Serra D’Alto

Late Neolithic village north of Matera in southeast Italy. It has given its name to a type of pottery found in abundance here in the 4th millennium be, characterized by a fine hard buff ware with dark purplish-brown painted decoration and elaborate handles. The commonest forms are cups and jars. ...

archaeologsEnglishPlace Names

Serra D’Alto

Scoglio Del Tonno

An important prehistoric site which formerly occupied a promontory projecting into the harbour of Taranto, southeast Italy; it was destroyed, after excavation, when the port was extended in 1899. The site was first occupied during the Late Neolithic by people using Serra D’Alto ware. It was then ...

archaeologsEnglishPlace Names, Ancient Cities

Sawwan

6th-millennium be site of the Samarra phase on the Tigris River north of Baghdad in Iraq. Five building levels have been excavated at Sawwan and by level III the settlement was defended by a ditch and wall except on the west, where the land fell away steeply to the river. Inside the wall were com...

archaeologsEnglishPlace Names

Sawwan

Samate

Settlement site of the Late Mesolithic Narva culture, located in the southeast Baltic province of Latvia, USSR. The single culture level has radiocarbon dates of 2950-2550 be and contains a rich collection of Narva pointed-base pottery and bone implements.

archaeologsEnglishPlace Names

Samate

Santa Isabel Iztapan

Kill site in the Valley of Mexico near Tepexpan, at which the butchered remains of two imperial mammoths were uncovered in association with flint and obsidian tools. It is important as an indicator of the rapidity with which newly arrived Asian hunters dispersed southward. Its geological context ...

archaeologsEnglishPlace Names

Santa Isabel Iztapan

Salzgitter-Lebenstedt

An open site in north Germany, 45 km east of Hanover, providing evidence that reindeer and mammoth were hunted by Middle Palaeolithic men. Human skull fragments were found, possibly dating from early in the last glacial period. Some authorities regard this as a key site but its significance remai...

archaeologsEnglishPlace Names

Sakçe Gözü

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

archaeologsEnglishPlace Names

Sakçe Gözü

Sabz

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

archaeologsEnglishPlace Names

Sabz

Sabatinovka

[Sabatinivka]. In this village near Uljanov in the western Ukraine, USSR, there are several Tripolye sites, the most important being Sabatinovka II (an early Tripolye site of the early 4th millennium be) and Sabatinovka I (a late Tripolye site yielding a knot-headed copper pin comparable to early...

archaeologsEnglishPlace Names

Qishan

[Ch’i-shan], A district in Shaanxi province, China, just west of Fufeng. The Zhou people are said to have settled at Qishan several generations before they overthrew the Shang dynasty, and Qishan remained a major centre after the founding of the Zhou dynasty. A large palace complex discovered in ...

archaeologsEnglishPlace Names

Qatna

An impressive fortified city east of Homs in Syria. Excavation has found evidence of 3rd-millennium bc occupation, but the fortifications — consisting of a free-standing plaster-faced glacis (bank) — belong to the Middle Bronze Age in the early 2nd millennium bc and were probably constructed by t...

archaeologsEnglishPlace Names, Ancient Cities

Qairawan

An important caravan city in Tunisia on the east-west route between Egypt and the Maghreb. It has four major 9th-century structures: the Great Mosque, the Mosque of Three Doors and two massive cisterns. The Great Mosque bears the name of Uqba b. Nafi, the conqueror of North Africa, who built the ...

archaeologsEnglishAncient Cities, Place Names

Ozette

A group of sites located on the western tip of the Olympic Peninsula, Washington State, USA. Three to five centuries ago the principal site, a Makah Indian village, was completely engulfed by a mudslide which preserved several plank houses and their contents. The over 60,000 artefacts recovered, ...

archaeologsEnglishPlace Names

Oxyrhynchus

An ancient Egyptian town some 11 km west of the Nile on the left bank of the Bahr Yusuf, best known for its papyri texts. Oxyrhynchus was a regional capital, and derives its name from the fish (Greek oxyrhynchus: ‘sharp-nosed’) with which the locally worshipped deity of Seth was associated. Littl...

archaeologsEnglishPlace Names, Ancient Cities

Otzaki

Neolithic tell site on the Thessalian plain of northern Greece. Early levels have yielded pottery of Impressed ware type, labelled Pre-Sesklo, but the main occupation belongs to the Middle Neolithic Sesklo culture. This stratum has rectangular mudbrick houses with internal buttresses and abundant...

archaeologsEnglishPlace Names

Ostrow Lednicki

An island in Lake Lednika which is one of the most important medieval sites in Poland. Excavations began in the mid-19th century and established that the earliest 9th-century settlement lay within natural defences, but that in the early 10th century the site was fortified by a 10-metre high rampa...

archaeologsEnglishPlace Names

Ostrow Lednicki

Orchomenos

A major Bronze Age site in Boeotia, central Greece. The rocky spur of Orchomenos was occupied throughout the Bronze Age, but, although extensive remains of the Early and Middle Helladic periods survive, the Mycenaean levels are badly eroded. However it seems that there was a palace or other large...

archaeologsEnglishAncient Cities, Place Names

Onion Portage

A site with a long stratigraphic record located on the Kobuck River in northeast Alaska. 70 living surfaces, each sealed by a layer of silt, show evidence of human occupation dating from c8000 bc to historic times. Tool assemblages, mostly blades, bifaces and associated cores, from the lowest lev...

archaeologsEnglishPlace Names

Olympia

At Elis in the Peloponnese, Southern Greece, was the sanctuary of Olympian Zeus and his consort, Hera, and the regular venue for the original Olympic Games. Perhaps first attracting use as an earth shrine and oracle (see Delphi and Delos), the site shows signs of continuous occupation from early ...

