WHAT IS THE FLINT ?

A type of hard stone, often gray in color, found in rounded nodules and usually covered with a white incrustation; a microcrystalline or cryptocrystalline form of silica containing some water and very fine pores, added to clay as an inert filler or aggregate. A member of the chalcedony group of water-bearing silica minerals, it was found from early use to fracture conchoidally and was ideal for making stone tools with sharp edges. It is chemically a quartz, but has a different microcrystalline structure. It can therefore be flaked readily in any direction and so shaped to many useful forms. It occurs widely, and where available was the basic material for man’s tools until the advent of metal; it is commonest “stone” of the Stone Age. The only types of stone preferred to it were obsidian and the tougher rocks used for ground tools in the Neolithic. The term is often used interchangeably with chert and also as a generic term denoting stone tools in the Old World. Nodules of flint occur commonly as seams in the upper and middle chalk of northwest Europe. During the Neolithic and Copper Age of Europe, flint workers recognized that flint from beds below ground were of superior quality to surface flint, especially for the manufacture of large tools such as axes. These beds were exploited by sinking shafts and then excavating galleries outwards. Flint mines are known from many areas of Europe and good examples occur in Poland (Krzemionki), Holland, Belgium (Spiennes), and England (Grimes Graves).

WHAT IS THE FLAKE ?

A thin broad piece of stone detached from a larger mass for use as a tool; a piece of stone removed from a larger piece (core or nucleus) during knapping (percussion or pressure) and used in prehistoric times as a cutting instrument. Also, any casual cutting implement typically consisting of large pieces of debitage detached from a core, not “formed” tools. Flakes often served as blanks from which more complex artifacts – burins, scrapers, gravers, arrowheads, etc. – could be made. Waste flakes (debitage) are those discarded during the manufacture of a tool. Flakes may be retouched to make a flake tool or used unmodified. The process leaves characteristic marks on both the core and flake which makes it comparatively easy to distinguish human workmanship from natural accident.

WHAT IS THE FISHTAIL POINT ?

A fluted and stemmed, fishlike stone tool of South America, dating to c. 11,000–8000 bc. The complex has some similarities to the Clovis of North America and is representative of the Paleoindian time in South America.

WHAT IS THE FIRST INTERMEDIATE PERIOD ?

Chronological phase (c. 2130–1938 bc) between the Old Kingdom (2575–2130 bc) and the Middle Kingdom (1938–1600 bc), which appears to have been a time of relative political disunity and instability. The period includes the 9th dynasty (c. 2130–2080 bc), 10th dynasty (c. 2080–1970 bc), and 11th dynasty (c. 2081–1938 bc). (The period corresponds to Manetho’s 7th to 10th dynasties and the early part of the 11th dynasty.) After the end of the 8th dynasty, the throne passed to kings from Heracleopolis, who made their native city the capital. Major themes of inscriptions of the period are the provision of food supplies for people in times of famine and the promotion of irrigation works. In the 10th dynasty, a period of generalized conflict focused on twin dynasties at Thebes and Heracleopolis. The 11th dynasty made Thebes its capital. In the First Intermediate Period, monuments were erected by a larger section of the population and, in the absence of central control, internal dissent and conflicts of authority became visible in public records. Non-royal individuals took over some of the privileges of royalty, notably identification with Osiris in the hereafter and the use of the Pyramid Texts. These were incorporated into a more extensive corpus inscribed on coffins – the Coffin Texts – and continued to be inscribed during the Middle Kingdom.

WHAT IS THE FINE ORANGE POTTERY ?

A high-quality orange ware, often decorated with incised, molded, or black-painted patterns; a late Classic (and post- Classic) pottery type of the lowland Maya area of Mesoamerica. Found at sites under the influence of Teotihuacán, it comes from the Tabasco- Campeche region (Usumacinta drainage). [Fine Orange ware]

WHAT IS THE FILIGREE ?

