Folsom points

Fluted points found in North America and associated with Paleo-Indian sites occupied by bison hunters from about 11,000 to about 10,200 years ago.


formal systematics

Classification of objects on the basis of their form or shape.


formative period, formative type

In North America, used to describe the cultural stage associated with the introduction of agriculture and settled village life. In Mesoamerica the formative is synonymous with the preclassic.


French Aurignacian period

From about 34,000 b.p. until about 20,000 b.p. in France.


geometric microliths

Small geometric-shaped stone tools.


glyph

A symbol used in a system of writing.


Hempelian logic

A logical form developed by the philosopher Carl Hempel as a means of understanding and describing how scientific statements (theories and hypotheses) should be created and verified.


henge

An enclosed space, defined by walls and ditches, frequently circular, and exhibiting one (but sometimes two) entrances. These prehistoric monuments sometimes contained buildings (or, as in the case of Stonehenge, stone circles). They are often interpreted as being places of ritual.


high-level theory

That body of archaeological theory most directly concerned with relating the knowledge derived about human beings from archaeological contexts to that which comes from other branches of history and anthropology.


historic contact Indian sites

Sites that show archaeological evidence of very early contact between European settlers and indigenous peoples in North America.


Holocene

The Quaternary era, comprising two geological stages—the Pleistocene (ca. 1,000,000 to 10,000 b.p.) and the Holocene (from 10.000 b.p. to the present). It should not be confused with the Paleolithic and Neolithic cultural divisions.


Hominids

The family of human beings that includes the genus Homo and the genus Australopithecus.


hominization

The process of the evolution of hominid physical and cultural characteristics.


Hopewell mounds

Found in southern Ohio and constructed between 100 b.c. and a.d. 500. Hopewell sites are found elsewhere in the Midwest of the United States, and ditches and embankments often enclose associated burial sites.


Hopewell/Havana societies

A variant of the general Hopewell culture found in the Lower Illinois Valley.


hydration rind dating

A chemical technique used to date obsidian (volcanic glass) artifacts. Based on the fact that water permeates newly broken obsidian edges, dating specialists observe the thickness and penetration of water by measuring the hydration rind.


Iberomaurusian (or Oranian)

Group of Epipaleolithic tool assemblages (predominantly featuring bladelets), as well as the cultures or peoples using them, mainly in Algerian coastal regions, Cyrenaica, and Morocco, dating roughly from ca. 20,000 b.c. to ca. 8000 b.c.


Iberomaurusian

A stone tool industry found in North Africa and dating from about 22,000 to about 10,000 years ago.


interaction spheres

Created by the interaction of adjacent cultural groups, sometimes over large areas. Interactions might be in the form of trade or warfare, or simply be based on the recognition that adjacent groups do not and cannot act as cultural, social, or indeed political isolates.


interlacustrine

Between lakes.


jar-burial

An inhumation where the body is placed in a jar.


Kulturkreise

A German school of diffusionist thought. See Fritz Graebner and Friedrich Ratzel.


La Tène

Iron Age site that is used as the type-site for this culture.


lacustrine system

Lake system.


Lamarck’s transformism

An approach to understanding the evolution of life on earth that emphasized the importance of inheritable modifications in the process of adaptation. Some archaeologists have used this notion of inheritable modifications to aid their understanding of the processes that lead to change (transformation) in cultures over time.


Landsat

A satellite-based mapping system developed by the U.S. National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) to create the photographic images of the surface of the earth; widely used in a remote sensing role by archaeologists to locate sites and landscape modifications in survey areas.


land-snail shell middens

A shell midden composed mostly of the shells of land snails.


Levallois

A very widely distributed stone knapping technique based around the preparation of the stone