Archaeologs - Archaeologs

Belt Cave

Bells

China. Chinese bells of the Shang and Zhou dynasties have two peculiarities: they seldom have clappers — they are struck on the outside with a mallet — and they are not round but have a pointed-oval cross-section. The cusped cross-section, known from the earliest examples (a small and primitive b...

Bells

archaeologsPlace Names

Bellows Beach

A coastal occupation site on Oahu, Hawaiian Islands, which has produced some of the earliest dates (ad 600-1000) for occupation of this island group. The assemblage is of Early Eastern Polynesian type: shell fishhooks, stone adzes and bones of pig, dog and rat. See also Halawa.

Bell Beaker

See Beaker.

EnglishAncient Pottery

Bell Barrow

See barrow.

Bell Barrow

Bel’Kachi I

An important settlement site on the Aldan River in central Siberia, occupied during the Neolithic (defined by the use of pottery, rather than the practice of farming). The lowest level has a radiocarbon date of <4020 bc (c4920 bc), which is the earliest date for pottery in Siberia, for a hand-mou...

Bel’Kachi I

archaeologsPlace Names

Belgae

Basically Celtic tribal group known mostly from Caesar’s account, found in northern France in the last few centuries BC. During the 1st century bc the Belgae expanded into southeast England in advance of the Roman armies (see Aylesford). They introduced the potter’s wheel and coinage to Britain, ...

Beldibi

A rock shelter which has given its name to a Mesolithic or ‘Proto-Neolithic’ culture which succeeds the Belbasi culture in the Antalya region of southern Anatolia. The lower levels belong to the Belbasi culture and rock carvings of a bull and a stag are probably associated with this phase. Later ...

Belbasi

Cave on the southern coast of Anatolia which has given its name to a late Palaeolithic culture. The tool kit includes tanged arrowheads, triangular points and obliquely truncated blades. The most interesting feature of this group is its rock engravings, the only known cave art in western Asia. Th...

Beiyinyangying

[Pei-yin-yang-ying]. Neolithic cemetery site at Nanjing in Jiangsu province, China. The finds probably belong to the latter part of the 4th millennium bc; most notable among them are finely polished jade ornaments and disc-like axes. See also Majiabang.

Beiyinyangying

Beit Mirsim

A three-hectare mound in the low hill country southwest of Hebron, on the west bank of the Jordan. This fortified settlement has been identified as the biblical town of Kiijath-sepher. Successive occupation layers from the 3rd millennium bc to the Babylonian destruction in 588 bc (with a gap from...

Beit Mirsim

Basilica

[Greek: ‘royal building’]. The Romans applied this name to a range of rectangular roofed buildings, with or without apse, subdivided internally by single or double rows of columns, roughly in the manner of the nave and aisles now familiar from church architecture. There was usually a clerestorey ...

EnglishArchitectural

Beishouling

[Pei-shou-lingj.

Beishouling

Beijing

[Pei-ching, Peking], Present-day capital of China, The Shang civilization reached this area in the early part of the dynasty; a grave of about the 14th century bc at Pinggu Liujiahe contained bronze ritual vessels and a bronze axe with a blade of forged meteoritic iron. Many early Zhou finds have...

Beidha

Natufian and Aceramic Neolithic site near Petra in southern Jordan. It was first occupied for a short period as a semipermanent camp in the Early Natufian period. The community of this time lived off ibex and goat; 75 per cent of the goats were immature animals, suggesting that selective hunting ...

Behistun

See Bisitun.

Begram

A site in Afghanistan, confidently identified as Kapisa, the capital of several Indo-Greek rulers in the 3rd — 2nd centuries BC, a summer residence of the Kushan Kings (1st century BC to 3rd century ad) and an important town on the caravan route between India and the West. Excavations in the so-c...

Begho

Located near the northern edge of the forest in the west of the modern Ghana, Begho was a major trading centre around the middle of the 2nd millennium ad, and by the 5th century a pottery style had been established which appears to be ancestral to that practised into historical times by Akan grou...