A technique of decorating jewelry with gold, silver, or electrum soldered onto metalwork. It consists of creating a fine open metalwork pattern out of wire, which is soldered together and to the main body of the piece. The wire can be plain or decorative. For goldwork, the solder is normally a gold–copper alloy (82% gold, 18% copper), which has a lower melting point than pure gold. The word is derived from the Italian filigrana which is “filum” and “granum” or "granular network.” It was first developed in the Near East and was often used in combination with granulation. The technique had been mastered by the Early Dynastic Sumerian craftsmen of the 3rd millennium bc, and fine jewelry decorated in this way appears in the royal tombs of Ur. Anglo Saxon and Germanic metalworkers greatly developed the technique. [filagree, filigraine]

WHAT IS THE FIKELLURA WARE ?

an Archaic east Greek black-figure pottery style. It has been found in the Fikellura cemetery on Rhodes; the source of the clay was Miletus.

WHAT IS THE FIGURINE ?

a small carved or sculpted figure of a human or animal, usually of clay, stone, wood, or a metal. A figurine’s purpose is often religious, either as an object of worship itself or as a votive offering to a god. They were made in prehistoric Europe from the Upper Paleolithic onwards, though they became less common in the Bronze Age.

WHAT IS THE FIBULA ?

in antiquity, a clasp, buckle, or brooch of various designs, usually shaped like a modern safety pin. It was often used for fastening a draped garment such as a toga or cloak, and was made of bronze, gold, silver, ivory, etc. It consisted of a bow, pin, and catch. It is the Latin word for brooch, and is so-named for the outer of two bones of the lower leg or hindlimb, which together with the tibia resemble an ancient brooch. The earliest examples date to around 1300 bc. There are two main families of fibulae. In the south they were made in one piece, starting with the Peschiera or violin bow form in northern Italy and Mycenaean Greece. From this developed the arc fibula north of the Mediterranean and the harp and spectacle fibulae in the eastern Alps in the years around 1000 bc. From the Certosa form was derived the long series of La Tène Iron Age varieties. Even wider variation is found among the succeeding Roman fibulae, leading on to the final forms in the Saxon and Migration periods. Around the same time, there was an apparently independent development in northern Europe of the two-piece variety. Fibula types include: violin bow, arc, elbowed, serpentine, dragon, harp, disk with “elastic bow,” leech, boat, twopiece fibula, spiral, La Tène I, and La Tène III. Fibula terms include: catchplate, pin, spring, bow, stilt, elongated catchplate, disk catchplate, and knobbed (Certosa) catchplate. Although primarily functional, fibulae were often also highly decorated items of personal adornment, sometimes inlaid with glass and precious stones. An enormous number of different types of fibulae were made and they can often be a useful guide to dating.

WHAT IS THE FIBER-TEMPERED POTTERY

Any clay pottery to which grass or root fibers have been added as a tempering material. This ware is the earliest pottery in Caribbean South America and is the oldest pottery in the United States, making its appearance in Archaic shell mounds in Georgia and Florida before 2500 bc. [fiber tempering]

WHAT IS THE FENGATE WARE ?

A family of elaborately decorated Neolithic ceramics found in southern and eastern parts of the British Isles. Dating to the period 3000–2000 bc, Isobel Smith divided Peterborough wares into three successive styles – Ebbsfleet, Mortlake, and Fengate – on the basis of their occurrence in the ditch fills at Windmill Hill. It is now recognized that these three groups overlap rather more than originally thought, and that they are best seen as part of the broad group of impressed wares found over much of northern Europe in the 3rd millennium bc. The decoration on Peterborough ware consists of pits, “maggot impressions” made by impressing tightly rolled cord, and the impressions made by pressing the ends of bird bones into the soft clay before firing. Some of the later vessels are the first in Britain to be made with flat bases. [Peterborough ware]

WHAT IS THE FEDERMESSER ?

