A Dictionary of Archaeology

Portugal, as well as later traditions in various regions around the world (see below). In the case of the British tradition, both the size of the stones and the diameter of the ring vary enormously, from the massive AVEBURY (330 m diameter) to small examples such as Little Meg in Cumbria (5 m diameter). A few examples have more than one ring of stones, arranged internally (the great circle at Avebury contains two smaller stone circles), concentrically (Oddendale, Westmoreland) or adjacently (The Hurlers, Cornwall). Other megalithic features often augment the circle, for example outlying standing stones or occasionally processional avenues of stones or a CURSUS. Circles are often associated with other types of ritual monument, for example they may form part of a massive HENGE construction (Avebury), or be associated with cairns or burials. Occasionally the megaliths are not free-standing: at Lough Gur (Ireland) they line the inner perimeter of a wide bank. Sometimes stone circles form the subsidiary part of a construction, for example the huge round burial mound of NEWGRANGE is edged with a circle of megaliths.

The stone circles of the British Isles often seem to contain within them astronomical sight-lines and markers. This seems highly probable in the case of the midwinter-midsummer solstice alignment at STONEHENGE, whereby a key alignment in the design of the whole circle centres on an easily observable astonomical event of great symbolic significance. However, as even a small stone circle can create a large number of possible sight-lines to an equally large number of conceivably significant astronomical events, alignments must often be proven statistically (i.e. it must be shown that they are highly unlikely to have occurred by chance). Heggie (1981) describes the problems involved in such proofs, and concludes that few stone circles in Britain have yet been shown to contain deliberate alignments.

Outside Britain, the most notable examples of free-standing rings of megaliths are the contemporary monuments of the CARNAC REGION of Brittany and the Evora region of Portugal. Traditions of stone-circle building occur sporadically outside Europe in later periods. For example, West Africa contains some fine multiple circles of standing stones dating perhaps from 200 BC until as late as AD 1000: the monuments at Sine-Ngayene in Senegal apparently mark collective graves of up to 60 individuals. The Bouar region of the Central African Republic also contains prehistoric megalithic structures (see AFRICA 5.3). Stone circles are associated with the early megalithic cemeteries of the Jordan Valley (e.g. the 12 stone circles beside the

STONEHENGE 545

tombs of Ala-Safat may have been used to cremate bodies before interment). Stone cairns enclosed by large boulders are quite common in peninsular India, covering pit or urn or sarcophagus burials – often the circle is the only remaining visible element, giving the misleading impression of a freestanding monument. Similarly, the Hokkaido region of Japan exhibits circular cairns of stones with occasional orthostats that can appear rather like stone circles. All these examples, however, seem much more closely related to commemorating the dead than is the earlier European tradition.

A. Thom, A.S. Thom and A. Burl: Megalithic rings, BAR BS 81 (Oxford, 1980); D.C. Heggie: Megalithic science

(London, 1981); R. Bradley: The social foundations of prehistoric Britain (London, 1984); R. Joussaume: Dolmens for the dead: megalith building throughout the world (London, 1984); C. Ruggles: Megalithic astronomy, BAR BS 123 (Oxford, 1984); J. Barnatt: Stone circles of Britain, 2 vols, BAR BS 215 (Oxford, 1989); A. Ghosh: An encyclopedia of Indian archaeology 2 vols, (New Delhi, 1989); C. Malone: Avebury (London, 1989).

RJA

Stonehenge Neolithic and Bronze Age HENGE monument and ceremonial complex on Salisbury Plain, Wiltshire, England. The monument visible today represents a complex series of construction phases, beginning with a relatively simple henge monument in the later 4th millennium BC (c.3200 BC), known as Stonehenge I. This consisted of a circular ditch and bank about 90 m in diameter with a single entrance; two standing stones were placed to mark the entrance to the henge, with a larger stone, now known as the ‘Heel stone’, some metres outside the entrance. Four stones, the ‘Station Stones’, were carefully set up inside the perimeter of the henge as if to mark the four corners of a rectangle (the dating of the Station Stones to the first main construction phase is not quite secure).

The entrance and design axis of this first monument is roughly, but deliberately, aligned on the point of the horizon above which the sun rises at the midsummer solstice. The rectangle formed by the Station Stones lies about this axis (as do later elements of the monument, notably the massive trilithon horseshoe). It also seems possible that the Heel stone was deliberately placed slightly offcentre of the sunrise axis so that, for observers watching the sun rise in the weeks leading up to the solstice, it acted as a marker of a sacred period within which festivities could take place. Less convincingly, some prehistorians have claimed that 56 pits about 1m deep which were dug around

546 STONEHENGE

the inner circumference in the earliest phase of the monument (the so-called ‘Aubrey Holes’), were used as part of an elaborate calculation of lunar events. This and other claims for the existence of sophisticated solar and lunar astronomical alignments in Stonehenge are critically examined by Heggie (1981), who offers a bibliography of the extensive literature.

