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Oxygen Isotope Ratio

archaeologsOthers

Oxus Treasure

A large hoard of gold and silver metalwork found in 1877 on the bank of the Oxus River near the present Afghan-Russian border. The objects include a variety of jewellery, ornamental plaques, figurines, chariot models and vessels. They show a great variety of influences, including Achaemenid Persi...

Ovcarovo

Tell settlement and two cemeteries nearTrgoviste, northeast Bulgaria, with an Early Neolithic occupation with pits and post holes stratified beneath 13 Copper Age habitation levels, dated to much of the 4th millennium be. After the initial construction of a rectangular wooden palisade enclosure, ...

Otzaki

Neolithic tell site on the Thessalian plain of northern Greece. Early levels have yielded pottery of Impressed ware type, labelled Pre-Sesklo, but the main occupation belongs to the Middle Neolithic Sesklo culture. This stratum has rectangular mudbrick houses with internal buttresses and abundant...

EnglishPlace Names

Otranto Mosaic

The Romanesque cathedral at Otranto in Apulia, southern Italy, houses a unique treasure — a mosaic pavement that covers the entire nave and aisles of the building from the entrance to the chancel. The mosaic, which was laid between 1163-6, was designed by a priest named Pantaleon and shows certai...

Otomani

The Rumanian equivalent of the Hungarian Fuzesabony group, Otomani is an earlier Bronze Age culture of the mid-2nd millennium be found primarily in the lowlands of the Banat as well as the Carpathian foothills to the east, in northwest Rumania. A high proportion of Otomani settlements are artific...

Otoliths

Small calcareous concretions from the middle ear region of fish, quite commonly found on archaeological sites. Otoliths are normally recovered by wet sieving of deposits from excavations. Study of otoliths recovered in this way allows the identification of the fish species present on the site. It...

Otoliths

archaeologsOthers

Otoe Koyo

See megaliths (Japan).

Otoe Koyo

archaeologsOthers

Otakinini

An excavated Maori pa (hillfort) on a small island in the South Kaipara Harbour, North Island, New Zealand. The site has three defensive phases from the 14th-18th centuries ad, and after 1500 its inner citadel was defended by palisades and large raised fighting platforms. Cultural affiliations ar...

Otakinini

archaeologsOthers

Ostrow Lednicki

An island in Lake Lednika which is one of the most important medieval sites in Poland. Excavations began in the mid-19th century and established that the earliest 9th-century settlement lay within natural defences, but that in the early 10th century the site was fortified by a 10-metre high rampa...

EnglishPlace Names

Ostrow Lednicki

archaeologsPlace Names

Ostrakon

Greek term for a pottery sherd, most commonly used of inscribed examples, and in association with the classical Greek voting practice of ostrakismos (ostracism), a 5th-century bc political ceremony, notably at Athens, in which each citizen could write upon a potsherd (usually in paint or ink) the...

Ostionoid

One of three associated ceramic series developed by Irving Rouse and José Cruxent to facilitate cultural comparison in the Greater Antilles area. Seen as transitional to Chicoid and Meillacoid, the Ostionoid appears in c650 ad in Puerto Rico, where it overlays more elaborate Saladoid materials. T...

Ostia

Roman settlement situated in antiquity at the mouth of the River Tiber, but now inland and up-river.The town was for a long time effectively the port of ancient Rome. Traditional early links with a salt industry are quite plausible, but little trace had been found. The earliest evidence we have s...

Oseberg Ship

Found under a burial mound in southeast Norway and now reconstructed in the Oslo Ship Museum, the Oseberg Ship is a fine example of a large sophisticated Viking warship. It was found with most of its timbers intact and its main burial chamber still filled with most of its contents. Among the obje...

Osa

A stratified settlement of the Late Mesolithic and Early Neolithic, located in a peat bog in the Lubana lowlands on the PiestenS River, Latvia, USSR. The stratigraphy at excavation B comprises three levels: 1 Mesolithic levels with a rich bone and antler industry, with radiocarbon dates of c5 200...

Orongo

A village of 48 stone houses with corbelled roofs on the rim of Rano Kao volcanic crater on Easter Island. Famous as the gathering-place for the annual ‘birdman’ ceremony which took place on the island, the Orongo village was probably built in the 16th century ad and the ceremony itself continued...

Ornament Horizon

Name sometimes given to a very brief phase of the British Middle Bronze Age, marked by the appearance in hoards of a number of ornaments and tools of Scandinavian and north German type. This influx seems to have given a boost to the native bronze industry, which started producing such forms as tw...

Orissa

A district of eastern India, well known for its Jaina rock-cut temples, dating from the 1st century bc and 1st century ad. The best-known examples are at Udayagiri and Khan-dragiri.

Orientalizing

Essentially an art history term, used of various periods and cultures in antiquity, when a ‘western’ production shows evidence for influence from the Near, Middle or Far East. An example would be the borrowing by Greek Black-figure painters, notably Corinthian and Athenian, of numerous abstract, ...

Ordos

A steppe region of western Inner Mongolia bounded on the south by the Great Wall and on the north by the northern bend of the Yellow River. The name is commonly applied to bronze daggers, plaques, and other Animal Style metalwork thought to come from the Sino-Mongolian border region: these so-cal...