A small backed blade, about the size and shape of a penknife blade; these blades were the most distinctive artifacts of the Final Glacial peoples of the north European plain during the Allerød oscillation (c. 9850–8850 bc). Similar bladelets occurred in the related Creswellian culture of Britain and the blades are very similar to the Azilian point. They are backed blades tapering to a point, and were probably used as arrowheads. They tend to have curved or angled backs unlike the earlier Gravette points.

WHAT IS THE FECUNDITY FIGURE ?

A type of offering bearer depicted on Egyptian temple walls which is mostly seen as a personification of geographic areas, the inundation, or abstract concepts. The male figures have heavy pendulous breasts and bulging stomachs, their fatness symbolizing the abundance they bring with them.

WHAT IS THE FAIENCE ?

1. A name used for the medieval pottery of Faenza in northern Italy, one of the chief seats of the ceramics industry in the 16th century; it was an early type of majolica. 2. It is also used for the tin-glazed earthenware made in France, Germany, Spain, and Scandinavia as distinguished from Faenza majolica, and that made in the Netherlands and England, which is called delft. 3. Most accurately, it is the primitive form of glass developed in Mesopotamia in the 3rd millennium bc and then, almost as early, in Egypt; it is sometimes called Egyptian faience. It is a substance composed of a sand and clay mixture baked to a temperature at which the surface begins to fuse to a bluish or greenish glass. It was colored with copper salts to produce a blue-green finish and used especially for beads and figurines, particularly in the second millennium bc. Its main use in the Bronze Age was for beads, seals, figurines, and similar small objects. The glazed material could be comprised of a base of either carved steatite (soapstone) or molded clay with a core of crushed quartz (or quartz and soda-lime) fired so that the surface fuses into a glassy coating. Examples occur also in Bronze Age contexts in Europe, including the Wessex culture.

WHAT IS THE ETRUSCAN POTTERY ?

Pottery produced at various centers in Etruria, especially during the Archaic and Classical periods. Although plain wares were particular common (Bucchero, Impasto), figure decorated pottery was also produced (Caeretan ware, Pontic ware).

WHAT IS THE EOLITH ?

Any naturally shaped or broken stone, once considered to be the oldest artifacts of early man. They consist of crudely chipped flakes and cores from pre-Pleistocene or very early Pleistocene deposits. It is now accepted that eoliths were not made by humans but were chipped by natural agencies as far back as 500,000 years bc. Most eoliths were frost-split chunks with irregular chipping round the edge. Eolithic is a term sometimes used by archaeologists for the earliest stage of human culture before the Paleolithic, characterized by very primitive stone tools, especially of flint. It means “dawn of the Stone Age.” [dawn stone]

WHAT IS THE EOCENE ?

a major geological epoch of the Earth’s history – the second division of the Tertiary period (Cenozoic era) that began about 57.8 million years ago and ended about 36.6 million years ago (mya). It follows the Paleocene epoch and precedes the Oligocene epoch. The Eocene is often divided into Early (57.8–52 mya), Middle (52– 43.6 mya), and Late (43.6–36.6 mya) epochs. The name Eocene is derived from the Greek eos (“dawn”) and refers to the dawn of recent life. During the Eocene, all the major divisions, or orders, of modern mammals appeared.

WHAT IS THE ENOLITHIC ?

a period in the Near East and southeastern Europe when copper metallurgy was being adopted by Neolithic cultures, in the 4th and 3rd millennia bc. The period is called the Chalcolithic in the Near East and the Copper Age in other areas.

WHAT IS THE END SCRAPER?

a stone tool formed by chipping the end of a flake of stone which can then be used to scrape animal hides and wood. Its steeply angled (acute) working edge was used for flensing or softening hides and to dress skins. It appeared in Europe during the Upper Paleolithic period. It differed from side scrapers in that it had a rounded retouched end and was often made on a blade. A side scraper had a retouched working edge along the long edge of the flake.

