Mes-Kalam-Dug

A little-known king of the Sumerian city of Ur, whose richly furnished grave in the Royal Cemetery was excavated by Woolley. His name does not appear in the Sumerian king list and it is therefore suggested that he might have been a local ruler who reigned before the First Dynasty of Ur, perhaps c...

archaeologsEnglishAncient Cities, Place Names

Mes-Kalam-Dug

Mehrgarh

A series of settlements of the Neolithic and Chalcolithic periods in Baluchistan, Pakistan, important as the earliest farming site known in the area, perhaps dating to before 6000 be. Subsequent phases in the 4th and 3rd millennia show a developing society, characterized by craft specialization (...

archaeologsEnglishPlace Names, Regions

Mehi

Site of the Kulli culture of southern Baluchistan, Pakistan, excavated by Aurel Stein. The site covers c8 hectares and Stein excavated part of the settlement and an adjacent cremation cemetery, with grave goods including copper tools, beads, and female, bull and bird figurines of terracotta. Carv...

archaeologsEnglishPlace Names

Megiddo

Large tell above the Plain of Esdraelon in Israel, excavated by the Oriental Institute of Chicago in the 1920s and 1930s. The ambitious aim of the project was to excavate the entire mound, layer by layer. This proved beyond the resources of the Institute, even at that period of cheap labour, but ...

archaeologsEnglishAncient Cities, Place Names

Medvednjak

Refers to a pair of Neolithic settlement sites on adjoining hills, north of Smederevska Palanka in northern Serbia, Yugoslavia. The first site, as yet unexcavated, is dated to the earliest VinOa phase. The second site, excavated by R. Galovic, is 24 hectares in extent and contains two occupation ...

archaeologsEnglishPlace Names

Matarrah

Prehistoric site south of Kirkuk in northeast Iraq, which has yielded evidence of occupation in the 6th millennium be, in the phase defined by the use of Samarra ware. See also Choga Mami, Sawwan.

archaeologsEnglishPlace Names

Matarrah

Marzabotto

Rare example of an Etruscan occupation site, 25 km from Bologna, northern Italy. Situated in the Reno valley, it was presumably deliberately set on an important Etruscan trade-route. Two distinct phases may perhaps be separated: a 6th-century bc phase, characterized by plain and rather primitive ...

archaeologsEnglishAncient Cities, Place Names

Marlik Tepe

Royal cemetery of early Iron Age (late 2nd millennium bc) date, occupying a natural spur overlooking a fertile valley southwest of the Caspian Sea in northern Iran. A total of 53 graves was excavated in the early 1960s; some contained rectangular stone slabs, on which the body with its grave good...

archaeologsEnglishPlace Names

Malwa

A district of central India which has given its name to a culture complex of the Chalcolithic period (3rd-2nd millennium BC). The characteristic pottery is painted in black on a red or cream ground in exuberant designs including geometric, plant and animal motifs. One of the most important sites ...

archaeologsEnglishPlace Names

Madagascar

This island in the Indian Ocean off the east coast of Africa was one of the last major tropical land masses to be settled by man: there is no evidence for human presence prior to the 1st millenium ad. The Malagasy language contains both African and Indonesian elements; in the recent material cult...

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Lukenya Hill

An inselberg in southern Kenya, southeast of Nairobi. Numerous rock shelters and other sites have preserved a long sequence of prehistoric occupation ranging in date from the ‘Middle Stone Age’ to the later Iron Age. A backed microlith industry was established by the 16th millennium be and probab...

archaeologsEnglishPlace Names

Lubna

The type site for a regional group of the earlier Bronze Age Trzciniec culture, the Lubna group is distributed in central Poland in the early 2nd millennium be. Stratified settlement sites are rare, with many sites constructed in sandy areas. One of the best-preserved cemeteries is the type site,...

archaeologsEnglishPlace Names, Architectural

Lubna

Lubaantun

A Late Classic Maya centre, located on the Rio Grande in southern Belize [formerly British Honduras]. Built in the early 8th century on a ridge in the foothills of the Maya Mountains, a considerable amount of fill (3000 cubic metres) was required to alter the topography sufficiently to allow the ...

