Sawankhalok

An ancient city in northern Thailand, known mainly for the celadon-like glazed pottery which its kilns, established in the 14th century, produced for centuries. The ware was exported to countries throughout the region, notably the Philippines and Indonesia. There are also Khmer remains at the sit...

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Sawankhalok

Savai’I Island

See Pulemelei.

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Savai’I Island

Sauveterrian

Two rock shelters at this locality in Lot et Garonne, southwest France, have revealed a sequence of Mesolithic deposits. Over the late Magda-lenian are found Azilian, Sauveterrian and Tardenoisian layers. A skull buried in Roc Allan is probably Sauveterrian.

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Satsumon

Name given to the HAJi-like pottery made in Hokkaido and northern Honshu, Japan, from about 800 to 1300, and to the culture characterized by this pottery. Satsumon houses are very much like Late Kofun houses, such as those found at Nakada in central Honshu. Iron tools were used to grow millet, bu...

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Sati

An Indian term describing the practice of a widow accompanying her husband to the grave. Archaeologists have sometimes used the term when they believe they have archaeological evidence of this practice: for instance, when a female burial is found in the same grave as a male burial, especially if ...

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Sati

Sassanian

Persian dynasty which ruled in Iran from c 224 ad when Ardashir Papakan revolted against the Parthians, until 651, when their empire was brought to an end by the Moslems. The Sassanian empire extended from India to Syria; in the west they were frequently in conflict with the Romans. Archaeologica...

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Sarsen

Type of sandstone found on the Marlborough downs of Wiltshire, southern England, the remnants of a once much larger deposit from the Tertiary period. It was used by prehistoric man for the construction of megalithic tombs and for the great stone circles of Avebury and Stonehenge, the latter site ...

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Sarnath

A site in northeast India, famous as the place where the Buddha gave his first sermon. The emperor Asoka visited the site on his pilgrimage of 249 BC and set up a commemorative pillar, surmounted by a fine lion capital. There is also a small temple, also of the 3rd century bc.

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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.

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Samate

Sarawak

See Borneo, Malaysia, Niah.

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Sarawak

Sarab

An early farming site near Kermanshah in the Zagros Mountains of western Iran. The site is at an altitude of 1300 metres and has produced little in the way of structures: it may have been seasonally occupied only, either belonging to a semi-nomadic herding community or representing a summer pastu...

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Sarab

Saqqara

A major necropolis in Lower Egypt, adjacent to modern Abusir and close to Memphis. The pharaohs of the Second Dynasty were buried here in graves which were clearly a development and elaboration of the type of royal tomb constructed in First Dynasty times at Abydos. With the passage of time burial...

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San Vincenzo Al Volturno

An important Benedictine monastery in Central Italy, founded early in the 8th century and probably at its largest in the 9th century. San Vincenzo was sacked by Arabs in 881 and the monastery was abandoned. The site was later reoccupied on a smaller scale, and eventually the monastery was taken o...

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San Vincenzo Al Volturno

Santubong

A complex of open sites on the delta of the Sarawak River in southwestern Sarawak, Borneo. Most sites date between 900 and 1350 and contain evidence for iron-smelting, large quantities of Chinese pottery, and local pottery of Tanjong Kubor type. There is a possible Tantric Buddhist shrine at Bong...

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Santiago De Compostella

See pilgrim.

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Santiago De Compostella

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

Santa Ana

Very extensive proto-historical burial ground, now in a suburb of Manila, Philippines, which produced extended burials with large quantities of Chinese monochrome and early blue-and-white pottery of the Sung Dynasty (probably 11th to early 14th century ad). See aZsoCalatagan.

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Santa Ana

Sanskrit

An early Indo-European language, still used in India for religious purposes. The Rigveda, the oldest religious document of India, is written in an archaic form of Sanskrit. The discovery in the late 18 th century that this language was related to Greek and Latin and many other European languages ...

archaeologsEnglishAncient Languages

San Pedro

Most recent of the chronological periods of the Cochise culture. Typically, tool assemblages contain seed-grinding tools such as manos and metates, and a variety of projectile points, including the narrow stemmed, side-notched type which first appeared during Chiricahua. Sites generally became la...

