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Glossary of Archaeological/Anthropological Terms Glossary of Archaeological/Anthropological Terms Glossary of Archaeological/An ms Glossary of Archaeology & Anthropology
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ABERRANT __ Deviation from the class to which an artifact or phenomenon belongs.
ABORIGINAL. INDIGENOUS __ Pertaining to the original occupants of a given region.
ABRASIVE STONE __ Usually a sandstone slab used for grinding and polishing.
ABSOLUTE DATING __ A dating method that determines an object's exact age, as opposed to its relative age; includes such techniques as dendrochronology and radiocarbon dating.
ABU SIMBEL __ Two temples located close to the border between Sudan and Egypt. They were constructed in the 13th century B.C.E. during the reign of Pharaoh Ramesses II.
ACCLIMATORY ADJUSTMENTS __ Reversible physiological adjustments to stressful environments.
ACCRETION __ Growth by virtue of an increase in inter-cellular materials.
ACCULTURATION __ The process by which a culture absorbs the traits or customs of another culture with which it is in direct contact.
ACEPHALOUS SOCIETY __ A society without a political head such as a president, chief, or king.
ACHEMENID EMPIRE __ Persian empire named after its founder Achemens. The empire lasted from about 550 to 330 BCE when it was conquered by Alexander the Great.
ACHIEVED STATUS __ Social standing and prestige reflecting the ability of an individual to acquire an established position in society as a result of individual accomplishments/
ACROPOLIS __ A highly fortified area that served as the defensive and ritual center of Greek cities such as Athens.
ACT __ The smallest unit of recurrent behavior involving an artifact.
ACTIVITY __ A set of related 'acts.'
ACTIVITY AREA __ that portion of an archaeological site which can be equated with a single activity such as flint knapping, butchering, or cooking.
ADAPTATION __ The process of change to better conform with environmental conditions or other external influences.
ADAPTIVE RADIATION __ The evolution of a single evolutionary stock into a number of different species.
ADJUSTMENT __ The ability of humans to survive in stressful environments by nongenetic means.
ADOLESCENT GROWTH SPURT __ A rapid increase in stature and other dimensions of the body that occurs during puberty.
ADULT __ The period in an individual's life cycle after the eruption of the last permanent teeth.
ADZE __ An axe-like implement in which the blade is hafted such that the cutting edge lies perpendicular to the handle after the fashion of a hoe. Used primarily for woodworking. trihedral adze. an adze with a triangular cross-section.
AEOLIAN ( sometimes EOLIAN) __ Sand, clay, silt, or mixed deposits that have been carried by the wind. Loess and sand dunes are typical aeolian deposits.
AERIAL PHOTOGRAPHY __ Aerial photography. vertical and oblique photographic imagery of the earth's surface taken from any point of advantage. The use of specialized films can render visible features which could not otherwise be detected. Topographic relief can be emphasized by photographing in the morning or early evening when shadows are most pronounced.
AFFILIATIVE BEHAVIOR __ Close-proximity behavior that includes touching, grooming, and hugging.
AFFINAL KIN __ Persons related by marriage.
AGATE __ A banded or mottled chalcedony.
AGAVE __ Sometimes called a century plant. Several species of the plant were used by Indians in the Southwest and Mexico. The plants vary greatly in size, but are characterized by a cluster of leaves spreading out at ground level from a short central stem. The narrow leaves are long and thick and terminate in a spine. At maturity, each plant sends up one long flowering stalk and then dies. Agaves grow at elevations of 3000 to 8000 feet. Species of agave are used in the manufacture of pulque and tequila, alcoholic beverages popular in Mexico. Raw agave is poisonous.
AGE GRADE __ A group of people of the same sex and approximately the same age who share a set of duties and privileges.
AGGRADATION __ An accumulation of sediment resulting in the building up of a land surface. An example would be part of a river bank upon which sediments are regularly deposited during the spring flood.
AGING __ The uninterrupted process of normal development that leads to a progressive decline in physiological function and ultimately to death.
AGONISTIC BEHAVIOR __ Behavior that involves fighting, threats, and fleeing.
AGRARIAN STATE __ The Fourth stage in the stage model , representing large regional systems or empires based primarily on non-mechanized agriculture and controlled by centralized and specialized bureaucracies.
AGRICULTURE __ A subsistence mode which involves the use of machinery or domesticated animals in the cultivation of plants.
A-HORIZON __ The uppermost, often dark-colored natural level in a soil profile characterized by roots, humus, and a lack of clay, iron, carbonates and soluble salts which have leached to lower levels.
AIMA __ Australasian Institute of Maritime Archaeology
AIRLIFT __ Instrument like a giant vacuum cleaner used by underwater archaeologists to remove dirt and debris from underwater archaeological sites.
AKHENATEN __ Pharaoh of the 18th dynasty and primary figure in the Armana Period. Approximate dates of reign: 1352-1336 BCE.
AKHETATEN __ New capital city founded by Akhnaten and now called Tell el-Amarna.
ALABASTRON __ A traditional Egyptian oil jar made of alabaster. The Greeks made later versions of it out of clay.
ALBERTA __ A Plano projectile point style of the northwestern plains. Specimens are as much as 20 cm in length, parallel-sided with blunt tips, and stemmed.
ALBINISM __ A recessive abnormality that leads to little or no production of the skin pigment melanin.
ALEXANDER THE GREAT __ King of Macedonia and conqueror.
ALIDADE __ An optical surveying instrument used in conjunction with a plane-table and stadia-rod to produce detailed large-scale topographic maps.
ALIENATION __ The fragmentation of individuals' relations to their work, the things they produce, and the resources with which they produce them.
ALL-MALE PARTY __ Among chimpanzees, a small group of adult or adolescent males.
ALLEN'S RULE __ A rule which states that among endotherms, populations of the same species living near the equator tend to have more protruding body parts and longer limbs than do populations farther away from the equator.
ALLOGROOMING __ Grooming another animal.
ALLOMETRIC GROWTH __ The pattern of growth whereby different parts of the body grow at different rates with respect to each other.
ALLOMORPHS __ Forms contained in morphemes that differ in sound but not in meaning.
ALLOPATRIC SPECIES __ Species occupying mutually exclusive geographical areas.
ALLOPHONES __ Sounds that belong to the same phoneme.
ALLOYING __ A technique involving the mixing of two or more metals to create an entirely new material, e.g. the fusion of copper and tin to make bronze.
ALLUVIAL DEPOSITS __ Sediments laid down by streams in their channels or on flood plains.
ALLUVIAL FAN __ A fan- or wedge-shaped accumulation of silt, sand, gravel and boulders deposited by rapidly-flowing streams when they reach flatter terrain.
ALLUVIUM __ A generally fine-grained mixture of sand, silt and mud deposited by flowing water.
ALTAMIRA __ Cave near the north coast of Spain discovered in 1868. The first site where Paleolithic Period cave paintings were found.
ALTIMETER __ A barometric device for determining elevations above sea-level.
ALTITHERMAL __ A postulated climatic period characterized by warmer and/or drier conditions approximately 4,000-8,000 years ago.
ALTRUISTIC ACT __ A behavior characterized by self-sacrifice that benefits others.
AMARNA __ General term used to refer to the reign of Akhnaten and surrounding years. Also modern name of the Egyptian city founded by Akhenaten. (Tell el-Amarna)
AMARNA LETTERS __ A collection of clay tablets containing diplomatic correspondence of the Amarna Period.
AMAZONS - Legendary tribe of warrior women.
AMBILINEAL DESCENT __ A descent ideology based on ties traced through either the paternal or the maternal line.
AMBILOCALITY __ Residence of a married couple with or near the kin of either husband or wife, as they choose.
AMPHIBIANS __ The earliest class of land vertebrates to evolve, yet have to keep their skin moist and lay eggs in water; includes modern frogs and salamanders.
AMPHORA __ Large round ceramic container used for transportation and storage of goods. Used from antiquity until the 16th century or so. Used for wine, oil, olives, grain, etc, etc. Amphoras in a shipwreck can often tell the age and nationality of the wreck.
AMUN __ Egyptian god associated with the state and the kingship during Egypt's New Kingdom.
ANALOGIES __ Structures that are superficially similar and serve similar functions, but have no common evolutionary relationship.
ANALOGY __ A process of reasoning whereby two entities that share some similarities are assumed to share many others.
ANALYSIS __ The process of studying and classifying artifacts, usually conducted in a laboratory after excavation has been completed.
ANASAZI __ One of the three desert cultures that shaped life in the American Southwest from 300 B.C. to A.D. 1300. Developed a new way of building pueblos and the technique of farming on top of mesas. Used both hand-formed adobe bricks and stones to build their homes.
ANATOLIA __ The large peninsular region of Turkey, bordered by the Black Sea to the north and the Mediterranean Sea to the south, and constituting the westernmost point of Asia; also known as Asia Minor.
ANCILLARY SAMPLE __ Any non-artifactual materials collected by archaeologists to aid in dating, paleoenvironmental reconstruction, or other interpretations - e.g. carbon samples, soil samples, palynological samples etc.
ANDESITE __ A fine-grained gray to green igneous rock composed primarily of minerals of the feldspar group -- in particular andesine, amphibole and pyroxene.
ANGKOR WAT __ A complex of religious buildings in Cambodia (in southeastern Asia) that is considered one of the world¹s archaeological and architectural treasures. The complex combines a temple dedicated to Vishnu (a Hindu god) and a mausoleum (a large and stately tomb). Angkor Wat was built by Suryavarman II, who ruled the Khmer Empire from A.D. 1113 to 1145.
ANGLO SAXONS __ A name used to describe the European warriors who invaded Britain around the 5th century A.D.; composed of two separate groups, the Angles and the Saxons.
ANGOSTURA __ A Plano projectile point style (previously termed "Long") named by R.P. Wheeler (in Wormington l957) after the Angostura Basin in South Dakota. Angostura points, sometimes termed "Lusk" points, are long and narrow, lanceolate in outline form, rhomboidal in cross section, and have concave or straight bases.
ANIMAL HUSBANDRY __ The breeding, care, and use of herd animals, such as sheep, goats, camels, cattle, and yaks.
ANIMATISM __ Belief in an impersonal supernatural force.
ANIMIST __ One who believes in animism, a belief that creatures, objects, and natural phenomena are inhabited by spirits.
ANNEALING __ In copper and bronze metallurgy, this refers to the process of heating and then cooling the material to remove stress from hammering.
ANTHROPOCENTRICITY __ The belief that humans are the most important elements in the universe.
ANTHROPOID (1) __ A Greek word meaning; man-shaped. This term is used for coffins made in the shape of a human.
ANTHROPOID (2) __ A member of the suborder Anthropoidea; includes the New World monkeys, Old World monkeys, apes, and humans.
ANTHROPOIDEA __ Suborder of the order Primates that includes the New World monkeys, Old World monkeys, apes, and humans.
ANTHROPOLOGICAL LINGUISTICS __ The scientific study of human communication within its sociocultural context and the origin and evolution of language.
ANTHROPOLOGY __ The scientific and humanistic study of man's present and past biological, linguistic, social, and cultural variations. Major sub-fields include archaeology, physical anthropology, cultural anthropology, and linguistic anthropology.
ANTHROPOMETRY __ The study of measurements of the human body.
ANTHROPOMORPHIC __ "Man-like." Used to describe artifacts or art work decorated with human features or with a man-like appearance.
ANTINOUS __ Favorite companion of Emperor Hadrian.
ANTONINE WALL __ Built during the early 140s AD. Northernmost Roman wall in Great Britain marked the edge of the territory of Hadrian's successor, Antonius Pius.
ANVIL __ A block of stone or metal upon which other materials are shaped or worked through striking.
APE __ A common term that includes the lesser apes (the gibbons and siamang) and the great apes (the orangutan, common chimpanzee, bonobo, and gorilla).
APHASIA __ A language disorder resulting from brain damage.
APHRODITE __ Greek goddess of love and fertility. Known as Venus to the Romans.
APPLIED ANTHROPOLOGY __ The activity of professional anthropologists in programs that have as primary goals changes in human behavior believed to ameliorate contemporary social, economic, and technological problems.
ARABLE LAND __ Land fit for cultivation.
ARBITRARY LEVELS __ An archaeological excavation technique in which the thickness of the layers removed is chosen for convenience. This method is generally used when a site does not possess natural stratigraphy and cannot, therefore, be excavated stratum by stratum.
ARCHAEO-ASTRONOMY __ The systematic study of astronomical knowledge and lore of prehistoric peoples.
ARCHAEOLOGICAL CONTEXT __ The physical setting, location, and cultural association of artifacts and features within an archaeological site.
ARCHAEOLOGICAL RECOVERY __ Removal of artifacts from archaeological context with full recording of their four dimensions of variability.
ARCHAEOLOGICAL SEQUENCE __ Artifacts, behaviors, or phases (periods) ordered in time.
ARCHAEOLOGICAL SITE __ A place where human activity occurred and material remains were deposited.
ARCHAEOLOGICAL SURVEY __ On-ground inspection of a study area for artifacts and sites.
ARCHAEOLOGY - ARCHEOLOGY __ the scientific study of past human cultures by analyzing the material remains (sites and artifacts) that people left behind.
ARCHAEOLOGY - CULT __ The study of the material indications of patterned actions undertaken in response to religious beliefs.
ARCHAEOLOGIST __ Anyone with an interest in the aims and methods of archaeology. A professional archaeologist usually holds a degree in anthropology with a specialization in archaeology.
ARCHAEOZOOLOGY __ Sometimes referred to as zooarchaeology, this involves the identification and analysis of faunal species from archaeological sites, as an aid to the reconstruction of human diets and to an understanding of the contemporary environment at the time of deposition.
ARCHAIC -- ancient; pertaining to a much earlier time period.
ARCHETYPE __ The divine plan or blueprint for a species or higher taxonomic category.
ARCHIVES __ l. a collection of primary historical documents such as journals, diaries, maps and personal and business correspondence. 2. the institutional repository within which such collections are housed.
ARCTIC SMALL TOOL TRADITION __ A grouping of archaeological complexes distributed across the North American Arctic from Alaska to Greenland which date between roughly 3000 B.C. to A.D. l000. The tradition is so named due to the extremely small, finely worked tools which these people manufactured.
ARES __ Greek god of war. Known to the Romans as Mars.
