Concise Oxford Dictionary of Archaeology (430 page)

Neolithic communities living in the western Nile Delta of Egypt in the 5th millennium
bc
, named after the type-site of Merimde Beni Salama. The Merimde Culture overlaps with the
AMRATIAN CULTURE
of Upper Egypt.

 
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An early state that controlled the Nile Valley from near the first cataract in Egypt southwards to at least Sennar on the Blue Nile from about 750 bc through to around ad 350. Also known as the state of
Kush
, the capital of these communities was at Meroe on the east bank of the Nile some 200km north of Khartoum in the Sudan. The Meroitic rulers modelled themselves and the administration of their state on Egypt; indeed the Meroitic king Piankhi conquered Egypt to found the 25th Dynasty in the 8th century
bc
.

 
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Royal family of the Frankish rulers from Childeric in the mid 5th century
ad
through to the middle of the 8th century
ad
. The name derives from an obscure mid 5th-century individual named Merovech , possibly the father of Childeric . Archaeologically the term is widely applied to material found in the region from the western Rhineland through to the Atlantic coast of France. The Merovingian world embraced a number of semi-autonomous kingdoms including Austrasia in the Rhineland, Neustria in central northern France, and Burundia in central France.

 
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Egyptian goddess, ‘She-who-lives-silence’, the goddess of the Theban Peak and serpent goddess of the West Bank at Thebes, worshipped by the local workmen.

 
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An area which extends from central Honduras and Costa Rica through Mexico to Tamaulipas and Sinaloa that was first defined in 1943 by Paul Kirchoff as a geographical and cultural entity.

 
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Literally the middle Stone Age, the period between the Palaeolithic and the Neolithic, often characterized by a microlithic flint industry. The transition from hunting, fishing, and fruit gathering to cereal cultivation and animal domestication has long been regarded as diagnostic of the Mesolithic and the Neolithic periods respectively. The change is now seen as a less abrupt and radical development in temperate Europe than it used to be.

 
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