Archaeologs - Archaeologs

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Silk

The delicate process of rearing the domesticated silkworm (Bombyx mori) and reeling silk from its cocoon was first mastered in China. Evidence for sericulture in Neolithic times is so far not conclusive but the silk industry was clearly well established by the Anyang period (cl300-cl030 bc). The ...

Silchester

[Roman Calleva Atrebatumj. A Romano-British town of some 43 hectares in Hampshire, southern England, remarkable for the detailed information of its complete street plan. Originally a Celtic tribal centre, capital of the Atrebates, the town prospered from the later 1st century ad onwards, and was ...

Silbury Hill

The largest man-made mound in Europe, situated near Avebury, Wiltshire, southern England. It was built in four distinct phases, but apparently continuously as part of a single constructional process, dated c2600-2300 bc. The final monument was a mound 40 metres high with a base covering cl hectar...

Sigatoka

A beach-dune site on southwestern Viti Levu, Fijian Islands, which has produced an important but discontinuous pottery sequence from late Lapita (500 be), through a paddle-impressed style (ad 200), into a later, undated level with pottery apparently ancestral to that of the ethnographic present.

Sieving

The practice of sieving soils and sediments from archaeological sites is now quite common. Sieving each bucket of spoil from the site improves recovery of artefacts, larger bones etc, which may have been missed by trowellers. A relatively coarse sieve is used for this purpose. For lighter soils, ...

Sidon

[modern Sarda]. Situated on the coast of Lebanon south of Beirut, Sidon was an important trading centre for Mediterranean trade from the Early or Middle Bronze Age and, with Tyre, one of the two most important Phoenician centres. It was partially destroyed by the Assyrians in 676 bc, but grew to ...

Sidi Abd Er Rahman

A Palaeolithic site close to Casablanca on the Moroccan coast. A series of pits near the airport has revealed Acheulian levels. These are earlier than the Amirian dune (perhaps 0.5 million years old or ‘Mindel’) and later than the Saletian dune of about one million years of age. They are associat...

EnglishPlace Names

Sidemi Culture

[Shell Midden culture]. Culture found in the Vladivostok area of eastern Siberia from the late 2nd millennium bc. The population lived in coastal settlements of semi-subterranean houses, which are associated with shell middens. Fish and shellfish were clearly important in the diet, but pigs and d...

EnglishCultures

Shwezigon Temple

Great Buddhist monument at Pagan, northern Burma, housing a copy of the tooth relic of Ceylon. Its construction began in about 1059 under king Anôratha, the founder of the Pagan dynasty, but was not completed until the reign of king Kyanzittha, half a century later. It contains the latter king’s ...

Shwezigon Temple

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Shuruppak

[modern Fara]. Situated on the bank of the Euphrates River in southern Iraq, Shuruppak was one of the city states of Sumer. Excavations by a German expedition in the first decade of this century uncovered important remains of the Early Dynastic period. The temples produced a wealth of early docum...

EnglishAncient Cities, Place Names

Shu [Shu]

Ba and Shu; Shou Xian.

Shu [Shu]

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Shou Xian

[Shou-hsien]. A district on the south bank of the Huai River in Anhui province, China. In the latter part of the Eastern Zhou period this area was held in succession by the states of Wu, Yue (which annexed Wu in 473 bc) and Chu (which expelled Yue c333 bc). Bronzes and mirrors of the 6th-3rd cent...

Shou Xian

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Shoe-Last Adze

Common stone tool found in Early Neolithic Linear Pottery contexts throughout Europe; it is long and thin in shape with a D-shaped cross-section. It might have been used as an adze for carpentry, but it is perhaps more likely that it was an agricultural tool, a sort of hoe.

Shizhaishan

[Shih-chai-shan]. See Dian Kingdom.

Shizhaishan

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Shirataki

A group of Palaeolithic sites in Hokkaido, Japan. A large number of obsidian, artefacts were recovered during excavations in the 1950s and 1960s. They are divided into two groups, based on radiocarbon and obsidian hydration dates, as well as on the stratigraphy of the Yubetsu river terraces where...

Shinto

The native religion of Japan. Its doctrine was only committed to writing by those with nationalistic aims in the recent past, and could only be reconstructed from fragmentary survivals in folk beliefs and court ceremonies, together with the descriptions of myths and rituals in Kojiki and Nihon Sh...

Shindo

A small spur projecting southwards into the valley of the Kyi Chu River about 8 km east of Lhasa, the capital of Tibet. P. Aufschnaiter discovered and excavated a group of burials there in 1950. He distinguished three phases, each occurring at a different level on the ridge. The first, Horizon A,...

EnglishAncient Pottery

Shilou

[Shih-lou]. A city in Shanxi province, China, on the southward bend of the Yellow River. Shang bronze weapons and ritual vessels have been found repeatedly in and near Shilou. These objects date from the An yang period but many are by Anyang standards eccentric in style. Central Shanxi seems to h...

Shilou

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Shilingxia

[Shih-ling-hsia]. See Majiayao.

Shilingxia

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