About 900 years after this first phase, during Stonehenge II, the entrance to the monument was widened in the first of many reconstructions; the new entrance was aligned much more precisely on the rising of the sun in midsummer (a feature still obvious to visitors on that day). A formal ditch and bank avenue was constructed leading away from the monument; this was lengthened many centuries later, and can still be easily traced in parts. The famous ‘bluestones’, weighing up to 4 tonnes, may have been imported to the site from the Prescelly Mountains in southwest Wales, although some authorities believe that they may have been moved to the locality naturally by glacial action. Abandoned postholes suggest that these stones were first intended to form a double circle/horseshoe arrangement on their own in the centre of the henge. When this idea was discontinued in favour of a much more ambitious plan involving the huge sarsen trilithons that dominate the site today, there seem to have been a succession of attempts to make use of the bluestones before they were integrated (not entirely happily) into the design as it now exists.

During the most impressive phase of construction (Stonehenge III), perhaps a century or so later at the end of the 3rd millennium BC, large sarsen blocks weighing up to about 50 tonnes were brought to the site from perhaps 20–30 km away. Carefully dressed using stone pounders into smooth regular uprights and lintels, the sarsens were erected to form a complete lintelled circle, surrounding five more massive free-standing trilithons (and it is the latter that dominate the modern visitor’s first impressions of the site). Mortice and tenon joints were used to secure the lintels to the uprights; this technique, perhaps adapted from woodworking, suggests that while Stonehenge is quite unique as a stone circle in its use of trilithons and extensive stone dressing, it may have been closely related to contemporary wooden structures. Some centuries later, the bluestones were rearranged around the trilithon centrepiece.

In the final phase (IV), the avenue was lengthened to a total of 2.5 km in a direction quite different to that of its original construction. This final construction, dated to about 1100 BC, brought to a close

the complex constructional history of what appears today to be a single monument. It is increasingly realized that the monument itself forms the centrepiece to a complex ritual landscape. This was particularly so during the early Bronze Age when the rich WESSEX CULTURE burials in the locality included that of BUSH BARROW.

R.J.C. Atkinson et al.: Excavations at Dorchester, Oxon (Oxford, 1951); R.J.C. Atkinson: Stonehenge and neighbouring monuments (London, 1978); ––––: Stonehenge

(London, 1979); D.C. Heggie: Megalithic science (London, 1981), 145–52, 195–205; C. Chippindale: Stonehenge complete (London, 1983); J. Richards: ‘The development of the neolithic landscape in the environs of Stonehenge’,

Neolithic studies: a review of some current research, ed. R. Bradley and J. Gardiner (Oxford, 1984), 177–87; D.V. Clarke et al.: Symbols of power at the time of Stonehenge

(Edinburgh, 1985), 71–80.

RJA

Stone to Metal Age (SMA) see AFRICA 5.3

strain see MULTIDIMENSIONAL SCALING

(MDSCAL)

Strathalan Cave B Stone Age cave-site situated at 1340 m above sea level in the eastern Cape foothills of the Drakensberg Mountains, South Africa. It was occupied just prior to the Last Glacial Maximum (at around 23,000 uncal BP) and just prior to an environmental shift to colder and drier conditions. Stone artefacts are of MSA (Middle Stone Age) technology with an important flakeblade component. The site is remarkable for well-preserved grass and food-plant remains in patches on three sides of a large elongate hearth. Food remains include geophytes, and these and the general patterning of the occupation are strongly reminiscent of LSA (Late Stone Age) sites in the Holocene.

H. Opperman and B. Heydenrych: ‘A 22,000 year-old Middle Stone Age camp site with plant food remains from the north-eastern Cape’, SAAB 45 (1990), 93–9.

RI

Strettweg Earlier Iron Age (i.e. HALLSTATT period) barrow near Graz in Austria which in 1851 yielded a remarkable model ‘cult wagon’ in bronze. Other grave goods, which include a large bronze urn and iron spear-heads, suggest that the barrow was constructed in the first half of the 6th century BC, but the wagon may be a century or so older. The four-wheeled wagon (48 × 32.5 cm; ht. 22.6 cm) has an open-work platform pierced with a wheel design,

on top of which is the giant figure of a nude but belted woman wearing ear-rings who supports a large shallow basin on her head. On the wagon in front of this figure is a tableaux of smaller figures, in which a woman with ear-rings and man with an axe, flanked by two horsemen wearing pointed helmets, stand behind two further attendants who lead a deer by its antlers; the same tableaux is repeated behind the giant figure. The wagon is usually interpreted as depicting a religious procession, and may itself have been used as part of the associated rituals. The style of the figures seems to be related to that of the Greek GEOMETRIC bronzes.

W. Modrijan: Der Kultwagen von Strettweg (1977), 91ff; W. Kramer: ‘Strettweg’, Trésors des princes celtes, ed. J.-P. Mohen et al., exh. cat. (Paris, 1987), 60–1.