Orchomenos

A major Bronze Age site in Boeotia, central Greece. The rocky spur of Orchomenos was occupied throughout the Bronze Age, but, although extensive remains of the Early and Middle Helladic periods survive, the Mycenaean levels are badly eroded. However it seems that there was a palace or other large...

EnglishAncient Cities, Place Names

Orangia

An important but undated site in the Orange River valley in the extreme south of the Orange Free State, South Africa. The artefacts are analogous to those of the Petersburg complex from further to the north, with which they are presumably broadly contemporary. In the undisturbed levels at Orangia...

Orange

[Roman Arausio]. Augustan colonia in southern France, of strategic importance for the control of communications along the Rhône. In the pre-Roman period the general area was occupied by rich and powerful Celtic tribes, notably the Tricastini, who seem to have been prepared to co-operate as much w...

Oracle Bones

Animal scapulae or tortoise plastrons used in ancient China for divination. A few examples have been found at Neolithic sites like Kexingzhuang (see also dadunzi.) More important are the oracle bones of the 13th-11th centuries bc found in large numbers at Anyang, for these were often inscribed. T...

Oquendo

See Chivateros.

Oquendo

archaeologsOthers

Opus Signinum

Latin technical term used by Vitruvius (Roman architectural writer, c30 BC) of a kind of waterproof plaster, commonly employed to seal walls and floors in bath complexes. The mix was essentially a lime mortar with an aggregate of coarse pieces of broken terracotta.

Opus Signinum

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Opus Sectile

[Latin: ‘sectioned work’]. Technical term used by Vitruvius (Roman architectural writer, c30 bc) of a decorative type of floor or wall surface. In a ‘mosaic’ made up of relatively large segments, geometric, floral and figured designs are made up from specially cut, thin pieces of coloured marble....

EnglishArchitectural

Opus Reticulatum

[Latin: ‘net-like work’]. Technical term used by Vitruvius (Roman architectural writer, c30 bc) to describe the diamond pattern of square stones that was often used as a decorative facing to an inner rough concrete core. The pattern is popular, roughly in the period cl00 bc-200 ad.

EnglishArchitectural

Opus Incertum

[Latin: ‘irregular work’]. Technical term used by Vitruvius (Roman architectural writer, c30 bc) to describe the irregular stone surface that was commonly applied to Republican-period walls, as a decorative facing for the concrete inner core.

Opunchu

A valley on Moorea, Society Islands, which has preserved remains of many late prehistoric structures including marae and house foundations. The Opunohu settlement pattern has been used to throw light on the hierarchical society of Tahiti-Moorea at European contact.

Opunchu

archaeologsOthers

Optical Square

Surveying instrument, used for setting-out right angles on the ground (see grid).

Optical Emission Spectrometry

Technique Principle. A sample is volatilized or vapourized by a spark discharge or laser beam. This also excites electrons within the sample, causing light to be emitted. The wavelengths of this light are related to the chemical composition of the sample. Thus, if the spectrum of light is analyse...

Optical Emission Spectrometry

archaeologsOthers

Oppidum

A Roman term for a town which served as an administrative centre. Caesar referred to several of the Iron Age settlements of Gaul as oppida and archaeologists have adopted the term to apply to all large and complex settlements of the later La T£ne Iron Age. These oppida are normally defended settl...

Opone

A trade station of the early centuries ad on the coast of the modern Somalia. Mentioned in the Periplus of the Erythraean Sea, it is probably to be identified with the modem Hafun, some 150 km south of Cape Guardafui.

Opone

archaeologsOthers

Opole

Series of centralized territories in Poland between the 7th and 11th centuries. Each opole was dominated by a fortified timber citadel which often had large and complex defences; examples of these have been excavated at Leczyic and Szeligi.

Onion Portage

A site with a long stratigraphic record located on the Kobuck River in northeast Alaska. 70 living surfaces, each sealed by a layer of silt, show evidence of human occupation dating from c8000 bc to historic times. Tool assemblages, mostly blades, bifaces and associated cores, from the lowest lev...

EnglishPlace Names

Onager

A race of Asiatic wild ass. Sometimes used in a wider sense to mean Asiatic wild asses in general.

Omori

A shell midden in Tokyo, excavated by Edward S. Morse in 1877. This was the first scientific excavation of an archaeological site in Japan. ‘Jomon’ is the Japanese translation of the term ‘cord-mark’ used by Morse to describe the pottery from the site.

Omo

The Omo River basin is in Ethiopia north of Lake Turkana [formerly Lake Rudolf]. The 800-metre thick Shungura formation spanning the time from over 3 million to under 1 million years ago is of outstanding importance as a basis for dating other sites throughout Africa, because its time-scale is un...

Olynthus

A classical Greek settlement at Toronaios Bay, Chalkidiki, familar from the speeches of Demosthenes (the so-called Olynthiacs), and of central importance as an example of Greek town-planning and the Hellenic house in the period 430-348 bc. Some late Neolithic settlement is followed after a gap by...

EnglishAncient Cities

Olympia

At Elis in the Peloponnese, Southern Greece, was the sanctuary of Olympian Zeus and his consort, Hera, and the regular venue for the original Olympic Games. Perhaps first attracting use as an earth shrine and oracle (see Delphi and Delos), the site shows signs of continuous occupation from early ...

EnglishPlace Names

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