Concise Oxford Dictionary of Archaeology (396 page)

Latin term for a type of body armour worn by Roman legionaries, consisting of a shirt made of iron chain mail.

 
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Latin term for a type of body armour worn by Roman legionaries, consisting of a cuirass made from iron strips hinged together.

 
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Latin term for a type of body armour worn by Roman legionaries, consisting of a cuirass made from shaped scales of iron and bronze riveted together.

 
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Copper Age communities of the 3rd millennium
bc
in southeastern Spain. Named after the type-site of Los Millares in the Almeria Province, excavated on several occasions since 1892, most recently by Almagro and Fernando Molina in the late 1970s and 1980s. The major settlements of the culture were enclosed villages, at Los Millares itself bounded by a stone wall with semicircular projecting bastions and an area of 5ha. Inside, the citadel occupies the tip of the promontory and is defended by three walls. Three smaller forts lie outside the main structure. Cemeteries comprise collective burials in passage graves. Grave goods found in the tombs includes pottery, stone tools, copper tools and weapons, and a variety of so-called idols made in stone, bone, or ceramic. Objects of ivory and ostrich-eggshell imported from Africa are also known. Beaker pottery is present in the later phases of the culture. At one time it was though that the Los Millares Culture developed as a result of colonization from the Aegean, but a local origin is now favoured, with the development of local elites controlling the water supplies to the arid lands in this part of Spain, and also sources of metal.

 
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A method of casting intricate metal shapes by first modelling the required form in wax, then surrounding the wax with clay, firing it and draining out the melted wax. This leaves a high-quality mould for a single casting.

 
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A system of archaeological record-keeping in which all artefacts and ecofacts that are found together in a single horizontally or vertically defined unit are combined into one group (i.e. lot) for the purposes of collection, analysis, and storage.

 
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