Concise Oxford Dictionary of Archaeology (155 page)

Now obsolete term coined by Gordon Childe in the 1930s and developed by Stuart Piggott in the 1950s to refer to the middle Neolithic communities living around the North Channel in southwestern Scotland, northern Ireland, and the Isle of Man. One of the main claims for the identity of this grouping was the form and distribution of long barrows—the so-called
Clyde–Carlingford tombs
—with deeply concave forecourts, orthostatic façades, and linear arrangement to the chambers which lead into the cairn from the back of the forecourt. Investigations in Scotland by Jack Scott and in Ireland by Ruaidhri de Valéra and others during the 1950s and 1960s showed that the similarities noted by Childe and Piggott were rather superficial and that the structures in southwest Scotland should be considered
CLYDE CAIRNS
while those in Ireland were part of a more widespread tradition of long barrow construction in Ireland where examples are known as
COURT CAIRNS
. See also
CARLINGFORD CULTURE
.

 
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A general descriptive term applied to those components of a ceramic assemblage that can be regarded as everyday transportation, storage, food preparation, and cooking vessels. Such wares tend to contrast with fine-quality tablewares and special ceremonial vessels in their quality of finish, method of manufacture, and general appearance. Coarse wares usually represent more than two-thirds of any domestic assemblage.

 
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A pair of walls arranged in a V-shaped pattern within the intertidal zone of a gently sloping foreshore with the pointed end at the seaward end. Built of stone or hurdlework, the walls may be up to 200m long. A narrow gap of about 1m is left at the point where the walls meet and here a net or fish-trap will be placed when the structure is in use. Built from prehistoric times onwards, these weirs work in a simple but highly effective way. At high tide the weirs flood, but as the tide goes out any fish within the area defined by the weirs are naturally channelled towards the traps placed at the junction of the two walls. When the tide is fully out the owner of the weir simply walks down the foreshore and takes the catch from the traps.

 
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A type of elaborately decorated wall found at sites in Mesoamerica to separate ceremonial buildings from other structures. The decoration typically comprises a serpent motif.

 
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An extensive series of open-air Palaeolithic rock-art panels in the deeply incised valley of the River Côa, a tributary of the Douro, in northern Portugal. The first panels were discovered in 1992 during surveys for an environmental impact assessment in connection with the proposed construction of a major dam and hydroelectric power plant which would mean flooding the valley. Between 1992 and 1995 several thousand panels were discovered as well as four rock-shelters and possible settlement sites dating to the Upper Palaeolithic. Following international pressure, the Portuguese government stopped the dam-building proposals in 1995 and declared the valley a national archaeological park. Several different styles are represented in the way the images were executed, including incised lines, pecking, and scraping. Most of the panels include motifs of animals, principally aurochs, horse, ibex, and red deer. Most are found on vertical rock faces with an aspect towards the river. Several different periods are represented, and the earliest are believed to span the
SOLUTREAN
,
GRAVETTIAN
, and
MAGDALENIAN
; some images, however, extend down into the local Iron Age of the later 1st millennium
bc
.
[Sum.: A. F. de Carvalho , J. Zilhão and T. Aubry , 1996,
Côa Valley. Rock art and prehistory
. Lisbon: Ministério da Cultura]

 
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