Concise Oxford Dictionary of Archaeology (372 page)

Late Archaic Stage woodland-dwelling hunter-gatherer cultures living mainly around the northeastern shores of the Great Lakes and the St Lawrence River in North America in the period
c.
3200 to 1000 bc. Their subsistence economy focused on the exploitation of heavy fish runs and seal colonies, although other animals and plants were used as well. These communities had great seasonal movement, mainly living in small bands moving about within well-defined territories, but coming together at defined base camps from time to time. There are two well-defined variants of the Lake Forest Tradition: the
OLD COPPER CULTURE
and the
LAURENTIAN
.

 
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An early occupation site beside the former Willandra Lakes in the arid region of New South Wales. Surveys by J. M. Bowler in 1968 and 1969 revealed midden deposits associated with stone tools belonging to the Australian core tool and scraper tradition dating to between 23000 and 30000 years ago. Fossilized skeletal material representing three individuals was found, some of it suggesting deliberate cremation. The Willandra Lakes started to dry up about 15000 years ago and with growing aridity the area became increasingly deserted.
[Sum.: J. M. R. Bowler , R. Jones and A. G. Thorne , 1970, Pleistocene human remains from Australia: a living site and human cremation from Lake Mungo, western New South Wales.
World Archaeology
, 2(1), 39–60]

 
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A settlement which was originally built on dry land at the edge of a lake or on a island, but which was subsequently inundated by rising water levels. Such settlements are found in many parts of the world at different times, but the most famous are undoubtedly those found in Switzerland and northern Italy, also known as
PILE DWELLINGS
.

 
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Type of late Bronze Age straight-sided bronze sword with a flat mid-section and rectangular hilt-tang found in southern Britain in the 12th and 11th centuries
bc
(Penard Phase). Local indigenous copies of the Rosnoën swords made in northern France.

 
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Major Lowland Maya site situated at 180m above sea level on an upland area between the Río Bravo escarpment and the Río Azul. The site was first explored by Sir Eric Thompson in 1938 but only rarely studied between that time and 1992, when a major new survey and investigation programme began under the direction of Norman Hammond .
The focus of the site occupies an area some 680m by 250m and is dominated by the Great Plaza. At
c.
165m by 120m this plaza is one of the largest public spaces built by the Maya. It is dominated by four large temple pyramids, the highest of which rises 24m above the plaza floor. To the south are two reservoirs, and beyond them a second group of buildings comprising three open plazas and a series of open courtyards. There are also two ball-courts, an acropolis, and a royal residence.
Eighteen stelae are known at La Milpa, most of them set on the eastern side of the Great Plaza in front of the pyramids. They were erected over a period of nearly four centuries between ad 406 and 780, possibly longer. In Contact Period times,
c.
ad 1500–1650, some of these monuments may have been moved by pilgrims who also deposited incense-burners in front of some of them.
Around the ceremonial core of the site there is extensive evidence of occupation with perhaps as many as 130 courtyards. Small-scale excavations suggest a sequence of occupation from late Pre-Classic times through to the Post-Classic.
[Rep.: G. Tourtellot III, A. Clarke , and N. Hammond , 1993, Mapping La Milpa: a Maya city in northwestern Belize.
Antiquity
, 67, 96–108]

 
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