CUMBRIAN CLUB: A term for a distinctive type of large polished stone ax of Middle Neolithic date made in northwest England. It has a broadbutted form, long, narrow proportions, and a distinct “waisting” of constriction towards the butt end. [Cumbrian-type stone ax]
CRESWELL POİNT: Type of later Upper Paleolithic flint tool found in the British Isles made from a narrow flint blade, with one end worked to produce a slightly elongated trapezoidal form, with the long side of the blade left unworked, and the shorter side blunted.
CRESTED BLADE: A flint blade with negative impressions of removals on one side of the dorsal surface, creating a crest. These constitute part of a previously worked striking platform or result from preparing the flaked surface on a core before detaching the flakes or blades.
CRESCENT: A crescent-shaped, bifacially flaked stone tool generally restricted to the Paleoindian period and almost always found in association with extinct Pleistocene lakes. They were possibly used for hunting large shorebirds. [Great Basin transverse point]
CRATER: A large, wide-mouthed, two-handled Greek or Roman bowl or vase, usually made of pottery or metal. It is characteristic of Greece in the Mycenaean and Classical periods. They were used to serve wine, mixed with water in varying proportions, into individual drinking cups, and handed out at banquets and sacrifices. The word is Greek for “mixing bowl.” There is a classification of four types: column crater, volute crater, calyx crater, and bell crater, which take their names from the characteristic shape either of the handle or of the body of the vase.
CRAMBECK WARE: A type of pottery that was widely distributed across the north of England and North Wales in the second half of the 4th century ad, including cream-colored mortaria and parchment wares, imitation Samian forms, and gray kitchen wares.
CORNER NOTCH : A major projectile form that is described as a point that has had notches for hafting struck into the corners of the base; a flaking technique applied to accommodate hafting which involved the flaking of notches into the basal corners of a preform base. [corner-notched, corner-notched point]
CORN MUMMY: A type of anthropomorphic funerary object made of soil mixed with grains of corn, which was usually wrapped up in linen bandages and had a face mask.
CORINTHIAN POTTERY: A widely distributed pottery made at Corinth and found throughout the Mediterranean, from the late 7th century bc until the mid 6th century bc. This important stage of vase painting included “naturalistic” designs of animals, maenads, and satyrs and the invention of the black-figure technique and some new shapes, such as the aryballos and alabastron. Proto-Corinthian pottery, most of which is miniature in size, was the first to be decorated in the black-figure painting technique – figure silhouettes drawn in black and filled in with incised details.
CORE TOOL: A stone tool, such as a hand ax, chopper, or scraper, formed by chipping away flakes from a core. These tools, often large and relatively heavy, were characteristic of Paleolithic culture. They were made by using a pebble, antler, or bone hammer. [core-tool]
CORE REJUVENATION FLAKE: A roughly round and slightly wedge-shaped flake of flint with the remains of flake beds around the outside edge. These flakes are created to extend the life of a core that has become uneven or difficult to work. [core tablet].jpg)
CORE: 1. A piece of stone used as a blank from which flakes or blades were removed by prehistoric toolmakers. Usually it was the byproduct of toolmaking, but it may also have been shaped and modified to serve as an implement in its own right. An object, such as a hand ax, chopper, or scraper made in this way is a core tool. Cores were most often produced when hit by a pebble, antler, or bone hammer. [blank, nucleus] 2. A black or gray zone in the interior crosssection of a vessel wall, usually associated with incomplete removal of carbonaceous matter from the clay during relatively low-temperature firing; not to be confused with black coring at high temperatures, which results from trapped gases and may lead to bloating. [coring (n.)]
CORDENED URN: A type of Middle Bronze Age pottery in the northern parts of the British Isles during the 2nd millennium bc, generally tall straightsided vessels with a flat base, slightly flaring body and a simple rim. The outer face is decorated with applied cordons ornamented with incised decoration.
CORDILLERAN: The ice mass that covered the coastal mountains along the Pacific Ocean coast of North America from northern Washington state into southern Alaska. At its maximum extent, about 20,000 years ago, it connected with the Laurentide ice sheet to the east and with the Pacific Ocean to the west, and reached a thickness of some 3 km (1 mile). The Cordilleran geosyncline was a linear trough in the Earth’s crust in which rocks of Late Precambrian to Mesozoic age (roughly 600 million to 66 million years ago) were deposited along the western coast of North America, from southern Alaska through western Canada and the United States, probably to western Mexico. The eastern boundary of the geosyncline extended from southeastern Alaska along the eastern edge of the northern Cordillera and northern Rocky Mountains of Canada and Montana, along the eastern edge of the Great Basin of Utah and Nevada, and into southeastern California and Mexico. The Old Cordilleran culture appeared in the Pacific Northwest about 9000 or 10,000 bc and persisted until about 5000 bc in some areas. Subsistence was based on hunting, fishing, and gathering. Simple willowleafshaped, bipointed projectile points are characteristic artifacts.
CORDED WARE: a Late Neolithic pottery ware decorated with twisted cord ornament found over much of north and central Europe in the 2nd half of the 3rd millennium bc. The commonest shapes are the beaker and the globular amphora. The ware is always associated with early agriculture, the stone battle ax, and usually with single burial under a small barrow or kurgan. The ware may derive from Denmark, central Germany (Saxo-Thuringia), eastern Poland, or the Ukraine. The culture received its name from the characteristic pottery. Some groups also had metal artifacts. There is some evidence that Corded ware people had domesticated horses and wheeled vehicles, and they are sometimes interpreted as nomadic groups – possibly Indo-European speaking – who spread across northern Europe from the east. Closely related are the Globular amphora and Funnel beaker cultures.
