Glossary: S Terms
Stupa
A stupa is a megalithic monument, built throughout the world to commemorate the Buddha throughout south Asia beginning in the 3rd century BC.
Storage Pits
A storage pit is what archaeologists call the remains of an ancient pit which was excavated by ancient people for storage of goods or materials.
Stone Boiling
Stone boiling is an ancient way of getting your soup hot.
Stallings Island (USA)
Stallings Island is the type site of the Stallings culture, a Late Archaic culture of the Middle Savannah River Valley of South Carolina and Georgia in the American Southeast, dated between 5000 and 3000 years ago.
Stone Hoe
A stone hoe is a tool used to dig in the earth, and is primarily associated with prehistoric farming societies who have no access to metals.
Star Carr (England)
The early Mesolithic archaeological site of Star Carr is probably one of the best known sites in England, occupied intermittently for about 300 years, beginning about 10,700 years ago.
Statistics
Statistics are used in archaeology to help us see patterns in the data we might not otherwise identify.
Starch Grain Analysis in Archaeology
Starch grains are tiny natural granules of matter that act as the main mechanism for food storage in plants, which modern archaeologists use to identify the diets of past peoples.
Statue-Menhirs
Statue-menhirs are a kind of megalithic standing stone consisting of a carved human or human-like statue of life or larger size.
Stentinello culture
Stentinello culture is the name given to a Neolithic site and related sites in the Calabria region of Italy, Sicily and Malta, dated to the 5th and 4th millennia BC.
Step Pyramid of Djoser (Egypt)
The Step Pyramid of Djoser was one of the earliest of the pyramids built in Egypt, during the Old Kingdom's 3rd Dynasty about 2800 BC.
Steppe Societies
Steppe societies is what archaeologists use to refer to the pastoral nomads of central Asia.
Sterkfontein (South Africa)
The ancient early man site of Sterkfontein is a cave in a dolomite hill of the Blaaubank River Valley, about 10 kilometers northwest of Krugersdorp, South Africa.
Stonehenge (United Kingdom)
Stonehenge is an enormous circle of 150 massive blocks located on the Salisbury Plain of southern England, the main portion of which was built about 2000 BC.
Stone Age
The Stone Age is the name first given by Danish museum director Christian Jurgensen Thomsen to the earliest period of artifacts in his museum (the others were Bronze and Iron Ages).
Structuralism
Structuralism, which started out as a theory of language, ended up impacting most of the social and historical scieces including archaeology during the latter half of the twentieth century.
Stratigraphy
In archaeology, the study of stratigraphy involves looking at the geological and archaeological layers that make up an archaeological deposit to better understand the processes that created the site.
Subsurface Testing
Archaeologists use the term 'subsurface testing' to mean exploration of an archaeological site using shovels or mechanical equipment.
Subsistence
Subsistence, to an archaeologist anyway, refers to the suite of behaviors that humans use to feed themselves.
Sumer and Sumerians
Sumer was one of two Early Dynastic period communities in southern Mesopotamia between the Tigris and Euphrates Rivers (the other was Akkad).
Sui Dynasty
The Sui Dynasty (AD 581-618) of China, is best known for putting the pieces of China back together again, after the fall of the Han Dynasty.
Sunda
Sunda is the name given to the amalgamated Pleistocene-age continent made up of Southeast Asia and Indonesian Islands.
Sungir (Russia)
The Sungir archaeological site is an enormous Upper Paleolithic archaeological settlement and cemetery located outside of Vladimir, Russia
Sunflowers (Helianthus annuus L.)
Sunflower (Helianthus spp.) is a plant native to the American continents. Prehistoric use of sunflower included ornamental and ceremonial use, as well as for food and flavoring.
Susquehanna Tradition
The Susquehanna Tradition is a Late Archaic period (ca. 5,900 to 3,200 years ago) cultural group of the northeastern United States and including Nova Scotia and New Brunswick.
Swartkrans (South Africa)
Swartkrans is a Lower Paleolithic cave site in South Africa, discovered in 1948 by Robert Broom and excavated by C.K. Brain in the 1960s.
Sweet Track (UK)
Sweet Track is the name given to the earliest known trackway in northern Europe, built, according to tree ring analysis of the wood, in the winter or early spring of 3807 or 3806 BC.
Sutton Hoo (UK)
The archaeological site of Sutton Hoo consists of a group of at least fourteen burial mounds, located in southeastern Suffolk, England, one of which is an Anglo-Saxon period ship burial with some of the richest burial goods ever found in the UK.
Syalakh Culture
The Syalakh Culture is the name archaeologists have given to an Early Neolithic (6500-5200 BP) culture of Siberia
Swifterbant Site and Culture
Swifterbant is the name of the type sites of the Swifterbant culture, a Late Mesolithic and Neolithic culture located in the Netherlands.
Synagogues
A synagogue is, of course, a religious structure that can be identified with the Jewish faith; the earliest synagogues probably developed during the Byzantine period of the 6th century BC.
Systematic Flaking
Systematic flaking is the collective term used by archaeologists to refer to a suite of characteristics found in a pile of broken pieces of stone (called lithics), that we have agreed are evidence that the stone was broken by either a human or one of our closest relatives
Sylvester Manor (New York, USA)
Sylvester Manor is the name of the ruins of a plantation established in 1651 for provisioning two sugar plantations in Barbados
Steenbokfontein Cave (South Africa
Steenbokfontein Cave is the name of a Later Stone Age rockshelter with a megamidden deposit, and some of the oldest rock art known from South Africa. The cave is located on Eland's Bay on the West Cape region of South Africa, and it is one of the few coastal caves which were visited by humans regularly between 3000 and 2000 BP
Subarctic
Archaeology of North American Subarctic. Subarctic Prehistory. Paleoindian, Archaic, Subarctic. Refer to this page to learn more about the Prehistory of the Subarctic.
Squash (Cucurbita Pepo) Domestication
Refer to this page to learn more about Squash Domestication, Domestication and Spread of Squash (Cucurbita Pepo). History of domestication and spread of the squash