Search - Archaeologs

Browse by Letters

We try our best to keep the ads from getting in your way. If you'd like to show your support, you can use Patreon or Buy Me a Coffee.

Recently Added

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...

Sozudai

A Palaeolithic site in Oita Prefecture on Kyushu, Japan. A few hundred tools, mostly of quartzite, were recovered from a secondary deposit on a marine terrace during excavations in 1964. They include hand axes, scrapers and flakes. The geological age of the deposit suggests that the tools could b...

Southern Cult, Southeastern Ceremonial Complex

A complex of artistic themes and cultural material, often death-related, which occurred over a wide area in the eastern USA, most often in Mississippian contexts. Common motifs such as the hand/eye symbol, the feathered serpent, the skull and long bone, and depictions of sacrifice support the fre...

Southern Cult, Southeastern Ceremonial Complex

archaeologsOthers

South Cadbury

This site in Somerset, southwest England, is one of the more important secular Dark Age sites in Britain. It is essentially an Iron Age hill fort with a complex history of abandonment and refortification continuing throughout the prehistoric, Roman and medieval periods. The 16th-century antiquari...

EnglishPlace Names

Southampton

Hamwih (or Hamton), the 8th- and 9th-century predecessor of medieval Southampton, is situated to the east of the later town opposite the Roman site of Bitterne (Clausentum) on the banks of the River Itchen in southern England. Hamwih was discovered in the 19th century by brick-earth diggers. Exca...

Sousse

Islamic Sousse [Roman Hadrume-tum] on the Tunisian coast was still a minor settlement in 821-2, when the Aghlabid ruler Ziyadat Allah built the ribat, a stronghold for volunteers dedicated to the holy war against the infidel. It is a square fort, 39 metres across, with towers (one of which is a m...

EnglishArchitectural

Sousse

archaeologsArchitectural

Sounion

[Roman Sunium]. Byron’s ‘Sunium’s marbled steep’ is a classical sanctuary site on a rocky headland some 70 km southeast of Athens. It is famous for the standing columns of its mid-5th century bc marble temple to Poseidon, which make a dramatic sight and give the location its alternative title of ...

EnglishPlace Names, Ancient Cities

Soufli

An Early Neolithic settlement in Thessaly, northern Greece. It is especially well known for having produced a rare piece of monumental sculpture depicting a more than life-size woman wearing a skirt and necklace.

Sotka Koh

A western outpost of the Harap-pan civilization close to the Makran coast. It is situated on a rocky outcrop and at least partly surrounded by a stone wall.

Sotka Koh

archaeologsOthers

Soroki

A group of short-lived settlement sites of the Late Mesolithic and Early Neolithic, located on the middle reaches of the River Dnieper in Moldavia, USSR. The Mesolithic sites, with radiocarbon dates of <5500-5400 be, are 20-cm thick layers with hearths containing layers of shells and fishbones an...

Sopot-Lengyel

Term defined by S. Dimitri-jevic to denote the later Neolithic sites of Srem, north Bosnia and east Slavonia, Yugoslavia, in the period of c4300-3700 be. The pottery of this group shares affinities with the dark burnished ware tradition of the south Balkans and the incised and monochrome traditio...

Son Vi

The ‘Sonviian’ stone industry of the Red River valley in north Vietnam is regarded by modern Vietnamese archaeologists as the immediate predecessor (or an early stage) of the Hoabinhian. The industry is of late Pleistocene date (radiocarbon dates cl 6,000-9000 be).

Son Vi

archaeologsOthers

Songze

[Sung-tse]. See Majiabang.

Songze

archaeologsOthers

Song

[Sung]. Chinese dynasty (ad 960-1279). During the Northern Song (960-1126) the capital was at Kaifeng near the Yellow River in Henan province. During the Southern Song (1127-1279) it was at Hangzhou (near modem Shanghai), and North China was ruled first by the barbarian Jin dynasty of the Jürched...

Sondage

A trench of limited area, sunk through the layers of an archaeological site, to make a preliminary investigation of its stratigraphy.

Somrong Sen

4.5-metre-thick occupation mound near the Tonle Sap Lake in central Cambodia, which has yielded a rich Neolithic assemblage of incised pottery, bone and shell tools and ornaments. The bulk of the deposit predates 1000 bc and it appears that a Bronze Age cemetery may also have been found on the si...

Somrong Sen

archaeologsOthers

Somme Bionne

A chariot burial of the Early La Tene Iron Age, in the Marne area of France, dated to the late 5th century bc. The burial, presumably of a chieftain, was under a large barrow and was equipped with very rich grave goods, both imported objects and locally manufactured items. The imported items incl...

Somerset Levels

The low-lying areas of Somerset in southwest England where marshy conditions led to the formation of peat, which has grown over a period of more than 4000 years. In the process it has preserved remains of human activity, as well as environmental evidence. Peat-cutting exposed remains of ancient t...

Solutrian

A site in the Sâone-et-Loire, central France, with Palaeolithic occupation on the slope below a craggy hill. Above Mousterian deposits come Aurig-nacian, later Perigordian, Solutrian (of which Solutré is the name site) and Magda-lenian. Only the results of the most recent excavations are at all r...

Solutrian

archaeologsOthers

Solomon Islands

A chain of large islands in the centre of Melanesia. Dates for earliest settlement remain unknown, but widely distributed Papuan languages suggest that the islands were inhabited before the beginning of Austronesian expansion into Oceania (c3000 bc). Archaeological sequences are best known from t...

Solo Man

See Ngandong.

Sol Lessivé

The type of soil which may develop under open vegetation, or under arable fields, normally in areas of relatively low annual rainfall, where the soil may dry out during the summer. Sols lessivés seem usually to have originated from brown forest soils which have been stripped of their protective t...

Solifluction

[solifluxion]. See periglacial.

Soil Marks

Pits and ditches may be revealed on aerial photographs by the different colour of their fill, in contrast to the surrounding subsoil. Soil marks show up particularly well in ploughed fields, but are sometimes apparent even under a crop.

Soil Marks

archaeologsOthers

Soil Conductivity Meter

One design of electromagnetic surveying equipment.

Soil

Material which has been subject to soilforming processes. A prerequisite for soil formation is the growth of vegetation. Gradual colonization, first by lichens and then by higher plants causes a parallel build-up of organic matter — humus — in the developing soil. Weathering of the underlying par...

Sohar

The principal town of the Batina coast of Oman in the Sassanian and early Islamic periods. The site had perennial water and enjoyed a plentiful supply of agricultural products, especially dates. The Wadi Jizzi provided a corridor for communications with Buraimi oasis in the interior. Although it ...

EnglishAncient Cities, Place Names

Previous Next