| Babylon (Iraq) The archaeological site of Babylon was the capital of a small city state of Mesopotamia, named Babylonia, located in what is now Iraq, near the modern town of Hilla.
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| Bachwezi Dynasty The Chwezi Dynasty (also called Bachwezi or Kitara Dynasty) is the possibly mythical, certainly legendary, kingdom of Uganda, who are said to have ruled between 1300 and 1500 AD.
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| Back dirt the excavated material from a site, presumed to be of little or no further archaeological significance.
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| Background Research The term background research refers to the collection of previously published and unpublished information about a site or region.
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| Badarian Culture The Badarian culture is the name archaeologists have given to the Neolithic period in Egypt and the Sudan between 4400-4000 BC.
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| Baden Culture The Baden culture is the name archaeologists have given to a culture of the central European Copper Age, related to the Bell Beaker culture and dated between about 3500-3000 BC.
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| Baghdad (Iraq) The ancient city of Baghdad, the capital city of modern day Iraq, was a relatively minor settlement in the Middle East until the 8th century AD.
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| Bagor (India) The archaeological site of Bagor is a Late Mesolithic (pre-Harappa) archaeological site in the Bhilwara District of the Rajasthan region of western India.
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| Baker Cave (US) Baker Cave is a rock shelter located in the Lower Pecos region of southwest Texas of the south central United States, with occupations dated between 9,000-6800 years before the present.
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| Ballana Culture The Ballana (or X-Culture) is the name given to a pre-Christian, post-meroitic culture of Egypt and Nubia, dominant in Lower Egypt and Nubia between about A.D. 250-550.
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| Balma de l'Abeurador (France) Balma de l'Abeurador is a rock shelter that contains a Mesolithic period site, located fifty kilometers from the Mediterranean Sea in France.
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| Ban Chiang (Thailand) The archaeological site of Ban Chiang is a Bronze Age village and cemetery site in Udon Thani province of Thailand.
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| Ban Na Di (Thailand) Ban Na Di is a Copper Age settlement and cemetery in Thailand (1313-903 BC), including sixty burials.
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| Band-e Dukhtar (Turkey) Band-e Dukhtar is an irrigation works located in the Anatolian plain and likely dated to the Achaemenid dynasty.
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| Bandkeramik Culture The Bandkeramik culture is the name given by archaeologists to the first true farming communities in central Europe, dated between 5400 and 4900 BC.
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| Banner Stone a stone that was attached to an atl-atl in order to make it a more effective weapon by adding weight and balance
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| Banpo (China) The archaeological site of Banpo is a Neolithic village and cemetery on the Wei River in Shaanxi Province, China, belonging to the early Yangshao culture, dated 5000-4000 BC.
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| Banyan Valley Cave (Thailand) Banyan Valley Cave is located in Pang Ma Pha province of upland Thailand, with occupations dated beginning in the Hoabinhian period of the late stone age, up into the metal ages (3,500-900 BC).
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| Barrow A barrow is the archaeological term for a specific type of burial mound belonging to the Neolithic period structures in Western Europe.
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| Bashidang (China) Bashidang is an early walled settlement belonging to the Pengtoushan culture, dated between 5540 and 5100 BC near Wufu village in the Yangtse River basin, Hunan province in China.
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| Basilique de St-Denis (France) The Basilique de St-Denis is the most recent structure of several churches built on the top of a Gallo-Roman cemetery where St. Denis is said to have been buried.
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| Basketmaker Culture The Basketmaker culture is the name archaeologists have given to a southwestern United States cultural group, ancestral to the Anasazi.
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| Bat Cave (US) Bat Cave is an archaeological site consisting of a complex of rock shelters in New Mexico, in the American southwest, with early evidence for maize agriculture.
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| Bats'ub/25 Flight Cave (Belize) The Bats'ub cave is a karst rock shelter located within the Columbian Forest Reserve of Belize.
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| Battlefield Archaeology Battlefield archaeology is the archaeological investigations of the sites of military battles.
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| BC (or B.C.) The term B.C. is used by nearly everyone in the United States to mean dates in the Julian calendar before the birth of Christ, or at least before the date once thought to be that of Christ's birth (the year 0).