ARGILLITE __ A fine-grained, metamorphosed mud and claystone. The deep-red-colored argillite artifacts found at the Hardy Site may have come from the Mazatzal Mountains in central Arizona.
ARRANGED MARRIAGE __ Any marriage in which the selection of a spouse is outside the control of the bride and groom. art the process and products of applying skills to any activity that transforms matter, sound, or motion into forms considered aesthetically pleasing to people in a society.
ARROW __ A dart-like projectile propelled by a bow. Feathers may be attached to stabilize the arrow in flight, and a stone, bone or metal tip may be fitted to improve its capacity for penetration.
ARROW WEED __ A rank-smelling shrub that forms dense thickets in stream beds and moist saline soil. The plant occurs at elevations of 3000 feet or lower, from Texas to Southem California and from Utah to northern Mexico. In addition to its use as a wall-covering material, arrow weed stems were used for arrow shafts by Indians in the Southwest.
ARROWHEAD __ The pointed tip of an arrow. If the means of propulsion cannot with certainty be identified as a bow, the term projectile point is more properly used.
ART OBJECT __ Any artifact carrying, or consisting of, decorative or artistic elements.
ARTIFACT (1) __ Any object manufactured, used or modified by humans.
ARTIFACT (2) __ Any physical remains of human activity.
ARTIFACT TYPE __ A category of artifacts whose attributes are similar: spoons, tables, and coffins, for example, are artifact types.
ASCLEPIUS __ Greek god of medicine and healing.
ASCRIBED STATUS __ Social standing or prestige which is the result of inheritance or hereditary factors.
ASIA MINOR __ The peninsula of western Asia bordered by the Black Sea to the north, the Mediterranean Sea to the south, and the Aegean Sea to the west; the Turkish region of Anatolia.
ASTROLABE __ Instrument used for celestial navigation.
ASSEMBLAGE __ A group of artifacts related to each other based upon recovery from a common archaeological context. Assemblage examples are artifacts from a site or feature.
ASSIMILATION __ The gradual process by which a minority group takes on the characteristics, including customs and attitudes, of the prevailing culture in which it lives.
ASSOCIATION __ Occurrence of two or more artifacts together.
ASSYRIA __ An ancient empire in Mesopotamia.
ASTARTE __ Goddess of love and fertility worshipped in various parts of the mideast. Her origin was Phoenician.
ATHENA __ Greek goddess of wisdom and warfare, patron of Athens. The Romans called her Minerva.
ATLANTIS __ Legendary civilization described by ancient writers like Plato.
ATLATL __ A wood or bone implement, held in one hand, and used to propel a spear. The tool acts as a lever, giving more powerful thrust and longer distance.
ATRIUM __ Room in a Roman house used for business or entertaining. The atrium was usually the focal point of the house and the largest room.
ATTIC __ From the area around Athens. (Attica)
ATTRIBUTE __ A characteristic or property of an object, such as weight, size, or color.
AUSTRALOPITHS __ Extinct early humans who evolved 4 to 5 million years ago in Africa.
AUTOCRACY __ A form of government in which a single person possesses unlimited political power; despotism.
AUTONOMY __ The right of a nation to govern itself; independence.
AUV __ Autonomous Underwater Vehicles are underwater robots that are not remote controlled and operate with artificial intelligence. Just like ROVs they are used instead of divers for difficult operations, e.g. on great depth.
AVEBURY __ Built around 2,500 B.C. Massive Late Neolithic stone circle in Wiltshire, UK.
AVOCATIONALS __ These are recreational scuba divers and amateur underwater archaeology groups who give invaluable help to underwater archaeologists. Examples are volunteer unpaid divers during investigations and diving clubs cooperating with archaeologists and maritime museums. The term may also be applied to volunteers in other archaeological disciplines.
AZTEC __ The civilization that ruled the region now called Mexico between A.D. 1000 and 1500. The capital of the Aztec Empire was called Tenochtitlan.
B
B-HORIZON __ The second zone of a soil, containing materials washed down from the A-horizon.
BABICHE __ Lacings, thread, thongs or netting made of sinew, gut or hide.
BABYLONIA __ A region of Southern Mesopotamia named after the city of Babylon.
BABYLONIANS __ A group known as the Amorites moved into Mesopotamia around 1900 B.C. The Amorite king, Hamurabbi, conquered all of southern Mesopotamia, and the civilization became known as Babylonian. Babylon was its richest and most powerful city.
BACCHUS __ Roman god of wine. Dionysos to the Greeks.
BACKED __ Intentionally dulled along one edge. A blade may be backed in order to allow it to be held opposite the cutting edge.
BACKFILL __ Refill an excavational unit at the end of the investigations; the dirt used to accomplish this. The latter is also known as backdirt.
BALANCED RECIPROCITY __ Gift giving that clearly carries the obligation of an eventual and roughly equal return.
BALEEN __ Whalebone. The term is more commonly used to refer to the bony substance within the mouth of the whale which is used to strain food. it is widely used by Eskimos for making tools and ornaments.
BALTIC SEA __ The world's largest brackish sea, located in northern Europe. The low salinity affects not only shipwrecks and other underwater artifacts, but also animal life, where the fish are of different species. The oceans have a salinity exceeding 3%, but the Baltic Sea has a salinity of 0.8% in the south, 0.3% in the north and 0.6% in average. Through currents there is a constant exchange of salt water from the Atlantic with brackish water from the Baltic. The heavier salt water stays in the deep, usually below 40 m depth (in the south) and 80 m depth (in the north). The lighter brackish water is always nearer surface. Between these layers there is also a constant exchange with the water movements – salt spreading up, and brackish water and oxygen diffusing down. For reasons unknown, perhaps climatic change, the Baltic Sea salinity is reducing.
BANNERSTONE __ A (usually) polished stone implement which may take a variety of forms. One of the most common is winged with a central hole. These may have served some ceremonial function or may simply be elaborate atlatl weights.
BARBARIAN __ A non-Greek. To the Greeks any foreigner who did not speak Greek was a barbarian.
BARQUE (or "Bark") __ A ship or a portable shrine shaped like a ship (usually mythical, e.g. the Barque of Amun- Re).
BASALT __ A fine-grained black, brown, gray or green rock consisting of feldspar, olivine, hornblende and augite. Often used for the manufacture of groundstone tools and ornaments.
BASAL THINNING __ The removal of flakes from the base of a projectile point or blade in a lengthwise fashion in order to facilitate hafting.
BASE LINE __ An arbitrary line established by stakes and string, or by surveying instrument, from which measurements are taken to produce a site-map, or to provide an initial axis for an excavation grid.
BASIN AND RANGE PROVINCE __ A geographic area extending from southern Oregon and Idaho to northern Mexico, and including most of western Arizona, the Great Basin of Utah and Nevada, and parts of eastern California. It is an area characterized by north-south trending mountain ranges interspersed by flat basins. The area was formed initially through block faulting during Tertiary times (15-20 million years ago), when, in a series of earthquakes, one section of land was lifted while the adjacent portion was lowered.
BASKET __ a container manufactured by the weaving, coiling or twining of vegetal materials such as cane or straw.
BAS-RELIEF __ Sculpture where figures project slightly from the background.
BASTION __ a projecting structure built onto a palisade for purpose of defence; any fortified place.
BATTLE OF MANZIKERT __ A decisive battle in 1071 in which the Seljuk Turks, under Sultan Alp Arslan, routed the forces of Byzantine emperor Romanus IV, resulting in the fall of Asia Minor to the Seljuks.
BAULK __ Unexcavated strip left standing between excavation units such that soil profiles remain in place for study and reference.
B.C.E. __ An abbreviation used to denote dates that occurred "Before the Common Era" as a more neutral alternative to the "B.C." ("Before Christ") of the Christian calendar.
BEAD __ Small disc-shaped, spherical or tubular artifact of bone, shell or glass which has been perforated such that it may be strung on a necklace.
BEAKER PEOPLE __ From the Late Neolithic to Early Bronze age (4000-2000 BC), named after their pottery. Styles of pottery known as funnel-beaker, protruding-foot beaker, and bell beaker.
BEAMER __ Tool fashioned of wood or the longbone of a large animal. It consists of a sharpened edge which runs nearly along the full length of the tool. The ends serve as handles by means of which it is drawn towards the user. It is used in the treatment of hides.
BEARDMAN JUG __ Common ceramic in the 17th and 18th centuries. May have contained wine or beer.
BEAR GRASS __ Also called sacahuista. Resembling clumps of large, coarse grass, this plant is found on mountain slopes around the Tucson Basin at elevations of 3000 to 6000 feet.
BEDROCK __ The solid layer of rock which underlies soil, gravel and other loose formations nearer the earth's surface.
BEHAVIORAL ADJUSTMENT __ Cultural responses, primarily through technology, that make survival in stressful environments possible.
BEHAVIORAL SINK __ A psychological state characterized by gross distortions of behavior.
BENTONITES __ A clay formed by the decomposition of volcanic ash, having the ability to absorb large quantities of water and to expand to several times its normal volume.
BERGMANN'S RULE __ A rule which states that within the same species of endotherms, populations with less bulk are found near the equator while those with greater bulk are found farther from the equator.
BERINGIA __ Landmass which existed in the Bering Strait between Alaska and Siberia during the last (Wisconsinan) Ice Age. At the height of the Wisconsin, sufficient water was "locked up" in the glaciers to cause a marked reduction in ocean levels. Thus, land was exposed in many coastal regions, and a "land bridge," over l500 km wide was formed between Asia and North America. For a century, Beringia has been widely accepted as the most probable route of entry for early man into the New World. The land bridge likely flooded a number of times in accordance with climatic changes and fluctuations in sea level, but was finally submerged l0,000 years ago
BESANT __ a valley in southern Saskatchewan which has given its name to a projectile point style and the Late Prehistoric Period phase, horizon or culture within which it occurs. The side-notched points generally have convex edges, sharp shoulders and straight bases. The latter are often thinned and ground and maximum width tends to occur at the shoulder or base. Length ranges from approximately l5 to 80 mm. The remainder of the artifact complex consists of drills, perforators, gravers, scrapers, spokeshaves, mauls and abraders. Besant peoples pursued a way of life focusing the communal hunting of bison by means of (bison) jumps and (bison) pounds throughout most of the northern plains. Their diet was supplemented by fishing, fowling and the collection of shellfish. Many other aspects of the Besant Phase are controversial. Chief among these are whether or not Besant peoples made pottery and the nature of the relationship between Besant and the burial mounds of the Sonota Complex along the Missouri River in northern South Dakota. Although Besant is here classed as Late Prehistoric, the bow (one of the defining traits of this period) was not in use in the earlier portions of this phase.
BEVELLED SURFACE __ One that meets two others at angles other than right angles.
BI (Chinese) __ Pierced jade disc
BIFACE __ A stone tool which has had flakes removed from both faces. No particular function is implied by this term as projectile points, knives and drills may all be bifacially worked.
BIFURCATION __ A basis of kin classification that distinguishes the mother's side of the family from the father's side.
BILATERAL DESCENT __ A descent ideology in which individuals define themselves as being at the center of a group of kin composed more or less equally of kin from both paternal and maternal lines.
BIOLOGICAL IMPERATIVES __ The basic human drives for food, rest, sexual satisfaction, and social contact.
BIOLOGY __ The science concerned with the structure, function, distribution, adaptation and evolution of all living organisms including both plants and animals.
BIPEDAL __ Signifies movement on two feet.
BIPOLAR __ A technique used in stone tool manufacture in which the core is rested on an anvil while being struck with the hammer. The waves of force are therefore not only directed downward from the hammer, but also reflected back upward from the anvil. Hence the flake may appear to have been struck at both ends.
BIRD ARROW __ An arrow which has been purposefully blunted so that it will not damage the hides or animals or become imbedded in a tree and thus be lost.
BIRDSTONE __ A polished stone object which resembles a bird in profile. Probably functioned as an atlatl handle or weight.
BISON JUMP __ A site at which bison have been killed by being stampeded over a cliff. This ancient communal hunting technique was occasionally used in conjunction with a (bison) pound.
BISON OCCIDENTALIS __ A large, now extinct variety of bison that roamed the North American grasslands during the Holocene.
BISON POUND __ A physiographic feature or a specially constructed enclosure into which bison were driven to be slaughtered.
BIT __ The cutting edge of an adze, axe, chisel, etc.
BITTERROOT __ An archaeological phase or culture represented at a number of sites in the Columbia Plateau region in eastern Oregon and in southern and eastern Idaho which Swanson (l962) equates with the northern Shoshone. Projectile points of this complex are side-notched and essentially indistinguishable from those from plains environments to the east (termed Logan Creek or Simonsen), and from those of the Mummy Cave Complex of the eastern slopes of the Rocky Mountains from Alberta to Wyoming. Associated artifacts include conical and wedge-shaped cores, choppers, oval, trinagular and side-notched end scrapers, stemmed and corner-notched bifaces, perforators, manos, whetstones, bone awls and beads of stone and seeds. Fauna include deer, antelope, bison and sheep. Radiocarbon dates range from 5200 to 3650 B.C.
BLACK SEA __ Inland sea connected to the Mediterranean through the Strait of Bosphorus.
BLADE __ l. the cutting edge of a tool. 2. a cutting tool. 3. that portion of a projectile point or knife which extends beyond the haft element. 4. a long, parallel-sided (prismatic, lamellar) flake core. These may be used as is, or used as the basis for the production of other tools. This highly sophisticated technique makes the most economical use of lithic resources.
BLANK __ An incompletely manufactured stone tool which has the general outline of the intended final form. The rough fashioning of blanks at a quarry would obviate the necessity of transporting greater amounts of unmodified stone to camp or fashioning all stone tools at the source of the stone.
BLOWOUT __ Geological term used to refer to the large bowl-shaped depressions created by wind erosion in arid and semi-arid environments. As the top soil and occasionally some of the underlying strata are removed in this process, artifacts may be exposed.
BOAT GRAVE __ A boat grave is a kind of ship burial, where a small boat is used. Examples of boat graves are Neolithic log boat graves, like the St Albans log boat grave. Other examples are planked boats used in Viking Age burials, perhaps they were simply poor man's/woman's versions of the larger ship burials.
BODKIN __ l. an awl used for making holes in fabric. 2. a blunted, large-eyed needle.
