Glossary: C Terms

The Cimmerian culture were nomadic horse-riding people of the Russian steppes beginning about 1200 BC.

Cishan is the type site for the Cishan culture, an early Neolithic culture in the Yellow River of China, occupied from about 6500-5000 BC.

The Clactonian Tradition refers to the stone tools of the Lower Paleolithic period (ca. 500,000 to 100,000 BP) in Europe, made by Homo erectus.

The term classical archaeology generally refers to the study of ancient Greece and Rome and their immediate forebears.

The term "Cliff dwellings" generally refers to Anasazi culture sites such as Mesa Verde, Colorado in the United States that have residences built right into the sheer cliffs of mountains.

The CLIMAP Project was developed in the 1970s by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration

The Clovis culture is the earliest well-established human culture in the North American continent

Coatepec, or Snake Mountain, is a mountain sacred to the Aztecs/Mexica, as the birthplace of the Aztec patron deity Huitzilopochtli.

Cobá is the name of a large lowland Maya city located between two large lakes in east central Quintana Roo, Mexico.

The Cochise culture is the name given to preceramic cultures of the American southwest, particularly Arizon, between 12,000 and 2,000 years ago.

The coconut was independently domesticated twice, and spread throughout the world's tropics by seafaring explorers, beginning some 3,000 years ago.

A codex (plural codices) is the technical name for an ancient book or manuscript

Cognitive archaeology is a theoretical underpinning of archaeological research that is interested in the material expression of human cognitive concepts.

Co Loa is an archaeological site in Vietnam, and it was the capital of the Au Lac kingdom during the third century BC.

The Coles Creek culture is the name given to sites created by a group of pottery-making farmers in the Lower Mississippi Valley of the United States

The archaeological site of Colha is a Maya occupation located in Belize about 60 kilometers north of Belize City.

The town of Williamsburg, Virginia is important because of its role in United States history; and its role in presenting concrete images of the past to the public.

Commercial archaeology focuses on the material culture aspects of commerce and transportation.

Complex hunter-gatherers or affluent foragers, are the terms archaeologists use to describe hunter-gatherers with a broader spectrum of abilities and subsistence techniques than traditionally included in hunter-gatherer groups.

Conchopata is a Wari Empire site located in the highlands of central Peru, within modern Ayacucho, and about 10 kilometers from the Wari empire capital city of Huari.

Constantinople is the old name for Istanbul, the great city located in what is now Turkey.

Coprolite is the name given to fossil feces, preserved human excrement discovered in an archaeological context.

The Coptic church is a form of Christianity developed in Egypt, said to have been started by one of Christ's apostles, Mark, in the 1st century AD

The archaeological site of Copán is located in western Honduras, and represents a major Classic period Maya temple and regional center.

The Corded Ware culture or complex is the name given to a wave of people in the Neolithic period, originating from the Carpathian mountains and the area now called the Baltic States.

A core, in the archaeological sense, is the basic raw material building block for a stone tool.

The archaeological site of Corinth was an ancient capital city of Greece, first occupied during the Neolithic period, and most famous for its Greek and Roman occupations.

Corlea Trackway is an Iron Age roadway that measures one kilometer long and four meters (12 feet) wide, and was built of massive oaken planks

The site of Cortaillod-Est is an Alpine Lake palisaded village in a lake in Switzerland, dated to the Late Bronze Age (1009-955 BC).

Cosmology is the intersection between astronomy and religion; many if not most prehistoric cultures studied the movement of the stars and planets as part of a religious rituals.

Cotton was domesticated in both the old and new worlds.

Coxcatlan Cave is a rockshelter in the Tehuacan Valley of Mexico, and it was occupied by humans for nearly 10,000 years.

Crescents are a type of chipped stone tool found on Paleoindian and preclovis sites throughout the western United States--but scholars have yet to decide exactly what its function was.

Crickley Hill is an important Neolithic and Iron Age occupation in Gloucestershire, primarily known for its archaeological evidence of a violent history.

Cro-Magnon is a now-outmoded word meaning early Homo sapiens sapiens, circa 35,000 to 10,000 years before the present.

Ctesiphon is the name of a very old city at the confluence of the Tigris and Diyala rivers near Baghdad in what is now Iraq.

The Cucuteni culture is a Neolithic/Chalcolithic civilization dated to 5400-2750 BC.

The Belizean site of Cuello is one of the first and best documented example of the emergence of village life and incipient social differentiation in the Maya region.

The Cuerdale Hoard is an enormous Viking silver treasure of some 8000 silver coins and pieces of bullion weighing nearly 40 kilograms, discovered in Lancaster England in 1840.

Cuicuilco is the name of a Late Formative period site (300-1 BC) located in the Basin of Mexico, located in the Distrito Federale of Mexico City.

Cuidad de Dios is a Moche civilization site, lacking ceremonial or public architecture. Rather, it represents a small, rural farming community during the sixth through eighth centuries AD.

Cultural Ecology is an anthropological theory put forward by Julian Steward, that considers adaptation to environment as the paramount driver in cultural change.

The theory of cultural evolution was proposed by British archaeologist A.H.L. Fox Pitt-Rivers in the early 20th century.

The cultural-historical method is a way of conducting anthropological and archaeological research developed by V.G. Childe and Franz Boas.

Cultural Resource Management is the term generally used to mean government-sponsored preservation and study of archaeological and historical resources, including archaeological sites, historical buildings.

To anthropologists (and many archaeologists), culture refers to the way of life of a group of people.

The culture people hypothesis is the theory that specific material culture and characteristics (like pot decorations and projectile point types, etc.) can be associated with a particular cultural group.

One of the earliest forms of writing, cuneiform was (probably) invented in Uruk, Mesopotamia around 3000 BC.

Curriboo Plantation is the name of an 18th century farming operation in South Carolina, in the southeastern United States.

Cusco, Peru is an alternate spelling of the ancient Incan city of Cuzco.

The modern day city of Cuzco in the Andes Mountains of Peru was founded, according to legend, by Manco Capac, the founder of the Incan Civilization.

The Cycladic Culture is the term used to refer to the ancestral Greek culture of the Cycladic islands of the southern Aegean Sea

Learn about the early Mesoamerican site of Cuicuilco, Mexico

Coca, from whence natural cocaine comes, has been used in South America for thousands of years.