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Ventana Cave

A deeply stratified site in southwestern Arizona, USA, excavated by Emil Haury. Occupation spans 10,000 to 11,000 years. Materials from the lowest levels, which included Ctovis/FoLSOM-like projectile points imply generalized hunting activity. The presence of a single mano, however, suggests some ...

EnglishPlace Names

Venosa

An open Lower Palaeolithic site north of Potenza in Basilicata in southern Italy. A hand axe or Acheulian level overlies one with abundant ‘side scrapers’ (evolved Clac-tonian, Tayacian or Charentian). The date of these is not well fixed.

EnglishAncient Cities, Place Names

Vedas

Rigveda. Veii [modem Veio]. 16 km northwest of Rome, Veii was the most southerly of the principal cities of Etruria, and destroyed by its rival and near neighbour, Rome, in 396 BC. The ager veientanus (‘territory of Veii’) probably extended at one time westward to the seaboard, and northward to L...

Vedas

archaeologsOthers

Vat Ph’U

Pre-ANGKORiAN site on a mountain in southern Laos, traditionally considered to be the cradle of the Cambodians. Originally called Lingaparvata, it consists of monuments of the 7th century.

Vat Ph’U

archaeologsOthers

Vase Support

Name for a pottery pedestal or ring manufactured to support round-based pottery which would not stand up by itself on flat surfaces. The term is used especially in European prehistory to describe highly decorated incised examples from the French Neolithic Chassey culture.

EnglishAncient Pottery

Varves

A form of sedimentation which takes place in lakes marginal to ice-sheets and glaciers. Seasonal fluctuations in particle size and speed of sedimentation take place. During the winter, ice melting is very slow, melt-water streams do not contain much water, and they flow slowly, carrying little ma...

EnglishArchitectural

Varves

archaeologsArchitectural

Varna

The largest collection of pre-Mycenaean gold in Europe was found at the Late Copper Age cemetery of Varna, on the Black Sea coast of Bulgaria. Excavated by I. Ivanov and dating to the mid-4th millennium be, the cemetery contains over 100 extended inhumations as well as two special grave types the...

Variable

A dimension, quality or measurement that varies.

Vapheio

Mycenaean tholos burial near Sparta, southern Greece, which produced many rich grave goods. Among these were two fine gold cups, decorated in relief with scenes of bulls. These cups have given the name ‘Vapheio cup’ to this particular shape of drinking vessel, characterized by a flat base, straig...

Vanuatu

[New Hebrides]. An archipelago in central Melanesia, with an Austronesianspeaking population and an archaeological record going back to Lapita settlement about 1300 bc. Settlement before this date remains hypothetical. Important archaeological phenomena include the Mangaasi pottery tradition and ...

Van-Lang

Legendary kingdom in present northern Vietnam, ruled by the Hong-bang dynasty, which is said to have begun in the 3rd millennium BC and was succeeded by the historic kingdom of Au-Lac in 258 BC. There is considerable debate over the archaeological basis of these legends.

Vandals

A Germanic people who in the early 5th century set out from central Europe and ultimately crossed from Spain to invade North Africa, where they quickly succeeded in annexing most of the major towns. They imposed their Arian religion on the native population, and it appears that they upheld many R...

Valsequillo Reservoir

Located south of the city of Puebla, Mexico, radiocarbon assays from this site have produced astonishingly early dates for man’s presence in the New World. A date of 36,000 be for the earliest level seems to confirm the proposition that a migration across the Bering Land Bridge in the warm inters...

EnglishPlace Names

Vallum

[Latin ‘rampart’]. Properly, a heaped rampart of earth as, for instance, around Roman military camps, towns and regional fortifications. These were often topped with stakes. The early English historian Bede (673-735) also used the term, as is sometimes done today, to describe the whole ‘assemblag...

Vallonnet

A tiny cave close to Monaco in the south of France that has yielded some 11 stone artefacts associated with a fauna datable to c0.9 million years ago. As such it is possibly the oldest well-dated occurrence of man in Europe.

Vallhager

A Migration Period nucleated settlement of the 5 th and 6th centuries situated on the Baltic island of Gotland just off the coast of Sweden. Its economy was mainly geared towards stock breeding and the extensive post-war survey of the area revealed many cattle droveways and individual farm dwelli...

Vallhager

archaeologsOthers

Valencoid

The most recent of the ceramic series developed by Irving Rouse and Jose Cruxent for comparison of northeastern South American cultures. The series appears to have evolved from the La Cabrera phase of the Barrancoid series at a number of sites in the Valencia Basin in Venezuela. Some of these sit...

Valencoid

archaeologsOthers

Valea Lupului

A large open settlement site of the Late Neolithic Cucuteni culture, near Ia§i, Moldavia, Rumania, with a radiocarbon date of c2750 be. The single phase occupation produced domestic assemblages of the Cucuteni B3 phase.

Valdivia

A series of Early Formative Period sites on the central coast of Ecuador with a long ceramic sequence (c3200-1400 be) which includes some of the ealiest pottery in south America (see also Puerto Hormiga). Radiocarbon dates, stratification of midden deposits, and considerable stylistic variation i...

Valders Advance

The final advance of the Wisconsin stage of Pleistocene glaciation in North America. The maximum limit of its advance dates to cl2,000 bp and its disappearance to cl0,000-9000 bp.

Vai Camonica

An Alpine valley in northwest Italy, remarkable for the abundance of rock carvings found on rock faces throughout the valley. The carvings, thought to date from the Copper Age to post-Roman times, are often superimposed, producing complicated palimpsests, often difficult to disentangle. Scenes in...

