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Steward

archaeologsOthers

Sterkfontein

A site on the Witwatersrand near Johannesburg, South Africa, which is one of the most important hominid sites in southern Africa. The main hominid fossilbearing level of these collapsed limestone cave (Member 4) has produced numerous remains of the gracile species Australopithecus africanus, dati...

Stentinello

A Neolithic ditched village site in southeast Sicily, which has given its name to a variety of Impressed Ware that characterizes the Early Neolithic of Sicily and also of Calabria, on the southwest Italian mainland. The pottery forms are simple, consisting mostly of bowls and jars; the decoration...

Stellmoor

A site near Hamburg, north Germany. The organic muds of late glacial and post-glacial date contain an older level (Ham-burgian, like nearby Meiendorf) and a later level of c8500 be (Ahrensburgian) with tanged points. The later level is also important for a hoard of pine-wood arrow shafts. Both gr...

EnglishPlace Names

Steinheim

A site near Stuttgart in southwest Germany, where in 1933 a nearly complete Palaeolithic skull was found in a gravel pit. The level in question dates from well before the Mousterian, possibly from the Holstein (penultimate) interglacial some 250,000 or 300,000 years ago. The skull is usually clas...

Stein

(1862-1943). Oriental scholar who travelled widely in central and southern Asia, recording a large number of prehistoric, classical and medieval sites in Iran, India, and especially Central Asia (Chinese Turkestan).

Stein

archaeologsOthers

Steatite

Rock chiefly composed of the soft mineral talc. Also known as soapstone, steatite is easily carved to make artefacts such as bowls and figurines, and is also a convenient material for MOULD-making. steel. An alloy of iron with carbon. Steel appears in the archaeological record during the Iron Age...

Stave Construction

Technique popular as a method of church building in Scandinavia from at least the 9th century. Although it was undoubtedly of similar importance in Britain, only one Anglo-Saxon stave church has survived at Greensted in Essex. The staves were made from split logs which were either placed upright ...

Stave Construction

archaeologsOthers

Statue-Menhir

A standing stone carved to represent the human form, usually in highly stylized form. Although human statues occur in many parts of the world, this term is used only in prehistoric European contexts. They belong in the main to the Late Neolithic/ Copper Age, though Bronze Age and Iron Age example...

Statue-Menhir

archaeologsOthers

Statistics

The study of numerical facts. Artefacts, sites, skulls, items etc are reduced to a series of measurements, analytically determined values or systematic observations which can be represented as numbers. The distributions of items with respect to these variables can then be studied. A wide variety ...

Staroselje

A rock shelter in the Crimean limestone region of the southern USSR. In excavations in 1953 and 1954 Mousterian levels were removed. Most of the skeleton of a baby of perhaps one-and-a-half years of age was recovered, demonstrating that the general shape of Neanderthal babies’ skulls seems to be ...

Stare Mesto

A settlement in the March Valley in Poland. Archaeologists have excavated the 9th-century fortified citadel with its stone-and-mortar church and collection of wealthy graves. During the 10th century, at the time of the Great Moravian culture, Staré Mesto was a great industrial centre, specializin...

Stare Mesto

archaeologsOthers

Starcevo

The type site for the Yugoslav aspect of the Early Neolithic First Temperate Neolithic culture. Starcevo was first excavated in 1928-9 and 1933-5. On the basis of these early excavations, V. Milojcic published a four-fold typological division of the Starcevo culture. This scheme has proved inaccu...

EnglishCultures

Star Carr

This site in the Vale of Pickering in Yorkshire, northern England, was a lake-side Mesolithic camp of Maglemosean or Duvensee type dated to c7500 be. The organic mud deposits ensured the preservation of wooden objects as well as carved bone and antler, especially barbed points, hitherto rarely fo...

Staraja Ladoga

The major north Russian town of Staraja Ladoga was founded in the 10th century on the left bank of the river Volkhow, 20 km from its outlet in Lake Ladoga close to the eastern end of the Baltic Sea. Excavations have revealed that the early town covered at least 9000 square metres and was enclosed...

Stanwick

The largest Iron Age hillfort in Britain, situated near Richmond, Yorkshire. It appears to have been constructed entirely in the 1st century ad and is interpreted by the excavator, Sir Mortimer Wheeler, as the capital of the Brigantes tribe, constructed by their leader, Venutius, for his revolt a...

Stanegate

Roman road in northern England from the Tyne at Corbridge to the Solway at Carlisle, whose construction is attributed to Agricola, c80 AD. Originally a military trunk route, it also acted as line of fortification with forts spaced at intervals of one day’s, or half a day’s, march. This function w...

Standard Deviation

A measure of the scatter about the mean in a distribution. The values of 68 per cent of cases fall within one standard deviation either side of the mean, 95 per cent between two, and 99 per cent between three standard deviations. The plus-or-minus of a radiocarbon date works in a similar way to a...

Stamnos

Type of Classical Greek vase, similar in size to the amphora, and likewise used typically for the storage of wine. The stamnos, however, is more squat in form, with two horizontal handles. The shape is popular with Athenian Red-figure vase-painters in the period from about 525 to 400 bc, and in E...

EnglishAncient Pottery

Stamford Ware

Some time during the 9th century the pottery industries centred in and around Stamford in Lincolnshire, central England, started producing the first AngloSaxon glazed ceramics. The Stamford industry, which operated until the 13th century, specialized in glazed, buff fine wares including character...

EnglishAncient Pottery

Stakehole

A small conical hole in the ground, made by hammering in a stake. Stakeholes are a common feature of some archaeological sites and may be distinguished from postholes mainly by their shape and size.