archaeologsEnglishPlace Names

Liulige

[Liu-li-ko]. A town in Hui Xian, Henan province, China, where many burials of the Shang and Eastern Zhou periods have been excavated. The Shang burials, some containing bronze ritual vessels, belong to the Erligang phase. Eastern Zhou finds at Liulige range in date from the 7th to the 2nd century...

archaeologsEnglishAncient Cities, Place Names

Lisicici

Refers to a Late Neolithic culture in southern Bosnia, Yugoslavia, dated to the 4th millennium bc. Only the type site, in a steep valley in mountainous terrain, has been widely excavated. The subsistence economy is based as much on hunting as on cattle husbandry and scanty structural remains are ...

archaeologsEnglishPlace Names

Lindholme Heje

A site on the northern shore of Limfjord in Jutland, used as a grave-field from the prehistoric period until the Viking era. In the 11th century it was overlaid by a Viking village. Extensive excavations, combined with documentary references, suggest that during the 11th century Lindholm Hoje fun...

archaeologsEnglishPlace Names

Lindholme Heje

Lehringen

A site near Bremen in north Germany, where organic muds have revealed In these muds, a yew wood spear 2.4 metres long and broken into several pieces was found. It passed between the ribs of the skeleton of an elephant of Elephas antiquus type. The tip was finely shaved to a point and hardened in ...

archaeologsEnglishPlace Names

Lebous

A settlement site of the Copper Age Fontbouisse culture in Herault, southern France, dated to the early 2nd millennium bc (mid-3rd millennium bc). The settlement was enclosed by a dry-stone wall, set with circular towers at regular intervals. It was once interpreted as a colony from the Aegean (a...

archaeologsEnglishPlace Names

Lebous

Las Bocas

Located on a natural opening in the hills of Puebla, Mexico, this site is particularly well known for its hollow figurines and other pottery in the Olmec style (e.g. babyish features, the down-turned mouth and the jaguar paw-hand motif). Unfortunately the site has been the object of considerable ...

archaeologsEnglishPlace Names

Lalibela Cave

Situated near the east side of Lake Tana, this is one of the very few sites in Ethiopia to have yielded remains of cultivated food plants. In the earlier part of the sequence, dated to the mid 1st millennium be, scrapers and other stone implements were associated with pottery and with seeds of ba...

archaeologsEnglishPlace Names

Lalibela Cave

Lake Nitchie

A relict lake bed on an anabranch of the Darling River, western New South Wales, Australia. Excavation of a burial uncovered the skeleton of a very tall man wearing a necklace of 159 pierced teeth of the Tasmanian Devil (Sarcophilus harrisii). The skeleton was estimated to date to c4500 be, and m...

archaeologsEnglishPlace Names

Jhukar

A site in Sind province, Pakistan, which has given its name to a prehistoric culture of the 2nd millenium BC. At the type site and at Amri and Chanhu-Daro, levels of the Jhukar culture succeed those of the Harappan Civilization; indeed, some authorities regard Jhukar as a late version of the Hara...

archaeologsEnglishPlace Names

Jerusalem

City sited on the Judaean hills, occupied for more than 4000 years and now the capital of Israel. Many excavations have taken place since the 1860s, but because of the long history of destruction and rebuilding on the site, it has been difficult to reconstruct the development of the city. Sporadi...

archaeologsEnglishPlace Names, Ancient Cities

Jericho

Known today as Tell es-Sultan, Jericho lies in an oasis in the Jordan Valley north of the Dead Sea, on a main east-west route. Its long stratigraphy documents almost continuous occupation from before 9000 be to cl580 bc. At the base of the tell was a Natuf-ian deposit, associated with a rectangul...

archaeologsEnglishPlace Names, Ancient Cities

Jemdet Nasr

[Jamdat Nasr]. Site between Baghdad and Babylon in southern Iraq which has given its name both to a painted ware characterized by red and black designs on a buff ground, and to the period when this pottery was in use. This period falls between the Uruk phase and the Early Dynastic Period and is u...

archaeologsEnglishPlace Names

Jellinge

A site in East Jutland which seems to be the remains of a 10th-century royal palace and burial ground of some importance. Two large barrows have been excavated; one contained a wooden burial chamber and the other nothing. In the cemetery area stand fifty bauta stones, which are part of a ship mon...

