A Dictionary of Archaeology

REGRESSION ANALYSIS 495

are more likely to be abandoned in the localities where they were used in temporary hunter-gatherer sites than in larger and more sedentary ones, where the disposal of waste material was much more highly organized’. Nevertheless it has proved difficult to validate even very general cross-cultural observations about refuse disposal.

W. Rathje: ‘The Garbage Project: a new way of looking at the problems of archaeology’, Archaeology 27 (1974), 236–41; M.B. Schiffer: Behavioral archaeology (New York, 1976); L.R. Binford: ‘Behavioral archaeology and the “Pompeii premise”’, JAR 37/3 (1981), 195–208; G. Hammond and N. Hammond: ‘Child’s play: a distorting factor in archaeological distribution’, AA (1981), 634–6; B. Hayden, and A. Cannon: ‘The corporate group as an archaeological unit’, JAA 1 (1982), 132–58; L.R. Binford: In pursuit of the past (London, 1983); M.B. Schiffer:

Formation processes of the archaeological record

(Albuquerque, 1987); B.G. Trigger: A history of archaeological thought (Cambridge, 1989).

IS

regression analysis Techniques for examining the relationship between two (or more) continuous VARIABLES, each measured on a set of

objects from the archaeological record. The simplest linear regression, seeks the best straightline relationship between two variables, and studies the differences (known as residuals) between the ideal and actual data. The extent to which the relationship can be described as a straight line (i.e. that one variable can be exactly predicted from the other) is measured by the correlation coefficient, which can vary from –1 for an exact negative relationship through 0 for no linear relationship to +1 for an exact positive relationship. The term correlation is also used more generally (but wrongly) to mean association (see CONTINGENCY TABLE). More complex types of regression are curvilinear regression (more complicated relationships between two variables) and multiple regression (relationship between one ‘dependent’ variable and several ‘independent’ ones).

Case-study: regression analysis and the distribution of Roman pottery. Regression has been used to good effect in SPATIAL ANALYSIS; for instance, Fulford and Hodder (1974) used regression analysis to study the distribution of late Roman pottery from the north Oxfordshire kilns. They calculated the

Percentage of Oxford Pottery

100		A	B

20

50

10

20																						PotteryOxford
10																						of
5																						Percentage

1								0
0		50		100		150 miles		0		50		100		150 miles

Figure 44 regression analysis Graphs showing (A) best-fit linear regression line for the decrease in Oxford pottery with increasing distance from the kilns ( the dotted line shows the decrease in New Forest Pottery away from the New Forest kilns); (B) decrease in Oxford pottery away from the kilns (filled circles indicate sites which may have been reached using water transport; open circles indicate sites not easily reached by water). Source: M.G. Fulford and I.R. Hodder: ‘A regression analysis of some late Romano-British fine pottery: a case study’, Oxoniensia 39 (1974), figs 1 and 3.

496 REGRESSION ANALYSIS

proportions of this ware at contemporary sites in southern England, and plotted them against the distances of the sites from the kilns (Fig. 44A). Although, as expected, the proportion decreased as distance from the kilns increased, this pattern was not followed consistently, and there was much unexplained variation.

However, when the sites were divided into two groups – those with easy access by water from the kilns, and those without – the position became much clearer. Each group could be fitted closely by its own regression line, the two lines differing greatly. The sites with access by water had a very shallow regression line, showing that the proportion of the ware decreased only slowly with distance from the kilns, while the other sites had a much steeper regression line, with the proportion decreasing much faster with distance from the kilns (Fig. 44B).

Although this study could be criticized because

(i) the proportions were based on counts of sherds, and (ii) the sites were not necessarily exactly contemporary, so chronological differences may have entered the picture, it clearly shows two distinct groups of sites, and suggests a reasonable interpretation of the difference between them – that the main form of transport of this ware was by water.

M.G. Fulford and I.R. Hodder: ‘A regression analysis of some late Romano-British fine pottery: a case study’, Oxoniensia 39 (1974), 26–33; J.E. Doran and F.R. Hodson:

Mathematics and computers in archaeology (Edinburgh, 1975), 61–5; C.R. Orton: Mathematics in archaeology

(Glasgow, 1980), 116–24; S. Shennan: Quantifying archaeology (Edinburgh, 1988), 114–89; M. Fletcher and G.R. Lock: Digging numbers (Oxford, 1991), 103–14.

CO

Remigia Rockshelter and cave site with one of the most striking concentrations of SPANISH LEVANTINE ROCK ART, in the Gasulla ravine, in Castellón, Spain. The figures, mainly of archers, vary from about 0.05 m to 0.5 m tall, and are painted in red and occasionally black. There are also animals such as deer, boars and goats (including herds of animals as well as single examples); other depictions have been interpreted as beehives, spiders etc. The most famous ‘scene’ at Remigia seems to show an execution: archers wave their bows above their heads as their victim lies in front of them, pierced with up to ten arrows.

A. Beltrán: Rock art of the Spanish Levant (Cambridge, 1982).

RJA

Reshnoe see SEIMA-TURBINO

residues Term used to describe material surviving on the surfaces of artefacts. For example, residues of such organic substances as blood, hair, bone or cartilage on butchery tools may be identified and characterized (and, more recently, subjected to DNA ANALYSIS). Useful evidence survives only in a small number of depositional conditions and environments. Blood residues, for instance, tend to survive primarily in such protected areas of artefacts as step fractures at the edge of undetached stone flakes.

