Breuil

(1877-1961). French Catholic priest who made major contributions to Palaeolithic archaeology and especially to the study of the Upper Palaeolithic cave art of France and northern Spain. He made detailed studies of nearly all the known decorated caves and to this day many of the illustrations of c...

archaeologsEnglishOthers

Breuil

Breccia

Sediment composed of angular fragments of gravel.

archaeologsEnglishArchitectural

Breadfruit

The breadfruit tree (Artocarpus altilis) provides a large, starchy fruit which requires cooking before it can be eaten. The tree was probably first brought into cultivation in a region extending from the Philippines to New Guinea, and attained its greatest economic importance in the Polynesian Is...

archaeologsEnglishOthers

Bratthalio

See Greenland.

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Bratthalio

Brassempouy

The Grotte du Pape near Brassempouy in the Landes, southwest France, had a long series of early Upper Palaeolithic deposits, but the early excavations by Piette do not enable the exact sequence to be reconstructed. The site is famous for a series of carved ivories, broken statuettes of the ‘venus...

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Brane

Cemetery of the Early Bronze Age Nitra group in southwest Slovakia. 308 graves have been excavated by J.Vladdr, mostly simple rectangular pits, sometimes with a wooden lining, containing inhumation burials. An interesting study of the grave goods by Susan Shennan suggests that certain burials sta...

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Brane

Brak

A tell site of c30 hectares on the Khabur River in northeast Syria overlooking an important river crossing. Material from the Halaf and Ubaid periods indicates a long history, but the site is best known for its sequence of rich temples of the late Uruk and Jemdet Nasr periods, when it was clearly...

archaeologsEnglishPlace Names, Architectural

Brak

Bradford-On-Avon

St Lawrence Church in Bradford-on-Avon in Somerset, is possibly the finest and best-preserved Aanglo-saxon church in England. The church is a small chapel, with a tall nave and chancel flanked by two side-porticos. There is some controversy as to its date, but it is likely that the major part of ...

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Brachycephalic

Broad headed, having a cephalic index of 80 to 84.9.

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Bp

Years before present. The ‘present’ referred to is the year ad 1950, the latest that the atmosphere was sufficiently uncontaminated to act as a standard for radiocarbon dating. The lower case ‘bp’-represents uncalibrated radiocarbon years; the capitals bp denote a calibrated radiocarbon date,or a...

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Bp

Boyne Culture

The term used for the passage graves of the Boyne Valley in Ireland, dated to the 4th millennium bc. They are notable for their size, the architectural expertise shown in their construction, and their decoration. The area must have been a centre of some importance, as five henges have been found,...

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Boyne Culture

Box Flue

[Latin tubulus’, box tile]. A term denoting the hollow box-shaped terracotta tiles which were joined together to form passages in the walls and roofing of Roman imperial buildings, especially baths, to carry furnace-heated hot air up from the hollow hypocaust floors.

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Bowl Barrow

Bouqras

A 7th-millennium bc Pre-pottery Neolithic B village site near the River Euphrates in Syria. The first occupation phase had two levels with rectangular mud-brick houses. The next four levels had more solid mud-brick houses, some with plastered floors, benches and pillars. The animal economy was ba...

archaeologsEnglishPlace Names

Bouleuterion

Council-house for the meetings of the Greek city council ( boule). Probably not originally distinctive in architecture, it seems to be one of a range of straightforward rectangular civic buildings. The internal space was probably undivided, except by a number of columns to hold up the roof struct...

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Boulder Clay

Type of till. The term is sometimes (erroneously) used to mean all kinds of till.

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Boudicca

[inaccurately Boadicea]. Queen of the Iceni, a British tribe inhabiting a large area of East Anglia. Under a special client-king agreement (dependent sovereignty), their King Prasutagus was permitted to continue ruling after the Romans began to occupy Britain in AD 43. Upon his death (c60), Rome ...

archaeologsEnglishPublic Figures

Boucher De Perthes

(1788-1868). customs officer from Abbeville in northern France who collected stone tools of the type now known as hand axes from the gravels of the River Somme in the 1830s, 1840s and 1850s. His claims that these objects were indeed the tools of ancient man and that they occurred in association w...

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Boucher De Perthes