 | This article includes a list of general references, but it lacks sufficient corresponding inline citations .(December 2011) |
Tsebelda culture is a late antiquity to early medieval archaeological culture [1] in the territory of the Apsilae or Tsebelda tribe, located in Abkhazia, Georgia on the Black Sea coast. The culture is known mainly from excavation of burial sites, starting in 1959, which yielded a large collection of artefacts.
The majority of the artifacts presently located at the Abkhaz Federal Museum in Sukhumi were found in 1959 by local schoolboy (Yuri Voronov), who later became a prominent archaeologist and Caucasiologist. He collected and saved from destruction over a thousand objects of Tsebelda culture, including spears, axes, jewelry, glass, and clay vessels.
The findings of the young archaeologist interested scientists, and systematic archaeological excavations of the monuments and treasures of Tsebelda culture began as early as 1960. An archaeological expedition led by M. M. Trapsh produced the first excavations of the necropolis of this culture at one of fortresses, referred to as the "Hat".
The first reasonably complete publications appeared in 1970–1971. Scientific reports were prepared by archaeologists IN.L. Lekvinadze, M.M. Trapsh, Str.T.O. Shamba, M.M. Gunba, and YU.N. Raven, giving a full picture of the Tsebelda culture of the ancient Apsilae.
On the basis of the artifacts found, the necropoles in the Tsebelda culture are attributed mainly to the first to fifth centuries CE. Voronov identifies the ethnicity of the population that used the necropoles as members of the ancient Abkhazian tribes Apsilae and Abasci.
Materials found at Raskopannoye (Russian : раскопанное), a rich burial site with Byzantine coins of Justinian I (reigned 527–565), have contradicted previous erroneous dating. Tsebelda burial grounds ceased to function at the end of seventh to the beginning of eighth centuries, as a consequence of the Arab invasions of the first half of the eighth century.
One layer of the site was dated to the first through third centuries via the examination of one- and two-part brooches, small glass beads, Roman silver coins with the image of the emperors Nerva, Trajan, Hadrian, and Antoninus Pius, and other items. A second burial site contains artifacts dating to the fourth and fifth centuries, including glass vials, amphorae, Roman silver coins with the image of the emperor Julia Domna, fibulae, a brooch, a cross bow, and a jug with an ovoid shape adorned with a cross in the early Christian style.
Between 1960 and 1962, archaeologists unearthed more than 100 graves, six of which were of horses. Monuments were also unearthed dating from the beginning of the sixth century BCE. The graves were differentiated into two types. The majority, some 82 per cent of cases, have an elongated rectangular burial pit. The dead were laid on their backs with their heads to the northwest or the southwest. In the remaining eighteen per cent of the burials, the dead were cremated, along with their ornaments. The cremation was performed off-site, and the ashes were placed in red clay urns with two looped handles.
A large number of weapons were found in the excavations, including single- and double-bladed swords, many daggers, unique axes, arrowheads, and shields. The axes, dated from the first through nineteenth centuries, are considered particularly characteristic of the Tsebelda culture.
Etowah Indian Mounds (9BR1) are a 54-acre (220,000 m2) archaeological site in Bartow County, Georgia, south of Cartersville. Built and occupied in three phases, from 1000–1550 CE, the prehistoric site is located on the north shore of the Etowah River.
The Great Serpent Mound is a 1,348-feet-long (411 m), three-feet-high prehistoric effigy mound located in Peebles, Ohio. It was built on what is known as the Serpent Mound crater plateau, running along the Ohio Brush Creek in Adams County, Ohio. The mound is the largest serpent effigy known in the world.
The Adena culture was a Pre-Columbian Native American culture that existed from 500 BCE to 100 CE, in a time known as the Early Woodland period. The Adena culture refers to what were probably a number of related Native American societies sharing a burial complex and ceremonial system. The Adena culture was centered on the location of the modern state of Ohio, but also extended into contiguous areas of northern Kentucky, eastern Indiana, West Virginia, and parts of extreme western Pennsylvania.
Julliberrie's Grave, also known as The Giant's Grave or The Grave, is an unchambered long barrow located near to the village of Chilham in the south-eastern English county of Kent. Probably constructed in the fourth millennium BCE, during Britain's Early Neolithic period, today it survives only in a state of ruin.
The Snape Anglo-Saxon Cemetery is a place of burial dated to the 6th century AD located on Snape Common, near to the town of Aldeburgh in Suffolk, Eastern England. Dating to the early part of the Anglo-Saxon Era of English history, it contains a variety of different forms of burial, with inhumation and cremation burials being found in roughly equal proportions. The site is also known for the inclusion of a high status ship burial. A number of these burials were included within burial mounds.
