Concise Oxford Dictionary of Archaeology (420 page)

A family system in which the husband is expected to live near to the wife's parents.

 
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1
The material or sediment in which cultural debris is contained; the surrounding deposit in which archaeological finds are situated.
2
HARRIS MATRIX
.
3
The main metal component of an
ALLOY
.

 
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See
MAAT
.

 
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A digging tool comprising a flat blade set transversely to a wooden handle. The oldest examples are Mesolithic in date and were presumably used for digging holes and grubbing up edible roots and tubers. Later examples were extensively used for breaking up ground for agriculture. Also called a
hoe
.

 
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Maudslay , Alfred Percival
(1850–1931)
[Bi].

English soldier and scholar who was one of the first people to visit and make a scientific record of the great Maya sites of central America. Inspired by accounts of the ruins, he visited Guatemala and the neighbouring republics in the 1880s and 1890s. During this work he took photographs and made casts, plans, and drawings at such sites as Quiriua, Palenque, and Chichén Itzá. He was the first archaeologist to see the important ruins of Yaxchilan. Between 1889 and 1902 he published eight volumes of photographs and drawings of Maya monuments and cities, accompanied by a text, as
Biologia Centrali-Americana. Appendix: archaeology
(London). Maudslay's work is important because it was accurate and objective; his records remain a valuable source of information.
[Obit.:
American Anthropologist
, 33 (1931), 403–11]

 
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A type of massive, heavy, stone hammer used for battering rock surfaces.

 
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