Concise Oxford Dictionary of Archaeology (72 page)

See
BLACK-BURNISHED WARE
.

 
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Before Christ, meaning the pre-Christian era in the Gregorian calendar, running backwards from the year 1 bc as the year before the calculated, and back-projected, year in which Christ was believed to have been born. The term is widely used in western societies in modern times, but when applied to prehistory it is simply the back-projection of a relatively recent chronological system which cannot have had any meaning to ancient people. The use of lower-case initials is often taken to indicate that the date has been calculated from a radiocarbon determination by subtracting 1950 from the radiocarbon age (sometimes expressed as RCYBC—Radiocarbon Years Before Christ). Although common in literature of the 1960s through to the 1980s, such a date is fundamentally wrong because radiocarbon years are not the same as calendar years and thus such calculations have been made without subtracting like from like. The use of upper-case letters conventionally denotes a
CALIBRATED RADIOCARBON AGE
in calendar years or, exceptionally, a historically determined age in calendar years. The alternative term BCE, meaning Before the Christian Era, is increasingly popular.

 
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Style of decorated middle Neolithic pottery found in western parts of Scotland and classified by Stuart Piggott into three groups: unornamented bag-shaped bowls (A); decorated carinated bowls with a rim diameter less than the diameter at the carination and incised or channelled ornament (B); and small bowls with panel ornament in fine whipped cord (C).

 
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General term for the place where a fire was deliberately lit to give some kind of warning or predetermined message to others, usually by smoke during the day and flames by night. Beacons are generally situated in prominent positions and are usually part of a group, chain, or line that allows the essential message to be spread over a wide area relatively quickly. Most were used to warn of the approach of hostile forces, and during periods of general unrest and the threat of war some beacons became well-established structures with temporary accommodation for those tending them. Roman, medieval, and post-medieval examples are known in northern Europe. See also
SIGNAL STATION
.

 
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A rim in the form of a small, rounded moulding, in section at least two-thirds of a circle. It was often used on bowls, dishes, and jars.

 
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1
Generally, a ceramic or metal drinking vessel of suitable size and shape to hold in the hands. The precise type is normally specified by reference to form or fabric, thus
BUTT BEAKER
,
ROUGH-CAST BEAKER
, etc.
2
Specifically, a kind of late Neolithic and early Bronze Age ceramic vessel characteristic of the
BEAKER CULTURE
. First defined by Lord
ABERCROMBY
in the early 20th century
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, beaker pottery, also known as drinking cups by earlier scholars, is distinctive in its range of shapes and style of decoration. Three main forms are recognized—the bell beaker, the short-necked beaker, and the long-necked beaker—each with numerous variations.
Bell beakers are often decorated with twisted cord impressions across the whole outer surface and these are known as all-over-corded beakers (AOC beakers). Where the outer surface of a beaker is covered in decoration, whether corded or using comb-impressed motifs, they are referred to as all-over-ornamented (AOO) beakers. Some beakers have a single looped handle making a mug. In some cases the impressed decoration was inlaid with a white paste which, against the traditional red fabric of beaker ware, makes the decoration look all the more impressive. Beaker pottery is found from northern Scotland to North Africa and from western Spain across to western Russia. It is particularly common in the Low Countries and northern France, and a good case has been made for its development out of local protruding foot beaker wares in the lower Rhine valley during the later 3rd millennium
bc
.
There has been much debate about the topological development of beaker styles and the role of regional traditions in the evolution of the forms. In general, bell beakers appear to be the earliest and the most widely distributed common form, especially AOC types. They are sometimes known as maritime beakers, reflecting something of the distribution itself and the means of transportation by which the ideas behind their manufacture spread. In the traditional chrono-topological sequence, short-necked forms follow the bell beakers, with the long-necked forms following still later. However, through studies of the British material, Humphrey Case suggested in 1993 that these rather crude stereotypes masked a series of three rather more broadly definable ‘styles’ which were in fact used contemporaneously in different regions. In this model each area has its own trajectory of topological development but within the overall limits of its chosen style.