ossuary

A place where the bones of many bodies are kept.


ostraca

A potsherd onto which ancient Athenians scratched the names of citizens who were to be expelled. Also used in ancient Egypt for sketches and plans.


overburden

Soil which lies on top of archaeological deposits.


pa

A fortified Maori place. See New Zealand, historical archaeology.


Palaeo-Indian fluted points.

See Folsom points.


paleoenvironment

The reconstruction of ancient environments.


palynological

Relating to analysis of fallen pollen. See palynology.


passage grave

A form of chambered tomb in which access to the chamber is via a long passage.


peri-Roman

Border of the ancient Roman world.


phalliforme

Shaped like a phallus.


phenetic

A classification of organisms based on estimates of overall similarity, but not evolutionary relationship.


philology

The science of language.


photogrammetry

The use of photographs to create maps and scaled drawings of sites and buildings.


phylogeny

A classification of organisms believed to reflect evolutionary relationships.


phytoliths

Samml silica bodies deposited by plants into soil. These are distinctive for each species and the study of phytoliths assists in the reconstruction of plant communities.


Pithecoid

Apelike.


Pitted ware

A culture created by groups of foragers occupying northern Scandinavia and the Baltic (Sweden and Finland) between the third and first millennia b.c.


platform mounds

Flat-topped earthen structures, found in the Mississippi Valley of North America, that served as bases for both ceremonial buildings and houses.


polygenism

The theory that human beings were of multiple origins.


polythetic

A set of objects, the members of which do not have to be exactly the same.


positivism

A school of philosophy that stresses the importance of the testability or verifiability of statements as being a primary determinant of their scientific adequacy.


postprocessual archaeology, postprocessualism

A school of archaeological thought developed in opposition to processual archaeology in the 1980s. Its central focus is on the application of postmodernist forms of social theory to archaeological analysis, an incorporation of colonial theories to critique the relationships between archaeologists and indigenous peoples, and a rejection of evolutionist and positivist frameworks of thought.


potassium-argon dating

A dating method based founded on the measurement of the radioactive decay of the isotope 40K (potassium) to the stable isotope 40Ar (argon).


prehistory

All of that period in human history during which there are no written records. The duration of prehistory differs across the world—in Australia it ended after the arrival of European explorers and settlers, but in the Middle East it ended with the invention of writing thousands of years previously.


processual archaeology or the “New Archaeology”

Processual archaeology, developed during the 1960s with the goal of making archaeology more scientific, embraced neoevolutionism and general systems theory along with positivist approaches to scientific reasoning in order to explore the fundamental assumptions of archaeology. Processual archaeology was in some of its forms also closely associated with a search for general laws thought to underlie human behavior.


proto-history

The period that spans the transition between prehistoric societies (those with no written record) and those societies which had the ability to produce written records.


proton-magnetometer

A geophysical device that measures the strength of the Earth’s magnetic field.


provenance/provenience

The precise origin of an artifact.


quadrant method

An excavation technique in which a barrow is divided into quadrants and these become the units of recording and analysis.


Quaternary

The last major geochronological subdivision of Earth history, covering about the last 2.5 million years.


quern

A large grindstone.


racloirs

Stone tools shaped like scrapers.


radiocarbon dating

An absolute radiometric-dating