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| Powerful kin leaders with charisma or extra-ordinary supernatural powers. Power was seldom inherited, and they served to redistribute goods and establish laws. |
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| Translated as “black islands”. An example would be the Lapita culture. |
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| A plant cultivated in New Guinea.This plant is less nutritious, more work to grow, not very productive, and rot quicker than cereal crops. They are also low in protein. |
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| “Those who have gone before”. A culture that used "agave" for a variety of purposes, such as roasting and weaving. |
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| One of the areas where Ancestral Pueblo society achieved a higher degree of complexity. This area became an important ceremonial center and linked dozens of settlements through ceremonial roadways and visual communication systems. |
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| Tree-ring dating – led to more precise dates for the Minoan and Mycenaean civilizations than those suggested by cross-dating or radiocarbon readings. |
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| A tradition that developed out of indigenous forager roots and was centered on the Four Corners area (where Utah, Arizona, Colorado, and New Mexico meet). |
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| A maize and bean farming culture in the Midwestern and southeastern U.S. dating from AD 900 to 1500. They manipulated the terrain, where inhabited river valley landscapes were changed so much to the point that fishing and hunting provided less food and energy than farming. |
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| Is now a modern province of Chile and is often referred as the poster child for people that could not manage their environment. Mysteries about the island refer toward domestication of certain foods (the sweet potato) and architecture (“Inca-like” stone work). |
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| Native to Africa and Asia and other tropical regions. Starchy. Almost black bark-like skin and white, purple or reddish flesh and come in many varieties. |
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| Domesticated in the (South) Americas and comes in two varieties. One has a golden skin with creamy white flesh and a crumbly texture. The other has a copper skin with an orange flesh that is sweet and soft. |
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| A cultural tradition occupying the Melanesia region; these peoples traded obsidian, made distinctive/locally made pottery, and were self-sufficient. |
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| Translated as “small islands”. An example would be the Yap Islands. |
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| A communal or sacred place that serves religious and social purposes in Polynesian societies. In all these languages, the word also means "cleared, free of weeds, trees, etc." It generally consists of an area of cleared land roughly rectangular. |
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| Famous for Hohokam ball courts. |
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| A room used by modern Puebloans for religious rituals. Typically square-walled and underground, and are used for spiritual ceremonies. |
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| Pueblo Bonito, New Mexico |
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| A major Ancestral Pueblo “great house” in Chaco Canyon, occupied in the 12th century AD. |
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| A religious and burial cult centered on Illinois and the eastern U.S., which flourished from 200 BC to AD 400. Elaborating Adena culture burials,the peoples had a distinctive religious ideology and used cult objects when burying their dead. |
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| Major Mississippian town and ceremonial center after AD 900 - with 26 earthen mounds. |
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| Megalithic sculptures (giant, long heads) constructed by the peoples of Easter Island (Rapanui). It is believed that people moved them by tugging on rope from both sides, making them “walk” to their locations. |
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| Paquimé (Casas Grandes), Mexico |
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| An important trading post between Mexico and the Southwest, where the Mogollon peoples occupied it. The site is recognized for its influence on trade – specifically parrot feathers (where they were sold only in one sex to prevent breeding). |
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| The indigenous Polynesian people of New Zealand.Over several centuries in isolation, the Polynesian settlers developed a unique culture with their own language, a rich mythology, distinctive crafts and performing arts – even body art (i.e. tattooing, “Tatau”). |
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| Translated as “many islands”. Historically, they were experienced sailors and used stars to navigate during the night. |
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| A highland farming culture without major population centers, small villages, little irrigation, and pit house construction with timber frames. They occupied the Paquimé trading post. |
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| An Ancestral Pueblo cultural development site that emphasized was on individual communities. There were numerous occasions when inhabitants of different communities organized large labor parties to carry out sophisticated water-control works and other communal projects. |
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| A culture dating between 500 BC and AD 400, centered on the Ohio valley and famous for its elaborate earthworks. These burial enclosures buried the most important people in long-lined tombs under burial mounds, their corpses smeared with red ocher or graphite. |
