Sàlacea

Sakçe Gözü

Tell site in southeast Turkey, occupied in the Neolithic period, with a sequence of wares relating the Amuq and Halaf pottery styles. In the early 1st millennium bc the site was reoccupied and a Syro-Hittite palace erected on the northwest corner of the citadel, decorated with reliefs and inscrip...

archaeologsEnglishPlace Names

Sakçe Gözü

Sai Yok

A large rock shelter in Kanchanaburi province, western Thailand, which has produced a 4.75-metre sequence from a possibly pre-HoABiNHiAN industry, through Hoabinhian, to a Neolithic assemblage of Ban Kao type. The sequence is undated, but from its depth the site could have the longest record of H...

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Saipai

See Ochre-coloured pottery.

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Saipai

Saint Urnel

Recent excavations at Saint Umel, near Penmarch in western Finistère, Brittany, have revealed an extremely large Dark Age cemetery. The hundreds of skeletons found have provided anthropologists with the opportunity of investigating whether the population was descended from British refugees, or wh...

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Saint Urnel

Saintonge Ware

A major pottery industry existed in the region of Saintes in western France from the 13th century until recent times. The best-known of these wares are the tall jugs with polychrome glazed decoration which appear to have been traded with western French wine to the English from about 1300. These p...

archaeologsEnglishAncient Pottery

St Ninian’s Isle

During the excavation of the small 12th-century chapel on St Ninian’s Isle in the Shetlands in 1958 the finest hoard of Pictish metalwork ever found in Britain came to light. The hoard seems to have been deposited at the end of the 8th century (possibly in response to Norse raids), and included s...

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St Ninian’s Isle

St Gereon

See Cologne.

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St Gereon

St Gall Plan

A remarkable Carolingian document, probably formulated after the Council of Inden in 816 and then sent by the Abbot of Reichenau to Abbot Gozbert of St Gall. The plan, drawn in ink on parchment, is an architect’s drawing for the rebuilding of the monastic complex. The layout is dominated by the l...

archaeologsEnglishArchitectural

St Gall Plan

Saint Acheul

See Acheulian.

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Saint Acheul

Sa-Huynh

An Iron Age culture of southern Vietnam, dating mainly from the 1st millennium BC and associated with pottery urn burials and rich artefact assemblages paralleled most closely in the Philippines. The culture may be associated with early Chamic (Austronesian) settlement in Vietnam, and appears to ...

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Sahul Shelf

The shallow ocean shelf between Australia and New Guinea, at its narrowest under the present Torres Strait. The shelf was exposed as dry land at periods of low sea-level in the Pleistocene, and New Guinea and Australia share a linked prehistory until the Torres Strait was finally drowned between ...

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Sago

The sago palm (Metroxylon sp.) stores large amounts of starch in its trunk prior to flowering. This starch can be washed out from the chopped pith of felled trees, and then cooked into porridge or cakes. Sago was utilized and traded widely around coastal New Guinea and the Moluccas Islands; the p...

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Sacsahuaman

An immense fortified complex, built as an adjunct to the Incan capital at Cuzco, and begun some time after 1438. Thought to have functioned as a storage centre and military garrison in peacetime, it was used as a safe haven for Cuzco residents in times of danger. Its north-facing limestone walls ...

archaeologsEnglishArchitectural

Sacsahuaman

Sacrifice

Many societies at different times and in various parts of the world have practised animal or human sacrifice, or both. In the Old World one of the best-known and most spectacular examples comes from the Mesopotamian city of Ur, where the Royal Cemetery provided several examples: Grave 800 (Queen ...

archaeologsEnglishOthers

Saccopastore

A gravel exploitation on the Via Nomentana leading out of Rome has revealed two Palaeolithic human skulls. These are often regarded as early or generalized Neanderthals and are believed to belong to the last interglacial. The brain sizes of both skulls are smaller than those of Europeans today, a...

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Sabz

Tell site in Khuzistan, southwest Iran, which has given its name to a phase in the prehistoric sequence. It succeeds the Muhammad Jafar phase (see Ali Kosh), though probably only after a gap; it has radiocarbon dates in the range 5500-5250 be. It is characterized by the appearance of painted pott...

archaeologsEnglishPlace Names