Glossary


Acheulean

Lower Paleolithic technology based around the production of bifacially flaked chopping tools. Acheulean industries are found on sites in Africa, Central and Eastern Europe, and in Asia east to India.


actualistic studies

Studies undertaken by archaeologists on contemporary materials and processes so that they might gain a clearer understanding of the processes that form the archaeological record.


Age of metal

That time succeeding the Stone Agewhich first saw the introduction of metal artifacts into prehistoric assemblages.


agropastoral

Referring to prehistoric agricultural economies.


amino acid racemization

An experimental technology used to date bone that can be up to 100,000 years old. It is based on determining the rate of transformation in amino acids from living bone to dead bone.


amphorae

Large two-handled jars used to store liquids.


anthropology

The discipline that is devoted to the study of human beings (particularly their cultural, physical, and social forms).


antiquarian

A person interested in many of the issues and perspectives that coalesced in the mid-nineteenth century as the disciplines of history and archaeology. Antiquarians used documents, oral histories, and artifacts to write about the history of humanity.


applied transformism

In Gabriel de Mortillet’s terms, the use of archaeology to demonstrate the reality of transformationist ideas in human evolution.


arboriculture

The use of fruit and nut trees as part of prehistoric economies.


archaeomagnetic

A dating technology based on the fact that hearths or kilns (as heat sources) are sources of paleomagnetism.


archaeometric

Relating to archaeometry.


Archaic, early, late, terminal

North American sites and contexts that exhibit broad-spectrum foraging, ground stone artifacts, and evidence of increasing sedentism.


assemblage

A collection of artifacts that are thought to constitute a single unit of analysis—either by site or by period.


Aterian

Group of Upper Paleolithic tool assemblages with little flakes, some blades, and tanged points that was spread throughout northern Africa and the Sahara, dating roughly from 170,000 to around 30,000–20,000 b.p.


Aurignacian

An Upper Paleolithic industry that spread from the Levant to Spain and France.


Australopithecine

An ancestral genus to Homo found in East and South Africa. Skeletal remains (which date from about 3.7 million years ago) are classified into species such as Australopithecus afarensis (found in Ethiopia) or Australopithecus africanus (found in South Africa).


Austronesian

A family of languages found in island southeast Asia, Polynesia, Micronesia, and Melanesia (with the exception of most of Papua New Guinea).


autochthony

Referring to something native, indigenous, or “home-grown.”


backed blades

A stone tool that is a blade shape with one of the longer edges deliberately blunted.


Bandkeramik culture

The earliest Neolithic culture of Central Europe (between 4500 b.c. and 3900 b.c.).


Baradostian

An Upper Paleolithic stone industry found in Iran.


barrow

A mound of earth and stones that in most cases covers a burial or a number of burials.


Bell beaker barrow

A burial mound associated