Concise Oxford Dictionary of Archaeology (282 page)

 
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Gorodtsov , Vasily Alekseevich
(1860–1945)
[Bi].

Russian archaeologist who developed a chronology for the Bronze Age of Russia. A retired infantry officer, he began excavating in the 1890s with financial support from the Countess Uvarova . In the early 1900s he became director of the Moscow Historical Museum and one of the founders of the Moscow Archaeological Institute. He excavated at a number of Palaeolithic sites including Gontsy, Il'skaya I, and Timonovka, and published several syntheses of Russian prehistory. He trained many professional archaeologists and was an exponent of a formalist approach to archaeology, studying the morphology of artefacts and seeking to arrange them into chronological sequences.
[Bio.: L. Klejn , 1999. Vasily Alekseevich Gorodcov. In T. Murray (ed.),
Encyclopedia of archaeology. The Great Archaeologists
. Oxford: ABC-CLIO. 247–62]

 
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Architectural style characterized by pointed arches and the vault, succeeding the Norman or Romanesque style at the end of the 12th century
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. Subdivided into three periods: early (13th century
ad
), characterized by the lancet window without tracery; the decorated Gothic (
c.
1290–1350), in which windows have first geometrical, then flowing, tracery; and the perpendicular (
c.
1350–1530), where tracery has strong vertical lines. The Gothic style was followed by the Tudor style, but was later revived as neo-Gothic or Gothic during the 19th century
ad
.

 
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Germanic peoples originating in the Baltic area in the 4th century
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and divided into two groups, the Ostrogoths and the Visigoths. In the 5th century
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the Visigoths occupied southern Gaul and Spain while the Ostrogoths occupied Italy. Both were strong barbarian kingdoms. The Ostrogoths succumbed to attacks by the eastern empire; the Visigoths were swallowed up by the expansion of the Arabs in the early 8th century
ad
.

 
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A half-hardy trailing plant (Lagenaria siceraria) which produces a large bulbous fruit. There are various kinds of gourd, including the marrow and the pumpkin. The rind of the bottle gourd is hard and when dried can be used to make water containers or musical instruments. Thought to be of African origin, but also found widely in the Americas, southern Asia, and the Pacific Islands. How gourds arrived in the New World is a puzzling problem, but they are present in South America by
c.
7000 bc. One possibility is that some fruits arrived by floating across the Atlantic. Certainly gourds remain viable after immersion in salt water for several weeks.

 
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See
GLOBAL POSITIONING SYSTEM
.

 
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