RJA

strip method, stripping see OPEN-AREA

EXCAVATION

Stroke-ornamented ware (Stichbandkeramik) Early to Middle Neolithic ceramic tradition in central Europe (Bohemia, south and central Germany, western Poland), characterized by rounded and pear-shaped vessels ornamented with short strokes/stabs or indentations within defined zones. The style dates to the early 5th millennium BC and is a successor to the LINEARBANDKERAMIK (LBK) culture, the first farming culture of much of temparate Europe, which by contrast produced pottery decorated with continuous lines. In strokeornamented ware, the strokes are typically used to form either horizontal borders, between which zigzag patterns run, or repeated bands of triangular motifs. The settlement pattern and architecture is quite similar to the LBK (some of the longhouses take on a more trapezoidal shape), and the little evidence available suggests the economy and burial rites (Zápatocká 1981) remained fundamentally the same. The lithic technology is a development of LBK technology, and includes shafthole adzes and hammer-axes.

M. Zápatocká: ‘Bi-ritual cemetery of the Stroked-pottery culture at Miskovice, district of Kutna Hora’, Nouvelles archéologiques dans la république socialiste tchèque, ed. J. Hrala (Prague, 1981), 26–31.

RJA

Stroked-pottery culture Iron Age culture which spread over central and northern Belarus and southeast Lithuania from about the 7th to the 1st century BC, with a ceramic tradition characterized by flat-bottomed pots decorated using strokes.

STRUCTURALISM 547

Settlements, usually located on top of morainic hills or on high river terraces, were at first unfortified, but from the 4th and 3rd centuries BC tended to be enclosed within turf walls and timber fences. Still later, in the 3rd–1st centuries BC, the fortifications were elaborated to include outer ramparts and one or several inner walls. Within the walls, in flattened areas, were longhouses (20–25 sq. m) built of wooden posts and consisting of several square rooms.

The central area of the forts was reserved for animal corrals and workshops. Numerous storage pits contained pottery, slag, animal bones and charred grains. Domesticates comprise 55–56% of the faunal remains (cattle, followed by pig, horse and sheep/goat); wild animals included boar, elk, red deer and brown bear. Finds of loom weights indicate the importance of weaving (wool, flax). Crops included Italian millet, wheats, pulses and lentils; stone querns are common finds at the sites. Iron implements were numerous, and included sickles, axes, arrowand spearheads, daggers, awls, needles and fishhooks; ornaments such as iron pins, bronze brooches, plaques, rings and bracelets are also known. At a number of sites, blacksmith’s shops have been recognised from the presence of furnaces, lumps of smelted iron and blacksmith’s instruments such as hammers, anvils and tongs; local bog-ores were the main source of iron. However, some metal objects (e.g. brooches) are of Scandinavian origin, while various goods from the later periods reveal contacts with the LA TÈNE sites in Central Europe and with Greek colonies on the Black Sea.

V.F. Isaenko et al.: Ocˇerki po arheologii Belorussii [Essays on the Archaeology of Belarus] (Minsk, 1970); A.G.

Mitrofanov: ˇ

Zeleznyi vek srednei Belorussii, VII–VI vv.do n.e.–VI v.n.e. [The Iron Age of central Belarus, 7th–6th centuries BC – 6th century AD] (Minsk, 1978).

PD

structural history see ANNALES

structuralism Structuralism is an approach to complex products of human culture such as language, literature, myth and decoration, that seeks to explain their superficial form by identifying and analysing more fundamental underlying structures and structural relationships. During the 1950s and 1960s, structuralism became a leading method of enquiry in linguistics, literature, sociology and anthropology – and influenced many other fields. Its effect on archaeology, in the sense of explicitly structuralist analyses of archaeological material, has been quite limited and lies mainly in

548 STRUCTURALISM

the field of prehistoric art, decoration, and analysis of the design of monuments and settlements (see below). In part, this may be because structuralism evolved as a science of the spoken and written word: neither of these rich sets of data is accessible in prehistoric archaeology. However, the concepts, language and assumptions of structuralist approaches in linguistics and anthropology have had a pervasive effect on the discipline, and both structuralist and POST-STRUCTURALIST approaches (the reaction against, and development of, structuralist thought) have heavily influenced

CONTEXTUAL ARCHAEOLOGY and other recent

theoretical approaches to archaeology. Structuralism – unlike, for example, MARXISM –

is really a label given to a number of similar approaches rather than the name of a closely defined theoretical or academic programme. Most authorities agree, however, that the structuralist approach originated in the work of the founder of modern linguistics, Ferdinand de Saussure (1857–1913). In his teachings (published posthumously as The course in general linguistics), Saussure identified an underlying structure in language that can be summarized as ‘a system of differences’. In Saussure’s structural linguistics, the important analysis was no longer the history of, and relationships between, individual alphabets, or syllables, or words, or grammars. Instead, he focused on how these ways of communicating gained meaning through the systems of contrast embedded within them. In describing his thoughts about language structure, Saussure himself often paired up key concepts. For example, he talked about the ‘synchronic’ study of language (the study of language at one moment in time) and the less fundamental ‘diachronic’ study of change in language through time. Another of Saussure’s dual concepts identified the significant or signifier (i.e. the thing that signifies, which in language may be a particular sound) and the signifié or the signified (the original concept in the mind of the speaker; for further discussion see SIGN AND SYMBOL). Together, the signifier and the signified comprise a sign which – usually by convention alone, rather than any essential link – relates to a referent or object in the outside world. The study of the nature and use of signs developed into a sub-discipline from the late 1950s, known as semiotics.

