Concise Oxford Dictionary of Archaeology (597 page)

Local name found in East Anglia, England, for mounds of burnt clay, ash, and broken ceramic materials resulting from coastal salt production during later prehistoric and Roman times. See
SALTERN
.

 
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The dispersal of trade goods from a central place throughout a society, a complex process that was a critical part of the evolution of civilization.

 
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See
PAVILAND CAVE
.

 
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Type of pottery produced in south Asia in the early 1st millennium
ad
characterized by a red or orange slip that is burnished to produce a glossy surface. Such wares are found along coastal regions of northwest India as well as inland further south. They have sometimes been confused with imported Roman ceramics, but the forms are very different.

 
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A fabric in which the iron oxide in the clay is in a low state of oxidation. It is produced when the final stages of heating and cooling are carried out without oxygen, which is removed from the solid compounds, resulting in a grey or black colour. Pottery can be partly reduced (indicated by colour differences between the surface and the core of the fabric) or unevenly reduced (indicated by colour differences on the surface of a vessel).

 
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The general principle that complicated phenomena can be explained by conceptually reducing them to a set of simple variables. This is often linked to essentialist or socio-biological approaches.

 
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