Stakehole

archaeologsOthers

Stained Glass

Fragments of stained glass have been recovered from excavations of early Byzantine churches and the two Northumbrian Middle Saxon monastaries of Monkwearmouth and Jarrow. The first complete surviving stained glass windows date to the 12th century, when Abbot Suger, in his design of St Denis Prior...

Stadium

[Greek stadion]. In classical Greece, a track for foot-races and other athletic events, perhaps about 200 metres long, and some 10 metres or so wide. In the Greek examples there is some evidence for a post at the ‘far’ end and some rounding of the course at this point, while the ‘start’ seems to ...

Stadial

Short period of colder climate during a glaciation, usually implying the growth of ice-sheets or glaciers.

Srikshetra

The ancient name for Prome in Lower Burma, the historical centre of gravity of the Pyus. Here, a Pyu Theravada Buddhist colony existed as early as the 5 th century, and a dynasty of Pyu kings bearing Sanskrit names reigned in the 7th and 8th centuries. The architecture of Srikshetra shows influen...

Squier

(1821-88). American journalist who, together with his colleague E.H. Davis, made a study of the prehistoric mounds of the eastern USA. Their book Ancient Monuments of the Mississippi Valley, published in 1848, contained detailed description and classification of the mounds, but concluded that the...

Squier

archaeologsOthers

Square-Mouthed Pottery

Name given to the type of pottery found in the Middle Neolithic of northern Italy and to the culture in which it occurs. The characteristic shape is achieved by taking a round pot while it is still wet and pinching its mouth to produce a roughly square shape. See also Chiozza, Quinzano.

Square-Mouthed Pottery

archaeologsOthers

Spy

The first complete Neanderthal skeletons were found during early excavations of the Mousterian levels of the Spy cave not far from Liège, Belgium, in the 1880s. Both a male and a female are represented, though the bones are damaged and incomplete. It was only after these discoveries that it was r...

Spring And Autumn Period

The earlier part, 770-476 bc, of the Eastern Zhou period. See Zhou.

Spring And Autumn Period

archaeologsOthers

Spout-And*Bridge Vessel

Distinctive vessel form popular among southern coastal Peruvian cultures (e.g. Paracas) with antecedents in the Initial Period ceramics of the Hacha complex. Typically it is a closed kettleshaped vessel, but its defining characteristic is a pair of vertical tubular spouts joined to each other by ...

Spout-And*Bridge Vessel

archaeologsOthers

Spondylus Gaederopus

Type of mollusc found only in the Mediterranean, the shell of which was used during the Early Neolithic to make simple ornaments such as bracelets and necklaces. Spondylus shell ornaments were traded from the Mediterranean into temperate Europe, occurring in contexts of the First Temperate Neolit...

Split

Properly the great palace built by Diocletian (a native of the area), to which he retired in 305 ad, and which subsequently became nucleus for the medieval and modem city of Split in Yugoslavia. This should be distinguished from Salona (some 6 km inland) which had been the prosperous capital of t...

Spissky Stvrtov

An earlier Bronze Age hillfort of the Fuzesabon y culture, dated to the mid-2nd millennium be and located near Mysia Hdrka in southern Slovakia. A partly encircling stone wall over 160 metres long defends the site on the east side, where the main entrance is flanked by tower-like bastions. In the...

Spiro

A major ceremonial centre of the Caddoan subculture of the Mississippian tradition, the climax of which was cl 3501400. Because of its abundance of paraphernalia of the Southern Cult, it is often linked to the centres at Etowah and Moundville, even though it is culturally distinct from them. The ...

EnglishPlace Names

Spirit Cave

An important Hoabinhian site in northwestern Thailand (clO,000-6000 be), which has yielded many plant remains (betel nut, pepper, gourd, Chinese water chestnut, amongst others) which have led to suggestions that Hoabinhians in this area may have practised incipient forms of horticulture. The uppe...

Spina

An important pre-Roman port on the northern Adriatic, now some 10 km inland. Although Greeks were to form a dominant part of the population, the town was probably an Etruscan foundation of the late 6th century bc, belonging to the period of rapid Etruscan northward expansion into the Po Valley. T...

EnglishPlace Names

Spiennes

A flint-mining site of the later Neolithic Michelsberg culture in Belgium. These flint mines show strong similarities to the British Neolithic flint mines and were worked in similar ways, with the use of bone and antler picks. Flint from the Spiennes mines was traded quite widely in northwest Eur...

Sphinx

In Ancient Egyptian, Hittite and early Greek art, a representation of a human head bn the body of a crouched lion. In Egypt, sphinxes were held to guard temples and tombs from intruders; they often bore the features of a pharaoh and the great rock-cut sphinx at Giza, 80 metres long and 20 metres ...

EnglishMythology

Spatial Analysis

The analysis of the way in which things, finds, sites etc are distributed in space. A wide variety of mathematical techniques is used for this purpose, many of them looking for patterns and groupings.

Spanish Levant Art

A series of rock shelters in the arid region of Mediterranean Spain (the Spanish Levant) has paintings in red and black. The scenes depicted are quite unlike the true Palaeolithic art of the last ice age. There are a number of scenes of hunters chasing their prey, but perhaps the most fascinating...

Spacer Plate

Specialized large flat bead with a number of parallel perforations, used to hold apart the multiple strands of complex necklaces. They occur in the European Bronze Age, when they were commonly made of amber, jet or faience. Very similar amber examples have been found in regions as distant as Myce...

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