Concise Oxford Dictionary of Archaeology (107 page)

A gourd used as a storage or drinking vessel.

 
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Relating to the chemical compound calcium carbonate (CaCO
₃
), of which chalk and limestone are largely composed. Also refers to soils with a high calcium carbonate content which, in chemical terms, are usually alkaline.

 
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Pottery whose fabric embodies crushed calcite (either shell or mineral grit) as a tempering agent, used especially for kitchen wares such as storage jars, cooking pots, and bowls.

 
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Latin term for the hot room (moist heat) in a Roman bath-house. It usually contains or is adjacent to a hot plunge bath which produces a hot humid atmosphere.

 
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The late Iron Age tribe living in western Scotland (Strathclyde) at the time of the Roman conquest. Some of Agricola's campaigns of the late 1st century
ad
came up against and defeated the Caledones led by Calgacus . Despite this setback, the province continued to develop largely untouched by the Roman world.

 
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A formal system for measuring and documenting the passage of time. The basic unit of nearly all known calendars is the cyclical movement of the sun, giving the units known in the modern western world as days, and—rather less easy to gauge—the annual cycle or solar year. In ancient Egypt, for civil purposes, a solar calendar of 365 days to the year was used in which there were 12 months of 30 days and 5 intercalary days. For agricultural purposes, and for determining the timing of religious festivals, a second calendar was used, based on observations of the dog star Sirius (Sothis to the Egyptians). The annual heliacal rising (i.e. at the same time as the sun) usually preceded the Nile flood. The two calendars would coincide every 1460 years, a period known as the Sothic Cycle. The cycle of the moon provides a lunar month and this was used as the basis for the calendar in ancient Mesopotamia, where 12 months of 29.5 days were adjusted over 19 cycles to keep the calendar in step with solar years. How these basic units were divided, combined, and reconciled is culturally specific, and many different systems have been developed. All, however, fall into one of two main types.
Linear calendars
start from a nominated moment and extend outwards from that time in an endless sequence of more or less equal sized repetitive units. The western Christian calendar takes as its origin a notional point considered to be the Incarnation of Christ and extends linearly forwards (years
ad
from ad 1) and backwards (years
bc
from 1 bc). The reckoning system was established by Julius Caesar who adapted the Egyptian solar calendar to Roman usage, inserting extra days in the shorter months to make 365 days over 12 months with the insertion of an additional day into February every four years. The naming of the years was first established in Italy in the 6th century
ad
and based on the Julian calendar; it was later revised by Pope Gregory XIII in ad 1582 to provide the calendar used today, which is known as the Gregorian calendar (adopted by Act of Parliament in Britain in ad 1752). Other linear calendars were established in classical times and more recently, and include: a Roman calendar with a notional start date fixed as the founding of Rome in years AUC (
ab urbe condita
) which can be mapped onto the Gregorian calendar as starting in 753 bc; a Greek calendar with a notional start date fixed as the first Olympiad which maps onto the Gregorian calendar as 776 bc; and an Islamic calendar based on the flight of Mohammad from Mecca to Medina (the Hegira). Hegira year 1 (AH 1) maps onto the Gregorian calendar as ad 622 but Hegira years are lunar years with a mean length of 354.3 days.
Cyclical calendars
use a floating starting position which is periodically returned to. One of the most common is with reference to the reign of a king, queen, or other official so that dates are given as the regnal year of that person. When the person is replaced the calendar starts again for the next person. Ancient Chinese societies used a cyclical calendar of 60 years, designated by two ideographs in a series which covers the whole 60-year period before starting again. The Mayan calendar was based on a 52-year cycle (known as the calendar round) which combined a 260-day almanac and a 365-day year. The use of this system carried with it a belief that events, including disasters, repeated themselves with each turn of the cycle. See also
TIME
,
LONG COUNT
.