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| BCE (or B.C.E.) BCE stands for "Before the Common Era" and it is basically equivalent to "BC", except that it doesn't have the Christian religious connotations of BC.
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| Beaker Folk The Beaker folk is the name given to a cultural group widespread throughout western Europe, from the Late Neolithic to Early Bronze Age (4000-2000 BC).
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| Beeches Pit (United Kingdom) Beeches Pit is the name of a Middle Pleistocene archaeological site located in the East Anglia, England, close to an abandoned channel of the Bytham/Ingham river.
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| Be'er Sheva (Israel) Be'er Sheva is a modern town in the Negev Desert of Israel, and also the name of a Chalcolithic settlement dated to the 4th millennium BC.
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| Behistun Inscription (Iraq) The Behistun inscription is a "Rosetta stone" for Old Persian, Elamite, and Akkadian language.
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| Beixin Culture A precursor to Dawenkou Culture, the Beixin Culture has recently re-dated between 4300-4100 BC
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| Belkachi Culture The Belkachi culture is the named given to a Middle Neolithic culture in the northern Baikal region of Siberia, between 5000-3900 years before the present.
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| Bell Beaker Culture The culture known as Bell Beaker is the largest portion of the loosely grouped Beaker Folk, named for a very particular type of ceramic vessel, shaped like an upside-down bell.
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| Benin (Benin) The modern city of Benin is named after the kingdom in what is now Benin.
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| Bent Pyramid (Egypt) The Bent Pyramid is one of the Old Kingdom Pyramids at Giza, Egypt; built in the 4th Dynasty, 2680-2565 B.C. by that wizard of architects, Imhotep.
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| Berbers The Berbers are a modern ethnic group in North Africa and Europe, with a deep history.
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| Bercy (France) The archaeological site of Bercy is an Early Neolithic settlement (4500-2000 BC) located on the Seine River within the city limits of Paris, France.
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| Berry-au-Bac (France) The site of Berry-au-Bac is a Neolithic site in the Paris Basin of France.
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| Besant-Sonota Complex The Besant-Sonota Complex is the name archaeologists have given to Woodland bison hunters in the American Great Plains in Canada and the United States.
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| Beth Alpha Synagogue (Israel) The site of Beth Alpha in Israel is believed to be a Jewish synagogue dated to the Byzantine period.
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| B-Group Culture The B-Group culture refers to an Early Bronze Age Nubian culture (2900-2000 BC), which is preceded by the A-Group and followed by the C-Group (or Kushite).
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| Biblical Archaeology Traditionally, biblical archaeology is the name given to the study of the archaeological aspects of the history of the Jewish and Christian churches as provided in the Judeo-Christian bible.
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| Bibracte (France) The archaeological site of Bibracte is an Iron Age site located on Mont Beuvray in France near Autun.
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| Bigo Bya Mugenyi (Uganda) Bigo Bya Mugenyi is a late Iron Age settlement in Uganda, the capital of the Kitara or Chwezi Dynasty.
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| Bilzingsleben (Germany) Bilzingsleben is a Lower Paleolithic open air site with fabulous preservation, located in Thuringia, eastern Germany and dated between 320,000 and 412,000 years ago.
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| Bin Bir Kilisse (Turkey) The site of Bin Bir Kilisse, also called Maden Sheher, was a Byzantine city, described by British archaeologist Gertrude Bell as the "City of a Thousand and One Churches".
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| Bipedal Locomotion Bipedal locomotion means walking on two legs in an upright position.
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| Biskupin (Poland) The Biskupin site is a fortified settlement in Poland, occupied between the Late Bronze and early Iron ages, and belonging to the Lausitz (Late Bronze age) and Hallstatt C (Early Iron) cultures.
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| Bitumen Bitumen is a black, oily, viscous material that is a naturally-occurring organic byproduct of fermented algae; and it was used by humans and our ancestors for any number of very useful things for the past 40,000 years.
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| Black Death The Black Death was the name given to an episode of the devastating bubonic plague in Europe between 1348 and 1351.
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| Black Mesa (USA) Black Mesa is the name given to a large upland area in the American southwestern state of Arizona, upon which hundreds of archaeological sites have been identified.
