Hypaethral

Winchester Style

Style of manuscript illumination, ivory carving, stone sculpture, metalwork, embroidery, and architecture from the capital of Late Saxon England, c 10th century AD. The emphasis was on naturalistic figure design and acathus decoration is prominent in manuscripts and the stone angels carved over t...

archaeologsEnglishArchitectural

Winchester Style

Opus Quadratum

A Roman construction technique using squared blocks, the equivalent of ashlar masonry. It was ordinary stone walling and was used as a facing especially for important public buildings under the earlier empire - for example, the exterior of the Colosseum. They were fairly large squared blocks laid...

archaeologsEnglishArchitectural

Opus Quadratum

Vernacular Architecture

Buildings belonging to the middle and lower end of the social scale which fall into three main categories - domestic, agricultural and industrial - and which are characteristic of a period, place, or group. Building styles that remain common over a period of time to a particular place.

archaeologsEnglishArchitectural

Vernacular Architecture

Gaza

A Palestinian site under modern Gaza; the southernmost city of the Philistine Pentapolis. Philistines, Egyptians, and 'Peoples of the Sea' occupied the site. The earliest evidence comes from two cemeteries, one to the north and one to the east of the main mound, with shaft graves containing potte...

archaeologsEnglishArchitectural

Gaza

Pantheon

A temple dedicated to a group of gods or collective divinities; the term also refers to the group of gods. The first Pantheon was built by Agrippa in 27-25 BC, and rebuilt by Hadrian sometime between c 118-128 AD, and was one of the most remarkable buildings of Rome. The rotunda was roofed by a d...

archaeologsEnglishArchitectural

Pantheon

Pillar Crypt

In Minoan architecture, a basement room with one or two pillars. Some were incised with sacred symbols.

archaeologsEnglishArchitectural

Pillar Crypt

Plinth

In architecture, the foot or lowest member of a base of a column, pedestal, or wall; a block upon which the moldings of an architrave or trim are stopped at the bottom.

archaeologsEnglishArchitectural

Plinth

Mastaba

The Arabic word for 'bench', a mudbrick superstructure of Egyptian tombs, mainly of the Archaic Period and Old Kingdom, including the royal tombs of the 1st and 2nd Dynasty. It was a low, rectangular building with a flat roof and vertical or slightly inclined walls that enclosed the shaft to the ...

archaeologsEnglishArchitectural, Tombs

Mastaba

Reticulated Work

In masonry, it is a type of facing used on ancient Roman concrete or mortared rubblework walls. It appeared during the late Roman Republic and succeeded the earliest type of facing, an irregular patchwork called opus incertum. Reticulated work looks like a diagonal checkerboard with its square st...

archaeologsEnglishArchitectural

Reticulated Work

Impluvium

In Roman architecture, a cistern or tank for collecting rainwater, situated in the atrium under an opening in the roof (compluvium).

archaeologsEnglishArchitectural

Impluvium

Tripartite

The architectural plan used in Ubaid houses and early Mesopotamian temples, with a long central room flanked by rows of smaller rooms.

archaeologsEnglishArchitectural

Tripartite

Frieze

A decorative band or feature, as a long band of relief sculpture decorating the upper stonework of a temple. It is the zone above the epistyle, decorated with triglyphs and metopes in the Doric order or sculpture or dentils in Ionic order architecture. This type of band of decoration on a wall or...

archaeologsEnglishArchitectural

Frieze

Opus Testaceum

A Roman construction technique using brick- and tile-faced concrete, which was by far the most common material for walling during the empire. Triangular tiles were used with their points turned into the concrete and their long sides showing, thus giving the appearance of a wall built of thin bric...

archaeologsEnglishArchitectural

Opus Testaceum

Gymnasium

An area in ancient Greek used as a sports ground. It could be within or outside the city and normally had a palaestra, running track, dressing rooms, bathrooms, and other rooms for exercise and ball games. It was for men only, except at Sparta, and was also a center of education (philosophy, lite...

archaeologsEnglishArchitectural

Gymnasium

Caryatid

A supporting base or column of a structure shaped in the form of a woman. Most often, a caryatid supported a porch, entablature, or a colonnade and was in the form of a draped woman bearing it on her head. The best known are of the Erechtheum at Athens (420-415 BC) and other examples part of thre...

archaeologsEnglishArchitectural, Mythology

Caryatid

Flute

A channel or grove running up a pillar or running up the center of a projectile point made of stone. In architecture, a flute resembles half of a flute split longitudinally, with the concave side outwards. In referring to projectile point artifacts, the mark is a distinctive longitudinal groove l...

archaeologsEnglishArchitectural

Flute

Winged Disk

A sun disk with an outspread pair of wings attached, found in Egypt from the 1st Dynasty. It is associated with Horus of Behdet (Edfu), and symbolizes the sun, especially in architecture on ceilings, cornices, and stelae. It was often copied outside Egypt - used in the Levant and by the Hittites,...

archaeologsEnglishArchitectural

Winged Disk

Multivallate

Having more than one rampart or protective barrier.

archaeologsEnglishArchitectural

Multivallate

Entablature

In architecture, the horizontal moldings and bands supported by and located immediately above the columns of Classical buildings. The term also refers to similar structural supports in non-Classical buildings. The entablature is usually divided into three sections: the lowest band, or architrave,...

archaeologsEnglishArchitectural

Entablature

Decumanus

East-west street of a Roman camp or town. The square grid layout of the two was basically identical and the decumanus usually ran from the gate in the middle of one wall to the gate opposite. The decumanus maximus was the main east-west street. The main transverse street was known as the cardo; t...

archaeologsEnglishArchitectural

Decumanus

Hadrian's Villa

Arc Style

An early style of Celtic art, an eastern subgroup in Bavaria, Bohemia, and Austria in which compass-drawn geometric motifs predominate.

archaeologsEnglishArchitectural

Arc Style

Peripteral

A temple surrounded by a single row of columns, having a row of columns on all sides. An architectural term denoting a building surrounded by an external colonnade, such as Mammisi. The Theseum in Athens is a Doric peripteral temple, with 13 columns at the sides and 6 at the ends.

archaeologsEnglishArchitectural

Peripteral

Tablero-Talud

In architecture, a sloped basal apron surmounted by a recessed vertical tablet. The talud-tablero architectural motif is typical of Teotihuacán culture: on each body or tier of a stepped pyramid is a rectangular frontal panel (tablero) supported by a sloping batter (talud). The tablero is surroun...

archaeologsEnglishArchitectural

Tablero-Talud

Opus Sectile

A Roman construction technique using thin pieces marble of different colors in geometric, floral, or figured designs as part of floors or wall surfaces. Latin for "sectioned work" this technical term was used by Vitruvius c 30 BC. Shell or mother-of-pearl was sometimes used instead of marble. Opu...

archaeologsEnglishArchitectural

Opus Sectile