Concise Oxford Dictionary of Archaeology (725 page)

The first public TAG conference was held at Sheffield University in December 1979 following the success of two seminars held for students and staff in the universities of Sheffield and Southampton. TAG meetings aim to act as a forum in which the nature and development of archaeological theory can be discussed in a wide-ranging way. A conference has been held annually in December since 1979, its venue moving between those universities in Britain with an interest in such matters.

 
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In archaeology the term is generally applied in a wide sense to mean any kind of discourse that is abstract in nature. Less frequently it is used in a more technical sense to mean structured concepts, statements, or models that are intended to make understandable in some way a specified set of phenomena. A theory is thus a statement that accounts for causes or relationships between phenomena.

 
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Public baths developed during the imperial Roman period as very large, beautiful, and elaborate bathing, fitness, and recreation centres. Large examples were built in Rome and in all the major cities of the empire; there were even small ones in some villages. The Thermae of Caracalla at Rome cover 11ha, but there were nearly 1000 others in Rome in the latest period. In addition to the actual baths (seat rooms, hot wash-rooms, cooling-off rooms, and cold plunge baths), there were facilities for swimming sports and spectators, gymnastics and sports and games in the modern sense, massage, libraries, gardens, rest-rooms, fountains, sculpture, and exhibitions, with shops and refreshments available nearby in the colonnades on the outside of the vast building. The afternoons of Roman citizens were often spent in the thermae.

 
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In studies of stone and flint artefacts a thermal fracture is a break line or crack caused by excessive heating or cooling. Frost can penetrate cracks in the
CORTEX
, and prise off a flake or ‘pot-lid’. Frost fractures are flattish with minute cracks and a pitted surface. When flint is placed in a fire it will usually shatter, with fragments detaching themselves from the surface.

 
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A dating technique applicable to pottery and other ceramic materials. It works on the principle that all matter is constantly bombarded by cosmic rays and radiation given off from the decay of radioactive elements in the ground and in objects themselves. Minerals that are bombarded in this way by radiation build up a store of energy within their crystalline structure which is released when heated. The longer or more intense the bombardment, the more energy is stored and thus the more there is to be released. When a piece of pottery is fired, all the previously stored energy is released and the build-up starts afresh. After excavation a sherd can be heated again and its stored energy released and measured. If the level and extent of bombardment to which the pottery has been exposed while buried is known (the dose rate), or can be estimated, then the age of a sample can be calculated in terms of the time that has elapsed since it was last heated. The range of the technique is potentially unlimited, but it has an accuracy of ±5–10 per cent.

 
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See
ARCHAEOMAGNETIC DATING
.

 
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