Concise Oxford Dictionary of Archaeology (778 page)

BOOK: Concise Oxford Dictionary of Archaeology
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W

 

WAC
[Ab].
Wace , Alan John Bayard
(1879–1957)
[Bi].
British archaeologist specializing in prehistoric Greece. He studied at Pembroke College, Cambridge, before becoming a Craven Student in 1903 and librarian at the British School in Rome two years later. After holding a fellowship at Pembroke College and a lectureship in ancient history and archaeology at St Andrews, he was appointed Director of the British School in Athens in 1914, a post he held until 1923. In 1924 he became deputy keeper in the Department of Textiles in London's Victoria and Albert Museum before returning to Cambridge in 1934 to become Laurence Professor of Classical Archaeology. Retiring early from Cambridge in 1944, he was appointed Professor of Classics and Archaeology in the University of Alexandria, a post he occupied until 1952. During his archaeological career he directed excavations at a number of sites in Greece, notably Loconia and Mycenae. At the time of his death he was working on material he had excavated outside the acropolis walls at Mycenae.
[Obit.:
The Times
, 11 November 1957].
Wadjet (Edjo/Uto)
[Di].
Egyptian goddess of Lower Egypt, depicted as a cobra, or as a woman wearing the Red Crown of Lower Egypt, or as a cobra with the wings of a vulture. Her shrine was the House of Flame and her city Dep in the Delta. Equivalent to the Greek Buto.
wagon burial
[MC].
A kind of aristocratic burial characteristic of the central European
HALLSTATT CULTURE
, in which individuals were buried with a four-wheeled funeral wagon under a tumulus. Excavated examples include the Hohmichele tomb beside the upper Danube, and the Vix burial beside the upper Seine. The tradition of vehicle burial continues into the
LA TÈNE
Iron Age, the four-wheeled wagon being superseded by the two-wheeled chariot or cart burial. In both variants the vehicle is sometimes intact, but most frequently dismantled before being placed in the grave. The horse teams, occasionally buried with the vehicle, are more commonly indicated only by the presence of harness and bridle fittings. Some wagon graves are richly furnished with personal items, weapons, and feasting equipment and provisions.
Wairau Bar, South Island, New Zealand
[Si].
MAORI
cemetery in the northern part of South Island investigated by Sir Roger Duff in the early 1940s. Dated to the 11th–12th centuries
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, Wairau Bar has yielded one of the richest artefact assemblages from any ancient site in New Zealand. About 26 burials were found, singly or in groups, many furnished with grave goods that included adzes, necklaces, fish-hooks, and moa eggs. The style of the artefacts suggests links with parts of eastern Polynesia.
[Sum.: R. Duff , 1950, Moas and man.
Antiquity
, 24, 72–83]
waisted axe
[Ar].
Neolithic axehead (generally of flint or stone) typical of the later Neolithic in northern Europe with a generally triangular outline but having concave long sides so that the central part is narrower than either the butt or the blade.
BOOK: Concise Oxford Dictionary of Archaeology
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