Fundamental to Saussure’s idea of language as a system are the syntagmatic and asociative (or paradigmatic) – concepts which describe the relationship between words. For example, in the sentence ‘I will dig now’, the relationship between ‘I’ ‘will’ ‘dig’ and ‘now’ in building up the meaning of the sentence is syntagmatic. By contrast, if we relate this sentence

to another sentence, ‘You must think first’, the relationship between the ‘I’ and the ‘You’ in both sentences is paradigmatic, as is the relationship between each of the other words (‘now’ and ‘first’ etc.). Using these and other concepts, all centred on the belief that elements within language only gain meaning through their relationship with other elements, Saussure founded the modern conception of language as a complex interdependent system. Indeed, structuralism has some similarities to SYSTEMS THEORY as an approach to understanding complex cultural constructs.

Saussure’s approach was hugely elaborated in succeeding decades, notably by Leonard Bloomfield, who developed a range of techniques for objectively analysing sentence structure. From the late 1950s, this developed structuralist approach was challenged by the work of Noam Chomsky who, while working from Saussurian structuralist principles, developed the idea of a ‘surface’ and a ‘deep’ grammatical structure. According to Chomsky, whose approach is often labelled as the ‘transformational grammar’ approach, language is governed by generative grammar. At the heart of Chomsky’s work is an attempt to discover the universal rules that govern the production of structure in all human languages, and which must be related to the fundamental nature of the human mind. The investigation of universal laws of cognition within the field of prehistory forms one strand of

COGNITIVE ARCHAEOLOGY.

The ideas developed in linguistics profoundly influenced the way researchers in other fields approached complex cultural products. For archaeologists, one of the most influential conduits was the work of the French anthropologist Claude Lévi-Strauss, who took the fundamental idea of a hidden structure beneath a cultural construct dependent for its form on contrasts, and used this approach to explore the ways that, for example, myths, eating habits and etiquette, and kinship structures are generated. In Lévi-Strauss’s work, the idea that meaning is constructed through using contrasting units – or ‘binary opposition’ – was elaborated. For example, in Mythologiques he described how myth is formed from, and acts as a continuing expression of, sequences of fundamental oppositions (such as death/creation, nature/ culture, maternal/paternal). Although the myth narrative sometimes acts to explain (and justify) particular social structures, the emphasis in Mythologiques is on the universal structures of meaning behind myth and – by extension – human cognition. Even so, in relating structure to social relations and to symbolic power, Lévi-Strauss

created a less formalistic, more subjective form of structuralist analysis.

The most notable early attempt to use this new strand in structuralist analysis to interpret prehistoric material was the work of André Leroi-Gourhan (e.g., 1965, 1982) whose approach relates closely to Lévi-Strauss. Leroi-Gourhan used structural concepts to examine and interpret the spatial arrangement and use of symbols in the CAVE ART of prehistoric Europe. The different animal species were accorded specific roles in a complex system of sexual symbolism, and the location in the caves of the individual works and the frequency of associations between the different animals were used to form hypotheses about the function of cave art and the nature of Palaeolithic society. The tenuous arguments justifying this complex symbolic system, and the difficulty of treating the works in any one cave as a consistently related and contemporary corpus of art, were brushed over by Leroi-Gourhan; instead, he offered detailed analyses of cave topography and statistical treatments. Leroi-Gourhan’s work, though immensely influential, was never entirely accepted by prehistorians – especially outside France.

Of later attempts, the work of Washburn (e.g., 1983) stands out as a concerted attempt to use structural analysis as a tool for interpreting archaeological material. Unlike Leroi-Gourhan’s work, Washburn’s formal structural analysis of pottery decoration remains quite close in approach to structural linguistics. That is, it tried to discover the rules (of symmetry etc) that lay behind complex pottery designs, rather than leaping from structure to underlying social meaning and complex communication. Washburn’s methodology involved close analysis of the way decoration was structured from the smallest assymetrical unit of design upwards. This kind of analysis can to some extent be tested: the rules it claims to identify governing decorative structure can be compared to new samples of pottery, and to pottery from unrelated cultures, to see if they remain useful.