Spiro Mounds is an Indigenous archaeological site located in present-day eastern Oklahoma. The site was built by people from the Arkansas Valley Caddoan culture. that remains from an American Indian culture that was part of the major northern Caddoan Mississippian culture. The 80-acre site is located within a floodplain on the southern side of the Arkansas River. The modern town of Spiro developed approximately seven miles to the south.
Colchian culture is Neolithic, early Bronze Age and Iron Age culture of the western Caucasus, mostly in western Georgia. Colchian culture was divided into two periods: Proto-Colchian and Ancient Colchian. It was partially succeeded by the Koban culture in Northern Caucasus and Colchian influence also spread in Shida Kartli, Meskheti, North-Eastern Anatolia.
Rock Eagle Effigy Mound is an archaeological site in Putnam County, Georgia, U.S. estimated to have been constructed c. 1000 BC to AD 1000. The earthwork was built up of thousands of pieces of quartzite laid in the mounded shape of a large bird. Although it is most often referred to as an eagle, scholars do not know exactly what type of bird the original builders intended to portray. It is listed on the National Register of Historic Places (NRHP) because of its significance. The University of Georgia administers the site. It uses much of the adjoining land for a 4-H camp, with cottages and other buildings, and day and residential environmental education.
The National Museum of Archaeology is a Maltese museum in Valletta, with artefacts from prehistory, Phoenician times and a notable numismatic collection. It is managed by Heritage Malta.
Archeological sites in Azerbaijan first gained public interest in the mid-19th century and were reported by European travellers.
The archaeology of Anglo-Saxon England is the study of the archaeology of England from the 5th century AD to the 11th century, when it was ruled by Germanic tribes known collectively as the Anglo-Saxons.
Burial in Anglo-Saxon England refers to the grave and burial customs followed by the Anglo-Saxons between the mid 5th and 11th centuries CE in Early Mediaeval England. The variation of the practice performed by the Anglo-Saxon peoples during this period, included the use of both cremation and inhumation. There is a commonality in the burial places between the rich and poor – their resting places sit alongside one another in shared cemeteries. Both of these forms of burial were typically accompanied by grave goods, which included food, jewelry, and weaponry. The actual burials themselves, whether of cremated or inhumed remains, were placed in a variety of sites, including in cemeteries, burial mounds or, more rarely, in ship burials.
The Leyla-Tepe culture of the South Caucasus belongs to the Chalcolithic era. It got its name from the site in the Agdam District of modern-day Azerbaijan. Its settlements were distributed on the southern slopes of Central Caucasus, from 3800 until 3200 B.C.
The Apsilae or Apsili were an ancient tribe inhabiting the territory of Apsilia, in modern Abkhazia.
The Archaeological Site of Senhor dos Mártires is an archaeological site associated with Greek interventions in the Alentejo, in civil parish of Santa Maria do Castelo, municipality of Alcácer do Sal.
The archaeological sites Randlev and Hesselbjerg refer to two closely related excavations done throughout the 20th century near the village of Randlev in the Odder Municipality of Denmark, three kilometers southeast of the town of Odder. Randlev is known primarily for its Romanesque church constructed sometime around 1100 A.D. Hesselbjerg refers to the large Viking-Age cemetery discovered on the Hesselbjerg family farm and the site Randlev refers to the nearby settlement from the same period. Although both Randlev and Hesselbjerg were contemporaneous and encompass a similar area, Hesselbjerg refers more specifically to the 104 graves discovered prior to the later excavation at the site Randlev, which pertains to the Viking Age settlement. The settlement consisted of a farm complex that was likely active during the ninth and tenth centuries; finds from the site such as silver hoards and elaborate jewelry indicate that the farm was likely prosperous, a conjecture which is supported by the extremely fertile land surrounding the area. Artifacts were found in the vicinity of the Hesselbjerg and Randlev sites as early as 1932 when a local farmer discovered a silver hoard, but serious excavations were not conducted until 1963. These excavations ended in 1970; however, Moesgård Museum returned to the site in 1997 and continued analysis until 2010.
Grakliani Hill is an archaeological excavation site in eastern Georgia near Kaspi, showing evidence of human presence possibly going back 300,000 years.
Bagrat's Castle is a ruined medieval castle near Sukhumi, Georgia’s breakaway republic of Abkhazia, close to the Black Sea coast. It is named after the Georgian king Bagrat, either Bagrat III or Bagrat IV, and traditionally dated to the late 10th or 11th century.
Tsebelda fortress is a Late Antique/Early Medieval fortification near the village of Tsebelda, in the eponymous valley, in Abkhazia, Georgia.
The Giberville bucket is an artifact discovered during archaeological excavations in the commune of Giberville, in what is now the Calvados department in Normandy, France. It is kept in the Normandy Museum in Caen.