. The largest pyramid, that of Khufu,...

EnglishRegions, Place Names

Giyan Tepe

A tell site in west-central Iran, whose long occupation sequence has yielded an important pottery typology spanning the period from the late 6th millennium be until the Iron Age. The latest phase belongs to the Assyrian period, when the site seems to have been an outpost of the empire.

EnglishPlace Names

Giyan Tepe

archaeologsPlace Names

Gilyak

See Okhotsk culture.

Gilyak

archaeologsOthers

Gilund

A site of the Banas culture in Rajasthan, western India. It was a substantial farming village, with four major phases of occupation. Pottery types include Black and Red ware and a fine black, red and white polychrome ware.

EnglishPlace Names

Gilimanuk

An important burial site of perhaps the early 1st millennium in western Bali, Indonesia. The burial goods appear to be pre-Hindu/Buddhist, and include bronze and iron artefacts, beads, and a gold eye-cover of probable south Indian origin. Burials are primary, secondary or umed.

Gilgamesh

Heroic king of the ancient Mesopotamian city of Uruk who appears in a number of epic tales, collectively labelled the Epic of He is now thought to have been a real historical king belonging to the First Dynasty of Uruk (in the Early Dynastic III phase, c2650-2550 bc). The epics credit him with th...

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