J. Eisele: Survival and detection of blood residues on stone tools (Reno, 1994); R. Fullagar, J. Furby and B. Hardy: ‘Residues on stone artefacts: state of a scientific art’, Antiquity 70 (1996), 740–4; N. Tuross, I. Barnes and R. Potts: ‘Protein identification of blood residues on experimental stone tools’, JAS 23 (1996), 289–96.

IS

resistivity survey Technique of nondestructive prospection which was first developed by Schlumberger in 1912, as a means of oil exploration. It relies on the principle that different deposits beneath the ground offer different resistance to the passage of an electric current, depending largely on the amount of water present. A damp pit will offer less resistance than the surrounding soil, while a brick wall will present more resistance. Unusual types of material give anomalous readings that can be plotted in terms of their depth and location.

If the soil conditions are right, and agricultural practice and modern digging has not confused the area too much, resistivity surveys can be an efficient way of locating major structural features across an extensive archaeological site. A typical resistivity survey comprises a linear array of copper rods laid out at regular intervals, with a source of electricity and a meter to measure the resistance at various depths. The resistance is measured along a number of different depths, thus being shown graphically as a set of lines showing the fluctuations in resistance at various depths. Because resistivity surveys measure relative values, they are more effective in some conditions than others. In very wet soils, for example, it may be difficult to distinguish features that reduce resistivity. Resistivity surveys are often used to plan excavation strategies, or to generate a sketch map of major features in the immediate vicinity of an excavation. They may be used in conjunction with another principal geophysical surveying technique, the MAGNETIC SURVEY. The technique has been used at many sites throughout the world (see, for instance, the work of Ian Mathieson at the ancient Egyptian sites of el-

Amarna, Memphis and Saqqara: Mathieson 1984; Mathieson and Tavares 1993).

C. Carr: Handbook on soil resistivity surveying: interpretation of data from earthen archaeological sites (Evaston, 1982); I. Mathieson: ‘A resistivity survey at el-Amarna’, Amarna Reports I, ed. B.J. Kemp (London, 1984), 99–123;

–––– and A. Tavares: ‘Preliminary report of the National Museums of Scotland Saqqara Survey Project, 1990–91’, JEA 79 (1993), 17–31.

IS

Rhapta The principal harbour of ancient Azania (East Africa), which is documented in an Alexandrine Greek text of the 1st century AD (The Periplus of the Erythraean Sea). The archaeological site of Rhapta has not yet been located, despite searches along the Tanzanian and Kenyan shores and estuaries (cf. the roughly contemporaneous port of HAFUN). Rhapta’s exports were ivory, tortoise-shell, rhino-horn and pearly shells; the shipping was largely in South Arabian hands but connected with both India and Roman Egypt.

L. Casson: The Periplus Maris Erythraei: text with introduction, translation and commentary (Princeton, 1989).

JS

Rhohri industry Palaeolithic stone tool industry identified from the Rhohri hills located to the east of the Indus River near Sukkar in Sind Province, Pakistan. Numerous chert nodules are still visible on the hill tops and in 1975 a brief survey conducted by Bridget Allchin, Andrew Goudie and Karunarkara Hegde resulted in the identification of numerous lithic production sites, dating from the Middle Palaeolithic, Upper Palaeolithic and INDUS CIVILIZATION. These surface sites were dated according to typological variation in lithic forms; no absolute dates are available. The Middle Palaeolithic artefacts include scrapers, cleavers, chopping tools, flakes, blades and cores, while those from the Upper Palaeolithic sites are characterized by higher frequencies of blades and blade cores. The Indus period sites provide evidence for largescale blade production at discrete working floors or activity areas.

B. Allchin, A. Goudie and K. Hegde: The prehistory and palaeogeography of the Great Indian Desert (London, 1978), 273–94.

CS

Rillaton Round barrow in Cornwall, England, which yielded the Rillaton gold cup – perhaps the single most famous object produced by the ‘WESSEX CULTURE’. The piece is made of corrugated sheet

RIWAT 497

gold and has a single riveted handle. It is related in design to a series of small cups made out of gold, silver, amber and shale which have been recovered from roughly contemporary Early Bronze Age contexts across Western Europe. Joan Taylor (in D.V. Clarke et al. 1985) suggests that the piece may even have been made in the same workshop as the plainer gold cup from Fritzdorf, Germany; the similarities between these finely crafted objects highlights the emergence of a series of regional but connected elites, choosing to define themselves by their possession of supra-regional ‘prestige objects’.

A.F. Harding: The Mycenaeans and Europe (London, 1984), 108; D.V. Clarke et al.: Symbols of power at the time of Stonehenge (Edinburgh, 1985), 115–19, 191–2, ill. 4.44.

RJA

Rimah, Tell el- Site in Mesopotamia dating from the Old Assyrian to the Middle Assyrian period (c.1726–1206 BC) which was excavated by David Oates in the 1960s in order to gain better understanding of events in Assyria in the early 2nd millennium BC. The site included a temple and ziggurat complex which were in use throughout most of the 2nd millennium. These buildings were initially axial and symmetrical, with the use of sophisticated vaulting and decoration comprising half-columns and niches.

D. Oates: ‘The excavations at Tell al-Rimah, 1964, 1965, 1966’, Iraq 27–9 (1965–7); S.M. Dalley, C.B.F. Walker and J.D. Hawkins: The Old Babylonian tablets from Tell elRimah (London, 1976); S.M. Dalley: Mari and Karana: two Old Babylonian cities (London, 1984).

