Glossary: N Terms
Na'aran (Israel/Palestine)
Na'aran was a Byzantine settlement and synagogue during the 5th and 6th century AD, located about four kilometers from Jericho.
Nabta Playa (Egypt)
Nabta Playa is an archaeological site in the western deserts of southern Egypt, where some of the earliest known evidence of domesticated cattle have been identified.
Nachukui Formation
Nachukui Formation is the name of location on the western shore of Lake Turkana in Kenya, where many fossils of the early humans and their stone tools have been found, dating to well over one million years.
Naco (USA)
The Naco site, located in Greenbush Draw near the town of Naco in Arizona on the border with Mexico, was discovered to hold evidence of Clovis people hunting mammoths.
Nag Hammadi Library
In 1945, a group of scrolls of religious and philosophical import to the judeo-christian religions called the Nag Hammadi Library was found tucked into a large jar.
NAGPRA
The acronym NAGPRA refers to one of the most important pieces of American legislation affecting archaeologists.
Nagyrev culture
The Nagyrev culture was an early Bronze age culture in the Balkan region of Bulgaria and Romania.
Naj Tunich, Guatemala
Naj Tunich is an important site for the Maya, where the largest corpus of hieroglyphic texts found in any cave in the Maya area.
Nahuatl
Nahuatl is the native American language spoken by the Axtec Mexica and other people of ancient Mesoamerica.
Namu
The archaeological site of Namu is important to understanding the American Northwest Coast prehistory.
Nakbe (Guatemala)
The Nakbe site is a central city of the Maya people on the Peten peninsula of Guatemala.
Nari (Pakistan)
The Early Indus civilization (ca. 4th millennium to middle of second millennium BC) archaeological site called Pind-wali Nari ('the ruined settlement') consists of three mounds,
Nariokotome (Kenya)
The site of Nariokotome is located in the Lake Turkana region of Kenya, where the nearly complete skeleton of a boy between the ages of 11 and 13 and classified as Homo ergaster was found.
Narmada Valley (India)
The Narmada Valley site in India is known for both a Cretaceous period fossil prehistory, as well as the discovery of an isolated cranium of an archaic Homo Sapiens.
Narmer Palette: Early Period Ancient Egypt
The Narmer Palette is an early Period Egyptian civilization artifact, showing the conquest of Upper and Lower Egypt by the first Egyptian pharaoh, Menes or Narmer.
Natron
Natron, used most famously to mummify people, is an ancient alkali used throughout the Mediterranean to make glass.
Natsushima (Japan)
The archaeological site of Natsushima is an early Jomon tradition site, located in Kanagawa Province on a small island in Tokyo Bay, Japan.
Natufian Period
Sedentary hunter-gatherers who lived in the near east between about 12,500 and 10,200 years ago, the Natufians were on the edge of the domestication process for both plants and animals.
Naujan (Canada)
The archaeological site of Naujan is located near the modern town of Repulse Bay on the northwestern edge of Hudson Bay in Canada.
Nausharo (Pakistan)
The archaeological site of Nausharo is a small Harrapan or Indus civilization site, located in the Baluchistan Province of Pakistan, within about six kilometers of the capital of Mehrgahr.
Navajo
The Navajo Nation are modern-day people of the American southwest; their history has a special importance for archaeologists as well.
Navajo Springs (USA)
Navajo Springs is an Anasazi site in the Chaco Canyon system, located on the Puerco River of Arizona about 300 kilometers southwest of Chaco Canyon.
Navan Fort (Northern Ireland)
The site of Navan Fort (known in old Irish as Eamhain Macha) was a Celtic capital of ancient Ulster.
Nazca Civilization Guide and Timeline
The Nazca (often spelled Nasca in archaeological texts) civilization was located in the Nasca drainage on the south coast of Peru between about AD 1-750.
Nawarla Gabarnmang (Arnhem Land, Australia)
Nawarla Gabarnmang is a gloriously painted rockshelter located in remote Arnhem Land, Australia, painted at least 28,000 years ago.