BODY SHERD __ Technically, a fragment of the body of a larger artifact. Most commonly, it refers to a fragment of a ceramic vessel which did not constitute part of the lip, rim, neck, shoulder or base.
BOG BODY __ Ancient human bodies preserved in bogs (waterlogged land filled with a substance called peat). Bog bodies have been found all over Europe, in bogs in Denmark, Germany, Ireland, Scotland, England, Sweden, and the Netherlands.
BONE __ The hard tissue, composed of both organic and inorganic materials, which makes up the skeletons of adult vertebrates. Because of their density, bones may survive in the archaeological record long after the decomposition of the soft tissue.
BONE BED __ A concentrated layer of articulated and disarticulated animal bones usually taken as an indication of a butchering and/or kill site. Typically found in association are weapons and butchering implements.
BONE GREASE __ The sweet marrow which is extracted by the smashing and boiling of bones. The grease floats and may be skimmed from the surface for immediate consumption, for storage or for use in pemmican.
BOOK OF THE DEAD __ The term Egyptologists use for the texts and illustrations that were buried with mummies to help them pass through the dangers of the underworld into the afterlife.
BOOK OF KELLS __ An illustrated manuscript of the four Christian Gospels (the New Testament books of Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John) created by monks in Scotland in about A.D. 800. The book is a masterpiece of Western art and includes amazing calligraphy (an artistic style of handwriting), colorful drawings of animals and people, and abstract designs. Some of the details are so fine that people can't see them with the naked eye.
BORDER CAVE, SOUTH AFRICA __ One of the earliest modern human sites on the planet, this rockshelter in the Lembombo Mountains was found by Louis Leakey(?) to contain Homo sapiens skeletons dated around 70,000 years old.
BOREAL (1) __ Pertaining to the north, its climate, flora, fauna, environment, resources and peoples; commonly used in reference to the northern forests.
BOREAL (2)__ A central North American climatic episode dating 7350 to 6540 B.C. This interval marks part of the warming trend between the Late Glacial climatic pattern and the warm dry Altithermal or Atlantic Climatic Episode which was to follow. During this time, the ice sheets retreated and vegetation zones moved towards their modern locations (Wendland l978).
BOREAL ARCHAIC __ An archaeological tradition associated with the mixed coniferous-deciduous forests of the American Northeast. As defined by Byers (l959), it was characterized by stemmed and side-notched projectile points, thumbnail and keeled scrapers, expanding and side-notched-based drills or perforators, shouldered knives and a proliferation of ground and polished implements: spears, adzes, gouges, plummets, rods, tubes, bannerstones, semilunar knives and birdstones. It was believed that Boreal Archaic peoples employed a diversified economy involving fishing, hunting, shellfish collection and plant harvesting. This construct is no longer commonly used.
BOREAL FOREST __ The technically correct term for the primarily coniferous forest which extends in a continuous arc from Alaska to Labrador and subsumes the Aspen Parkland -- the transition between the coniferous forest and the grasslands to the south. The white and black spruces are the most common elements throughout, with tamarack, balsam fir, jackpine, alpine fir and lodgepole pine achieving more restricted distributions. Trembling aspen and balsam poplar are the most important deciduous species (Rowe l972). The Boreal Forest is roughly equivalent to the taiga of ecologists.
BOSS __ A small mound-shaped node or protuberance. When used as a decorative element on pottery, they may be produced either by the impressing of a deep punctate on the opposite surface, or by the application and smoothing of small amounts of clay.
BOTANIST __ A person who pursues the scientific study of the structure, growth, and identification of plants.
BOTANY __ The science concerned with the study, classification, structure, ecology and economic importance of plants.
BOW __ A weapon consisting of a staff of elastic material such as wood, which is bent by a shorter piece of twine attached to each end. The tension thus imparted to the string is utilized to propel an arrow.
BOW DRILL __ a form of fire drill in which the stick is rotated with increased speed by virtue of the back-and-forth movement of a bow the string of which is looped around it.
B.P. __ Years before present; as a convention, 1950 is the year from which B.P. dates are calculated.
BRAKISH WATER __ Mixture of seawater and freshwater. The low salt-rate usually excludes those organisms that eat wood on shipwrecks.
BRECCIA __ A composite rock composed of angular fragments of more ancient rocks bound together by a natural cement.
BRONZE __ Mixture of copper, tin, and other metals.
BRONZE AGE __ The second age in Thomsen's three-age system, referring to the period when bronze tools were manufactured.
BRUSHED __ A method of modifying the surface of ceramic vessels by smoothing the still wet clay with a grass brush. This produces a heavily scored or striated appearance.
BUFFALO CHIP __ A piece of dried bison dung used as fuel by Native Americans.
BULB OF PERCUSSION __ A bulb or boss-like feature on the ventral face of a flake immediately below the striking platform.
BULBAR SCAR __ A minute surface irregularity which is occasionally present on the bulb of percussion of a man-made flake.
BULL BOAT __ A simple tub- or bowl-shaped boat made by stretching a bison hide over a willow frame bound with thongs. Used by various North American Native peoples.
BURIAL __ l. the covering-over of an object with earth. 2. the ceremonial entombment of a dead body beneath the ground or in a chamber. 3. the feature thus created consisting of the individual(s) and the context. bundle burial. the (re-)burial of bundled-up disarticulated, defleshed remains. extended burial. placement of the individual with arms at the sides and legs extended. flexed burial. placement of the individuals with arms and legs bent up against the body. intrusive burial. the excavation of a grave into a burial pit or mound constructed at an earlier period. Two individuals may thus appear to be in association although they are not contemporaneous. multiple burial. collective internment; the placement of two or more bodies within the same grave. platform burial. see scaffold burial. primary burial. placement of the dead in a grave with the flesh at least partially intact such that after further decomposition, the bones remain articulated. scaffold burial. placement of the dead on a scaffold above the ground where it may be defleshed by scavengers. The remains may be interred at a later date. seated burial. entombment of the deceased in a sitting position. secondary burial. the final interment of an individual subsequent to an earlier burial in which the flesh decomposed. Secondary burials are therefore not articulated (or frequently improperly articulated) and some bones may have been lost. supine burial. placement of the dead on the back with face and palms upward.
BURIAL MOUND __ Raised mass of earth or debris within or below which deceased individuals are placed.
BURIN __ A generally small flake tool which bears a short, chisel-like cutting edge. They are believed to have been used for engraving or scoring bone, antler or ivory prior to splitting.
C
C-14 __ Abbreviation for "carbon l4"; a radioactive form (or isotope) of carbon used in radiocarbon dating. The numerical suffix indicates that the atom contains l4 particles within its nucleus as opposed to the l2 within the more common, stable (non-radioactive) isotope.
CACAO __ Seeds from which chocolate is extracted.
CACHE __ An excavated pit, or mound of stones used to store and/or hide food or tools.
CADASTRE (CADASTER): __ A public record of the extent, value, and ownership of land within a district for purposes of taxation.
CADUCEUS __ A staff with two serpents coiled around it and a pair of wings at the top. Carried by the Greek god Hermes, known as Mercury to the romans.
CAIRN __ A mound of stones serving as a monument or marker.
CALCAREOUS CONCRETIONS __ A rounded mass of mineral matter occurring in sand stone, clay, etc., often in concentric layers around a nucleus.
CALCINED BONE __ Burned bone reduced to white or blue mineral constituents.
CALENDRICAL SYSTEM __ System of measuring time that is based on natural recurring units of time, such as revolutions of the earth around the sun. Time is determined by the number of such units that have preceded or elapsed with reference to a specific point in time.
CALICHE __ Deposits of calcium carbonate that occur as the substrata throughout much of the US desert southwest. Caliche occurs as irregular, impervious layers a fraction of an inch to several feet in thickness, or as the matrix in a sand and gravel conglomerate.
CALL SYSTEM __ A repertoire of sounds, each of which is produced in response to a particular situation.
CALLITRICHIDAE __ family of New World monkeys consisting of the marmosets and tamarins.
CALUMET __ A peace pipe, usually elaborately decorated and often composed of both wood and stone elements.
CANAAN __ A historical and Bibilical term used to describe the strip of land which includes most of present day Gaza Strip and Israel and the Western part of Jordan. The term was found on Egyptian writings from the 15th century BC.
CANNIBALISM __ The consumption of human flesh by other humans for reasons of dire need or for ritual purposes. In the archaeological record, the forceful enlargening of the foramen magnum at the base of the skull (presumably for removal of the brains) and the smashing of long bones (for the extraction of bone grease) are often viewed as evidence of cannibalism. In at least some cases, however, it is possible that while the individual was thus prepared for consumption, they were only symbolically devoured.
CANOE __ A long, narrow open boat lacking sails and rudder. It is pointed at both ends and propelled by paddles.
CANOPIC JARS __ Ancient Egyptian containers used to hold the internal organs that were removed from a dead person before mummification.
CARBOHYDRATES __ Organic compounds composed of carbon, oxygen, and hydrogen; includes the sugars and starches.
CARBON SAMPLE __ A quantity of organic material, usually charcoal, collected for radiocarbon dating.
CARIES __ Tooth decay. The condition of the teeth of a skeleton is often an important clue to the diet and health of the individual.
CARNIVORE __ An animal that eats primarily meat.
CARPAL __ A bone of the human wrist, or one of the corresponding bones of the forelegs of other animals.
CARRYING CAPACITY __ The point at or below which a population tends to stabilize.
CARTONNAGE __ Papyrus or linen soaked in plaster, shaped around a body. Used for Egyptian mummy masks and coffins.
CARTOUCHE __ Elongated version of the hieroglyphic sigh W "shen" which means 'to encircle'. Two of the Pharaoh's five names were written inside the cartouche. The sign represents a loop of rope that is never ending, such as the arch of the sky and the world, to indicate that Pharaoh lead everything that the sun encircled.
CAST __ A representation of an organism created when a substance fills in a mold.
CASTELLATION __ A projecting or raised section on the rim of a pot.
CATLINITE __ A soft, red, easily worked stone of the Upper Missouri region which was commonly ground and polished into tobacco pipes. Also known as "pipestone".
CATALOGUE __ The systematic list recording artifacts and other finds, recovered by archaeological research, including their description and Provenience.
CATALOGUE NUMBER __ A number assigned all items recovered by archaeological research to cross-index them to the catalogue.
CATARRHINE NOSE __ A nose in which the nostrils open downward and are separated by a narrow nasal septum; found in Old World monkeys, apes, and humans.
CATARRHINI __ Infraorder of the order Primates that includes Old World monkeys and the hominoids plus various extinct taxa.
CATASTROPHIC AGE PROFILE __ A mortality pattern based on bone or tooth wear analysis, and corresponding to a "natural" age distribution in which the older the age group, the fewer the individuals it has. This pattern is often found in contexts such as flash floods, epidemics, or volcanic eruptions.
CATASTROPHISM __ The eighteenth-century theory that earthquakes, volcanic eruptions, and other natural disasters were responsible for the distribution of animal fossils and artifacts.
CATION-RATIO DATING __ This method aspires to the direct dating of rock carvings and engravings, and is also potentially applicable to Paleolithic artifacts with a strong patina caused by exposure to desert dust. It depends on the principle that cations of certain elements are more soluble than others; they leach out of rock varnish more rapidly than the less soluble elements, and their concentration decreases with time.
CATTLE COMPLEX __ An East African socioeconomic system in which cattle represent social status as well as wealth.
CAULDRON __ A large kettle.
C.E. __ An abbreviation used to denote dates that occur within the "Common Era," as a more neutral alternative to the "A.D." of the Christian calendar.
CEBID __ A member of the family Cebidae; the New World monkeys excluding the marmosets and tamarins.
CEBIDAE __ Family of New World monkeys that includes the squirrel, spider, howler, and capuchin monkeys, among others.
CELL __ The smallest unit that is considered to be alive. All living organisms either are one cell or are composed of several cells.
CELTS __ A category of people who flourished from about 750 to 12 B.C. During this time, the Celts were the most powerful group in central and northern Europe. Although the Celts were composed of many different tribes, they shared similar languages, technology, customs, artistic styles, and beliefs. By A.D. 60, their power had been destroyed by the Romans. After that, only the Celtic tribes in the more remote areas of Europe, such as the British Isles, survived.
CENOTAPH __ From the Greek word meaning; "empty tomb". A tomb built for ceremonial purposes that was never intended to be used for the interment of the deceased.
CENOTE __ A natural waterhole. Cenote is a corruption by the Spanish of the Maya word dzonot, a large circular sink-hole created by the collapse of limestone caves. The water in cenotes is filtered through limestone and constituted one of the primary sources of drinking water for the Maya. Patterns of settlement among the early Maya often followed the location of cenotes.
CENSUS __ A comprehensive survey of a population designed to reveal its basic demographic characteristics.
CENTRAL HALL __ A frame house consisting of two rooms and an enclosed central hall.
CENTRALIZATION __ Concentration of political and economic decisions in the hands of a few individuals or institutions.
CERAMIC __ Pottery, fired clay.
CERBERUS __ Three headed dog that guarded the entrance to Hades.
CERCOPITHECIDAE __ Family that includes all the Old World monkeys, such as guenons, mangabeys, macaques, and baboons.
CERCOPITHECINAE __ Subfamily that contains the Old World monkeys that are omnivorous and possess cheek pouches.
CERCOPITHECINAE __ Superfamily that consists of the Old World monkeys.
CEREMONIAL FUND __ The portion of the peasant budget allocated to religious and social activities.
CHAC MOOL - Maya stone reclining figure with a place for offerings on it's stomach.
CHACO CANYON __ Site in New Mexico representative of the Anasazi culture that thrived there between A.D. 500 and 1300.
CHAIN __ A surveying chain, or long steel tape-measure, calibrated in meters or feet, used for site mapping and grid layout.
CHALCEDONY __ A microcrystalline form of quartz with crystals arranged in parallel strands. Chalcedony was commonly used for tool-making and could be either chipped or ground.
CHARCOAL __ Carbon formed by heating organic matter in the absence of air; one of the preferred substances for radiocarbon dating.
CHARON __ In Greek myth, the boatman who rowed the souls of the dead across the River Styx into the underworld.
CHEEK POUCH __ A pocket in the cheek that opens into the mouth; some Old World monkeys store food in the cheek pouch.
CHEMISTRY __ The science concerned with the structure, properties, reactions and commercial application of substances.
