Archaeologs - Archaeologs

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Stukely

(1687-1765). British antiquary who made quite accurate drawings and descriptions of prehistoric monuments such as Avebury and Stonehenge, containing much useful information about features now destroyed. However, he was afflicted with what Stuart Piggott has called ‘Druidomania’, attributing all p...

Stukely

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Stroke-Ornamented Ware

English name for the German Stichbandkeramik, which characterizes the Middle Neolithic culture in Central Europe (southern Poland, Czechoslovakia and parts of southern and central Germany). The pottery is decorated with geometric designs, especially zigzags, made by incision in a series of short ...

EnglishAncient Pottery

Striking Platform

When a core is made of stone for the removal of flakes or blades, it must have a flat surface against which the hammer is struck to remove the blanks. This is the striking platform. Part of it comes away with each flake.

Strigil

[Latin: strigilis]. narrow curved scraper, made of horn or metal, used by Roman and Greek bathers for the cleansing of the skin. Romans used them particularly in the hot room (caldarium) (see baths, roman), and this task was often performed by slaves.

Strigil

archaeologsOthers

Strettweg

Hallstatt burial in eastern Austria of the 7th century bc, famous for one of the grave goods: a miniature bronze wagon, possibly a cult object. The wagon frame bears a group of mounted warriors flanking a much larger naked woman, interpreted as a goddess, holding a bowl above her head.

Strelice

A small settlement site of the Late Neolithic Lengyel culture, located in central Moravia, Czechoslovakia, and dated to the mid-4th millennium be. Among the rich middle Lengyel ritual assemblage was a fired clay house model showing timber posts and a pitched roof with bucrania attached to the gab...

Straubing

A regional group of the Early Bronze Age Unetice culture found in Bavaria. It is characterized by flat inhumation cemeteries with grave goods such as simple bronze daggers, awls, tores, cones of coiled wire and amber beads.

Stratigraphy

The study of sequences of sediments, soils, structures or rocks. Layered deposits are said to be stratified. The sequence of deposition can be assessed by a study of the relationships of different layers. Any one layer can be said to have been deposited at a later date than those which are strati...

Stoneware

Distinctively hard-fired vessels which were first made at Siegburg near Cologne as early as about 1200 ad. Stoneware involved the firing of pots in excess of 1100°C, at which point the molecules fuse to form a new stronger structure. Stonewares required particular clays, but the technique made po...

EnglishAncient Pottery

Stonehenge

Situated on Salisbury plain in Wiltshire, southern England, Stonehenge is Britain’s most remarkable stone circle and one of the most impressive megalithic monuments anywhere. Excavations have revealed three major building stages and some subsidiary substages. The first monument, Stonehenge I, was...

Stone Circle

Term for a ring of standing stones, either truly circular or near-circular in shape. Stone circles occur in many parts of the world at different times, but in prehistoric Europe they represent a peculiarly British development About 900 examples are known throughout Britain and Ireland and datable...

Stone Age

The first age of the Three Age System, defined by the use of stone for tools. See also Mesolithic, Neolithic, Palaeolithic.

Stone

One of the first materials to be used for making artefacts. Very fine grained, or glassy stones, such as flint and obsidian, were shaped mainly by chipping or flaking. Other less brittle stones had to be hammered or chiselled into shape, and then polished. Precious and decorative stones were also...

Stoa

Type of classical Greek building, consisting essentially of a long, straight colonnade, with vertical wall (and sometimes rooms) behind and roof over. The colonnade is sometimes doubled, and a projecting wing may be added to either end. Examples occur from about 650 bc onwards. The type does not ...

Stirrup-Spout Vessel

An ancient American vessel, with precursors in the Initial Period, which usually takes the form of a closed globular jar. Its defining characteristic is a hollow loop (or stirrup) of clay attached to the vessel body at both ends with a tubular spout set into it in a vertical plane, usually at its...

Stirrup-Spout Vessel

archaeologsOthers

Stillbay

Site on the Cape coast of South Africa which yielded a poorly defined stone tool assemblage of ‘Middle Stone Age’ type. The name Stillbay was formerly used over a wide area of southern and eastern Africa to designate industries of this general type. The term has now been replaced by a series of m...

Steward

(1902-72). American archaeologist and anthropologist who made major contributions to theoretical archaeology. His main interest was in the study of culture process and for this he drew on both anthropological and archaeological evidence. He edited the monumental Handbook of South American Indians...

Steward

archaeologsOthers

Sterkfontein

A site on the Witwatersrand near Johannesburg, South Africa, which is one of the most important hominid sites in southern Africa. The main hominid fossilbearing level of these collapsed limestone cave (Member 4) has produced numerous remains of the gracile species Australopithecus africanus, dati...

Stentinello

A Neolithic ditched village site in southeast Sicily, which has given its name to a variety of Impressed Ware that characterizes the Early Neolithic of Sicily and also of Calabria, on the southwest Italian mainland. The pottery forms are simple, consisting mostly of bowls and jars; the decoration...

Stellmoor

A site near Hamburg, north Germany. The organic muds of late glacial and post-glacial date contain an older level (Ham-burgian, like nearby Meiendorf) and a later level of c8500 be (Ahrensburgian) with tanged points. The later level is also important for a hoard of pine-wood arrow shafts. Both gr...

EnglishPlace Names

Steinheim

A site near Stuttgart in southwest Germany, where in 1933 a nearly complete Palaeolithic skull was found in a gravel pit. The level in question dates from well before the Mousterian, possibly from the Holstein (penultimate) interglacial some 250,000 or 300,000 years ago. The skull is usually clas...

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