The approach also seems to offer a detailed and objective way of describing and comparing decorative traditions. If decorative traditions were closely related to other aspects of culture, the structural analysis of pottery decoration seemed also to offer an objective way of measuring the cultural closeness and ‘relatedness’ of different groups. The degree to which this kind of analysis is truly ‘objective’ has been questioned by Ian Hodder (1986: 39–40), who argues that even in defining the decoration that is to be the subject of analysis a level of interpretation, or

STRUCTURALISM 549

subjectivity, is unavoidable. However, it certainly offers a more testable approach than analysis of decoration relying on subjective evaluation of the similarities of style or motif.

The main difficulty with this kind of carefully conducted FORMAL ANALYSIS lies in connecting the results to the questions that most prehistorians actually want to ask. Most prehistorians want to know how, and to what extent, any structural similarities in pottery decoration in a given culture are related to other aspects of cultural production and self-conscious ethnic identity, and can thus be taken as reliable material culture indicators of more ephemeral human activities and relationships. Most also want to know whether formal analyses can provide clues to ‘deeper’ social realities, of a kind attempted prematurely by Leroi-Gourhan.

A well-trodden route to applying structuralist analytical tools to archaeological analysis is to identify a series of inter-linked binary oppositions in a set of material culture and to use these to ‘explain’ some social dynamic within the culture under examination. Hodder (1982) provides ethnographic examples, Jameson (1987) an historical material culture example, and Shanks and Tilley (1987: 155–71) an archaeological example. This kind of analysis can be revealing in terms of identifying patterns within the material culture record, but it is difficult to verify the links between symbolic communications in different areas of material culture, and even more difficult to relate these securely to behavioural and social dynamics. The challenge of establishing such sound links is in some ways similar to establishing valid ETHNOGRAPHIC ANALOGIES. It is often dependent upon a tenacious web of similarities across different facets of culture that are not easily accessible to the archaeologist, and the process can quickly lead to circular arguments. It may be better in many circumstances to recognize that a structuralist hypothesis is simply suggestive and interesting, or to use it to bolster or elaborate evidence gained from other approaches.

N. Chomsky: Syntactic structures (The Hague, 1957); C. Lévi-Strauss: Mythologiques (Paris, 1964–72); A. LeroiGourhan: Préhistoire de l’art occidental (Paris 1965); C. Lévi-Strauss: Structural anthropology (London, 1968); F. de Saussure: Course in general linguistics (London 1978); A. Leroi-Gourhan: The dawn of European art (Cambridge, 1982); I. Hodder: Symbols in action (Cambridge, 1982); ——, ed.: Symbolic and structural archaeology (Cambridge, 1982); D. Washburn: Structure and cognition in art

(Cambridge 1983); I. Hodder: ‘Burials, houses, women and men in the European Neolithic’, Ideology, power and prehistory, ed. D. Miller and C. Tilley (Cambridge, 1984);

––––: ‘Structuralist archaeology’, Reading the past (Cambridge, 1987), 34–54; R. Jameson: ‘Purity and power

550 STRUCTURALISM

at the Victorian dinner party’, The archaeology of contextual meanings, ed. I. Hodder (Cambridge 1987), 55–66; M. Shanks and C. Tilley: Re-Constructing archaeology

(Cambridge, 1987); I. Hodder: Theory and practice in archaeology (London 1992), 24–80.

RJA

stupa Stone-faced cylindrical Buddhist structure with a hemispherical dome enclosing earthen and rubble fill and a relic casket. Stupas were constructed to enshrine the cremated remains of Buddha and his disciples as well as Mahavira, the founder of the JAIN faith, gradually coming to symbolize the teachings of these two indigenous Indian religious traditions. The earliest surviving stupas date to the reign of the MAURYAN emperor Asoka (273–232 BC). Worship involves the circumnambulation of the monument, and a paved path typically encircles the structure.

D. Mitra: Buddhist monuments (Calcutta, 1971), 21–30; G.A. Michell: The Penguin guide to the monuments of India

(Harmondsworth, 1989), 64–6.

CS

Suberde see ACERAMIC NEOLITHIC

Sugizawadai Large Early JOMON settlement in Akita prefecture, Japan (c.5000–3500 BC). A central plaza contained four large buildings, the largest of which was over 220 sq. m in area – one of the largest Jomon buildings yet discovered. The largest building had six hearths aligned along the central axis and had been rebuilt three times; 40 smaller buildings and 100 storage pits were located around the edge of the plaza. The function of these large buildings remains contentious, possibly being community gathering places or workplaces for winter tasks in the snowy region.

Akita Prefectural Board of Education: Sugizawadai and Takei sites (Akita, 1981).

SK

Sui-chou-shih (Suizhoushi) see TSENG HOU YI

TOMB

Suizhoushi (Sui-chou-shih) see TSENG HOU YI

TOMB

Sultan, Tell es- see JERICHO

Sumbar River in the Kopet-Dag Mountains of southern Turkmenistan, a tributary of the Atrek

river, in the valley of which were located several Iron Age settlements and famous Bronze Age cemeteries. The Iron Age sites (the ‘archaic Dakhistan’) were excavated by V.M. Masson and others in the 1940s and 1950s. The sites range in age between 1500 BC and AD 700, and include four-cornered citadels, ‘manors’ and separate houses, as well as complicated irrigation works in the presently desertified region of western Turkmenistan.

