Concise Oxford Dictionary of Archaeology (528 page)

BOOK: Concise Oxford Dictionary of Archaeology
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peplos
[Ar].
A type of Greek woman's garment, made of wool, long and sleeveless, being fastened on each shoulder with a pin, and having a deep fold hanging free from neck to waist. In the Panathenaic festival every four years a new peplos embroidered by Athenian women was carried in procession to the Acropolis and presented to Athena.
perambulation
[Ge].
The custom of walking, inspecting, and redefining boundaries, particularly those of a parish. This sometimes results in documents giving a verbal description of the boundaries and the features along it. The earliest perambulations in England are of Saxon date.
percussion flaking
[De].
A stoneworking technology applied to isotropic materials such as fine stone and flint where a stone, bone, or wooden hammer is used to detach flakes in a controlled way in order to shape the material being worked. Direct striking of the core with a hammerstone tends to give thick bulbous flakes; with a cylindrical (bone or wooden) hammer the flakes produced are thinner and flatter.
Indirect percussion
, also known as punch flaking, necessitated the use of a bone or wooden punch between the hammer and the core, controlling the precision of flaking.
peribolos
[Co].
The wall of a sanctuary or
TEMENOS
.
periglacial
[Ge].
Arctic conditions in the regions surrounding an ice-sheet. Although such conditions are now confined to high latitudes, during the
PLEISTOCENE
they were far more extensive.
Perigordian
[CP].
French Upper Palaeolithic sequence of flint industries based on the topological analysis of tools and assemblages that is taken to represent a continuous tradition spanning the
CHÂTELPERRONIAN
and
GRAVETTIAN
. The scheme was advocated by D. Peyrony in the 1930s but is not widely accepted.

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