IS

Río Bec/Chenes Regional architectural styles of the Classic period LOWLAND MAYA (c.AD 300–900), found in the area of the Yucatán peninsula just north of Petén, Guatemala. Both styles feature elaborate mosaic façades similar to the PUUC style, but Río Bec is distinguished by the use of false-terraced pyramid towers, while the closely related Chenes style has monster-mask doorways.

D.F. Potter: ‘Prehispanic architecture and sculpture in central Yucatán’, AA 41/4 (1976), 430–48; P. Gendrop: ‘Dragon-mouth entrances: zoomorphic portals in the architecture of central Yucatan’, Third Palenque Round Table 1978, Part 2, ed. M.G. Robertson (Austin, 1980), 138–50.

PRI

Riwat Palaeolithic site (Site 55) in the SOAN Valley, southeast of Rawalpindi, Pakistan, which has been thermoluminescence dated to a minimum

498 RIWAT

age of 45,000 BP. Along with numerous quartzite flakes, blades and cores, the remains at the site include a linear boulder alignment, a stone-lined pit, and possible post-holes. It has been interpreted as a lithic procurement site or hide processing location.

R.W. Dennell, H.M. Rendell, M. Halim and E. Moth: ‘A 45,000-year-old open-air Palaeolithic site at Riwat, Northern Pakistan’, JFA 19 (1992), 17–33.

CS

robust A statistical technique is said to be robust if it performs well even when the MODEL on which it is based does not hold for the DATA being considered. For example, although Wenban-Smith’s

use of DISCRIMINANT ANALYSIS at BOXGROVE was

based on assumptions about the VARIABLES which did not hold in practice, it performed well and gave useful results. Discriminant analysis can be said to be robust in this respect. Robustness is a desirable property, but difficult to study because there are many different ways in which data can depart from a model.

CO

Rocca San Silvestro Situated in a hill overlooking the coastal plain of western Tuscany near the town of Campiglia Marittima, Rocca San Silvestro is a remarkably well-preserved 11thto 13th-century mining village. The greater part of the village was excavated between 1984 and 1993, and a systematic survey was made of mines in its environs. The excavations revealed a highly controlled feudal operation, managed for the Pisans by a local family occupying the small rocca (fortified tower). A romanesque church with a compact graveyard containing hundreds of burials was situated beside a piazza on the north side of the rocca. Well-built, two-floor dwellings gathered within the walls, around the contours on the east side of the hill. The communal olive press was found at the northern extent of the dwellings. Copper, lead and bronze were worked on the western side of the hill, each within its own enclosure. Silver for coinage was extracted here too. Iron, by contrast, was worked in a forge immediately outside the south gate of the village. Twenty-metre-deep shafts for the extraction of the minerals were excavated in the valley below. By AD 1350 the large village had been deserted, as the Pisans sought new, richer mineral sources in Sardinia.

R. Francovich: Rocca San Silvestro (Rome, 1992).

RH

Roc de Combe Sited on a tributary of the Dordogne, the cave/shelter of Roc de Combe is probably the only known site with reliable interstratification of CHÂTELPERRONIAN and AURIGNACIAN deposits. In a sequence from the

MOUSTERIAN through to GRAVETTIAN/Upper

Périgordian, the basal layer dating to the Upper Palaeolithic (layer 10) is fragmentary, but layers 9 and 7 are clearly Early Aurignacian, while layer 8 is clearly Châtelperronian. Given the now prevailing view that the Châtelperronian was the indigenous product of NEANDERTHALS, whereas the Aurignacian is intrusive, this site gives conclu-

sive evidence that ANATOMICALLY MODERN

HUMANS and Neanderthals coexisted in Western Europe for some time. Unfortunately, it is difficult to tell exactly how long this coexistence lasted.

PG-B

Roc de Sers Upper Palaeolithic rockshelter in Charente, France, in which blocks of carved limestone depicting animals such as ibex, horses and bison (0.30–0.70 m tall) were found during the 1920s. The most famous block depicts two ibexes facing each other, their body outlines and curved horns boldly delineated in deep relief. Like the reliefs at the comparable site of ANGLES-SUR- L’ANGLIN the sculptures were originally painted; unlike the works found at that site, they were carved on blocks already detached from the cave wall, and were apparently set up to run as a single decorated frieze around the walls of the shelter. The Solutrean archaeological material found in the cave suggests that the sculptures may date from some time after 20,000 BC.

H. Martin: La frise sculptée et l’atelier solutréen du Roc de Sers (Paris, 1928); H. Delporte: ‘La frise sculptée du Roc de Sers’, DA 131 (1988), 38–9.

RJA

Rollright Stones Middle to Late Neolithic monument near Chipping Norton, England, which consists of a stone circle (the King’s Men), an earlier portal dolmen (the Whispering Knights) and a monolith (the King Stone). The King’s Men are the remnants of what was possibly a continuous and almost perfectly round (33 ± 1 m) lightly embanked stone circle with a portal entrance to the southeast.