WHAT IS THE EMBLEM GLYPH ?

Symbols standing for royal lineages and their domains in the Maya civilization; a Maya glyph identifying a place or polity. Each of the principal Maya cities had its own hieroglyph, which appears in inscriptions of all kinds. All such emblem glyphs share the same prefix, but the main element varies from one city to another. Many of these glyphs can now be linked to specific sites; others have still to be identified. They were first discovered in 1958.

WHAT IS THE ELKO POINT?

Large, roughly triangular-shaped chipped stone points with concave, straight, or slightly concave bases either with corner notches or “ears” on the base. They are dated to 1300 bc to ad 700, the desert Archaic stage in Great Basin and western North America.

WHAT IS THE EDEN POINT?

Eden points are known for their exceptionally well done, parallel pressure flaking and diamond cross-section. The people that made them were hunting large animals like bison. Eden points were first discovered in Yuma County, Colorado blow outs during the 1930s but none were found in situ until the spring of 1940 when Harold J. Cook spent several days digging in a site discovered by O. M. Finley. The Eden point was named by H. M. Wormington after the town of Eden, Wyoming. The Eden type site was named the Finley site in honor of O. M. Finley who discovered it.

WHAT IS THE EBBSFLEET WARE ?

EBBSFLEET WARE: a family of elaborately decorated Neolithic ceramics found in southern and eastern parts of the British Isles. Dating to the period 3000-2000 BC. Peterborough wares were divided into three successive styles Ebbsfleet, Mortlake, and Fengate – on the basis of their occurrence in the ditch fills at Windmill Hill. It is now recognized that these three groups overlap rather more than originally thought, and that they are best seen as part of the broad group of impressed wares found over much of northern Europe in the 3rd millennium bc. The decoration on Peterborough ware consists of pits, “maggot impressions” made by impressing tightly rolled cord, and the impressions made by pressing the ends of bird bones into the soft clay before firing. Some of the later vessels are the first in Britain to be made with flat bases. (Peterborough ware).

WHAT IS THE EAST GREEK POTTERY ?

EAST GREEK POTTERY: a type of pottery produced during the Archaic period within the Greek islands and on the western coast of Turkey at Chios, Samos, Ephesus, Miletus, Clazomenae, and Rhodes.

WHAT IS THE EARTHENWARE ?

EARTHENWARE: ceramics fired at temperatures high enough for vitrification to begin, usually 900 1200°C. It is glazed or unglazed nonvitreous ceramic material, usually low-fired, porous, and permeable.

WHAT IS THE EARLY DYNASTIC PERIOD ?

EARLY DYNASTIC PERIOD: a chronological phase in southern Mesopotamia between c. 2900 and 2330 bc, ending with the founding of the dynasty of Akkad. It was also known as the Pre-Sargonid period. The Sumerian city states flourished under their separate dynastic rulers – Ur, Umma, Kish, and Lagash. The period is 3100–2450 bc on what is called the “high chronology” (the other being the “medium chronology”). The term itself is derived from the Sumerian “king list” which implies that Sumer was ruled by kings at this stage, although archaeological evidence for the existence of kingship is meager before the middle of the period. Traditionally, it is divided by archaeologists into three subdivisions – ED I, II, and III – each of approximately 200 years’ duration. The royal tombs of Ur belong to the ED III period. The Early Dynastic phase shows clear continuity from the preceding Jemdet Nasr, and represents a period of rapid political, cultural, and artistic development. Within the period, the pictographic writing of the earlier period developed into the standardized cuneiform script. This period represents the earliest conjunction of archaeological and written evidence for the history of southern Mesopotamia.

WHAT IS THE EARLY BRONZE AGE ?

Early Bronze Age: a period in the Levant dating to c. 3200–1950 bc, just before Egypt’s Archaic period. Increasing urbanization was shown by the building of walled towns.

WHAT IS THE Early Archaic percussion pressure flaking ?

