Concise Oxford Dictionary of Archaeology (168 page)

A professional archaeologist whose work programme comprises a series of archaeological projects carried out on behalf of third parties according to the terms of legally binding contracts. Such contracts are usually won through the process of
COMPETITIVE TENDERING
.

 
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See
BURIAL SITE
.

 
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A term used by Karl Marx to refer to mutually antagonistic tendencies in a society.

 
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A statistical or experimental means of holding some variables constant in order to examine the causal influence of others.

 
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contubernium
(pl.
contubernia
)
[Ge].

A Roman tent party—a group of eight men who shared a tent while the legion was on campaign, and two rooms when in barracks.

 
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The laboratory determination of the antiquity of organic materials estimated by
RADIOCARBON DATING
. The conventional radiocarbon age is the standard way for reporting determinations and should take the form, as a minimum, of an age estimate in years before the present (BP), a standard deviation, and the laboratory code for the sample tested (e.g. 4678 ± 70 BP HAR-000). It is often useful to indicate what kind of material provided the source sample (e.g. charcoal, wood, bone, or shell). There are a number of assumptions implicit in the citation of a conventional radiocarbon age, for example that the Libby half-life for
¹⁴
C of 5568 years was used; that ad 1950 is the reference year zero; that 0.95 NBS oxalic acid provided the modern reference standard; and that radiocarbon years BP are the units used to express the age. See also
CALIBRATION
and
CORRECTED AGE
.

 
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