Concise Oxford Dictionary of Archaeology (343 page)

BOOK: Concise Oxford Dictionary of Archaeology
8.16Mb size Format: txt, pdf, ePub
irregular enclosed field system
[MC].
irregular open field system
[MC].
Isaac , Glynn Llywelyn
(1937–85)
[Bi].
South African archaeologist who after taking first degrees at Cape Town University in 1958 and Cambridge (UK) in 1961 researched his Ph.D. at Peterhouse, Cambridge, completed in 1969. He is well known for his work in Africa and especially that on early man. He was Warden of Prehistoric Sites in Kenya (1961–2) and Deputy Director of the Centre for Prehistory and Palaeontology at the National Museums of Kenya (1963–5). In 1966 he joined the anthropology faculty at the University of California, Berkeley. He was co-director of the Koobi Fora project in East Africa with Richard Leakey . In 1983 he was appointed Professor of Anthropology at Harvard University, where, at the time of his death, he was developing a series of new research projects.
[Obit.:
Antiquity
, 60 (1986), 55–6]
Ishtar or Inanna
[Di].
The Sumerian goddess of the planet Venus. Like her classical counterpart she was credited with jurisdiction over love and procreation.
Isis
(Aset)
[Di].
Egyptian moon goddess and one of the great goddesses in the
HELIPOLITAN ENNEAD.
She was mistress of magic, wife of Osiris, and mother of Horus. With Nephthys, Neith, and Selket, she was one of the four protector goddesses of the dead: she watched over the canopic jar containing the liver. She is often depicted as a woman with a moon-disc on her brow. In the late period Philae was her cult centre.
Islam
[Ge].
A religion founded by Muhammad in ad 622 (1 AH), spreading rapidly to many parts of the Near East, Middle East, and Far East during the later 1st millennium
ad
, reaching China, for example, by the 8th century
ad
.
Islamic civilization
covers a vast area from the North African shores of the Atlantic to the western periphery of the Pacific and from central Asia to sub-Saharan Africa. It is bound together by the shared heritage of Islam and its associated intellectual traditions.
Archaeologically, Islam and the civilization it engendered includes many different peoples of various religious and cultural traditions and a tremendous variety of regional assemblages, aesthetic tastes, and social practices.

Other books

Dancing with Bears by Michael Swanwick
Eat Thy Neighbour by Daniel Diehl
Brazen Temptress by Elizabeth Boyle
Stripped Bare by Lacey Thorn
The Reluctant Queen by Freda Lightfoot