CHERNOZEM __ A rich, black organic soil well-suited to the growing of grasses, which is found in cool or temperate semiarid environments.
CHERT __ A very fine grained rock formed in ancient ocean sediments. It often has a semi-glassy finish and is usually white, pinkish, brown, gray, or blue-gray in color. It can be shaped into arrowheads by chipping. It has often been called flint, but true flint is found in chalk deposits and is a distinctive blackish color.
CHIEFDOM __ The third stage in the 'stage model,' representing regional systems with mixed economies that are integrated through the institution of chief.
CHILAM BALAM __ A series of books written by various Maya tribes in Spanish after the Spanish Conquest. The content probably came directly from Maya codices.
CHINKING __ A mortar, usually composed chiefly of clay, used to plaster over gaps in walls or to bind bricks or stones.
CHIPPING STATION __ A restricted area of "floor" within an archaeological site which yields stone flakes to the virtual exclusion of other kinds of artifacts. Such features are frequently interpreted as places used for the chipping of stone.
CHITHO __ A disc-shaped biface.
CHINAMPAS __ The areas of fertile reclaimed land, constructed by the Aztecs, and made of mud dredged from canals.
CHOL __ Maya language and ethnic group.
CHOLLA __ Several species of spiny cactus having cylindrical stems and branches. The plants are found in many parts of semiarid and arid North America.
CHOPPER __ An axe-like tool, generally fashioned from a cobble or large pebble, and usually worked only on one face.
C-HORIZON __ The bottom-most zone of a soil, consisting of unaltered natural sediments.
CHRONOLOGY __ Arrangement of events in the order in which they occurred.
CHRONOLOGY BUILDING __ Devising a dated history for a region by combining numerous lines of evidence.
CHRONOMETRIC DATING __ Placing an event or process with a range of dates on a calendrical time scale, usually by means of radiocarbon or potassium/argon techniques
CHRONOMETRY __ The art of measuring time accurately.
CICERO __ Roman orator, died 43 BCE.
CISTS __ Boxed burials (eg: some of the Neolithic graves at El Garcel, Almeria, Spain) are referred to as cists burials. The term simply comes from the German word 'Kiste' meaning a box or crate.
CITY-STATE __ City and surrounding countryside under it's influence. Main political entity of classical Greece.
CIVILIZATION __ A term used by anthropologists to describe any society that has cities.
CLADE __ A group of species with a common evolutionary ancestry.
CLADISTICS __ A theory of classification that differentiates between shared ancestral and shared derived features.
CLADOGRAM __ A graphic representation of the species, or other taxa, being studied, based upon cladistic analysis.
CLAN __ A unilineal descent group usually comprising more than ten generations consisting of members who claim a common ancestry even though they cannot trace step-by-step their exact connection to a common ancestor.
CLASS (1) __ A major division of a phylum, consisting of closely related orders.
CLASS (2) __ A ranked group within a stratified society characterized by achieved status and considerable social mobility.
CLASSIFICATION __ Systematic arrangement in groups or categories according to criteria.
CLAY __ Extremely fine (less than 0.0l mm in diameter) particles produced by the weathering of certain rocks. Its primary constituent is hydrated aluminum silicate, but numerous impurities, such as quartz, mica, calcium carbonate, alkalies, iron compounds, humus, and sand may also be present. Clay is plastic when moist, but hardens when dried and is used in the manufacture of ceramics.
CLEAVER __ A large core tool with a straight, sharp edge at one end.
CLEOPATRA __ Ruler of Egypt from 51 to 30 B.C. Of Macedonian (Greek) descent, Cleopatra reigned for 21 years, until the fall of Egypt to Rome in 30 B.C. She was the lover of the famous Roman general Mark Anthony.
CLIFF DWELLINGS __ Shelters or villages built along the edges of cliffs.
CLOSED CORPORATE COMMUNITY __ A community that strongly emphasizes community identity and discourages outsiders from settling there by restricting land use to village members and prohibiting the sale or lease of property to outsiders.
CLOVIS __ A town in New Mexico which has lent its name to a distinctive type of Paleo-Indian or Early Prehistoric Period projectile point as well as to the complex (also known as the Llano Complex) and culture within which it occurs. The highly distinctive projectile points are concave-based and highly variable in size, ranging from approximately 3 to l2 cm in length. One or both faces may be fluted with the channel flake extending one-half or less of the length of the point. Most Clovis sites are either surface finds of isolated projectile points or kill sites and hence the full nature of he complex is not known. Associated artifacts include a variety of scraping tools, blades, hammerstones, chopping tools and foreshafts and defleshers of bone (Frison l978). Clovis points are distributed from the arctic to Mexico, and from California as far east as Nova Scotia. Radiocarbon dated sites range in age from 8500 to approximately l0,000 B.C. Where perishable materials are preserved and an association can be demonstrated, faunal remains are nearly invariably those of the mammoth. Clovis points are rare in Manitoba due to the fact that most of the province was glaciated or beneath the waters of glacial Lake Agassiz during the Clovis period. The small area in southwestern Manitoba which would have been available for occupation at that time probably did not support the kind of vegetation upon which mammoths depended for food (Pettipas l975).
CLUSTER ANALYSIS __ a multivariate statistical technique which assesses the similarities between units or assemblages, based on the occurrence or non-occurrence of specific artifact types or other components within them.
COBBLE __ A medium-sized stone (larger than a pebble but smaller than a fieldstone) which has been rounded and occasionally polished by erosion.
COCHRANE RE_ADVANCE __ A surging of the Wisconsinan ice sheet which occurred roughly 8000 years ago and which is associated with a rise in the level of glacial Lake Agassiz.
CODE SHEETS __ Anthropologists' checklists of observed behaviors and inferred motivations for or attitudes toward them.
CODY __ A town in Wyoming which has lent its name to a distinctive style of Palaeo-Indian knife as well as a complex consisting of at least two forms of Plano projectile points (Eden and Scottsbluff) and possibly a third (Alberta). The knives are either single-shouldered or parallel-sided with a transverse blade. Associated artifacts include a variety of side- and end-scrapers, drills, knives, spokeshaves, gravers, perforators and denticulates. Cody Complex sites are more or less restricted to grassland environments and where preservation is good, they contain the remains of now-extinct forms of bison. In Manitoba, Cody artifacts occur above the Manitoba escarpment in the extreme southwestern corner of the province. Elsewhere, they have been radiocarbon dated between 5900 B.C. and 7900 B.C. (if Alberta is included) or 7l00 B.C. if it is not.
COFFIN TEXTS __ Texts written inside coffins of the Egyptian Middle Kingdom that are intended to direct the souls of the dead past the dangers and perils encountered on the journey through the afterlife. More than 1,000 spells are known.
COGNATE WORD __ Words in different languages which are similar in terms of meaning and structure by virtue of descent from a common ancestral language.
COGNITIVE ANTHROPOLOGY __ The study of how peoples of different cultures acquire information about the world (cultural transmission), how they process that information and reach decisions, and how they act on that information in ways that other members of their cultures consider appropriate.
COGNITIVE ARCHAEOLOGY __ The study of past ways of thought and symbolic structures from material remains.
COGNITIVE IMPERATIVE __ The human need to impose order on the world by mental processes.
COGNITIVE PROCESSES __ Ways of perceiving and ordering the world.
COIL FRACTURE __ A potsherd, the shape of which reveals that it was a section of one of the coils used to manufacture the vessel. see coiling.
COILING __ A method of ceramic vessel manufacture which involves the stacking of rings of clay. The coils are later smoothed-over by hand or paddled to complete the finish and to bind the coils to one another.
CO-INFLUENCE SPHERE __ An area within which human groups interact due to trade, conflict, migration, the nature of local resources and the manner in which various groups exploited them. As the basis for a research design, the Co-Influence Sphere Model emphasizes interaction as opposed to unilineal chronology, and relies upon cultural comparisons beyond the immediate research area as a basis upon which to draw conclusions.
COLD HAMMERING __ Fashioning metal without the use of heat sufficient to melt it. In prehistoric Manitoba this was restricted to copper and recent evidence indicates that temperatures of up to l000C were often applied to render the substance less brittle.
COLLAGEN __ A protein which occurs in bone and may be used for radiocarbon dating.
COLLATERAL FLAKING __ When flakes on a chipped stone artifact extend to the middle from both edges forming a medial ridge. The flakes are at right angles to the longitudinal axis, and regular and uniform in size.
COLLECTING __ The removal of materials in archaeological context from one settlement by the residents of another.
COLLECTION __ l. the total array of artifacts from a single site or area. 2. the total array of artifacts in the possession of an individual or institution.
COLLUVIAL DEPOSITS __ Deposits formed on slopes near sources of sediment such as mountains.
COLLUVIUM __ A mixture of rock fragments and debris occurring at the foot of a slope.
COLOBINAE __ Subfamily of Old World monkeys that includes the langurs and colobus monkeys; species that are specialized leaf eaters, possessing a complex stomach and lacking cheek pouches.
COLOSSUS OF RHODES __ A massive bronze statue of the sun god Helios located on the Greek island of Rhodes. It was built around 290 B.C. and was destroyed by an earthquake around 226 B.C. One of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World, the Colossus was 110 feet high and was once thought to have straddled the entrance to the city harbor (a fact which scholars now know would have been impossible).
COMMUNAL CULT __ A society with groups of ordinary people who conduct religious ceremonies for the well-being of the total community.
COMMUNICATION __ The transmission and reception of some stimulus or message. In relation to animal life, communication occurs when one animal transmits information to another animal.
COMMUNITY __ The behavioral component comprised of groups of households whose members frequently interact.
COMMUNITY IDENTITY __ An effort by speakers to identify themselves with a specific locality and to distinguish themselves from outsiders.
COMPUTER TOMOGRAPHY __ A technique that uses X ray or ultrasound to provide images of layers of solid objects, such as pottery or the human body. The images are processed by a computer to create two- and three-dimensional pictures of the object.
CONCEPTUAL __ The major assumptions or underlying premises of a field of research.
CONG (Chinese) __ Jade tube.
CONQUISTADOR __ A name given to the 16th-century Spanish explorers who came to the New World.
CONSERVATION __ The scientific process of cleaning--and often repairing and/or restoring--an artifact in order to preserve it for further study and/or display.
CONSERVATION ARCHAEOLOGY __ A sub-field of archaeology which focuses on the preservation of archaeological resources. This position encourages the stabilization and preservation of archaeological sites as opposed to their immediate excavation.
CONTEXT __ Relationship of artifacts and other cultural remains to each other and the situation in which they are found.
COPAL __ An incense of Mesoamerica.
COPPER SHEATHING __ Used underwater (below the waterline) on wooden ships to repel marine organisms.
COPROLITE __ Fossilized, desiccated< or otherwise preserved dung or human faeces. Study of coprolites can yield information on the diet, environment and habits of early peoples.
COPTIC __ The Afro-Asiatic language of the Copts, which survives only as a liturgical language of the Coptic Church; of or relating to the Copts, the Coptic Church, or the Coptic language.
CORBALLED ARCH __ A false arch constructed by putting ceiling tiles closer together on each successive layer until a capstone could be laid.
CORE __ 1. the stone from which flakes have been removed; the nucleus. A "prepared" core is one which has been specially modified in such a way as to control the shape of subsequent flakes. The core itself may be modified into a tool (core tool). core, conical. a cone-shaped core with the flat surface serving as the striking platform. core, polyhedral. a generally sphere-shaped core with many faces. core, wedge-shaped. a core in which flakes are removed from two faces, thus rendering it a wedge-shaped appearance. 2. a generally thin, cylindrical sample of soil or tree growth-rings.
CREMATION __ Destruction of the bodily remains of the deceased by burning. This mode of postmortem treatment may be favored for many reasons; to prevent the return of the dead, to protect the deceased from scavengers, or to prevent the transformation of the dead into a harmful entity. Treatment of the ashes is highly variable from one group to another. Cremation seems to have been particularly popular with Paleo-Indians and this is one of the reasons that skeletal remains dating to this period are so rare.
CRETACEOUS PERIOD __ A period 144 to 65 million years ago, characterized by the growth of the first flowering plants and the height of the era of the dinosaurs. It ended with the complete extinction of the dinosaurs 65 million years ago.
CROP MARK __ Differential vegetational growth as a result of buried features. Some species of plants are particularly sensitive to various subsurface conditions. For example cereals will not achieve normal height and will ripen sooner over wall foundations, while over ditches, or trenches they will grow taller and remain green longer. Study of these differences, particularly with the aid of aerial photography, can reveal such features in remarkable detail.
CROSS DATING __ A relative dating technique which attributes similar ages to two strata, components or sites on the basis of the recovery of similar artifacts from each; the use of an artifact whose age is known elsewhere, to date a new site.
CUCURBIT __ The plant family which includes pumpkins, squash, gourds and cucumbers and which occurs in tropical and subtropical regions. Some members of this family were domesticated by Native North Americans.
CULTIGEN __ An initially wild plant which has undergone sufficient genetic changes due to nurturing (or conscious selection), so as to be entirely dependent upon man for its survival; a domesticated plant.
CULTIVAR __ A wild plant that is nurtured by humans. Cultivars may thus be found thriving outside of their normal habitats due to irrigation, fertilization or weeding.
CULTIVATION __ Preparation and use of land for the production of food.
CULT-STATUE __ A statue of a divinity found in a shrine dedicated to that divinity.
CULTURAL ANTHROPOLOGY __ That branch of anthropology that concerns itself with homanity's non-biological adaptations. Occasionally it is used synonymously (but incorrectly) with social anthropology.
CULTURAL DATING __ The process of comparing objects archaeologists find with information they already have; comparing cultural attributes.
CULTURAL ECOLOGY __ The study of the ways a society adapts to its environment.
CULTURAL EVOLUTION __ The study of how and why human adaptive systems have changed over time.
CULTURAL FORMATION PROCESS __ Human activities responsible for forming and modifying the archaeological record.
CULTURAL DYNAMICS __ The study of population movements and stability or cultural change and continuity. Cultural dynamics thus includes such phenomena as migration, diffusion, re-adaptation, population increases and expansions, etc. and attempts to identify the reasons for their occurrence.
CULTURAL RESOURCE MANAGEMENT __ A branch of archaeology that is concerned with developing policies and action in regard to the preservation and use of cultural resources. Often called simply CRM.
