Concise Oxford Dictionary of Archaeology (525 page)

BOOK: Concise Oxford Dictionary of Archaeology
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Pedra Furada, Brazil
[Si].
Large rock-shelter in the sandstone hills of the Sierra Talhadra in the Piauí region of eastern Brazil. Excavated by Niede Guidon in the 1970s and 1980s, the site yielded a long sequence from Palaeo-Indian times onwards. The walls of the rock-shelter are adorned with paintings, fragments of which have been found in stratified layers dating to about 10000 bc. Earlier levels dating to before 39200 years ago have yielded quartzitic artefacts.
[Sum.: N. Guidon and G. Delibrias , 1985, Carbon-14 dates point to man in the Americas 32000 years ago.
Nature
, 321, 769–71; R. G. Bednarik , 1989, On the Pleistocene settlement of South America.
Antiquity
, 63, 101–11]
peer group
[De].
A friendship group composed of individuals of similar age and social status.
peer review
[De].
The process used by publishers and editors of academic journals to provide a chance for scholars to examine and critique a paper or monograph before it is published to help ensure its integrity and veracity.
pegged spearhead
[De].
A variety of socketed spearhead common in the European late Bronze Age in which the shaft is secured to the metal head by means of a metal or wooden peg set at right angles to the main axis of the shaft passing through a pair of opposed holes in the metal casing of the socket.
Pekin Man
[Sp].
Obsolete term once used to describe the hominid remains from Choukoutien in China which are now classified as being of
Homo erectus
.
Pelasgians
[CP].
The name in Greek literature for the pre-Hellenic peoples living in central and northern Greece at the time of the immigration of the first true Greeks about 2000 bc. The Pelasgians were widely dispersed in these mass movements, and Herodotus mentions pockets of the Pelasgian language surviving to his own day in Chalcidice and near Cyzicus on the Sea of Marmora. The Athenians claimed a Pelasgian ancestry and in doing so believed that they were the autochthonous inhabitants of Attica. The name of their city and goddess is indeed pre-Hellenic: more probably, a Pelasgian element survived and was absorbed when Attica was occupied by Greeks in the early immigration. The Dorian invasion had little effect on Athens, which was the only citadel of Mycenaean times to survive into the Hellenistic period.

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