Concise Oxford Dictionary of Archaeology (679 page)

A mythical beast with the body of a lion and the head of a human being found widely in Egyptian, Hittite, and early Greek art. In ancient Egypt it typified the might of the pharaohs and the mysticism underlying their strength. The best-known example is the Great Sphinx of El Gizah, more than 80m long and 20m high, probably dating from the 4th Dynasty, about 2529 bc, and perhaps representing the pharaoh Khafra .

 
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A small, perforated disc of stone or pottery which acts as a fly-wheel, maintaining the momentum of a spindle rotated by the spinner whilst he or she teases more fibres out of a fleece.

 
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Originally a ‘spade-depth of earth’ but in modern archaeological excavation the term is applied to a defined thickness of deposit (typically between 1cm and 10 cm) that is removed as a single operation. See also
SPIT EXCAVATION
.

 
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A commonly used method of excavating archaeological deposits by removing arbitrarily defined slices or spits of even thickness. Finds can be assigned to the spit and if necessary subdivided spatially by using a grid or coordinate system. Also called the
plano system
, spit excavation is useful in extensive, thick, and poorly differentiated deposits, but where clear boundaries can be seen between exposed deposits most excavators prefer to proceed by removing the deposits in reverse stratigraphic order.

 
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Wrought iron bars found in the middle and later Iron Age of central and midland parts of England that are typically parallel-sided strips of metal sometimes with the corners bent upwards at one end. They are assumed to be ingots of metal, although whether they ever had any value as currency as their name suggests is questionable.

 
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Spitsyn , Aleksandr
(1858–1931)
[Bi].

Russian archaeologist and founder of the empirical school of archaeology in eastern Europe. Spitsyn was a member of the Imperial Archaeological Commission to record the cultural heritage of Russia. Later his interests focused on the role of archaeological research and he developed the position that the basic task of the archaeologist was to provide the most detailed and accurate descriptions of artefacts and sites possible, eschewing premature historical or sociological conclusions.
[Bio.: S. A. Zhebelev , 1948, Biography and bibliography of A. A. Spitsyn .
Soviet Archaeology
, 10 (1948), 9–52]

 
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