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| Major ceremonial center of the Mississippian culture, built after AD 900. The center gained political and religious importance due to its strategic placement close to the Mississippi River and near its confluence with the Missouri, in a region where northern and southern trade routes met. |
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| The art of Polynesian tattoos and traditional motifs. |
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| Decent from a common ancestor. |
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| Rights and privileges going to the firstborn (usually male). |
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| State-organized societies |
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| A large-scale society with strongly centralized government and marked social stratification. Synonymous with pre-industrial civilizations. |
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| The assumption that metallurgy, specialists, and food surpluses caused a revolution in human life and urban civilization. Developed by V. Gordon Childe. |
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| A civilization that develops irrigation for urban development, and maintains control over its population by means of controlling the supply of water. Coined by Karl Wittfogel. |
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| Coined the term “hydraulic civilization”. He developed this in order to explain the importance of irrigation, specifically for Chinese rice farmers, where water was predominately controlled through farming. |
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| Disproved Wittfogel's "hydraulic civilization" hypothesis, and concluded that irrigation comes after urban societies are developed. |
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| Used the archeology of coastal valleys in Peru to argue that warfare played a key role in state formation – where the competition of resources fueled aggressive tensions between neighboring villages, and civilization developed through accumulated warfare success and geo-occupational growth. |
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| Traditionally, they were used to regulated and reinforce social hierarchies and morals through restrictions, often depending upon a person's social rank, on permitted clothing, food, and luxury expenditures. |
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| Has a diversified economy (often based on taxation and tribute), public (civic ceremonial) architecture, a system of record keeping, and a comprehensive ideology. Also implies “civility”. |
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| Formulated the theory for the “Urban Revolution”, where a new class-stratified society came into being based on economic classes rather than traditional ties of kin. |
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| Some examples of this include the narrative creation-myth Aztec story of the founding of the capital Tenochtitlan, as well as the American colonist’s Manifest Destiny. Referred to as a system of beliefs that can take on several forms (political, socio-economic, religious). |
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| Can be embodied either through overt coercion/subtle manipulation or impunity. |
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| Typically with a dense population greater than 5,000 people. Has multi-regulatory institutions – tiers of power. There are also non-food producers; craft specialists. |
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| A British archeologist that gave trade a primary role in the rise of states – where he attributed the dramatic flowering of the Minoan civilization through intensified trading contacts. Oversaw obsidian trade study. |
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| A physical layered plateau with cultural context for each layer - "layer cakes". Found in Mesopotamian archeology, Ur is an example of this. |
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| Large-scale public architecture, typically used to house priests and rulers (i.e. the elite). |
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| Early farming culture of about 5000 BC in southern Mesopotamia. What’s unique about these peoples is that they chose to inhabit an inhospitable region – where the area was at the mercy of flooding, few building resources available, and poor climate. Their technology consisted of clay tools in place of stone – used vitrification to make ceramic-based sharp edges for cutting. |
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| Mesopotamia script made by stamping clay tablets with a wedge-shaped stylus; a type of syllabary derived from iconographic script. |
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| A system of written symbols that represent the syllables (the combinations of vowels and consonants) that make up words. |
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| One of the world’s earliest cities, consisting of a mud-brick temple with fairly substantial mud-brick houses around it, often with a rectangular floor plan. Archeologists had trouble excavating the site due to a lack of expertise with distinguishing sun-dried mud-brick from the surrounding soil (Campbell-Thompson). |
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| Biblical Calah, a major city of the Sumerian civilization in the third millennium BC - known for its large ziggurat built in 2300 BC. When Leonard Woolley excavated the site in the 1920s and 1930s, the city was a tell. The city served as one of the most important Sumerian capitals, but eventually in the 4th century BC, the city was abandoned due to the Euphrates River changing course. |
