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.

archaeologsEnglishOthers

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...

archaeologsEnglishOthers

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...

archaeologsEnglishCultures, 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.

archaeologsTurkishPlace 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 ...

archaeologsEnglishOthers

Uvinza

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...

archaeologsEnglishPlace 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...

archaeologsEnglishOthers

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...

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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. ...

archaeologsEnglishPlace Names

Usf-Belaia

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...

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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...

archaeologsEnglishCultures, Architectural, Place Names

Usatovo Culture

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...

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Uryudo

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...

archaeologsEnglishAncient 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...

archaeologsEnglishAncient 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...

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Umes

Urn

Name given to any kind of large pottery vessel used to contain the cremated remains of the dead; the term is sometimes extended to cover similarly shaped vessels used for domestic storage purposes. The term is particularly widely used in the European Bronze Age and the name Urnfield cultures, giv...

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Urewe Ware

The characteristic Early Iron Age pottery type of the interlacustrine region of East Africa. There are good reasons, both typological and chronometric, for regarding Urewe ware as ancestral to the varied wares of the Early Iron Age complex further south. Named after a site in southwestern Kenya, ...

archaeologsEnglishAncient Pottery, Place Names

Urartu

A kingdom that flourished in the early 1st millennium bc in the region of Armenia (i.e. eastern Turkey and adjacent areas of Iran and the USSR). Its centre was in the Lake Van region. The name Urartu first appears in documentary sources in the 13th century bc and the kingdom was in existence by c...

archaeologsEnglishNations

Uranium Series Dating

Group of related radiometric dating methods, based on the decay series of the uranium isotopes 238U and 235U. Principles. Each of the isotopes decays through a series of radioactive daughter isotopes until a stable isotope of lead is reached. Three daughter isotopes arc created and decay with hal...

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Uranium Series Dating