Later, in the late 1960s to early 1990s, a group of Bronze Age cemeteries and settlements were found in the middle stretches of Sumbar, near the town of Kara-Qala, and studied by I.N. Khlopin. Khlopin believes that the cemeteries of Parkhai I, and Sumbar I–III belong to the Late Bronze Age, and are equivalent to the periods Namazga V–VI (see NAMAZGA, roughly 2500–1800 BC). They consist of catacomb graves with a horizontal or a vertical entrance; the dead were buried in a contracted posture. The grave goods include a grey ware, bronze arrowheads and spearheads, knives, awls, rings as well as stone mace-heads in (presumed) elite graves. The grey ware is similar to that known in northern Iran (e.g., SIALK, TEPE), however Khlopin convincingly argues for the continuity of a local tradition known as the ‘Sumbar culture’; the appearance of ‘grey ware’ is therefore simply a technological innovation in pottery-making and does not imply a cultural relationship.

I.N. Khlopin: Jugo-zapadnaja Turkmenija v epohu pozdnei bronzy (Leningrad, 1983).

PD

Sumer, Sumerian The word ‘Sumer’ is used in early CUNEIFORM texts to describe the geographical region of southern Iraq, however the term is also applied by archaeologists to the earliest civilization in this region of Mesopotamia, the formative phase of which was the UBAID period (c.5000–3800 BC). An ethnic distinction is usually made between the Semites in central Mesopotamia and the Sumerians further to the south, although in fact the material culture and social systems of these two groups are virtually identical, the only real differences being linguistic. Georges Roux therefore argues that ‘Stricto sensu, the appelation ‘Sumerians’ should be taken as meaning ‘Sumerian-speaking people’ and nothing else . . . This incidentally explains why all efforts to define and to assess the relations between Sumerians and Semites in other fields than philology are doomed to failure.’ (Roux 1992: 81).

It seems likely that the Sumerian population actually included both Sumerian and Semitic

SUMER, SUMERIAN 551

Figure 51 Sumbar Grave goods from the Sumbar cemetery. Source: I.N. Khlopin: Jugo-zapadnaja Turkmenija v epohu pozdnei bronzy (Leningrad, 1983).

linguistic/ethnic elements, although all may have shared the same Sumerian material culture, thus making them difficult to distinguish in archaeological terms – this quandary is usually described as the ‘Sumerian problem’. As Harriet Crawford (1991: 20) points out, ‘It is not possible to tell how much of this culture should be attributed to the Sumerian speakers and how much to those speaking a Semitic language, but the question hardly matters as it seems to have been the fusion of all the elements in the population which produced the distinctive [Sumerian] civilization . . .’. It is clear, however, that the term Sumerian can be comfortably applied, in a general sense, to the culture that dominated Mesopotamia for two millennia, from

the Uruk period to the end of the Early Dynastic phase (c.3800–2010 BC). During the 3rd millennium BC the great Sumerian cities, such as UR, ERIDU, KISH and NIPPUR, flourished in the region between the Tigris and Euphrates.

S.N. Kramer: The Sumerians (Chicago, 1963); T. Jones, ed.: The Sumerian problem (New York, 1969); F.R. Kraus: Sumerer und Akkader (Amsterdam, 1970); J. Oates: Babylon, 2nd edn (London, 1986), 19–23; H. Crawford: Sumer and the Sumerians (Cambridge, 1991); N. Postgate:

Early Mesopotamia: society and economy at the dawn of history (London, 1992); G. Roux: Ancient Iraq, 3rd edn (Harmondsworth, 1992), 80–4 [including discussion of the so-called Sumerian Problem].

IS

552 SUNAGAWA

Sunagawa Late Palaeolithic site in Saitama prefecture, Japan. Two locations, each containing three artefact units and one burned cobble cluster, were discovered some 10 m apart. The site was one of the first where extensive refitting of lithics was achieved, the results suggesting occupation by at least two small bands.

T. Inada: ‘The Palaeolithic age’, Recent archaeological discoveries in Japan, ed. K. Tsuboi (Paris and Tokyo, 1987), 5–23.

SK

Sunghir Upper Palaeolithic open-air site situated on the upper terrace of the river Klyaz’ma, several kilometres east of the town of Vladimir, in central Russia. The site was discovered by O.N. Bader in 1955 and investigated by him between 1956 and 1975. The stone industry is Upper Palaeolithic and includes Kostenki-style shouldered knives and Szeletian points; uncalibrated radiocarbon dates range between 26,000 and 20,000 years BP. Since 1964, several burials of

ANATOMICALLY MODERN HUMANS (AMH) have

been discovered. One of the graves contained an AMH male skeleton, 55–65 years old, interred on his back in an extended posture, with the head directed to the northeast. The rich grave-goods include two large spears (1.66 and 2.24 m) of straightened mammoth task, spearheads, javelins, and knives. There were also various ornaments: 3500 perforated beads of mammoth tusk; perforated pendants of polar fox canines; perforated pendants of schist; and bracelets of mammoth tusk.