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| British archeologist that excavated a royal cemetery at Ur, where he found the remains of a series of kings and queens who had been buried in huge graves with their entire retinue of courters. |
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| An Aegean seafaring culture with strong interest in trade – monopolizing the bronze market. Buildings were plastered and painted with brightly colored geometric designs, with landscapes, dolphins, and other sea creatures. |
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| This palace contained frescoes, that of the Minotaur and the Labyrinth, where the Minotaur was depicted carrying a double-sided axed called a Labrys. |
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| A disk of fired clay. These tokens featured hieroglyphic “seals” – it is yet to be deciphered. |
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| It was in the Middle Assyrian period that the town is first recorded as an administrative center. It was chosen as a new Assyrian capital by Assurnasirpal II and remained the capital of Assyria for more than 150 years. |
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| An expensive dye, often worn by royalty as a status symbol. It is commonly associated with sumptuary law, where people of improper status that wear this particular dyed clothing were punished. |
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| Translated as “Land between the rivers”, and now southern Iraq, the Victorians thought of the region as the location of the biblical Garden of Eden. It is located between the Tigris and Euphrates rivers; where much of the area was made up of inhospitable sand, swamp, and dry mud flats – however, it was the cradle of the world’s earliest urban civilizations. |
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| The world’s first city-state. This city provides the earliest evidence for writing/record keeping – used to keep track of private property and “ownership”. Slavery was used to pay off debts and more of a prescribed phenomenon then slavery in North America. There is also evidence for rationing food, where there were size-graded ceramic bowls. |
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| Gives flavor to Mesopotamian ideology and the most famous of Sumerian literature. |
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| Civilization in modern-day Iraq and Kuwait that lasted from c. 3100 to 2334 BC. Was the first attempt at becoming an empire. Had a strong economic and trade system - wrapping up tokens in balls of clay and stylized with cuneiform writing that were used as seals (made it harder to forge mail). |
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| Prospered by virtue of their well-organized, professional army; as well as being expert diplomats who controlled what is now northern Syria. Both the lack of maritime power (sea, water) and a rigid feudal system contributed to this society's decline. Supposedly fended off Ramesses II. |
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| Reached its height through mainly textile production. Kings of this society were expert charioteers and horsemen, whose material culture and life ways are immortalized in Homer’s epic poems, the “Iliad” and the “Odyssey”. |
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| Located on the Tigris River in northern Mesopotamia, and was a major force in the eastern Mediterranean world. This empire expanded dramatically in the 9th century BC, when a series of despotic, grandiose kings expanded their domains. |
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| When his palace was completed at Nimrud on the Tigris River, he threw a large party for more than 16,000 people. This Neo-Assyrian king has had a reputation for being sadistic and cruel. |
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| The last of the great Assyrian kings, who was famed for amassing a significant collection of cuneiform documents for his royal palace at Nineveh. |
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| The library of Assurbanipal. Among its holdings was the famous “Epic of Gilgamesh”. |
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| Capital of Assyrian Empire under King Assurbanipal, c. 630 BC. |
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| A Semitic-speaking leader that founded a ruling dynasty in Agade, south of Babylon. His rule declined from failure to follow up his military conquests with proper administrative governance. |
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| The successor of Sargon, who placed great emphasis on consolidating the new empire into a powerful and well-organized bureaucracy. He was founder and first king of the Third Dynasty of Ur, who unified Sumer and Akkad under authoritarian rule. |
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| A 1792 BC Babylonian king that is most recognized for his law code. He integrated the smaller kingdoms of Mesopotamia by winning a series of wars against neighboring kingdoms. Although his empire controlled all of Mesopotamia at the time of his death, his successors were unable to maintain his empire. |
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| Founders of the city of Carthage in North Africa. Amalgamated a variety of different ethnicities, trafficked cedar and Tyrain Purple, and power declined as Assyrians moved into the area. |
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| A mighty Babylonian king that ruled for 43 years and ruled over Mesopotamia, turning his capital into one of the 7 “wonders of the world” – the “Hanging Gardens of Babylon”. It was to Babylon that a large contingent of Jews were taken as captives after his armies sacked Jerusalem – immortalized in Psalm 137:1. |
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| “By the rivers of Babylon, there we sat down, yea, we wept, when we remembered Zion”. |
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| Took Babylon by military force after Nebuchadnezzar’s death in 539 BC. |
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