archaeologsEnglishPlace Names

Nok

The name given to the archaeological manifestation of a very early Iron Age settlement on the southern and western slopes of the Jos Plateau in Nigeria. Attention was first drawn to the Iron Age archaeology of this area by the recovery during mining operations of numbers of fine pottery human fig...

archaeologsEnglishPlace Names

Nok

Nitrianski Hradok

A multi-phase defended settlement site of the earlier Bronze Age, located on the banks of the River Nitra, west Slovakia. Little excavation has taken place in the interior. The fort was defended by a double ditch and timber-framed rampart. TELL-like accumulation of material from substantial occup...

archaeologsEnglishPlace Names

Nitrianski Hradok

Nippur

[modem Nuffar]. Situated 150 km southeast of Baghdad in Iraq, Nippur was centrally placed in the territory of the Sumerian civilization of the 3rd millennium bc. As well as being the centre of a city state, it played a special role in the life of Sumer as a religious city, centre of the worship o...

archaeologsEnglishPlace Names

Nineveh

One of the most important of the ancient Mesopotamian cities, situated c400 km north of Baghdad on the Tigris River opposite Mosul in Iraq. The site today consists of several mounds, the main one being Kuyunjik. It was occupied from the 6th millennium be (a test pit beneath the Temple of Ishtar, ...

archaeologsEnglishAncient Cities, Place Names

Neapolis

See Naples.

archaeologsEnglishAncient Cities, Place Names

Neapolis

Nea Nikomedeia

Tell site in Macedonia, northern Greece, occupied in the Early Neolithic period. Of a range of radiocarbon dates from c6200 to 5300 be, most authorities feel that those between 5800 and 5600 reflect the most likely date of the occupation. Several square and rectangular single-roomed houses were e...

archaeologsEnglishAncient Cities, Place Names

Nasik

Rock-cut Buddhist temple in the western Deccan, India, dating to the early centuries ad.

archaeologsEnglishAncient Cities, Place Names

Naples

Greek neapolis, ‘new city’ (a name common in antiquity). The principal Greek city of Campania, southern Italy, but probably only of modest size and importance during the Roman period. Tradition gives the settlement as a daughter colony founded by Greeks from Cumae, and a 7th-century bc date looks...

archaeologsEnglishAncient Cities, Place Names

Nakada

[NagadaJ. See Pre-Dynastic Egypt.

archaeologsEnglishPlace Names, Architectural

Nakada

A settlement site in the western suburbs of Tokyo, Japan, best known for the 79 pit houses of the Kofun Period. A change in heating and cooking methods was introduced in the middle of the Kofun Period, from a central hearth on the floor to a clay stove built against the wall. Various, but not num...

archaeologsEnglishPlace Names, Architectural

Nakada

Nagyrev

The type site for a regional group of the earlier Bronze Age, distributed in the lowlands of northern Hungary and dated c2300-1500 be. Most known settlement sites are tells surrounded by enclosing banks and ditches. Whilst timber-framed houses are common, clay houses with internal partitions are ...

archaeologsEnglishPlace Names

Nagyrev

Mycenae

A major citadel of the Greek Bronze Age situated in the Argolid, in the northeast Peloponnese. It was occupied in the Early Bronze Age, but became powerful in the Middle and Late Bronze Age after, it is believed, an invasion by Greek-speaking peoples. Among the most important monuments of Mycenae...

archaeologsEnglishPlace Names, Ancient Cities

Mureybat

[Mureybet, Mureybit]. A site on the middle Euphrates c80 km east of Aleppo in Syria, occupied from c8500 to 6900 be. The site went through three major occupation phases, beginning with a Natufian village of round huts and expanding to cover some three hectares with both rectangular and round hous...

archaeologsEnglishPlace Names

Mureybat

Munhata

Located on a high terrace of the River Jordan, 15 km south of Lake Kinnereth in Israel, Munhata was occupied in the PPNB phase and has a radiocarbon date of c7200 be. Several different building phases are documented and the architecture is characterized by plastered areas and raised stone platfor...

archaeologsEnglishPlace Names

Monteoru

The type site for a long-lasting Bronze Age culture of the Sub-Carpathian zone (south Poland, northeast Rumania), lasting through much of the 2nd millennium be. Ilie type site of Sarata-Monteoru comprises a citadel with a long occupation and four large grave groupings in an adjoining cemetery. Th...

archaeologsEnglishPlace Names

Mohenjo-Daro

One of the two major cities of the Harappan civilization of the 3rd millennium bc. Mohenjo-Daro, in the upper Sind district of Pakistan, is the largest of all the Indus Valley sites, covering cl 00 hectares, of which nearly one third has been excavated. Its population has been estimated as around...

archaeologsEnglishAncient Cities, Place Names

Mitla

Located 40 km southeast of Monte Alban in Oaxaca, Mexico, Mitla was first occupied in the Middle Pre-Classic and was still in use at the time of the Spanish Conquest. Major construction in the Early Post-Classic coincides with the abandonment of Monte Alban, suggesting that it became a new locus ...

archaeologsEnglishPlace Names

Mildenhall

Thistley Green, West Row, 5 km from Mildenhall in Suffolk, eastern England is the find-site of a hoard of 4th-century Roman silver plate, richly decorated with figured reliefs. The 34 pieces include a large dish (roughly 60 cm in diameter) depicting the head of Oceanus, ringed by friezes of sea a...

archaeologsEnglishAncient Cities, Place Names