O.N. Bader: Sungir: Verhnepaleoliticˇeskaja stojanka

[Sungir: an Upper Palaeolithic site], (Moscow, 1978).

PD

Su Nuraxi see BARUMINI

superstructure see MARXIST ARCHAEOLOGY

Sur Jangal Small prehistoric village of the 4th and 3rd millennia BC, located in the Baghnao Valley of northern Baluchistan, Pakistan. The remains of mud-brick architecture and domesticated cattle were found throughout the three phases of occupation. Artefacts include painted ceramics, with a variety of geometric and naturalistic designs, including humped cattle motifs, as well as flint and ground stone tools, clay bangles and large numbers of female terracotta figurines. The material culture at Sur Jangal shows similarities to several contemporary Baluchistan sites, such as Kechi Beg, DAMB

SADAAT and Kili Ghul Muhammad (see QUETTA).

A. Stein: ‘An archaeological tour in Waziristan and Northern Baluchistan’, MASI 37 (1929); W.A. Fairservis: ‘Archaeological surveys in the Zhob and Loralai District, West Pakistan’, APAMNH 47 (1959), 277–448

CS

Susa (Shush) City in southwestern Iran originating in the late 5th millennium BC; the surrounding alluvial plains became known as Susiana and the earliest phases of urbanization in the region are expressed in terms of the stratigraphy at Susa, consisting of three major post-UBAID phases (Susa I–III or A–C) dating to the 4th millennium BC. Susa I–II was strongly influenced by the contemporaneous URUK phase in Mesopotamia, while Susa III was characterized by a much more distinctively indigenous proto-Elamite culture.

By the 3rd millennium BC Susa became the capital of ELAM. Although the Elamite rulers were initially subject to the hegemony of the AKKADIAN and UR III rulers, they eventually became a power in their own right during the 2nd millennium BC, and many plundered Mesopotamian objects (including the Law Code of the Babylonian ruler Hammurabi) have been excavated from the palace buildings at Suva. The archaeological remains of Susa, first excavated by William Loftus in 1851–3, comprise four main areas, of which the earliest is the site of the Elamite ‘acropolis’. The other three mounds are

(1) the palace of the Achaemenid ruler Darius, incorporating an APADANA (palace reception hall) and a columned hall, (2) the ‘royal city’, and (3) the ‘city of the artisans’ which consists mainly of postAchaemenid housing.

A. Le Breton: ‘Susa, the early periods’, Iraq 19 (1957), 79–124; M.J. Stève and H. Gasche: L’acropole de Suse: nouvelles fouilles (Leiden and Paris, 1971); E. Carter: ‘The Susa sequence 3000–2000 BC’, AJA 83 (1979), 451–4; F. Vallat: Suse et l’Elam, études élamites (Paris, 1980); P.O. Harpur, J. Aruz and F. Tallon, eds: The royal city of Susa (New York, 1992).

IS

Sutkagen Dor Small fortified settlement of the INDUS CIVILIZATION located on sandstone ridges near the Makran coast, western Pakistan. The westernmost Harappan site in Pakistan, it was excavated by Auriel Stein in 1931 and George Dales in 1962. The site was enclosed within a massive stone and earth wall, with its main entrance flanked by two towers. Dales identified three phases of occupation and a bipartite spatial division of the site into ‘citadel’ and ‘lower town’ areas. Material remains from Sutkagen Dor are exclusively

SWAHILI HARBOUR TOWNS 553

Harappan, with no affinities to contemporary

SHAHI TUMP or KULLI COMPLEX traditions of the

Makran region (Besenval 1992: 27). Because of its location, the site is often interpreted as a Harappan port, the occupants of which were engaged in maritime trade, although direct evidence for such activities (e.g. seals, sealings or trade goods) has not been found (Ratnagar 1981: 48–51).

G.F. Dales: ‘Harappan outposts in the Makran Coast’, Antiquity 36 (1962), 86–92; S. Ratnagar: Encounters: the westerly trade of the Harappa Civilization (New Delhi, 1981), 48–51; R. Besenval: ‘Recent archaeological surveys in Pakistani Makran’, South Asian archaeology, 1989, ed. C. Jarrige (Madison, 1992), 25–35.

