Etowah

A large Mississippian site located on the north bank of the Etowah River in northern Georgia, USA, which appears to have functioned as a ceremonial centre rather than a centre for population. Its major features are three truncated pyramid mounds, surrounded by a ditch and palisade. The largest mo...

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Ethnoarchaeology

The study of living societies from an archaeological point of view. The ethnoarchaeologist studies the material remains of such societies with the aim of furthering understanding of the patterns of material remains that emerge from archaeo-/ logical contexts. In particular, ethnoarchae? ology is ...

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Este

The ancient name of this town standing in antiquity on the River Adige in northeast Italy was Ateste, which is now used to denote the striking Iron Age culture of the area from the 9th century BC. Profiting from its position, its maritime trade connections and its contacts with Greek and Etruscan...

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Essenes

See Dead Sea Scrolls.

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Essenes

Eskimo

[Inuit]. A long-standing and widely used term for the Arctic hunting peoples. It is a French transliteration of an Algonquin word meanin ‘raw flesh eaters’. Inuit, a native Eskimo word meaning simply ‘the people’, is the term currently favoured to describe the same group.

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Esh Shaheinab

A site near the eastern bank of the Nile, 50 km downstream from Khartoum, dated to the second half of the 4th millennium be. For long the only fully investigated manifestation of the so-called ‘Khartoum Neolithic’, the site was held to illustrate the small-scale beginnings of food-production in t...

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Eshnunna

The ancient name of a city under the mound of Tell Asmar, excavated by an American team led by Henri Frankfort in the 1930s. Situated in the Diyala area, to the northeast of Sumer proper, Eshnunna was nonetheless to all intents and purposes a Sumerian city. Although it was occupied from the Early...

archaeologsEnglishAncient Cities

Escomb

A village in Co.Durham which contains one of the most complete upstanding Anglo-Saxon churches in England, the small chapel of St John. A simple double-celled building, its square-ended chancel has a tall narrow chancel arch with jambs formed of monolithic blocks laid in ‘long and short’ style th...

archaeologsEnglishPlace Names

Escomb

Ertebolle

A coastal shell-mound site in Jutland which has given its name to a late Mesolithic culture in Denmark. Pottery was apparently introduced in this culture.

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Ertebolle

Erôsd

See Ariu§d.

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Erôsd

Ermine Street

Name given to the Roman road that ran north from London to Lincoln. Doubtless following more ancient tracks, it was most likely established very soon after the Roman invasion of Britian in ad 43, to provide communications with the legionary fortress at Lincoln. Later, when Lincoln became a coloni...

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Erlitou

[Erh-li-t’ou]. Type site of the Erlitou phase, near Luoyang in Yanshi, Henan province, north China. The Erlitou phase represents the earliest known stage of the Chinese Bronze Age. Radiocarbon dates suggest that the four levels at the Erlitou site span the first half of the 2nd millennium bc. The...

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Phase

Stage of the early Bronze Age in North China defined by two strata at Zhengzhou Erligang in Henan province. The Erligang phase is assumed to belong to the earlier part of the Shang dynasty. It follows immediately on the Erli-tou phase and precedes the historical Anyang period (cl300-cl030 bc; see...

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Erligang

[Erh-li-kang]

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Erligang

Erimi

Deeply stratified site in southern Cyprus, which has produced evidence of a sequence of pottery styles covering most of the 4th millennium BC. To begin with houses were cut into the rock, but were later built freestanding. The site is best known for its single copper chisel, the earliest evidence...

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Eridu

The most southerly and possibly also the earliest city of Sumer in southern Mesopotamia. A sounding excavated underneath a ziggurat of the late 3rd millennium BC revealed a sequence of 18 religious buildings. The earliest building was a simple mud-brick shrine resting on virgin sand. By the time ...

archaeologsEnglishAncient Cities, Place Names

Erechtheum

A religious building on the North side of the Acropolis at Athens, named after the legendary King Erechtheus of Athens, and put up in the name of various cults to house cult objects and to cover cult areas. It is a large and complex rectangular building in the Ionic style, built of white Pantelic...

archaeologsEnglishArchitectural

Erech

Biblical name for the Mesopotamian city of Uruk.

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Erd

A recently excavated Mousterian site in Hungary near Budapest. Radiocarbon dates suggest that it was occupied by bear-hunters in the later part of the Mousterian period.

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Ercengtai

[erh-ts’eng-t’ai]. See shaft tombs (China).

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