CULTURAL RESOURCES __ Site
A
ABERRANT __ Deviation from the class to which an artifact or phenomenon belongs.
ABORIGINAL. INDIGENOUS __ Pertaining to the original occupants of a given region.
ABRASIVE STONE __ Usually a sandstone slab used for grinding and polishing.
ABSOLUTE DATING __ A dating method that determines an object's exact age, as opposed to its relative age; includes such techniques as dendrochronology and radiocarbon dating.
ABU SIMBEL __ Two temples located close to the border between Sudan and Egypt. They were constructed in the 13th century B.C.E. during the reign of Pharaoh Ramesses II.
ACCLIMATORY ADJUSTMENTS __ Reversible physiological adjustments to stressful environments.
ACCRETION __ Growth by virtue of an increase in inter-cellular materials.
ACCULTURATION __ The process by which a culture absorbs the traits or customs of another culture with which it is in direct contact.
ACEPHALOUS SOCIETY __ A society without a political head such as a president, chief, or king.
ACHEMENID EMPIRE __ Persian empire named after its founder Achemens. The empire lasted from about 550 to 330 BCE when it was conquered by Alexander the Great.
ACHIEVED STATUS __ Social standing and prestige reflecting the ability of an individual to acquire an established position in society as a result of individual accomplishments/
ACROPOLIS __ A highly fortified area that served as the defensive and ritual center of Greek cities such as Athens.
ACT __ The smallest unit of recurrent behavior involving an artifact.
ACTIVITY __ A set of related 'acts.'
ACTIVITY AREA __ that portion of an archaeological site which can be equated with a single activity such as flint knapping, butchering, or cooking.
ADAPTATION __ The process of change to better conform with environmental conditions or other external influences.
ADAPTIVE RADIATION __ The evolution of a single evolutionary stock into a number of different species.
ADJUSTMENT __ The ability of humans to survive in stressful environments by nongenetic means.
ADOLESCENT GROWTH SPURT __ A rapid increase in stature and other dimensions of the body that occurs during puberty.
ADULT __ The period in an individual's life cycle after the eruption of the last permanent teeth.
ADZE __ An axe-like implement in which the blade is hafted such that the cutting edge lies perpendicular to the handle after the fashion of a hoe. Used primarily for woodworking. trihedral adze. an adze with a triangular cross-section.
AEOLIAN ( sometimes EOLIAN) __ Sand, clay, silt, or mixed deposits that have been carried by the wind. Loess and sand dunes are typical aeolian deposits.
AERIAL PHOTOGRAPHY __ Aerial photography. vertical and oblique photographic imagery of the earth's surface taken from any point of advantage. The use of specialized films can render visible features which could not otherwise be detected. Topographic relief can be emphasized by photographing in the morning or early evening when shadows are most pronounced.
AFFILIATIVE BEHAVIOR __ Close-proximity behavior that includes touching, grooming, and hugging.
AFFINAL KIN __ Persons related by marriage.
AGATE __ A banded or mottled chalcedony.
AGAVE __ Sometimes called a century plant. Several species of the plant were used by Indians in the Southwest and Mexico. The plants vary greatly in size, but are characterized by a cluster of leaves spreading out at ground level from a short central stem. The narrow leaves are long and thick and terminate in a spine. At maturity, each plant sends up one long flowering stalk and then dies. Agaves grow at elevations of 3000 to 8000 feet. Species of agave are used in the manufacture of pulque and tequila, alcoholic beverages popular in Mexico. Raw agave is poisonous.
AGE GRADE __ A group of people of the same sex and approximately the same age who share a set of duties and privileges.
AGGRADATION __ An accumulation of sediment resulting in the building up of a land surface. An example would be part of a river bank upon which sediments are regularly deposited during the spring flood.
AGING __ The uninterrupted process of normal development that leads to a progressive decline in physiological function and ultimately to death.
AGONISTIC BEHAVIOR __ Behavior that involves fighting, threats, and fleeing.
AGRARIAN STATE __ The Fourth stage in the stage model , representing large regional systems or empires based primarily on non-mechanized agriculture and controlled by centralized and specialized bureaucracies.
AGRICULTURE __ A subsistence mode which involves the use of machinery or domesticated animals in the cultivation of plants.
A-HORIZON __ The uppermost, often dark-colored natural level in a soil profile characterized by roots, humus, and a lack of clay, iron, carbonates and soluble salts which have leached to lower levels.
AIMA __ Australasian Institute of Maritime Archaeology
AIRLIFT __ Instrument like a giant vacuum cleaner used by underwater archaeologists to remove dirt and debris from underwater archaeological sites.
AKHENATEN __ Pharaoh of the 18th dynasty and primary figure in the Armana Period. Approximate dates of reign: 1352-1336 BCE.
AKHETATEN __ New capital city founded by Akhnaten and now called Tell el-Amarna.
ALABASTRON __ A traditional Egyptian oil jar made of alabaster. The Greeks made later versions of it out of clay.
ALBERTA __ A Plano projectile point style of the northwestern plains. Specimens are as much as 20 cm in length, parallel-sided with blunt tips, and stemmed.
ALBINISM __ A recessive abnormality that leads to little or no production of the skin pigment melanin.
ALEXANDER THE GREAT __ King of Macedonia and conqueror.
ALIDADE __ An optical surveying instrument used in conjunction with a plane-table and stadia-rod to produce detailed large-scale topographic maps.
ALIENATION __ The fragmentation of individuals' relations to their work, the things they produce, and the resources with which they produce them.
ALL-MALE PARTY __ Among chimpanzees, a small group of adult or adolescent males.
ALLEN'S RULE __ A rule which states that among endotherms, populations of the same species living near the equator tend to have more protruding body parts and longer limbs than do populations farther away from the equator.
ALLOGROOMING __ Grooming another animal.
ALLOMETRIC GROWTH __ The pattern of growth whereby different parts of the body grow at different rates with respect to each other.
ALLOMORPHS __ Forms contained in morphemes that differ in sound but not in meaning.
ALLOPATRIC SPECIES __ Species occupying mutually exclusive geographical areas.
ALLOPHONES __ Sounds that belong to the same phoneme.
ALLOYING __ A technique involving the mixing of two or more metals to create an entirely new material, e.g. the fusion of copper and tin to make bronze.
ALLUVIAL DEPOSITS __ Sediments laid down by streams in their channels or on flood plains.
ALLUVIAL FAN __ A fan- or wedge-shaped accumulation of silt, sand, gravel and boulders deposited by rapidly-flowing streams when they reach flatter terrain.
ALLUVIUM __ A generally fine-grained mixture of sand, silt and mud deposited by flowing water.
ALTAMIRA __ Cave near the north coast of Spain discovered in 1868. The first site where Paleolithic Period cave paintings were found.
ALTIMETER __ A barometric device for determining elevations above sea-level.
ALTITHERMAL __ A postulated climatic period characterized by warmer and/or drier conditions approximately 4,000-8,000 years ago.
ALTRUISTIC ACT __ A behavior characterized by self-sacrifice that benefits others.
AMARNA __ General term used to refer to the reign of Akhnaten and surrounding years. Also modern name of the Egyptian city founded by Akhenaten. (Tell el-Amarna)
AMARNA LETTERS __ A collection of clay tablets containing diplomatic correspondence of the Amarna Period.
AMAZONS - Legendary tribe of warrior women.
AMBILINEAL DESCENT __ A descent ideology based on ties traced through either the paternal or the maternal line.
AMBILOCALITY __ Residence of a married couple with or near the kin of either husband or wife, as they choose.
AMPHIBIANS __ The earliest class of land vertebrates to evolve, yet have to keep their skin moist and lay eggs in water; includes modern frogs and salamanders.
AMPHORA __ Large round ceramic container used for transportation and storage of goods. Used from antiquity until the 16th century or so. Used for wine, oil, olives, grain, etc, etc. Amphoras in a shipwreck can often tell the age and nationality of the wreck.
AMUN __ Egyptian god associated with the state and the kingship during Egypt's New Kingdom.
ANALOGIES __ Structures that are superficially similar and serve similar functions, but have no common evolutionary relationship.
ANALOGY __ A process of reasoning whereby two entities that share some similarities are assumed to share many others.
ANALYSIS __ The process of studying and classifying artifacts, usually conducted in a laboratory after excavation has been completed.
ANASAZI __ One of the three desert cultures that shaped life in the American Southwest from 300 B.C. to A.D. 1300. Developed a new way of building pueblos and the technique of farming on top of mesas. Used both hand-formed adobe bricks and stones to build their homes.
ANATOLIA __ The large peninsular region of Turkey, bordered by the Black Sea to the north and the Mediterranean Sea to the south, and constituting the westernmost point of Asia; also known as Asia Minor.
ANCILLARY SAMPLE __ Any non-artifactual materials collected by archaeologists to aid in dating, paleoenvironmental reconstruction, or other interpretations - e.g. carbon samples, soil samples, palynological samples etc.
ANDESITE __ A fine-grained gray to green igneous rock composed primarily of minerals of the feldspar group -- in particular andesine, amphibole and pyroxene.
ANGKOR WAT __ A complex of religious buildings in Cambodia (in southeastern Asia) that is considered one of the world¹s archaeological and architectural treasures. The complex combines a temple dedicated to Vishnu (a Hindu god) and a mausoleum (a large and stately tomb). Angkor Wat was built by Suryavarman II, who ruled the Khmer Empire from A.D. 1113 to 1145.
ANGLO SAXONS __ A name used to describe the European warriors who invaded Britain around the 5th century A.D.; composed of two separate groups, the Angles and the Saxons.
ANGOSTURA __ A Plano projectile point style (previously termed "Long") named by R.P. Wheeler (in Wormington l957) after the Angostura Basin in South Dakota. Angostura points, sometimes termed "Lusk" points, are long and narrow, lanceolate in outline form, rhomboidal in cross section, and have concave or straight bases.
ANIMAL HUSBANDRY __ The breeding, care, and use of herd animals, such as sheep, goats, camels, cattle, and yaks.
ANIMATISM __ Belief in an impersonal supernatural force.
ANIMIST __ One who believes in animism, a belief that creatures, objects, and natural phenomena are inhabited by spirits.
ANNEALING __ In copper and bronze metallurgy, this refers to the process of heating and then cooling the material to remove stress from hammering.
ANTHROPOCENTRICITY __ The belief that humans are the most important elements in the universe.
ANTHROPOID (1) __ A Greek word meaning; man-shaped. This term is used for coffins made in the shape of a human.
ANTHROPOID (2) __ A member of the suborder Anthropoidea; includes the New World monkeys, Old World monkeys, apes, and humans.
ANTHROPOIDEA __ Suborder of the order Primates that includes the New World monkeys, Old World monkeys, apes, and humans.
ANTHROPOLOGICAL LINGUISTICS __ The scientific study of human communication within its sociocultural context and the origin and evolution of language.
ANTHROPOLOGY __ The scientific and humanistic study of man's present and past biological, linguistic, social, and cultural variations. Major sub-fields include archaeology, physical anthropology, cultural anthropology, and linguistic anthropology.
ANTHROPOMETRY __ The study of measurements of the human body.
ANTHROPOMORPHIC __ "Man-like." Used to describe artifacts or art work decorated with human features or with a man-like appearance.
ANTINOUS __ Favorite companion of Emperor Hadrian.
ANTONINE WALL __ Built during the early 140s AD. Northernmost Roman wall in Great Britain marked the edge of the territory of Hadrian's successor, Antonius Pius.
ANVIL __ A block of stone or metal upon which other materials are shaped or worked through striking.
APE __ A common term that includes the lesser apes (the gibbons and siamang) and the great apes (the orangutan, common chimpanzee, bonobo, and gorilla).
APHASIA __ A language disorder resulting from brain damage.
APHRODITE __ Greek goddess of love and fertility. Known as Venus to the Romans.
APPLIED ANTHROPOLOGY __ The activity of professional anthropologists in programs that have as primary goals changes in human behavior believed to ameliorate contemporary social, economic, and technological problems.
ARABLE LAND __ Land fit for cultivation.
ARBITRARY LEVELS __ An archaeological excavation technique in which the thickness of the layers removed is chosen for convenience. This method is generally used when a site does not possess natural stratigraphy and cannot, therefore, be excavated stratum by stratum.
ARCHAEO-ASTRONOMY __ The systematic study of astronomical knowledge and lore of prehistoric peoples.
ARCHAEOLOGICAL CONTEXT __ The physical setting, location, and cultural association of artifacts and features within an archaeological site.
ARCHAEOLOGICAL RECOVERY __ Removal of artifacts from archaeological context with full recording of their four dimensions of variability.
ARCHAEOLOGICAL SEQUENCE __ Artifacts, behaviors, or phases (periods) ordered in time.
ARCHAEOLOGICAL SITE __ A place where human activity occurred and material remains were deposited.
ARCHAEOLOGICAL SURVEY __ On-ground inspection of a study area for artifacts and sites.
ARCHAEOLOGY - ARCHEOLOGY __ the scientific study of past human cultures by analyzing the material remains (sites and artifacts) that people left behind.
ARCHAEOLOGY - CULT __ The study of the material indications of patterned actions undertaken in response to religious beliefs.
ARCHAEOLOGIST __ Anyone with an interest in the aims and methods of archaeology. A professional archaeologist usually holds a degree in anthropology with a specialization in archaeology.
ARCHAEOZOOLOGY __ Sometimes referred to as zooarchaeology, this involves the identification and analysis of faunal species from archaeological sites, as an aid to the reconstruction of human diets and to an understanding of the contemporary environment at the time of deposition.
ARCHAIC -- ancient; pertaining to a much earlier time period.
ARCHETYPE __ The divine plan or blueprint for a species or higher taxonomic category.
ARCHIVES __ l. a collection of primary historical documents such as journals, diaries, maps and personal and business correspondence. 2. the institutional repository within which such collections are housed.
ARCTIC SMALL TOOL TRADITION __ A grouping of archaeological complexes distributed across the North American Arctic from Alaska to Greenland which date between roughly 3000 B.C. to A.D. l000. The tradition is so named due to the extremely small, finely worked tools which these people manufactured.
ARES __ Greek god of war. Known to the Romans as Mars.