G. Lambrick: The Rollright Stones (London, 1988).

RJA

Romanelli Vast cave on the Mediterranean coast, c.15 km from Otrante in southern Italy, which

has given its name to a distinctive late Upper Palaeolithic industry of c.10,000 BC. This industry, which is stratified over an earlier but meagre MOUSTERIAN or Upper Palaeolithic cultural layer, comprises points and burins similar to the GRAVETTIAN/Upper Périgordian tradition but scrapers and microburins that parallel later industries such as the AZILIAN. The Romanellian industry, often described as ‘EpiGravettian’, is associated at Romanelli with concentrations of wall engravings and engraved art mobilier.

RJA

rongorongo Undeciphered Easter Island script, which some have interpreted as a copy of European writing, but using indigenous symbols, whereas others have seen it as an indigenous mnemonic device connected with rituals.

A. Metraux: Ethnology of Easter Island (Honolulu, 1940); P. McCoy: ‘Easter Island’, The prehistory of Polynesia, ed. J. Jennings (Canberra, 1979), 135–66.

CG

Rose Cottage Cave MSA (Middle Stone Age) cave site in the Orange Free State, South Africa, located a few kilometres east of Ladybrand. First excavated between 1943 and 1946 by B.D. Malan, the 7 m deep succession of deposits has been a matter of controversy for most of the intervening time. New excavations and reassessment of Malan’s records and material by L. Wadley have done much to clarify the situation. The succession commences with a pre-HOWIESON’S POORT expression of the MSA, followed by classic Howieson’s Poort, possibly divisible for the first time into two or three phases, followed by a variant MSA persisting to between 27,000 and 20,000 uncal BP, and anticipating, in its later stages, the ensuing Robberg industry (13,360–9250 uncal BP). The succession concludes with Oakhurst/Albany levels (9250–8380 uncal BP) and typical WILTON material. Associated charcoals indicate a shift from grass and heathland in the Late Pleistocene to grass, scrub and woodland in the Holocene.

L. Wadley and P. Harper: ‘Rose Cottage Cave revisited: Malan’s Middle Stone Age collection’, SAAB 44 (1989), 23–32; ––––: ‘Rose Cottage Cave: background and a preliminary report on the recent excavations’, SAAB 46 (1991), 125–30.

RI

Rosetta Stone Black granitic stele (British Museum EA24), which derives its name from the village of el-Rashid in the Egyptian Delta, where it

ROUFFIGNAC 499

was found in 1799. It was inscribed with the same text written three times over in different scripts (hieroglyphics, demotic and Greek), thus providing Jean-François Champollion with the key to the decipherment of Egyptian hieroglyphs. The text itself was actually a decree issued at Memphis and dated to 27 March, 196 BC, the anniversary of Ptolemy V Epiphanes’ coronation.

C.A. Andrews: The Rosetta Stone (London, 1981); S. Quirke and C.A. Andrews: The Rosetta Stone: a facsimile drawing (London, 1988).

IS

Rössen Early Neolithic culture of central and southern Germany characterized by dark, highly polished pottery, some plain and some decorated with geometric motifs such as diamonds or zigzags, and a stone industry including shoe-last celts and disc bracelets. This stone industry is closely related to the earlier LINEARBANDKERAMIK culture, the first farming culture of the region. Rössen material succeeds the LBK, and may be partially contemporaneous with the Stichbandkeramik (SBK see

STROKE-ORNAMENTED WARE), another LBK

development, in south-west Germany. It persists longer than the SBK, and so is also a contemporary of early Michelsberg (the principal ‘middle Neolithic’ culture of the region). A notable difference between the Rössen and the LBK in most areas is the layout of the houses: the LBK houses are long rectangular/trapezoidal whereas Rössen examples have a less regular shape and tend to be squarish. At the late Rössen settlement of Berry-au-Bac, for example, a (probably defensive) ditch and inner palisade mark out an area of 2–3 ha, within which stand four timber buildings, the largest of which is 20 m long by 10 m wide, with deep postholes and foundation trenches. At a few Rössen sites in Germany, however, the longhouses are of a notably long, trapezoidal shape that is much more closely related to earlier LBK forms.

RJA

Rouffignac Deep cave apparently embellished with Magdalenian engravings and black-outline drawings, situated near Les Eyzies, France. Unusually, the cave is dominated by representations of mammoth (c.150) and there are no deer or oxen; it also has a unique frieze of large rhinoceros. The authenticity of some, or even all, of the works of art has been questioned; Barrière’s wellillustrated but uncritical account was denounced in the editorial of Antiquity cited below, which usefully summarizes the arguments.

500 ROUFFIGNAC

C. Barrière: L’art parietal de Rouffignac (Paris, 1982); Editorial of Antiquity 58 (1984), 167–8.

RJA

Royal Domain (ch’i, chi) Geographical area under the direct control of the kings of Chou, in the feudal-like administrative set-up which was established in China in WESTERN CHOU times (1122–771 BC; see CHINA 2). The exact nature and extent of the Royal Domain is a matter for debate: some rather fanciful views allege that the vast size of the ‘royal domain’, as compared to the ‘princely states’, arose towards the close of the EASTERN CHOU era (771–255 BC) and in the early centuries of Western HAN (206 BC–AD 24). These views still tend to temper most reconstructions of the past (see Creel 1970: 363–6), despite the increasing array of relevant archaeological evidence (see

CHINA 3).

H.G. Creel: The origins of statecraft in China (Chicago, 1970), 363–6; Ch’en ch’uan-fang: Chou-yuan yü Chou- wen-hua [Chou-yüan and the culture of Chou] (Shanghai, 1988).

