Concise Oxford Dictionary of Archaeology (652 page)

An individual believed to have special magical powers; a sorcerer or witch doctor. A medicine man in ‘primitive’ societies, often with supernatural powers, who was capable of healing or harming.

 
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Originally a medieval market in which the stalls were let out for the sale of fish and meat. Later a shambles consisted of specially constructed buildings with stalls either side of a central channel into which blood and unsalable animal remains were swept.

 
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The earliest named Chinese dynasty known from historical records and confirmed archaeologically. Spanning the 16th to the 11th centuries
bc
, this Bronze Age power ruled the North China Plain. Traditionally preceded by the Xia period, the Shang is divided into a number of phases including the Erlitou, the Erligang, and the Anyang (1300–1030 bc). Historical records of the dynasty comprise oracle bones discovered around 1900 ad at the site of its last capital near modern-day Anyang. During the Shang period several settlements rose to prominence as cities, amongst them the capitals at Cheng Chou and Anyang in Honan Province near the middle Yellow River. Buildings were mainly of timber on rammed earth foundations. City defences were also of rammed earth. Burial was typically by inhumation in pit graves with the corpse extended and face down. The royal tombs at Anyang were richly furnished. The Shang period also saw the invention of the Chinese ideographic script and the discovery and development to a very high order of artistic and technical skill in bronze casting.

 
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A high-altitude cave site in the Zagros Mountains of northern Iraq excavated between 1950 and 1960 by Ralph Solecki . Thick deposits in the cave span many periods, the earliest of which dates to the
MOUSTERIAN
. It is from these levels that several Neanderthal skeletons dating to between 60000 and 44000 years ago have come, some thought to have been killed by rock falls. One Neanderthal was buried in a pit with flowers laid on the body and represented archaeologically by clusters of pollen. Another burial seems to have had his arm amputated at the elbow and lived for some time afterwards. Later deposits in the cave include Upper Palaeolithic levels dating to the Baradostian (
c.
33000–27000 years ago), and at the top of the sequence, around 10000 bc,
ZARZIAN
Culture levels with some evidence of early farming in the region.
[Rep.: R. S. Solecki , 1971,
Shanidar—the first flower people
. New York: Knopf]

 
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A piece of a broken pot or ceramic or glass vessel.

 
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A wooden, stone, terracotta or faience statuette buried with the dead in ancient Egypt in order that it might perform any duties required of it by the deceased in the afterlife.

 
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