ARGILLITE __ A fine-grained, metamorphosed mud and claystone. The deep-red-colored argillite artifacts found at the Hardy Site may have come from the Mazatzal Mountains in central Arizona.
ARRANGED MARRIAGE __ Any marriage in which the selection of a spouse is outside the control of the bride and groom. art the process and products of applying skills to any activity that transforms matter, sound, or motion into forms considered aesthetically pleasing to people in a society.
ARROW __ A dart-like projectile propelled by a bow. Feathers may be attached to stabilize the arrow in flight, and a stone, bone or metal tip may be fitted to improve its capacity for penetration.
ARROW WEED __ A rank-smelling shrub that forms dense thickets in stream beds and moist saline soil. The plant occurs at elevations of 3000 feet or lower, from Texas to Southem California and from Utah to northern Mexico. In addition to its use as a wall-covering material, arrow weed stems were used for arrow shafts by Indians in the Southwest.
ARROWHEAD __ The pointed tip of an arrow. If the means of propulsion cannot with certainty be identified as a bow, the term projectile point is more properly used.
ART OBJECT __ Any artifact carrying, or consisting of, decorative or artistic elements.
ARTIFACT (1) __ Any object manufactured, used or modified by humans.
ARTIFACT (2) __ Any physical remains of human activity.
ARTIFACT TYPE __ A category of artifacts whose attributes are similar: spoons, tables, and coffins, for example, are artifact types.
ASCLEPIUS __ Greek god of medicine and healing.
ASCRIBED STATUS __ Social standing or prestige which is the result of inheritance or hereditary factors.
ASIA MINOR __ The peninsula of western Asia bordered by the Black Sea to the north, the Mediterranean Sea to the south, and the Aegean Sea to the west; the Turkish region of Anatolia.
ASTROLABE __ Instrument used for celestial navigation.
ASSEMBLAGE __ A group of artifacts related to each other based upon recovery from a common archaeological context. Assemblage examples are artifacts from a site or feature.
ASSIMILATION __ The gradual process by which a minority group takes on the characteristics, including customs and attitudes, of the prevailing culture in which it lives.
ASSOCIATION __ Occurrence of two or more artifacts together.
ASSYRIA __ An ancient empire in Mesopotamia.
ASTARTE __ Goddess of love and fertility worshipped in various parts of the mideast. Her origin was Phoenician.
ATHENA __ Greek goddess of wisdom and warfare, patron of Athens. The Romans called her Minerva.
ATLANTIS __ Legendary civilization described by ancient writers like Plato.
ATLATL __ A wood or bone implement, held in one hand, and used to propel a spear. The tool acts as a lever, giving more powerful thrust and longer distance.
ATRIUM __ Room in a Roman house used for business or entertaining. The atrium was usually the focal point of the house and the largest room.
ATTIC __ From the area around Athens. (Attica)
ATTRIBUTE __ A characteristic or property of an object, such as weight, size, or color.
AUSTRALOPITHS __ Extinct early humans who evolved 4 to 5 million years ago in Africa.
AUTOCRACY __ A form of government in which a single person possesses unlimited political power; despotism.
AUTONOMY __ The right of a nation to govern itself; independence.
AUV __ Autonomous Underwater Vehicles are underwater robots that are not remote controlled and operate with artificial intelligence. Just like ROVs they are used instead of divers for difficult operations, e.g. on great depth.
AVEBURY __ Built around 2,500 B.C. Massive Late Neolithic stone circle in Wiltshire, UK.
AVOCATIONALS __ These are recreational scuba divers and amateur underwater archaeology groups who give invaluable help to underwater archaeologists. Examples are volunteer unpaid divers during investigations and diving clubs cooperating with archaeologists and maritime museums. The term may also be applied to volunteers in other archaeological disciplines.
AZTEC __ The civilization that ruled the region now called Mexico between A.D. 1000 and 1500. The capital of the Aztec Empire was called Tenochtitlan.
B
B-HORIZON __ The second zone of a soil, containing materials washed down from the A-horizon.
BABICHE __ Lacings, thread, thongs or netting made of sinew, gut or hide.
BABYLONIA __ A region of Southern Mesopotamia named after the city of Babylon.
BABYLONIANS __ A group known as the Amorites moved into Mesopotamia around 1900 B.C. The Amorite king, Hamurabbi, conquered all of southern Mesopotamia, and the civilization became known as Babylonian. Babylon was its richest and most powerful city.
BACCHUS __ Roman god of wine. Dionysos to the Greeks.
BACKED __ Intentionally dulled along one edge. A blade may be backed in order to allow it to be held opposite the cutting edge.
BACKFILL __ Refill an excavational unit at the end of the investigations; the dirt used to accomplish this. The latter is also known as backdirt.
BALANCED RECIPROCITY __ Gift giving that clearly carries the obligation of an eventual and roughly equal return.
BALEEN __ Whalebone. The term is more commonly used to refer to the bony substance within the mouth of the whale which is used to strain food. it is widely used by Eskimos for making tools and ornaments.
BALTIC SEA __ The world's largest brackish sea, located in northern Europe. The low salinity affects not only shipwrecks and other underwater artifacts, but also animal life, where the fish are of different species. The oceans have a salinity exceeding 3%, but the Baltic Sea has a salinity of 0.8% in the south, 0.3% in the north and 0.6% in average. Through currents there is a constant exchange of salt water from the Atlantic with brackish water from the Baltic. The heavier salt water stays in the deep, usually below 40 m depth (in the south) and 80 m depth (in the north). The lighter brackish water is always nearer surface. Between these layers there is also a constant exchange with the water movements – salt spreading up, and brackish water and oxygen diffusing down. For reasons unknown, perhaps climatic change, the Baltic Sea salinity is reducing.
BANNERSTONE __ A (usually) polished stone implement which may take a variety of forms. One of the most common is winged with a central hole. These may have served some ceremonial function or may simply be elaborate atlatl weights.
BARBARIAN __ A non-Greek. To the Greeks any foreigner who did not speak Greek was a barbarian.
BARQUE (or "Bark") __ A ship or a portable shrine shaped like a ship (usually mythical, e.g. the Barque of Amun- Re).
BASALT __ A fine-grained black, brown, gray or green rock consisting of feldspar, olivine, hornblende and augite. Often used for the manufacture of groundstone tools and ornaments.
BASAL THINNING __ The removal of flakes from the base of a projectile point or blade in a lengthwise fashion in order to facilitate hafting.
BASE LINE __ An arbitrary line established by stakes and string, or by surveying instrument, from which measurements are taken to produce a site-map, or to provide an initial axis for an excavation grid.
BASIN AND RANGE PROVINCE __ A geographic area extending from southern Oregon and Idaho to northern Mexico, and including most of western Arizona, the Great Basin of Utah and Nevada, and parts of eastern California. It is an area characterized by north-south trending mountain ranges interspersed by flat basins. The area was formed initially through block faulting during Tertiary times (15-20 million years ago), when, in a series of earthquakes, one section of land was lifted while the adjacent portion was lowered.
BASKET __ a container manufactured by the weaving, coiling or twining of vegetal materials such as cane or straw.
BAS-RELIEF __ Sculpture where figures project slightly from the background.
BASTION __ a projecting structure built onto a palisade for purpose of defence; any fortified place.
BATTLE OF MANZIKERT __ A decisive battle in 1071 in which the Seljuk Turks, under Sultan Alp Arslan, routed the forces of Byzantine emperor Romanus IV, resulting in the fall of Asia Minor to the Seljuks.
BAULK __ Unexcavated strip left standing between excavation units such that soil profiles remain in place for study and reference.
B.C.E. __ An abbreviation used to denote dates that occurred "Before the Common Era" as a more neutral alternative to the "B.C." ("Before Christ") of the Christian calendar.
BEAD __ Small disc-shaped, spherical or tubular artifact of bone, shell or glass which has been perforated such that it may be strung on a necklace.
BEAKER PEOPLE __ From the Late Neolithic to Early Bronze age (4000-2000 BC), named after their pottery. Styles of pottery known as funnel-beaker, protruding-foot beaker, and bell beaker.
BEAMER __ Tool fashioned of wood or the longbone of a large animal. It consists of a sharpened edge which runs nearly along the full length of the tool. The ends serve as handles by means of which it is drawn towards the user. It is used in the treatment of hides.
BEARDMAN JUG __ Common ceramic in the 17th and 18th centuries. May have contained wine or beer.
BEAR GRASS __ Also called sacahuista. Resembling clumps of large, coarse grass, this plant is found on mountain slopes around the Tucson Basin at elevations of 3000 to 6000 feet.
BEDROCK __ The solid layer of rock which underlies soil, gravel and other loose formations nearer the earth's surface.
BEHAVIORAL ADJUSTMENT __ Cultural responses, primarily through technology, that make survival in stressful environments possible.
BEHAVIORAL SINK __ A psychological state characterized by gross distortions of behavior.
BENTONITES __ A clay formed by the decomposition of volcanic ash, having the ability to absorb large quantities of water and to expand to several times its normal volume.
BERGMANN'S RULE __ A rule which states that within the same species of endotherms, populations with less bulk are found near the equator while those with greater bulk are found farther from the equator.
BERINGIA __ Landmass which existed in the Bering Strait between Alaska and Siberia during the last (Wisconsinan) Ice Age. At the height of the Wisconsin, sufficient water was "locked up" in the glaciers to cause a marked reduction in ocean levels. Thus, land was exposed in many coastal regions, and a "land bridge," over l500 km wide was formed between Asia and North America. For a century, Beringia has been widely accepted as the most probable route of entry for early man into the New World. The land bridge likely flooded a number of times in accordance with climatic changes and fluctuations in sea level, but was finally submerged l0,000 years ago
BESANT __ a valley in southern Saskatchewan which has given its name to a projectile point style and the Late Prehistoric Period phase, horizon or culture within which it occurs. The side-notched points generally have convex edges, sharp shoulders and straight bases. The latter are often thinned and ground and maximum width tends to occur at the shoulder or base. Length ranges from approximately l5 to 80 mm. The remainder of the artifact complex consists of drills, perforators, gravers, scrapers, spokeshaves, mauls and abraders. Besant peoples pursued a way of life focusing the communal hunting of bison by means of (bison) jumps and (bison) pounds throughout most of the northern plains. Their diet was supplemented by fishing, fowling and the collection of shellfish. Many other aspects of the Besant Phase are controversial. Chief among these are whether or not Besant peoples made pottery and the nature of the relationship between Besant and the burial mounds of the Sonota Complex along the Missouri River in northern South Dakota. Although Besant is here classed as Late Prehistoric, the bow (one of the defining traits of this period) was not in use in the earlier portions of this phase.
BEVELLED SURFACE __ One that meets two others at angles other than right angles.
BI (Chinese) __ Pierced jade disc
BIFACE __ A stone tool which has had flakes removed from both faces. No particular function is implied by this term as projectile points, knives and drills may all be bifacially worked.
BIFURCATION __ A basis of kin classification that distinguishes the mother's side of the family from the father's side.
BILATERAL DESCENT __ A descent ideology in which individuals define themselves as being at the center of a group of kin composed more or less equally of kin from both paternal and maternal lines.
BIOLOGICAL IMPERATIVES __ The basic human drives for food, rest, sexual satisfaction, and social contact.
BIOLOGY __ The science concerned with the structure, function, distribution, adaptation and evolution of all living organisms including both plants and animals.
BIPEDAL __ Signifies movement on two feet.
BIPOLAR __ A technique used in stone tool manufacture in which the core is rested on an anvil while being struck with the hammer. The waves of force are therefore not only directed downward from the hammer, but also reflected back upward from the anvil. Hence the flake may appear to have been struck at both ends.
BIRD ARROW __ An arrow which has been purposefully blunted so that it will not damage the hides or animals or become imbedded in a tree and thus be lost.
BIRDSTONE __ A polished stone object which resembles a bird in profile. Probably functioned as an atlatl handle or weight.
BISON JUMP __ A site at which bison have been killed by being stampeded over a cliff. This ancient communal hunting technique was occasionally used in conjunction with a (bison) pound.
BISON OCCIDENTALIS __ A large, now extinct variety of bison that roamed the North American grasslands during the Holocene.
BISON POUND __ A physiographic feature or a specially constructed enclosure into which bison were driven to be slaughtered.
BIT __ The cutting edge of an adze, axe, chisel, etc.
BITTERROOT __ An archaeological phase or culture represented at a number of sites in the Columbia Plateau region in eastern Oregon and in southern and eastern Idaho which Swanson (l962) equates with the northern Shoshone. Projectile points of this complex are side-notched and essentially indistinguishable from those from plains environments to the east (termed Logan Creek or Simonsen), and from those of the Mummy Cave Complex of the eastern slopes of the Rocky Mountains from Alberta to Wyoming. Associated artifacts include conical and wedge-shaped cores, choppers, oval, trinagular and side-notched end scrapers, stemmed and corner-notched bifaces, perforators, manos, whetstones, bone awls and beads of stone and seeds. Fauna include deer, antelope, bison and sheep. Radiocarbon dates range from 5200 to 3650 B.C.
BLACK SEA __ Inland sea connected to the Mediterranean through the Strait of Bosphorus.
BLADE __ l. the cutting edge of a tool. 2. a cutting tool. 3. that portion of a projectile point or knife which extends beyond the haft element. 4. a long, parallel-sided (prismatic, lamellar) flake core. These may be used as is, or used as the basis for the production of other tools. This highly sophisticated technique makes the most economical use of lithic resources.
BLANK __ An incompletely manufactured stone tool which has the general outline of the intended final form. The rough fashioning of blanks at a quarry would obviate the necessity of transporting greater amounts of unmodified stone to camp or fashioning all stone tools at the source of the stone.
BLOWOUT __ Geological term used to refer to the large bowl-shaped depressions created by wind erosion in arid and semi-arid environments. As the top soil and occasionally some of the underlying strata are removed in this process, artifacts may be exposed.
BOAT GRAVE __ A boat grave is a kind of ship burial, where a small boat is used. Examples of boat graves are Neolithic log boat graves, like the St Albans log boat grave. Other examples are planked boats used in Viking Age burials, perhaps they were simply poor man's/woman's versions of the larger ship burials.
BODKIN __ l. an awl used for making holes in fabric. 2. a blunted, large-eyed needle.
BODY SHERD __ Technically, a fragment of the body of a larger artifact. Most commonly, it refers to a fragment of a ceramic vessel which did not constitute part of the lip, rim, neck, shoulder or base.
