Concise Oxford Dictionary of Archaeology (595 page)

Iron tool in the form of a long slightly curved knife, usually with a single blade on the inner face of the curve, used for harvesting cereals, grass, or reeds.

 
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Local name found on Dartmoor in southwestern England for low banks and walls, perhaps once capped with hedges, forming the boundaries of Bronze Age field systems. Such boundaries are typically 0.5–1.0m high and up to 2m across.

 
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Visigoth king, who succeeded his father Leovigild in 586 and in the next year was baptized a Christian. In 589 he summoned a council at Toledo which marked the end of official
Arianism
in Spain. Died
c.
ad 601.

 
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In archaeology this refers to exchanges between individuals or communities who are symmetrically placed, that is they are exchanging things more or less as equals: a sort of gift exchange. One gift does not have to be followed by another at once, but an obligation is created every time a gift is given and this needs to be reciprocated. Anthropologist Marshall Sahlins suggests that amongst close kin gifts are freely given with no expectation of return (positive reciprocity); within a wider kin network gifts are given and there is a general expectation of return in roughly equal measure (balanced reciprocity); while outside the kin group gifts are given to strangers and other communities with the hope that your exchange partner will return something better (negative reciprocity).

 
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Literally, to construct again; in the archaeological context this is taken to mean the rebuilding of something using non-original materials but to a design or pattern that is well established. This applies to structures and artefacts. Thus in the case of a ruined Roman villa it may be appropriate to reconstruct the main walls of the building to a certain height, using the original foundations and re-using the stone present in the excavated collapsed remains of the original wall. It would not be appropriate, however, to reconstruct the roof of that same building because it is not known exactly what it was like. When carrying out reconstruction it is normal to discretely mark the boundary between the original construction and the reconstruction for future reference. The main aim of reconstruction is usually a combination of preservation and presentation.
A variation on conventional reconstruction is experimental reconstruction within the context of
EXPERIMENTAL ARCHAEOLOGY
. Here, all available archaeological evidence is used to propose the nature of the original structure which is then reconstructed to see whether it could in fact have been like that and what the alternatives might be.

 
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An archaeological site or monument which has been identified, located, and documented by a professional archaeologist or other trained individual, details of which have been lodged with a recognized archaeological record or inventory of some kind.

 
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