Concise Oxford Dictionary of Archaeology (423 page)

Middle Bronze Age.

 
Back
  -  
 
New Search

McBurney , Charles Brian Montagu
(1914–79)
[Bi].

Prehistorian best known for his work on the Palaeolithic. American by birth, he was brought to England when he was eleven and privately educated there. Although his family lost their farm in Stockbridge, Massachusetts, in the Great Depression, McBurney went up to King's College, Cambridge, in 1933 to study archaeology, becoming a British citizen in 1940. He remained at Cambridge as a university lecturer in archaeology and was given a personal Chair in 1977. He worked at numerous sites in North Africa, Britain, and central Asia, and his publications include
The Stone Age of Northern Africa
(1960, Harmondsworth: Penguin) and
The Hauna Fteah (Cyrenaica) and the Stone Age of the south-east Mediterranean
(1967, Cambridge: CUP).
[Obit.:
The Times
, 17 December 1979]

 
Back
  -  
 
New Search

Middle Archaic communities living on the Great Plains of North America who manufactured and used a distinctive chipped stone point known as the
MCKEAN POINT
in the period
c.
2900–1000 bc. Named after its type-site in northeast Wyoming, the McKean Complex is not, however, universally recognized, as many specialists feel it subsumes a wide range of cultural groupings. The importance of the complex is that these communities developed a hunter-gatherer adaptation that involved the careful scheduling of economic activities through the year to coincide with the seasonal abundance of plants and animals.

 
Back
  -  
 
New Search

Bifacially worked chipped stone projectile points characteristic of the McKean Complex of the middle Archaic Stage in the Great Plains of North America during the period
c.
2900–1000 bc. Lanceolate in outline with curved sides and a hollow base these points were probably spearheads used in bison hunting.

 
Back
  -  
 
New Search

1
An area of grassland used for making hay.
2
An area of low-lying marshy ground usually beside a river or stream that is seasonally flooded but when dry enough used for grazing cattle.
WATER MEADOW
.

 
Back
  -  
 
New Search

A rock-shelter near the town of Avella in southwestern Pennsylvania investigated by James Adovasio between 1973 and 1977. The very extensive sequence of deposits in the shelter divides into eleven main strata. Dated by over 70 radiocarbon determinations, these strata span the period from the late glacial (before 30000 bc) down to historic times. The earliest artefacts come from Stratum IIa and belong to what is believed to be a pre-Clovis Palaeo-Indian tradition with small blades, a bifacially worked flake knife which the excavator called ‘Mungai’ and a lancolate projectile point. This material is not typical of eastern Palaeo-Indian assemblages and eight radiocarbon determinations date it to the period between 17000 and 11000 years ago. These dates have been disputed by the geologist C. Vance Haynes on the basis of possible contamination, while others have questioned such an early dating because the environmental evidence for the same strata does not match with the kind of tundra conditions which would be expected at this time. At present, however, the Meadowcroft is the best candidate for early occupation of North America.
Later deposits include Archaic and Woodland Stage occupation, all with acceptable radiocarbon dates and associated cultural material.
[Sum.: J. M. Adovasio , 1978, Meadowcroft Rockshelter , 1977: An overview.
American Antiquity
, 43(4), 632–51; R. C. Carlisle and J. M. Adovasio (eds.), 1982,
Meadowcroft: Collected papers on the archaeology of Meadowcroft Rockshelter and the Cross Creek Drainage
. Minneapolis: Society of American Archaeologists]