BOG BODY __ Ancient human bodies preserved in bogs (waterlogged land filled with a substance called peat). Bog bodies have been found all over Europe, in bogs in Denmark, Germany, Ireland, Scotland, England, Sweden, and the Netherlands.
BONE __ The hard tissue, composed of both organic and inorganic materials, which makes up the skeletons of adult vertebrates. Because of their density, bones may survive in the archaeological record long after the decomposition of the soft tissue.
BONE BED __ A concentrated layer of articulated and disarticulated animal bones usually taken as an indication of a butchering and/or kill site. Typically found in association are weapons and butchering implements.
BONE GREASE __ The sweet marrow which is extracted by the smashing and boiling of bones. The grease floats and may be skimmed from the surface for immediate consumption, for storage or for use in pemmican.
BOOK OF THE DEAD __ The term Egyptologists use for the texts and illustrations that were buried with mummies to help them pass through the dangers of the underworld into the afterlife.
BOOK OF KELLS __ An illustrated manuscript of the four Christian Gospels (the New Testament books of Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John) created by monks in Scotland in about A.D. 800. The book is a masterpiece of Western art and includes amazing calligraphy (an artistic style of handwriting), colorful drawings of animals and people, and abstract designs. Some of the details are so fine that people can't see them with the naked eye.
BORDER CAVE, SOUTH AFRICA __ One of the earliest modern human sites on the planet, this rockshelter in the Lembombo Mountains was found by Louis Leakey(?) to contain Homo sapiens skeletons dated around 70,000 years old.
BOREAL (1) __ Pertaining to the north, its climate, flora, fauna, environment, resources and peoples; commonly used in reference to the northern forests.
BOREAL (2)__ A central North American climatic episode dating 7350 to 6540 B.C. This interval marks part of the warming trend between the Late Glacial climatic pattern and the warm dry Altithermal or Atlantic Climatic Episode which was to follow. During this time, the ice sheets retreated and vegetation zones moved towards their modern locations (Wendland l978).
BOREAL ARCHAIC __ An archaeological tradition associated with the mixed coniferous-deciduous forests of the American Northeast. As defined by Byers (l959), it was characterized by stemmed and side-notched projectile points, thumbnail and keeled scrapers, expanding and side-notched-based drills or perforators, shouldered knives and a proliferation of ground and polished implements: spears, adzes, gouges, plummets, rods, tubes, bannerstones, semilunar knives and birdstones. It was believed that Boreal Archaic peoples employed a diversified economy involving fishing, hunting, shellfish collection and plant harvesting. This construct is no longer commonly used.
BOREAL FOREST __ The technically correct term for the primarily coniferous forest which extends in a continuous arc from Alaska to Labrador and subsumes the Aspen Parkland -- the transition between the coniferous forest and the grasslands to the south. The white and black spruces are the most common elements throughout, with tamarack, balsam fir, jackpine, alpine fir and lodgepole pine achieving more restricted distributions. Trembling aspen and balsam poplar are the most important deciduous species (Rowe l972). The Boreal Forest is roughly equivalent to the taiga of ecologists.
BOSS __ A small mound-shaped node or protuberance. When used as a decorative element on pottery, they may be produced either by the impressing of a deep punctate on the opposite surface, or by the application and smoothing of small amounts of clay.
BOTANIST __ A person who pursues the scientific study of the structure, growth, and identification of plants.
BOTANY __ The science concerned with the study, classification, structure, ecology and economic importance of plants.
BOW __ A weapon consisting of a staff of elastic material such as wood, which is bent by a shorter piece of twine attached to each end. The tension thus imparted to the string is utilized to propel an arrow.
BOW DRILL __ a form of fire drill in which the stick is rotated with increased speed by virtue of the back-and-forth movement of a bow the string of which is looped around it.
B.P. __ Years before present; as a convention, 1950 is the year from which B.P. dates are calculated.
BRAKISH WATER __ Mixture of seawater and freshwater. The low salt-rate usually excludes those organisms that eat wood on shipwrecks.
BRECCIA __ A composite rock composed of angular fragments of more ancient rocks bound together by a natural cement.
BRONZE __ Mixture of copper, tin, and other metals.
BRONZE AGE __ The second age in Thomsen's three-age system, referring to the period when bronze tools were manufactured.
BRUSHED __ A method of modifying the surface of ceramic vessels by smoothing the still wet clay with a grass brush. This produces a heavily scored or striated appearance.
BUFFALO CHIP __ A piece of dried bison dung used as fuel by Native Americans.
BULB OF PERCUSSION __ A bulb or boss-like feature on the ventral face of a flake immediately below the striking platform.
BULBAR SCAR __ A minute surface irregularity which is occasionally present on the bulb of percussion of a man-made flake.
BULL BOAT __ A simple tub- or bowl-shaped boat made by stretching a bison hide over a willow frame bound with thongs. Used by various North American Native peoples.
BURIAL __ l. the covering-over of an object with earth. 2. the ceremonial entombment of a dead body beneath the ground or in a chamber. 3. the feature thus created consisting of the individual(s) and the context. bundle burial. the (re-)burial of bundled-up disarticulated, defleshed remains. extended burial. placement of the individual with arms at the sides and legs extended. flexed burial. placement of the individuals with arms and legs bent up against the body. intrusive burial. the excavation of a grave into a burial pit or mound constructed at an earlier period. Two individuals may thus appear to be in association although they are not contemporaneous. multiple burial. collective internment; the placement of two or more bodies within the same grave. platform burial. see scaffold burial. primary burial. placement of the dead in a grave with the flesh at least partially intact such that after further decomposition, the bones remain articulated. scaffold burial. placement of the dead on a scaffold above the ground where it may be defleshed by scavengers. The remains may be interred at a later date. seated burial. entombment of the deceased in a sitting position. secondary burial. the final interment of an individual subsequent to an earlier burial in which the flesh decomposed. Secondary burials are therefore not articulated (or frequently improperly articulated) and some bones may have been lost. supine burial. placement of the dead on the back with face and palms upward.
BURIAL MOUND __ Raised mass of earth or debris within or below which deceased individuals are placed.
BURIN __ A generally small flake tool which bears a short, chisel-like cutting edge. They are believed to have been used for engraving or scoring bone, antler or ivory prior to splitting.
C
C-14 __ Abbreviation for "carbon l4"; a radioactive form (or isotope) of carbon used in radiocarbon dating. The numerical suffix indicates that the atom contains l4 particles within its nucleus as opposed to the l2 within the more common, stable (non-radioactive) isotope.
CACAO __ Seeds from which chocolate is extracted.
CACHE __ An excavated pit, or mound of stones used to store and/or hide food or tools.
CADASTRE (CADASTER): __ A public record of the extent, value, and ownership of land within a district for purposes of taxation.
CADUCEUS __ A staff with two serpents coiled around it and a pair of wings at the top. Carried by the Greek god Hermes, known as Mercury to the romans.
CAIRN __ A mound of stones serving as a monument or marker.
CALCAREOUS CONCRETIONS __ A rounded mass of mineral matter occurring in sand stone, clay, etc., often in concentric layers around a nucleus.
CALCINED BONE __ Burned bone reduced to white or blue mineral constituents.
CALENDRICAL SYSTEM __ System of measuring time that is based on natural recurring units of time, such as revolutions of the earth around the sun. Time is determined by the number of such units that have preceded or elapsed with reference to a specific point in time.
CALICHE __ Deposits of calcium carbonate that occur as the substrata throughout much of the US desert southwest. Caliche occurs as irregular, impervious layers a fraction of an inch to several feet in thickness, or as the matrix in a sand and gravel conglomerate.
CALL SYSTEM __ A repertoire of sounds, each of which is produced in response to a particular situation.
CALLITRICHIDAE __ family of New World monkeys consisting of the marmosets and tamarins.
CALUMET __ A peace pipe, usually elaborately decorated and often composed of both wood and stone elements.
CANAAN __ A historical and Bibilical term used to describe the strip of land which includes most of present day Gaza Strip and Israel and the Western part of Jordan. The term was found on Egyptian writings from the 15th century BC.
CANNIBALISM __ The consumption of human flesh by other humans for reasons of dire need or for ritual purposes. In the archaeological record, the forceful enlargening of the foramen magnum at the base of the skull (presumably for removal of the brains) and the smashing of long bones (for the extraction of bone grease) are often viewed as evidence of cannibalism. In at least some cases, however, it is possible that while the individual was thus prepared for consumption, they were only symbolically devoured.
CANOE __ A long, narrow open boat lacking sails and rudder. It is pointed at both ends and propelled by paddles.
CANOPIC JARS __ Ancient Egyptian containers used to hold the internal organs that were removed from a dead person before mummification.
CARBOHYDRATES __ Organic compounds composed of carbon, oxygen, and hydrogen; includes the sugars and starches.
CARBON SAMPLE __ A quantity of organic material, usually charcoal, collected for radiocarbon dating.
CARIES __ Tooth decay. The condition of the teeth of a skeleton is often an important clue to the diet and health of the individual.
CARNIVORE __ An animal that eats primarily meat.
CARPAL __ A bone of the human wrist, or one of the corresponding bones of the forelegs of other animals.
CARRYING CAPACITY __ The point at or below which a population tends to stabilize.
CARTONNAGE __ Papyrus or linen soaked in plaster, shaped around a body. Used for Egyptian mummy masks and coffins.
CARTOUCHE __ Elongated version of the hieroglyphic sigh W "shen" which means 'to encircle'. Two of the Pharaoh's five names were written inside the cartouche. The sign represents a loop of rope that is never ending, such as the arch of the sky and the world, to indicate that Pharaoh lead everything that the sun encircled.
CAST __ A representation of an organism created when a substance fills in a mold.
CASTELLATION __ A projecting or raised section on the rim of a pot.
CATLINITE __ A soft, red, easily worked stone of the Upper Missouri region which was commonly ground and polished into tobacco pipes. Also known as "pipestone".
CATALOGUE __ The systematic list recording artifacts and other finds, recovered by archaeological research, including their description and Provenience.
CATALOGUE NUMBER __ A number assigned all items recovered by archaeological research to cross-index them to the catalogue.
CATARRHINE NOSE __ A nose in which the nostrils open downward and are separated by a narrow nasal septum; found in Old World monkeys, apes, and humans.
CATARRHINI __ Infraorder of the order Primates that includes Old World monkeys and the hominoids plus various extinct taxa.
CATASTROPHIC AGE PROFILE __ A mortality pattern based on bone or tooth wear analysis, and corresponding to a "natural" age distribution in which the older the age group, the fewer the individuals it has. This pattern is often found in contexts such as flash floods, epidemics, or volcanic eruptions.
CATASTROPHISM __ The eighteenth-century theory that earthquakes, volcanic eruptions, and other natural disasters were responsible for the distribution of animal fossils and artifacts.
CATION-RATIO DATING __ This method aspires to the direct dating of rock carvings and engravings, and is also potentially applicable to Paleolithic artifacts with a strong patina caused by exposure to desert dust. It depends on the principle that cations of certain elements are more soluble than others; they leach out of rock varnish more rapidly than the less soluble elements, and their concentration decreases with time.
CATTLE COMPLEX __ An East African socioeconomic system in which cattle represent social status as well as wealth.
CAULDRON __ A large kettle.
C.E. __ An abbreviation used to denote dates that occur within the "Common Era," as a more neutral alternative to the "A.D." of the Christian calendar.
CEBID __ A member of the family Cebidae; the New World monkeys excluding the marmosets and tamarins.
CEBIDAE __ Family of New World monkeys that includes the squirrel, spider, howler, and capuchin monkeys, among others.
CELL __ The smallest unit that is considered to be alive. All living organisms either are one cell or are composed of several cells.
CELTS __ A category of people who flourished from about 750 to 12 B.C. During this time, the Celts were the most powerful group in central and northern Europe. Although the Celts were composed of many different tribes, they shared similar languages, technology, customs, artistic styles, and beliefs. By A.D. 60, their power had been destroyed by the Romans. After that, only the Celtic tribes in the more remote areas of Europe, such as the British Isles, survived.
CENOTAPH __ From the Greek word meaning; "empty tomb". A tomb built for ceremonial purposes that was never intended to be used for the interment of the deceased.
CENOTE __ A natural waterhole. Cenote is a corruption by the Spanish of the Maya word dzonot, a large circular sink-hole created by the collapse of limestone caves. The water in cenotes is filtered through limestone and constituted one of the primary sources of drinking water for the Maya. Patterns of settlement among the early Maya often followed the location of cenotes.
CENSUS __ A comprehensive survey of a population designed to reveal its basic demographic characteristics.
CENTRAL HALL __ A frame house consisting of two rooms and an enclosed central hall.
CENTRALIZATION __ Concentration of political and economic decisions in the hands of a few individuals or institutions.
CERAMIC __ Pottery, fired clay.
CERBERUS __ Three headed dog that guarded the entrance to Hades.
CERCOPITHECIDAE __ Family that includes all the Old World monkeys, such as guenons, mangabeys, macaques, and baboons.
CERCOPITHECINAE __ Subfamily that contains the Old World monkeys that are omnivorous and possess cheek pouches.
CERCOPITHECINAE __ Superfamily that consists of the Old World monkeys.
CEREMONIAL FUND __ The portion of the peasant budget allocated to religious and social activities.
CHAC MOOL - Maya stone reclining figure with a place for offerings on it's stomach.
CHACO CANYON __ Site in New Mexico representative of the Anasazi culture that thrived there between A.D. 500 and 1300.
CHAIN __ A surveying chain, or long steel tape-measure, calibrated in meters or feet, used for site mapping and grid layout.
CHALCEDONY __ A microcrystalline form of quartz with crystals arranged in parallel strands. Chalcedony was commonly used for tool-making and could be either chipped or ground.
CHARCOAL __ Carbon formed by heating organic matter in the absence of air; one of the preferred substances for radiocarbon dating.
CHARON __ In Greek myth, the boatman who rowed the souls of the dead across the River Styx into the underworld.
CHEEK POUCH __ A pocket in the cheek that opens into the mouth; some Old World monkeys store food in the cheek pouch.
CHEMISTRY __ The science concerned with the structure, properties, reactions and commercial application of substances.