NB

Rudna Glava Copper mine of the 5th millennium BC in northeast Serbia. Rudna Glava is the most intensively investigated early mining site in the central Balkans – 30 or so shafts have been excavated – and the site has helped to prove the autonomy and scale of copper metallurgy in the region. The ore (malachite and azurite) was extracted from horizontal and vertical shafts (up to 20 m deep) using antler picks and stone pounds to break up deposits which may already have been weakened by fire-heating and sudden dowsing with water. The mines have only been dated indirectly

by their association with ˇ ware (Vincˇa D).

VINCA

The site was also worked, as an iron ore mine, in the Roman period.

B. Jovanovic: ‘The origins of copper mining in Europe’, SA 242/5 (1980), 114–20; M. Gimbutas: ‘Copper mining in Old Europe, 5000–4000 BC, Quarterly Review of Archaeology 4/1 (March 1983), 2.

RJA

‘Ruins of Yin’ (Yinxu) see AN-YANG

Rusahinili see URARTU

Rusinga Island on the eastern (Kenyan) side of Lake Victoria, where remains dating from some 15 to 20 million years ago, have been excavated. Rusinga is a relic of a collapsed Miocene volcano, and, together with other sites with volcanic deposits of this period, it has yielded valuable and varied fossils of early African fauna. Especially important for the study of the evolution of higher primates is the anthropoid-ape ‘Proconsul ’ skull, discovered at Rusinga by Louis and Mary Leakey in 1948. Proconsul is now generally regarded as a member of the Dryopithecine group, represented in both Asia and Africa.

S. Cole: The prehistory of East Africa (New York, 1963), 87–8.

JS

Russell Cave Multi-component prehistoric site in northeastern Alabama along the western edge of the Tennessee River valley. Archaeological investigations conducted during the 1950s and 1960s revealed seven stratigraphic zones. The bottom three strata contained cultural material dating from the Early to Late Archaic periods. Three radiocarbon dates calibrated between 4030 and 4360 BC were associated with a Middle Archaic ‘Morrow Mountain’ component (the Morrow Mountain phase (c.5300–3500 BC), identified by distinctive stemmed projectile points, was first defined at sites in the North Carolina piedmont). Late Archaic artefacts resembling those found at the well-known Tennessee River shell middens were found above the Middle Archaic stratum. The upper four strata contained ceramic and lithic artefacts dating to the

WOODLAND and MISSISSIPPIAN periods.

J. Griffin: Investigations at Russell Cave. (Washington, D.C., 1974); J. Walthall: Prehistoric Indians of the Southeast: achaeology of Alabama and the Middle South

(Tuscaloosa, 1980).

RJE

Ruichangshi see JUI-CH’ANG-SHIH

S

Sabaeans see ARABIA, PRE-ISLAMIC

Sab Champa One of two moated sites in central Thailand to exhibit a substantial prehistoric occupation prior to the development of the DVARAVATI CULTURE. Excavations have uncovered prehistoric inhumations associated with pottery vessels and with the moulds used for bronze casting.

M. Veerapan: ‘The excavation of Sab Champa’, Early South East Asia, ed. R.B. Smith and W. Watson (Oxford 1979), 337–41.

CH

Sabrières de Libreville see AFRICA 5.3

Sabz, Tepe Neolithic settlement site in the Kuzistan region of southwestern Iran that has given its name to the Sabz phase, dating to the late 6th millennium BC. The earliest Sabz assemblages show great continuity with the preceding Muhammad Jaffar phase, in terms of the ceramics and microlithic tools, as well as the remains of plastered mud-brick houses, built on stone foundations (with the addition, in the Sabz phase, of party-walls made of tauf). The painted buff Sabz ware is closely related to the Susiana A–D ceramic sequence defined at Neolithic SUSA. It has been suggested that the scale of flax production at Tepe Sabz may be an indication of the introduction of irrigation (Hole et al. 1965).

F. Hole, K.V. Flannery and J. Neely: ‘Early agriculture and animal husbandry in Deh Luran, Iran’, CA 6 (1965), 105–6; F. Hole and K.V. Flannery: ‘The prehistory of southwestern Iran: a preliminary report’, PPS 33 (1967), 147–206.

IS

sacbe (Mayan: ‘white road’) Mayan term for a causeway, perhaps ceremonial, constructed of stone and rubble and paved with plaster, traversing often rough terrain to join two sites or architectural complexes within a site. At the Classic Maya site of Coba (in the northeastern Yucatan peninsula), for

example, at least ten sacbeob crisscross the site centre and extend out to satellite sites within Coba’s orbit. One of these, joining Coba to Yaxuna (south of CHICHÉN ITZÁ) is 100 km long; one leading to Ixil is 20 km in length.

W.J. Folan, E.R. Kintz and L.A. Fletcher: Coba: a Classic Maya metropolis (New York, 1983).

PRI

saff tomb Arabic term (meaning ‘row’) which is used to describe an unusual type of ancient Egyptian royal rock-tomb, fronted by a court lined on three sides with rows of pillars, built in the elTarif area of western Thebes during the 1st Intermediate Period (c.2150–2040 BC). A number of private saff-tombs have also been excavated at

ARMANT and DENDERA.

