Concise Oxford Dictionary of Archaeology (455 page)

A Middle Palaeolithic stoneworking industry associated with Neanderthal communities. Named after the type-site of Le Moustier in the Dordogne Valley, France, Mousterian industries are found over most of the unglaciated parts of Eurasia as well as the Near East and Africa, dating to the period
c.
200000 to 30000 years ago. Stone tools of the tradition include triangular points made on flakes, racloirs, triangular bifacial handaxes, and burins and awls made on blades. The
LEVALLOIS TECHNIQUE
of working flint was extensively used. Several variations of the Mousterian have been recognized: the Mousterian of Acheulian Tradition (MAT) named by François Bordes and relating to southwest France, the earlier elements of which (type A assemblages) are dominated by handaxes, backed knives, denticulates, and scrapers, while the later elements (type B assemblages) have fewer handaxes but a higher proportion of burins and awls; the Charentian with an abundance of side scrapers; and a central European variant with leaf-shaped points.

 
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Movius , Hallam Leonard
(1908–87)
[Bi].

American prehistorian well known for his work on the Palaeolithic of Europe and the Near East. Born in Massachusetts, he graduated from Harvard in anthropology and archaeology in 1930. Something of an athlete at college, he planned to follow a business career but this fell by the wayside after he joined an archaeological expedition to Czechoslovakia immediately after graduating. On his return he enrolled in the Harvard Graduate School and studied in the Department of Anthropology. Between 1931 and 1937 he worked with Dorothy Garrod in Palestine and Hugh Hencken in Ireland. During WW2 he served with the United States Air Force in the Mediterranean, afterwards returning to the Harvard and Peabody Museum where he eventually became professor. During the 1940s and 1950s his interest focused on the French Palaeolithic and especially the great cave sites of the Dordogne Valley. He excavated at La Colombière and Abri Pataud. He received many awards and honours for his work, and the French government named the new museum at Abri Pataud after him. He was elected a Fellow of the Society of Antiquaries of London in 1944. His many publications include the substantial
Early man and Pleistocene stratigraphy in southern and eastern Asia
(1944, Cambridge MA: Peabody Museum).
[Obit.:
Antiquaries Journal
, 68 (1988), 396]

 
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Muckelroy , Keith
(1951–80)
[Bi].

British archaeologist who did much to establish underwater archaeology in the British Isles. After graduating in history and archaeology from Cambridge he decided to take up underwater archaeology. In 1974 he became a research assistant at the Institute for Maritime Archaeology at St Andrews University, before returning to Cambridge in 1977 as a postgraduate to research cross-Channel trade in the later Bronze Age. In March 1980 he was appointed to the staff of the National Maritime Museum at Greenwich, but died later that year, at the age of only 29, in a tragic accident while carrying out underwater research in Loch Tay, Scotland. His publications include the widely acclaimed volume
Maritime archaeology
(1978, Cambridge: CUP).
[Obit.:
The Times
, 13 September 1980]

 
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Sun-dried blocks of clay mixed with straw or dung used in building houses and other structures common in parts of the world with a hot dry climate. Buildings constructed with mud brick have a surprisingly long life (30–50 years) if the walls and roof are kept dry. Known as
ADOBE
in the Americas.

 
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A flat piece of window glass made by blowing a bubble of glass. The bubble was swung to and fro on the blow-pipe as it was being blown so that it became a long cylindrical bubble. The ends were cut off the cylinder which was then split along the middle and allowed to uncurl on a flat surface in an oven to produce a flat sheet of glass.

 
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