Ball Game

Game both recreational and of ritual significance, originating in Mesoamerica and ultimately spreading over wide areas of the Americas; it is also known by the Nahuatl word tlatchli. Stone reliefs at Dainzu and the possible remains of a ball court at San Lorenzo Tenochtitlan indicate that the gam...

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Ball Game

Ball Court

See ball game.

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Ball Court

Balkh

Known to its Arab conquerors as the ‘Mother of Cities’, the city of Balkh in Afghanistan was occupied long before the arrival of Islam. In the 1 st millennium bc it was associated with Zoroaster, and Alexander the Great made it his base for operations in 329-327 bc. Balkh was a caravan city on th...

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Bali

Archaeologically, the island of Bali has always lived in the shadow of its bigger neighbour Java. The earliest inscriptions, dating from the end of the 9th and the 10th century, reveal an independent Indianized Balinese society practising Buddhism and Sivaism at the same time. The marriage of the...

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Balanovo

The eponymous cemetery of a regional group of the Corded ware culture group, distributed in the Volga-Oka area of south central Russia in the early 2nd millennium be. Most sites are cemeteries, the majority using flat inhumation rites as at the type site. At Balanovo some 120 graves are known, in...

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Bala Kot

Site of the Harappan civilization on the Makran coast of Baluchistan, Pakistan.

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Bala Kot

Bala Hisar

See Charsada.

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Bala Hisar

Bakun

Tell site near Persepolis in southern Iran, occupied in the Chalcolithic period, probably from the early 5th millen nium be. The site consisted of 12 mud-brick buildings with from one to seven rooms each; it was occupied by a simple agricultural community, that excelled in the production of fine ...

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Bakun

Baktun

See calendar (Americas).

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Bakong

A monument in the southeastern part of Angkor, in Roluos, just east of present Siem Reap, Cambodia. Founded by king Indravannan in 881, it is the first Khmer monument to represent a temple-mountain and the first to be built in sandstone (earlier ones having been built of brick). The central tower...

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Bakers Hole

Chalk pit at Northfleet close to the Swanscombe sites of northwest Kent. Its ‘coombe rock’ deposits are geologically a little later than the Swanscombe high terrace deposits, and contain a large series of Leval-lois flakes and cores.

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Bakers Hole

Bäile Herculane

A large cave site with an important Palaeolithic, Mesolithic, Neolithic and Copper Age stratigraphy, located in a side valley 10 km north of the Iron Gates gorge of the river Danube in the Rumanian Banat. The long stratigraphy comprises three main occupation horizons: I, Upper Palaeolithic levels...

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Bäile Herculane

Baikal Neolithic

The Neolithic of the Lake Baikal region in eastern Siberia is relatively well known (the term Neolithic being used here to refer to communities that used pottery, rather than those that practised farming). The first stage is called after the site of Isakovo and is known only from a small number o...

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Bahrain

The island of Bahrain in the Arabian Gulf has been identified plausibly with the land of Dilmun, mentioned in Mesopotamian documents of the second half of the 3rd millennium bc. A Danish expedition has investigated sites ranging in date from prehistoric to the 16th century ad. Two important sites...

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Bahia

A regional development on the central coast of Ecuador which flourished from c500 bc to ad500. Characterized by large stone-lined platform mounds and unique pottery forms, Bahia represents a well developed socio-political and religious unit. Some continuities with earlier Formative Period ceramic...

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Bahia

Baghdad

The present-day capital of Iraq and the Islamic capital from the 8th century to the 13th century. When the Abbasids overthrew the last Umayyad caliph in 750, they decided to move the Islamic capital from Damascus, which was full of Umayyad sympathizers and too close to the Byzantine frontier. Two...

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Badorf Ware

Distinctive type of pottery dating to the later 8th century and the 9th century, made in the Vorgebirge hills west of Cologne. The pottery was probably produced in the typical cream fabric as early as the 7 th century, but the globular pitchers and bowls of the Carolingian period are the best kno...

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