D. Arnold: Gräber des Alten und Mittleren Reiches in ElTarif (Mainz, 1976).

IS

Saharan rock art ‘Rock art’ (engravings and paintings on rock surfaces such as boulders, cliff faces and rock-shelter walls) is distributed across the whole of North Africa (see AFRICA 1), from western Mauretania to the Nile Valley, and from the Atlas mountains to the Ennedi hills of Chad, with another concentration further south in the mountains of Ethiopia. It is in the upland regions that Saharan rock art has been found: the Tassili-n- Ajjer/Hoggar region in southern Algeria (the Tassili covering the northern half of the upland massif, the Hoggar covering the southern half, see map 1) and its offshoot the Tadrart Acacus in western Libya. Other major sites include Adrar des Iforas (across the Mali/Algeria border), Air (in Niger), Tibesti and Ennedi (in Chad) and JEBEL UWEINAT (on the borders of Libya, Egypt and Sudan). There is also rock art in the lower-lying Fezzan area.

Several tens of thousands of paintings and engravings have now been registered, even though many regions are still poorly explored. Although many 19th-century European explorers reported

502 SAHARAN ROCK ART

seeing rock paintings and drawings in their travels across the Sahara, the first systematic studies by archaeologists were those of G.-B.-M. Flamand (1921) and Raymond Vaufrey (1939) in the western desert, and Leo Frobenius (1937) and Paolo Graziosi (1937; 1939; 1942) in the eastern desert. These studies indicated a broad chronological division between an earlier style (showing game and stock such as cattle), which is assumed to be prehistoric in date, and a later style (with scenes of horses, chariots and camels) which is presumed to reflect contact between the Saharan population and peoples such as the Egyptians, although no absolute dating evidence was available for either.

In the 1950s and 1960s, efforts were made by Henri Lhote (1958; 1965) and F. Mori (1965) to refine and date the development of the art. Developmental stages in the material were established by detailed typological studies, based on analyses of style and technique augmented by inferences from patina, overlay, and archaeological and historical correlations, and occupation deposits in decorated caves or rock shelters were excavated for material for radiocarbon dates: the latter could at least indicate a general date for the paintings by association or, better still, date them from the occurrence in the occupation deposits of objects decorated in the same style, or even pieces of the rock art that had flaked off the walls into the deposits.

These studies indicated five main styles/periods:

(1) Big Game, with incised pictographs of animals such as elephant, buffalo, crocodile, hippopotamus, giraffe and rhinoceros, a savannah fauna indicating a period of much greater moisture in the Sahara than today; (2) Round Heads – paintings of roundheaded humans; (3) Pastoral or Cattle – paintings and engravings of humans herding cattle; (4) Equid

– incised and painted scenes with horses; and (5) Camel – incised and painted scenes with camels. Radiocarbon dates in the Libyan Tadrart Acacus indicated dates of c.7000 uncal BP for the Round Head style and c.5000 uncal BP for the Pastoral style (Mori 1965). The Big Game motifs were variously regarded as Palaeolithic or Mesolithic in date. The Horse and Camel styles also included depictions of chariots and other motifs indicating contact with the Egyptian and classical civilizations.

The validity of these typological sequences, however, is now very doubtful. Muzzolini, in particular, has argued in a series of studies, firstly, that the Big Game motifs (also termed ‘Bubaline’) form a style or school of designs, not an initial phase of rock art, secondly that they were in fact contemporary with the Pastoral or Cattle motif along with many of the

‘Round Head’ paintings, and thirdly, that the main corpus of early rock art in general was contemporary with the transition from hunting to herding in the Sahara (Muzzolini 1986, 1990, 1991, 1993). The most recent radiocarbon dates indicate that cattle and sheep herding had appeared in the Sahara by 5000 or 5500 BC. The Equid and Camel motifs are certainly late in the rock art tradition, but again there are many indications of contemporaneity, and there is general agreement that most of them probably date from about 1500 BC onwards, reflecting contact between the Saharan peoples with Egypt and later also with the Phoenicians and Greeks (Muzzolini 1982a, 1982b).

Detailed studies of the Fezzan material by Le Quellec (1987) support Muzzolini’s arguments for regional diversity and stylistic mixing after about 4000 BC, rather than a long sequence of widespread styles beginning much earlier in the Holocene. In the Adrar des Ifroras in Mali, too, the Big Game and Pastoral motifs appear to be more or less contemporary, separated from a later set of pictographs indicative of horse and camel herding (Dupuy 1989, 1990). Dupuy (1992) links the two groups of material respectively with the ancestral peoples of present-day Fulani pastoralists and Tuareg conquerors.

The period of the transition from hunting to herding in the Sahara was characterized by significant climatic fluctuations, with increasing aridity over time. Rather than seeing the rock art as literal representations of hunting or herding, as before, therefore, Le Quellec (1987), Smith (1993) and Muzzolini (1995) have suggested that most of it is probably best understood in terms of the changing ideologies of Saharan peoples at a time of major transformations in life-styles in response to environmental change. They draw parallels with the role of rock art (both the art of making it, and the completed ‘text’) in the complex ideologies of the Kalahari San (Lewis-Williams 1981, 1982, 1983), in which it operates as encoded messages in activities such as initiation rites. Smith suggests that the animals drawn acted as metaphorical intermediaries between humans and the spirit world, interpreted by specialist SHAMANS. The analysis of the Saharan rock art in such terms promises to yield considerable insights into the social and cognitive transformations experienced by societies as they changed from hunting to herding. ACCELERATOR MASS SPECTROMETRY dating applied to pigments also offers the hope of considerable refinements in the chronology of the art.