archaeologsEnglishPlace Names

Jarmo

The type site of the Jarmoan culture, situated in the Zagros mountains in Iraqi Kurdistan. The settlement, of the Aceramic Neolithic, has a range of radiocarbon dates, of which the earliest is c6500 be, and has produced important evidence for early farming in this area. The population cultivated ...

archaeologsEnglishPlace Names

Jabrud

Several rock shelters at Jabrud in the Anti-Lebanon hills of Syria were excavated in the 1930s and seem to provide a long lower, middle and upper Palaeolithic sequence of over 30 layers. The precise significance of the various suggested cultures (Jabrudian, Pre-Aurignacian, Nebekian etc) is far f...

archaeologsEnglishPlace Names

Iwajuku

An archaeological site in Japan, about 90 km north of Tokyo. The 1949 excavation by Meiji University, following the site’s discovery by an amateur a few years earlier, provided the first convincing evidence that the Japanese islands were occupied by man during Palaeolithic times. Among the stone ...

archaeologsEnglishPlace Names

Ivolga

A settlement site in southern Siberia belonging to the Hsiung-nu state of the last few centuries bc and first few centuries ad. The settlement covered c7 hectares and was defended by four lines of walls and ditches, showing clear evidence of Chinese influence. The community seems to have been bas...

archaeologsEnglishPlace Names

Ivolga

Isimila

A site in southern Tanzania. The most distinctive tools are hand axes and cleavers of African Acheulian type, but two other assemblage types are found, one with picks and the other with small retouched tools. Isimila may have been occupied about a quarter of a million years ago.

archaeologsEnglishPlace Names

He

An important town in Yoruba country in southern Nigeria, whose archaeological antecedents extend back into the 1st millennium ad, although they are only known with clarity from the 11th century onwards. The buildings were of sun-dried brick: their architecture is not known in detail but included ...

archaeologsEnglishPlace Names

He

Idaean Cave

Situated on Mount Ida in central Crete at an altitude of 1500 metres, this cave is one of those claimed as the birthplace of Zeus. It was an important cult centre from the late Minoan period. Inside was a large rock shaped into a stepped altar, while the floor was covered with ash, charcoal, bone...

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Iceland

The 9th-century Irish geographer Dicuil suggests that Celtic monks had reached the Faroes and possibly even Iceland by his time, but Iceland was not systematically settled until the Norwegians came to the island in the late 9th century, in the last great wave of Viking emigration and expansion. T...

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Iblis

Located c80 km southwest of Kerman in southern Iran, Tal-i Iblis is a tell settlement occupied in the 5th, 4th and 3rd millennia be. The earliest occupation, dating to the early 5th millennium be (Tal-i Iblis 0), is characterized by coarse-tempered red burnished ware made into a variety of simple...

archaeologsEnglishPlace Names, Ancient Cities

Iblis

Hoxne

A site in Suffolk, East Anglia, of historical importance because in 1797 John Frere recovered and described hand axes from here associated with extinct animals. In 1956 it was demonstrated that the lake clays had a distinctive Hoxnian pollen diagram, and Acheulian hand axes were associated with t...

archaeologsEnglishPlace Names

Horsham

Town in Sussex, southern England. Mesolithic flints are abundant on the sandy heaths close by, and include a hollow-based point, sometimes called a Horsham point. This was once considered typical of a Horsham culture or group.

archaeologsEnglishPlace Names

Hierakonpolis

An important Predynastic Egyptian settlement located 100 km north of Aswan. The town was of considerable extent: estimates of its population vary greatly, but the figure is almost certainly in excess of 5000. In proto-dynastic times Hierakonpolis was the capital of southern Egypt: important disco...

archaeologsEnglishAncient Cities, Place Names

Hesi

Tell site on the Palestinian coastal plain west of Hebron, occupied from the Early Bronze Age to the Hellenistic period. It was excavated in the 1890s first by Sir Flinders Petrie and subsequently by F.J. Bliss, and these early excavations mark the beginning of stratigraphical excavation in this ...

archaeologsEnglishPlace Names

Hesi

Hajdusamson

Denotes a horizon of Hungarian and Rumanian metalwork hoards (the ‘Apa-Hajdusamson’ horizon) defined by A. Mozsolics and dated to the later Early Bronze Age, C1700-1500 be. Whilst the bronze solid-hilted swords, disc-butted and shaft-tube axes and daggers are often richly decorated, the peak of a...

archaeologsEnglishPlace Names