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San Lorenzo

Earliest of the major Olmec ceremonial centres and a site of long occupation. Located in the open country around the Rio Chiquito in southern Veracruz, Mexico, its main construction, oriented on a north-south axis, rests on an artifically modified salt dome. This plateau has a series of man-made ...

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Sankisa

Holy Buddhist site in the upper Ganges Valley, India, where the Buddha is said to have descended from heaven. It was visited by the emperor Asoka in his pilgrimage of 249 BC and retains the commemorative pillar with its elephant capital erected on that occasion.

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San Jose Mogote

The largest of a number of village communities which developed in the Pre-Classic Period in central Oaxaca, Mexico, some time prior to 1300 be. Established in an area where the water table was a mere three metres below the land surface, agriculture was practised by ‘pot irrigation’, that is, dire...

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San Jose Mogote

Sanjaya

(1) A Sivaite king of the 8th century in Central Java. His earliest inscription dates from 732, and in much later ones he is represented as the founder of the kingdom of Mataram and of a dynasty bearing his name. However, his successor reigned under the suzerainty of the Sailendras. (2) The name ...

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Sanjaya

Sangoan

The name, derived from Sango Bay on Lake Victoria, Uganda, loosely applied to a rather heterogeneous group of industries in eastern and south-central Africa, and perhaps in West Africa also, following the final Acheulian. Its charactertistic artefacts are massive triangular-sectioned picks and co...

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Sangiran

The most important locality for Indonesian finds of Homo erectus in central Java. Rich fossil-bearing deposits of both Middle Pleistocene (Trinil fauna) and Lower Pleistocene (Djetis fauna) have yielded fossils of more than four hominid individuals from each level, including five skulls from the ...

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Sangamon

Group of quaternary interglacial deposits in North America (see Table 7, page 420). The Sangamon comprises a range of sediments, including organic sediment, but is represented mainly by a palaeosol, which overlies Illinoian tills and is covered by Wisconsin loess and tills. This palaeosol can be ...

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Sangamon

Sanga

Major Iron Age cemetery beside Lake Kisale in the Upemba depression, southeastern Zaire. The numerous graves that have been investigated are attributed to the Kisalian and Kabambian industries.

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Sandia Cave

Located in the Sandia Range near Albuquerque, New Mexico, USA, the lowest levels of this site contained a unique tool assemblage. Radiocarbon dates indicating an age greater than 10,000 years are generally disputed but the Sandia level was overlain by Folsom material. An association with certain ...

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Sand

Term describing the size of particles which go to make up a sediment, soil or similar material. Sand particles are those between 2mm and 0.06mm (BS 1377) in diameter( see particle size). The term has no implications of colour, organic content or any property other than particle size or texture.

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Sanchi

Site in central India with a famous Buddhist stupa. Excavations have shown that a brick-built stupa of the Asokan period was later encased in stone and surrounded by a stone railing. This stupa measured c40 metres in diameter and cl 8 metres in height.

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San Agustin

Group of sites centred in the area of the headwaters of the Magdalena River in the highlands of Colombia. Though pottery, wattle and daub dwellings, and evidence of irrigation and terracing indicate a long cultural sequence in the region, San Agustin is most notable for its mounds and monumental ...

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San Agustin

Sample

(1) In statistics, a sample refers to a representative group of objects, cases or items, selected from a larger population. If the selection has been random, the distributions within a sample should have similar proportions to those of the original sample. The degree to which a sample is truly re...

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Samoa

Major island group of Western Polynesia, settled, with Tonga, by Lapita colonists in the late 2nd millennium bc. Samoa maintains a pottery sequence through the 1st millennium bc, after which pottery manufacture ceases. As with Tonga, the period since about ad 200 has been aceramic. On the evidenc...

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Samian Ware

See terra sigillata.

archaeologsEnglishAncient Pottery

Sambungmacan

The find-site (1973) on the Solo River, Java, of a calotte of Homo erectus, with Middle or Upper Pleistocene faunal associations. The calotte belongs to an advanced grade within Southeast Asian populations of Homo erectus, perhaps slightly earlier than the population from Ngan dong, further downs...

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Sambungmacan