CS

Sutton Hoo The cemetery of burial mounds at Sutton Hoo (Suffolk) is presently the most systematically investigated funerary monument of the MIGRATION PERIOD. An early 7th century boatburial with an extraordinarily rich array of grave goods was excavated in 1939. In 1983–92, Martin Carver led a new programme of investigations including a rigorous evaluation of the previous excavations and a modern field strategy, involving the use of SAMPLES: the cemetery was sampled by means of the excavation of two wide, intersecting transects. The results revealed not only the character of other burial mounds, but the existence of a cemetery of ‘sand-men’, poorly preserved burials of individuals associated with the mound graves. As a result, Carver was able to trace the complex evolution of the 6thto 8th-century burial ground of the Wuffingas family.

Martin Carver, ed.: The age of Sutton Hoo (Woodbridge, 1992).

RH

Šventoji Group of 42 Neolithic sites, situated in the coastal peat-bog of Pajuris, in the mouth of the Šventoji river in Lithuania – formerly a lagoon of the Baltic Sea. The sites were discovered and excavated in the 1970s by R. Rimantiene. The earlier sites, dated by radiocarbon to calendar years 3500–2600 BC, belong to the local variant of the later phase of the NARVA tradition. The later sites belong to the so-called ‘coastal tradition’ of the CORDED WARE culture. The economy of the Narva-related sites was based mostly on hunting, fishing and foodcollecting. The occupants of the ‘coastal tradition’ sites relied predominantly on seal hunting, and six nets made of lime bast thread were discovered at Site 2B. The bones of cattle and sheep/goat were also found in limited numbers.

R. Rimantiene: Šventoji I/II, 2 vols (Vilnius, 1979–1980).

PD

Swahili harbour towns Settlements of the Swahili-speaking East African maritime civilization of the 9th–19th centuries AD, centred on the coasts of Tanzania and Kenya, and involved in trade with the lands around the Indian Ocean. Swahili is a Bantu language spoken on the coast and islands of Tanzania and Kenya, as well as in some areas to the south (Comores, Mozambique and northern Madagascar) and north (the southern Somali coast). Notable sites include Bur Gavo, GEDI, Kilwa, Manda, Mombasa and SHANGA, as well as the islands of ZANZIBAR and Pemba. There is no thorough description of Bur Gavo, the northernmost of the harbour towns, but Neville Chittick, who visited briefly in 1968, left valuable notes on, inter alia, a walled enclosure, a curious domed building and various tombs, some with pillars.

In the 9th and 10th centuries the focus of Swahili commerce was with the Persian Gulf and the Islamic heartlands of the Abbasid empire. Later, however, the overseas contacts – not only commercial but also cultural and Islamic – diversified,

				SOMALIA
				T	Bur Gavo
K E N Y A				an
				a
				Shanga
				Manda
S	ab
			aki
P				Gedi
a
n			Mombasa
g
a
n
i
T A N Z A N I A
Mtambwe Mkuu				Pemba
(Ras) Mkumbuu
Zanzibar		Unguja Ukuu
R
u
f i
j i
Ru
fiji				Mafia
			Kilwa
			Songo Mnara		N
			a
		m
	u
v
Ru
M O Z A M B I Q U E				0	200 km

Map 29 Swahili harbour towns The locations of the Swahili harbour towns.

GREAT ZIMBABWE

554 SWAHILI HARBOUR TOWNS

N mag.

S O N G O

M N A R A

0		20 m

Figure 52 Swahili harbour towns Stone buildings of the 14thand 15th-century Swahili harbour town of Songo Mnara, part of the Kilwa group complex. The mosques can be identified by their mihrâb projections in the qibla wall facing north to Mecca; the larger houses on the plan can be seen to contain interior courtyards; the small circles on the plan represent wells. Source: J.E.G. Sutton: A thousand years of East Africa (BIEA, 1990).

extending eastwards to India and indirectly to China, as well as northwards, via the Red Sea, to Egypt and the Mediterranean. The wealth of the early Swahili settlements is reflected in the stone ruins of mosques and tombs as well as rich houses and palaces. Most of the stone architecture belongs to the 14th and 15th centuries, although the tradition of stone mosques is much older. The earliest mosques, dating back to about AD 800 at Shanga, were of wood and earth construction with thatched roofs, as were houses generally. On the islands of Pemba and Zanzibar, there were several early Swahili sites. Those on Pemba included Ras Mkumbuu (probably the ‘Qanbalu’ documented in 9thand 10th-century Arab writings) and Mtambe Mkuu (where a hoard of locally minted 11th-

century silver coins was discovered). Those on Zanzibar included the early 9th-century site of Unguja Ukuu (‘old’ or ‘great Zanzibar’), with plentiful ‘SASANIAN-Islamic’ pottery. The 13thcentury remains on Tumbatu, a separate islet off the north end of Zanzibar, have yielded a connection with Yemen, perhaps foreshadowing the architectural feats of Kilwa (to the south) in the early 14th century AD.

Until the 15th century the larger Swahili harbour towns of the coast and islands thrived on the sale of African products, notably ivory and gold from Zimbabwe, to the wider world. There is a good chronological correspondence between Kilwa, the most southerly of the Swahili sultanates, and

in the gold-producing zone,