G.-B.-M. Flamand: Les pierres écrites (Paris, 1921); L. Frobenius: Ekade Ektab: die Felsbilder Fezzans (Leipzig,

1937); P. Graziosi: ‘Preistoria del Fezzan’, Reale Società Geografica Italiana (1937), 243–74; ––––: L’Arte rupestre della Libia (Naples, 1939); R. Vaufrey: L’art rupestre NordAfricain (Paris, 1939); P. Graziosi: L’arte rupestre della Sahara Libico (Florence, 1942); H. Lhote: A la découverte des fresques du Tassili (Paris, 1958); ––––: ‘L’évolution de la faune dans les gravures et les peintures rupestres du Sahara et ses relations avec l’évolution climatique’,

Miscelánea an Homenaje al Abate Henri Breuil, 1877–1961

(Barcelona, 1965), 83–118; F. Mori: Tadart Acacus (Turin, 1965); J.D. Lewis-Williams; Believing and seeing: symbolic meanings in southern San rock art (London, 1981); ––––:

‘The economic and social context of southern San rock art’, CA 23 (1982), 476; A. Muzzolini: ‘Les climats Sahariens durant I’Holocene et la fin du Pleistocene’, TLAPEPMO (1982a), 1–38; ––––: ‘La ‘periode des chars’ au Sahara: I’hypothèse de l’origine égyptienne du cheval et du char’, Les chars préhistoriques du Sahara, ed. G. Camps and M. Gast (Aix en Provence, 1982b), 45–56; J.D. Lewis-Williams: The rock art of southern Africa

(Cambridge, 1983); A. Muzzolini: L’art rupestre préhistorique des massifs centraux Sahariens (Oxford, 1986); J.-L. Le Quellec: L’art rupestre du Fezzan septentrional (Libye); Widyan Zreda et Tarut (Wadi esh-Shati)

(Oxford, 1987); C. Dupuy: ‘Les gravures naturalistes de l’Adrar des Iforas (Mali) dans le contexte de l’art rupestre saharien’, TLAPEPMO 9 (1989), 151–74; ––––:

‘Réalization et perception des gravures rupestres stylisées de l’Adrar des Iforas (Mali)’ TLAPEPMO 10 (1990), 93–109; A. Muzzolini: ‘The sheep in Saharan rock art’, Rock Art Research 7 (1990), 93–109; ––––: ‘Proposals for up-dating the rock-drawing sequence of the Acacus’, LS 22 (1991), 7–30; C. Dupuy: ‘Trois milles ans d’histoire pastorale au sud du Sahara’, Préhistoire et Anthropologie Méditerranée 1 (1992), 105–26; A. Muzzolini: ‘The emergence of a food-producing economy in the Sahara’, The archaeology of Africa, ed. T. Shaw et al. (London, 1993), 227–39; A.B. Smith: ‘New approaches to Saharan rock art of the ‘Bovidian period’, Environmental change and human culture in the Nile basin and northeast Africa, ed. L. Krzyzaniak et al. (Poznan, 1993), 77–90; A. Muzzolini: Les images rupestres du Sahara (Toulouse, 1995).

GB

Sahul see OCEANIA

Sa Huynh Prehistoric urnfield cemetery in coastal Vietnam, discovered in 1909. Excavations led to the recovery of 120 large lidded jars, disposed in groups, which contained cremated human remains. Numerous other such sites have been found, all concentrated in the coastal tract of central and southern Vietnam (e.g. Tam My, where the cremated bones of the dead were placed in large lidded jars, and the grave goods included iron spearheads, knives and sickles, as well as bronzes). Calibrated radiocarbon dates fall within the second

SAINT-MICHEL-DU-TOUCH 503

half of the 1st millennium BC, and the grave goods include iron spearheads, knives and sickles as well as bronze spearheads and bells and exotic stone jewellery. Double animal-headed stone pendants from this area are paralleled in DONG SON, Philippine and central Thai contexts. The mortuary ritual is so unlike any other in prehistoric Southeast Asia that there is a serious case for considering the Sa Huynh culture as intrusive. The sites are located in the same region as the later CHAM polities, and could well have been ancestral to the Austronesian-speaking Chams themselves.

W.G. Solheim II: ‘Sa-Huynh related pottery in Southeast Asia’, Asian Perspectives 3 (1959), 177–88; Trinh Can and Pham Van Kinh: ‘Excavation of the urnfield of Tam My’ Khao Co Hoc 23 (1977), 49–57 [in Vietnamese].

CH

Saikachido see OTSUKA

St Césaire see NEANDERTHALS

St Gall Abbey Abbey in Switzerland which was the first monastic site to be planned in detail. The plan comprised a schematic red-ink drawing composed of five separate pieces amounting to an overall size of 0.77 × 1.12 m., which is now in the Stiftsbibliothek (Ms. 1092) of the Abbey of St Gall. This drawing depicts the plan of a monastery at c.AD 820, and a dedication indicates that it was a specific building project made at the request of the Abbot Gozbert of St Gall.

The plan has been the subject of much debate because Walter Horn proposed that it was a paradigm for all early medieval monasteries (Horn and Born 1979); Jacobsen 1992). It depicts a medieval monastic lay-out, showing an abbey-church with an attached cloister, surrounded by a variety of service and other buildings. Excavations at St Gall indicate that the plan was never realized, whereas excavations at nearby Mittelzell, Reichenau suggest that the draughtsman was using local architectural ideas already developed there (Zettler 1990).

