Concise Oxford Dictionary of Archaeology (50 page)

Egyptian god of the sun, shown as a gold disc with rays ending in hands. Worshipped by
AKHENATEN
as a great creator god, the sole god of his monotheistic state religion.

 
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Name given to an evolved middle Palaeolithic stoneworking tradition in the Atlas Mountains of North Africa. Among the distinctive tools are tanged points and basically worked leaf-shaped points.

 
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Leader of the Visigoths, successor of Alaric , who led the Visigoths out of Italy into southern Gaul in ad 412. In bc 414 he married Placidia , sister of Honorius , who had been captured in bc 410 at the sack of Rome. Athaulf is said to have intended to create a Gothic empire, but changed his mind because of his people's savagery. Died
c.
ad 415.

 
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Provincial Greek writer of the period around 200ad whose sole surviving work is cast in the genre of symposium literature, in which learned guests at a banquet debate philosophical, literary, and allied topics. Its archaeological relevance derives from brief descriptions of Celtic feasting customs which are borrowed virtually verbatim from
POSIDONIUS
.

 
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The modern capital of Greece, situated at the upper corner of a small coastal plain on the western side of the peninsula of Attica. The site has an exceptionally long, more or less continuous, history extending back into prehistoric times. Numerous excavations and surveys have been carried out in the city, the biggest programme of work in the late 20th century being that connected with the construction of a metro.
Traces of occupation in late Neolithic and Mycenaean times have been found, but it is from the 7th century
bc
onwards that the town develops into a major city-state and enters a period of alternating phases of success and failure that lasts down to Roman times. Amongst the first buildings to be set out in the new Hellenistic city were the agora and the monumental temples on the
ACROPOLIS
. At the same time Athenian black-figure ware of high artistic quality was developed and came to be widely traded in the Mediterranean world. Red-figure ware succeeded it from about 500 bc. The sack of Athens by the Persians in 480 bc provided a major setback with most of the major buildings and structures flattened. Outstanding buildings constructed in the 5th-century rebirth of Athens include the
PARTHENON
and Erechtheum on the acropolis. After the defeat of Athens by Sparta in the Peloponnesian Wars (432–404 bc) building nearly ceased again, but from the early 4th century new private finances were found and the city again entered a period of prosperity. This tradition continued down the centuries: the east side of the agora was filled with a stoa financed by Attalos, king of Pergamum, in the 2nd century, while, for example, Ptolemy VI, the Roman emperor Hadrian, and others built libraries.
[Sum.: J. M. Hurwit , 1999,
The Athenian Acropolis: history, mythology and archaeology from the Neolithic era to the present
. Cambridge: CUP]

 
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Atkinson , Kathleen Mary Tyrer
(d. 1979)
[Bi].

British archaeologist and classical scholar. Born Kathleen Chrimes , she married Donald Atkinson , and became Professor of Ancient History in Queen's University, Belfast. In addition to excavating at Caistor by-Norwich with her husband, she worked at Psart and Kouklia in Cyprus. Her published works include
Ancient Sparta
(1949, Manchester: Manchester University Press).
[Obit.:
Antiquaries Journal
, 60 (1980), 463]

 
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