A. Lane-Fox Pitt-Rivers
(1827–1900) [Bi]British soldier, anthropologist, and archaeologist often regarded as the ‘father of scientific archaeology’. He was born on 14 April 1827 at Hope Hall near Bramham Park, North ...
Aaron Burr
(1756–1836)US Democratic Republican statesman. After losing the presidential election to Jefferson in 1800, Burr was elected Vice-President. He was defeated in the contest for the governorship of New ...
abacus
An ancient device for performing arithmetic calculations by sliding beads along rods or in grooves. Despite the spread of electronic calculators and computers, the abacus is still widely used in the ...
Abbeville
[Si]A gravel pit in the 45 m gravel terrace of the Somme Valley, France, from which numerous handaxes were obtained by Boucher de Perthes and others from ad 1836 onwards and which in 1939 gave its ...
Abbevillian
[CP]Now obsolete, this term was originally proposed by Abbé Breuil in ad 1939 to describe the pre‐Acheulian flint industries of western Europe on the basis of material from Abbeville in France. Also ...
ABC Model
[De]A scheme for the cultural history of the British Iron Age first proposed by Christopher Hawkes in 1931, but expanded and elaborated in the late 1950s as the opening paper at a conference on the ...
abduction
An inference process widely used in artificial intelligence, particularly in expert systems and rule-based systems. In diagnosis, for example, there may be a rule like “if measles then red spots” so ...
Abejas Phase
[CP]Fourth main phase of activity in the Tehuacán Valley of Mexico, dating to the period 4300–3000bc, marked archaeologically by the appearance of semipermanent villages of pit houses, new species of ...
Abingdon ware
[Ar]A type of middle Neolithic round‐bottomed decorated pottery found in the upper Thames valley and central parts of England, one of the regional variations of the so‐called Southern Decorated ...
abortion
There is no actual prohibition in the Bible against aborting a foetus. Nevertheless, in the unanimously accepted Jewish consensus, abortion is a very serious offence, though foeticide is not treated ...
Abraham Lincoln
(1809–65)US Republican statesman, 16th President of the USA (1861–65). His election as President on an anti‐slavery platform antipathetic to the interests of the southern states helped precipitate ...
absolute dating
A range of methods for determining the absolute age of an object or material, for example using radiometric dating which measures the decay product produced by radioactive decay in minerals, or via ...
Abu Simbel
The site of two huge rock-cut temples in southern Egypt, built during the reign of Ramses II in the 13th century bc and commemorating him and his first wife Nefertari. Following the building of the ...
academies
Are societies or institutions for the cultivation and promotion of literature, the arts or science, or of some particular branch of science such as medicine, for example, the Académie de ...
Acanthus
(family Acanthaceae)A genus of shrubs and perennial herbs, most of which are xeromorphic and have spiny leaves. Some species are cultivated as ornamentals. The upper lip of the corolla is lacking. ...
accelerator mass spectrometry
(AMS)A technique for radiocarbon dating in which a cyclotron is used to measure directly the number of 14C atoms or the proportion of 14C to 12C and 13C atoms in the sample. Results are obtained much ...
aceramic
[De]A term applied to a culture, region, or period in which pottery was not made, used, or traded on a regular basis. Instead, containers may have been made from leather, basketry, bark, gourds or ...
Achaemenid
A member of the dynasty ruling in Persia from Cyrus I to Darius III (553–330 bc); the name comes from Greek Akhaimenēs ‘Achaemenes’, the reputed ancestor of the dynasty.
Acheulian
[CP]Lower Palaeolithic tool‐making tradition, found throughout Europe, western Asia, and Africa, which is closely associated with Homo erectus. The tradition was initially named, after the type‐site ...
acropolis
Elevated part of the city, or the citadel, in Ancient Greece, especially the Athenian acropolis (from acro-, meaning highest or topmost, and polis, meaning city).Dinsmoor (1950)