Vai Camonica

archaeologsOthers

Valac

Small hilltop settlement of the Late VinCa phase, with a radiocarbon date of c3950 bc, located near Kosovska Mitrovica, Kosovo, south Serbia, Yugoslavia. A single occupation level is known from a 1.2-metre stratigraphy. In contrast to the poor ceramics, each house has a rich ritual assemblage mai...

Vaito’Otia

An important Early Eastern Polynesian settlement on Huahine, Society Islands, which has produced rich organic and non-organic remains of the period c850-l 100. The material culture has close parallels with that of the first Maori settlers of New Zealand. See also Hane, Maupiti, Wairau Bar.

EnglishPlace Names

Vaito’Otia

archaeologsPlace Names

Vaisali

One of the cities of the Ganges civilization of northern India, famous as the birthplace of Mahavira, founder of the Jain religion. The earliest occupation belongs to the Iron Age, when Mahavira lived (6th century bc) and has yielded Northern black polished ware and iron artefacts.

Vailele

A locality east of Apia, Western Samoa, which has yielded assemblages from the terminal ceramic phase of Samoan prehistory (c300 be to ad 200) stratified beneath later aceramic house mounds. The pottery and stone adzes appear to be representative of the culture of the first Polynesians to sail in...

Vadastra

The eponymous tell site for a Middle Neolithic culture distributed in Oltenia, southwest Rumania, and northern Bulgaria in the late 5th millennium be. The tell has a long stratigraphy including an Aurig-nacian level, separated by a long hiatus from two Vadastra culture levels and a Salcuta cultur...

EnglishCultures, Place Names

Dendra

Orta Helladik döneme ait bir tümülüsü içerisinde barındıran (İ.Ö. 15-14. yy.) ve zengin oda mezarları bulunan Yunanistan'da bir Bronz Çağı mezarlığı.

TurkishPlace Names

Uvinza

An Iron Age salt-working area of western Tanzania, not far from the eastern shore of Lake Tanganyika. Salt, which was widely traded, was evaporated from the local brine springs. The earliest occupation is marked by Early Iron Age pottery akin to Ure we ware, dated to around the middle of the 1st ...

Uvinza

archaeologsOthers

Utnur

Neolithic site in the central Deccan, India, occupied in the 3rd millennium bc. Four major phases of occupation were recognized. The people who occupied the site were primarily cattle-herders, probably living in huts built of branches and brush. Remains of stockades for penning the beasts were fo...

EnglishPlace Names

Utica

[modern Utique]. In antiquity a Phoenician city on the North African coast, sited at the mouth of the River Bagradas (now Medjerda) in Tunisia. Tradition gives it as the earliest Phoenician foundation, possibly of the 8th century bc. Since antiquity, silting has left the former port isolated some...

U-Thong

(1) Ancient city in southwestern Thailand which was probably for some time the capital of the Mon kingdom of DvArav-atI (7th-llth centuries). (2) A school in the art history of Thailand, denoting Mon origin. King Ramadhipati, the founder of the kingdom of Ayutthaya in 1350, is said to have come f...

Usf-Belaia

A site on the upper Angara River in the Baikal region of southern Siberia, occupied from early in the postglacial period (labelled Mesolithic) into the Neolithic (defined by the appearance of pottery, not farming). The site represents a base camp for a hunting group, occupied over a long period. ...

EnglishPlace Names

Usf-Belaia

archaeologsPlace Names

Ushki Lake

Palaeolithic site in Kamchatka, northeast Siberia. The lowest horizon (VII) has radiocarbon dates of cl 1,650 and 12,350 be, associated with a small-tool technology including tanged arrowheads. 12 hearths and a burial were excavated in this level the bones were missing, but red ochre survived, as...

Usatovo Culture

The type site for a regional group derived from the Late Tripolye culture (Tripolye C2), distributed in the Odessa region of the south Russian steppe zone. Dated to the mid-3rd millennium bc, the barrow cemetery at Usatovo was one of the richest in the steppe zone and lay next to a stone-built se...

EnglishCultures, Architectural, Place Names

Usatovo Culture

archaeologsCultures, Architectural, Place Names

Uryudo

One of the many village sites of Yayoi rice farmers who settled in the lowland plains of Osaka, Japan, in the 1st century bc. The cemetery is of interest, because some members of the community were buried in small mounds surrounded by ditches, while most others were interred in simple pits. The d...

Uryudo

archaeologsOthers

Uruk

[modern Warka; biblical Erech]. Situated c250 km south of Baghdad, on an ancient branch of the Euphrates River in Iraq, Uruk was one of the major city-states of Sumer. Excavations by German archaeologists from 1912 onwards have revealed a series of very important structures and deposits of the 4t...

EnglishAncient Cities, Place Names

Urnfield

An urnfield is a cemetery containing cremations placed in urns. The term Urnfield culture or cultures is used to describe the Late Bronze Age groups found over much of temperate Europe, who disposed of their dead in umfields. The Urnfield cultures are dated to C1300-800/700 bc, lasting even later...

EnglishAncient Pottery

Umes

The 11th-century church at Umes in Norway is one of the oldest and finest stave churches in existence. Some of the staves are decorated with Viking ornament in the form of sinuous animals and zoomorphic ribbons including one scene in which a quadruped is locked in combat. The term ‘Umes style’ is...

Umes

archaeologsOthers

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