Concise Oxford Dictionary of Archaeology (266 page)

 
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1
A small Bronze Age
STONE CIRCLE
of four upright stones at the corners of a rough rectangle. Mainly found in central Scotland.
2
Type of Iron Age structure represented archaeologically by a square-shaped setting of four substantial postholes. Believed to be the supports for an above-ground granary.

 
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Egyptian gods, the protective genii who guarded the canopic jars.

 
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A collective name for indigenous peoples (e.g., Aborigines) in countries where an alien majority has now become the established government.

 
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Fox , Sir Cyril Fred
(1882–1967)
[Bi].

British archaeologist and scholar specializing in the prehistory of the British Isles and the application of geographical models to archaeological data. Born in Chippenham, Wiltshire, and educated at Christ's Hospital he was destined for a career in market gardening. By a happy coincidence he was appointed superintendent of the University Field Laboratories in Cambridge. Here he became interested in archaeology and was admitted to Magdalene College to read for the tripos, but Professor H. M. Chadwick was so impressed by Fox that he arranged for him to proceed straight to a Ph.D. His thesis was on the archaeology of the Cambridge region. It was highly successful and innovatory, and was eventually published. In 1923 Fox became assistant curator of the University Museum of Archaeology and Ethnography, but a year later he moved to the dual post of Keeper of Archaeology in the National Museum of Wales and Lecturer in Archaeology at University College, Cardiff. In 1926 he succeeded to the directorship of the Museum where he remained until his retirement in 1948. During his time in Wales he carried out a great deal of fieldwork, including the excavation of several Bronze Age barrows and the surveying of Offa's Dyke. In building geographical models he noted the ways in which Britain was connected to mainland Europe via a series of seaways that were used over many millennia and he also proposed a division of Britain into a Highland Zone and a Lowland Zone as a way of characterizing key differences in the nature of the archaeological evidence, but also in the kinds of society that might have existed in the regions in the past. His numerous publications include
The personality of Britain
(1932, Cardiff: National Museum of Wales) and
Life and death in the Bronze Age
(1959, London: Routledge). He was knighted in 1935.
[Obit.:
Antiquaries Journal
, 47 (1967), 337]

 
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A deeply stratified cave deposit on the Peloponnesian coast of the Argolid in southern Greece. Excavated by T. W. Jacobson between 1967 and 1979. The lowest levels dated to the period 20000–8000 bc, the Upper Palaeolithic, and included the remains of wild ass, red deer, and a variety of fish. The upper levels date to the Mesolithic and Neolithic, and it was during the Mesolithic, around 7000 bc, that obsidian from Melos first appears in the sequence, demonstrating long-distance boat journeys across the Aegean. An abrupt change in subsistence patterns around 6000 bc saw the introduction of domesticated sheep and goat, with, a little later, cultivated barley, and finally pottery.
[Sum.: T. W. Jacobsen , 1976, 17000 years of Greek prehistory.
Scientific American
, 234, 76–87]

 
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