Concise Oxford Dictionary of Archaeology (454 page)

1
The hollow former into which molten material (typically metal) is poured or soft plastic material is pressed to harden into a required predetermined shape. The simplest type of mould is a one-piece open former in which the casting emerges with one flat unshaped face. Two- and three-piece moulds for use in metalworking were available from middle Bronze Age times onwards. Moulds were also used for making figurines and occasionally for making pottery (e.g. relief-decorated Samian ware).
2
[De].
In American archaeology this term is used to refer to the topsoil.

 
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Obsolete term to describe a range of North American cultures and traditions living in the eastern woodlands that constructed platform mounds for ceremonial and burial purposes. See
ADENA CULTURE
;
HOPEWELLIAN CULTURE
;
MISSISSIPPIAN TRADITION
.

 
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Mississippian ceremonial centre and settlement beside the Black Warrior River, important as the largest such site known. The centre flourished between ad 1250 and 1500 when it covered more than 120ha. At the centre was a rectangular plaza of 32ha, around which were twenty large platform mounds. The largest (mound B) was over 17m high. Public buildings, a sweat-house and charnel structure, and houses for the elite also surrounded the plaza. Higher-status people lived and were buried east of the plaza. Others, perhaps as many as 3000 at any one time, lived in the vicinity of the ceremonial centre, the three sides of the site away from the river being protected by a palisade.
Over 3000 burials have been found on the site, the high-status individuals being buried in the mounds while everyone else was buried in the major village areas.
Moundville was the major ceremonial centre at the heart of a three-tiered settlement pattern of the kind that is typical of an established chiefdom. Ten minor ceremonial centres in the surrounding area each comprised only a single mound, while of still lower status were numerous villages and farmsteads.
[Rep.: C. Peebles , 1979,
Excavations at Moundville 1905–1951
. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan, Museum of Anthropology]

 
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A mound constructed as a viewing platform within part of a garden, or in order to overlook a garden, in the 16th or 17th century
ad
.

 
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A phase of the British late Neolithic spanning the period 2750–2000 bc which was defined by Colin Burgess in the late 1970s using the henge enclosure of Mount Pleasant, Dorset, as the type-site. The Mount Pleasant period follows the
MELDON BRIDGE PERIOD
and preceded the
OVERTON PERIOD
. It is characterized by the appearance of
BEAKER
pottery in Britain and the continued development of metalworking through Stages III (Frankford industries), IV (Migdale-Marnoch/Migdale-Killaha industries), and V (Ballyvalley–Aylesford industries). Stage IV involves the early use of bronze as well as copper and gold, and shows some links to the early
ÚN
TICE
(Reinecke A1) industries on the continent.

 
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