Boniface
[Na].
Missionary born in Devon, England
c.
ad 680. Educated at Exeter and Winchester. In 716 he went to Frisia to convert the heathen. He was created bishop in ad 723 and archbishop in ad 732. He organized and reformed the new churches and the Frankish establishment. In ad 746 he was head of the eastern churches. He was killed by pagans at Dokkum, Friesland, in ad 755 and later made a saint.
boomerang
[Ar].
A curved throwing stick, one form of which can be made to return to the thrower in flight. Several kinds of boomerang are traditionally used by Australian Aborigines for hunting and fighting. Archaeological examples from widely scattered findspots including Egypt, Holland, and Poland suggest the autonomous invention of this weapon.
bora ground
(bora ring)
[MC].
A kind of ceremonial site comprising a pair of earth-banked rings linked by a pathway. Found in New South Wales, Queensland, and Victoria in Australia.
Borax Lake Phase
[CP].
Hunter-gatherer communities of the Archaic in the North Coast Ranges of California and the western USA dating to 5000 bc to ad 500. Their assemblages are dominated by chipped stone points, burins,
manos
, and
metates
.
Bordes , François
(1919–81)
[Bi].
French prehistorian specializing in the Middle and Upper Palaeolithic periods. He became Professor of Archaeology in Bordeaux University where he established the Institut du Quaternaire. He excavated many sites, including the Palaeolithic deposits at Combe-General and Pech de l'Azé. He was an expert flint knapper and replicated early tools. He is probably best known for his classification of the Mousterian industries of southwest France in what became known as the
système Bordes
. He interpreted the variations between topological groups as reflecting chronological changes through time. He was famously challenged over this by Lewis Binford in the late 1960s who interpreted the data as reflecting functionally differentiated assemblages.
[Obit.:
Antiquity
, 55, 168–9]
Boreal Phase
[Ge].
A biostratigraphic subdivision of the
FLANDRIAN
in which conditions were warmer and drier than in the preceding
SUB-BOREAL
. Godwin's
POLLEN ZONES
V and VI correspond with the Boreal in Britain, marked by the expansion of pine/birch forests and increasing amounts of mixed woodland; tree cover was continuous at lower altitudes. The Boreal generally spans the period from
c.
7700 bc down to
c.
5500 bc in northern Europe.