Glossary: O Terms

Oasis Theory
The Oasis Theory is a core concept in archaeology, referring to one of the main hypotheses about the origins of agriculture.

Oaxaca Valley (Mexico)
The Oaxaca valley is a large y-shaped valley in Oaxaca state of central Mexico, and it was the home of the Zapotec and Mixtec civilizations.

Obsidian
Obsidian is a volcanic glass that occurs in deposits all over the world, and was prized for its beauty and versatility

Obsidian Hydration
The dating technique called obsidian hydration is a favorite of archaeologists, both because it is relatively secure and because it is relatively inexpensive.

Oc Eo (Vietnam)
Oc Eo is a very large Funan culture site in the Mekong Valley of Vietnam, occupied approximately 1500 years before the present.

Ochre
Ochre has been used by humans to color things for over 100,000 years.

Ogley Hay Hoard (UK)
The Ogley Hay Hoard, better known as the Staffordshire Hoard, is a 7th century AD collection of nearly 3500 artifacts found in a farm field in the UK.

Ochre (or Ocher) and Hematite
Ochre (also spelled ocher) and Hematite are names archaeologists use to refer to several forms of iron oxide, that is to say a type of clay or sandy clay mineral that is found naturally in many different regions of the world.

Ohalo II (Israel)
Ohalo II is a typical Upper Paleolithic (Kebaran) site on the shores of the Sea of Galilee, with extremely rare preservation of organic materials.

Old Smyrna (Turkey)
Old Smyrna is a classical Greek site in Turkey, which may--or may not--be the birthplace of the most important Greek writer and poet, Homer.

Oldowan Tradition
The Oldowan Tradition is the name given to a pattern of stone-tool making by our hominid ancestors, some 2.5 million years ago.

Olduvai Gorge (Tanzania)
Olduvai Gorge in Tanzania is an ancient hominid archaeological site in Tanzania, excavated by the Leakeys in the mid-1950s.

Olive History
The history of the domestication of olives is complicated because it has been domesticated at least nine separate times, the first at least 8000 years ago.

Olive Oil
The history of olive oil lies in the ancient Mediterranean. This article describes how it was produced, who produced it and why, based on archaeological evidence and historical evidence.

Olmec Civilization
The Olmec civilization is the name given to a sophisticated central American culture between 1200 and 400 BC.

Olympia (Greece)
The archaeological site of Olympia is a Panhellenic sanctuary in Greece, excavated in the mid-19th century by Edward Curtius.

Olorgesailie
Olorgesailie is the name of a geological formation in southern Kenya, East Africa where a group of lower paleolithic archaeological sites have been discovered.

Opatów, Poland (Site 1)
Opatow is the name of a site and a village in the Silesian province of Poland, where an enormous cemetery used for several hundred years has permitted archaeologists to compare health conditions for wealthy and not-so-wealthy individuals.

Opovo (Serbia)
The site of Opovo is a Late Neolithic village site in the province of Vojvodina on the Tamis River in what is the modern day country of Serbia.

Omo Kibish (Ethiopia)
Omo Kibish is an ancient rock formation in Ethiopia where excavations by Richard Leakey and others have recovered Homo sapiens remains as old as 125,000 years before the present.

Opal Phytoliths
An opal phytolith is a tiny, three-dimensional copies of a plant cells created by a plant as a product of taking in water with dissolved silica.

Opone (Somalia)
The ancient trade center of Opone on the east coast of Africa was mentioned in Egyptian records about 40 AD, and is probably the archaeological site of Ras Hafun, Somalia.

Orce Basin (Spain)
The Orce Basin in the Andalucía of Spain is noted for holding the earliest Homo erectus occurring in Europe, about 1.6 million years ago.

Oracle Bones
Oracle bones are a type of artifact found in archaeological sites from the Shang Dynasty in China.

Oppida
Oppida is the word given to the archaeological remains of fortified settlements throughout Europe by archaeologists, from a word used by Julius Caesar.

Orange Culture
The Orange culture is a term for the Late Archaic period in Florida (and no, I'm not making this up).

Osteodontokeratic
The term osteodontokeratic was invented by the Australian archaeologist Raymond Dart, to describe the tool kit of our hominid ancestor Australopithecus africanus. Great name,isn't it? Too bad he was wrong.

Oranjemund Shipwreck (Namibia)
The Oranjemund shipwreck is a 17th century Portuguese trading vessel discovered in 2008 on the Atlantic coast of Namibia by diamond miners.

Orchomenos (Greece)
The archaeological site of Orchomenos was mentioned by Homer and excavated by Heinrich Schliemann.

Orgnac 3 (France)
Orgnac 3 is a Middle Paleolithic cave and open air site located in the Rhone Valley of France, near the Ardeche river gorges.

Oroncota (Bolivia)
Oroncota (also spelled Huruncuta) is the name of a region in Bolivia and a small Inca provincial center.

Ortoiroid Culture
The Ortoiroid culture is a preceramic culture of the Caribbean Sea, generally dated concurrent to and after the Casimiroid culture, and thought to have resulted from people migrating north from South America.

Harbor at Ostia Antica
Built by the Emperor Claudius in the first century A.D., the Roman empire harbor at Ostia Antica was the major port city for the Roman Empire.

Oseberg (Norway)
The Oseberg is the name of a 9th century Viking boat-grave excavated in Norway, in which two women were buried.

Oshara Tradition
The Oshara tradition is the name given to an Archaic culture of the American southwest, about 6000 BC.

Otzi the Iceman (Italy)
The Iceman was found in the Tyrolean Alps in 1991, a Bronze Age hunter lost in a storm between 3350-3300 BC

Ostrogoths
The Ostrogoths were a Germanic kingdom in Italy, one of six major Germanic tribes to run things in Europe after the end of the Roman Empire.

Otumba (Mexico)
Aztec site of Otumba, Aztec city-state of Otumba, craft specialization among the Aztecs, the Aztecs and Otumba, Otompan

Ottoman Empire
The Ottoman Empire ruled much of the middle and near east beginning in the 15th century AD and continuing into the 20th century.

Otomani Culture
The Otomani culture was a group of Bronze age settlements in the Carpathian basin in the early 2nd millennium BC.

Ozette, Olympic Peninsula, Washington
The Ozette site is the so-called North American Pompeii, a village buried and preserved by a mudslide in the 18th century.

Tell el-'Oueili (Iraq)
The settlement of Tell el-'Oueili is an Ubaid (and pre-Ubaid) site of the Mesopotamian civilization, located near the modern (and ancient) city of Larsa, in Iraq.

Oxkintok, Yucatan Peninsula
Oxkintok is a Maya site located in the north of the Yucatan Peninsula of Mexico, that reached its maximum development between the 5th and the 9th centuries AD.

Out of Africa Hypothesis
The Out of Africa or African Replacement Hypothesis argues that every living human being is descended from a small group in Africa.

Owo (Nigeria)
The Owo site consists of the remains of a Yoruba city state dated to the 15th century AD.