Southampton

Hamwih (or Hamton), the 8th- and 9th-century predecessor of medieval Southampton, is situated to the east of the later town opposite the Roman site of Bitterne (Clausentum) on the banks of the River Itchen in southern England. Hamwih was discovered in the 19th century by brick-earth diggers. Exca...

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Sousse

Islamic Sousse [Roman Hadrume-tum] on the Tunisian coast was still a minor settlement in 821-2, when the Aghlabid ruler Ziyadat Allah built the ribat, a stronghold for volunteers dedicated to the holy war against the infidel. It is a square fort, 39 metres across, with towers (one of which is a m...

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Sousse

Sounion

[Roman Sunium]. Byron’s ‘Sunium’s marbled steep’ is a classical sanctuary site on a rocky headland some 70 km southeast of Athens. It is famous for the standing columns of its mid-5th century bc marble temple to Poseidon, which make a dramatic sight and give the location its alternative title of ...

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Soufli

An Early Neolithic settlement in Thessaly, northern Greece. It is especially well known for having produced a rare piece of monumental sculpture depicting a more than life-size woman wearing a skirt and necklace.

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Sotka Koh

A western outpost of the Harap-pan civilization close to the Makran coast. It is situated on a rocky outcrop and at least partly surrounded by a stone wall.

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Sotka Koh

Soroki

A group of short-lived settlement sites of the Late Mesolithic and Early Neolithic, located on the middle reaches of the River Dnieper in Moldavia, USSR. The Mesolithic sites, with radiocarbon dates of <5500-5400 be, are 20-cm thick layers with hearths containing layers of shells and fishbones an...

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Sopot-Lengyel

Term defined by S. Dimitri-jevic to denote the later Neolithic sites of Srem, north Bosnia and east Slavonia, Yugoslavia, in the period of c4300-3700 be. The pottery of this group shares affinities with the dark burnished ware tradition of the south Balkans and the incised and monochrome traditio...

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Son Vi

The ‘Sonviian’ stone industry of the Red River valley in north Vietnam is regarded by modern Vietnamese archaeologists as the immediate predecessor (or an early stage) of the Hoabinhian. The industry is of late Pleistocene date (radiocarbon dates cl 6,000-9000 be).

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Son Vi

Songze

[Sung-tse]. See Majiabang.

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Songze

Song

[Sung]. Chinese dynasty (ad 960-1279). During the Northern Song (960-1126) the capital was at Kaifeng near the Yellow River in Henan province. During the Southern Song (1127-1279) it was at Hangzhou (near modem Shanghai), and North China was ruled first by the barbarian Jin dynasty of the Jürched...

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Sondage

A trench of limited area, sunk through the layers of an archaeological site, to make a preliminary investigation of its stratigraphy.

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Somrong Sen

4.5-metre-thick occupation mound near the Tonle Sap Lake in central Cambodia, which has yielded a rich Neolithic assemblage of incised pottery, bone and shell tools and ornaments. The bulk of the deposit predates 1000 bc and it appears that a Bronze Age cemetery may also have been found on the si...

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Somrong Sen

Somme Bionne

A chariot burial of the Early La Tene Iron Age, in the Marne area of France, dated to the late 5th century bc. The burial, presumably of a chieftain, was under a large barrow and was equipped with very rich grave goods, both imported objects and locally manufactured items. The imported items incl...

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Somerset Levels

The low-lying areas of Somerset in southwest England where marshy conditions led to the formation of peat, which has grown over a period of more than 4000 years. In the process it has preserved remains of human activity, as well as environmental evidence. Peat-cutting exposed remains of ancient t...

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Solutrian

A site in the Sâone-et-Loire, central France, with Palaeolithic occupation on the slope below a craggy hill. Above Mousterian deposits come Aurig-nacian, later Perigordian, Solutrian (of which Solutré is the name site) and Magda-lenian. Only the results of the most recent excavations are at all r...

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Solutrian

Solomon Islands

A chain of large islands in the centre of Melanesia. Dates for earliest settlement remain unknown, but widely distributed Papuan languages suggest that the islands were inhabited before the beginning of Austronesian expansion into Oceania (c3000 bc). Archaeological sequences are best known from t...

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Solo Man

See Ngandong.

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Sol Lessivé

The type of soil which may develop under open vegetation, or under arable fields, normally in areas of relatively low annual rainfall, where the soil may dry out during the summer. Sols lessivés seem usually to have originated from brown forest soils which have been stripped of their protective t...

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Solifluction

[solifluxion]. See periglacial.

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