W. Horn and E. Born: The Plan of St Gall (Berkeley, 1979); W. Jacobsen: Der Klosterplan von St Gallen und Die Karolingische Architektur (Berlin, 1992); A. Zettler: ‘Der St Galler Klosterplan: Überlegungen zuseiner Herkunft und Entstehung’, Charlemagne’s heir, new perspectives on the reign of Louis the Pious (814–840), ed. P. Godman and R. Collins (Oxford, 1990), 655–90.

RH

Saint-Michel-du-Touch Settlement site in the suburbs of Toulouse, Haute-Garonne, south

504 SAINT-MICHEL-DU-TOUCH

France, of the Middle Neolothic CHASSÉEN complex. A palisade and a series of deep ditches mark off the promontory on which the site is located, and may form part of an interrupted ditch system. Like other Chasséen sites in the region (e.g. VILLENEUVE-TOLOSANE), the structural remains of the interior of Saint-Michel-du-Touch are dominated by multiple cobble structures, which were originally assumed to be hut bases but may represent large food-processing or cooking hearths. There are also pits and graves, most notably a double burial within a massive rectangular pit (7.4 m × 4 m) filled with cobbles and with pottery. The pottery includes two decorated VASE SUPPORTS (a pottery type diagnostic of the Chasséen complex), decorated with ladder and elongated triangle motifs. The honey-coloured flint and the obsidian blade found in the grave are also typical of the French Middle Neolithic, for it was in this period that trade or exchange systems first developed extensively and ‘exotic’ materials were introduced. The site was probably in use for over a millennium, perhaps between 4900 and 3200 BC.

G. Simmonnet: ‘Le village chasséen de Saint-Michel-du- Touch à Toulouse’, IXe Congrès UISPP (Nice, 1976), 16–34.

RJA

Sais (Sa el-Hagar) Town-site in the Egyptian western Delta, dating principally to the 8th–6th centuries BC, when it was the provincial capital of the 5th nome of Lower Egypt and the seat of the 24thand 26th-dynasty rulers. The remains of the tell have been largely destroyed by local farmers removing archaeological deposits for use as agricultural fertilizer, and there appear to be no surviving remains earlier than the 11th century BC.

B. Porter and R. Moss: Topographical bibliography of ancient Egyptian hieroglyphic texts, reliefs and paintings IV (1934), 46–9; L. Habachi: ‘Sais and its monuments’, ASAE 42 (1942), 369–416; R. el-Sayed: Documents relatifs à Saïs et ses divinités (Cairo, 1975).

IS

Sai Yok Rockshelter in Kanchanaburi Province, central Thailand, which was the first site in this area to exhibit a flaked stone industry resembling the HOABINHIAN material from northern Vietnam. Subsequent research in the area has expanded the number of such sites; no radiocarbon dates have been reported from this site.

H.R. van Heekeren and E. Knuth: Archaeological excavations in Thailand I: Sai Yok’ (Copenhagen, 1967).

CH

Sakitama Inariyama Keyhole-shaped mounded tomb in Saitama prefecture, Japan, which contained one of the few datable inscriptions from the Kofun period (see JAPAN 4). A sword was shown by X-ray analysis to bear an inscription of 115 Chinese characters referring to a date of AD 471 or 531, commemorating the service of a regional chief to the central YAMATO authority. (See figure 25.)

W. Anazawa and J. Manome: ‘Two inscribed swords from Japanese tumuli: discoveries and research on finds from the ‘Sakitama-Inariyama and Eta-Funayama tumuli’, Windows on the Japanese past, ed. R. Pearson, K. Hutterer and G.L. Barnes (Ann Arbor, 1986), 375–96.

SK

Salado Late prehistoric culture in the American Southwest, primarily in southeastern Arizona and southern New Mexico. The geographical range and temporal span (c.AD 1280–1500) are defined by the occurrence of Roosevelt Red Ware ceramics (including Pinto, Gila and Tonto polychrome); associated cultural characteristics include adobe and rock-adobe construction of PUEBLOS, PLATFORM MOUNDS and walled compounds.

There are three models with which the Salado can be interpreted. The first and oldest model regards it as a distinct culture formed late in prehistory either by the merging of ANASAZI and MOGOLLON elements or by a specialized adaptation of the HOHOKAM. The second interprets Salado not as a culture but as a multi-ethnic phenomenon resulting from the demographic upheaval of the abandonment of the Colorado Plateau, rapid population increase in the central Arizona mountains, and expansion out of Chihuahua into southern New Mexico and Arizona. The Lake Roosevelt/Tonto Basin region, considered to be the Salado heartland in the first model, reflects the multi-ethnic use of the area. Ethnic co-residence during Salado times is to be seen in the mixture of architectural conventions: cliff dwellings with rectangular and T-shaped doors; rambling checkerboard-style, cobbled masonry pueblos; platform mounds; and walled compounds. The third model interprets the weak unity of Salado as indicative of a cult or ideological system, cross-cutting different ethnic groups.

B.A. Nelson and S.A. LeBlanc: Short-term sedentism in the American Southwest (Albuquerque, 1986); P.L. Crown:

Ceramics and ideology (Albuquerque, 1994).

JJR

Saliagos On this tiny Greek island, a Neolithic settlement has yielded some of the earliest radio-