Concise Oxford Dictionary of Archaeology (776 page)

Name applied to a group of Iron Age hillforts in Scotland which are distinctive in having timber-laced ramparts that have been fired, either deliberately or accidentally, causing the stone within the rampart core to fuse. Excavated examples date to the last few centuries
bc
.

 
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A very large burial mound 42m in diameter and 6m high immediately outside the massive hillfort of Mont Lassois. Excavations by M. René Joffroy in 1953 revealed that the mound covered an extremely rich
HALLSTATT
D burial of the later 6th century
bc
. Within a rectangular wooden chamber was the body of a woman wearing a solid gold torc on a dismantled cart. The torc had been imported from the classical world, as had an Etruscan bronze vessel and an Attic black figure cup. The most notable object in the grave was a massive bronze
KRATER
1.64m high of Greek manufacture and thought to have been made either in Sparta or the Greek colony of TARENTUM in southern Italy. The decoration on this piece was elaborate and included an embossed frieze of foot soldiers and chariots around the neck. The burial was clearly that of an elite female and serves to indicate the powerful role that women played in Iron Age society.
[Sum.: J. V. S. Megaw , 1966, The Vix burial.
Antiquity
, 40, 38–44]

 
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In ancient Egypt, the prime minister or right-hand man to the king or pharaoh.

 
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A collective name sometimes applied to pottery-using hunter-gatherer communities in the forest zone of the central Russian Plain in the region enclosed by the Upper Volga, Oka, and Desna rivers during the 4th and 3rd millennia
bc
. This area was the homeland of the
PIT-COMBWARE
cultures, direct descendants of the local Mesolithic groups. The earliest of the Volga-Oka cultures was the
LIALOVO CULTURE
in the mid 4th millennium
bc
. Closely related was the
BELEV CULTURE
that developed in the later 4th millennium
bc
to the south of the Lialovo. Both had a settlement pattern that kept to the riverbanks, the shores of lakes, or sand-dunes. The accumulated layers at excavated sites on lake margins point to a rather settled way of life, but sites on sand-dunes appear to be transitory. No agriculture or animal husbandry was practised, subsistence economies being based on hunting and fishing. The pottery comprises characteristic baggy vessels with a pointed or rounded base, decorated with deeply impressed pits often arranged in horizontal zones divided by comb impressions. Regional and local variations in ceramic styles are evident. Superseded by the
FATYANOVO CULTURE
around 2000 bc.

 
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The spiral-patterned element in the capital of the Ionic, Corinthian, and Composite Orders: derived from the voluted ram's horns, or of geometrical origin, or perhaps suggested by the perfect natural spiral of the seed-box of one of the commonest Greek clovers.

 
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Access route to the tiered seating (
cavea
) in a Roman theatre or
AMPHITHEATRE
.

 
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