Concise Oxford Dictionary of Archaeology (703 page)

BOOK: Concise Oxford Dictionary of Archaeology
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A burial which has been deposited with the corpse lying on its back, face upwards.
PRONE BURIAL
.
supra-orbital torus
[Ge].
A protruding bony brow-ridge, frequently found in early hominid skulls and most marked in male gorillas.
surface scatters
[MC].
In America, surface scatters are sites that have geological or geographical context but no archaeological associations. This includes material incorporated in secondary contexts such as river gravels or colluvium. In Britain, surface scatters are spreads of humanly worked material, often struck flint, which is taken to represent one of two things:
(1) material brought into the topsoil by cultivation and derived from disturbed archaeological features of some kind (e.g. pits, ditches);
(2) material remains of activities which only have a topsoil dimension in the sense that the material was originally dropped or placed or abandoned on the ground surface and over the course of time it has become incorporated into the topsoil where it has remained ever since.
FLINT SCATTERS
.
surface survey
[Te].
The collection of archaeological finds from disturbed ground surfaces (e.g. cultivated fields) with the objective of gathering representative samples in order to establish the types of activity within the area examined. Such surveys may be unsystematic: that is, the pattern of scanning is unstructured and simply involves scanning the route of a more or less precisely defined path. By contrast, systematic surface survey involves setting out a grid across the survey area and either walking each line as a series of stints of defined length and duration (line walking), or spending a set amount of time scanning the surface of each grid square (grid recovery). The material collected during surface surveys can be quantified under a series of classifications and
TREND SURFACE ANALYSIS
can be used to produce density plots for particular classes of material (flint tools, Roman pottery, etc.).
Surrey white ware
[Ar].
Type of medieval pottery produced in Surrey from about 1300 ad onwards. Distinctive in having an off-white or buff-coloured fabric, often with a patchy green glaze. From the 15th century, however, thick green and yellow glazes were used. The term
TUDOR GREEN
ware is usually used to describe the products dating to the 16th century. The main forms produced were cooking pots, cauldrons, skillets, pipkins, jugs, jars, and pitchers.
Susa, Iran
[Si].
Large tell mound representing the remains of a very substantial early city on the bank of the Karkeh River in the Khuzistan region of southwest Iran. Excavated more or less continuously since 1897 by a succession of French archaeologists, it has four main phases parallel to those of Mesopotamia:
UBAID
,
URUK
,
JEMDET,NASR
/early dynastic. Overall, however, the site shows an almost unbroken line of occupation from about 4000 bc down to early medieval times.
The site itself covers more than two square kilometres and comprises a number of separate components: the acropolis which seems to have been the focus of prehistoric settlement; the royal city which has produced important Elemite remains of the 2nd millennium
bc
; the Apadana with a large and impressive Achaemenid palace; and the artisans' town which is also of the Achaemenid period.
[Sum.: P. Harper
et al
. (eds.), 1992,
The royal city of Susa
. New York: Metropolitan Museum]
BOOK: Concise Oxford Dictionary of Archaeology
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