Concise Oxford Dictionary of Archaeology (171 page)

Traditional, highly manoeuvrable, keel-less bowl-shaped light water craft used for fishing and transport on the rivers of western Britain and Ireland. Comprising a wickerwork or lath frame over which greased cloth, leather, or hide is stretched, coracles are generally built to carry one person, the exact shape being particular to the area in which they are made: the majority, however, are roughly oval in outline with one end slightly flattened and one end taken to a rounded point.

 
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A hard red, pink, or white calcareous substance secreted by a variety of marine polyps for support and to provide habitations. In ancient times it was collected from the Mediterranean and the Indian Ocean and extensively through the Old World for use in decorating metal jewellery such as brooches.

 
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A stone block or timber projecting from a wall to provide the seating for a beam or rafter supporting an upper floor, balcony, or projection. Usually found in groups and often ornamented.

 
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A roof constructed using stone slabs that progressively overlap each other to create a false vault or dome, the top being finished with a single capstone which spans the remaining hole. The technique was very widely used in the construction of
PASSAGE GRAVES
in Atlantic Europe during the 5th to 3rd millennia
bc
and in the construction of the Mycenaean tholos tombs in the 3rd and 2nd millennia
bc
.

 
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Corcoran , John Xavier Willington Patrick
(1927–75)
[Bi].

British prehistorian and authority on Neolithic chambered tombs in northwest Europe. Born in Cheshire, he attended school in Birkenhead before studying archaeology at Manchester University. He presented a Ph.D. thesis on the Carlingford Culture of Ireland and developed a great interest in the archaeology of western Britain. He became Staff Tutor in Archaeology in the Department of Extra-Mural Studies in the University of London in 1957, before being appointed to a lectureship in archaeology in the newly formed Department of Archaeology in the University of Glasgow in 1961. In 1971 he was made Senior Lecturer. He published many works on the Neolithic period and the Iron Age of northern Britain but is best known for his papers showing that many Neolithic chambered tombs were multi-period constructions. He was elected a Fellow of the Society of Antiquaries in 1958. He died from a heart attack at the age of 48.
[Obit.:
Current Archaeology
, 5.2, 37]

 
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A general term used to describe the regular heart-shaped, flat profiled form of the bifaces characteristic of the
MOUSTERIAN
in western Europe.

 
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