Concise Oxford Dictionary of Archaeology (619 page)

 
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Pottery decoration consisting of small particles of dried clay or gritty material dusted over the surface of a vessel, generally under a slip coating.

 
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Product of the first stage in the production of a flint or stone axe where a block of raw material has been selected and crudely shaped by removing unwanted peripheral material. At this stage the suitability of the raw material for the intended finished product can be seen fairly clearly and the piece was discarded if deemed to be unusable. Some blocks break during the roughing-out process as natural flaws reveal themselves. Selected rough-outs can be taken on to the next stage of fine flaking, grinding, and polishing, as appropriate, this work usually being carried out away from the main quarry sites associated with working areas where the roughing-out is done.

 
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Incised decoration made by a toothed wheel or roller (roulette) applied while the vessel is turning on the potter's wheel.

 
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An embanked univallate enclosure with an external ditch and a single entrance. Inside are buildings and structures representing a single farmstead or small hamlet belonging to an agricultural community. They are similar to the raths and
RINGFORTS
of western Britain and Ireland, although the term ‘round’ generally only applies to examples in Devon and Cornwall in the southwest of England. Rounds generally date to the later 1st millennium
bc
and continue to be built and used through to the mid 1st millennium
ad
.

 
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Probably the most widespread and numerous class of archaeological monument in Europe, and found in other parts of the world too. At the most basic a round barrow is simply a roughly hemispherical mound of soil, stone, and redeposited bedrock heaped over a central burial. Depending on the nature of the bedrock, such mounds may be predominantly stone (cairns) or earth. The basic pattern is elaborated by the range of constructional features and devices. Some examples have a surrounding ditch which acted both to delimit the monument and as a quarry for material with which to make the mound. Kerbs are found round some mounds, while others have a gap or berm between the mound and the surrounding ditch. Compositionally some mounds are carefully made with alternating layers of turf, soil, and stone forming successive envelopes, and in a few cases there are concentric rings of posts set in the original ground surface and giving structure to the mound. Stones are used instead of posts in some western areas of the British Isles. The central burial may be an inhumation, usually in a pit or cist, or a cremation either in a pit or contained within an urn or jar. As well as a central primary burial, many round barrows contain satellite burials added during the construction of the barrow mound. Secondary burials are often added to the mound, in some cases many centuries later.
The simplest round barrows are generally referred to as bowl barrows because of their shape, variations and more complicated forms being termed
FANCY BARROWS
. In the British Isles the majority of round barrows are of Bronze Age date, but the tradition as a whole begins in the early Neolithic around 4000 bc and continues intermittently until late in the 1st millennium
bc
.

 
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