Search - Archaeologs

Browse by Letters

We try our best to keep the ads from getting in your way. If you'd like to show your support, you can use Patreon or Buy Me a Coffee.

Recently Added

Florisbad

A spring deposit in the Orange Free State, South Africa, which preserved a human cranium attributed to an early form of modern man, Homo sapiens sapiens. Its brow ridges, while pronounced, are markedly less prominent than those of the (presumably earlier) skull from Broken Hill in Zambia. The Flo...

Florentine Valley

See Tasmania.

Florentine Valley

archaeologsOthers

Florence

[Roman Florentia, modem Italian Firenze]. City in Tuscany, central Italy, a rich and important town since later Roman imperial times. Little is known of earlier settlement on this favourable site on the junction of the Arno and the Mignone, but recently discovered Villanovan material suggests occ...

Flood

‘Flood stories’ appear in the literature of many of the civilizations of western Asia. The discovery by George Smith in 1872 of a Babylonian version among the tablets of Ashurbanipal’s library in Nineveh aroused great public interest because of its similarity to the biblical account. In this vers...

Flint Mine

During the Neolithic and Copper Age of Europe, flint workers recognized that flint from beds below ground was of much superior quality to surface flint, especially for the manufacture of large tools such as axes. These beds were exploited by sinking shafts and then excavating galleries outwards. ...

Flint Mine

archaeologsOthers

Flint

See chert.

Flemish Blackwares

Later medieval Flemish pottery is well-known from paintings of the Renaissance period. Some of these wares were especially well-decorated, such as the so-called Aardenburg type, which has applied floral decorations. However, the majority of the Flemish wares were coarse black wares with pinched b...

Flemish Blackwares

archaeologsOthers

Flandrian

A group of British Quaternary interglacial deposits. The Flandrian can be dated by radiocarbon, and ranges from 10,000 bp (the end of the Devensian) up to the present day (seeTable 6, page 419). These deposits represent the latest Quaternary interglacial stage, equivalent to the Holocene epoch. A...

Flake

The removal of a flake from a block of raw material is the basis of flint, and other stone, technology. Flakes vary greatly in shape and size, according to the technique used to remove them. They are generally used as blanks for the manufacture of tools, which is done by the removal of further sm...

Five Dynasties Period

The period of Chinese history between the fall of the Tang dynasty in 907 and the founding of the Song dynasty in 960. The name refers to a series of dynasties that ruled North China; in the same period the south was divided among the Ten Kingdoms.

Fission Track Dating

Radiometric dating method for mineral materials. Principle. One of the isotopes of uranium, 238U, spontaneously undergoes nuclear fission to produce two heavy ‘fragment’ nuclei. This happens at a very slow, but known, rate. The fission fragments are released with great energy and create tracks of...

Fishing

Fishing probably did not become a major source of food until quite late in man’s evolution, although fish remains are occasionally found on early Palaeolithic sites, such as Olduvai. Fish and other sea food were a more important part of the diet for coastal peoples and in the poleward latitudes. ...

Fishbourne

Town in Sussex, southeast England, best known for its Roman-style villa/ palace of the 1st century ad, a four-hectare extravaganza, possibly put up for and by the British king (of the tribe of the Regni) Cogidubnus, a noted Romanophile. The site lies near to Chichester, which was first fort and t...

Fish Bones

Fish have a markedly different skeleton to mammals. Many of the bones are very small and thin, and so do not survive very well on archaeological sites. However, some bones are commonly preserved, notably the jaws and some other head bones, otoliths and the centra of vertebrae. They usually accumu...

Fish Bones

archaeologsOthers

First Temperate Neolithic

[FTN]. Generic term for the earliest farming cultures in the temperate zone of Europe (and sometimes applied in other areas also). In southeast Europe from c5400-4500/4300 be the following regional groups have been identified: StarCevo (eastern and northern Yugoslavia), KOrOs (eastern and southwe...

First Northern Culture

See TRB culture.

EnglishCultures

First Northern Culture

archaeologsCultures

Firedog

An instrument to ensure the proper burning of a fire, alternatively known as an andiron. The end of a log could rest on the crosspiece, which was supported by two uprights. Decorative iron examples come from La TfeNE Iron Age contexts, mostly graves. There are several examples from the British Is...

Firedog

archaeologsOthers

Fire

Possibly the most important single discovery made by early man was how to produce fire at will. Fire is first found on occupation sites of the Lower Palaeolithic period, approximately half a million years ago, although true hearths do not become typical until the penultimate glacial period, perha...

