Archaeology Glossary Entries from BC to Blombos Cave, South Africa

BC (or B.C.)
The term B.C. is used by nearly everyone in the United States to mean dates in the Julian Calendar before the birth of Christ, or at least before the date once thought to be that of Christ's birth (the year 0).

BCE (or B.C.E.)
BCE stands for "Before the Common Era" and it is basically equivalent to "BC", except that it doesn't have the Christian religious connotations of BC.

Be'er Sheva (Israel)
Be'er Sheva is a modern town in the Negev Desert of Israel, and also the name of a Chalcolithic settlement dated to the 4th millennium BC.

Beaker Folk
The Beaker folk is the name given to a cultural group widespread throughout western Europe, from the Late Neolithic to Early Bronze age (4000-2000 BC).

Bear Cove Site
Bear Cove is an archaeological site on Vancouver Island, and an important site of the prehistory of the Northwest Coast.

Beans (Phaseolus vulgaris L)
Beans comes in lots of colors, shapes and sizes, and they were first domesticated in the Americas.

Beeches Pit (United Kingdom)
Beeches Pit is the name of a Middle Pleistocene archaeological site located in the East Anglia, England, close to an abandoned channel of the Bytham/Ingham river.

Beginish Island
Beginish Island is a small island located in the Irish Sea between Valentia Island and the Iveragh peninsula, in County Kerry, Ireland, with the ruins of a 10th century Viking Age settlement.

Behistun Inscription (Iraq)
The Behistun inscription is a "rosetta stone" for Old Persian, Elamite, and Akkadian language.

Beixin Culture
A precursor to Dawenkou Culture, the Beixin Culture has recently re-dated between 4300-4100 BC

Belkachi Culture
The Belkachi culture is the named given to a Middle Neolithic culture in the northern Baikal region of Siberia, between 5000-3900 years before the present.

Bell Beaker Culture
The culture known as Bell Beaker is the largest portion of the loosely grouped Beaker Folk, named for a very particular type of ceramic vessel, shaped like an upside-down bell.

Benin (Benin)
The modern city of Benin is named after the kingdom in what is now Benin.

Bent Pyramid (Egypt)
The Bent Pyramid is one of the Old Kingdom Pyramids at Giza, Egypt; built in the 4th Dynasty, 2680-2565 B.C. by that wizard of architects, Imhotep.

Berbers
The Berbers are a modern ethnic group in north Africa and Europe, with a deep history.

Bercy (France)
The archaeological site of Bercy is an Early Neolithic settlement (4500-2000 BC) located on the Seine River within the city limits of Paris, France.

Beringia
Beringia is the name given to the now-submerged portion of the Bering Strait, that once connected the Siberian mainland with North America.

Berry-au-Bac (France)
The site of Berry-au-Bac is a Neolithic site in the Paris Basin of France.

Besant-Sonota Complex
The Besant-Sonota Complex is the name archaeologists have given to Woodland bison hunters in the American Great Plains in Canada and the United States

Beth Alpha Synagogue (Israel)
The site of Beth Alpha in Israel is believed to be a Jewish synagogue dated to the Byzantine period.

Bibracte (France)
The archaeological site of Bibracte is an Iron Age site located on Mont Beuvray in France near Autun.

Biblical Archaeology
Traditionally, biblical archaeology is the name given to the study of the archaeological aspects of the history of the Jewish and Christian churches as provided in the Judeo-Christian bible.

Bigo Bya Mugenyi (Uganda)
Bigo Bya Mugenyi is a late Iron Age settlement in Uganda, the capital of the Kitara or Chwezi Dynasty

Bilancino (Italy)
Bilancino is an Upper Paleolithic (Gravettian) open air site located in the Mugallo region of central Italy.

Bin Bir Kilisse (Turkey)
The site of Bin Bir Kilisse, also called Maden Sheher, was a Byzantine city, described by British archaeologist Gertrude Bell as the "City of a Thousand and One Churches".

Bipedal Locomotion
Bipedal locomotion is what researchers call walking on two legs in an upright position: it refers to an important evolutionary step of moving from living in trees to walking primarily on the earth.

Biskupin (Poland)
The Biskupin site is a fortified settlement in Poland, occupied between the Late Bronze and early Iron ages, and belonging to the Lausitz (Late Bronze age) and Hallstatt C (Early Iron) cultures.

Bitumen
Bitumen is a black, oily, viscous material that is a naturally-occurring organic byproduct of decomposed organic materials; and it was used by humans and our ancestors for any number of very useful things for the past 40,000 years.

Black Death
The Black Death was the name given to an episode of the devastating bubonic plague in Europe between 1348 and 1351.

Blombos Cave (South Africa)
Blombos Cave is a Middle Stone Age (MSA) site located in the southern Cape, South Africa, that contains excellently preserved MSA deposits that date to older than 70,000 years.

Black Drink
Black drink, also known as yaupon or cassine, is a tea made from the American holly plant, and consumed by several North American indigenous groups in important ceremonies and other rituals.

Bluefish Caves
Bluefish Caves is an important paleoarctic site in the Yukon Territory of Canada.

Black Mesa (USA)
Black Mesa is the name given to a large upland area in the American southwestern state of Arizona, upon which hundreds of archaeological sites have been identified.

Bloodletting
Bloodletting--the ritual or therapeutic cutting of the human body to release blood--is an ancient technique used by the Greeks and Central American societies.

Ancient Maya Bloodletting Rituals
Bloodletting rituals and sacrifices were widespread throughout Mesoamerica; but especially among the Maya.