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| Blombos Cave (South Africa) Blombos Cave is a Middle Stone Age (MSA) site located in the southern Cape, South Africa, that contains excellently preserved MSA deposits that date to older than 70,000 years.
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| Bodo Cranium (Ethiopia) The Bodo Cranium is a nearly complete hominin skull recovered from a site in the Middle Awash region of Ethiopia.
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| Bog Bodies The term bog bodies is used to refer to human burials, some likely sacrificed, recovered from peat bogs of Denmark, Germany, Holland, Britain, and Ireland.
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| Boghazkoy (Turkey) Boghazkoy is the site of a major Hittite capital called Hattusas, in what is now Turkey, some 100 kilometers from the Black Sea and 150 miles from Ankara.
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| Bonampak (Mexico) Bonampak is a Classic Maya site in the state of Chiapas, Mexico, occupied from about 650-800 AD.
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| Boomplaas Cave (South Africa) Boomplaas Cave (Tree Farm Cave) is located in the Swartberg Range of South Africa, near the southern most tip of the continent.
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| Border Cave (South Africa) Border Cave is a rock shelter in the Lembombo Mountains between South Africa and Swaziland, in Kwazulu Natal of South Africa.
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| Bordesley Abbey (UK) Bordesley Abbey is a Cistercian Medieval monastery complex, built in the 12th century AD in Warwickshire, England.
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| Bosutswe (Botswana) Bosutswe is the name of a deeply stratified Toutswe culture site, located on the Motloutse River (tributary to the Zambezi River) at the eastern edge of the Kalahari Desert in Botswana.
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| Bourbon Excavations In 1738, Charles of Bourbon, King of the Two Sicilies and founder of the House of Bourbon, hired antiquarian Marcello Venuti to work at the sites of Herculaneum and Pompeii.
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| Bouri (Ethiopia) The paleontological region called Bouri is located within the Middle Awash region of Ethiopia and contains evidence of hominid occupation between 2.5 and 160,000 years ago.
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| Box Gully (Australia) Box Gully is the name of a very old archaeological site located on Lake Tyrell, southern Victoria, Australia.
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| Boxgrove (UK) The Boxgrove site is a Middle Stone Age site located in a stone quarry in West Sussex England.
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| Boylston Street Fish Weir (USA) The Boylston Street Fish Weir is a Late Archaic fish trap located within the town of Boston, Massachusetts.
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| Boyne Valley (Ireland) The Boyne Valley in Ireland, called 'Brugh na Bóinne'in Gaelic, is an important region in Europe.
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| BP (or B.P.) Archaeologists use the term 'BP' to mean 'years before humans began to screw up the atmosphere by testing nuclear devices'.
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| Bromme Culture The Bromme culture is the name given to an early prehistoric reindeer-hunting culture of Scandinavia.
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| Bronze Age The Bronze Age is a fairly arbitrary technological stage invented as part of a three-part system (Stone, Bronze, and Iron).
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| Brook Run In the piedmont region of northern Virginia, in a grove of cedar trees near the Rapidan River, lays important evidence of rock quarrying by some of the earliest human residents of the region.
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| Budakalász (Hungary) The archaeological site of Budakalász is a Baden culture (Bell Beaker, 3500-3000 BC) occupation and cemetery.
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| Bundle Burial human bones bundled together in some material and buried.
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| Burgwall culture "Burgwall" translates to "castle wall or barrier" in German, and the term refers to the medieval Slavic culture of central Europe of the 11th century AD.
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| Burial Mound mound under which a person or group of people were buried.
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| Burials and Graves in Archaeology Archaeological research into death include mortuary behaviors, grave goods, cemetery plans, mortality, morbidity, and diet and health.
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| Burzahom (India) The site of Burzahom is a Neolithic settlement and cemetery in the Kashmir state of India, occupied between about 3000-1500 BC.
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| Bushmen The Bushmen is a collective term for a modern cultural group in sub-Saharan Africa, primarily the Kalahari Desert.
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| Byzantium (Turkey) Byzantium is the name of the state, culture and capital city of the eastern Roman empire, which outlived the Roman empire, from Roman times through the 15th century AD.
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