Concise Oxford Dictionary of Archaeology (729 page)

Recording the position of objects, materials, and samples discovered or recovered during excavation in Cartesian space using two coordinates in the horizontal plain (X and Y) and one in the vertical plane (Z). These are typically calculated either with reference to a local site-specific grid or tied in to a more extensive geo-referencing system such as the Ordnance Survey National Grid in Great Britain.

 
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Hard roughly level surface, either covered or open, used for processing cereals, especially the separation of the grain from the husk or straw using flails to beat the harvested plants in order to fracture the husk and shake the grain free.

 
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A room occupying the full depth of a building.

 
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Late prehistoric hunting communities dating to the period 700 bc through to modern times living around the Siberian and American coasts of the Chukchi Sea, and around the American shore of the Baring Sea. These groups were mainly whale- and seal-hunting communities. They are characterized by the presence of polished slate tools, sophisticated toggling harpoons, and an elaborate and intricate art style. The Thule Tradition embraces a series of geographically and regionally distinct cultural groups including Old Bering Sea Cultures, the Punuk Culture, and the Birnirk Cultures. Sometime around the beginning of the second millennium
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Thule people began migrating to the east so that by the 13th century
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they had settled throughout the coasts of the Canadian Arctic and Greenland. Here they replaced the Palaeo-Eskimo (i.e. pre-Dorset and Dorset cultures) with what might be termed Neo-Eskimo.

 
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Round scrapers on small flakes or ends of blades; known to have been hafted in certain cases by traces of resin on specimens.

 
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Capital city of the Tiahuanaco empire, situated on the altiplano of the central Andes at 4000m above sea level at the southern end of Lake Titicaca. Flourishing during the middle Horizon.
In the centre is a major ceremonial complex spread over an area 1000m by 500m. The largest temple platform is called the Akapana; each side measures 200m long and it stood 15m high. A lower, smaller platform, the Kalasasaya, 3m high and 126m by 118m stood at its base. At the northwestern entrance to the Kalasasaya stood a massive carved monolith known as the Gateway of the Sun. Made from a single slab of andesite weighing at least 10 tons, this monolith is carved in the form of a doorway with niches on either side. Above the door is a representation of the most important local deity, the Staff Deity: a human wearing an elaborate headdress with appendages ending with the heads of animals and holding a staff in each hand.
The surrounding state was large and appears to have extended into southern Peru, northern Chile, most of Bolivia, and some of Argentina. There was a sharp boundary between Tiahuanaco and the adjacent Huari state. Tiahuanaco declined in the late first millennium
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and was abandoned by about ad 1000.
[Rep.: C. W. Bennett , 1934, Excavations at Tiahuanaco.
Anthropological Papers of the American Museum of Natural History
, 34, 359–494]

 
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