Fiorelli

(1823-96). The most important of the 19th-century archaeologists to excavate at Pompeii. He set up a training school based at Pompeii, where many other archaeologists learnt the techniques of stratigraphical excavation.

Fiorelli

archaeologsOthers

Finglesham

An early Saxon cemetery situated close to the former mouth of the Wansum estuary in Kent, in use between the early 6th and mid-7 th centuries. The large inhumation cemetery was partially excavated at the beginning of this century; the main research excavation took place in the 1960s, and over 40 ...

Filitosa

A defended promontory site in southern Corsica, belonging to the Torre culture. The walls are built of Cyclopean masonry and incorporate broken statuemenhirs; these and others in the area apparently represent male figures equipped with daggers and swords. There is a radiocarbon date of cl200 bc (...

Filigree

A technique of decorating gold and silver jewellery: designs formed by thin wire are soldered on to the part to be decorated. The technique had been mastered by the Early Dynastic Sumerian craftsmen of the 3rd millennium bc and fine jewellery decorated in this way appears in the Royal Tombs of Ur...

Fiji

An archipelago in eastern Melanesia, centred on the large islands of Viti Levu and Vanua Levu. A rich archaeological sequence begins with the Lapita culture from about 1300 be, and progresses through successive ceramic phases (see Sigatoka) to a period of earthwork fort construction and warfare, ...

Fibula

Latin word for a common type of brooch, usually made of bronze, resembling the modem safety-pin and used in the fastening of such clothes as tunics and cloaks. The fibula essentially comprises a pin bent round (often with a spiral at the angle) with a catch to hold the point. Alternative forms ha...

Fertile Crescent

A term invented in 1916 by James Breasted, first Director of the Oriental Institute of Chicago. The term was applied to a crescent-shaped area of cultivable land between the highland zones and the West Asian desert, stretching from Egypt through the Levant to southern Anatolia and northern Mesopo...

Ferrières

A passage grave in Languedoc, southern France, which has given its name to a cultural group of the Late Neolithic and Copper Age (3rd millennium bc). It is characterized by pottery with incised decoration.

Fernando Po

Island off the coast of Equatorial Guinea, of particular archaeological interest since (presumably due to the absence of sources of metal) a Neolithic technology and life-style appear to have continued until at least the early centuries of the 2nd millennium ad. A similar situation seems to have ...

Fenshuiling

[Fen-shui-ling]. SeeLiYU.

Fenshuiling

archaeologsOthers

Fenghuangshan

[Feng-huang-shan]. See

Fenghuangshan

archaeologsOthers

Feng

[Feng]. See Zhou capitals.

Feng

archaeologsOthers

Fen

A community of plants growing in basic or neutral waterlogged conditions, as opposed to bog. Fens represent a stage in the progressive colonization of shallow water; this plant succession continues with the colonization by trees (the ‘carr’ stage) followed in some areas by the growth of a raised ...

Fell's Cave

Located on mainland Chile near the Straits of Magellan, this is one of the principal sites used in defining the Magellan Complex (the other being Palli Aike). A radiocarbon date of 8700 be taken from its earliest level has helped make credible the widely accepted minimal date of 9000 be for the p...

EnglishPlace Names

Fell's Cave

archaeologsPlace Names

Federmesser

Literally, a pen-knife point. Points of this type are a typical constituent of assemblages of flint tools in northern Europe dating from the last few millennia of the last ice age. They are backed blades tapering to a point, and were probably used as arrowheads. They tend to have curved or angled...

Feddersen Wierde

The most thoroughly excavated and best-preserved of the terp settlements on the North Sea German littoral. Lack of space necessitated that the internal layout of the village was carefully planned, and so it was divided into segments radiating like spokes of a wheel from a central open area, separ...

Feature

On archaeological excavations the term is used for any recorded remain that is not classified as a structure, a layer or a small find. For instance, pits and post-holes are features, as is anything of uncertain nature or function.

Fayum

A low-lying lake-basin in Lower Egypt to the west of the Nile, to which it was formerly connected by a channel. The Fayum Depression has yielded a long sequence of archaeological occurrences, but is primarily known for Neolithic sites illustrating the earliest farming communities yet recognized i...

Fayum

archaeologsOthers

Fauresmith

The name formerly given to a stone industry now recognized as a final phase of the South African Acheulian. Named after a town in the Orange Free State, the ‘Fauresmith industry’ was characterized by the presence of small, neatly made, pointed hand axes.

Fatyanovo

A cemetery on the upper Volga, USSR, representing part of the Copper Age single grave tradition. The burials were crouched inhumations in shallow pits; grave goods included globular pottery vessels (some with cord ornament), stone battle-axes and ornaments of copper and bone.

Previous Next