Glossary: C Terms
Cimmerian Culture
The Cimmerian culture were nomadic horse-riding people of the Russian steppes beginning about 1200 BC.
Cishan (China)
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.
Clactonian Tradition
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.
Classical Archaeology
The term classical archaeology generally refers to the study of ancient Greece and Rome and their immediate forebears.
Cinnabar
Cinnabar, or mercury sulfide, is a highly toxic material which has been used to decorate walls, pots and burials for at least the past 9,000 years.
CLIMAP Project
The CLIMAP Project was developed in the 1970s by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration
Clovis Culture
The Clovis culture is the earliest well-established human culture in the North American continent
Coatepec
Coatepec, or Snake Mountain, is a mountain sacred to the Aztecs/Mexica, as the birthplace of the Aztec patron deity Huitzilopochtli.
Cliff Dwellings
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.
Cochise Culture
The Cochise culture is the name given to preceramic cultures of the American southwest, particularly Arizon, between 12,000 and 2,000 years ago.
Coconut Domestication
The coconut was independently domesticated twice, and spread throughout the world's tropics by seafaring explorers, beginning some 3,000 years ago.
Co Loa
Co Loa is an archaeological site in Vietnam, and it was the capital of the Au Lac kingdom during the third century BC.
Cognitive Archaeology
Cognitive archaeology is a theoretical underpinning of archaeological research that is interested in the material expression of human cognitive concepts.
Cobá (Mexico)
Cobá is the name of a large lowland Maya city located between two large lakes in east central Quintana Roo, Mexico.
Coles Creek Culture
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
Colha (Belize)
The archaeological site of Colha is a Maya occupation located in Belize about 60 kilometers north of Belize City.
Codex
A codex (plural codices) is the technical name for an ancient book or manuscript
Colonial Williamsburg (USA)
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
Commercial archaeology focuses on the material culture aspects of commerce and transportation.
Complex Hunter-Gatherers
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.
Constantinople (Turkey)
Constantinople is the old name for Istanbul, the great city located in what is now Turkey.
Coosa
Coosa was an important Mississippian (Native American) polity based in the American Southeast in the 15th through 16th centuries AD.
Copper History
The green and metallic sheen of copper has been a source of attraction to humans for at least 9,300 years.
Coprolites
Coprolite is the name given to fossil feces, preserved human excrement discovered in an archaeological context.
Conchopata (Peru)
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.
Corded Ware Culture
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.
Core
A core, in the archaeological sense, is the basic raw material building block for a stone tool.
Copán (Honduras)
The archaeological site of Copán is located in western Honduras, and represents a major Classic period Maya temple and regional center.
Corlea Trackway (Ireland)
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
Cotton (Gossypium)
Cotton was domesticated in both the old and new worlds.
Cosmology
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.
Coptic Christianity
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
Crescents
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.
Cortaillod-Est (Switzerland)
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).
Corinth (Greece)
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.
Cro-Magnon
Cro-Magnon is a now-outmoded word meaning early Homo sapiens sapiens, circa 35,000 to 10,000 years before the present.
Cuello, Belize
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.
Cucuteni culture
The Cucuteni culture is a Neolithic/Chalcolithic civilization dated to 5400-2750 BC.
Coxcatlan Cave (Mexico)
Coxcatlan Cave is a rockshelter in the Tehuacan Valley of Mexico, and it was occupied by humans for nearly 10,000 years.
Cuerdale Hoard (United Kingdom)
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.
Ctesiphon (Iraq)
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.
Cuicuilco (Mexico)
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.
Cuneiform
One of the earliest forms of writing, cuneiform was (probably) invented in Uruk, Mesopotamia around 3000 BC.
Cultural Ecology
Cultural Ecology is an anthropological theory put forward by Julian Steward, that considers adaptation to environment as the paramount driver in cultural change.
Cultural Evolution
The theory of cultural evolution was proposed by British archaeologist A.H.L. Fox Pitt-Rivers in the early 20th century.
Cultural Historical Method
The cultural-historical method is a way of conducting anthropological and archaeological research developed by V.G. Childe and Franz Boas.
Culture
To anthropologists (and many archaeologists), culture refers to the way of life of a group of people.
Culture-People Hypothesis
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.
Coca
Coca, from whence natural cocaine comes, has been used in South America for thousands of years.
Cuidad de Dios (Peru)
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 Resource Management
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.
Curriboo Plantation (USA)
Curriboo Plantation is the name of an 18th century farming operation in South Carolina, in the southeastern United States.
Cusco, Peru
Cusco, Peru is an alternate spelling of the ancient Incan city of Cuzco.
Cuzco (Peru)
Cuzco located in the Andes Mountains of Peru, was the capital of the Inca empire, founded by Manco Capac, the founder of the Incan Civilization.
Cycladic Culture
The Cycladic Culture is the term used to refer to the ancestral Greek culture of the Cycladic islands of the southern Aegean Sea