Neanderthal
Neanderthals were a type of early hominid that lived on the planet earth between about 100,000 to 30,000 years ago.
Nazca Lines (Peru)
The Nazca Lines are large geometric animal and abstract geoglyphs from rocks in a desert in northern Peru.
Nenana Culture
The Nenana Valley of central Alaska is the site of one of the earliest archaeological occupations in the North American continent
New Archaeology
The 'new archaeology' movement of the mid-twentieth century changed the direction of the field, at least in the Americas.
Newgrange (Ireland)
The site known as Newgrange is a megalithic passage tomb in the Brugh na Bóinne valley of Ireland.
Ngandong Hominids (Indonesia)
The Ngandong hominids were ancient skeletal remains of human ancestors found in Indonesia.
Nelson River (Canada)
Nelson River is a Thule tradition site, located on Banks Island off of the Amundsen Gulf in high arctic Canada.
Nicoya Culture
The Greater Nicoya Culture, or Guanacaste-Nicoya culture of pre-Columbian Central America
Niah Cave (Borneo)
The Great Cave of Niah in an important Middle Paleolithic archaeological site in Borneo, and part of the Southern Disperal Route argument.
Nicoya Polychrome
Nicoya Polychrome or Guanacaste is the name given to the Early Post Classic period in Costa Rica and Guatemala.
Nimrud (Iraq)
The archaeological site of Nimrud is one of the most important Assyrian sites in the world.
Nineveh (Iraq)
Nineveh, capital city of the Assyrian empire, is located in the modern city of Mosul, Iraq.
Nindowari (Pakistan)
Nindowari is a Kulli complex site in southern Balochistan province, Pakistan.
Niuheliang (China)
The archaeological site of Niuheliang, is a late Neolithic Hongshan culture site in Liaoning Province.
Niya (Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region of China)
Niya, today known as Minfeng, was a capital of the Jingjue and Shanshan kingdoms of central Asia beginning in the first century BC, and an important city on the ancient Jade and Silk Roads.
Non Nok Tha (Thailand)
The site of Non Nok Tha, Khok Kaen province of Thailand, belongs to the Phu Lon complex and dates between 1500 and 1000 BC.
Nok Art
Nok art describes the sculpted ceramic art of northern Nigeria between 500 BC and AD 200.
Nong Nor (Thailand)
The Bronze Age site of Nong Nor is a small fishing village located in central Thailand.
Non Pa Wai (Thailand)
The Bronze Age mining site of Non Pa Wai is located near Lopburi in central Thailand.
Norse
The Norse were Viking warriors who were great adventurers, traveling westward from the Viking homeland to Iceland, Greenland, and yes, even Canada.
Norton Culture
The Norton culture refers to one of several cultures in the North American arctic related to the Small Tool Tradition.
Normans
The Normans were descendants of Vikings, who settled in the northwest France in the early 10th century AD and crossed the English Channel in 1066.
Notation, Paleolithic
Paleolithic notation is the term used by archaeologists for deliberate markings made by our ancestors to count objects or remember events in a sequence.
Nri Kingdom (Igbo)
The Nri kingdom (also called Igbo) was a cultural group in Nigeria during the 10th century AD.
Nosy Mangabe (Madagascar)
The island of Nosy Mangabe, Madagascar, has an archaeological site on it dated between 670 and 980 AD.
Ntusi (Uganda)
The site of Ntusi in Uganda is a late Iron Age site, occupied between the 10th and 14th centuries AD.
Numic Speakers
Numic speakers are ancestral Ute, Paiute and Shoshone, thought to have moved into the Great Basin of the United States from California about AD 1000.
Numantia (Spain)
The ruins of Numantia are located in the Upper Duero valley of northern Spain, about 7 kilometers from the modern town of Soria.
Nuragic Culture
The most distinctive characteristic of the Nuragic culture on Sardinia in the Mediterranean Sea is the large towers shaped like truncated cones.