Early Archaic percussion pressure flaking: 

a type of flaking in which the preform was shaped by percussion flaking. The blade edges were ground to prepare a surface for the removal of elongate pressure flakes. The pressure flaking may have taken the form of alternate uniface bevel flaking, biface serration flaking, alternate biface bevel flaking, or irregular pressure flaking.

WHAT IS THE EARLIER STONE AGE

Earlier Stone Age: first stage of the Stone Age in sub-Saharan Africa, dating from more than 2.5 million years ago to c. 150,000 years ago. The earliest artifacts are representative of the Oldowan Industrial Complex, which was succeeded by the Acheulian Industrial Complex between c. 1.5 million and 150,000 years ago.

WHAT IS THE DYNASTIC PERIOD ?

A period of ancient Egypt’s history tied to a framework of 30 dynasties (ruling houses) of kings, or pharaohs, who ruled from the time of the country’s unification into a single kingdom in c. 3100 bc until its conquest by Alexander the Great in 332 bc. The two Predynastic kingdoms of Upper and Lower Egypt were united by the legendary king Menes, possibly to be identified with the historical King Narmer. The Dynastic period was followed by a Greek period when the country was ruled by the Ptolemys, descendants of Alexander the Great’s general. The Ptolemaic period and Egypt’s independence were brought to an end in 30 bc when Queen Cleopatra VII died and the country was absorbed into the Roman Empire. The political history, largely derived from written sources, has a detailed and, for the most part, precise chronology. From the 21st dynasty onwards, Egypt’s cohesion broke, and from the 11th to 7th centuries bc Libyan, Asian, and Nubian contenders vied with Egyptians for control of the state. The divine ruler, the pharaoh, was ultimately responsible for the complex bureaucracy and was also the figurehead of the official religion, the personification of the sun god Ra, counterpart of Osiris, the god of the land of the dead. Because of their belief in the afterlife, the royal tombs of the pharaohs in particular reflect the great wealth and concentration of resources at the pharaoh’s disposal. Much of our information about ancient Egyptian history comes from the records that were carefully maintained by the Egyptians themselves, notably by the priests who were regarded as the guardians of the state’s accumulated wisdom.

WHAT IS THE DRYAS ?

A series of cold climatic phases in northwestern Europe, during a time when the North Atlantic was in almost full glacial condition. Dryas I was c. 16,000–14,000 bp, Dryas II (Older Dryas) was c. 12,300– 11,800 bp, and Dryas III (Younger Dryas) was c. 11,000–10,000 bp. It is named after a tundra plant. The increasing temperature after the late Dryas period during the Pre-Boreal and the Boreal (c. 8000– 5500 bc, according to radiocarbon dating) caused a remarkable change in late glacial flora and fauna.

WHAT IS THE DRAKENSTEIN URN ?

Type of Middle/Late Bronze Age ceramic vessel found in the Low Countries. The pots were barrel-shaped with impressed cordon decoration on the upper part of the body and occasionally with zigzag decoration. The shape and decoration of these vessels suggest some contact with the Deverel-Rimbury wares of southern England.

WHAT IS THE DOTAKU ?

A type of bronze bell made in the Yayoi period of Japan that was cast from melted bronzes, some heavily decorated. They may have been used in agricultural fertility rituals.

WHAT IS THE DOMESDAY BOOK ?

A survey of land ownership in England after the Norman Conquest. The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle describes how in 1085 it was decided to make a record of the number of hides in land existing in each English shire and to establish the amount and value of acreage and livestock possessed by individual landowners. The idea was to create a new rating system which would protect and enlarge the king’s revenue. The resulting document – a two-volume survey of land ownership arranged under tenurial rather than territorial headings – is the great testament of feudal England. The Domesday Book is of fundamental importance to both historians and archaeologists of the late Saxon and early Norman periods, as it gives the names and sizes of villages, farms, manors, churches, and other properties that existed at the time as well as certain sales and transactions.