CORACLE: Primitive, light, small bowl-shaped boat with a wattle frame of grasses, reeds, or saplings covered with hides. They were first known in the Iron Age and are still used in Wales and along coastal Ireland, usually with a canvas and tar covering. The term also refers to an Old English boat of wickerwork covered with hides. Native Americans used the similar bullboat, covered with buffalo hides, on the Missouri River, and the corita, often sealed with bitumen, on the Colorado.
COPRIC PERIOD: Chronological phase in Egypt lasting from the end of the Roman period, c. ad 395, until the Islamic conquest, c. ad 641. It is also described as the “Christian” period and is roughly equivalent to the Byzantine period elsewhere in the Near East.
COPROLITE: Fossilized or desiccated human or animal feces. The study of these remains can provide information about human or animal activity in that particular locale, such as diet and disease; the study of these remains is called coprology. Coprolites only survive in exceptional circumstances – arid, frozen, and occasionally waterlogged deposits. They can be reconstituted by the addition of chemicals like trisodium phosphate, and can then be analyzed for their plant and animal remains. This gives additional insight into what was being eaten at a site, since the evidence from pollen analysis, or flotation, only suggests what was being grown. |
| Copper Hoard Culture |
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| Iceman Otzi |
CONG: A tubular, jade object, circular on the inside and enclosed in a rectangular body, made in various sizes and used for ritual purposes in ancient China. Cong were described in ancient Chinese texts as symbols of rank and were used as ritual objects primarily in the Shang (18th to 12th century bc) and Zhou/Chou (1111–255 bc) dynasties. They have been found in graves, arranged with bidisks around the corpses of the elite. The cong is thought to have symbolized Earth or possibly to have been an astronomical instrument. [ts’ung]
CONE MOSAIC: A type of wall decoration used in the Uruk (VI–IV) and Jemdet Nasr periods of southern Mesopotamia. Stone or baked clay cones were stuck into the surface of building facades to produce a colored mosaic geometric pattern. Examples have been found in the Eanna section of Warka.
CONCHODIAL FRACTURE: A characteristic shell-like fracture pattern that occurs in siliceous rocks, such as obsidian, chert, and flint. The fracture has smooth, shell-like convexities and concavities. [conchoidal]
CONCHOIDAL FLAKE: A type of spall resulting from the fracture of fine-grained or glassy rocks. It is characterized by a bulb of percussion, striking platform remnant, and extremely sharp edges. There is a predictable fracture pattern that allows the manufacture of predetermined tools from these materials.
COMPARTMENTED SEAL: The typical, usually metal, seal of the Bronze Age in western Central Asia and northern Afghanistan. Most often round, the seal motifs were geometric or of objects in nature.
COMB: A toothed object of wood, bone, horn, metal, etc. with a number of uses – for hair dressing, carding wool, currying horses, compacting the weft in weaving, for decorating pottery, or as an ornament to keep the hair in place. As used for combing the hair, but not wearing, combs were found in Pompeian and Egyptian tombs and in early British, Roman, and Saxon barrows..jpg) |
| The colossus of Rameses II |
COLLARED URN: A type of urn used in the British Early Bronze Age, also called an overhanging rim urn. It has a developed rim which may be straight, convex, or slightly concave in profile. Decoration is normally on the rim or the upper half of the vessel. Collared urns often contained cremation burials, though some have been found in domestic contexts.
COIN: A piece of metal or, rarely, of some other material (such as leather or porcelain) certified by a mark or marks upon it as being of a specific value. Coinage is considered to be any standardized series of metal tokens, their specific weights representing specific values, and usually stamped with designs and inscriptions. Coins or coinlike objects were first issued by the Lydians of Anatolia in the late 7th century bc, made of the gold–silver alloy electrum. Their use was then adopted in the Far East, then around the Mediterranean, and has since spread throughout the world. Early coins were used for specialized, prestigious purposes and not for everyday exchange. The early Greek coins were also made of electrum, silver, or gold; the first Roman coins were produced in the early 3rd century bc and were also made of precious metals. Later in that century the first bronze coin was introduced. These material remains are self-dating, though they do not always date the materials they are found with as they may have been traded, handed down through generations, or displaced in the stratigraphy
COCHISE POINT: A type of projectile point from 4000 bc to perhaps 500 bc, indicating an increased interest in hunting, of the US southwest (Arizona). Currently the use of the Cochise culture concept is fairly uncommon.
COARSEWARE: A classification of sandy, rough pottery including Castor ware, New Forest ware, and Rustic ware. [coarse pottery, coarse ware]
CLOVIS POINT: A distinctive, fluted, lanceolate (leaf-shaped) stone projectile point characteristic of the early Paleoindian period, c. 10,000– 9000 bc, and often found in association with mammoth bones. It is named for Clovis, New Mexico, where it was first found. The oncave-based projectile point has a longitudinal groove on each face running from the base to a point not more than halfway along the tool. The base of a Clovis point is concave and the edge of the base is usually blunted through grinding, probably to ensure that the thongs, attaching the point to the projectile, were not cut. It is assumed to have been a spear because of its size; the length of points varies from 7 to 12 cm (2–4 inches), and their widest width is 3–4 cm (1–1.5 inches). Clovis points and the artifacts associated with them (grouped together as the Llano complex) are among the earliest tools known from the New World and have been found over most of North America, with a few outliers as far south as Mexico and Panama. It is the earliest projectile point of the Big Game Hunting tradition of North America. From these points came the later, more sophisticated points, such as the Folsom. [Clovis projectile point, Clovis spear point]