CHERNOZEM __ A rich, black organic soil well-suited to the growing of grasses, which is found in cool or temperate semiarid environments.
CHERT __ A very fine grained rock formed in ancient ocean sediments. It often has a semi-glassy finish and is usually white, pinkish, brown, gray, or blue-gray in color. It can be shaped into arrowheads by chipping. It has often been called flint, but true flint is found in chalk deposits and is a distinctive blackish color.
CHIEFDOM __ The third stage in the 'stage model,' representing regional systems with mixed economies that are integrated through the institution of chief.
CHILAM BALAM __ A series of books written by various Maya tribes in Spanish after the Spanish Conquest. The content probably came directly from Maya codices.
CHINKING __ A mortar, usually composed chiefly of clay, used to plaster over gaps in walls or to bind bricks or stones.
CHIPPING STATION __ A restricted area of "floor" within an archaeological site which yields stone flakes to the virtual exclusion of other kinds of artifacts. Such features are frequently interpreted as places used for the chipping of stone.
CHITHO __ A disc-shaped biface.
CHINAMPAS __ The areas of fertile reclaimed land, constructed by the Aztecs, and made of mud dredged from canals.
CHOL __ Maya language and ethnic group.
CHOLLA __ Several species of spiny cactus having cylindrical stems and branches. The plants are found in many parts of semiarid and arid North America.
CHOPPER __ An axe-like tool, generally fashioned from a cobble or large pebble, and usually worked only on one face.
C-HORIZON __ The bottom-most zone of a soil, consisting of unaltered natural sediments.
CHRONOLOGY __ Arrangement of events in the order in which they occurred.
CHRONOLOGY BUILDING __ Devising a dated history for a region by combining numerous lines of evidence.
CHRONOMETRIC DATING __ Placing an event or process with a range of dates on a calendrical time scale, usually by means of radiocarbon or potassium/argon techniques
CHRONOMETRY __ The art of measuring time accurately.
CICERO __ Roman orator, died 43 BCE.
CISTS __ Boxed burials (eg: some of the Neolithic graves at El Garcel, Almeria, Spain) are referred to as cists burials. The term simply comes from the German word 'Kiste' meaning a box or crate.
CITY-STATE __ City and surrounding countryside under it's influence. Main political entity of classical Greece.
CIVILIZATION __ A term used by anthropologists to describe any society that has cities.
CLADE __ A group of species with a common evolutionary ancestry.
CLADISTICS __ A theory of classification that differentiates between shared ancestral and shared derived features.
CLADOGRAM __ A graphic representation of the species, or other taxa, being studied, based upon cladistic analysis.
CLAN __ A unilineal descent group usually comprising more than ten generations consisting of members who claim a common ancestry even though they cannot trace step-by-step their exact connection to a common ancestor.
CLASS (1) __ A major division of a phylum, consisting of closely related orders.
CLASS (2) __ A ranked group within a stratified society characterized by achieved status and considerable social mobility.
CLASSIFICATION __ Systematic arrangement in groups or categories according to criteria.
CLAY __ Extremely fine (less than 0.0l mm in diameter) particles produced by the weathering of certain rocks. Its primary constituent is hydrated aluminum silicate, but numerous impurities, such as quartz, mica, calcium carbonate, alkalies, iron compounds, humus, and sand may also be present. Clay is plastic when moist, but hardens when dried and is used in the manufacture of ceramics.
CLEAVER __ A large core tool with a straight, sharp edge at one end.
CLEOPATRA __ Ruler of Egypt from 51 to 30 B.C. Of Macedonian (Greek) descent, Cleopatra reigned for 21 years, until the fall of Egypt to Rome in 30 B.C. She was the lover of the famous Roman general Mark Anthony.
CLIFF DWELLINGS __ Shelters or villages built along the edges of cliffs.
CLOSED CORPORATE COMMUNITY __ A community that strongly emphasizes community identity and discourages outsiders from settling there by restricting land use to village members and prohibiting the sale or lease of property to outsiders.
CLOVIS __ A town in New Mexico which has lent its name to a distinctive type of Paleo-Indian or Early Prehistoric Period projectile point as well as to the complex (also known as the Llano Complex) and culture within which it occurs. The highly distinctive projectile points are concave-based and highly variable in size, ranging from approximately 3 to l2 cm in length. One or both faces may be fluted with the channel flake extending one-half or less of the length of the point. Most Clovis sites are either surface finds of isolated projectile points or kill sites and hence the full nature of he complex is not known. Associated artifacts include a variety of scraping tools, blades, hammerstones, chopping tools and foreshafts and defleshers of bone (Frison l978). Clovis points are distributed from the arctic to Mexico, and from California as far east as Nova Scotia. Radiocarbon dated sites range in age from 8500 to approximately l0,000 B.C. Where perishable materials are preserved and an association can be demonstrated, faunal remains are nearly invariably those of the mammoth. Clovis points are rare in Manitoba due to the fact that most of the province was glaciated or beneath the waters of glacial Lake Agassiz during the Clovis period. The small area in southwestern Manitoba which would have been available for occupation at that time probably did not support the kind of vegetation upon which mammoths depended for food (Pettipas l975).
CLUSTER ANALYSIS __ a multivariate statistical technique which assesses the similarities between units or assemblages, based on the occurrence or non-occurrence of specific artifact types or other components within them.
COBBLE __ A medium-sized stone (larger than a pebble but smaller than a fieldstone) which has been rounded and occasionally polished by erosion.
COCHRANE RE_ADVANCE __ A surging of the Wisconsinan ice sheet which occurred roughly 8000 years ago and which is associated with a rise in the level of glacial Lake Agassiz.
CODE SHEETS __ Anthropologists' checklists of observed behaviors and inferred motivations for or attitudes toward them.
CODY __ A town in Wyoming which has lent its name to a distinctive style of Palaeo-Indian knife as well as a complex consisting of at least two forms of Plano projectile points (Eden and Scottsbluff) and possibly a third (Alberta). The knives are either single-shouldered or parallel-sided with a transverse blade. Associated artifacts include a variety of side- and end-scrapers, drills, knives, spokeshaves, gravers, perforators and denticulates. Cody Complex sites are more or less restricted to grassland environments and where preservation is good, they contain the remains of now-extinct forms of bison. In Manitoba, Cody artifacts occur above the Manitoba escarpment in the extreme southwestern corner of the province. Elsewhere, they have been radiocarbon dated between 5900 B.C. and 7900 B.C. (if Alberta is included) or 7l00 B.C. if it is not.
COFFIN TEXTS __ Texts written inside coffins of the Egyptian Middle Kingdom that are intended to direct the souls of the dead past the dangers and perils encountered on the journey through the afterlife. More than 1,000 spells are known.
COGNATE WORD __ Words in different languages which are similar in terms of meaning and structure by virtue of descent from a common ancestral language.
COGNITIVE ANTHROPOLOGY __ The study of how peoples of different cultures acquire information about the world (cultural transmission), how they process that information and reach decisions, and how they act on that information in ways that other members of their cultures consider appropriate.
COGNITIVE ARCHAEOLOGY __ The study of past ways of thought and symbolic structures from material remains.
COGNITIVE IMPERATIVE __ The human need to impose order on the world by mental processes.
COGNITIVE PROCESSES __ Ways of perceiving and ordering the world.
COIL FRACTURE __ A potsherd, the shape of which reveals that it was a section of one of the coils used to manufacture the vessel. see coiling.
COILING __ A method of ceramic vessel manufacture which involves the stacking of rings of clay. The coils are later smoothed-over by hand or paddled to complete the finish and to bind the coils to one another.
CO-INFLUENCE SPHERE __ An area within which human groups interact due to trade, conflict, migration, the nature of local resources and the manner in which various groups exploited them. As the basis for a research design, the Co-Influence Sphere Model emphasizes interaction as opposed to unilineal chronology, and relies upon cultural comparisons beyond the immediate research area as a basis upon which to draw conclusions.
COLD HAMMERING __ Fashioning metal without the use of heat sufficient to melt it. In prehistoric Manitoba this was restricted to copper and recent evidence indicates that temperatures of up to l000C were often applied to render the substance less brittle.
COLLAGEN __ A protein which occurs in bone and may be used for radiocarbon dating.
COLLATERAL FLAKING __ When flakes on a chipped stone artifact extend to the middle from both edges forming a medial ridge. The flakes are at right angles to the longitudinal axis, and regular and uniform in size.
COLLECTING __ The removal of materials in archaeological context from one settlement by the residents of another.
COLLECTION __ l. the total array of artifacts from a single site or area. 2. the total array of artifacts in the possession of an individual or institution.
COLLUVIAL DEPOSITS __ Deposits formed on slopes near sources of sediment such as mountains.
COLLUVIUM __ A mixture of rock fragments and debris occurring at the foot of a slope.
COLOBINAE __ Subfamily of Old World monkeys that includes the langurs and colobus monkeys; species that are specialized leaf eaters, possessing a complex stomach and lacking cheek pouches.
COLOSSUS OF RHODES __ A massive bronze statue of the sun god Helios located on the Greek island of Rhodes. It was built around 290 B.C. and was destroyed by an earthquake around 226 B.C. One of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World, the Colossus was 110 feet high and was once thought to have straddled the entrance to the city harbor (a fact which scholars now know would have been impossible).
COMMUNAL CULT __ A society with groups of ordinary people who conduct religious ceremonies for the well-being of the total community.
COMMUNICATION __ The transmission and reception of some stimulus or message. In relation to animal life, communication occurs when one animal transmits information to another animal.
COMMUNITY __ The behavioral component comprised of groups of households whose members frequently interact.
COMMUNITY IDENTITY __ An effort by speakers to identify themselves with a specific locality and to distinguish themselves from outsiders.
COMPUTER TOMOGRAPHY __ A technique that uses X ray or ultrasound to provide images of layers of solid objects, such as pottery or the human body. The images are processed by a computer to create two- and three-dimensional pictures of the object.
CONCEPTUAL __ The major assumptions or underlying premises of a field of research.
CONG (Chinese) __ Jade tube.
CONQUISTADOR __ A name given to the 16th-century Spanish explorers who came to the New World.
CONSERVATION __ The scientific process of cleaning--and often repairing and/or restoring--an artifact in order to preserve it for further study and/or display.
CONSERVATION ARCHAEOLOGY __ A sub-field of archaeology which focuses on the preservation of archaeological resources. This position encourages the stabilization and preservation of archaeological sites as opposed to their immediate excavation.
CONTEXT __ Relationship of artifacts and other cultural remains to each other and the situation in which they are found.
COPAL __ An incense of Mesoamerica.
COPPER SHEATHING __ Used underwater (below the waterline) on wooden ships to repel marine organisms.
COPROLITE __ Fossilized, desiccated< or otherwise preserved dung or human faeces. Study of coprolites can yield information on the diet, environment and habits of early peoples.
COPTIC __ The Afro-Asiatic language of the Copts, which survives only as a liturgical language of the Coptic Church; of or relating to the Copts, the Coptic Church, or the Coptic language.
CORBALLED ARCH __ A false arch constructed by putting ceiling tiles closer together on each successive layer until a capstone could be laid.
CORE __ 1. the stone from which flakes have been removed; the nucleus. A "prepared" core is one which has been specially modified in such a way as to control the shape of subsequent flakes. The core itself may be modified into a tool (core tool). core, conical. a cone-shaped core with the flat surface serving as the striking platform. core, polyhedral. a generally sphere-shaped core with many faces. core, wedge-shaped. a core in which flakes are removed from two faces, thus rendering it a wedge-shaped appearance. 2. a generally thin, cylindrical sample of soil or tree growth-rings.
CREMATION __ Destruction of the bodily remains of the deceased by burning. This mode of postmortem treatment may be favored for many reasons; to prevent the return of the dead, to protect the deceased from scavengers, or to prevent the transformation of the dead into a harmful entity. Treatment of the ashes is highly variable from one group to another. Cremation seems to have been particularly popular with Paleo-Indians and this is one of the reasons that skeletal remains dating to this period are so rare.
CRETACEOUS PERIOD __ A period 144 to 65 million years ago, characterized by the growth of the first flowering plants and the height of the era of the dinosaurs. It ended with the complete extinction of the dinosaurs 65 million years ago.
CROP MARK __ Differential vegetational growth as a result of buried features. Some species of plants are particularly sensitive to various subsurface conditions. For example cereals will not achieve normal height and will ripen sooner over wall foundations, while over ditches, or trenches they will grow taller and remain green longer. Study of these differences, particularly with the aid of aerial photography, can reveal such features in remarkable detail.
CROSS DATING __ A relative dating technique which attributes similar ages to two strata, components or sites on the basis of the recovery of similar artifacts from each; the use of an artifact whose age is known elsewhere, to date a new site.
CUCURBIT __ The plant family which includes pumpkins, squash, gourds and cucumbers and which occurs in tropical and subtropical regions. Some members of this family were domesticated by Native North Americans.
CULTIGEN __ An initially wild plant which has undergone sufficient genetic changes due to nurturing (or conscious selection), so as to be entirely dependent upon man for its survival; a domesticated plant.
CULTIVAR __ A wild plant that is nurtured by humans. Cultivars may thus be found thriving outside of their normal habitats due to irrigation, fertilization or weeding.
CULTIVATION __ Preparation and use of land for the production of food.
CULT-STATUE __ A statue of a divinity found in a shrine dedicated to that divinity.
CULTURAL ANTHROPOLOGY __ That branch of anthropology that concerns itself with homanity's non-biological adaptations. Occasionally it is used synonymously (but incorrectly) with social anthropology.
CULTURAL DATING __ The process of comparing objects archaeologists find with information they already have; comparing cultural attributes.
CULTURAL ECOLOGY __ The study of the ways a society adapts to its environment.
CULTURAL EVOLUTION __ The study of how and why human adaptive systems have changed over time.
CULTURAL FORMATION PROCESS __ Human activities responsible for forming and modifying the archaeological record.
CULTURAL DYNAMICS __ The study of population movements and stability or cultural change and continuity. Cultural dynamics thus includes such phenomena as migration, diffusion, re-adaptation, population increases and expansions, etc. and attempts to identify the reasons for their occurrence.
CULTURAL RESOURCE MANAGEMENT __ A branch of archaeology that is concerned with developing policies and action in regard to the preservation and use of cultural resources. Often called simply CRM.
CULTURAL RESOURCES __ Site
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