Concise Oxford Dictionary of Archaeology (436 page)

A cultural-historical classification for eastern parts of North America developed by W. C. McKern and colleagues during the 1930s. Based on artefact classifications, the system was at first simply a taxonomy with no direct relationship to time or space. A hierarchy of traits reflected in specific items and assemblages was created, the smallest unit being a
component
(a site or a layer within a site), gradually building up through
focus
,
aspect
,
phase
, and
pattern
, to
base
which represented the most generalized grouping of cultural traits. In time, however, the system became sufficiently elaborate that its taxonomic categories acquired chronological and spatial definition.

 
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See
INSTITUTE OF FIELD ARCHAEOLOGISTS
.

 
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An early industrial stage (Stage IV) of the British early Bronze Age spanning the later 2nd millennium
bc
and part of Burgess's
MOUNT PLEASANT PERIOD
. Named after hoards from two Scottish hoards: Migdale in Highland and Marnock in Grampian. The industry is characterized by the use of copper, bronze, and gold in the production of pins, awls, tubular beads, basket-shaped earrings, rings, bracelets, narrow-butted flat axes, riveted flat daggers and hollow cones. The industry overlaps with the early stages of the
WESSEX CULTURE
, and has links to the early Ún
tice/Reinecke A1 metalworking traditions on the continent.

 
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The process by which, over a period of time, people living in one area gradually move into another region perhaps some distance away. Such movements occur mainly through the physical transfer of small groups (families and extended families) at a time, the incomers making their new homes in the midst of the existing occupants of the area, although as the migrants become the dominant social group various social tensions may build up.

 
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A general theory of social change and a way of accounting for the introduction of novel material culture to a region, very popular in archaeological interpretation during the 1960s and 1970s, and contrasting with the
INVASION HYPOTHESIS
of earlier decades.

 
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The age of folk movements in northern Europe. Though Germanic migrations outside the Roman empire began in the 2nd century
ad
, the term is usually confined to the period of the great movements in the 5th and 6th centuries
ad
. In northern Europe the migration period is conventionally followed by the age of the Vikings, the last of the Germanic migrations.