Concise Oxford Dictionary of Archaeology (394 page)

 
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A type of pottery with a relatively fine burnished grey or black fabric, often imitating various forms of Samian bowls, and often decorated with inscribed lines, impressed stamps, rouletting and compass-scribed circles. Made in the Thames Estuary area, Suffolk, Hertfordshire, and the Nene Valley in the late 1st and 2nd centuries
ad
, and widely distributed during this period.

 
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A class of middle Neolithic burial monument found extensively across the British Isles and related to other contemporary tomb-building traditions in other parts of northwestern Europe, especially northern France. The essential features of a long barrow are: the long rectangular or trapezoidal mound of soil and stone sometimes edged with a peristalith, a dry-stone wall, or timber posts; flanking ditches or quarry pits from which the material to construct the mound was obtained; chambers within the mound built either of orthostats or timber; and some kind of elaboration to the higher and broader end of the mound in the form of a concave forecourt or façade. Much literature on the period distinguishes between so-called
earthen long barrows
in the southern and eastern part of the country and the stone
chambered tombs
of the north and west. Both are part of the same tradition of long-barrow building, although not all chambered tombs are long barrows (some are
PASSAGE GRAVES
,
PORTAL DOLMENS
, etc.).
The chambers within long barrows are located in one of two areas: terminal chambers that open into the mound form the wider higher end of the barrow, from the back of the forecourt or centre of the façade; or lateral chambers that open into the side of the mound. In all cases the chambers represent a small proportion of the overall structure, prompting speculation that the barrows may also have served as territorial markers. The burials are usually disarticulated inhumations, the corpses having been placed in the entrance areas to the chambers and then, bit by bit, moved further into the mound as they decayed and space was needed for the introduction of new burials.
All dated long barrows were built and used during the mid 4th millennium
bc
; many show signs of abandonment and in some cases deliberate blocking after about 3000 bc. A number of regional groupings can be recognized on the basis of concentrations in the distribution and the use of particular architectural details, including: Cotswold–Severn tombs, Clyde tombs, Carlingford tombs, Wessex long barrows, Yorkshire long barrows, Medway tombs, East Anglian and Midland group; and East Scottish group.

 
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A calendrical system for measuring absolute time devised in Mesoamerica during the Formative (Pre-Classic) period. The day forms the basic unit (
kin
), thereafter multiplying up into larger units progressing by 20s:
uinal
(20 days),
tun
(360 days),
katun
(7200 days), and
baktun
(144000 days). Dates are expressed as units in a five-place notation starting with the largest units. Thus 8.2.4.5.1 means 8
baktunob
, 2
katunob
, 4
tunob
, 5
uinalob
, and 1
kin
. The Maya began their counting at a time equivalent to 3114 bc, perhaps marking some mythical event in Maya history. They inscribed their dates in the notation given above as hieroglyphs in which bars represented units of five and dots units of one. The long count system was replaced after ad 900 by a short count system in which the
katun
replaced the
baktun
as the largest unit.

 
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A term proposed by Richard
ATKINSON
in 1950 to describe a class of rectangular ditched enclosures found first at Dorchester-on-Thames in Oxfordshire and later known sporadically throughout England and Scotland. They date to the middle Neolithic, broadly the later part of the 4th millennium
bc
, and appear to be ceremonial structures, perhaps the precursors of
CURSUS
monuments. Although Atkinson originally thought they might be the places where corpses were excarnated, prior to their bones being interred within
LONG BARROWS
, this is no longer accepted.

 
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